Former Obama White House aide Valerie Jarrett commented on racism in America when asked about a racist tweet about her sent by actress and comedian Roseanne Barr earlier this year.
On May 28, Barr tweeted that Jarrett would be the byproduct if the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic political organization, and Planet of the Apes “had a baby.” ABC (DIS) canceled Barr’s hit show the following morning. Barr, for her part, called the tweet a “joke” before apologizing.
“Look, I think that racism has always been a part of our history. And it’s currently alive and well,” Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama from 2009 to 2017, told Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman at Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit on Thursday. “But I also believe the vast majority of American people are good and decent and care about one another, care about their neighbors regardless of race, religion, background.”
Jarrett, an African-American who grew up in Iran, said subtle forms of racism have always been present in the U.S. However, she asserted, the Trump era has made more blatant racism more acceptable after decades of civil rights progress.
“I think a lot of us who have experienced kind of the more covert forms of racism recognize that it doesn’t always have to be as blatant,” Jarrett said. “There are some benign ways of making people feel less than. And that’s always been a part of our country.
“But I do think that … what we’re saying is a lot more expressions of it than were ever acceptable in the recent past.”
Watch the full interview with Jarrett here.
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