Race relations conversation needs better policing
Garrard McClendon noticed a police car in his rear-view mirror while driving through Valparaiso to moderate a town hall forum Monday on race relations and policing strategies.
“I got that nervous twitch,” admitted McClendon, who's black.
The police car later passed McClendon's vehicle. The white officer waved to him, he said.
“Today is a
The predominantly white audience laughed, but most of them did so nervously, not knowingly. Many of them, including me, have likely not been in a police-related traffic situation based on the color of their skin rather than their driving skills.
“I don't want to always have to steer with my hands at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock,” McClendon said on stage, pretending to steer a vehicle with his hands in the proper positions. “I should be just as relaxed as the next guy.”
Nonetheless, McClendon instinctively feels anything but relaxed in such situations, he said.
His personal anecdote aptly introduced the forum's goal — “to proactively engage citizens in discussing the issues facing the region and across the country, searching for better understanding of the challenges facing Northwest Indiana regarding police-community relations.”
Designed to foster civil conversations on race, justice and policing, the forum was part of a continuing series, sponsored by the recently formed Northwest Indiana Coalition for Civil Discourse.
“Civil discourse” too often feels like an oxymoron in this area, and in this country. McClendon acknowledged this early on, saying, “I'm feeling the tension already.”
There wasn't much tension, though. Not compared to the tension we feel in everyday situations we'd rather not talk about, at least not outside our private circles.
It could be in a 30-second elevator ride, as a white woman clutches her purse when a black man steps in. It could be a college-age black woman at a predominantly white university who feels her every move is being watched and judged.
It could be saying or hearing the N-word in public and cringing together.
In recent years, our country has had numerous encounters between “the police and the policed,” as described by Ivan Bodensteiner, professor emeritus at the VU law school, one of the panelists on stage.
You'd think those fatal incidents or shootings would have taught us a lesson by now.
“We don't learn,” Bodensteiner said. “Maybe we don't
I nodded in agreement. We
Too many of us are habitual offenders when it comes to this complex subject. We routinely offend or alienate others strictly out of habit. Most of these race-related habits are ingrained in us from birth. Some habits become intensified by high-profile incidents that trigger instinctive feelings in us.
Much of this has to do with systemic perceptions and distorted expectations regarding racial interactions, agreed the panel, including VU School of Law Dean Andrea Lyon, Porter County Sheriff David Reynolds, community activist Christina Hearne, and David Ashley, pastor at Redeemed Fellowship Church in Michigan City.
One black audience member reminded panelists that the majority of white Americans have no black friends. Our country's decades-old description of being a “melting pot” or a “salad bowl” is a myth, not the mantra we boast about, he said.
Instead of painting our self-portrait with the gray hues of empathy and understanding, we whitewash it with broad brush strokes of political correctness or passive-aggressiveness.
“We never really get to reality,” said McClendon, host of the talk show “CounterPoint” on Lakeshore Public Television. (You can watch a broadcast of the forum at 9 p.m. Friday or 11 a.m. Sunday on Lakeshore Public Television.)
“It all begins with conversations,” said Valparaiso Mayor Jon Costas, another panelist.
“Conversations that are difficult to have,” said Vanessa Allen, president and chief executive officer of the Urban League of Northwest Indiana.
I jotted into my notepad: “Are we having these conversations outside of social media rants? Or only at town hall forums that attract like-minded people?”
This forum invited guests to ask questions or offer comments for everyone to hear, and to ponder. Several guests asked questions. Several others wrote down questions but didn't ask them publicly.
One older white woman whispered to me that she was too embarrassed to ask her question. I asked to see it. She politely shook her head back and forth. This, I thought, is what we as a society are up against in fostering a conversation of race, justice and policing.
“We need to stop dancing around and coddling the issue of race,” said a middle-age black man who identified himself as a military veteran and father of 10 children. “We don't realize what's at stake.”
Audience members nodded in agreement.
We either dance delicately around the subject of “America's original sin,” as McClendon described it. Or we kick it in the teeth out of frustration and resentment. Sharing a civil discourse at a common ground is obviously easier at a college campus public forum.
Still, all of us have questions we've written in our minds. Questions we want to ask and to answer. Unfortunately, too many of them rarely come out. We repress them out of politeness, fear or apathy.
After the forum ended, I posed a few of the uncomfortable questions to my social media readers. I will share their responses on my Casual Fridays radio show with McClendon as my special guest.
Tune in at noon Friday to WLPR-FM 89.1; to ask questions or offer comments, call 219-769-9577. The show also will be aired at 7 p.m. Friday and posted online at
In this case, the answer is black and white: We can't keep this conversation going only at town hall meetings every few months.
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