Guest blog: What makes for a good conversation about race
Below is a guest blog from Jonathan Smith, acting chair and assistant professor in the Department of American Studies at St. Louis University.
Smith’s column is in response to a Feb. 19 blog item by Kurt Greenbaum — “Living up to what A Conversation about Race can really be.” Greenbaum wrote that he was encouraged by comments in a couple recent conversations — the controversy over the New York Post chimpanzee cartoon and Eric Holder’s recent comments on race.
Smith contacted us and said he wasn’t as impressed by the conversation about the New York Post cartoon. We asked if he’d like to explain why. What follows is his response:
Jonathan Smith
I am less interested in The New York Post, Sean Delonas’ cartoon and the protests revolving around them than I am in the kinds of conversations generated in their wake. The most typical conversation flips easily between accusations of “racism” on one hand and counter-accusations of “over-sensitivity” on the other. Instances such as this most recent New York Post incident and the Don Imus affair in which the main issue is media representation appear to be especially fertile sites for this old kind of conversation.
Voices on both sides of the latest issue at hand can be heard to claim a particularly privileged position from which they believe themselves unheeded, unrecognized, and unheard. In short order, as was all too easily demonstrated this week on MSNBC’s Hardball in a Mike Barnicle moderated conversation between Pat Buchanan and Michael Eric Dyson, talk turns rather quickly into a debacle of accusations that never quite address the ostensible matter at hand. In the end, as comments and conversation proliferate, it does not matter whether the initial topic was an editorial cartoon, an ill-considered and inappropriate word, or Eric Holder’s comments on the quality of conversations about race in American public discourse. So the initial topic fades deep into the background of a conversation that soon forgets just what it was that animated us in the first place. It is an all too familiar devolution in which misquotes, misreading, tenuous connections, Al Sharpton references, and purported crime or wedlock statistics abound. We may lose sight of that fact and its implications, however, if we believe honesty and candor to be the only, or two most important, characteristics of American conversations about race.
The most important thing for us to learn now is how to have honest and candid conversations about race that do more than simply mimic the structure of the same accusation/recrimination model we have used for so long, for centuries now. This most recent round of conversations, protests, and countering reactions reveals nothing new to us about the way race works. Instead, it reinforces - honestly and candidly - all our old worse blaming habits.
At its best, this blog’s “about this blog” urges us not only to have honest, candid, and civil conversations about race, but also to ask questions about racial disparities and their causes. Honest and candid conversations about health disparities, educational disparities, and criminal justice disparities might prove more practically useful than the kind of hand-wringing we do over cartoons and shock jocks.
To be clear, I do not mean at all to trivialize the importance of media produced representations of race. I urge that we reorder its priority in our honest, candid, and practical conversations about race. All of us might have been better served to have listened to and grappled with Eric Holder’s comments than Delonas’ cartoon because of one critical difference: pronouns. Delonas’ cartoon depends on the third-person singular to make assessments; Holder’s comments rely on the first-person plural.
Therein lie our real conversational challenges and opportunities.
(4 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5)
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Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980. 
It always gets down to this when it’s liberal white person and a Black man.
“Ask questions about racial disparities and their causes. Honest and candid conversations about health disparities, educational disparities, and criminal justice disparities might prove more practically useful than the kind of hand-wringing we do over cartoons and shock jocks.”
When it that paragraph lies the ultiment blame game that Blacks used to justify their ill behaviors, or their lack of success in this dominate white country.
When those types of recriminations stop, and blacks start looking into their souls, that they are at fault for their own failures, the racial disparity will continue.
I think I can agree with Mr. Smith’s basic premise (or what I take as his basic premise), which is that we all need to be honest with ourselves, honest with history, and honest with the facts as the relate to race relations and discussions, else no real dialogue can come around that will lead to anything meaningful.
Great in theory, hard to implement in the real world. I’m not saying it’s not a worthy goal. I’m just wondering if it’s an attainable goal. Both sides have too many noise makers leading the way. They need to go away first so as not to distract from the real discussion.
A great article.
To ‘Yes we can:’ your comment is the perfect example of what Smith is suggesting we stop doing. That is, adhering to ‘the structure of the same accusation/recrimination model.’ I imagine you’re very steadfast in the opinions you hold, but if you take anything from this article, I hope it’s even the smallest urge to have more honest, civil, and thoughtful conversations about race in the future; much more honest, civil, and thoughtful than the comment you’ve left here.
And as for the ‘blame game’ you claim African-Americans employ– it’s hard to take such wildly illegitimate claims seriously, especially when the person they’re coming from is unable to convey them in a coherent sentence.
Laren
I agree it’s been years that I’ve practice writing anything. I’ve worked hard making a living and I didn’t set in an office and write memo’s to whom ever. Skill of writing needs to be used and practices daily.
My beliefs are life driven, based on observations from a class of people you don’t come into contact on a regular basis. I admit I’m jaded, but I earn my jadedness. I’ll still stand by my post, as a group Black people are violent and statistic are on my side. I don’t use fuzzy math.
Yes we can,
I’m not sure if ‘jaded’ is the right word, though ‘ignorant,’ ‘prejudiced,’ and ’sheltered’ seem to fit the bill just fine.
I take the absence of any ’statistics’ on your end as confirmation of what you and I both know: statistics are certainly not on your side or the side of your vastly incorrect generalization that as a whole ‘Black people are violent.’ Fuzzy or otherwise, you’ve not offered any math to substantiate any of the baseless (and I may add, racist) claims you’ve made about African-Americans.
That said, I hesitate to continue this conversation, as I’m trying to employ the attitude Dr. Smith prescribes in his guest blog. Once again, this tangential conversation (on a much smaller scale, obviously) has overshadowed the larger and more compelling conversation at hand.
Lauren,
Yes we can’s comment is the perfect example of what Smith is suggesting we START doing.
Just because you do not agree with what was said, he/she was being honest and civil. So let’s hear some counter arguments to it and start a productive discussion.
lauren, you lit the fuse on this one and are dangerously bordering on argumentum ad hominem. You are not trying very hard to “employ the attitude Dr. Smith prescribes” with attacks on sentence structure and outright name calling. Try again.
These first few comments, in microcosm, are why these conversations are so difficult.
For example, what do we do when facts are presented that run contrary to our preconceptions? Most commonly, we challenge the presented facts on one facet or another. Just last week, in this space, there was a conversation about crime and race. In that conversation many statistics were thrown around, and the closing comment went something like this: 100 years ago, if we were having this conversation, the topic of black/white wouldn’t be the issue. The issue would be what is it about the Irish and the Poles that makes them so prone to violent crime?
There are so many statistics out there, and they are so prone to misuse. One has to be terribly careful about statistics, and how one draws meaning from them. We naturally latch on to facts that support our views, and reject facts that do not.
Another aspect that keeps us where we are is a definition of “civil”.
I would suggest that the biggest problem with this conversation is the unwillingness of most participants to admit that they have blind spots, that they have ingrained beliefs that they don’t really want to change.
I include myself in that statement.
Jewsus Freaking Christ!
Haven’t we covered this ground before? What part of
“you want a one-sided conversation masquerading as
an honest conversation” is it you don’t understand?
You had to bring in some Predator Look-alike reinforcements?
JS>he most typical conversation flips
JS>easily between accusations of “racism” on
JS>one hand and counter-accusations of JS>“over-sensitivity” on the other.
(Gee, I hope the author of this nonsense gets to
actually read this…)
Well, Johnny, you’re trying to redefine the terms
to your advantage as your premise. This is a no-
redefining-for-self-serving-benefit zone, at least
so long as I’m still able to post here.
The argument is between accusations of racism
(racisism) and accusations of racismism. “Over-
sensitivity is something a shy middle-school boy
who’s not developing as rapidly as his classmates
wallows in.
I’ve already determined that what was being looked-for
here was a conversation on race between a narrow spectrum of pseudo-liberals, from pseudo-liberals
who are somewhat socially conservative and psuedo-
liberals who are full-bore kibbutzunist all the time
all the way.
Anyone who’s followed the paper’s staffs’ responses
to what’s occurred here so far can easily see this.
If we can’t have an honest conversation without
marginalizing the one side of the conversation
and redefining the middle as the extreme, let’s just
move on and start talking about something else.
How ’bout a conversation on a NASCAR race? You ought
to be able to handle that responsibly here–maybe.
You do ramble on.