A Conversation About Conversations

Many moons ago when I toiled for the fourth estate, I suggested to any editor who would listen that we start a weekly column called “Race Exchange.” It would be written by a black writer and a white writer and it would be a clearing house for racial nonsense, myths, lies, and half-truths. Readers could write in with questions, observations and stories of the system actually working. Importantly, it would be written with a sense of humor. I was met with polite indifference until one day, one of the freelance writers told me why it wouldn’t work. “We can’t win,” he said. Who’s we, I asked. The answer was white people and the newspaper.

I don’t work for a newspaper anymore, so I’ll do what I damn well please, and I please to start the conversation about race, at least in Cartoonland. And you know what? I don’t care who wins. It’s not a contest. Racial bullshit is one of those things I’m just sick of hearing about. We’ve talked around the racial divide long enough. Let’s do something about it. Let’s end this crap now. Let’s be open and honest about it and see what happens, because the nonsense that has happened so far is getting us nowhere. The Bible says the truth shall set us free. I like the sound of that. Let’s be free.