The 'Honest Conversation on Race' Trap

American Thinker ^ | Robert Weissberg

[RoosterRedux]

Let’s start simple. Airing out differences on emotionally laden subjects (and yakking about race guarantees high blood pressure) is not always advisable. Actually, lots of harm can happen from ill-advised frankness. Those in happy marriage know that it would be unwise to turn their 25th wedding anniversary into a two hour tête-à-tête about each other’s annoying personal hygiene habits or spousal sexual ineptitude.

A frank discussion about race relations would be far worse. I can readily see a white person working himself up into a lather when recounting the sky-high black crime rate, the awful academic performance of blacks despite trillions in government help, the relative level of dependence on government handouts and the absolute lack of any gratitude for this assistance. To which an agitated black would respond with a similarly lengthy catalogue: the legacy of slavery and discrimination, innumerable incidents of police brutality, white denial of their pernicious racism and related sins that undermine black self-respect. And this would be only round one of a 15 round championship fight.

That every one of these items has been discussed ad nauseam for half a century suggests that the purpose of this dialogue is not to provide new information or to clear the air as one might spit out a spouse’s long annoying faulty hygiene in couples therapy. Nor could it be argued that contemporary Americans need a refresher course on race -- almost every item in these prospective conversations spontaneously surfaces with once-a-month regularity thanks to the mass media’s infatuation with racially charged white-on-black violence (but not the reverse).

Why then the repeated calls and the unwillingness of whites to engage African Americans? Here’s why: nearly all whites (and many Asians, too) know that the invitation is a trap, a disguised ploy to advance the racial egalitarian agenda.

[driftless2]

There has been a conversation for the last fifty years. It was conducted by liberals and assorted black race-baiters and directed at everybody else. The one-sided message was that most whites, except for the right people i.e. liberals, were all nasty racists and entirely responsible for whatever problems black Americans had.

After fifty years all the non-liberals i.e. non race-baiters have finally had enough. Only the dimmest and most intractable liberals believe that whites cause black pathologies. Most whites, like me, are consumed with black fatigue. Just don't care about their self-inflicted problems anymore.

[JimRed]

You can not talk about racial problems, because TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.

[Buckeye McFrog]

An honest conversation about race would involve discussing with black people the fact that their children are descending into a cesspool of crime, drugs, and illegitimacy due to the breakdown of the black family and a near-total lack of value placed on education in their subculture.

That conversation, I am sure, would get me branded a racist.

[JimRed]

Of course, those responses are the same if you try to ignore them...take the case of the black guys who attacked the white guy on the subway because he didn’t want to discuss michael brown.

Had he given them my standard answer, that Michael Brown NEEDED killing, they'd have done the same.

[Altura Ct.]

Bump for later

[RoosterRedux]

You are so right. The Truth is the new Hate Speech.