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Barack Obama uses ‘N-word’ in radio interview on racism

President Barack Obama has used the ‘N-word’ in a radio interview in which he claimed the United States is not yet “cured of racism”.

Mr Obama was speaking to comedian Marc Maron for a podcast recorded Friday in the wake of the Charleston shootings, which saw nine people murdered at a historically black church in South Carolina.

“Racism, we are not cured of it,” said President Obama on the show, published on Monday. “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 200 to 300 years prior.”

“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,” he said.

President Obama speaks to comedian Marc Maron

However, Mr Obama, the first black president in the United States’ history, said great strides had been made since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

“Do not say that nothing has changed when it comes to race in America, unless you’ve lived through being a black man in the 1950s or 60s or 70s,” he said.

“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.

“If we made as much progress over the next 10 years as over the last 50, things would be better. That’s within our grasp.”

In the same interview, Mr Obama attacked the National Rifle Association’s “grip” on Congress, by referencing the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

“I will tell you, right after Sandy Hook, Newtown, when 20 six-year-olds are gunned down, and Congress literally does nothing,” he said. “Yes, that’s the closest I came to feeling disgusted. I was pretty disgusted.”