You may have noticed or heard -- because we are repeating it ad nauseum -- that we (as in the collective NPR we) have redesigned the NPR Web site, the "new" NPR.org.

I've been checking it out, and I came across an opinion piece that I've been thinking a lot about.

It's by Harold Pollack and it ran in partnership The New Republic (NPR also runs pieces from the National Review, among others).

Pollack says that however appalled one might be about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and all that it implies, now is not the time to spend a lot of time worrying and talking about it.

He explains why.

I understand the logic. The argument is that President Obama now needs every member of his possibly fragile coalition to pass health care reform, and there are already signs that lower income less educated whites (who didn't vote for him anyway) are balking.

And although lower income people are far more likely to lack health care, some polls show that these voters are starting to be concerned that the chief beneficiaries of reform will be ... not them. But it will be ... guess who?

So, as Pollack argues, opening up race opens up the kind of race-based conflict that so often obscures the real class issues underneath the surface, and thus dooms the kind of coalition needed to overcome the entrenched special interests, which are organized very much around the status quo on health care.

This could easily be true.

And yet, when is it going to be time?


As I told a friend, if we both fell down the stairs and I hurt my back and you broke your leg. I can understand that the doctor will see you first.

But when does he or she see me? Later? Or never?

For African-Americans, I think it -- and the flurry of commentaries that have been written by just about every black intellectual I know -- feels that this fraught relationship with law enforcement has been going on for centuries.

The stereotyping, the disrespect, the lack of courtesy; no it does not begin with law enforcement but law enforcement carries the imprimatur of our government, to which we all pay taxes and which is supposed to serve us all.

And thus the question becomes, when WILL it be time to fix this problem?

"Beer-Gate" is tonight, by the way. It's when Gates and Sgt. James Crowley, of Cambrige, are scheduled to sit down and chat with the President over some beers.

We'll talk more about how it all went tomorrow ...

And there is another piece I on our new site that I liked (about a homeless man who bequeathed $4 million to NPR). I just wanted to share it.

tags:

categories: More on Race

5:21 - July 30, 2009

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