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AFP
WASHINGTON
BARACK OBAMA visited a predominantly black college Saturday, making the case that the last decades and his presidency had brought substantial improvements for African-Americans.
Acknowledging that more needs to be done to reduce inequality, Obama took head-on the issue of race relations that have sometimes appeared to fester under his administration.
Since Obama came to office in 2009 as the first African American president, a strain of opposition to him has emerged that often appears racially driven.
Meanwhile, cities from Ferguson, Missouri to Baltimore, Maryland have exploded amid the killing of young black men at the hands of white police officers.
African-American men are still far more likely to have served time in jail and to earn less than their white peers.
But Obama insisted progress had been made."America is by almost every measure better than it was when I graduated from college," he said, looking back to 1983.
"Race relations are better since I graduated. That's the truth. No, my election did not create a post-racial society, but the election itself and the subsequent one -- because the first one, folks might have made a mistake... was just one indicator of how attitudes have changed."
"Racism persists. Inequality persists," he told graduating students at Washington's Howard University, while offering a litany of examples of how things had changed for the better.
"When I was graduating, the main black hero on TV was Mr. T," the burly, Mohawk-wearing former professional wrestler."Rap and hip-hop were counter-culture, underground. Now, Shonda Rhimes owns Thursday night, and Beyonce runs the world."
"We're no longer entertainers, we're producers, studio executives. No longer small-business owners, we're CEOs, we're mayors, representatives, presidents of the United States."
In a nod to the lingering problems that have spurred the Black Lives Matter movement, Obama insisted that anger at injustice was not enough.
