Race to harmony begins with individuals,
not groups
I attended the Citizen Dialogue on Race and Stereotypes on March 23 at the Tivoli and came away thinking this: Racial stereotypes exist so widely that forthright conversations between strangers are often impossible.
The Presidentâs Initiative on Race is flawed from the start. There are inherent problems in packing a room with 800 people and asking for an honest discussion on a highly emotional and personal topic. Whoever set that up was asking for trouble, and, boy, did they get it.
Someone failed to include Native Americans on the seven-person initiative panel.
How the hell did that happen?
And Judith Winston, the Initiativeâs executive director, made matters worse when she told a pack of hecklers the panel was not intended to reflect the U.S. population. ãIt could not have,ä she said.
Nonsense.
Denver Mayor Wellington Webb seemed to set a tone for the meeting when he talked about the cityâs long, proud history of tolerance. He listed several Native American tribes and inadvertently said they ãwereä Colorado residents.
ãWeâre still here,ä came shouts from the crowd. No one doubted that by the end of the night.
Before long, the meeting deteriorated as Native Americans shouted down a few speakers and the two emcees responded with slick, cynical and patronizing comments.
Native Americans unrelentingly booed the chairman of the advisory board, John Hope Franklin, when he got up to speak. He sat down in defeat without completing one sentence. Later, Franklin recanted his statement that the protest was a ãperformance.ä
ãWould you stop and listen to yourselves? We are getting nowhere,ä lamented Ernest Gurule, a moderator and correspondent for KWGN-TV. He asked for a representative ãfrom the group that is most vocal.ä
ãIt is far easier to sit there and remain disruptive than it is to come up,ä he said.
Some Native Americans decried the tokenism. ãOne person, one person,ä they said.
Someone thumped a drumbeat on the back of a chair as a group of young Native American girls chanted discontent.
At times, the meeting looked and sounded like a charismatic revival. One person after another gave a testimonial about their experience with discrimination and hate. Each seemed driven to surpass the emotion and drama elicited by the speaker before them. Each prefaced their remarks by listing credentials such as their ethnic background or experience with racism.
Some Native Americans compared their suffering with that of blacks.
ãSlavery has ended, our colonization has not ended,ä shouted Steve Newcomb, a Native American, as blacks shook their heads in dissent.
The value of this sort of meeting is minimal, but I donât blame the Native American activists. They have a legitimate objection and probably wouldnât have been heard at all if they werenât so loud and persistent.
But racial harmony is a phenomenon between individuals, not groups. You canât just throw all the races together in a room and order them to work out their problems. Itâs chaos, and the group with the loudest voice dominates the discussion.
The only lasting result is more anger and disillusionment on all sides.
To tell the truth, Iâm sick of talking about race with people I donât know personally. I would rather talk about music, travel, religion, college, whatever. I would rather go to a movie with someone who is an ethnic minority or eat lunch with them before we talk about race.
Iâm not avoiding the issue. Race is too important and too emotionally charged, and the potential for misunderstanding is too high to discuss race before I know the person Iâm talking with.
People sometimes get this ãchange-the-worldä complex when theyâre talking about race in front of a large group. Trite statements about justice, diversity and equality flow freely, but rarely will anyone offer specific, concrete and practical solutions.
Have you seen the TV commercial promoting the Presidentâs Initiative on Race? The camera focuses on men and women of several ethnic backgrounds and also a couple of people with disabilities. The smiling faces tell how they, too, like ãgood food,ä and ãgood music.ä
One says, ãYou donât have to like me ...ä
Another, ãbut if you get to know me ...ä
And another, ãyou might.ä
Thatâs where racial harmony really begins.
Preaching pundits with amusing anecdotes have little to offer a serious discussion on race. Angry activists are symptomatic of the fact that blatant racism exists at all levels of society.
Mass meetings are one thing, and they serve a small purpose in ãbringing people together.ä But they are a poor substitute for personal interaction.
