What Precedes Debate.
Before any subject is open to debate it is necessary, first, that a motion be made by a member who has obtained the floor; second, that it be seconded (with certain exceptions); and third, that it be stated by the chair, that is, by the presiding officer. The fact that a motion has been made and seconded does not put it before the assembly, as the chair alone can do that. He must either rule it out of order, or state the question on it so that the assembly may know what is before it for consideration and action, that is, what is the immediately pending question.
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So, is this discussion “out of order”? What *exactly* is the immediately pending question?

Still, the point that I was trying to make regarding the crack epidemic was that we were in a dilemma, a Catch-22. In 1985-1991, we could have sat back and done nothing. If you believe Steven Leavitt, we had been aborting our way out of the problem since 1973, which may have been a pretty effective though rather unpalatable solution. Even if you do believe that, there’s no way we could know it then. So we went with what we believed would work, getting tough. And it was a consensus solution, it became a consensus solution when Bill Clinton turned “tough on crime” during the 1992 election (going back to Arkansas to put down Ricky Ray Rector, for one example). If I were going to put an actual name to the negative results, I’d call them “unintended consequences”, rather than mistakes.

But also, when I hear implicit accusations that the “other side” is *whining*

Interesting that you see this in terms of two, binary, opposed “sides”, which you seem to imply break down on race. That’s unfortunate.

Complaining that minorities are being unfair because a) I’m not a racist! and b) geeziz haven’t we beaten this subject to death already? is, yes, whining. Worse, probably, than whining is your repeated attempt to obscure the problem (racial injustice and pervasive racism) by putting yourself as the Arbiter of the Golden Mean and telling everyone they’re equally at fault.

Using your marriage-counselor analogy, if the wife is physically violent and abusing the husband, we wouldn’t nod sympathetically if she said “But he complains when I spend too much money and, you know what, he makes a big deal out of it when I hang the toilet paper the wrong way!” We wouldn’t, I hope, lecture the abused husband on how he needs to think of all the nice things his wife has done for him and how he really needs to pay more attention to the times she *doesn’t* hit him, and by the way, they should go home and do their homework and find nice things to say about one another.

(I didn’t see The Chief’s comment as any kind of analogy, by the way, more as a “fuck all y’alls, I’ve said my piece, now I’m outta here.”)

Tom, while I agree with much of what you say, “mistakes were made” is a deliberate use of language to obscure and erase blame. Nobody MADE mistakes, certainly not us; the mistakes just made themselves! Those darn mistakes, whatchagonnado? As for what *we* can do, really the first step in doing anything is not saying that we simply can’t do anything and it’s nobody’s fault really.

There’s another type, I think, that may be even more prevalent among many whites. That is the disconnected, wash-our-hands of this, got-enough-to-worry-about, I’ve-already-moved-on type, the type that is more dismissive rather than defensive or angry regarding whatever dialog or lecture or whatever we’ve been having for decades or centuries. Extending the marriage metaphor yet again, this is the mindset preceding divorce or parallel marriage. That’s more the type that I think Jonah Goldberg speaks to.

We hear about one problem after another, about the criminal justice system or the education system or a hundred other things. That stuff is all a mile above our heads too. We’ve got our own bills to pay and jobs we hate and kids to put through school, none of which are any easier given the current implosion in the economy, so the easiest response to the perennial racial ills of America, apologies to Jerry Seinfeld, is “Well, good luck with all that.”

We’ve had these issues with us for decades now. Many of them don’t seem to be improving past a certain point. Much of what we might try to do only seems to make the problem worse. The issue with crack cocaine, to cite one example, is a case in point. It was only 20 years ago that crack was hollowing out American cities and turning them into war-zones. For that matter, the crack boom coincided with, and was likely a major contributing factor, to the end of the steady progress of black Americans on most socioeconomic indicators since the 1960s (income, education, child mortality, homicide rates, incarceration rates, etc.) Crack was a by-product of a lot of trends from the 70s: economic and political unrest in Latin America caused most directly by the oil crunch and debt crisis, the federalization of the wars on drugs and organized crime unleashed against the last crime problem of the late 60s and early 70s, urban deindustrialization, and at the very least, the nonchalance of the CIA as to many of its Latin American assets’ side businesses. Big, complex tangle of root causes that. But we couldn’t wait 20 years for another big change in the winds. So the criminal justice system stepped in. And now we have had two generations of black men who were pulled away from their communities and families for stupid things they did in their teens and 20s, and who come back in their 30s and 40s without much to show for their lives except for major-league felony raps. Mistakes were made. What exactly ought we have done? If nothing else, at least our cities stopped looking like Beirut.

Precious little any of us can do about any of this, whatever magical powers are ascribed to us whiteys. I don’t have any Congressmen or Senators or CEOs on my speed dial. I don’t know any secret handshakes, or have a preppy secret-society nickname, or any of that. None of the other white people I know do either. If we did, things might be different. As such…

I will say this, with regards to comments of the sort that Reverend Wright made. None of us particularly care to be put on the spot over half the world’s ills that we can’t do much about ourselves. A lot of us tend to keep a little mental box, I’ll call it the “Farrakhan box”, for loud and angry people blaming us for things. Once someone is in the Farrakhan box, it becomes very easy for us to just say back at them, with no small degree of amusement: “Right. Thank you for calling. Appreciate your input. Take a number. Get in line,” and go on about our day with a very light conscience indeed. That, ultimately, is the danger that I think that the Rev posed to Obama, and what I think Obama has been working to keep himself out of. It’s not that Obama is in danger from starting a dialog that whites don’t want to have, but that he could get pigeonholed in the minds of many whites into a monologue that we figure that we’ve heard, and comfortably ignored, many, many times before.

My point about AIDS isn’t that the govt is spreading it, but that for good reason the idea that the govt would do such isn’t “ridiculous” to everyone.

I mean, really. The Bush administration has not looked into one complaint of racial employment discrimination but has prosecuted a number of reverse-discrimination complaints even people of color are discriminated against at a much, much higher rate than white reverse-discrimination. Some govt action.

Here’s the problem as I see. The conversation goes beyond how you treat people or even whether or not you hate them. The issue has to do with the constant disadvantages people of color face from just about every sphere of life in the US. We say to white Americans that there’s a problem. Not a few of you deny there’s a problem. We give you a truncated list of some of the barriers people of color face. You say, “Well, IF it’s true . . .” There’re no “ifs.” It’s just true! What you personally can do, unless you’re a teacher or police officer or bank manager or a DA or school board member or doctor, ect, and so on, is not deny what’s obvious to us. At least own up to the truth that people of color face grave disadvantages.

And as for acknowledging improvements. Seriously, what do you want? A cookie? “Yay! You don’t lynch me any more when I vote! Yippie!” Meanwhile, in Texas, you’re prosecuting elderly people of color because they forgot to sign their names to the back of the mail-in ballot envelope. They now have criminal records, 6 months probation, and $2000 fine, but at least they’re not hanging from a tree! This, while conservatives in Texas stuff the ballot box and face not even a raised eyebrow. - What’s more is that the income gap has been increasing since 2001. The gap in accumulated wealth is at its widest in decades. Even though blacks make up on 13% of drug abusers, we make up well over 50% of nonviolent, drug offense prisoners. People are disturbed by the rate of high school drop among black boys, and rightfully so, but few bother to mention that these schools count on students dropping out because otherwise, they’d be even more overcrowded.

And I suppose it would be natural enough that whites discuss race in your homes. I assume you teach your children to treat everyone the same no matter what. Besides that, I only wonder what your conversation is based on. Much of what is “known” about black people is myth. We save money at the same rate. We use illegal drugs at a slightly lower rate. Once you hold for socioeconomic status/income, crime rates are the same. Education is equally important in the black community - black students spend as much if not slightly more time studying as white students. “Gangsta rap” is what’s choking the market because that’s what the market buys, and 80% of gangsta rap listeners are young, white males.

However, it seems reasonable that progressives would want a part in such conversations. Currently, they are, inadvertently, restricting it to venues where they have no input.

And though the conversion process has indeed begun, we are all very much works in progress.”

So, you end up pretty much restating Goldberg’s actual point- the conversation on race was started long ago, not by Obama’s speech. And where do you base your claims that Goldberg feels that the conversation “has continued for far too long, and probably ought to be dropped” or that we should “move on”? I saw nothing in his piece to substantiate that assumption. That seems to be a rather unfair characterization of his argument.
Despite your attempt to put a much finer point on the definition of “conversation” as requiring a conversion of beliefs, I think it’s pretty safe to say that most do not share such a requirement. In common parlance a conversation is simply seen as a discussion of views.

I agree, Mythago. But also, when I hear implicit accusations that the “other side” is *whining*, e.g.

> “What do you want? A cookie?”

… I immediately know the speaker isn’t actually listening to what’s being said.

I’ve seen The Chief and Married Tom say what they want, in this case. They want to know the scope of the discussion. “Is this enough?” “Where does this end?” etc.

Hugo mentions “ten thousand conversations” and “start(ing) over at the very beginning”. He talks about change, and by analogy, conversation, “happen(ing) for years and years.” This makes sense to me. But, Hugo, your analogy with a philandering husband is an unfortunate choice. Doesn’t this suggest a situation where fault has already been assigned, and where a victimized party does all of the talking, and the guilty party does all of the listening? (Couldn’t you have made a “Hatfields and McCoys” analogy? IRA vs. Provos?)

The Chief makes an analogy about sneaking out of a lecture, and the lecturer(s) not even realizing he is gone. Jonah Goldberg mentions in his book “the permanence of white sin, and therefore the eternal justification of white guilt.”

I see a big disconnect. I see two sides disagreeing on so many levels, there may not even be common ground for them to stand on. I imagine the therapist telling this hypothetical couple, “You two are not yet ready to have this conversation, but your homework assignment is to come up with one thing you respect about the other person.”