'Once broke a classmate's nose for...': Barack Obama shares anecdote on racial slurs

Streaming giant Spotify on Monday unveiled a new show featuring two American cultural heavyweights: rock star Bruce Springsteen and former US President Barack Obama.

In the first episode of the audio series "Renegades: Born in the USA", the former US President recalled how he once broke a schoolmate’s nose after the then-friend used a racial slur during a locker room fight.

In “Renegades,” which will release six subsequent episodes weekly, the two men speak intimately and expansively on topics such as race, fatherhood and the painful divisions that persist in American society.

According to The Hill, Obama in conversation with Bruce, said, “Listen, when I was in school, I had a friend. We played basketball together”.

“And one time we got into a fight and he called me a c----. Now, first of all, ain’t no c---s in Hawaii, right?" Obama said.

The 44th US President continued to say, “It’s one of those things that – when he might not even know what a c--- was – what he knew was, ‘I can hurt you by saying this.’”

“And I remember I popped him in the face and broke his nose. And we were in the locker room,” Obama revealed.

Obama, the first Black President of the United States asserted that racial slurs come down to “an assertion of status over the other”. "That basic psychology that then gets institutionalised is used to justify dehumanising somebody, taking advantage of 'em, cheatin' 'em, stealin' from 'em, killin' 'em, raping 'em," Obama stated.

Although the show is positioned as an attempt to understand the divisions in American society and to search for solutions, Obama and Springsteen largely avoid politics and stick to personal stories.

The former President's foray into podcasting follows that of his wife Michelle, who found success in the medium last year, notably with an episode that brought the pair together on air.