“We’re just getting warmed up,” President Clinton moaned as public television host Jim Lehrer said it was time to wrap up the third and final forum of the president’s year-long dialogue on race.
Well, gee, no kidding. You mean smart people like us didn’t solve the nation’s race problems in one hour?
As one of the eight panelists invited by PBS’ “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” to “dialogue” with the president on public television, I didn’t expect miracles and I didn’t get any.
I expected something like the rest of the president’s racial forums: little bit of news conference, a little bit of food fight and a lot of personal anecdotes about victimization, either by racism or affirmative action, depending on which side of that fence the speaker was on.
In the end, I expected the moderator would announce that time was up and somebody would conclude that we have not solved the problem and that it’s too bad because we were just getting warmed up.
Of course we were just getting warmed up. If you really want to have a productive dialogue on race, you need more than an hour.
And you don’t need a panel made up of educated elites. You need to mix it up with some blue-collar homeowners from urban and suburban bungalows, who fear racial change or view Native American rights as a threat to their property values. You need store clerks who tense up whenever young black or Latino males walk in the door. You need some young black and Latino honor students who tense up whenever they see a cop.
Then you need at least a weekend, preferably isolated in some cabin in the woods, where the screaming won’t disturb the neighbors. Then you spend the first day getting to know each other well enough to get past the social niceties and political correctness and get down to some really frank racial gripes.
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Then sometime after midnight, people begin to see things from the other groups’ points of view. By the end of the weekend, the participants usually sense change, a real meeting of the minds, if they haven’t killed each other first.
Lacking that much time, we did what we could and left predictably frustrated that we didn’t get a chance to do more.
Sherman Alexie, an author and filmmaker, described how indigenous peoples simply “don’t exist” in the nation’s racial discussion. This was exemplified by Alexie being the first Native American to be included on any of the president’s panels. He also noted the “Washington Redskins” sticker he spotted on a locker on his way into the studio.
“You see?” he said. “We don’t exist.” He didn’t have to say more. Fans may argue, but “Redskins” is still a slur, no matter how you slice it.
Elaine Chao, of the conservative Heritage Foundation, offered examples of Asians being caught both ways, discriminated against as non-whites and as “over-represented” in school admissions in California.
Roger Rosenblatt, a Time magazine and NewsHour essayist, called on the president to “remind us that integration is the goal.”
Other panelists included Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of the Atlanta Constitution; Kay James, an African-American and dean of Regent University, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson; Richard Rodriguez, of the Pacific News Service and a regular NewsHour essayist and Roberto Suro, a Washington Post reporter and author of “Strangers Among Us: How Latino Immigration is Transforming America.”
The president appeared to be in his element, orchestrating a seminar of opposing views and trying eagerly and smoothly to edge us toward a consensus, no matter how uneasy or tenuous. When we criticized his policies or practices, he responded by simply ignoring the criticism.
When I, for example, criticized the president for “tiptoeing around the really tough issues of race,” particularly affirmative action, he responded with an eloquent call for a new type of affirmative action that would save the “kids who are being lost altogether.”
Of course, he never really answered my question, and we let him get away with it. Throughout the hour and even afterwards (He hung around with us for more than a half hour, still chatting passionately.) whenever passions heated up, the president cooled them down through his remarkable propensity for smoothing ruffled feathers by ever so slightly changing the subject to paths of less resistance.
Presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson left a legacy of racial progress by making bold initiatives, spending political capital but changing history for the better. So far, the Clinton administration has offered small reforms and big occasions to get together and talk across racial lines without fighting. Considering our lack of frank discussions since the 1960s, that’s a plus.
But it’s only a beginning. Maybe next time we should go into the woods.