A Quote by Mahershala Ali
When I was growing up, I was told you could be anything you want to be, but I didn't really believe that because you couldn't be president. Like, I knew that; we never had a black president.
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My kids did not know that Obama was the first black president. I felt like I needed to tell them because I felt like, 'How could you not know that?' But for the ones who didn't know, he was basically the only president they knew.
I don't want us to have a president that we constantly have to be explaining to our kids, I know that's what the president did but you shouldn't do that. I don't want that. We actually had a president like that not long ago. It was really bad.
I think it's really cool that someone could have ovaries and the presidency. Growing up, I thought I could never be president because I was black and female. Now I know that's wrong. Within my own lifetime - that's different. Within my lifetime, interracial couples are more common. Within my own lifetime, biracial folks are able to claim that.
I figured that if we had to choose the woman president, she'd be the first woman president, and if we had the kid from Honolulu and the Harvard graduate, we'd have the first black president. They were both lawyers, and they knew the law, and I saw Obama and said that he's got some vision, and that's what a lot of people are latching on to.
The small moments I've had to talk with President Obama, I've told him, 'I get it.' His presidency was in some ways almost overshadowed by the fact that he was the first black president.
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.'
The 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 is 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.
Black people have been qualified to be president for hundreds of years. George Washington Carver could have been president. I could go on with a list of black men that were qualified to be the president of the United States. So the Obama victory is progress for white people.
I could have easily not run for president, and people would have come up and said, "Oh, man, you would have been a great president." Or even a lousy president. But I never would have known had I not chosen to run. Part of life is seizing the moment.
Somebody once said to me after I'd done "Deep Impact," "What is it like to play a Black president," and I said, "I didn't play a Black president. I played a president. I just happened to be Black. There's a difference.
When I was a senior, I ran for class president. And I lost. One of my opponents even told me I was "really stupid" if I thought a girl could be elected president.
I take running for president and being president really seriously. It's a - maybe the toughest job in the world, right? And I knew that there was unfinished business from the successful two terms of President Obama, whom I had served, but that we needed to go further on the economy, on health care, and so much else.
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.
In my own situation, I cannot show anything... And I believe that everybody now understands that, president or not president, one is entitled to have a private life. But of course when one is president, this creates duties and obligations.
Sure, this country has a black president, but when you look at a black president, President Obama is left with his foot stuck in the mud from all of the Republicans with the way he's treated.
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.
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