Obama notes racial progress to NAACP

NEW YORK -- President Obama on Thursday urged the nation's most influential civil rights organization to "reclaim the strength" to fight educational and economic inequality, "the new barriers of our time."

Speaking to 5,000 NAACP members gathered for their 100th convention, Obama said that racial prejudice persists, but "overall, there's probably never been less discrimination in America than there is today."

Obama credited the civil rights movement for his own opportunity to rise to the presidency. "I stand here tonight on the shoulders of giants and I am here to say thank you to those pioneers and thank you to the NAACP," he said.

"This evening is an affirmation of all the work we've done for a century," NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said. "The sense of energy and excitement in the room had me electrified."

The first U.S. president to formally address an NAACP convention was Harry Truman in 1947, although previous presidents had met with NAACP leaders.

In 2008, as the first black nominee of a major political party, Obama received a thunderous ovation at the group's convention. As president, he faces a recession that has taken a particularly harsh toll on black Americans.

He contrasted the violence of the civil rights era with the "structural inequalities" between races that persist today. Unemployment rates are higher and rates of health insurance coverage are lower among African Americans, Obama said. Black students lag in math and reading, and black children are five times as likely to be jailed as white children.

"These are the barriers of our time," Obama said. "They're very different from the ones faced when fire hoses and dogs were being turned on young marchers."

The economy will not be truly strong until education is improved, he said.

"The state of our schools is not an African-American problem; it's an American problem. If black and brown children cannot compete, America cannot compete," he said.

Sounding one of his longtime themes, Obama called on blacks to be involved parents and encourage children to higher aspirations than "baller and rapper."