"We Need A Dialogue About Race" - Meta interactions do no good.

Don’t get me wrong; the United States populace needs to have an honest discussion with itself about race, but the royal “we” cannot have that discussion until we understand how to confront these things in an open and honest way.  What we are getting now is neither honest, nor a discussion.  In fact, we aren’t really even getting dishonest dialogue about race.  We are getting chatter about having a discussion or dialogue about race, which is way worse than just saying, “Ah, fuck it.  Our institutions are still mired in the racial inequality of the past, and until we all fulfill George Carlin’s prophecy of forming a beautiful, non-racial, caramel colored population, we aren’t going to move past thinking white culture is superior, black culture is inferior, and stay out terrorists and Spanish speaking people.”  Why is it worse?  Because it’s hope out of Pandora’s box when it comes to those who really TRULY just want to live equally and focus our energy on solving other problems like war and poverty.  The problem is, we are looking to the wrong people to start the dialogue, we aren’t even talking about race, and the terminology we are using is non-starter language designed by people who want to not talk about anything.

            When you turn on a 24 hour news network, if you’re really expecting to have honesty in discussion, you’re absolutely idiotic, and I hope Chris Farley’s ghost returns from the great beyond to beat you about the head and neck area with the tack hammer that David Spade referenced in the airplane sequence of “Tommy Boy.”  These channels are not about honest anything.  They are about keeping twenty four hours of TV filled; six of which are commercials (each hour is about fifteen minutes of commercials, or one fourth.  In 24 hours, a fourth of that is six.  Boom.  Math.)  Expecting news anchors, the twenty four hour variety or otherwise, to lead us in some discussion about race in our society that completely changes our society is like going to a tent preacher hoping to have an honest debate about the nature of the holy trinity.  You go there because you’re looking for entertainment and a little bit of fire and brimstone.  They are more showmen than they are preachers.  Similarly, when you turn on the all night news networks, they have a baked-in agenda of eyeballs first, constant motion second, and political ideology third.  After that comes honesty, factual accuracy, and journalistic integrity, but usually near the end of the hour, after the Centrum Silver commercial. It’s info-tainment, with splashy graphics, ongoing segments, and the constant need to treat the news like it’s the Oakland Raiders defensive secondary, constantly throwing to one of the three, four, five, or six boxes on the screen to get a screamed opinion that isn’t even full sentences.  Why is this the correct ground to start a “dialogue” about race?  They don’t even want to have a dialogue about the news!  Going to CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News to hear debate and discussion about race is like going to EPCOT in place of science class.  Cool experiments!  But what do they all mean?!  Who cares!  Thanks or your sixty seven fifty, we hope you enjoy the eight dollar sodas! Once you get past all of that, and all of the breathless talk about starting a dialogue about race, you need to remember, that’s not even talking about race.

            When we get all self important and lectury on our news networks about talking about race, it’s extremely important to remember we aren’t actually talking about race.  We are talking about TALKING about race.  No, I’m not joking about that extra layer.  It’s important to point out.  We aren’t saying “You know what, fuck it.  I’m not waiting around for anyone else to be ready.  I’m saying it: This is my opinion about what is wrong in this society.  Here are my facts to back it up.  If anyone would like to disagree with me, present me your argument.”  THAT is talking about race.  What news anchors and reporters are doing now is adding a layer of sterilization to the discussion.  They are talking about starting that discussion about race, which means that they aren’t actually starting it.  When you talk about talking about something, you end up adding another layer in the progression of actually accomplishing what you’re talking about.  Every time I hear a discussion about talking about race on TV, my head wants to explode from rage.  I want to scream “Hey, you know who would be a GREAT person to talk about race in the United States?  FUCKING YOU!!  The person who sits at a stupid glass countertop, with what I can only assume is a cardboard newsroom filled with paid background actors typing the same sentence over and over again, staring into a magical device that blasts your stupid face out to the rest of us.  You have time to kill talking about having a discussion; why not fill that time with having the discussion?”  These news anchors are not interested in having that discussion.  It’s the same thing with the person who complains day in and day out about their job, but never applies to another job, and never does anything to change their job, and never tries to improve their lot.  They don’t want to change anything about it, because then they’d actually have to do their job.  They wouldn’t be the person who hates their job.  In order to fill their hour or two of water treading each day, these news anchors need to keep something in the chamber for the next day, which is why they have a discussion about having a discussion about race.  It keeps pushing the actual content off until a later date.  Unfortunately, I’ve used the word discussion and dialogue interchangeably, as though they mean the same thing.  They don’t, and that’s the other part of this triple cocktail of lies and inaction.

            Everything we view on the news is so thoroughly cultured and vetted for air, it’s surprising that anything of substance ever gets through.  I’m not talking about the NBC Nightly News, mind you.  I’m talking about the cable networks.  There is zero chance someone at one network decided to say that the discussion we need to have is a dialogue about race, and everyone else went “Ooh, ‘dialogue!’ is a great way to say discussion without saying discussion!  That’s so super duper!  I’m going to go home and write dialogue over and over again in my notebook by my desk in big balloon letters!”  No, the word dialogue was chosen, because it’s another non-starter.  It sounds like it means talking.  It does.  Unfortunately, once we demand, as a public, that we stop talking about having a dialogue, and actually have a dialogue, we aren’t having what we think we are having.  We aren’t having a discussion about race.  We are having a dialogue.  Dialogue exists in the movies.  Aaron Sorkin writes great, snappy dialogue.  Dialogue is prefabricated and leads to a predetermined place.  For this great and powerful discussion we are going to have about race, it’s going to lead to us all learning to understand more about one another for about a week and a half, and then we’ll all fall right back into our little comfortable couch seat ass-craters we’ve formed from sitting on our duffs, watching the news talk about talking about race, and then “talk” about race.  But we’ll all feel great about ourselves as a country for being so adult until some asshole in Mississippi drags a black person behind their truck with that stars-and-bars decal on the rear window, and then we’ll all be right back to where we started.  Instead of having some dialogue, where the words are written for us and we just have to take direction on how to say them, we need to have a discussion, one that is open ended; a discussion where we aren’t afraid to be afraid of our own thoughts and fears and opinions.  We need to stop referring to everyone who disagrees with us as a racist.  That’s like doing the “fake-cough-‘douchebag’-cough” thing from the movies after every point with which you disagree.  That doesn’t help.

            So where does all my big talk and swear words get us?  Not really anywhere.  I’m actually the third layer out.  I’m talking about how talking about talking about race isn’t really talking about race.  I guess I’m hoping that identifying how talking about race isn’t actually talking about race will get us to skip that second meta-step.  I don’t actually have answers on how to start this dialogue, because telling three hundred million people to do anything is the exact way to get everyone to not do whatever it is you said to do.  If we all turned off TV, if we all sat down in the streets and said “No more until we hash this shit out,” we’d have this solved by Thanksgiving.  But we don’t or can’t, because we’re too busy, too poor, too concerned for our own children to worry about anyone else’s.  So we expect others to start this discussion for us, not realizing they are paid to not really focus on anything of substance in favor of being a background of white noise and blather that drones on and on, convincing us everyone else is the problem, not us, so we don’t have to change our daily routine, or our attitudes we didn’t realize weren’t accepting of others. It’s okay; we can talk about having a dialogue, and once someone else writes that dialogue for us, we can have it, quickly, with as little change as possible.  Then, we can talk about how that dialogue happened, and then we can talk about how the dialogue made us feel, and how talking about the dialogue made us feel, and how all of that worked out for us.  There will be talk, but no action, which means we’ll be right back here in a few weeks, months, or years, and we’ll start the process over.  It’s all right, though… there are always twenty four hours to fill on CNN.