Barack Obama and Race: David Remnick and Ta-Nehisi Coates in Conversation
On Tuesday, April 6th at 7pm, David Remnick, author of The Bridge, and Ta-Nehisi Coates will discuss President Obama’s campaign and the history of race in American politics. This event will take place at the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in New York City.
NYPL is offering a discount code to purchase tickets to this event for $15 (originally $25): BRIDGE.
Visit the Showclix page to apply the discount and purchase tickets.
For more information about the event and speakers, read on.
“Barack Obama is what comes at the end of that bridge in Selma.”—John Lewis, veteran congressman and civil-rights leader
Obama’s election as the first African-American President came at the end of a personal journey that intersected with the history of race in American politics. What does it mean for America, 150 years since the commencement of the Civil War, to have a black president? What was it about Obama that allowed him to break this barrier? Is Obama a symbol of how much the country has changed, or is the country changing itself? What separates Obama, historically and personally, from generations of civil-rights leaders and other black politicians? How, as a writer and as a politician, did he go about making his personal story emblematic of the American story?
These are just some of the questions examined in The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama that will be explored in a discussion between David Remnick and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
David Remnick won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Lenin’s Tomb, about the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he is also the author of King of the World, a best-selling work on the evolution of Cassius Clay into Muhammad Ali in the midst of the civil-rights movement. Remnick joined The New Yorker as a writer in 1992 and has been the magazine’s editor since 1998.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle.