OBAMA ‘ OPTIMISTIC’ ABOUT U. S. FUTURE

As President Barack Obama said goodbye and thanked supporters in his adopted hometown of Chicago, the occasion marked the unofficial countdown to the end of his historic presidency.

“I leave this stage more optimistic about this country than when I started!” Obama said in a speech that went between optimism and warning for the future.

Obama started by saying that talk of a post- racial America after his 2008 election may have been wellintended, but it “was never realistic.”

“Race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society,” he said.

Obama said he committed to Trump that his administration would “ensure the smoothest possible transition” just as his predecessor, President George W. Bush, did for him.

The outgoing president said in Chicago “it’s up to all of us to make sure our government can help us meet the many challenges we still face.”

Obama said the nation’s politics need to reflect “the decency” of the American people.

At one point, he was interrupted by chants of “Four more years!”

Obama replied: “I can’t do that.”

Later, Obama said “democracy can buckle when we give in to fear.”

He is also making a reference to President- elect Donald Trump’s campaign calls for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration to the United States.

The outgoing president said he rejects discrimination against Muslim Americans, and he is drawing cheers for saying they are “just as patriotic as we are” and that U. S. can’t withdraw from global fights to expand democracy, human rights and the rights of women, gays and lesbians.

Obama acknowledged that “stark inequality” is corrosive to the nation’s democratic principles, a nod to the economic uncertainty that helped Republ i can Donald Trump win the White House last November over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In the aftermath of Trump’s election as the next president, Obama acknowledged that the nation’s progress has been “uneven.” He says that for “every two steps forward, it often feels we take one step back.”

But the president said the country strives for “forward motion, a constant widening of our founding creed to embrace all, and not just some.”

He made no mention of Trump, who will replace him in just 10 days. But when he noted the imminence of that change and the crowd began booing, he responded, “No, no, no, no, no.” One of the nation’s great strengths, he said, “is the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next.”

The moment Tuesday especially resonated for many African- Americans, who basked in the era of the first black president.

Blacks overwhelmingly voted to send Obama to the White House in 2007 and have remained among his strongest supporters during his eight years in office.

The Democratic president, wife Michelle Obama and their two daughters also have been a source of pride for many. Michelle Obama was born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, and the family has a home in the city.

The scene Tuesday was reminiscent of election night in 2008. Then, Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, greeted a cheering crowd in Grant Park in Chicago to claim victory at the end of a campaign run on hope and change. The Obamas were not yet in their 50s; their children, Malia and Sasha, were 10 and 7.

Others, like Peggy Montes, chose to stay home and watch.

Montes, founder of the Bronzeville Children’s Museum, said the Democratic president’s mark on her life was personal and professional.

She recalled that as an Illinois state legislator Obama helped secure the state funding to start the museum, believed to be the first of its kind for blacks nationwide. Montes was invited to both of Obama’s presidential inaug- urations and attended.

The Obamas are now a focal point of an exhibit at the museum greeting visitors as they walk in the door.

Like many in Chicago, Montes said Tuesday’s speech was bittersweet.

“I’m sad because he will be leaving, but I’m also grateful for the fact that he did touch our lives for such a short period of time,” she said. “He came in when the people were in distress. He was able to lift them up.”

Horace Small, executive director of the Boston-based anti- poverty group Union of Minority Neighborhoods, said Obama’s election was a tremendous source of pride for everyone, especially poor and middle- class blacks. But Small said the middleclass blacks benefited more than those battling poverty because Obama didn’t talk more about race and class.

“But poor blacks did benefit from the fact that there was a black man in the White House less than 100 years after we were hanging from trees,” Small said.

Small said Obama failed to mobilize citizens to pursue policies that could have impacted poverty in black communities.

Amy Maldonado, an immigration lawyer based in East Lansing, Mich., who voted for Obama twice, said she was extremely disappointed in Obama because of his deportation policies and his detention of Central American children.

She said that Obama reacted too late to protect some immigrant college students and that activists were forced to sue his administration over a lack of legal representation of detained immigrants.

“I will not be sorry to see this president go,” Maldonado said. “I have no love for this administration.”

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican and the nation’s only Latina governor, said it was not her role to assess the presidency of Obama, who rarely visited the state with the country’s largest percentage of Hispanic residents.

“I think that it’s up to the American people and for history to decide on what impact his presidency has had on our country and the world,” Martinez said.