Thinking Outside the Box

Race relations is a complicated subject in America.

I guess it's always been that way.

Well, it's always been complicated since I've been around.

In 1966, I enrolled in first grade. That happened to be the first year that the public schools were integrated in my hometown in central Arkansas. Two of my classmates were the twin sons of the man who was running for governor as the Democratic nominee that year. He was, shall we say, outspoken in his opposition to integration, so that first day of school was busy — to say the least.

Every TV station in Little Rock had dispatched film crews to report on the candidates' sons' first day of school — but, even though I was only 6 years old at the time, I reached the conclusion fairly quickly that the cameramen really wanted to get shots of my classmates with some of the black kids. It seemed to me that the photographers spent comparatively little time shooting the candidate with his sons and focused on getting shots that showed children of different racial backgrounds.

If the schools had been desegregated the year before — or if integration happened some other year — I don't think the Little Rock TV stations would have cared about the first day of classes at an elementary school in a town of less than 10,000 people — even if it was the hometown of the gubernatorial nominee.

So, under the guise of reporting on the candidate's sons' first day of school, the TV stations were playing the race card. At that time in that place, it was the hot–button topic.

Well, in spite of what you may have thought, it's still the hot–button topic, but the pendulum has swung. These days, when newspapers have needed a boost, they have printed — and often reprinted — special editions marking the milestones in Barack Obama's ascendance — the editions following his nomination, proclaiming Obama the winner of the election, the editions first building up to and then following his inauguration, commemorative editions marking his first 100 days in office.

(And, I'll admit, even I profited — albeit very modestly — from Obama's inauguration. You see, I do some freelance writing for an online company, and each time someone clicks on an article I've written, it contributes — again, very modestly — to the amount I receive each month.

(After you've been writing for the company for awhile, you develop a reputation and, occasionally, you will be asked if you will write specific articles. Well, on the day of Obama's inauguration, I received an e–mail from this company asking me if I would write an analysis of his inaugural address. I received the e–mail about half an hour after Obama delivered the speech. I hadn't taken any notes on it. The article wouldn't even be eligible for what is called "up front payment" of a specified amount, but it would be eligible for "performance points," which is the combined tabulation of those clicks I mentioned before.

(I agreed to write the article. I did some quick research, took some quotations from the text of the speech that had been posted online, relied upon my own knowledge of history and the presidency and wrote the article in about an hour.

(I submitted the article and it was accepted by the editors within the next hour and posted online. And based on the latest statistics on my published articles, it is far and away the most popular article I have written.)

The marketing folks probably recognized the value of the Obama name and image first. It wasn't long after the election before I saw all sorts of things like commemorative plates and commemorative coins being advertised on TV. His popularity has remained high, and savvy businesspeople will ride a popular wave as long as it lasts, especially in a recession.

A lot of people — myself included — hoped, perhaps naïvely, that Obama's presidency would at least bring to an end the era in which the spotlight was focused on race. If it achieves nothing else, we thought, maybe it will accomplish that. But, instead, it seems to have intensified the spotlight.

Maybe that is a sign of the growing pains the American melting pot must endure as it strives to become a more perfect union. But if that is the case, then Richard Thompson Ford, writing in the Boston Globe, suggests a new approach is called for.

"[I]n dealing with the worst racial problems we now face," Ford writes, "the civil rights approach is no longer the right tool for the job."

The ideas that the civil rights movement promoted when I was a child have been applied. "Courts and government agencies enforce legal prohibitions against discrimination; private businesses and universities fashion their own diversity policies based on civil–rights principles. Even private individuals think about race relations in civil–rights terms: we aspire to the ideal of 'colorblindness,' and condemn the evils of discrimination and bias."

Ford writes that the problem goes beyond what legislation and policy can address. The problem stems, he says, "from racial segregation and the many disadvantages that follow from living in isolated, economically depressed, and crime–ridden neighborhoods." These are not the products, he writes, of "ongoing discrimination."

Now, Ford concedes that civil rights groups have a role to play, but it doesn't involve legal action. There is no Brown v. Board of Education to help activists gain a toehold today. But many activists behave as if it is 1966 all over again.

The rules have changed. Isn't that what Obama has been saying about everything else? That solving today's problems will require thinking outside the box?

Basically, what Ford is saying is that we will have to think outside the box to improve racial relations in a lasting, meaningful way. The election of a black president didn't resolve matters. From what I've seen, Ford makes a good case. The problems are individual, not institutional. In that sense, Obama is symbolic. In that sense, he has already earned his spot in the history books simply by becoming the first black president.

But the symbol will have little value if the president has few results to show in this area. His record in promoting the ideals of the melting pot must clearly show the depth of his commitment to uncovering creative solutions to the most entrenched problems.

And there is no more entrenched problem in America today than racial relations.

It is a vexing problem. There are no simple answers.

But it is the acceptance of that very fact that is necessary before one can think outside the box productively.

It is what must be done to end the recession. It is what must be done to put the unemployed back to work.

And it is what must be done to heal, finally, the centuries–old wound that exists between the races in America.