President Obama was a hot topic on Thursday night during a book reading at Bluestockings bookstore in the Lower East Side.
The book, “The First Black President: Barack Obama, Race Politics, and the American Dream,” was written by Dr. Johnny Bernard Hill, who is an ordained pastor. The book reading, which was more of an intense discussion, covered several topics but most importantly, Obama’s dealings with the issue of race.
Dr. Hill jumped right into discussion about Obama’s election. Since his election, Obama has not intentionally mentioned the issue of race. Hill refers to this as “a betrayal of the platform he ran on.” Throughout his presidential speeches, Obama has neglected to mention specific figures, such as Dr. Martin Luther King, who were important to the civil rights movement and, essentially, helped Obama get to where he is, according to the author. Hill repeatedly used the term “problematic” when discussing Obama’s failure to recognize this.
“The Obama presidency is as much about race as it is about policy and economics,” he said.
While Obama constantly addresses issues such as Iraq, the problem is he does not acknowledge that race is an important issue as well, Hill said, pointing out that the number of people in hate groups has doubled since Obama took presidency.
Part of the problem is that people deal with race by either not talking about it, or even ignoring the fact that it is an issue, he said. When people don’t talk about an issue, they cannot understand it and this is why many misconceptions have been raised, Hill argued.
One of the most common misconceptions is that people assume race only effects the poor, the author said. They don’t realize that race effects a much wider range of people. There are several “grey” areas within the issue of race, which Hill discussed including racial differences between individual races or religions that people fail to recognize.
“It’s like a wound that continues to get worse because we don’t talk about it,” said Hill.
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