Obama used the n-word in a frank podcast interview about race
Comedian Marc Maron has interviewed hundreds of celebrities on his WTF podcast, but none higher profile than President Barack Obama. The commander-in-chief stopped by Maron's garage to talk U.S. race relations in an episode released Monday. In the aftermath of last week's deadly shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, the president cautioned listeners against believing racism no longer exists:
Racism, we are not cured of it. And it's not just a matter of it not being polite to say n-gger in public. That's not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It's not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don't, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior. [WTF with Marc Maron]
Obama also spoke of building on "common sense gun safety laws" that could be implemented to make shootings less likely, but added "the grip of the NRA on Congress" makes legislative change during the next couple of years improbable.
Listen to the whole interview here.
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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.
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