World News for Students of English

25-06-2015 07:00

Barack Obama says the United States has not yet overcome its history of racism and he used the n word, an offensive racial slur to highlight his point. He commented in an interview on a US podcast while speaking about the debate over race and guns after the racially motivated murder of nine churchgoers in Charleston South Carolina last week.

Mr. Obama told the comedian mark Marc Maron, “We’re not cured of racism and it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to use the n word in public. It’s not a measure of whether racism exists or not. Societies don’t overnight completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior.”

The US President also added while he thinks attitudes towards race have changed in his lifetime, the legacy of slavery casts a long shadow that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on. He expressed his frustration of the strong grip the National Rifle Association has on congress after the Sandy Hook massacre where 20 children and six teachers were killed in a school in Connecticut three years ago.

The alleged 21-year-old gunman Dylann Storm Roof faces nine counts of murder in connection with the Charleston shooting.

Difficult words: n word (– a very offensive term for an American black person, do not use this word), slur (insult – something rude), overnight (quickly), prior (before), legacy (something which exists as a result of things which happened in the past), grip (to have effective control over something), massacre (when someone kills a lot of people), alleged (when people believe something to be true).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com