The Atlantic - Latest Comments in One reason to not be honest in the race debate...

Re: One reason to not be honest in the race debate...

albatross — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:36:10 -0000

I also would urge you to keep telling the truth as best you understand it. Omitting facts or shading the truth a bit to avoid giving comfort to bad people also withholds the facts from good people, and you can't really predict which group will benefit from it the most.

Re: One reason to not be honest in the race debate...

Dan Goldman — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:46:30 -0000

I second Hilzoy. Part of what's enjoyable about reading blogs by you, Andrew, Hilzoy and others, is that I get to see some of the inner workings of how people much smarter than I, reach their conclusions.

If you're shading your conclusions because some in your audience don't quite understand where you're coming from, then you're doing a greater disservice to those of us who have read you for years (or at least since you started writing for the Voice.)

But more important than all that, the drug war isn't a racist plot? I suppose it depends on how we define "plot" huh?

Re: One reason to not be honest in the race debate...

hilzoy — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:21:06 -0000

Not really my place to give advice, but fwiw: the world is already full of people who hold back on what they think for fear of how it will look. There is no shortage of them. But there's a huge shortage of you. Why transform a shortage into a total absence in order to give us one more person all of whose complicated interesting bits have been airbrushed away?

Obviously there are points at which one should think about how other people might take things -- if you're about to say something that will be just gratuitously insulting to a large group of people, it might be worth considering why you want to say it -- but in general, I think that too much thinking about that stuff just kills you as a writer.

I'm probably just being selfish: your willingness to genuinely think through this stuff, and to explore what happens when you really try to put yourself in unfamiliar shoes, is why I read you, and I'd hate to see it vanish.

***

PS: The Summers example is instructive. When you're President of Harvard, you hold a position that really does require that you consider how your words might come off. There are limits to caution there too, but they are further in than they are for ordinary citizens.

In particular, a President of Harvard, one might think, ought to consider that (rightly or wrongly, and often wrongly), what she says can be heard as though she's a sort of ambassador from the world of the intellect; and that being the case, she should do her best to represent that world well. To my mind, the bad part about Summers' comments wasn't "oh no he has criticized women", or anything. (Trust me when I say that Harvard has a whole lot of tolerance for people with views other people disagree with.) It was "he is talking to a group of serious scholars, and he is coming up with his own views on the topic they've worked on forever, without bothering to do any of the hard work that justifying such an opinion normally involves, as witness the fact that the support he offers is stuff like: what his daughter calls her truck."

He could have really sat down, worked through this issue, and tried to make a substantive contribution. Alternately (and much more plausibly), he could have said: the work you all are doing is really important, and here's how my present job lets me see its importance. Either would have been fine. Neither is what he actually did.

(NB: speaking for myself here. I have gone out of my way not to talk about this with my relatives, and have no idea what they thought.)

In any case: unlike Summers, I don't think you have any such position. You have not taken any job that requires you to be an ambassador for anything, and therefore, while I assume you'd always constrain what you say by, oh, your own principles, you don't have to take on the additional constraints that ambassadorial positions involve.

My two cents. ;)

Re: One reason to not be honest in the race debate...

Tom West — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:38:03 -0000

I'll have to say there may be merit to your regrets. There are some truths that *will* be interpreted by human beings in such a way as to be detrimental to many.

For example, I strongly suspect that there are biological reasons why there are fewer women represented in high end science institutions (mostly due to "long tail" effects in males, etc.). However, I *also* believe that Summers was rightfully let go (indirectly) for his comments.

As someone in the public eye, he should have been aware that his comments would be used to dismiss *rightful* complaints about social barriers against women to such positions, as well as confirm the biases of every sexist high school physics teacher (or student). His speech damaged (to a limited degree) women's ability to reach those very institutions and women studying science everywhere.

It doesn't matter that wasn't what he said - he should have known how it would be interpreted.

Obviously you are not quite as high profile as Larry Summers. But as someone whose profile seems to be rapidly growing (at least in the blogosphere), it behooves you to not only examine the contents of your words, but how those words will be interpreted, and how those interpretations will affect others.

Re: One reason to not be honest in the race debate...

Laurie — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:02:50 -0000

Don't stop sharing your views. I just discovered your blog after hearing you interviewed on NPR about your book. As a white woman who has a 6 year old adopted African American son, I really appreciate hearing your perspective. I am grateful to the blogosphere for giving access to so many different voices within the Black community. Thank you for sharing your voice.

Re: One reason to not be honest in the race debate...

BellaS — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:52:54 -0000

That was one of the most interesting posts that I've read recently - anywhere. It made me think, enough that I've talked about it with a couple of people. It's rare to read that type of self-reflection. In fact, that quality is what makes your blog one of my favorites out there right now.

Re: One reason to not be honest in the race debate...

Michael O'Neill — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:21:11 -0000

Please don't fear giving us your best, even when we find ourselves incapable of giving you ours.

Re: One reason to not be honest in the race debate...

JoePo — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:51:31 -0000

I stopped reading the comments at "perhaps it's time to revisit your earlier post No More Complaints About How Black Kids Act in Public Please."

I suddenly felt that, if it hadn't already, it would devolve into a series of David Brent-isms.