Race talk.

I appreciate Nathan Glazer's taking the time to review my book, Color-mute: Race Talk Dilemmas in an American School (book review, Winter 2006). However, he neglected the core point of the book: that "race talk dilemmas" plague American educators on a daily basis. Deep dilemmas regarding when and how to talk and not talk racially about people, practices, programs, policies, and patterns also plague researchers who care about accurate analyses and the effects of such public discourse (or lack of it) on children. Race-talk dilemmas are a key aspect of American education; they are the phenomenon that Colormute is all about.

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Glazer seems frustrated that I keep these dilemmas in mind through 300 pages. "She seems to want the teachers to recognize and be more straightforward in their talk about racial realities," he writes; "but she does not want them to acknowledge straightforwardly that blacks, Latinos, and Samoans are the problem." Yet in education, both clumsy race talk and actively not talking about race (I call the latter color-muteness) can make things worse. This is the reality of American education: we are a nation plagued by racial inequality, by attempts to ignore racial disparities, and by clumsy and reductive attempts to discuss them. For any educator in any real American school, how to talk about race, and when, is an ongoing question of practice and policy.

Colormute attempts to assist educators not only by outlining some tactics for skillful race talk, but also by laying out core dilemmas of race talk and colormuteness for educators themselves to consider. By analyzing their own race talk and colormuteness, educators, as intelligent adults, can make decisions about when and how it helps to talk about race and when and how it harms.

MICA POLLOCK

Assistant Professor

Harvard Graduate School of Education