Sublime

Conversation is the communal air we breathe. All day long, we talk to our families, friends, strangers, coworkers, and sometimes pets. We communicate via text, email, online posts, and social media. We speak via keyboards and voice-to-text, sometimes with handwritten letters and, occasionally, with grunts, smiles, grimaces, and sighs.

THE PROBATIVE CONVERSATION is vastly different from the other three conversations. It takes place without us present, through the intermediaries of our thought leadership and referrers.

But talking about race rarely gets to the heart of the matter. The talk is crippled by fear, shame, hurt, anger, politeness, posturing, self-censorship, self-flagellation, and the inability of flawed human beings to rise to the subject’s huge demands. No one says what they think when the setting is a university classroom, an anti-bias training

Most important, what benefits do we expect will emerge from this dialogue, and are they worth the risks?