OK, Let's Talk About Race

Mary Curtis wrote earlier about a positive turn in racial discrimination and, by doing so, in the way we discuss the topic. For those ancient adults who've missed the news, there is a new Disney princess in town and she's (gasp!) amphibian (also, black, but really, what took so long?) Anyway, as Mary demonstrates, it is much more pleasant to write about sweet little girls who dream of tiaras than angry adults expressing their pain.

For at least the last year, since we elected a president who was not a white man, Americans have been trying to have principled discussions across tribal lines about racial biases, stereotypes and misconceptions.

Unfortunately, as Christine Wicker noted in an internal WomanUP email, when people of any color open the subject, people of other colors get uncomfortable, defensive, or angry. It's awkward even among close friends of different ethnicities, as the women who write on this blog have discovered. That has changed a lot in my long lifetime (next week, WomanUP dissects ageism . . . ) but it is still hard to talk about race across races.

Just last summer, press colleagues and pundits simmered in angst and anxiety for weeks over the implied image of poor Skip Gates losing his cool, or felt enraged by the iconic picture of him in handcuffs. As a white woman, I have deep-seated guilt for being the beneficiary of generations of unearned entitlement. My ancestors fled pogroms, and I'm not suggesting they didn't hustle, work impossible hours or have beautiful stitch work, but along with those qualities, their white skin made assimilation easier than for non-white immigrants or the offspring of slaves.
I know we still have a long way to go to end the mistrust and bigotry that those times ushered in, but I'm really glad we've finally started talking.