Have you ever had the experience of engaging in dialogue with someone about community issues and something just seems off key? We get the words right, but you can just tell that something meaningful is missing from the conversation. Too often that thing which is missing, and is so often at the core of the thing being discussed, is the explicit and productive insertion of issues of race and racial justice. Or when issues of race and racial justice are inserted, it is in a way that is completely unproductive, or in a way that doesn’t necessarily ring true. Or it ends up centering on who is or is not the racist in the room, or who is to blame for the problem we’re facing.

How do we have a better conversation on race? Is it possible to change the conversation in such a way that does not ignore the impact of race and racism, but does so in a meaningful and productive manner? Can we have conversations where any mention of race doesn’t lead to the person bringing up race issues being accused of playing the race card, or accused of being the racist themselves (or of promoting reverse racism)?

A good conversation about race should be:

• Constructive
• Productive
• Insightful
• Meaningful
• Participatory
• Purposeful

How can we have conversations that deals with the individual side of racism, while also shifting the conversation to deal head on with issues of structural racism. Where structural racism is:

• The overarching system of racial hierarchy and inequality across institutions and society.
• The cumulative and compounded effects of an array of factors that systemically privilege white people and disadvantage people of color.

How do we shift the focus from blame and shame or guilt and grievance to cause and effect or systems and solutions? But in a way that doesn’t minimize the work we as individual actors must do around what we believe and act upon related to race and racism.

We must move from…

…Who is a racist to what’s causing racial inequities

…Attitudes and intentions to actions and impacts

…Personal prejudice to institutional inequity

…Only individual change to systems change

…Reactive responses and grievances to proactive strategies and solutions

We must go from anti-racism to racial justice and from abstract notions to concrete actions that lead to viable solutions. We need to make racial justice a prominent and complimentary priority in our efforts in addressing the challenges facing our community. If it is about income inequality or unemployment or incarceration and education, we cannot ignore the power of structural racism that allows these patterns to emerge over and over again, in our community and across the country. The conversation we need to have should move us from talking about who is or is not a racist to what’s causing these stark racial inequities we see all around us, and what are our solutions? We must move from a conversation on attitudes and intentions to actions and impacts. Impacts are documentable, intentions are debatable. Racism does not require intent. We can see disparate outcomes all around us, many of which are replicated through unjust systems and replicate without any consciousness or awareness. We have got to focus on systems change and not just individual change. We must care about individual change, but it can’t be all we focus on, otherwise we’re always playing catch up as the systems continue to progress at a faster pace than individual change. And lastly we have to move to proactive strategies and solutions. In Minneapolis we are plagued with racial disparities in education, incarceration, employment, and health, all of which result from generations of discrimination and racial inequality. It’s hard for me to believe that if someone saw the patterns of racially disparate outcomes, they could say “race has nothing to do with it”. But it will take more than just seeing the patterns.

We have to make visual the patterns that perpetuate racial injustice; understand the root causes and design solutions and strategies that create equitable outcomes.

It’s about intersections. It’s not about either/or. We can’t talk about the issues we care about in isolation from the inequities and disparities all around us. And we cannot talk about race alone. It’s always “RACE AND”… explicitly but not exclusively. I would be willing to bet you that whatever issues you care about, chances are that we won’t make any progress on it if we don’t deal with racial justice. Where racial justice is the creation and proactive reinforcement of policies, practices, attitudes, and actions that produce equitable power, access, treatment, opportunities and outcomes for all.

Racial justice is not diversity (variety), it is not equality (sameness), it is equity (fairness, justice).

This is crucial, if you care about race or not, but desire to effectively deal with whatever you care about. To pretend that we are in a post-racial society or that we can move our way forward with a colorblind lens, will not get us to the place of effectively dealing with the challenges so many of us want to address.