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In an effort to deepen the discussion on race, the local League of Women Voters invited Chicago Tribune columnist Dawn Turner Trice to keynote their 85th anniversary gala Feb. 29 in Elmwood Park. The standing-room-only crowd confirmed it was their most attended of galas in recent years. Every incumbent and would-be politician in area villages was there. Three were even on a panel. Ironically, none of the three officials from Oak Park, Forest Park or River Forest even mentioned race in their report of how things were going in their respective places. Skeptics might ask, “Why should they? We’re in a post-racial era.”
Before her formal address, I sat down with my colleague and discussed a variety of issues. Dawn grew up in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, as did my wife. Dawn’s first novel, Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven, describes the life of a black girl growing up in this Chicago community of color, which many liken to Harlem. At least they did before the so-called “post-racial era.”
Dawn said she wanted to keynote this event because it was at the tail end of Black History Month. She wanted to look beneath the surface of conversations on race that were going on in our villages. I told her that, earlier in the day, I had the same discussion with white, Latino and black students in Mark Vance’s African-American history class at Oak Park-River Forest High School. Despite some of the lovely language we hear about “diversity,” according to scores of interviews I did in preparation for a book, many blacks, biracials and Latinos feel left out of power-sharing. That includes being elected to local public office, letting of contracts, use of investment bankers and insurance brokers in development deals, hiring and promotion of people of color and inviting students of color into honors classes. I should mention that both of my sophomore twins are in honors classes, but they are the exception, not the rule, in this post-racial era – proclaimed by so-called “color-blind” pundits who want to declare Barack Obama’s presidential victory the end of civil rights and the beginning of an era where race no longer matters. Dawn and I mused about this notion.
She and I had different opinions about how U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder termed some American whites “cowards” for not confronting their fears on race.
“I decry the language, not the message,” Dawn said.
When I probed why, she talked about “fear, shame and isolation of some whites.”
When I asked, “Could not that fear and how it is acted out within the country’s dominant ideology of white male privilege be cowardly?” she smiled.
Dawn told the crowd that, like many reporters of color (yours truly included) she spent much of her career not writing about race “because it could be viewed as clichéd.” She changed last January when “Barack Obama won the Iowa primary.” In her columns and blogs since, she’s challenged Americans of all stripes to “shed those superficial layers” and discuss race candidly and honestly “in ways in which we do not blame or shame, using language like ‘some’ and not ‘all.'”
The League of Women Voters should be applauded for inviting such a dynamic African-American author-journalist to chat in an open forum on issues some just whisper about. Hope it helps.
Stan West, an Oak Parker for 16 years, is a former foreign correspondent for Pacific News Service. He is an author, educator, filmmaker and human rights activist. But his favorite job, he says, is being a parent.