Hide and Go Seek

Ezre Klein makes the point I was trying to make in Thoughts on Racism in Point 3.

In his post he says:

To me, the most powerful portion of Obama's speech was when he admitted "For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table...like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation." There's still a lot of racial anger in this country, and the way we've dealt with it, in part, has been to censure its public expression. That has had some positive impacts -- you can't wander around slurring people because of their skin color -- but it's also driven honest expressions of anger or resentment into private settings. That may be superior in the sense of helping everyone get along, but occasionally, the communities collide, as they're doing at the moment, and a lot of the shock over Wright is, I think, a simple forgetfulness that these feelings still exist. If we really were having a consistent conversation over race, I think Wright's words would be a lot less surprising.

I found the whole University of the Free State thing disturbing not just because of what happened, but also because of the reaction. If there is racism, we need to talk about it, it can't just be hidden away so that people pretend it doesn't exist.

Closing a Residence doesn't close the students who were there.