Conversation -- or instruction?

After last week’s speech on race by Barack Obama, many people — even some of Senator Obama’s critics — lauded it as a way to open a “national conversation” on race. Some remarked on Obama’s courage, even though he had essentially avoided the topic despite knowing that Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary rhetoric was a political time bomb waiting to explode, and one Obama ran from defusing before the inevitable detonation. Obama’s call to open a discussion surprises Jonah Goldberg, who wonders when we’ll ever stop talking about race:

Because so many people agree on this brilliant new strategy to heal our national wounds, I can only assume that I’m the one missing something. Because when one luminary after another smacks his forehead like someone who forgot to have a V8 in epiphanic awe over the genius of Obama’s call for a national conversation on race, all I can do is wonder: “What on Earth are you people talking about?” ….

Here I’d been under the impression that every major university (and minor one for that matter) in the country already had boatloads of courses — often entire majors — dedicated to race in America. I’d even read somewhere that professors had incorporated racial themes and issues into classes on everything from Shakespeare to the mating habits of snail darters. And scratching faintly in the back of my mind, I felt some vague memory that these same universities recruited black students and other racial minorities, on the grounds that interracial conversations on campus are as important as talking about math, science and literature. A ghost of an image in my mind’s eye seemed to reveal African American studies centers, banners for Black History Month and copies of books like “Race Matters” and “The Future of the Race” lined up on shelves at college bookstores.

Were all of the corporate diversity consultants and racial sensitivity seminars mere apparitions in a dream? Also disappearing in the memory hole, apparently, were the debates that followed Hurricane Katrina, Trent Lott’s remarks about Strom Thurmond, the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, the publication of “The Bell Curve” and O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. Not to mention the ongoing national chatter about affirmative action, racial disparities in prison sentences and racial profiling by law enforcement.

And the thousands of hours of newscasts, television dramas and movies — remember Oscar-winning films such as 2004’s “Crash?” — dedicated to racial issues? It’s as if they never existed, vanishing like the image on a TV screen after the plug’s been pulled. The New York Times’ six-week Pulitzer Prize-winning series, “How Race Is Lived in America”: just an inkblot?

Goldberg has a good point, at least in one sense. We have been asked to see nearly every aspect of American life through the prism of race, as well as gender. Entire industries exist to focus on the failings of America to eliminate the need for these industries, especially in academia, as Goldberg points out. The entertainment industry churns out movies that rely on racial, ethnic, and lifestyle animuses for both dramatic and comedic effect as a constant reminder.

Maybe what we need is less talk and more reflection. We certainly could use a little more empathy. Between the Jeremiah Wrights who see no difference between Jim Crow America and the US today, and those who think that the nation miraculously resolved all racial disparities in the moment we passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, there exists a massive middle ground that understands the massive improvements we have made still have left some room for further work — but who disagree on the extent and nature of government’s role in effecting that change.

Absolutists on either side don’t contribute to understanding; they drive people away. That’s not a conversation, it’s demagoguery. Barack Obama had the opportunity to repudiate the latter but chose not to do so, excusing both it and his support for it over the years as a vestige of days gone by. Better days won’t arrive while people like Obama and Trent Lott pretend that the demagogues somehow contribute to a “conversation”.