Steven Friedman
WORM’S EYE VIEW
Sometimes, the way we try to start a conversation can be guaranteed to end it. An example is the planned government attempt to start a discussion on race.
There is no issue on which we need more urgently to talk. Race continues to dominate our society and will do so for decades. Talking about it cannot make it go away, but can help us deal with it.
Race lurks behind most of our public debate. White assumptions about black incompetence, and black defensiveness in reaction, pervade political discussion and what people think, say (often in private) and do in the economy, sport and most other aspects of social life.
But much of this is now conducted in code. Because we live in a formally non-racial society but race still haunts our minds, much of it is expressed in euphemisms which everyone understands but nobody deciphers. That people feel some need to suppress prejudice may be progress. But it does not eliminate the problem, which continues to eat away at us, preventing our progressing. We cannot begin to deal with it unless we talk about it more openly.
There are those who want to sweep race under the carpet. Either it is in their interests to keep it suppressed – so that, as in much sporting discussion, racism can be passed off as “merit” – or their blindness to a past in which they were not victims leads them to spout fatuous nonsense about “putting the past behind us” or the need to “stop harping on race”.
This ignores the reality that racism’s most powerful legacy is not black poverty or mi-nority domination of the economy and the professions (although these are important). The real demon lives on in our heads: those of the former dominators who cannot come to terms with the idea that black people might be good at anything, and of the former dominated who, having been told countless times that they are inferior, have come to believe it – even when (perhaps particularly when) they aggressively assert themselves. Just as lack of self-esteem is deeply damaging for individuals, so is it for groups, whether it leads to servility or hostility to others.
That is why the sooner we begin openly to discuss our racial hang-ups, acknowledging that whining about “declining standards” or defending corruption or callousness on grounds of “historical disadvantage” are coded symptoms of our national disease, the sooner will we be able to tackle our challenges.
So the Human Rights Commision’s (HRC) wish to discuss racism in the media with journalists is, on the surface, a step forward. But the way in which the issue has been handled is simply a symptom of our malaise.
That there is racism in the media is blindingly obvious. The task is to get people to talk honestly about it so that we can find ways to end it. In this and other fields, we need a discussion which can prompt willingness to look inward and acknowledge both the problem and the need to address it.
Serving subpoenas on people is no way to initiate a serious conversation meant to confront the problem. It is merely likely to initiate a ritual in which both sides stake out positions and talk at, rather than to, each other.
Certainly, the subpoenas may be a reaction to much of the initial media response to the commission’s inquiry into racism allegations – in the main, the media took the view that the HRC investigation was an attempt to attack press freedom and that it should have nothing to do with it. By agreeing to co- operate, they would have signalled precisely that willingness to talk (whatever they may have thought of the complaint which began the inquiry) which is what we need if we are to address racism seriously.
But that does not alter the reality that subpoenas will not begin a discussion on race; they will prevent one, ensuring not an attempt to arrive at some mutual understanding, but the sort of posturing which will ensure that the disease deepens.
For both sides, the stand-off is the easy option: it allows both the HRC and the media to strengthen their sense, and that of those who support them, that they are victims of the other.
But easy options are often the most damaging, because they deepen the problem they claim to want to solve.
Since two of the important institutions in our society, the media and a commission established to protect our rights, cannot initiate a discussion on racism without perpetuating the syndrome which makes that conversation necessary, the planned government conference on racism would seem desperately necessary.
And, if it does become a real attempt to confront the problem, it will have made a major contribution. Sadly, the probabilities suggest it will not.
It is hard to see how racism could be seriously addressed by the sort of high- profile, ritualised conferences which governments are wont to arrange.
Over the past few years, conferences have been held on job creation, small business promotion, minority rights and corruption. They may have had an important political purpose: to demonstrate seriousness about an issue or to win support for the government’s positions. But jamborees are perhaps the worst possible way of launching the intense, focused and sometimes self- critical discussions which are necessary to tackle racism. At best, they might help to begin a conversation; but they should not be mistaken for the discussion itself.
If we are to confront racism, a myriad discussions need to begin in schools, workplaces, professions, between elites and between citizens, in seclusion and in open forums where people are able to speak their mind, since it is impossible to tackle a partly suppressed demon unless people speak openly.
Given the nature of conferences, it seems more likely that this one will be an occasion for position-taking and symbolic denunciation. Both have their uses – getting people to confront their prejudices is not one of them.
And perhaps the most damaging prospect is that the conference may become a platform for those who see denouncing racism as an easy way to play to their galleries and silence critics.
It will then have the opposite effect to the one needed – it will drive the racial demons in people’s heads even deeper underground, strengthening the tendency for those who still harbour racial feelings to suppress them unless they are talking only to members of their own group.
Our opportunity to talk about race has never been better, for we have a president who understands the importance of the issue and the need to confront it.
But the chance will be missed if race is used to silence people rather than to get them to talk.