WASHINGTON — Just days after nine black parishioners were killed in a South Carolina church, President Barack Obama said the legacy of slavery still “casts a long shadow” on American life, and he said that choosing not to say the word “nigger” in public does not eliminate racism from society.
In a wide-ranging conversation about race, including his own upbringing as a man born to a black father and a white woman, Obama insisted that there was no question that race relations have improved in his lifetime. But he also said that racism was still deeply embedded in the United States.
“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,” the president said during an interview for Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast that was released on Monday. “We’re not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not.”
He added, “Societies don’t overnight completely erase everything that happened two to 300 years prior.”
Obama has been more open about the issue of race during his second term, in part because of racially charged episodes in the last several years. The killing of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager in Florida, and the protests that followed several police shootings have prompted the president to be more reflective about his own racial identity and the nation’s.
In the hourlong interview, Obama talked about being a rebel during his youth and “trying on” different kinds of personas as he struggled to understand what kind of African-American man he wanted to be.
“I’m trying on a whole bunch of outfits,” Obama said. “Here’s how I should act. Here’s what it means to be cool. Here’s what it means to be a man.”
He said that a lot of his issues when he was young “revolved around race” but that his attitude changed around the time he turned 20. That is when he began to understand how to honor both sides of his racial identity, the president said.
“I don’t have to be one way to be both an African-American and also someone who affirms the white side of my family,” he said. “I don’t have to push back from the love and values that my mom instilled in me.”
Obama began talking about race and his upbringing early in his life when he wrote Dreams From My Father, a memoir, as he was about to begin his first campaign for the Illinois State Senate in 1995. In that book, he talks in detail about growing up in Hawaii, his use of marijuana and his struggles to understand how he fit in with the races in America.
As a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama confronted race directly when he gave a speech about the issue to confront comments by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his onetime pastor. In his first term, Mr. Obama mostly shied away from the issue of race, except for an early comment about a white police officer in Cambridge, Mass., who arrested a black Harvard professor.
Obama’s interview with Maron took place on Friday, in the garage where the comedian records his popular podcast. Officials said they did not know of another time when a sitting president had recorded an interview in someone’s garage studio.
But instead of joking around, the conversation between the two men was mostly serious. In addition to discussing race, Obama and Maron talked about the issue of gun control, and whether something should be done in the aftermath of shootings like the one at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., last week.
“It’s not enough to just feel bad,” Obama said. “There are actions that could be taken to make events like this less likely, and one of those actions we could take would be to enhance some basic, common-sense gun safety laws that, by the way, the majority of gun owners support.”
He added: “The question is, just, is there a way of accommodating that legitimate set of traditions with some common-sense stuff that prevents a 21-year-old who is angry about something, or confused about something, or is racist, or is, you know, deranged, from going into a gun store and suddenly is packing and can do enormous harm? And that is not something that we have ever fully come to terms with.”
Supporters of stricter gun control measures had criticized Obama for seeming to give up on passing new gun control measures when he spoke in the immediate aftermath of the church shootings last week.
Obama said in the interview on Friday that despite broad support among the American public for changes in gun laws, legislation is unlikely to pass soon because of the power of the National Rifle Association.
“I don’t foresee any real action being taken until the American public feels a sufficient sense of urgency and they say to themselves, ‘This is not normal, this is something that we can change, and we’re going to change it,’” Obama said. “And if you don’t have that kind of public and voter pressure, then it’s not going to change from the inside.”
