10 Most Fascinating Quotes From Obama’s ‘WTF’ Chat With Marc Maron
In a widely discussed episode of comedian Marc Maron‘s WTF podcast released Monday, President Obama discussed racism, gun control and what he considers his greatest achievements in office. Although there were lighter moments, such as when Obama ribbed Maron for being “a little narcissistic” for pasting photos of himself in his garage (where the interview took place) and joking about how his daughters find him boring, the president fielded more serious questions in a measured and often earnest fashion. Here are the ten most thought-provoking quotes the president said over the course of the hour-long interview.
1. On the time Congress most “disgusted” him.
“Right after Sandy Hook, Newtown, when 20 six-year-olds are gunned down and Congress literally does nothing, that’s the closest I came to feeling disgusted. I was pretty disgusted.”
He added that “that’s the exception rather than the rule.”
2. On race relations in America (in which the president says the n-word).
“I always tell young people in America, ‘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 Sixties or Seventies.’ It is incontrovertible that race relations have improved significantly during my lifetime and yours and that opportunities have opened up and that attitudes have changed. That is a fact. What is also true is that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, that casts a long shadow and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on. Racism, we are not cured of. 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. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t overnight completely erase everything that happened two to 300 years prior and so what I tried to describe in the Selma speech that I gave, commemorating the march there, again is a notion that progress is real and we have to take hope from that progress.”
3. On breaking the cycles of poverty and racism.
“What are we doing to help…lowest-income communities? We know, for example, that early childhood education works. That is one way to break the legacy of racism and poverty. If a 3-year-old, 4-year-old kid is in an environment of love and is getting a good meal and has a teacher that is trained in early childhood development and is hearing enough words and is being engaged enough, they can get to where a middle-class kid is pretty quickly….What hasn’t happened is us making a collective commitment to do it.”