Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s mixed-race background is a great asset to him, to the country and to the world at a time when leaders have to be able to relate empathically to people who are very different from themselves, multicultural expert Rebecca Walker said during an interview in Madison on Monday night.
During her earlier 90-minute talk, “Hyphen-Nation: The Role of Race in a Globalized Society,” and subsequent question-and-answer session that kicked off the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s 2008-2009 Distinguished Lecture Series, Walker only mentioned the presidential candidate parenthetically.
….Walker told a crowd of about 400 in the Union Theater that the discussion about race has become toxic in American culture and globally. It’s a challenge to talk about race in America, she said.