It happened decades ago, but former President Barack Obama still clearly remembers the day when someone he thought had his back called him a racial epithet.
“Listen, when I was at school, I had a friend. We played basketball together,” Obama told Bruce Springsteen on his new Spotify podcast, Renegades: born in the USA. “And once we fought and he called me an idiot. And I remember I punched him in the face and broke his nose.”
The move was an instant reaction.
“And he said, ‘Why did you do that?” Obama remembered. “And I explained to him – I said, ‘Never call me that.'”
Mr. Obama’s friend Springsteen told him that he witnessed something similar that happened to Clarence Clemons, his late saxophonist and close friend, who was also black. They had gone to a club when someone called Clemons a bad word. Springsteen saw how upset Clemons was at the incident, especially since the person who used the word offensive was an acquaintance of the band member E Street.
Then, once, when they were touring the Ivory Coast, they “went to a stadium entirely of black faces,” said Springsteen. “And we stood for a moment, and Clarence came over and said, ‘Well … now you know how it goes.’
The two were friends for four decades.
“It’s never something that comes again. Do you know? It’s … 45 years old,” said Springsteen. “And the only thing we never had fun is that race didn’t matter. We lived together. We traveled the United States and we were probably as close as two people could be. However, at the same time, I always recognized that there was a part of Clarence that I really wouldn’t know exactly and ah … it was a relationship unlike any other I’ve had in mine … I’ve had in my life. “
Springsteen was well aware of the fact that Clemons – who was nicknamed The Great Man – had to join a white man seven years younger to draw attention in an industry he worked in for a decade.
The rocker asked Obama if he thought America was ready to “deconstruct its founding myths” or consider reparations.
“So, if you ask me theoretically, ‘are repairs justified?’ The answer is yes, “said Obama.” There is not much doubt. Right? That the wealth of this country, the power of this country, was built in a significant part, not exclusively maybe not even most of it, but a large part of it was built on the backs of slaves. They built the house that I stayed in for a while.
“What is also true is that even after the end of formal slavery and the continuation of Jim Crow, the systematic oppression and discrimination of black Americans has resulted in black families not being able to accumulate wealth, not being able to compete, and that has Therefore, if you are thinking about what is fair, you look back and say: ‘The descendants of those who have suffered these kinds of terrible, cruel and often arbitrary injustices deserve some kind of redress, some kind of compensation – a recognition. ‘”
Obama said he acknowledged during his terms as president that the country would not do that.
“And so, this leads us to ‘Could you really get that kind of justice? Could you get a country to agree and own this story?'” Said Obama. “And my judgment was that, from a practical point of view, that was unattainable. We can’t even get this country to provide decent education for children in the city center.”
Still, he said, he sees value in discussing it.
“If for no other reason to educate the country about a past that is often not taught,” said Obama, “and let’s face it, we prefer to forget.”
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