The Changing Nature of Race, Power, and Ethnicity in the Era of Obama

On October 14^th, I attended a global awareness workshop entitled “The Changing Nature of Race, Power, and Ethnicity in the Era of Obama.”  I was encouraged to attend this workshop by my history professor, Professor Fernandez. This workshop was similar to the rest of the workshops I attended because it was crowded, but the way it was conducted was very different.  In this workshop there was a panel which consisted of about five professors from the history department at Baruch.  Each professor made a powerpoint presentation discussing different aspects of race and ethnicity, For example, one professor used demographic maps in his presentation which showed where different races and ethnicities, specifically minorities, live in the United States. Questions and comments were raised by students in the crowd and the panel answered the questions and reacted to the comments.  Some of the topics talked about included whether Hispanics are as recognized as they should be.  However, I think that the biggest topic of this workshop was our reactions and thoughts about racism.  Overall, the workshop was very interesting, although it was lengthy; it ended almost an hour later than it was supposed to.