Barack Obama Quotes About Slavery

• And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Horse, Home

  Barack Obama's Speech at National Prayer Breakfast, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. February 5, 2015.

• It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name - modern slavery.

  Barack Obama

  Talking, Common Humanity, Names

  President Barack Obama's remarks at Clinton Global Initiative at Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers in New York City, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. September 23, 2014.

• I am confident that we will one day end the scourge of modern slavery, because I believe in those committed to this issue.

  Barack Obama

  Believe, Issues, One Day

• 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

  Country, Believe, Race

  "On the Road with Barack Obama". www.essence.com. December, 16, 2009.

• Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith?

  Barack Obama

  Children, Muslim Faith, Mind Blowing

  Barack Obama (2009). “Barack Obama: Speeches on the Road to the White House”

• I have much more confidence in my ability, or any president or any leader's ability, to mobilize the American people around a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment to help every child in poverty in this country than I am in being able to mobilize the country around providing a benefit specific to African Americans as a consequence of slavery and Jim Crow.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Children, People

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

• I actually believe that some residue of discrimination would lessen, because it's my view that there is a certain percentage of the white population that stereotypes and makes assumptions about African Americans because they don't inject the history of slavery and Jim Crow into current incarceration rates, or crime rates, or poverty rates, or what have you.

  Barack Obama

  Believe, Views, White

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

• Theoretically, you can make, obviously, a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps. That those were wrongs done to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it's not in the form of individual reparations checks, but in the form of a Marshall Plan, in order to close those gaps. It is easy to make that theoretical argument.

  Barack Obama

  Powerful, Order, Community

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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