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We're listening to people speaking at us, all the time.
We expect our leaders to be articulate talkers and we encourage their constant talking.
When we hear from our President or our representatives, it's always in the form of a speech or an interview.
What I want to see is a good dialogue.
Not a debate, wherein two people with opposing views go head to head and try to win.
I want a discussion. A good dialogue in which two or more people get together with the clear intention of learning from another and talking and listening and asking questions of each other around a specific topic.
I think if we could get our white leaders and black leaders to sit down and dialogue about race, as white people we might learn something.
Because right now we have people addressing us regarding race. They have clear ideas about race in America and they are going to share those clear ideas with us.
And the ones who are dialoguing and listening to others about race are not our leaders. They are on the Kojo show or in your church, but they are not our representatives.
No, we expect our representatives to have done their thinking, to have clear ideas and clear heads and to state what they think at us.
How much more might we respect our leaders if we saw them actually wrestling with tough issues like humans do? Instead of just preaching at us?
Maybe if we got to see our leaders THINKING about race in dialogue, we would be willing to listen more and learn through their dialogue.
I know that I don't usually recommend anything to the reader except to always ask questions, but I want to recommend something.
I think we should push for a national dialogue on race.
It could be something as elaborate as a series of discussion questions disseminated to all Americans to get them asking difficult questions about what they believe about race.
Or it could be something as simple as a weekly dialogue on race with our president and respected leaders centered on a weekly question.
No goals for this dialogue except openness and tolerance. Just honest dialogue in which white people (and people in general) are required to think about what race means and how people are actually treated in these United States.
And I say white people in particular, because in this current society we as white people have the distinct privilege of choosing when we think about race. We don't have to think about race every day like persons of color do.
We have the privilege of ignorance.
I'm in a book group at my church. We're reading and discussing The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and one of the questions our leader brought up today was why there weren't more white people in our group. I don't think we actually answered the question, but I kept thinking about it nonetheless. I think as white people we don't talk about race because we don't have to talk about race. I think we often don't want to talk about race because for some reason we feel guilty, like we're being called racists whenever the topic is brought up. But I think the key reason why we don't talk about race is that first reason: we don't have to.
But we MUST. We must think about race and talk about race and begin to dismantle its deep hold in this society or else we are letting oppression continue and we are denying the possibility of justice for all.
We must dialogue. And we must push our leaders to dialogue, not just talk at us.
For it is only through thinking out loud and listening to others that we learn what it is that we actually think and believe and push ourselves to change for the better.
E.M. Forster said "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?"
We must talk to each other so we can change ourselves for the better.
And wouldn't that be cool if our leaders did the same?
