Overcoming and Combating Prejudice The self-described “son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas,” Barack Obama seemed an unlikely presidential candidate. Obama’s ability to build a political coalition among people of different racial, ethnic, economic, and age groups led to his winning the White House—twice. In a speech on racial politics in the United States, Obama declared, “I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together—unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction—towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.”
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