What do Ben Affleck, Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, and Matt Damon have in common?
No, all three of them were not in Good Will Hunting (close, two out of three were).
No, all three of them were not in Gone Baby Gone (Bonus point: can you guess which two were?)
No, all three of them were not in Argo (close again, two out of three).
All three are producers of DiGiovanni's multimedia solo performance and documentary film One Drop of Love "which incorporates filmed images, photographs, and animation to tell the story of how the notion of ‘race’ came to be in the U.S., and how it influences the narrator’s relationship with her father."
All three also have ties to Cambridge, Massachusetts which will host a performance on Friday, August 30, 2013 at the James R. Fitzgerald Theater at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, 459 Broadway Cambridge, MA 02138.
When Boston College graduate student Marya Mtshali took the course Politics of Black Sexuality, she noticed a glaring need when it came to research around interracial relationships, particularly those involving Black women and White men:
Marya Mtshali, PhD Student
Department of Sociology
Boston College
"Practically all of the research I came across or found on Google Scholar about interracial couples was about Black men with White women and how Black women were upset by interracial relationships. I noticed a gap in the literature that I think is important to fill."
And that is exactly what she aims to do through her exploratory sociological study on the experiences of Black female-White male interracial couples. Marya will be using this research for her doctoral thesis and a published article in a peer reviewed journal. She hopes her research can provide a better overall picture of interracial couples and that the information will add to better understanding of the way race and gender intersect.
So if you are a Black woman in an "intimate" relationship with a White man or a White man in an intimate relationship with a Black woman (for purposes of this study, intimate is defined as being together consistently for at least one year), between the ages of 18 - 65, please consider helping Marya out and volunteering for this study. Interviews typically last between 1 and 1.5 hours and consist of questions about your demographics, upbringing, dating history, and experiences from your current relationship. Interviews are taped and stored under password protected files, using pseudonyms and other generic references to minimize the collection of personally identifiable information. Ideally Marya would like to interview both members of the couple, but participation from both isn't required.
Now, Marya only needs ten couples or participants, but I'm hopefully optimistic that between all of us and the people that we know, we can make sure she has ten and then some. And in case you're wondering, I'm signed up for my interview next week.
Although the site includes geographic requirements, as this point Marya is interested in participants regardless of where they live. If you're interested in participating, email Marya directly at blackfemalewhitemalestudy@gmail.com
I thank you in advance.
(This piece is featured in the Fall issue of Wedding Nouveau, "the premiere digital and print-on-demand bridal resource for multi-ethnic weddings and intercultural brides who dream in culture.")
Out of the 365 days of the year, for 364 of them, our wedding DVD collects dust on a bookshelf in our living room. But every August 19th, my husband and I dust it off, watch and remember the day our family began.
I love all things local, including bloggers, and last month I had the pleasure of hosting Blogging While Brown's first (of many) Boston Meetup. One of the many new friends I made is this week's guest blogger: Laura K. Warrell, writer, teacher and author of the blog Tart & Soul: A Search for Connection and Meaning.Before she takes over the world, I want to make sure you remember where you read her first. Enjoy! -Tinu
Poor Gary. I think he may have been at my church growing up...
In May 2004, I met my husband right before I left town for Memorial Day weekend. I'd just barely survived my first year of law school and planned to spend the holiday weekend in Maryland to detox my soul. But over a three week period, every Sunday at church a different person would come up to me, insisting that I meet this guy from church who was starting law school in the Fall. I knew it was really serious when a friend visiting from Nashville even insisted that I meet this guy. So one fateful Sunday, a friend finally introduced us after church. There was no love at first sight; no fireworks. But that meeting sparked the beginning of a friendship that evolved into a romance, engagement and marriage over the next three years.
Most people wrongly assume that my husband and I met in law school because we're both lawyers. It's understandable--we did attend the same law school and overlapped by one year. In fact, most of the lawyer couples I know connected over Torts or spent long nights "studying" Constitutional Law outlines together, but alas, we don't share the typical "Barack and Michelle Obama love story." When I tell people that we actually met at church, I find it amusing how often people are taken aback. I'm not sure why, but I have some theories: A) They assume lawyers are angry at God for law school and conclude that "Christian lawyer" is an oxymoron and our profession is full of soul-less, religion-averse, God-haters; or B) They think that God fits so snugly under the notches of the Bible Belt that He ceases to exist North of Maryland. And if so, then surely Massachusetts is at the cusp of eternal damnation.
Moving to Boston after our first year of marriage entailed lots of searching: a job for me, a place to live, somewhere to park our car, the closest L.L. Bean for winter outfitting, etc. But searching for a church proved to be an adventure far more hilarious than we expected. First there was the church that packed us in like sardines, featured impromptu solos from the pastors in the middle of sermons, and took time to recognize "100% tithers" (I still haven't quite figured out the math on that one--how can anything less than 10% can still be called a tithe?). Then there was the so-seeker-friendly-that-we-don't-make-any-definitive-statements church, where the sermon began with "Well, I think maybe what Paul might probably be trying to say here could possibly be perhaps..." but we really enjoyed the free bagels and the Starbucks gift cards! And then the suburban churches we visited left us feeling literally and figuratively out of place at their disbelief that we drove in "all the way" from the city (a mere thirty minutes).
You see, neither of us really had to "look" for a church before. Growing up, we attended the same church that our respective parents attended, and in North Carolina I attended the same church for eight years. So we came to Boston having done very little church research, with a few half-hearted recommendations from family and friends, and a resigned "I wish I had a church I could recommend to you in Boston, but I don't," from one of our North Carolina pastors. As we began church shopping, we talked about what we were looking for--how we would know when it was time to stop browsing the aisles and settle into a particular congregation. Chief among our concerns was worshipping in a place where we felt accepted and affirmed as an interracial, married couple. And very early into our relationship, I learned that nothing to do with the demographic make-up of a church's pastoral staff or congregation.
When my husband and I were dating, I expected some less-than-ideal reactions from family members, but was completed blind sided by the comments I heard from members of my church (many of whom had no idea I was dating anyone, much less, a White guy). In one instance, a friend relayed a story about a disagreement with another church leader. To drive home his point that the other person involved was everything but a child of God, he concluded: "AND he's married to a white woman!" (Trust me, he didn't intend it as a compliment.) In another instance, while chatting with a fellow graduate student, I learned about some church leaders who, when talking to their child about dating, ended the conversation with, "You want to marry someone who looks like mommy don't you?"
After we got engaged and entered the realm of church-based, pre-marital counseling, I noticed that none of our assigned reading acknowledged that two people who don't look like each other might actually meet at church and consider spending the rest of their lives together. So I asked another classmate who was also engaged and in an interracial relationship if she knew of any books that churches or pastors used in pre-marital counseling with interracial couples. Her response: "No, because there aren't any. And I think that silence speaks volumes about how most churches really feel about interracial marriage."
Hindsight is twenty-twenty, and I realize that my shock had more to do with my overly idealistic and unrealistic view of church that was, quite frankly, unbiblical. There is no perfect church because at its core is a community of broken people. So even in a faith community that holds diversity and multi-culturalism in high regard as a core value, and boasts a congregation made up from every tribe, race, nation, and tongue, Jesus does not simply become a panacea for the racist thoughts and behavior to which we are all susceptible. It's not enough to simply be comfortable with having lots of different people in the room (but it can be a great start). In fact, if I hear a church harping on "racial reconciliation" for more than five minutes, I start to get a little nervous.
Our search for a faith community in Boston included many twists and turns, but eventually led us to settle in a Presbyterian congregation where the dominant culture is Pan-Asian. And on the one hand, I'd like to think that I could find out what our church leaders really think about racial issues by asking: "How would you react if your son or daughter married someone that doesn't look like you?" But the truth is, racism is too pervasive to have a litmus test. It doesn't matter how many flags from different nations are displayed around our sanctuary; how many worship songs and hymns we sing in other languages; how many AIDS orphanages we support; how many East Africans or Koreans we adopt; how many Historically Black Colleges and Universities we reach out to; how many hours we tutor and mentor children from the local housing project; how many care packets we prepare for the homeless; how many outreaches we hold for the Spanish-speaking community; how often our sermons reference Martin Luther King, Jr.; or how often our bulletins and announcements include imagery with different colored hands, rainbows, or kaleidoscopes. But rather, our willingness to embrace and display grace in the midst of messy lives, full of misconceptions, mistakes, misunderstandings, and missteps around race (among other things).
For some strange reason, the only two channels that work on the treadmill televisions in my gym are the Public Broadcasting Station and one with twenty-four hour infomercials. Now, I don't get to watch as much Sesame Street as I used to, so when a show that I mistook for Sesame Street came on, I considered it a treat. But then I quickly realized how much the "neighborhood" had changed since the eighties and nineties. Instead of a harmonica playing in the background to Can You Tell Me How To Get To Sesame Street, I listened to Elmo sing "la" for thirty seconds as the intro to Elmo's World. "Wow, Elmo has a solo gig?!" I said to myself. "Good for him!"
Now personally, I find some comfort in routine and predictability, so I enjoy watching the throwback episodes paying homage to "Classic Sesame Street." I'm talking about the young Savion Glover, Maria and Louis in their fix-it shop, the attack on Lionel Ritchie brought to us by the letter U, and Cab Calloway scatting with Muppets to Hi De Ho Man. But the more things change, the more they stay the same, and the more they go unexplained like Oscar the Grouch's mood swings, Elmo's atrocious grammar, Cookie Monster's sugar addiction, and the ambiguous relationship between Bert and Earnie.
But this particular morning, I watched the first episode in the trilogy Elmo's Summer Vacation, entitled Skin. "Ooooooh, Elmo's talking about skin? I thought to myself. This ought to be good and controversial!" The show actually began very innocently for about the first ten minutes, and then Elmo's (black) friend Elaine talked about what she learned in school about skin: Elmo: "Boy! Elmo loves finding out about skin! Elmo's friend Elaine learned ALL about skin in school, and she told Elmo all about it!"
Elaine: "Ms. Michaelson asked our class what we could learn by looking at our skin. So we started to investigate. We could see that everybody's skin looked different. There was dark skin, light skin, and all different shades in between. My skin was dark, and Cassie had light skin with rosy cheeks. Then we looked at our skin through a magnifying glass. It makes things look bigger. We could see all sorts of things we never noticed before. There was hair growing out of our skin, and the fronts of our arms had more hair than the back of our arms, but the palms of our hands didn't have any hair at all, but they had lots of lines. So did the tips of our fingers. Some parts of our skin were smooth like our cheeks. Some parts were real wrinkly like our knuckles and elbows. Then we ran some water on our arms to see what our skin looked like when it was wet. The water didn't soak in. It just rolled right off. We could see how our skin protects our bodies. So even though everybody's skin looked different up close, our skin wasn't really very different at all."
Now, Elaine had me all the way up until that last sentence. Thankfully I was still the only person in the gym, so I could get away with talking to myself at length out loud: "Wow...see...why is Elmo lying to these children? Because the reality is that if Elaine's brother and Cassie's brother get into a fight at school, it's more likely that Elaine's brother would be sent home in a police car with a long-term suspension for the remainder of the school year. He would get little (if any) access to alternative education opportunities, fall behind on his work, miss his end-of-year exams, and would have to repeat the whole year. And if he has no parental/adult supervision while he's out of school, he's likely to have pre-mature contact with the criminal justice system or head down a path that could lead to dropping out of school all together. Yeah, I’d like to hear how Elaine and Cassie feel over the next six to twelve years when they are competing against each other for admission into same exclusive high schools and colleges!"
When it comes to broaching the topic of racial and ethnic identity with young children, I can understand a kinder, gentler approach, but sometimes I wonder whether that approach is really for the benefit of children or for parents who feel uncomfortable or ill-equipped. Early in our marriage I was taken aback while speaking with an interracial couple about their approach to affirming their young child's racial and ethnic identity. In essence, they felt like this wasn't a topic they needed to discuss with their child, and by not bringing it up, believed it would just work itself out someday by going along with whatever their child wanted.
But the idea of children being oblivious to race and ethnicity--even at an early age--is a tad foreign to me (no pun intended). I can actually think of few (if any) times in my childhood when I didn't know I was different, and not just from the non-black kids at school, but everybody. For my earliest years of schooling, my world was pretty homogenous in that the vast majority of my teachers and classmates were black. Even then I knew that my parents and their friends spoke this other language at home that I never heard in school and the food my mom made us for dinner didn't smell, look, or taste anything like what I ate in school. By second grade I tested into a public school system operating under a federal court ordered desegregation school busing plan. So my school bus, classmates, teachers, and world became much more racially and ethnically diverse, and thus began a first-day-of-school tradition that followed me all the way through law school: the butchered mispronunciation of my name (my teachers butchered the names of many students, but since my name fell towards the beginning of the alphabet, I was usually the first victim).
Thirty minutes later Elmo's World and my run were over, but a question still lingered in the back of my mind: "If children are so keenly aware of differences (racial or otherwise) what is the harm in telling them the truth about race in America, even at a young age?" And as critical as I was towards the "Elmo approach," I also had a feeling that if my five-year-old child were to ask me a simple question about skin colors, that going off into a ten minute monologue on why education is the civil rights issue of our time wouldn't be any more effective. I still ruminate on this issue and in doing so found the following excerpt from Stickin' To, Watchin' Over, and Gettin' With to be somewhat helpful in correcting some of my own miseducation: "Sometimes young children struggle with skin color issues at the level of color differences, not at the level of racial and social injustice or inequality. They should be allowed to explore those differences free of parental fear that their child is racially illiterate."
"Well, you know, I prefer to see black people with other black people because we need more strong, black families." -Anonymous
Me:"Are black people the only ones who talk about love in terms of race and color? Like is there 'brown love, yellow love, red love?"
My Husband:"I don't know."
Me: "Do white people talk about 'white love'?" Hubs:"No." Me:"Hm. I wonder why?" Hubs:"Because anytime you put 'white' in front of a noun, like White Love, White History Month, White Pride, White Law Students Association, or the Massachusetts Association of White Attorneys, people assume it's a white supremacist organization."
I must admit, when the topic of conversation is "black love" I feel a little left out. In its most basic form, black love is the emotional connection shared by two black people. Period. It doesn't matter if one of you is black. It doesn't matter if you are a white African. It doesn't even matter if you think your dog is black. Black love = two black people. Usually black love refers to the romantic relationships between black men and black women, but the concept embraces a "wide" range of relationships like black parents and their black children, members of an extended black family, black neighbors, black church members, and a type of mystical ethos shared among the entire Black Diaspora.
Valentine's Day fuels many conversations about black love and last year this backfired on Essence Magazine when it featured professional football player Reggie Bush on its February 2010 cover. At the time Bush was dating Kim Kardashian, a non-black woman. A number of Essence readers found Bush's selection for the cover of "the black love issue" as an affront to black women everywhere. I didn't (and still don't) understand the reaction for a number of reasons (besides the obvious). The cover said nothing about an article on black love and I wonder why reader outcry was louder about the race of his girlfriend than his Heisman Trophy fiasco. But in case you are wondering, the February 2011 cover of Essence features actress Regina Hall and she is indeed dating a black man named Theo (otherwise known by his government name, Malcom-Jamal Warner). As a woman who self-identifies as black, and fully embraces the myriad of experiences that embody my unique black experience, I find it hard to accept the idea that love is more or less worthy of celebration based solely on the skin color of the parties involved.
Among my friends and family, I have a reputation for generally treating people the same, regardless of their station in life. I am just as likely to crack jokes with a Senator as I am with a friend's two-year old. My parents find this mindset particularly unsettling because Yoruba culture has a pecking order. It values honor, respect, and status, especially with regard to age, gender, education, occupation, and especially title (my husband and I often chuckle at the sight of: "The Most Excellent Reverend, Doctor, Pastor, Engineer, Evangelist, Teacher, Bishop Chief Tyrone Olu Johnson III, PhD" listed in programs at Nigerian functions).
But as I got older I began to question some of these notions: Why should any adult I come into contact with recieve respect by virtue of being old enough to be my mom or dad? What if I know he mistreats his children or his wife? What if I feel uncomfortable because of the way he looks at me or because he hugs me a little too long? What if she calls me stupid or fat or ugly when my parents aren't around? So I concluded that the labels might make a difference, but that's not all that mattered. The labels without the substance weren't enough. It wasn't enough that the person was Yoruba, or a Doctor, or Nigerian, or African, or Christian, or Black, or a Pastor, or rich, or from my father's village, or royalty, or went to Harvard. Who are they? What is their substance? What are they really made of? And in the same way I'd hope that any love worth celebrating is because of its substance, not merely its color.
My husband's tastes in music lean toward a genre I call White Guys With Guitars or (WG)2for short. Just imagine if Kris Allen, Matt Kearney, Joshua Radin, and The Fray all got together and had a baby (I know, it's a stretch), whatever popped out would encapsulate my husband's musical inclinations. Sometimes I think it's almost subconscious. As we're driving in the car and scanning radio stations he'll stop for The Police (no pun intended) or Jason Mraz and then gets his hand slapped for touching the tuner when the rotation includes Camp Lo or Mary J. Blige. When we're out and about in Boston, he'll buy a CD from some random acoustic guitarist set up outside of Fanuiel Hall but can't bear listening to the guys drumming on empty plastic buckets and frying pans when the Celtics games let out (except during last year's playoff games when crowds gathered outside of TD Garden chanting 'F---K L.A.!' Alot of good that did...)
How would I describe my own musical tastes? Oh I'd say varied, eclectic, and somewhat cosmopolitan. And being keenly aware of my lack of objectivity, I thought I'd ask my husband while we were on our way to meet friends for dinner:
"You know how I always refer to your musical tastes as White Guys With Guitars?"
"Yeah."
"Well if you could describe my musical tastes in one phrase or one word, what would it be?" (This is the part where he was supposed to say "varied, eclectic, and cosmopolitan.")
"BLACK."
Excuse me?"
"BLACK. Black gospel, black hip-hip, black rap. All black everything."
"Wow. Okay, I wasn't expecting that answer."
"And then there's like Lauryn Hill and her whole genre..."
"Uh, I guess that's like borderline hip-hop and R&B. I mean she sings and raps so I guess it depends on the song. So then would you say that being in an interracial marriage--specifically being married to me--has broadened your musical horizons?"
"No."
Blank stare.
"I mean you've introduced me to a few artists I hadn't heard of like Robin Thicke but for the most part I still listen to the same music I've always liked."
After our conversation I started thinking about the idea of music "having race" and I took a quick inventory of my iTunes library. Now this doesn't happen often, but my husband was actually right. The only non-black artists I'd purchased over the last couple of years were Robin Thicke (of course), one Sugarland single (which I only bought after overhearing the performance on my in-laws' television while they were watching the Country Music Awards, I was probably on the computer checking my email), The Departed soundtrack, a Hillsongs CD, and compilations of Italian Jazz and Bossa Nova that I purchased for a friend's Italian-themed bridal shower.
Then I thought back two years when we had friends over for pre-Thanksgiving dinner before heading down to Maryland to spend the holiday with my family. My husband created a playlist that grated my last good nerve and consisted of three albums: The Fray: Acoustic in Nashville, The Fray by The Fray, and The Fray Live). By dessert and our first round of Imaginiff, I'd had enough of this "Fray Lovefest" and did what any reasonable woman in my position would have done: I put on my New Jack Swing Gold album. Oh yeah. I went there. All the way back to the late-1980s into the mid-1990s. And as soon as I hit Track 3 and Guy let out that first "Groove me" all of the black people in the room (all three of us) gathered around the stereo yelling, "Oh! That's my JAM," got our respective grooves on, and began reminiscing about middle and high school. Meanwhile our spouses (none of whom are black) just stared in utter confusion.
These moments reinforce the fact that we don't have to be the same to be in love. We have enough differences that if we wanted to dwell on them we could dwell all day long. Some areas of our lives continue to evolve and develop with time while other things--like New Jack Swing or George Strait or Fela Kuti or KC and the Sunshine Band--that stay with us no matter where we find ourselves on life's journey. My husband may never come to enjoy Richard Smallwood as much as I do, but it's nice to know that if I've got an extra ticket to one of his concerts, he wants to be there with me. And while I'll never be as avid of a follower of Brendan James (who actually plays the piano, not the guitar) as my husband, it's nice to know that when he drags me along--oops--I mean when I tag along, that we can always get in our special request (my apologies in advance for the poor video quality, Brendan is the smaller, fuzzy mass on the right-side of the screen):
As a child growing up in Prince George's County, Maryland, my memories of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday were those of celebration. Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday played on a continual loop over my school's intercom system before the morning announcements. My classmates and I learned songs like Lift Every Voice and Sing and basic choreography routines (i.e. clap sway left, clap sway right) in preparation for the school's MLK assembly (and our music teacher Ms. Harris encouraged some of us to help the more, let's say, "rhythmically challenged" classmates stay on beat). There were oratory and essay contests, field trips to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, and getting out of spelling word drills to watch the next segment of Eyes on the Prize.
As a college student and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I learned what it meant to observe the holiday through celebration and service. So we still sang, danced, wrote essays and gave speeches. But we also gave out scholarships to public school students, picked up trash on neglected highways, and visited lonely nursing home residents. And every once in a while a great speaker or two like Cornel West or Nikki Giovanni would come through to share their words of wisdom.
This year my MLK holiday weekend began at the Museum of Science's new exhibit called Race: Are We So Different?Honestly, I thought that in some ways, the answer was "yes" but it was clear from the exhibit that my answer was supposed to be "no." My husband and I visited the museum with friends who are also a married, interracial couple, so I found it comically ironic that we had to drop a "yes, we're together" when the museum volunteer at the exhibit entrance failed to recognize our husbands as the other two members of our party of four. Once we got inside and looked around we thought "Oh, we'll be in and out of this place in like fifteen minutes max." An hour and a half later the four of us met up to debrief about the exhibit and our impressions. Personally, I was struck by how many of the first recorded references to race in Colonial America (and laws instituting racial segregation) were prompted by a fears of interracial marriage between whites and free blacks. At times I found the exhibit depressing, particularly the section about the history of blacks in America. And I felt the exhibit lacked a certain realistic groundedness as to how race impacts contemporary, American life. While I can appreciate how humans are more alike than different in terms of gene sequences, and how you couldn't tell the difference between races if we all had our skin ripped off, and how all human beings can trace their origins to Africa, the reality is that while God may not look on the outward appearance, humans do it all the time.
On Sunday we went to church, and since I've attended non-denominational, multi-ethnic churches for most of my life, I'm used to hearing at least an MLK shout-out at church the Sunday before the holiday. Still, I was surprised when I looked down at my church bulletin and saw the title of day's sermon, Grace and Race: Unity in Diversity. I have a short attention span so most Sunday mornings at church are a struggle for me anyway, but I made a concerted effort to listen. For the first time in my life I sit under the teaching of a Korean pastor and attend a church with a dominant/majority culture that is pan-Asian (Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, etc.). So I when the sermon began going down the path of black-white race relations I started furrowing my eyebrows (think Chloe from the first season of 24). I thought it was interesting that the sermon challenged us to look at our social networks and evaluate whether we have people in our lives who can impact us that don't look like us. And if so, we were to ask ourselves whether these people were just token friends or more like family. But as we walked home I wondered why we weren't challenged to ask ourselves how we'd react if our kids started marrying the kids of those "friends who don't look like us and are like family."
On Monday I attended the 41st Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Breakfast at the Boston Convention Center, an event I've had the opportunity to attend for the last four years. After a series of invocations, musical selections, and greetings from our esteemed head table (including Senator Scott Brown's "Can't we all just get along?!"), Princeton Professor Dr. Melissa Perry-Harris delivered the keynote address, comparing the political and social climate of 2011 to 1967 when Dr. King asked: "Where do we go from here? Chaos or Community?" At the conclusion of Dr. Harris' speech, after the standing ovation died down and we had all reclaimed our seats, the emcee took a moment to recognize the speaker's husband who was in attendance recognizing that "behind every strong woman is a strong man!" In my years of attending the breakfast this is the first time I remembered this happening and as Dr. Harris' husband stood, received his applause and sat down, I secretly hoped that any husband, regardless of his skin color, would receive the same honor and recognition.
So as an adult living in Boston, I've gained a greater sensitivity for how the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday prompts discussions around race like no other day of the year. For the first time in my life I experienced what I call "race talk overload." For eleven months, three weeks, and six days our society largely avoids substantive discussions around race and then suddenly, race is playing non-stop for twenty-four hours, just like Stevie Wonder playing all morning in my elementary school. Now I always welcome a good, thoughtful, discussion on just about anything. Heck, I was raised in a family where our love language is arguing! But I question whether our MLK race talks accomplish anything other than maintaining the status quo of elephants in a room filled with white noise: meaningless and distracting chatter about obvious problems that no one wants to discuss. And I yearn for conversations about race that aren't treated like holiday greeting cards at CVS: confined to a particular space for a particular season and then tossed out before the next holiday is even on the horizon.
