Post-Racial Era Discussions About Race

If you are getting tired of the shrill discussions about race that were sparked by the Shirley Sherrod firing, I suggest you check out these thoughtful pieces on race and publishing written over the last three years by black women writers:

"Writers Like Me" by Martha Southgate

"Reading Too Much Into Race" by Carleen Brice

"Black Writers in a Ghetto of the Publishing Industry's Making" by Bernice L. McFadden

"Readers, Rise Up" by Tayari Jones

Last week, author Lori L. Tharps wrote a provocative piece on the networking site SheWrites where she asked for white ambassadors to help get the word out about her new book. I think Tharps intended for the piece to be a humorous and informative essay about the challenges black writers have in marketing their books, but based on the responses to the piece, I'm not sure her intentions were clear.

People have noted that Sherrod's NAACP speech was nuanced and talked about race in a way that was not simple. I think that anytime you're aiming for the truth, and not a soundbite, what you say will be nuanced. This is why writers and literature are so important, especially today amidst our fast paced media culture. Sometimes the quieter and more reflective voices have the most to say.

Needed: Creative Thinking + A Collective Time-Out

We've seen a lot of race-baiting in public discourse recently. I appreciated this article, "Everything Professor Gates & Sergeant Crowley Needed to Know, I Learned at a Montessori School" by Jehmu Greene that appeared on Huffington Post today.

Greene argues that we need more critical thinking and conflict resolution skills to effectively work through racial conflicts. She writes:

A person's ability to solve problems in the midst of a heated situation is directly related to the number of possible solutions he can think of in that moment.

I'm guilty. So true.

A List in Honor of Sotomayor's Nomination

By now we've all heard the statement made by Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, that has been criticized by some politicians and journalists.

Sotomayor said:

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Although Sotomayor's critics say that her remark raises concerns about her judicial temperament (some have even called her racist), by all accounts her record reveals that she's been a fair and impartial judge.

Sotomayor's statement was part of a written presentation titled "A Latina Judge's Voice" that Sotomayor gave in 2001 at a lecture at the UC Berkeley School of Law. The remark has caused a mini-controversy for her nomination and prompted the NYT to publish an article asking whether identity politics is stylish once again.

Since I've been alive, racial identification has been exploited for political purposes; it's the reason we enacted civil rights legislation.

But that doesn't mean cultural and racial identification are bad.

Take the arts. I'm thankful that in the arts (generally-speaking) one's identity is not considered a handicap or something to play down. After all, an artist's sexual, cultural, and racial identity is crucial to her artistic voice. Many of the best writers explore the meaning of their identity or culture. What kind of literature would we have if one's life experiences or cultural practices were left out? Would the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and its influence on poetry have ever happened?

I think that reading the literature of a specific cultural group, of say, "writers from New York with Puerto Rican roots," may be a good way to broaden one's perspective about that culture, to teach tolerance, and to combat ignorance. So, in honor of the positive effects of cultural identification, here's a list of American writers with Puerto Rican roots (please feel free to add more writers that fit the description) :

Willie Perdomo
Judith Ortiz Cofer
Martin Espada
Miguel Algarin
Sandra Maria Estevez
Piri Thomas
William Carlos Williams
Pedro Pietri
Miguel Pinero