National Public Radio weekly commentator and author Diane Roberts spoke about America's obsession with President Barack Obama's racial identity Wednesday night. About 100 people attended the lecture, entitled "The Blackness of Barack Obama," filled with sarcasm and historical anecdotes in Pugh Hall.
Despite the focus on what some considered to be a touchy subject, audience members took to her casual delivery.
UF history senior Sarah McNamara said race is something a lot of people try to avoid, but Roberts presented the issue of race in a humorous way.
"Most of us are mutts just like the president," said Roberts, a commentator and essayist for NPR's "Weekend Edition" and an English professor at Florida State University.
But the questions continue, Roberts said, about whether Obama is biracial, too black, mixed race or not black enough.
The questions stem from a 400-year history of racism and prejudice in America, Roberts said, launching into historic examples of racial tensions.
The plantation owners thought slaves sang because they were having fun in the cotton fields, Roberts said.
The idea of the white man's superiority was prominent then, she said, adding that power continues to have a white face.
Even the White House resembles a plantation house, she said.
However, for a culture hysterically dedicated to a racial divide, she said, American society was never truly separated.
African influences penetrate Southern food and Southern accents, she said.
But this shared history does not lend a solution to the problems of racism and prejudice that continue to plague American society, she said.
Some members of the audience agreed.
UF associate history professor Jack Davis, who helped organize the event, said until America sorts out its past, it can't form an identity.
Roberts' theory demonstrates how the concept of identity is tangled with history, he said.
America cannot liberate itself from history, even though Obama's election is a step toward erasing racism of the past, Roberts said.
Still, Roberts said Obama's election does not erase her family's racist history.
"I still feel happily bad, and I'm not giving up my white guilt card," she said.
