Editor's Note

Editor's Note

In volume 6, number 4 (Winter 2003) of Rhetoric & Public Affairs, John B. Hatch published a provocative essay in the forum section titled "Reconciliation: Building a Bridge from Complicity to Coherence in the Rhetoric of Race Relations." I asked three leading scholars on the rhetoric of reconciliation to respond to Hatch's essay. In volume 7, number 3 (Fall 2004), Kirt H. Wilson, Erik Doxtader, and Mark Lawrence McPhail did just that. In the essay that follows, Hatch replies to his respondents and in so doing not only continues the conversation, but adds depth and resonance to it. Considered as a set, these five essays, along with the earlier work of each of these scholars, compels us to think, theorize, critique, and act—and that's exactly what first-line scholarship is supposed to do.