A Discussion of Race

Since Katrina and Bill Bennett I have been touching on the issues of race and the socioeconomic realities of our country. Racial and justice issues will always be things we as a society wrestle in dealing with. In no way do I think this little blog can have all the answers or even the right ideas with regard to the complicated and nuanced issues of race and economics. However, I do feel like the discussion is worth having in hopes that our collective ideas might bring about greater perspectives and insight into these issues.

Four recent events have caused me to think a lot about these issues. Katrina, Bill Bennett's comments, the recent NBA dress code ruling, and the "Millions More Movement" that was recently held in Washington D.C. Each of these events have created widely diverse opinions and reactions. In the cases where people or groups have taken an opposing view of the same situation the opinions and judgments have been strong and at times harsh. Using myself as an example, I could hardly imagine a more inflammatory statement about race and crime than what Bill Bennett said. Yet, many, many, many people didn't see his comments the way I did. They saw his comment as a statement of fact and that people who were upset were only that way because Bill wasn't being PC.

It happened to be that most of those defending Bennett were political conservatives, which (in my opinion) doesn't help the already tarnished image Republicans have on issues of race. There are obvious and not so obvious racism in both of the nations political parties. There are also champions of equality and opportunity in both of the parties as well. Republicans do seem to fail spectacularly at communicating their ideas for creating greater equality between peoples. Critics of conservatism would say they fail because their only solution is for people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and that the government has little or no role to play in that. Democrats succeed in speaking about the plight of those disenfranchised but lack any ideas (as of late) that have a balance of accountability and empowerment.

To further the discussion of race I would like to examine some conservative perspectives and ideas regarding race and the situations mentioned above. The Heritage Foundation recently sponsored a panel discussion on race that was broadcast on C*SPAN. The members of the panel are the following:

Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson - Founder and President, Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny
Joseph C. Phillips - Actor (Denise's husband on the Cosby Show) and Columnist
Linda Porter - Hurricane Katrina Survivor & Founder, Jochebed Education Project
Dr. Shelby Steele - Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution
La Shawn Barber - Blogger, www.lashawnbarber.com

I have listened to about an hour and a half of the program so far, and it has been very interesting and worth the time. I wanted to give you an opportunity to listen to this forum and perhaps reflect on the conservative perspective of race, poverty, and the role of government in peoples lives. Click here to be taken to the web page that has the MP3 available for download.

Based on what I have listened to so far I am envisioning a series of posts (probably 4) based on the four key values and ideas that the panelists seem to be emphasizing. That will probably not be adaquate in addressing all that the panel discusses, but I think it will be enough to have a good discussion here. I will probably post the first topic sometime next week.