Barack Obama Quotes

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.

I was born in the 1960s. I came up in the 1970s. I know how race relations were. The thing is, I want to advance the ball and never return to those days again. I want to keep the topic going. I'm going to discuss it. And we're going to make America better. It's my job as a citizen, and I demand it.

If white America is ready to extend complete democratic rights to colored people, there will be no race, no racial tension and no racial prejudice on either side, but we can be sure that any movement 'back to normalcy' in race relations will be bitterly resisted by colored people. It is now up to white America to make its choice...

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

It's undeniable there's been remarkable progress for African-Americans in this country. They've been elected senators and governors and running major corporations. But obviously we still have a long way to go.

I am absolutely convinced that race relations on the whole are actually better now than they were 20 years [ago].

Should a community... be free to enact legislation to say they don't want blacks? Now that's illegal. Fifty years ago it was legal. Is that progress or is that regress?

One of the less dismaying aspects of race relations in the United States is that their improvement is not a matter of a few people having a great deal of courage. It is a matter of a great many people having just a little courage.

If we got there and we looked up and we said, "You know what? Black folks are still doing a little bit worse off than whites, but it's not like it was 20 years ago," then we can have a discussion about how do we get that last little bit. But that's a high-class problem to have.

In '42,' it's like the '40s where racial equality had come into the consciousness of a lot of people, whereas in the 1900s it was sort of a new thing.

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.

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

My number one priority is to save the Black man.

Race has no place in American life or law.

We suspect that 25 years from now the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.

The American demands of the Negro are there, made in the American manner, rooted in the American ideal. They are not to be brushed aside, and something more than fulmination and bluster is indicated from the opposition. The next move is up to white Americans, and particularly white Southern Americans.

The author of the Declaration of Independence and his associates declared equal rights impracticable in society constituted of masses of different races

We are justified in believing that the success of this movement for equality of the sexes means more progress toward equality of the races.

Individuals who have been wronged by unlawful racial discrimination should be made whole; but under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution's focus upon the individual. ...To pursue the concept of racial entitlement - even for the most admirable and benign of purposes - is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American

In approaching this problem [school desegregation], we cannot turn the clock back...

We have got to move away from the concept of race and color because that is what apartheid is. We cannot end apartheid if we retain these concepts.

If you ask me whether the election of Barack Obama is the fulfillment of Dr. King's dream, I say, 'No, it's just a down payment.'

The civil rights movement didn't end on August 6, 1965. It continued because the work of creating a truly equal country never ends.

While nothing is perfect or complete in the battle for civil rights, the efforts of Dr. King and those like him have in fact, changed the country and the world for the better in noticeable ways. His vision has made the world a more equal place, and if not equal, it has helped to ensure that minorities have a voice.