What Does It Take To Have A Rational Discussion About Race?
Apr 26th, 2008 at 8:27 am by Susie
Pam Spaulding and Mike Signorile address the question on his radio show:
Anyway, we also discussed the complete lack of followup to Obama’s major speech on race, and how the MSM has gone right back to placing race into the context of the political horse race, not delving deeper into what is behind the demographics of the folks in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
For instance, all these alleged blue-collar lunch bucket folks who don’t vote for Obama - is it really about race? If it is, as the talking heads continue to bleat, why aren’t reporters going out to do stories on why this is so? Interview some of these voters who cite that race is a factor, and dig deeper?
* Is it that they hold stereotypical views of blacks based on views because of how they were raised, or, say perp walks on TV?
* Do they have any black friends, neighbors or co-workers they are close to?
* What about race troubles them — affirmative action? Crime?
* Is it the “fear of a black planet” revolution kind of thing?Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have discussions about the above — to be able to have these questions explored without fear of reprisal and denial? The reporters dance endlessly around the issue, but make all sorts of assumptions that tell us precious little about why race matters to voters, choosing to focus on whether they do. Willingness to look at the former is the key to making progress. I don’t have faith that we’ll see much reporting from that vantage point.
What’s interesting and painful to see is that, even after Barack Obama’s speech, too many people really don’t have the tools in their emotional toolboxes to 1) call out something they feel is a color aroused bomb, or 2) know how to react when the bomb is tossed out there.
Lacking the tools to dismantle the bomb, the involved parties are either:
1) blown up because they are paralyzed with fear as to what to do next,
2) blown up because they are sitting in front of the bomb arguing what to do about the ticking device, blaming each other for forgetting the tools,
3) run in opposite directions to avoid the explosion, and learn nothing from the experience.
I do all of this thinking aloud about improving the dialogue on race because it helps us all, myself included, figure out what tools we all need to pack to dismantle the bomb the next time we “find” one.
Doing post-mortems on whatever the last color arousal f*ckup — no matter the cause, regardless of parties involved — is important, but not if we’re screaming at one another, all while trying to convince ourselves that we are more self-aware (or less racist) that the person sitting on the bomb, tied to it because of what they said or did. In the end, too much of the righteous anger ends up being the focus of the discussion, rather than the root causes of implicit bias, and that we need to own up to them to put any rational discussion into context.
Progressives really have a problem on this front, because the painful realization that they don’t have the tools often turns into hand-wringing, embarrassment and silence. For some, they may have a hard time thinking about the programming they’ve received in sheltered or intolerant families growing up, reconciling learned bigotry from people they love. For others, confrontation is simply best avoided because they feel the problem is too large, or that they haven’t the “expertise” as the oppressed group to say anything meaningful (that’s what I see way too often).
The color-aroused right has a different problem - those folks have no problem owning their biases, but in most cases they don’t give a rip about finding the tools because they feel there’s nothing in it for them to address racial misunderstanding. To correct themselves would mean equal treatment, and thus a threat to their white privilege.
For the historically oppressed minority group in question, the problem seems to be that they are tired of waiting for the folks in the dominant culture to get a clue and own their implicit biases and get to work on correcting that behavior. That’s when the defensive explosions of “are you really that stupid/bigoted/racist” occur and shut the conversations down. It does get tiring to see the same ignorant (blind spot) or malicious race-based “mistakes” occur, particularly when there are plenty of people quick to defend/give a pass to the person making the faux pas and tell the minority to get over it. Little useful analysis is done, no one is interested in acquiring any tools.
And the next bomb the parties find themselves in front of will go off, just as it did the last time. We have to break the cycle.
The main reason we can’t face this problem very easily is that racism and capitalism were born together in Europe in the 17th century. The justification for imposing white, eurocentric religion, values and political domination on the rest of the (non-white) world is that the ‘white race’ is the only one really capable of realizing full human potential (as Kant put it) and needs to colonize, to instruct (and to accumulate capital from) all the rest.
If we confront this racist logic directly, all the justification for our arrogant foreign policy (like bombing countries into the stone age, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent (non-white) people) is called into question.
And, let’s face it, that is the side on which our bread is buttered.
Ohmigod, there are unreconstructed racists. In Pennsyltucky. Call the SCLM.
Being old and pudgy, I can recall times when folks of darker hue could be called ni**er to their face. The ability of an AfAm citizen to run for President in my life is wonderous. It shows how far we’ve come.
Gee, go to the high-crime areas and you notice a number of things. One is the plethora of layabout young lads during working hours. You think maybe they could get work, or at least look. In many cases these fellows sneer at incomes that provide for entire families, especially north of Rt 80. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the response to that.
“Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the response to that.”
Yeah - I think “take your crap to redstate or lgf” is an appropriate response to your swill.
Gee, go to the high-crime areas and you notice a number of things. One is the plethora of layabout young lads during working hours. You think maybe they could get work, or at least look,
The highest-crime areas I know of are 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., the US Capitol buildinhg, Crawford TX, and Camp David.
Do they have a plethora of layabout young lads during working hours?
susie, bravo for bringing this up. this is right on target. the prez election has brought a lot of this up to the surface; i see the discomfort among progressives everywhere whenever the topic comes up.
if the msm or a-list bloggers like kos or huff actually gave a fig about racism, they’d do a series on modern race issues with racialicious or the naacp or tavis smiley, et al to start a productive discussion that actually informs people and works toward a solution. but this primary season’s made it clear that the biggest players (big media, big blogs) don’t give a crap about productive discussions or solutions–they’d rather exploit the problem and make it even bigger for their own self-serving purposes. same goes for obama’s campaign.
“Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have discussions about the above — to be able to have these questions explored without fear of reprisal and denial?”
Yeah, it would.