President Obama has addressed the controversy over Los Angeles Clippers owner Don Sterling on Sunday during a press conference with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
The comments, which were caught on tape, feature Sterling telling his girlfriend, who is Mexican and African-American, "It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you're associating with black people. Do you have to?" when she posted a photo of herself with Magic Johnson on her Instagram page.
When President Obama was asked to comment, he called Sterling “ignorant.”
"When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk. That's what happened here," he said, CNN reports.
He continued that his comments are just proof that “the United States continues to wrestle with the legacy of race and slavery and segregation,” adding, "That's still there, the vestiges of discrimination. We've made enormous strides, but you're going to continue to see this percolate up every so often.”
Sterling has owned the Clippers for over 30 years and he’s currently under investigation by the NBA.