Obama Says "Nigger" and Speaks the Truth About Racism

Politico reports that:

President Barack Obama did not mince words in discussing race in a recent interview, going so far as to use the N-word in talking about America’s complex racial history when speaking to Marc Maron on the comedian’s “WTF” podcast in Los Angeles last week.

“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, posted in full on Monday. “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 2-300 years prior.”

The President's remarks come a few days after Michael Eric Dyson mustered up the courage to say this:

"The question is, Ed, when will this president finally see that he doesn't have to run from his race or run from blackness which are obviously there, and the tether to the issue of gun control and violence in this country," Dyson said. "He must use his bully pulpit to excoriate those forces that are demonizing all American citizens, in this case those who happen to be African-American."

"If you look at the descending order of greatness of nuance there, Bernie Sanders talked about the ugly stain of racism, Hillary Clinton talked about race, guns violence and division," Dyson said. "And then President Obama, oh, who by the way, Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about this, and then he talked about hatred across the races. Huh?"

"When a young man goes into a church and says, I'm here to kill black people, the president cannot pretend this is an issue of gun violence because if that man had a knife, he would have tried to kill the people with a knife. It doesn't matter the implement," Dyson said

Apparently, President Obama got the message.

Some are offended by the President's use of the N word. I am not. We must stop giving that word unspeakable power. Obviously, President Obama's intent was not to insult. His intent was to inform, to inform White America about the true, pervasive, structural and institutionalized nature of racism. Racism is bigger than a word. It is a permanent system of oppression.