Perspectives: A Chat and a Tweet on Race

Perspectives: A Chat and a Tweet on Race: It has been more than a decade since Harvard law professor Lani Guinier, and, in her wake, former President Bill Clinton, called for a national conversation on race. Clinton’s initiative died after 15 months of town hall meetings, buried by media disinterest in an event about reconciliation, rather than rage.

With the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, a conversation on race began to re-emerge, albeit in a form that was more about an imagined “post-racial” state of affairs than any reality that most Americans encounter daily.

For simple reasons—the harsh facts of demographics and economics, if not for reasons of doggedly trying to better this country and ourselves—we ask that a serious conversation on race again be attempted. This time, we ask for a conversation with attention to the kind of depth and texture invited by Guinier, who grew up with a keen awareness of the need for bridge building across America’s ravine that we call race.