President Obama condemned the “incredibly offensive racist statements” attributed to the Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling during a press conference on Sunday in Malaysia.
“I don’t think I have to interpret those statements for you,” the president said, responding to a question from a reporter. “They kind of speak for themselves.”
“When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don’t do really have to do anything,” he added. “You just let them talk.”
The president said he was confident that the league commissioner, Adam Silver, would address the situation, noting that the league has “an awful lot of African-American players” and is “steeped in African-American culture.”
He said the remarks underscored the country’s struggle to “wrestle with the legacy of race and slavery and segregation.”
“We’ve made enormous strides, but you’re going to continue to see this percolate up every so often,” he said. “And I think that we just have to be clear and steady in denouncing it, in 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 ourselves.”
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