Bill Clinton appears to downplay Obama's place in history by telling Tennessee rally crowd 'We're all mixed race'

[HAPPY2BME]

'We learned that unless your ancestors, every one of you, are 100 percent, 100 percent from sub-Saharan Africa, we are all mixed-race people.'

* Novelist Toni Morrison called Clinton the 'first black president' in 1998

* On Friday, Rep. Steve Cohen referenced this remark when introducing the former president before a group of Hillary supporters in Tennessee

Former President Bill Clinton appeared to downplay President Barack Obama's place in history as the first black president of the U.S. on Friday.

Clinton was introduced by Tennessee Representative Steve Cohen, who said Clinton was not the first black president but was a 'heck of a stand-in'.

Clinton then went on a strange rant about how all people are mixed races.

'The other thing I want to make a funny comment about is Steve Cohen's remark that I was just a stand-in for the first black president,' said Clinton.

'I'm happy to do that, but you know what else we learned from the human genome?

'We learned that unless your ancestors, every one of you, are 100 percent, 100 percent from sub-Saharan Africa, we are all mixed-race people.'

Clinton unusual racial tangent comes just after Oscar winning actress Meryl Streep was criticized for uttering similar sentiments..

'There is a core of humanity that travels right through every culture, and after all we're all from Africa originally,' Streep said to Variety in Berlin.

In 1998 Toni Morrison wrote: 'White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime.'

Morrison later clarified that her statement was in regards to Bill Clinton's sex scandal: 'I said he was being treated like a black man on the street, already guilty, already a perp.'

Bill Clinton began campaigning for his wife last October and intensified attacks on Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders last week.

Hillary faces off against Sanders in the Tennessee primary on March 1. 

She is currently leading in the national Democratic primary polls with 50.2 percent, while Sanders trails at 39.1 percent, according to HuffPost Pollster.

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