The public school system is not about educating black children. Never has been. Inner-city schools are about social control. Period. Theyโre operated as holding pensโminiature jails, really. Itโs only when black children start breaking out of their pens and bothering white people that society even pays any attention to the issue of whether these children are being educated.
Barack ObamaI think sometimes Europe may take for granted the extraordinary progress that's been made over the last 40, 50 years. I recognize that sometimes there is great frustration that arises out of the euro zone or out of the EU.
Barack ObamaIf everybody who voted in 2008 shows up in 2010, we will win this election. We will win this election.
Barack ObamaToday we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.
Barack ObamaI didn't have a perfect model, but I wanted to try to blend my own personal reflections and experiences with this broader canvas to see how a lot of the narratives we have about economy and foreign policy got stuck. Because we have these categories of liberal, conservative, free marketer, open government - all these stereotypes about our politics and the categories we try to put things in are inadequate to this sort of complex, ambiguous, sometimes contradictory experience we have as ordinary people and that I have as an elected official.
Barack Obama