Barack Obama Quotes

The only reason race matters is because of racism.

Racial inequality is a big problem.

I feel that racial profiling may be a very complicated and long-standing problem. It will take a long time even to make tiny progress.

Shame on America for the plight of the Negroes

I wanted to remind myself and others of the old Jim Crow, so that we can remind ourselves that we're still living in the new Jim Crow. I feel it's important to dress in the fashion of the times.

I couldn't see why a black man wasn't allowed to drink out of the same water fountain or sit in the same bus or go to the same schools as a white guy.

We must create a committee to address the long-standing discrimination against black people in America.

Black women's lives have never been shown any value in America.

Democrats don't understand what is wrong in the black community or how to fix it. If they do, they don't care.

Systemic racism is something that diminishes all of us. Of course its worst effects are for its victims, but our entire country is held back through the inequality and the mistrust that it creates.

We've got to address the systemic racism in our criminal justice system.

I fully understand that the African-American community has suffered from discrimination and that there are many wrongs that must still be made right.

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.

Racial profiling has to stop.

Black people cannot look to government to solve their problems.

Sometimes black people really want to hold onto our oppression - 'This is ours! This belongs to us.' You can't just talk about equality for somebody else. Let's pass it on. Let's pass it on to somebody else. At the end of the day, it is all about inequality.

Although black and white Americans live, work, and learn together now, there is still injustice in America.

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

Racism cannot be cured solely by attacking some of the results it produces, like discrimination in housing or in education.

There is no more apartheid in South Africa than in the United States.

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.

Education in this country is about how to maintain the status quo and to perpetuate racism.

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.

Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse.

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.