At a press conference with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, President Obama was asked about the audio recording of racist Donald Sterling’s racist comments.
Here are his remarks, courtesy of CNN:
I don’t think I have to…interperet [Sterling’s] statements for you. They kind of speak for themselves. When people…When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don’t really have to do anything, you just let them talk. And that’s what happened here. I have confidence that the NBA commissioner Adam Silver, a good man, will address this. Obviously the NBA is a league that is beloved by fans all across the country. It’s got an awful lot of African-American players. It’s steeped in African-American culture. I suspect that the NBA is going to be deeply concerned in resolving this.
I will make just one larger comment about this. You know, we, the United States, continues to wrestle with a legacy of race and slavery and segregation that’s still there, the vestiges of discrimination. We’ve made enormous strides but you’re going to continue to see this percolate up every so often and I think we have to be clear and steady in denouncing it, teaching our children differently, but also remaining hopeful that part of why some statements like this stand out so much is because there has been this shift in how we view our selves.
