Obama: I absolutely faced racism while in office
.@POTUS to @FareedZakaria in #ObamaLegacy: Are there people whose primary concern is that I seem foreign? Absolutely https://t.co/VLBUR6m6es
— CNN (@CNN) December 8, 2016
In an interview aired Wednesday on CNN, President Obama described how he thinks people may view him differently than other presidents because of his race.
”I think there’s a reason attitudes about my presidency among whites in northern states are very different from whites in southern states,” Obama told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.
{mosads}Obama described how the “birther” movement, fueled in large part by President-elect Donald Trump, affected him.
“Are there folks whose primary concern about me has been that I seem foreign — the other? Are those who champion the birther movement feeding off of bias? Absolutely,” he said.
In 2011, Trump questioned why Obama hadn’t revealed his birth certificate, speculating that Obama was born in Kenya and not the U.S. This September, Trump announced that he now believes Obama was born in the United States.
He also spoke to how these difficulties have strengthened people of color.
“The concept of race is not just genetic,” he said. “It’s cultural. This notion of people who look different than the mainstream, suffering terrible oppression but somehow being able to make out of that a music and a language and a faith and a patriotism.”
The interview aired as part of CNN’s “The Legacy of Barack Obama” special.
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