Every one says we need a conversation about race. Yet anytime a person makes a statement or misstatement in a racial context people scream “…fire him/her,” “…she or he should resign.” I am not talking here about outright racial animus. I am talking about a comment like that made by Senator Harry Reid. Senator Reid was trying to be honest about why he thought that, although he is a black man, Barack Obama had been attractive as a presidential candidate. When it came to race, Senator Reid said he thought that it was a plus that Obama was “light skinned… with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

What a racist! Cries rang out for his resignation.
Why such an outcry? Truth is, such outcries mask the racial anxieties of the crier.
Not only that, but crying wolf every time someone speaks their truthful understanding of how race works in America, means we suppress the needed conversation. One does not have to agree with Senator Reid to say “… well, that’s an interesting idea. Let’s explore whether this has any basis in reality.”

On the morning of January 11, 2010, the Monday following the revelation of Senator Reid’s comments, I was pleased to hear a conversation on the radio about whether Reid was right. The caller and the radio hosts were white men. And these men were willing to say that yes, probably, that Reid was right in saying that some, if not many, white Americans were partly comfortable with Obama because of he didn’t look “…that black” and he was articulate. At the same time, the hosts, with the caller agreeing, made the point that Obama also had many other qualities going for him to get him elected.

That, it seemed to me, was a useful conversation. There was at least an attempt to take on the Reid’s comments without damning Reid for uttering the idea. About race, there are many ideas floating around. Suppressing those ideas does not make them go away.

We need a conversation about race where those ideas come out without name calling from any speaker. No, one should not be allowed into the conversation if the way one converses is racially crude, using, for example, racial slurs. But comments like Reid’s need to be aired and discussed.