Obama Racial Quotes & Sayings

I loved the fact that Obama is multi-racial. I thought that was terrific, as my wife is the same racial make-up. — Clint Eastwood

Obama's ascendancy unhinged the radical right, offering a unified target to competing camps of racial, nativist and religious animus. — Barton Gellman

President Obama, when he was elected, he could have been a unifying figure. He could have chosen to be a leader on race relations and bring us together. And he hasn't done that, he's made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions that have divided us rather than bringing us together. — Ted Cruz

The promise of Obama's presidency, in many people's minds, is partly that America will move toward becoming a post-racial society. It's pretty clear, though, that we aren't there yet. — Timothy Noah

I don't believe it is possible to transcend race in this country. Race is a factor in this society. The legacy of Jim Crow and slavery has not gone away. It is not an accident that African-Americans experience high crime rates, are poor, and have less wealth. It is a direct result of our racial history. — Barack Obama

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 only people who live in a post-black world are four people who live in a little white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. The idea that America is post-racial or post-black because a man I admire, Barack Obama, is president of the United States, is a joke. And I hope no one will even wonder about this crazy fiction again. — Henry Louis Gates

If Barack Obama now, or some black person in the future, should become president, neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton would be out of a job. A black president can't end black misery; a black president can't be a civil rights leader or primarily a crusader for racial justice. — Michael Eric Dyson

Chicago, a town that's accustomed to its racial wounds and prides itself on a certain lack of sentiment. — Barack Obama

Clearly, the Obama presidency hasn't wiped out racial prejudices. — Ron Fournier

In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri - where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions. — Barack Obama

What Obama is about, in my opinion, is he is a Global redistributionist. He's pursuing reparations but it's not racial reparations. It's global reparations for the sins and conquest of colonism. — Dinesh D'Souza

The greatest hope most Americans - including Republicans - had when Barack Obama was elected president was that the election of a black person as the country's president would reduce, if not come close to eliminating, the racial tensions that have plagued America for generations. — Dennis Prager

I believed in Obama for social issues. I believe he brought our nation together and healed our racial divide. Martin Luther King's dream came true when he was elected. That's huge. — Melissa Etheridge

A little more than half a century after Brown, the election of Obama gave hope to the country and the world that a new racial climate had emerged in America, or that it would. But such audacious hopes would be short-lived. A rash of voter-suppression legislation, a series of unfathomable Supreme Court decisions, the rise of stand-your-ground laws, and continuing police brutality make clear that Obama's election and reelection have unleashed yet another wave of fear and anger. It — Jesmyn Ward

The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person ... — Barack Obama

When Obama came to power, there was a lot of talk about a post-racial America. — Ezra Koenig

Racial relations in this country are plummeting. Racial strife is rising. All the while, Obama is out there talking about unity and bringing us together. — Rush Limbaugh

We think of faith as a source of comfort and understanding but find our expressions of faith sowing division; we believe ourselves to be a tolerant people even as racial, religious, and cultural tensions roil the landscape. And instead of resolving these tensions or mediating these conflicts, our politics fans them, exploits them,and drives us further apart. — Barack Obama

For a long time, the Court has moved toward outlawing all forms of racial preference, including affirmative action, and Obama seems accepting, even supportive, of the change. — Jeffrey Toobin

I travel to Chicago a lot. And I've followed Obama through his Senate race and beyond. I found him to be an exceptional candidate who was able to transcend ethnic and racial lines. — Sal Albanese

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

Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality — Barack Obama

Obama has placed himself in perfect political position: he spent the 2008 campaign convincing the American people that he's a racial unifier rather than a divider, without any evidence to prove it. — Ben Shapiro

The biggest accomplishment, in racial terms, for Barack Obama was being elected. He had to overcome his blackness to be elected. He climbed the Mt. Everest of American politics, becoming an historic first. — Randall Kennedy

Those close to Mr. Obama say he grows irritated at being misunderstood - not just by opponents who insinuate that he caters to African-Americans, but also by black lawmakers and intellectuals who fault him for not making his presidency an all-out assault on racial disparity. — Jodi Kantor

We need to recognize that the situation in Ferguson speaks to broader challenges that we still face as a nation. The fact is, in too many parts of this country, a deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color. Some of this is the result of the legacy of racial discrimination in this country. — Barack Obama

Throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality. — Barack Obama

One thing that gets lost in all the aggregation throughout this book: on an individual level, the personal affects of these broad social forces are often very subtle... when you go person by person, any individual's experience is too small and too varied to conclusively say anything racial has happened. It could be your skin or it could be just you. On the other side of it, it's laughable to think of one red-faced guy searching for n****r jokes because Barak Obama got elected, but it's a lot less funny when you can see that he's one of thousands and thousands making the same search. And it's less funny still when you see the large affects these private attitudes can still have, even in public life. Thus the story of just one of us versus the story of us all. That's why data like this is necessary; it ends arguments that anecdotes could never win. It provides facts that need facing. — Christian Rudder

Democrats can cackle all they want about the gaffe-prone Romney's elitist cultural insensitivity in Jerusalem. Their hero Obama is no more willing to acknowledge and question the racial Darwinism that substitutes culture for genes than he is to recognize and criticize Israel's racist oppression of the Palestinians. He at once embodies, epitomizes, and embraces that cultural white supremacism in a way that does no small damage to non-white prospects at home and abroad. — Paul Street

The criminal-justice system is, obviously, the sole source of racial tension in this country [USA] or the key institution to resolving the opportunity gap. It is a part of the broader set of challenges that we face in creating a more perfect union. — Barack Obama

There haven't been fundamental structural changes in America. There's been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack Obama. But the only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. — Henry Louis Gates

The Nazis are not justified by saying,
Don't you know that there is more than just the issue of the Jews? The issues are more complex than that! What of the poor in this country, who cannot afford housing? What about the sick and malnourished? Don't you care about these people? Don't you claim to be a follower of Jesus?!
Supporting a murderous political agenda with such an argument is tragic!
And what do we know about Obama? He is the single most anti-life proponent that has ever run for the office of president. — Joseph Bayly

What used to be racial segregation now mirrors itself in class segregation, this great sorting (has) taken place. It creates its own politics. There are some communities where not only do I not know poor people, I don't even know people who have trouble paying the bills at the end of the month. I just don't know those people. And so there's less sense of investment in those children. — Barack Obama

I'm not saying that President Obama should be exempt from criticism, nor do I believe it is some act of racial treason for a black person to hold our president accountable for his actions. — Cornel West

I'm less interested in how we label ourselves. I'm more interested in how we treat each other. And if we're treating each other right, then I can be African-American, I can be multi-racial, I can be you name it, what matters is, am I showing people respect, am I caring for one, for other people. — Barack Obama

We hear things like "we elected a black president," as if that event was the magic eraser to wipe away all of the racial problems in our country in one fell swoop.
But that would be like saying that in 1932, we elected a president with a physical disability, so we should stop building ramps and having reserved handicap spaces because that's reverse discrimination against the able-bodied — Simon S. Tam