Story highlights Hillary Clinton discussed race, police brutality and gun violence in Philadelphia

She said racial bias is something that has been part of our "DNA"

Philadelphia (CNN) Hillary Clinton bluntly assessed the state of race relations in the United States on Wednesday, telling a mostly African-American audience that racial bias is something that has been part of our "DNA going back probably millennia."

Clinton, as part of her effort to reach out to African-Americans voters, headlined a roundtable on gun violence in Philadelphia, an event that featured graphic descriptions of shootings at the hands of the police and direct questions about how she will deal with race issues as president.

"We all have implicit biases," Clinton said at St. Paul's Baptist Church. "What we need to do is be more honest about that and surface them. Because today, most people believe that they don't have those biases."

Clinton, a candidate running to be the first person to succeed the first black president of the United States, has talked about race throughout her campaign, acknowledging what she regularly calls "deep seeded racism" that plagues the United States.

But Clinton's African-American outreach has not always been easy, however. Clinton's support for then-President Bill Clinton's 1994 crime bill has enraged many young black activists, some of whom have protested her events. A group of 10 protesters stood outside her Philadelphia roundtable on Wednesday passing out letters that called for Clinton to pardon "all current and former federal prisoners unjust convicted or sentenced as a result of the '94 crime bill."

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