Racial Inequality: Doors of opportunity still closed for many

Half a century after the march that led to voting rights for black Americans, Barack Obama still faces a stiff challenge in his attempt to tackle racial inequality, reports Toluse Olorunnipa

US President Barack Obama stood in front of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, at the weekend on the 50th anniversary of the march that led to voting rights for black people, to tell Americans that “doors of opportunity swung open” yet the fight for equality isn’t over.

“We just need to open our eyes, and ears, and hearts, to know that this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us,” Obama said in a fiery speech that aides said he largely penned himself. “We know the march is not yet over, the race is not yet won, and that reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content of our character requires admitting as much.”