Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

The feelings, myths and prejudices about the Negro American which now seem so valid and real to some of our white contemporaries will take their place on the shelf along with the belief in witches and the notion that the earth is the center of the solar system.  Nobody knows as yet whether the future [of the race situation] is hopeless. All we know is that it can be made hopeless, if enough people choose to consider it so.

The idea that America elected a black man to be its president forty years after it declined to allow Martin Luther King Jr. to stand on a balcony without getting shot still maintains its power to awe and inspire.

I always believed there would be an African-American president. It was something I'd dreamed about, thought about, but certainly did not believe would happen in my lifetime.

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

Let me tell you the truth: I'm 45 years old. I never thought that I would live to see a black president.

I can't negate the theory that the Huxtables on 'The Cosby Show' may have helped pave the way for the Obama family. People enjoyed watching that black family.

I think the race situation is getting better as far as people respecting each other goes. I think the race situation with entertainment is not that much better.

The day will come - and it is not far off - when the legacy of Lincoln will finally be fulfilled at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when a black man or woman will sit in the Oval Office. When that day comes, the most remarkable thing about it will be how naturally it occurs.

Because of where I come from, I never thought I'd see in my life a black candidate running for President.

Electing a black president was probably the only coup America could pull off.

I had great admiration for the election of President Obama. I believe that the U.S. at that moment showed tremendous capacity to show that it is a great nation, and it surprised the world. It may be very difficult to be able to elect a black president in the U.S. - as it was very difficult to elect a woman president in Brazil.

Let me tell you, never before in the history of this planet has anybody made the progress that African-Americans have made in a 30-year period, in spite of many black folks and white folks lying to one another.

We do have a black president, and that means a lot. People ask, 'What has he done?' What he's done is change the color up, which you see on the screen. When the head of the free world is black, there's got to be some sort of spin-off from it.

'The Cosby Show' - no one thought there's doctors and lawyers who are married and live in brownstones! Back then no one would have thought we would have an African-American president. They would have laughed in your face.

I think it is so great right now that we are in an age where there's an African American president in office. I think it is important for our generation to really witness that.

Racial lines, which once were bitterly real, now serve nothing more than marking out a living mosaic of human beings. And even here men of the same color are like the ivory keys of one instrument where each resembles all the rest, yet varies from them in pitch and quality of voice.

You could not let your masters see you read; but now [after Emancipation] the colored people are fond of sending their children to school. Because the children in after years will be able to tell us ignorant ones how to do for ourselves.

What really exercises my mind is not this hypothetical day on which some other Negro ‘first’ will become the first Negro president. What I am really curious about is just what kind of country he’ll be President of.

If someone had told me in 1963 that in 50 years we would see a Black man in the white house, I would have said “You’re crazy! You are not living in the real world.”

Much of the professed concern about the white working class is a cover for the interests of white elites who evoke working-class solidarity to combat racial, sexual and gender progress.

In the Fifties, there were certain places we couldn't ride on the bus, and now there is a possibility of a black man being in the White House. You have to feel good about it.

We are not race blind. Of course we still have racial tensions in this country. But the United States of America has made enormous progress in race relations, and it is still the best place on Earth to be a minority.

I always figured I would live long enough to see a black president. The movies predicted it. Usually, Morgan Freeman.

Simply as an exercise in efficient politics, Obama '08 rewrote the textbook. His accomplishment was historic and one that transformed how race and politics intersect in our society. Obama is the leading edge of this change, but his success is merely the ripple in a pond that grows deeper every day.

America is Tiger Woods country for a reason, and she elected Barack Obama to punctuate this new reality.