President Obama sat down with comedian Marc Maron for Maron's WTF podcast Friday, and Maron got Obama to talk about something he doesn't always expound on: race.
Good point, Mitt. https://t.co/Ryusfp8Xbh
— President Obama (@POTUS44) June 21, 2015
But for the most part, since his speech on race relations during the 2008 campaign, the nation's first black president has made a virtual art of avoiding overt conversations about race — especially when a matter can instead be discussed in terms of inequality, the absence of opportunity, cynicism or fear.
During the podcast, taped Friday but made public Monday, Maron and Obama covered topics from political polarization to guns, and many more. But the bit of the interview that has drawn the most attention is just what the president said about race — and the language he used — to describe race relations in the United States.
Specifically, the n-word.
"The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on. We’re not cured of it,” Obama said in the interview. “Racism. We are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘n*****’ 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 two to 300 years prior.”
So, the president who does not readily and freely speak directly about race until it becomes unavoidable, called for a deeper national examination of race and privilege, injustice and inequality. He essentially said that the nation's focus on when people use the n-word and who uses it is a poor gauge of race matters in the United States.
Naturally, what has followed are a bunch of stories and cable-news segments about the fact that the president himself used the n-word — the full word — in an interview. Was it appropriate, too outrageous, offensive or unwise? Should the word ever be uttered, and is it okay for Obama to use the word since he is a black man? Would a white president ever be able to say the same thing without being pilloried?
The questions might represent the earnest attempts of social and political commentators to dissect and report the president's rare and direct commentary on race. But they certainly don't get much closer to the deeper, more difficult conversation about race and inequality and the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in the United States that the president was trying to suggest that America needs to have right now.
It seems the president’s point has not, in fact, registered.
President Obama sat down with comedian Marc Maron for Maron's WTF podcast Friday, and Maron got Obama to talk about something he doesn't always expound on: race.
Obama has issued public statements after each of the events that have pushed the issue of race and policing into the headlines and listed racial disparities in the criminal justice system among the reasons that reforms should become a priority. And, most recently, he re-tweeted Mitt Romney's call for South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina capitol grounds with the Twitter-equivalent of an endorsement.
Good point, Mitt. https://t.co/Ryusfp8Xbh
— President Obama (@POTUS44) June 21, 2015
But for the most part, since his speech on race relations during the 2008 campaign, the nation's first black president has made a virtual art of avoiding overt conversations about race — especially when a matter can instead be discussed in terms of inequality, the absence of opportunity, cynicism or fear.
During the podcast, taped Friday but made public Monday, Maron and Obama covered topics from political polarization to guns, and many more. But the bit of the interview that has drawn the most attention is just what the president said about race — and the language he used — to describe race relations in the United States.
Specifically, the n-word.
"The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on. We’re not cured of it,” Obama said in the interview. “Racism. We are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘n*****’ 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 two to 300 years prior.”
So, the president who does not readily and freely speak directly about race until it becomes unavoidable, called for a deeper national examination of race and privilege, injustice and inequality. He essentially said that the nation's focus on when people use the n-word and who uses it is a poor gauge of race matters in the United States.
Naturally, what has followed are a bunch of stories and cable-news segments about the fact that the president himself used the n-word — the full word — in an interview. Was it appropriate, too outrageous, offensive or unwise? Should the word ever be uttered, and is it okay for Obama to use the word since he is a black man? Would a white president ever be able to say the same thing without being pilloried?
The questions might represent the earnest attempts of social and political commentators to dissect and report the president's rare and direct commentary on race. But they certainly don't get much closer to the deeper, more difficult conversation about race and inequality and the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in the United States that the president was trying to suggest that America needs to have right now.
It seems the president’s point has not, in fact, registered.