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What we talk about when we talk about race
 Posted
12/2/2009 6:32:00 PM
I just got home from a six-hour town hall meeting titled “Unfinished Work: Race, Civility, and Equality of Opportunity.” Part of the Lincoln Bicentennial, the meeting was organized by the Georgia Humanities Council, hosted at the Morehouse College Leadership Center, and involved help from a host of academic, civic, and nonprofit partners. See the details here.
If anyone doubted that there is “unfinished business” when it comes to
race in this city, consider that this confab took place the
day after Atlanta's mayoral run-off was decided by a less than 1
percent margin, with a black man, Kasim Reed, edging out the white
woman, Mary Norwood (who is asking for a recount).
While the candidates did a relatively decent job of keeping racial
rhetoric out of their campaigns, race intruded into the race more than
a few times. It certainly played a factor in the outcome. As an
interactive map put together by the AJC demonstrates, polling results reflect the city’s demographics. The (mostly white)
northside was firmly in Norwood’s camp, the (mostly black) southside
solidly for Reed, and (sort of diverse) intown gave Reed a passable, but not overpowering, edge.
So this made for an interesting backdrop for the day's agenda. The meeting was designed to foster candid conversation, and a condition of taking part was that one couldn’t record or reproduce what went on. So I can’t give you a detailed story packed with quotes or accompanied by photos. Sorry, but you will have to go elsewhere for recaps of the excellent talks by Orville Vernon Burton, author of Age of Lincoln, and historian Charles Branham.
But here are some general impressions.
The event was structured with short panels in which four speakers presented their takes on a topic, followed by a speedy question and answer session with moderator Angela Robinson. There weren’t questions from the audience, but instead, the audience sat at assigned tables with facilitators taking notes and manning stopwatches, and took part in smaller group discussions that riffed on the panelists’ topic.
During the morning session, everyone talked about a pivotal personal experience that centered on race. Panelists were Beverly Tatum, president of Spelman, Kevin Young, award-winning poet and Emory professor, Sachi Koto, former CNN anchor, and Martin Lehfeldt, former president of the Southern Council of Foundations. Koto’s story was particularly moving. Her American-born parents both did time in Japanese internment camps during World War II, and when they moved to Georgia lived a few miles from Stone Mountain, where the KKK regularly held cross burnings.
I can’t speak for what happened at the other dozen tables, but the subsequent conversation at mine was moving and the stories more candid than expected under such contrived circumstances. The facilitators used their timers, but also brought out Kleenex.
The afternoon panel, of which I was a member, ostensibly addressed “unfinished work around race in Atlanta,” a large topic to cover in a four-minute talk and one round of questions. Morehouse historian Herman “Skip” Mason gave a solid overview of pivotal moments of opportunity in Atlanta’s past. Judith Martinez of Atlanta Latino reminded us all that race needs to be about more than black and white. The marvelous Alexis Scott of the Atlanta Daily World offered a more optimistic outlook than the rest of us, citing among other things social networking as a tool for breaking barriers. I decided to focus on the word “civility,” and suggested that although Atlanta’s civility helped it through racial tension in the past, much of its good manners are driven by an obsession with public relations and image. Perhaps, a little less civil, more candid, dialog about race is in order.
During the group discussions that followed our panel, everyone was urged to come up with three recommendations for addressing race in Atlanta. The residential segregation indicated by those mayoral polling patterns—and by extension segregation along social, religious, and cultural lines—emerged as the prevailing theme. Some of the ideas presented were lofty but unfundable (“make all education access equal” or “give jobs to everyone who can work”) while others were noble but sweepingly broad (“engage in truth and reconciliation”). In the end, the key theme that emerged was education; getting us all to learn more about the past so we can figure out how to get along now.
It was a thought-provoking, inspiring day. Here’s what made this conversation different from corporate diversity seminars or academic roundtables I’ve sat through in the past. The white people wanted to be there, were aware (to varying degrees) of the country’s racial history, and were desperate to overcome their accompanying guilt. This made an environment that seemed somewhat more conducive to sharing for people on the other side of the melanin spectrum. As a result the conversation flowed a little more easily than I’ve experienced in those other settings.
But not that easily. I’ve been thinking a lot about white guilt lately, and I have the beginnings of a theory. Ruling out bigots and diehard racists, most white people want to acknowledge the shameful realities of slavery, legal segregation, and economic discrimination, avoid any personal blame, and then move on. They don't want to make any real changes. It’s like apologizing to a partner after screwing up. You want him to say “that’s okay” and then switch over to making plans for dinner or picking a movie on pay-per-view, brushing the mistake aside.
White people want some kind of “that’s okay” to assuage their guilt. We don’t want to own up to the mistakes of our parents, grandparents, or great-great-great grandparents. But we benefited from those mistakes, and still do, no matter the particulars of our particular family histories. If we want to make any kind of progress, we have to really document our guilt. I’m not talking about that nagging, liberal, bad feeling, but the overwhelming and tangible consequences of hundreds of years of slavery and another century and a half of systemic discrimination. That accounting is scary.
The next session of the town hall meeting takes place December 9 at the Carter Center. Some of the suggestions raised during today’s meeting are going to be presented for further discussion. If you want to go, click here more for details. In the mean time, I'm curious what you think about white guilt and racial dialog.
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Rebecca Burns
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Funny you should say that, Rebecca. I've always thought that the issue is that to admit to the seriously, almost incomprehensible legacy of slavery is, for white people, to admit that maybe they haven't earned everything they have. And the American mythos of hard-work, grit and standing tall on your own two feet makes that nigh impossible. Also, alot of black people just want a consensus that says not only, "i'm sorry" but "you are not crazy. it has been really bad." It's not unlike an abused spouse, to carry your analogy further -- you want your experience to be validated.
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Posted By
tressie
On
1/14/2010 9:28:27 PM
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