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03/25/2008: "I thought we had been talking about race"

Thank God for Barack Obama. For until his “More Perfect Union” speech last Tuesday, it seems it never occurred to anyone that America needed to talk about race.

Here I’d been under the impression that every major university (and minor one for that matter) in the country already had boatloads of courses—often entire majors—dedicated to race in America...Were all of the corporate diversity consultants and racial sensitivity seminars mere apparitions in a dream?

In fact, doesn’t it seem like the majority of people begging for a “new conversation” on race are the same folks who shout “racist!” at anyone who disagrees with them?

This sort of disconnect between rhetoric and reality is the kind of thing one finds in novels by Alexander Solzhenitsyn or Milan Kundera.

[ People like illusions, and passive activities that make them feel better without solving problems. ]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg25mar25,0,4595893.column