Obama: ‘Hopefully My Presidency Helped’ Cure America’s Racial Bigotries

President Obama said he's hopeful his presidency has helped America recover from its "ugly history" of racial bigotry. He worried, though, that people are being "fed information" that encourages us to remain intolerant.

Here's an excerpt:

"And as I said in my speech on Tuesday, we got more work to do on race. It is not — it is simply not true that things have gotten worse. They have not. Things are getting better, and I have more confidence on racial issues in the next generation than I do in our generation or the previous generation. I think kids are smarter about it. They are more tolerant. They are more inclusive by instinct than we are. And hopefully my presidency maybe helped that along a little bit. But you know, when we feel stress, when we feel pressure, when we're just fed information that encourages some of our worst instincts, we tend to fall back into some of the old racial fears, racial divisions, racial stereotypes, and it is very hard for us to break out of those and to listen and to think about people as people and imagine being in that person's shoes."