Chicago Tribune | Exploring race: Dawn Turner Trice: Say you are a white person who's at a dinner party and a subject involving race surfaces. The topic could be about anything: from the comments made by Barack Obama's former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright to Bill Cosby's cross-country tour promoting personal responsibility and self-reliance.
So what do you do? Engage in the conversation or determine where the booze is being served and cozy up to a cocktail in another room?
A recently published Northwestern University study looks at white people who avoid racial conversations and even interracial interactions primarily because they are so afraid they will say something that's not politically correct and it will make them appear prejudiced.
That someone would avoid a situation that might make them seem racist is not surprising. What was striking about the study's findings was that the participants—taken from a pool of about 300 students—were so incredibly unnerved by these seemingly minor interactions that their responses mimicked those of people who felt anxious about weightier things, such as chronic pain.
