I agree with everything you said, except “instead of.” I would offer “alongside,” maybe? I dunno. This is when my youth kicks in and I say I need to read more (it’s also where the subtle generational difference kicks in as well, as you smartly pointed out). I have an inkling that there’s a way today not to talk about other things “instead of” race, but to integrate issues more seamlessly. As always, historical precedents exist. We’ll be having this conversation for many years!

Re: The expert class. I don’t think it’s as crazy as you think it sounds. By and large, people will be uninformed, I think. That’s not a knock on people, it’s just most don’t have the time/energy to do what we do. It’s why I think the news vs. entertainment argument is so silly. It’s not like there was some magical time when people were really informed about issues. What to do with pervasive ignorance is a quandary though.

I think the specific vulnerability of what I like to call “targeted groups” indicates the precarious position of even currently privileged groups. It seems that the only transformative politics would have to be based in centralizing the targeted group rather than making them the exceptional case. Have you ever read Agamben’s State of Exception? He argues that the exceptional actions of government (those in which they suspend the normal rules restraining them) are the pure and fundamental expression of governmental power. Not exceptional but constitutive. That’s how I feel about blackness, femininity, and queerness in America or globally. They’re not exceptional; they’re constitutive.

I don’t know how to speak to that. Even less to the 90s babies after your set. However, I am not convinced that inoffensiveness is what is called for. Rather, (and I know I’m gonna be shot for saying this)… I think I’d like something like a return to their being an expert class. It used to be that academics were political and cultural authorities, but as the academy opened up to white women and people of color (as well as to women’s, ethnic, and sexuality studies) suddenly the knowledge produced in academe was of no use.

The fact is, that sociologists, historians, and cultural critics know some things about how inequality works in our society. But that knowledge is made to seem crazy by people who usually haven’t spent a moment doing the work we have to do. So, I’m sort of a battering ram on this stuff. All the years that folks were kept *out* of the academy because we “didn’t have the background” for it… well, on race white folks have to show me that they’ve got more than their opinion and personal experience. Otherwise, they’re not qualified to speak.

I know, it sounds harsh. And it has never gone over very well with anyone I’ve been forced to say it to. But the thing is, it doesn’t say you can’t speak *because* you’re white. It says you can’t speak until you do some work to get caught up to speed. I’m not having the “why white people can’t say the N word” conversation for the 500th time since 5th grade! Sorry, my white friend, but you’re late to that party. I’ve been there/done that.

Now, how do I have so many white friends

That inability to actually have a more inclusive conversation might be because, well, race is divisive and people need to understand the stakes. A broader conversation might be politically neutering — as in, it inspires no one to social justice. I think that’s how it is most of the time and it’s where the discontent with Obama comes from, as in he soothes angst rather than inspires action. That’s a problem. However, I still think there’s something significant in a Obama-like conversation. And I’m wondering if there are ways to actually mobilize to real politics in it. I don’t know who’s doing it, and certainly there are historical guides (abolitionism, civil rights) but I’m tempted to sit back and wonder if there isn’t something about now that opens up new kinds of possibility. Because when we talk about the realities of race now, for some reason it does sound crazy to people as you say. So the logical thing is change how we talk about it. But I’m not smart enough to come up with how that actually can be done. There’ll probably be some historical catalyst that will show the way, if this is even a way to go.

(BTW, you didn’t see this post because I didn’t post it on Facebook/Twitter/anywhere when I wrote it. I just wanted to see if I actually had a clear idea and I wrote it out to see if it made any sense. But I’m still unsure about the ideas, so I didn’t want to blowhorn it!).

It’s not so much that we need a new way of talking about race, it’s that it has to be understood that to talk about race is not, on its face, crazy. It is a legitimate pursuit and, like all legitimate pursuits, complicated and multi-faceted. But one does not have to go past race, beyond it, or post-it to get to the complexity. The complexity is already in race, we’ve just been taught that talking especially about blackness is a bull-ish exercise, and that’s insane.

And, umm, Obama’s Philadelphia race speech is a monstrosity. It speaks to and soothes so many constituencies that it does not hold together at all. It was an excellent piece of politicking, and it served its purpose. But it had no actual *content* — that is to say, its aim was *affective* … the act of giving the speech, in the not-at-all-angry way that he gave it *was* the only content of the speech for most of his audience, especially white folks. I dare you, ask one if they remember any *lines* from the speech, besides the ones that got looped by Fox about his grandmother.