I used to blame my parents and their generation for not taking care of that whole "race thing" when they had it in their sights. Reach some bone-deep level of understanding, move on to new challenges and never broach the subject again.
But it doesn't work that way. It's a question without answer for every generation to puzzle over and struggle with anew. Unfortunately the collective consciousness seems to have filed it away as yesterday's dilemma and race, by and large, doesn't get talked about it. Except when someone crosses the fuzzy - but certainly not warm - threshold of outrage. But at least Don Imus hasn't gone into "rehab."
It's not fun to talk about. It's not easy to talk about. But when you let anything so fundamentally problematic subside into peripheral noise, it only grows. And nasty things grow in darkness. Are race relations any better than they were in the 1950s or 1960s? Doesn't seem like it to me.
Which brings to why we sometimes write about things that make people uncomfortable. Writing about race is less fun, less easy and more problematic than having a face to face conversation. Some people feel it opens wounds, think it's some conspiratorial attempt to divide people and distract them from 'the issues.' Some people are hurt by it.
If one of our professional goals as reporters is to get past people's soundbytes and the official version of reality offered by those of power and influence, with hope of communicating some approximation of what's really going on to the public, then how could we steer clear of a topic that draws the strongest emotions out of so many people?
People I deeply respect have complained to me that I shouldn't mention race in, say, just for example ... the Pasadena City Council District 1 campaign.
African-American candidate Jacque Robinson and Robin Salzer (the white guy) put the two nicest faces on politics, while so many people around them are seething.
And they're talking about it.
Not that all of them have ink on tap and presses at the ready.
Pasadena Journal Publisher Joe Hopkins has his approach to bringing race into the conversation, one that some support and from which others reel.
Joe is a provocateur in the truest sense. He makes this clear with sort of a caveat emptor warning on the front page of his website, where he advertises his book 'I Will Not Apologize."
Nor should he -- radical free speech is good.
People do need to be provoked into discussing and confronting the uncomfortable places inside them they meticulously avoid visiting, but it's questionable if talking about Robin and white slaveowners in the same breath is going to increase anyone's understanding.
But Joe continues to cite the "infamous WIllie Lynch speech" in his editorials about the election, despite the fact African American Professor Manu Ampim debunked it as a late 20th Century hoax.
And if I read the Willie Lynch speech correctly, it seemed to be about using misinformation, suspicion and fear to keep people divided.
