THE TYRANNY OF CLICHÉS: Kamala Harris Says America Still Hasn’t Had ‘An Honest Discussion About Race.’
Really? After Charlottesville, Ferguson, Baltimore’s riots, Ralph Northam, Jussie Smollett, Roseanne Barr, Kanye West’s various rants, Philando Castile, #BlackLivesMatter, the Dallas police shootings, the Charleston church shooting, the removal of the Confederate flag from South Carolina state-capitol grounds, Laquan McDonald, Eric Garner, Rachel Dolezal, former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling and arguments about subconscious bias and Starbucks’ #RaceTogether campaign and microaggressions, the regular controversies about associations with Louis Farrakhan, the arguments about Harvard’s admissions standards and Asian-Americans . . . in Harris’ eyes, this country still hasn’t had an honest discussion about race?
(Recently in Maryland, a white Democratic state legislator referred to a particular district as an N-word district. Her colleagues censured her, and like Northam, she resisted calls to resign . . . and life is going on, with local supporters insisting “That’s just not who she is.” If she were of the other party, would her fellow Democrats react the same way? Would “certain whites get a pass for racially insensitive comments, actions, or views because of their partisan affiliation” be part of this national honest discussion?)
We didn’t have an honest discussion about race in this country during the Obama presidency? The nutty birther allegations, Jeremiah Wright, Henry Louis Gates’s arrest, “the police acted stupidly,” the statement that Latinos need to “punish their enemies,”, the ubiquitous presence of Al Sharpton, the emergence of #BlackLivesMatter . . . none of those moments meet Harris’s definition of “an honest conversation about race”? (The comment is reminiscent of former attorney general Eric Holder’s declaration, one month after Obama’s inauguration, that Americans were “in things racial, we have always been, and we, I believe, continue to be, in too many ways, a nation of cowards.” The country didn’t have an honest discussion about race after Green Book, BlacKkKlansman, GetOut, Selma, Hidden Figures, The Help, Crash, The Butler, 12 Years a Slave, 42? Not after #OscarsSoWhite?
Besides, do we even need one at this point? As Jon Gabriel famously summed up the Obama era:
(Classical reference in headline.)