Talking Race, Part II

Shortly after I moved out of my fraternity, our house became embroiled in a campus-wide racial uproar over an issue that was inflamed by a newspaper account that began “According to an unverified rumor…”

Unverified rumors are hardly the foundation upon which solid journalism is built, but no matter, the damage was done. We immediately became persona non grata on campus, the targets of verbal assaults, vandalism and physical threats from blacks and whites alike. The university took up the cause and ordered we undergo what today would be called diversity training, sending a series of African-American speakers to enlighten us. The first few did little more than point fingers and tell us how we represented all that was wrong with white America. Little enlightenment took place.

But the final speaker brought about an epiphany. Rather than rant, he asked three simple questions. Did we feel we were being treated unfairly? Yes. Did we feel people were saying things about us that weren’t true? Yes! And finally, the coup de grace – did we feel we were being prejudged? There was a collective gasp among the sixty-five or so young, white men gathered in that room.

Suddenly, if only in the smallest of ways, we understood what blacks must endure on a daily basis. How it feels when someone you don’t know shouts an epithet in your direction. When people eye you suspiciously for no apparent reason. How you begin to see malevolent intentions in even innocent gestures. It can start to make one wary, angry and more.

What this gentleman did so brilliantly was get us to understand his perspective by showing he understood ours. Rather than presume us guilty of racism, he allowed for the possibility that we weren’t, which in turn got us to lower our defenses and open our minds to how racism can manifest itself. That’s something too often missing on both sides of our discussion about race – an attempt at mutual understanding. Instead, there’s a tendency to stand on our respective soapboxes with fingers wagging and minds already made up. Ironically, that’s the definition of prejudice – deciding before the fact.

Whites tend to look at all the progress - anti-discrimination laws, affirmative action, blacks serving in the upper-echelons of government and business - and thus want to believe racism is a thing of the past. Blacks, on the other hand, see the results of the pernicious, systematic racism of the past and thus tend to see racism today in places where it doesn’t exist. The truth is that both sides are often mistaken. Racism exists more than most whites care to admit, but not as much as some blacks might believe.

If both sides can allow for the possibility that things are neither as rosy nor bleak as we might think, we may finally reach that middle ground where mutual understanding takes place. Then, the collective gasp will likely come not from sixty-five young men, but from all of us. That day cannot come too soon.