President Obama discusses the positives and negatives of being the first black president

Obama reflects on his presidency. — (Image credit: Getty Images)

Being the first black president has had political advantages as well as disadvantages, President Obama said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times released Thursday.

"I have no doubt there are people who voted against me because of race... or didn't approve of my agenda because of race," he said. "I also suspect there are a bunch of people who are excited or voted for me because of the notion of the first African-American president... Those things cut both ways."

Returning to the issue at another point in the conversation, Obama conceded that "there are pockets of the country where some dog whistles blow and there's underlying racial fears that may be exploited." But at the same time, he said, "You've got a whole generation of kids growing up where the first president they've known is an African-American. Even if they're hearing their parents say he's terrible, it kind of seeps in that it's not a crazy thing. So that sometime later, if there's a Hispanic, or a woman or another African-American, that won't seem as exceptional. These things change over time."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.