First Black President Quotes & Sayings

First thing that always pops into my head regarding our president is that all of the people who are setting up this barrier for him ... they just conveniently forget that Barack had a mama, and she was white - very white American, Kansas, middle of America. There was no argument about who he is or what he is. America's first black president hasn't arisen yet. He's not America's first black president - he's America's first mixed-race president. — Morgan Freeman

The election, and even the re-election, of a black man as president, in a country that is 87 percent non-black - a first in human history - has had no impact on what are called 'racial tensions.' — Dennis Prager

In a moment when young black voters were key to the election and the reelection of a black president, when the Department of Justice has been led these years by the first two African-American attorneys general, when many big cities boast African-American league prosecutors and police chiefs and mayors, even in this moment, why is it that it still feels to so many young people that there is more power for change on the court than in the courts? — Melissa Harris-Perry

How ridiculous! You're going to have the first black president apologize for slavery? — Mark Steyn

Wasn't Winston Churchill the first black president of America? There's a statue of him near me ... that's black ... — Danielle O'Hara

Will Herman Cain become the first black President that I acknowledge? I call him a dark horse because he's an unlikely candidate who surged forward, and not because he's a horse. — Stephen Colbert

Obama has built his public image around his ability to bridge divisions - racial, ideological or generational. And that was his reputation, even at Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the 'Law Review.' — Mara Liasson

(The mainstream media) are so vested in our first black president not being a failure that it's going to be amazing to watch the lengths they go to to protect him. They, I believe, will spout this racist line if some of their colleagues up here aren't doing it aggressively enough. There is going to be a real desperation. — Joe Walsh

Really, an historic night last night. You may have heard, Barack Obama will be the first black president of the United States of America ... Obama is also the first Democrat to receive more than 50 percent of the vote since Jimmy Carter, the first senator to be elected since Jack Kennedy, the first Muslim to be ... I said too much. — Jon Stewart

The boy who had scolded her was Dirk Eberwein, the first non-Genestella in the history of the Le Wolfe Black Institute to reach the rank of student council president. There — Yuu Miyazaki

Hadn't been able to avoid hearing about the Tea Party, a recrudescence of the far right sooner than I would've hoped. Depending on whom you ask, the Tea Party formed either as a spontaneous grassroots protest against the government's massive interventions in the economy after the financial collapse of 2008, an hysterical backlash against our first black president, or just a hasty rebranding of the Republican Party now that the name Republican had taken on the same stigma as the Pinto, DC-10, and other products that reliably self-destruct. Their platform was the usual Republican wish list - cut taxes, gut the government, repeal the last century and revoke the social contract - and happened to coincide with the financial interests of their billionaire backers. They were widely regarded, on the left,* as dingbats. But today I was going to resist the impulse to sneer and feel superior and instead try, for once, to listen. — Tim Kreider

Shirley Chisholm is another one [political hero]. She was a dynamic speaker, and the first black woman to run for President. — Donna Brazile

As we march toward the reality that, by 2050, no one racial or ethnic group will hold a proportional majority in this country, racial suicide paranoia abounds. And for the white racist legislators in the red states, nothing is more threatening than a majority-brown country; it strips them of their historic power. The prospect of being outnumbered is what enabled the Tea Party's mutiny of Congress in 2010 after the election of Barack Obama, America's first black president, allowing it to cripple the Republican establishment; render the first major-party female presidential candidate powerless; and enable the rise of the racist, nationalistic, and misogynistic Donald Trump The white people who are still in charge believe that if their women don't start having lots of babies they- the white patriarchs - are going to become obsolete. — Dr. Willie Parker

Barack H. Obama is a landmark presidential figure as the first black, multiracial, multicultural president from Hawaii and the Pacific. — Dinesh Sharma

We were a very politically active family. My father was one of the first lawyers in South Africa to have a black partner, so I grew up very aware of the struggle going on. Coming from that background, it really gave me chills to have my music be a part of the election of the first black American president. — Trevor Rabin

The first black president will be a politician who is black. — Douglas Wilder

For the first time ever, a black Republican woman has been elected to Congress. President Obama told her, 'You are all set. This country never turns against a black anything.' — Conan O'Brien

What people forget is that the most radical thing about Obama is that he was the first black man in history to imagine that he could become president, who was able to make other Americans believe it as well. Other than that, he is a centrist, just like I try to be. He's been bridging divisions his whole life. — Henry Louis Gates

There is a big risk for the Republicans in a race, especially with Hillary Clinton as a likely Democratic nominee in a contest that will focus on the possibility of the first woman president to be six months suspending up the nomination of a black woman, who is imminently qualified. — Barack Obama

So, to say Barack Obama is progress is saying that he's the first black person that is qualified to be president. That's not black progress. That's white progress. — Chris Rock

I feel sorry for Obama because he's still got to fight the innate racism of Americans. I mean, did you see his first speech, when he got made President and they put all that bullet proof glass in front of him? I think that shows you how racist America still is. Just because he's black doesn't mean he's going to shoot anybody. — Frankie Boyle

President Clinton was often known as the first black president. I wouldn't be upset if I could earn the right to be the second. — John F. Kerry

When all the public eye sees are headscarves instead of individual stories, our community is collectively tokenized. It creates the perception that opportunity is limited and only a rare few of us can make it. Whenever that happens to an already marginalized community, it pits its own members in a competition against one another instead of against the restrictive frameworks that put us in that position in the first place. The first hijabi whatever won't eliminate Islamophobia just as the first black president hasn't eliminated racism, though both are signifiers of some type of progress - symbols of ascending beyond adversity. — Amani Al-Khatahtbeh

With respect to Barack Obama, let's face it; Barack Obama is an iconic figure in the African-American community. We respect that. We understand that. African-Americans are going to vote for the first black president, especially when he happens to share the liberal politics on economic issues that many in that community hold. — Artur Davis

Never mind what you've heard. Halle Berry was not the first black woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress. She was actually the 74th white one. And never mind all this talk about America electing its first black President; Barack Obama is actually the 44th white man to hold the job. — Jeffrey Kluger

I do not diminish the incredible symbolic importance of a black man getting elected president. But my euphoria was a smart guy getting elected president. Maybe for the first time in my lifetime we had elected one of the thousand smartest Americans president. — Aaron Sorkin

I wonder what it's like to be from a state that is spread across a few islands way out in the Pacific Ocean, only added to the United States in 1959. Not only that but to be the birthplace of America's first black president? Pretty cool, I bet. — Henry Rollins

They agreed, without any prodding, without the shadows of obligation or compromise, on Barack Obama. At first, even though she wished America would elect a black man as president, she thought it impossible, and she could not imagine Obama as president of the United States; he seemed too slight, too skinny, a man who would be blown away by the wind. Hillary Clinton was sturdier. Ifemelu liked to watch Clinton on television, in her square trouser suits, her face a mask of resolve, her prettiness disguised, because that was the only way to convince the world that she was able. Ifemelu — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

As a grown woman, I saw the first black president reach down a hand and touch the face of a child like I once was, lifting his eyes toward a better future. But I have never, ever, in all my years seen a leader so committed to delivering that better future to America's children as Hillary Clinton. — Donna Brazile

Once you have learned to trust your own voice and allowed that creative force inside you to come out, you can direct it to write short stories, novels, and poetry, do revisions, and so on. You have the basic tool to fulfill your writing dreams. But beware. This type of writing will uncover other dreams you have, too-going to Tibet, being the first woman president of the United States, building a solar studio in New Mexico-and they will be in black and white. It will be harder to avoid them. — Natalie Goldberg

I don't think that the United States are ready for a presidency as the one of Obama, at least because he would be the first black president. — Gianfranco Fini

That night, as he bounded up the steps and out of the church basement, nobody in the room could have imagined that they had just seen the man who, a decade from now, would become the first black president of the United States. NEW — Isabel Wilkerson

In interviews with dozens of black advisers, friends, donors and allies, few said they had ever heard Mr. Obama muse on the experience of being the first black president of the United States, a role in which every day he renders what was once extraordinary almost ordinary. — Jodi Kantor

It's a new world that's very, very difficult to make sense of. But we have a new hope. We have a new man. America has now elected its first openly black President. — Rory Bremner

When I first heard that Barack Obama was going to be the first black president, I wanted to do the smallest, biggest tribute in history. — Willard Wigan

Fox News reported Thursday that Bill Clinton can't get into any of New York's better golf and country clubs. Not one member has been willing to sponsor him. So it's official, he really is America's first black president. — Argus Hamilton

Keeping the Union together, freeing slaves and being assassinated all added up to creating 'Lincoln the myth.' He overcame a lot of his own prejudices and became what many would consider the first black man's president. — Henry Louis Gates

Well, first of all, we've got to get away from being offended by the truth. We've seen a 41 percent increase in food stamp recipients across the United States of America since President Obama was sworn in in January 2009. That has nothing to do with black, white, Hispanic or whatever. It's a fact, and we need to, you know, deal with that. — Allen West

It's the fear of being mistaken for Joyce that has always ensured that I ignore the box marked "biracial" and tick the box marked "black" on any questionnaire I fill out, and call myself unequivocally a black writer and roll my eyes at anyone who insists that Obama is not the first black president but the first biracial one. But I also know in my heart that it's an equivocation; I know that Obama has a double consciousness, is black and, at the same time, white, as I am, unless we are suggesting that one side of a person's genetics and cultural heritage — Zadie Smith

First black president ever, and to be living while it happened - that's a good part of history. That's probably the biggest person I admire right now. — Meek Mill

Trump says he wants to run for president. Why not? It wouldn't be the first time he pushed a black family out of their home. — Snoop Dogg

The election of Donald Trump confirmed everything I knew of my country and none of what I could accept. The idea that America would follow its first black president with Donald Trump accorded with its history. I was shocked at my own shock. I had wanted Obama to be right.

I still want Obama to be right. I still would like to fold myself into the dream. This will not be possible. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I love Obama, and I love the fact that it's a black president of the United States of America, but he's not the first black president. Robert Mugabe is a black president, too, so let's not get to talking about precedents being set. — Lupe Fiasco

The first black president was a hotter plot line than the first woman president. — Tina Brown