Obama: Accept 'no excuses for any failure'

NEW YORK, July 16 (UPI) -- President Barack Obama Thursday urged black Americans to teach children there are "no excuses" and said "no one has written your destiny for you."

"Your destiny is in your hands, and don't you forget that," Obama said in the keynote address to the NAACP's centennial convention in New York. "That's what we have to teach all of our children! No excuses! No excuses!"

"No one has written your destiny for you," Obama said.

In a rousing speech punctuated by sustained applause, the president told parents to push their children to achieve and to focus more on getting good grades and less on playing video games.

"If we are to be true to our past, then we also have to seize our own destiny, each and every day," he said.

The speech was Obama's first to a primarily black audience in the United States since he became the first black president. He looked back on his own life, straying from his prepared text to talk about how his mother kept him focused when he was young.

"When I drive through Harlem and I drive through the South Side of Chicago and I see young men on the corners, I say, 'There but for the grace of God go I,'" he said.

Obama said "barriers still remain," including lingering "structural discrimination" and the poverty and lack of opportunity that are legacies of segregation. He said his plans to improve education and reform healthcare can help.

"The pain of discrimination is still felt in America,'' Obama said, citing injustices inflicted on blacks, Hispanics, Muslims and gays.

Benjamin Jealous, head of the NAACP, later described the president's speech as "pitch perfect."