President Obama Opens Up About Being Mistaken For Wait Staff Multiple Times

To illustrate his concerns about racial bias and profiling in America, President Obama revealed in an exclusive interview with People Magazine that both he and the First Lady have been mistaken multiple times for "the help." They've been mistaken as wait staff, valets, and retail workers. On one occasion, Mrs. Obama explained, the President was wearing a tuxedo to a black tie dinner, and one attendee asked him to get coffee.

"There's no black male my age, who's a professional, who hasn't come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn't hand them their car keys," he told People Magazine in the soon-to-be-released interview.

The First Lady also described a situation where she went to a highly publicized Target shopping trip, and was only approached by one person, who asked her to help take something off of a high shelf. The president did elaborate, and said that these "small indignities" the First Couple have experienced pale in comparison to the sometimes-violent discrimination faced by youths of color today.