The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello, and welcome to our national conversation about conversations about race.

The weekly podcast where we discuss the ways in which talking about politics, power, identity, pop culture, and so much more just got a lot more post-post racial.

You could say all that or just call this show about race.

I'm Anna Holmes, and joining me in the Panoply Studios in New York is Rebecca Carroll, the critic at large for the Los Angeles Times, and the editor of special projects

at WNYC. Welcome back, Rebecca. Thank you, Anne. Hi. Hi. And also joining us from D.C.

is Jamel Bowie, Chief Political Correspondent at Slate.com, and also now one of the hosts of a

fantastic podcast that you should all be listening to called Trumpcast. Glad to have you back, Jamel.

Glad to be back. So guys, today, a conversation we want to have, or are going to have, before the

end of the year, well, maybe I should back up by saying, when I walked in the Panoply Studios,

this afternoon, went half an hour ago, there was a large flat screen TV upon which Barack Obama was appearing because he was giving his last press conference of the year. I heard it might be the last press conference of his administration, but I kind of doubt that. Then Rebecca walked in and there was just a kind of feeling of like, there was some, as you put it, it was, it's the end of an era. And that segues very

nicely into the subject of today's show, which is the end of the Obama presidency, the fact that

we're not going to have Obama as our president anymore. We're not going to have a black president

anymore. I'm not sure we'll ever have one again, although I actually do feel optimistic.

Well, I feel optimistic.

Well, I feel optimistic that if the United States continues to exist, we will have a black for another black president. Or you could just put it that way. Yeah. And so in some ways,

we can, in many ways, we can look back at the Obama administration and celebrate in spite of what

is going to come after it, but there are things that the quote-unquote Obama effect was and wasn't able to

accomplish. So first off, I want to start with something that's been read very widely this

week, which is a piece for the Atlantic by Tana Hossi Coates. My president was black. Rebecca,

did you read it? I did. I did read it. And I thought it was really very fair. I thought it was

obviously beautifully written, but stunningly and strikingly fair and really looked, because, you know,

...