In a recent interview with BET, President Obama urged the public to have both patience and vigilance in fighting the problems of racism and bias that are so deeply entrenched within American society. The interview is scheduled to air this coming Monday, and in it Obama does his best to remind us all that the United States has made significant progress on civil rights issues.

Obama stated, "This is something that's deeply rooted in our society, it's deeply rooted in our history...But the two things that are going to allow us to solve it: No. 1 is the understanding that we have made progress. And so it's important to recognize - as painful as these incidents are - we can't equate what's happening now to what was happening 50 years ago.

If you talk to your parents, grandparents, uncles, they'll tell you that things are better - not good, in some cases, but better... And the reason it's important for us to understand progress has been made is that then gives us hope that we can make even more progress."

Obama also encouraged the youth of the United States to not give up on the pursuit of equal rights. He said, "The second thing is ... we have to be persistent, because typically progress is in steps... It's in increments. When you're dealing with something as deeply rooted as racism or bias in any society, you've got to have vigilance, but you have to recognize that it is going to take some time and you just have to be steady, so that you don't give up when we don't get all the way there."

The interview with Obama comes at a time when protests are raging concerning the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, who are thought to be wrongly killed. According to Yahoo, an NBC News poll released on Sunday shows that 47% of Americans say that law enforcement applies different standards to blacks and whites, while 44% disagree. However, 82% of African Americans said that police apply different standards based on race, as compared to only 39% of white people polled.