President Barack Obama says US race relations 'in a better place' than 30 years ago during Howard keynote

Howard’s commencement is the first of three keynotes Mr Obama will make at US colleges this year

Mr Obama delivered the first of his three last commencement speeches as president Saul Loeb/Getty

President Barack Obama delivered an optimistic keynote address to the graduating class of Howard University - one of the highest ranking Historically Black universities in the US - channeling his 2008 campaign’s vision of hope and change.

Mr Obama told the graduates that the America is in “a better place today” than when he graduated from college in 1983 when it comes to race. The country “also happens to be better off than when I took office, but that’s a longer story,” he joked, digressing from his original point about racial progress.

“When I was a graduate, the main black hero on TV was Mr T,” he said to laughter from the 2,300 student-large graduating class. “Rap and hip-hop were counter-culture. Now Shonda Rhimes [producer of Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy] owns Thursday night and Beyoncé runs the world.”

But he urged the graduates that much more work needed to be done because, “Racism persists, inequality persists.”

“I tell you this not to lull you into complacency, but to stir you into action because there's still so much work to do … so many more miles to travel, and America needs you to gladly take up that work.”

He applauded the new generation of civil rights activists, such as those who protest on behalf of the Black Lives Matter movement, but said he wanted to see more participation in the democratic process.

“You have to go through life with more than passion for change,” he said. “You need a strategy.”

Mr Obama cited voting as the best way to change politics, not just on a national level, but locally, too.

“When we don’t vote, we give away our power. We disenfranchise ourselves,” he said. “That’s how we change our politics: By electing people at every level who are representative of and accountable to us.”

And when it came to racial identity, Mr Obama told graduates to embrace their heritage.

“Remember the tie that does bind us as African Americans: That is is our particular awareness of injustice, unfairness, and struggle,” he told the graduates.

“Be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your Blackness.”

Howard’s commencement is the first of three keynotes Mr Obama will make at US colleges this year. He will speak to students at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, later in May; and he will speak at the US Air Force Academy in June.