Law Humor

I Sometimes Use Class To Avoid Talking About Race

By Pseudoanonymous

It’s true, and it’s a little embarrassing, but I have sometimes used class to avoid talking about race. It’s the sort of compromise that has always grit my teeth. Why do I sink to it?

(Hear that? “sink to it” There’s a moral overtone, tied up with my pride, that I don’t like there.)

When you plan, when you think into the future, again, if you aren’t thinking about race as part of that future, you aren’t going to make very good plans.

This is vision here, how you plan to instantiate the world you want beginning with the world you have. That vision has to be complete and explicit, both in its positive statement of what’s wanted and in its negative statement of what has to be abolished or overcome. Race lies at the heart of that in the United States, and a strategy for progressive change must start there.

But sometimes the people you’re up against are splitting you from the people you’re depending on with cynical uses of race. When they (whoever they is–I found it easy to locate in particular city officials and functionaries) find discussion of race useful, I’m usually in favor of dodging it. What does work, sometimes, is appealing to common interest instead, which comes down to class.

That’s a sloppy and unsatisfying compromise. Neither my ego nor my pride likes it. That’s not necessarily a bad sign.

Full post as published by Arkansawyer on April 25, 2010 (boomark / email).