Barack Obama Quotes

We've come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

I feel that there has been progress made since I was a boy on matters of race, but we have a long way to go.

When the civil rights battle was won, all the Jews and hippies and artists were middle class white people and all the blacks were still poor. Materially, not much changed.

Separate and unequal didn't work 100 years ago. It will not work today.

I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro. This is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future.

Race in America is not a problem you can go over, or around or under. You've got to go through it.

What worries me is that 'post-racial' America is not that different from the Americas that have preceded us, and it might not ever be.

By the 1960s, many of us believed that the Civil Rights Movement could eliminate racism in America during our lifetime. But despite significant progress, racism remains.

In spite of what some people claim, we are not in a post-racial era. I think it's still an important issue to bring up.

I grew up black in segregated America, where it was hard to find an open door. It's harder now for young blacks to find a closed one.

If there is inequality, and that equates with colour, then I'm going to deal with it.

In 2016, the conversation of the black experience is so broad, and it's very raw. I mean, c'mon, we have a black president. That's a major thing, and there are so many other significant occurrences that have come from the '60s and '70s up to now.

We live in a really racist culture and it's got to be addressed.

Racial inequality is a big problem.

However, while we should certainly celebrate the demise of overt official racism, we must also critically examine where we are at this historical moment, recognize the many challenges ahead and reaffirm our commitment to making Brown v. Board a reality.

Black people cannot look to government to solve their problems.

Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.

While the old spiritual 'Slavery Chain Done Broke at Last' was sung by blacks in the hours following the Appomattox surrender, racism sadly continues to be a crippling national scourge.

Black America surely faces an existential crisis, but not the one imagined in the condescending news media - of somehow getting non-black America to be more just and generous. The truth is, we've already been through that, and there is nothing left to do. We're out of 'affirmative actions' of all kinds.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed.

This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.

There has been, and there will continue to be, vigorous discussions about race in America. I worry that little will come of these discussions because we aren't addressing what must be done to change the current racial climate.

The fact is that racism, despite all the doomsayers, has diminished.

If you want to know if racism is a problem in your country, you might not want to ask white people.

It's hard to say when or if we will actually arrive at that place called 'post-racial', or, better yet, post-racism.