Running the Race

Dr. Catherine Meeks and Company filled the Douglass Theatre last night (not a difficult task, even in Macon) to talk about race. I have mixed feelings on the race discussion. I think it needs to take place, yeah, but what good is talking? What bothers me is the social segregation we willingly do to ourselves. Talking isn't going to change that. What I'd like to see is someone out there providing logical opportunities for the different races (including Asians and Mexicans, etc.) to mix and mingle, to hang out. That'll do more to change our attitudes on races than anything.

If that sounds stupid, or if you're thinking "well, we have to get past racist attitudes just to get people to hang out", then think about this: Where are the most integrated places in Macon? Kroger, Smiley's, chain restaurants -- it's in middle class environments. Granted, get into the bars and churches then you see one side or another, but you know what, there are folks already assembling in the same spaces. What we got to do is make it more social.

That, to me, also points out that the racism is less of a big deal for regular folks, for those lower-middle and middle class people. The trouble is with the groups of people who routinely only hang out with one race or another. In other words: the really broke or the well-to-do. They are the people who are most insulated. They are those most likely to hate or act like they hate.

Either way, the Telegraph didn't treat this story right. Writer Ashley Joyner spent her first three paragraphs marveling at the size of the crowd as if a couple hundred people in a metro area of over 150,000 should be that impressive. Secondly, she wrote this: "many in attendance concluded afterward was the most candid discussion about race they had witnessed in a long while - in Macon, at least."

She's alluded, I'm sure, to how Macon just hasn't moved on, and in some ways, she's right. But in other, more accurate ways, she's blind. It isn't just Macon. It isn't just the South. It's this whole country, and in fact, the whole world. We just find prejudice in other ways. Does it make us less sophisticated because we haven't moved on to hating gays more than blacks?

But what really pisses me off is how little the whole article says and this paragraph is the heart of it not saying anything. "... the most candid discussion about race they had witnessed in a long while..." Really?

And what, pray tell, made it so candid?