When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 5 by Nicholas Kristof

[elleng]

WE Americans are a nation divided.

We feud about the fires in Ferguson, Mo., and we can agree only that racial divisions remain raw. So let’s borrow a page from South Africa and impanel a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to examine race in America.

The model should be the 9/11 commission or the Warren Commission on President Kennedy’s assassination, and it should hold televised hearings and issue a report to help us understand ourselves. Perhaps it could be led by the likes of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and Oprah Winfrey.

We as a nation need to grapple with race because the evidence is overwhelming that racial bias remains deeply embedded in American life. Two economists, Joseph Price and Justin Wolfers, found that white N.B.A. referees disproportionally call fouls on black players, while black refs call more fouls on white players. “These biases are sufficiently large that they affect the outcome of an appreciable number of games,” Price and Wolfers wrote.

If such racial bias exists among professional referees monitored by huge television audiences, imagine what unfolds when an employer privately weighs whom to hire, or a principal decides whether to expel a disruptive student, or a policeman considers whether to pull over a driver.

This “When Whites Just Don’t Get It” series is a call for soul-searching. It’s very easy for whites to miss problems that aren’t our own; that’s a function not of being white but of being human. Three-quarters of whites have only white friends, according to one study, so we are often clueless.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-when-whites-just-dont-get-it-part-5.html?&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0

[appalachiablue]

1. A Commission is a good idea, and long overdue. Dunno about W on it though. There should be

many black leaders involved like Ben Jealous, Jesse Jackson, Congresswoman Lee, Duvall Patrick, Cornell West, historians, others-

[Doctor_J]

2. yes if they really need a republican involved, someone like the late Jack Kemp

would have been perfect. Having an idiot like smirk sitting there on tv sweating, fidgeting, smirking, checking his watch, and flicking bits of paper at the others would be a disaster.

[appalachiablue]

3. Yes like Kemp. In a Bethesda, Md. bookstore once he was in front of me at the counter,

trying to talk on the phone that a very young clerk guy handed him. Seems he was having a problem with cc authorization. A guy behind me started hassling him about smthg. to further embarrass him, but he struggled on. I thought this awkward, went looking for a manager to ask if there was someplace more 'private'. Not a good situation for anybody.

No way W on a Commission for sure! Maybe Michael Steele (not Ben Carson or Herman Cain please), can't think of any more moderate Repubs. involved with civil rights. Former Sen. Jim Webb of Va. gave a law school conference I attended 2007 on law enforcement & criminal justice. Brought up how many minorities, blacks were incarcerated--first time I saw that addressed.