Jimmy Carter Says President Obama's Election Inflamed Some Racists
The former Democratic president discusses his legacy.
— -- Former Democratic President Jimmy Carter told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that he thought the 2008 election of President Obama may have served to agitate some whites in the country who hold racist beliefs.
Stephanopoulos asked Carter whether he was "surprised that the election of President Obama didn't lead to even more progress on this issue."
"I think ... in a strange and I'd say unpleasant way, this kind of resurrected some animosity among people who are white and thought that whites should be superior," Carter said in an interview for ABC News' "This Week."
"We kind of took it for granted that we eliminated the concept in America that whites were superior in some way to black people. And I think we let our guard down," the former president told Stephanopoulos.
Carter's comments came during a wide-ranging interview with ABC News that took place Wednesday in New York, one day before the Confederate flag came down over the South Carolina statehouse weeks after the killing of nine African-Americans in June at an historic black church in Charleston.