Talking about talking about race relations
April 7th, 2008
By JAZZ SHAW, Assistant Editor
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If I could point out one must read column in the media today it would have to be the latest from John Kass at the Chicago Tribune. The initial thrust of the column is the perceived damage to Barack Obama’s presidential aspirations done by his association with Rev. Wright. But after that, Kass settles down and attempts to tackle the problems we face in dealing with the issues this story brought to public attention. One of the key problems, in the author’s view, is that we spend too much time “talking about talking about race” rather than digging into the tougher issues which lie beneath.
Actually, we don’t talk about race. Instead, we talk about talking about race, which is easy. TV does it best. Slap an angry Wright up on the screen and a reasonable Obama, and then go find some tape of an angry white guy and you’re home for supper.
But if we really talked about race, we’d really talk about unfair racial preferences in college and graduate school admissions, in hiring and on tax-subsidized public contracts. We’d talk about the horrendous drop-out rate in big city high school systems run by political bosses who, year after year after year, use minority school children as cash cows to cement their power.
Why does Kass think it’s so hard to for us to address these questions?
It’s been so corrosive for so long, black resentment over white bigotry and white resentment over racial preferences (which is, in effect, institutionalized racism); and the abandonment of minority schools, generation after generation dropping out, left behind.
We can’t talk about it. It gets too loud and too angry too fast.
Perhaps tackling this problem is the first step toward actually working on residual race issues. We’re probably all familiar with the breakdown in such public discussions. If you are a person of color and bristle at inequity of opportunity, racial profiling or remaining bouts of open hatred and bigotry left over from the era of the civil rights movement, you can quickly find yourself labeled an “angry black man” or “stuck in the past complaining about slavery” which is generations behind us. Potentially valid complaints you raise will then be framed in the lens of that portrait.
Should a white person grumble about minority set-aside contracts, racial quotas for college admissions or some aspects of hate crime legislation then it may quickly be assumed that you have a closet full of evening wear made from white sheets. You are, in short, a racist and any input you may have had for the discussion is discounted out of hand as simple bigotry.
But are there not valid complaints regarding situations in America here and now - not just locked away in the distant past of chains and plantations - which are valid from both sides? And if we can’t get past the automatic defensive reactions posited above, will we ever be able to reach solutions to these complaints and move forward? John Kass raises a very valid question but leaves it to us to find an answer. I’m sure that I am far from smart enough to come up with it, though.
This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 7:11 am and is filed under Columnists, Black/African-American, Newsweek Blogitics, Racism, Barack Obama, Race, Minorities, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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