Conversation in black & white: let's talk race.

Because of increased racial tensions in the United States, last year President Bill Clinton called for a national dialogue to "cleanse our house of racism." But will simple dialogue between the races help? Are we so different, so antagonistic that we needn't even try?

From October 1993 through June 1994, I took part in such a dialogue. An art gallery just south of Houston's downtown had hung a group exhibition aimed at expressing racial experiences. Connected to the exhibit was a discussion titled "Blacks and Whites Together: A Conversation for Racial Harmony," soon simply shortened to "The Conversation." The dialogue was open to anyone. We met for about five hours one Saturday a month for nine months. There was no moderator, no structure. Anything that bore on race could be discussed. At first, about sixty people attended but the number dwindled to a steady ten or twelve at the end. We sat in a circle of folding chairs. The early meetings were stormy; some people simply blew off steam and disappeared, never to return. By the third Saturday, those who remained were committed to saying what none of us had ever said directly to the other race: What it is to be black, what it is to be white.

What did the conversation teach us? We heard stories of commonplace events of black life that utterly astonished the white members of the group. We learned that a black man is often suspected of being an armed robber when he enters a convenience store, that most of the black men in the group, before reaching the age of puberty, had been stopped and harassed by the police (and sometimes arrested), just for being black and on the street. We learned about a nationally famous black sculptor in Chicago who was denied entrance to a lavish party in his honor by a white policeman who couldn't believe he belonged on Lake Shore Drive. We heard about the bank loans denied, the cars that could not be bought, the snide comments about everything from African hair to whether blacks can understand high technology. Story after story illuminated what it means to be black in America, not a century ago, but now.

Each month, the blacks talked about the previous session as if it had been only the day before, about how hard they had thought about the things that had been said. By contrast, that previous meeting seemed remote to the whites, not something we'd thought much about in the meantime. Why the difference? Because for blacks, race is the issue. One black artist said race is like a gas in a room, permeating everything. I had never thought of it that way because for me it isn't that way. Race is something to think about or not as I please. For blacks there is not a choice. You deal with it well or ill, but you deal with it always. The black members seemed surprised to learn how peripheral the issue of race is to most whites. In that, we are two different societies.

The blacks in the group showed a definite sense of racial solidarity. They felt a certain personal stake in the successes and failures of other black people. This came as no surprise to me. I remembered some blacks had said that Anita Hill should not have accused Clarence Thomas, because to do so, particularly regarding sexual matters, was to tar the race with an old brush. But I also found that blacks in the group transferred their sense of racial unity onto white people. At the time I was shocked at their naivete. Who could imagine whites claiming that Robert Bork's shortcomings should have been covered up because he is white? More recently though, the strong reaction by whites as a race to the verdict in the Simpson case suggests that it was I who was naive.

What we learned in the conversation would take a book to record, but what changes in attitudes, assumptions, responses did it produce? Hear the whites: "I'm freer to feel my true feelings toward blacks." "I don't have to pretend." "I can be critical of blacks now the same as I am of my white friends. I'm not constrained to be nice." "I'm not afraid of race. It's not a subject to avoid any more." "I don't put up with racism when I hear it. I'm more willing to speak out." Hear the blacks: "I can be more myself around white people." "I feel I can say things more honestly." "I feel more in control of situations with white people." "I could feel the empathy of whites, their openness. I talk more freely to white people now." Compare these words to those of Louis Farrakhan, to certain talk-show hosts, or to the tapes of Detective Mark Fuhrman.

How could nine Saturday afternoons make such changes in our perceptions? Because the Conversation was about race. I have reread some of the narratives of the fight against segregation during the fifties and sixties. They now seem hopelessly optimistic in their assumption that the mere association of the races in schools, restaurants, movie theaters, etc., was all that was required to purge our society of racism. The Conversation taught me that blacks and whites in America cannot know each other without knowing what part race plays in the life of the other. We cannot simply live and work together and never mention that I am white and you are black and what that means about our lives and how we see the world.

The Conversation was personal. We sat together, looked at each other, read each others' eyes, body language, tones of voice. The stories and feelings were our own. It was voluntary. No one made us do it: We were there because our hearts were there. The group controlled what the group did. We had no leader and no agenda. Those who came with an agenda were frustrated and soon left. In short, we were the conversation; our own true, common experiences of race created the often difficult and everlastingly valuable thing that was the conversation. And so, more than any book or history class, its lessons have stayed with me, because they are not lessons at all, but people who were seen, felt, known in explicitly racial ways. Once a person has done that, he or she has turned a corner and cannot turn back.

Racism requires ignorance of the other race. It assumes that we are insuperably different. The Conversation confronted that assumption. Of course, no one who took part in it fully understands the other race, nor can dialogue alone erase the gross inequalities between the races in employment, education, health, housing, etc. Those problems demand their own solutions. But a society whose races cannot talk to each other will never resolve the practical inequalities between them. If we remain ignorant of our common humanity, where will we find the desire to right the wrongs that plague us? To eradicate ignorance, frank talk and sympathetic listening are needed. Many people of both races want that, and the members of the Conversation wish to tell them it can work.

Robert Franklin is a poet, essayist, and attorney living in Houston, Texas. His work has appeared in An Anthology of Texas Poets, the Concho River Review, and the Houston Law Review.