Skip to footer

Obama talks gun control, racism, and the N-word

President Obama expressed frustration that 'we're not cured of' racism in the United States but reiterated that the nation has come a long way in recent decades during a Friday interview with comedian Marc Maron.

|
Carolyn Kaster/AP
President Obama pauses as he speaks about gun violence at the Annual Meeting of the US Conference of Mayors in San Francisco on Friday. Conceding that congressional action was unlikely soon, President Barack Obama said lawmakers will tighten federal firearms restrictions when they believe the public is demanding it. 'I am not resigned,' Obama said. 'I have faith we will eventually do the right thing.'

President Obama used strong words to illustrate how he thinks America still has a lot of work to do to eliminate racism.

In an hour-long interview on comedian Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast – taped last Friday in Mr. Maron’s garage studio in Los Angeles and posted online this morning – President Obama said that while the United States has made progress in reducing discrimination, the legacies of slavery and racial discrimination in the country “casts a long shadow” and is still “part of our DNA.”

“We’re not cured of it ... and it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say [the N-word] in public,” he told Maron. “That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination.”

The president’s comments come days after a white man killed nine black parishioners during bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.

He has called for new laws restricting gun sales in the country in the past, and during the interview criticized the political clout of the National Rifle Association, a powerful pro-gun lobbying group.

“The grip of the NRA on Congress is extremely strong,” he told Maron.

He cited the failure of gun control legislation in the wake of a 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., saying the failure of Congress to pass a gun control bill left him “pretty disgusted.”

“I tell you, right after Sandy Hook, Newtown, when 20 6-year-olds were gunned down and Congress literally does nothing – yeah, that’s the closest I came to feeling disgusted” during this presidency, he said.

But the president also acknowledged that, while the US still has a ways to go in eliminating racism, they have already come a long way in recent decades.

“I always tell young people in particular: ‘Do not say that nothing’s changed when it comes to race in America unless you lived through being a black man in the 1950s or ‘60s or ‘70s,” said Obama.

He added, “Societies don’t just overnight completely erase everything that happened two to 300 years prior.”

This report includes material from Reuters and the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Obama talks gun control, racism, and the N-word
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/0622/Obama-talks-gun-control-racism-and-the-N-word
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe