Head in the Sand?
Max Eternity - Yesterday, Clarence B. Jones, Scholar in Residence at Stanford University's Martin Luther King, Jr. Institute, and the co-author of "What Would Martin Say", wrote for the Huffington Post an article, which candidly ponders the question of whether or not on the subject of race, President Obama has his "Head in the Sand?"
An excerpt from his article:
I've written and posted here before about how race is clearly the 800-pound gorilla in America's communal living room. I'm tired of that analogy; it offers a cartoonish version of a problem that I see more in the horrifying vein of a Francis Bacon painting. So let's instead see it that way -- as a raw and open wound on every citizen's back. We look in the mirror and we don't see it. We could if we turned just so and tried, but we don't really want to. Few people in the public eye ever want to acknowledge or talk about this wound. To do so is to risk accusations of "playing the race card," among other criticisms. Well, the whole idea of playing cards is that, in order to have a successful game, everyone playing needs to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each card in the deck.
An excerpt from his article:
I've written and posted here before about how race is clearly the 800-pound gorilla in America's communal living room. I'm tired of that analogy; it offers a cartoonish version of a problem that I see more in the horrifying vein of a Francis Bacon painting. So let's instead see it that way -- as a raw and open wound on every citizen's back. We look in the mirror and we don't see it. We could if we turned just so and tried, but we don't really want to. Few people in the public eye ever want to acknowledge or talk about this wound. To do so is to risk accusations of "playing the race card," among other criticisms. Well, the whole idea of playing cards is that, in order to have a successful game, everyone playing needs to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each card in the deck.
So maybe now, finally, it's time to reframe the discussion. Let's stop the game so we're not "playing" any cards, and simply examine this race card in the light and try to understand how it fits into the deck that constitutes America's political landscape.
Morally, now is always the opportune time to have a national dialogue about race. The problem is, moral leadership often bends to political expediency.
Still, every time some racially-charged event unfolds in real time (more and more these days than any time since the Rodney King riots in LA), whenever some egregious incident makes headlines, we're told this at long last is an opportunity for a national dialogue on race. Yet that dialogue never happens. Read more.
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