still is the embodiment of race. he is he was a president who just happened to be black. but his campaign and he knew if he went out there and talked about race all the time, he would lose out. when he talked about skip gates, he lost a certain segment of white america and never gained it back. he s keenly aware that he wrote about it in the book and he talked about it in this great interview with anderson cooper, but he talked about race with skip gates. he talked about race as he said in the interview with jeremiah wright but he also talked race when he went to selma, you know, with then congressman john lewis commemorating 50 years since that bloody sunday march. he talked race when we went to africa and traveled to africa. he talked race with trayvon martin and it boggled my mind, brianna and john and britny he
us. and, you know, sometimes unconscious. but i also think that there are certain right wing media venues, for example, that monetize and capitalize on stoking the fear and resentment of a white population that is witnessing a changing america. let s bring in abby phillip, anchor of inside politics sunday and cnn senior political correspondent. so interesting to hear the former president basically say, look what happened when i tried. look what happened in that moment with the lowest of low bars. you know, when skip gates was arrested for trying to get swo into his own house. look what happened when i spoke out about that and how can you ask how i feel my discussions of race were during my presidency. you get a sense that he recognizes that the standards have changed since he was in office. there was a tip toeing around race when obama was president.
continue. the truth is when i tried to tell that story oftentimes my political opponents would deliberately not only block out that story but try to exploit it for their own political gain. i tell the story in the book about the situation where skip gates, harvard professor, who is trying to get into his own house, gets arrested and i m asked about it. i don t know not having been there and not seeing all the facts what role race played in that, but i think it s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry. number two, that the cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. subsequent polling showed that my support among white
it s hard for the majority in this country of white americans to recognize that, look, you can be proud of this country and its traditions and its history and our forefathers, and yet it is also true that this terrible stuff happened and that, you know, the vestiges of that linger and continue. and the truth is that when i tried to tell that story, oftentimes my political opponents would deliberately not only block out that story but try to exploit it for their own political gain. the former president david axelrod mentioned this last week on the show. he said after he spoke out about professor skip gates getting arrested back in 2009, polling showed that his support among
reconciled with our history. but the fact is that it is a hard thing to hear. it s hard for the majority in this country of white americans to recognize that, look, you can be proud of this country and its traditions and its history and our forefathers and yet it is also true that this terrible stuff happened. and that, you know, the vestiges of that linger and continue. and the truth is that when i tried to tell that story, oftentimes my political opponents would deliberately not only block out that story but try to exploit it for their own political gain. i tell the story in the book about the situation where skip