Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream had seemingly come to fruition. America had finally sought to look beyond the color of a man’s skin and see into his character.

The United States had elected its first black president – not once, but twice.

And as the first black U.S. president, Barack Obama had opportunity to bridge the racial divide in our country as no other commander-in-chief in our nation’s history. His bully pulpit was the highest office in the land and held the attention of the entire civilized world.

“Progressively,” we would learn that rather foster healing to our nation, Obama would become the “divider-in-chief,” with contentious words that would help revive racial tensions of the past.

And the black community would, once again, feel compelled to remind America that “black lives matter.”

Throughout the Obama presidency, we’ve seen him rush to judgment in incidents in a manner that incites racial unrest rather than supports our nation’s laws.

Following the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, Obama failed miserably in this regard.

In fact, he made it personal.

“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said. “When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids.”

Martin, reportedly unarmed, was shot by George Zimmerman, a man on neighborhood watch, who apparently had an altercation with the young black man. Following weeks of investigation, Zimmerman was acquitted of any wrongdoing.

Following the controversial verdict, rather than offer sobering perspective in support of the decision, Obama chose to castigate a “flawed” judicial system.

Speaking during a daily briefing, Obama blamed a history of “racial disparity” in our judicial system and a lingering social prejudice in America for contributing to unrest in the black community over the verdict.

Following the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, President Obama asserted the event had awakened Americans to a reality the black community has never forgotten.

“Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement – guilty of walking while black or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness.”

Soon after the shooting, video surfaced showing Brown stealing “cigarillos” from a nearby convenience store and assaulting the store clerk. Subsequent investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice concluded the officer called to the scene shot Brown in self-defense.

Most recently, following the deaths of two black men killed in separate shootings, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, Obama once again blamed racial disparity in our judicial system.

“All of us as Americans should be troubled by these shootings. These are not isolated incidents. They’re symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.”

The failure of Barack Obama to use his presidency to foster the healing of racial inequality in our nation will go down as one of the greatest travesties in history.

But the fact that he made it worse may be the greatest shame of all.

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.