An interesting article from the AP poses the question, “Where should conversation on race start?” After Obama’s speech about race, everyone seems to be talking about it, and this article interestingly points out several different perspectives on just what a national dialog about race could/should look like.
The interesting thing about Obama’s speech, I think, is that it was more candid than we normally see when it comes to race in the U.S. However, as this article points out, how exactly do we have a national conversation about race?
It’s not as easy as just talking about black and white, because we live in a nation of many colors and ethnicities. And any time we start talking about race, it doesn’t matter which group we focus on–some ugly things are going to be brought up. For instance, if we’re talking about racism against people of Middle Eastern descent, inevitably we’ll start talking about terrorism and racial profiling in the context of national security. If we’re talking about the Hispanic community, we’ll probably hear something about illegal immigration. If we’re talking about the African-American community, we have the entire history of the U.S. to think about–from the very beginning when a slave was defined as 3/5s of a person.
So how do we talk about it? Obviously, the issue is too complex to meld into one large idea that “we should all like people who look different than we do”. Of course that’s a great idea, but it doesn’t hit on the long history of real issues that complicate the question. For instance, if you own a store and a higher percentage of the people who steal from your store belong to a specific minority group, then it can be honestly difficult not to start looking askance at other members of that group. Is it necessarily right? No. But should the owner of that store be vilified for a natural reaction that most people would probably have? Not necessarily, depending on how he reacts.
I think dismantling racism — and, for that matter, the other “isms” that continue to plague this country, including sexism and heterosexism — happen on a person to person basis. The conversation happens between two people, and the more people you add to the group, the harder it becomes to understand one another. Everyone has a lot of history involving these issues. We’ve all come into contact with racism in a lot of different ways, and because we’ve been drilled not to say things that are politically incorrect, it can be extremely difficult to talk openly about these experiences.
So, should a national discussion even happen? Despite the difficulty, I think it should. The less openly it’s talked about, the more racism feels institutionalized and the harder it is to point out the small inequities as they happen. I don’t know what it should look like, though, but I think the simple fact that so many people are talking about it is a start.
But then there are probably also people who think that racism and racial inequality aren’t things we need to focus on now. There are other problems facing this country that may seem to dwarf this problem, such as the economy, the war in Iraq, whatever.
That may be true. I can’t say what’s going to turn into the bigger problem first. However, I do think that pushing off these issues to face “bigger” problems is an easy excuse to continually ignore them. Should we ignore everything else going on in the world to focus on racial inequity? Of course not. But we shouldn’t ignore this to focus on those problems either.
The longer we ignore issues around race, the larger they will become. Ignoring them will not make them go away. The longer racial inequity exists, the longer we are losing voices that–had they been given equal opportunity–may have helped to solve the other problems we’re facing.
So here’s hoping the conversation continues.
