WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama has warned that racial discrimination was still part of the American DNA that’s passed on.

In a transcript released on Monday, Mr Obama told WTF podcast in Los Angeles that also stressed the need for making gun control laws to end indiscriminate shootings.

“The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on. We’re not cured of it,” he said.

The Jim Crow laws were racial segregation laws in southern United States, mandating de jure racial segregation in all public facilities. Starting in 1890, the laws continued in force until 1965.

Charleston, South Carolina, where a gunman killed nine African American worshippers at a church last week was also part of the American South that practised legal racial segregation. The alleged shooter, Dylann Roof, is a self-declared white supremacist.

“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,” said President Obama, using a forbidden term instead of a socially acceptable word like African American or black.

“It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. … Societies don’t overnight completely erase everything that happened 2-300 years prior,” he said.

Referring to the Charleston church attack, Mr Obama reiterated a point he had raised in his immediate reaction as well.

“No other advanced nation on Earth … tolerates multiple shootings on a regular basis and considers it normal,” he said.

Mr Obama said that after a mass shooting in Tasmania, Australia changed its gun laws, but the Americans failed to do so despite multiple shooting incidents.

Last year, the FBI identified 160 active shooter incidents in the United States between 2000 and 2013. An average of 11.4 incidents occurred annually, with an increasing trend from 2000 to 2013.

The FBI recorded 1,043 casualties, 486 killed and 557 wounded.

On Dec 14, 2012, a man armed with an assault rifle and two semi-automatic pistols entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and massacred 28, including 20 children under the age of seven.

After the shooting, President Obama launched a nationwide campaign to change America’s gun laws that allow easy access to firearms.

Earlier this week, White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters after the Sandy Hook tragedy, President exhausted “every possible avenue” to change the gun laws but failed.

He said that President Obama did not anticipate action from Congress after the Charleston shooting either, since he “is very realistic about the political realities”.

In the WTF podcast, President Obama also raised this issue, telling his nation that “it’s not enough to just feel bad” after a shooting.

“There are actions that could be taken to make events like this less likely, and one of those actions we could take would be to enhance some basic, common-sense gun safety laws.”

Mr Obama reminded his nation that now was the time to make laws that prevent angry young men from walking into a public place and start shooting innocent people.

But the US president regretted that the National Rifle Association (NRA), which is one of the most influential lobbies in the United States, would not allow Congress to make such a law.

“Unfortunately, the grip of the NRA on Congress is extremely strong. I don’t foresee any legislative action being taken in this Congress and I don’t foresee any real action,” he said.

And an NRA board member Charles Cotton proved President Obama right by blaming the victims, instead of the shooter, for the Charleston tragedy.

In a now-deleted comment on a Texas-based message board for gun owners, he wrote that those killed could have been alive today had they been “allowed … to carry handguns in church.”

Published in Dawn, June 23rd, 2015

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