Playing the race card

A few days ago, I was sitting in a diner, having lunch with a good friend of mine. It was just a few days after Lebron James had made his decision to leave Cleveland and join the Miami Heat, and the subject of Jesse Jackson's comparing of Cavs owner Dan Gilbert's post-announcement comments as akin to treating James as a "runaway slave" came up.

My friend agreed with Jackson, citing a history in professional sports of African-Americans actually being treated as quasi-slaves to team owners. Gilbert, he claimed, was subconsciously conjuring this sentiment. I, of course, disagreed, claiming that Gilbert was, at worst, simply acting as a crybaby, a childish buffoon who could not control his emotions when faced with the fact that he had lost.

Besides that, I claimed, Jackson had once again pulled his trigger at an inopportune time. He would better serve his cause if he would make examples of the more obvious cases of racism to make examples of, instead of throwing the race card up even at the most ambiguous moments. It is better to be both right and smart, than simply to be right, I thought, and Jackson seems to have no sense of how to frame his case to the wider audience.

My friend re-butted that it was more important that Jackson, by throwing the race card at every instance of potential racism, was at least creating debate; forcing people to discuss race whereas otherwise they would simply ignore it.

As I sat and listened to him make this argument, a question popped into my head. Are we even capable of having a real discussion on race in this country? After all, we are living in an era where racism is not as easily framed as it once was. Gone are the lynchings, legal segregation, and apartheid that defined discussion sixty years ago. Today, a discussion on race is insurmountably more complex, filled with more ambiguities, subconscious thinking, and social patterns that require a far higher level of discussion than in the past. But debates on almost all matters in this country are dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. What makes us any more capable of a sincere discussion on race?

John Kass, a conservative columnist for the Chicago Tribune, recently wrote:
"With so many race cards in the air, any day now Attorney General Eric Holder might just accuse Americans of being cowards when it comes to race, right after we elect the first African-American president of the United States. Oops. My bad."

Never could it occur to Kass, or any of those who make the same argument, that electing the first African-American President might actually create more racism by en-flaming those who worry or oppose the change. But that would require actual thinking. It does not fit within our simple A-B logic and so we can't be bothered with it.
And the same criticism could be made of Jackson's comments on Gilbert. It is easy to assume that every time a white man criticizes an African-American that there is an inherent racism behind his motives, and certainly Jackson is the grand spokesman for this ideal, but that, once again, is too simple of logic.

It just might be that Gilbert was furious because a city that has fallen destitute in recent years has lost the player that gave them hope, and the organization that he owns has lost all hope of winning a title without any prior notice and in front of a nationwide audience. Perhaps race had never even entered his mind when he made his comments. It could also be that either Kass's or Jackson's argument could be right. But again, finding out would require a far higher level of discussion; a level that, sadly, I fear we are not capable of meeting.