Is There Interest in Reconciliation?

On June 14, 1997, President Clinton addressed the graduating class at the University of California, San Diego, and said, "We must begin with a candid conversation on the state of race relations today. . . . We must be honest with each other. We have talked at each other and about each other for a long time. It's high time we all began talking with each other."¹ With these words, the president invited America to a yearlong discussion about race relations. Clinton appointed a panel of experts, led by the historian John Hope Franklin, to facilitate the discussion and advise him on racial policy. The president and members of the commission traveled to Akron, Ohio, and Houston, Texas, to participate in town hall forums. On July 9, 1998, many PBS stations televised an hour-long discussion between the president and his commission, and, according to several news sources, Clinton even considered using the "Initiative on Race and Reconciliation" to apologize for slavery. Eventually, the White House rejected the idea, with press secretary Mike McCurry explaining, "[an apology] is not the place that he chooses to begin this dialogue. . . . I don't anticipate the president putting any of the focus of his energy on that subject anytime soon."²

I was reminded of Clinton's dialogue on race after reading John Hatch's essay in the Winter 2003 issue of Rhetoric & Public Affairs. Building on Mark Lawrence McPhail's work and recent trends abroad, Professor Hatch expresses the hope that reconciliation could "work sociopsychologically to move groups plagued by a historical victimizer/victim relationship toward involvement in dialogic coherence."³ Hatch admits that his proposal faces obstacles, because he advocates only for a serious dialogue and not the kind of "rhetorical sleight of hand" that plagued President Clinton's failed initiative.⁴ Hatch's purpose is to "begin opening up space for a serious scholarly discussion of reconciliation as a rhetorical response to the problem of race."⁵ In the following moments, I would like to participate in the space that Hatch creates. He deserves credit for furthering our conversation about racism and how rhetoric might facilitate a solution. I am sympathetic with much of what he says, especially his appreciation for McPhail's scholarship; nevertheless, I am not convinced that reconciliation is the best direction for future U.S. race relations.

While there are undeniable emotional and psychological dimensions to racism, a social psychological approach is not the best foundation for a theoretical model or pragmatic methodology that addresses the problem. Using the theory of interest-convergence, I contend that a more likely means toward "reconciliation" lies not in a cathartic experience that removes shame, guilt, and victimage but in a rhetoric that induces the public to consider that its interests are served by dismantling existing systems of white privilege. Even this approach is limited, because reconciliation, itself, may be incapable of solving the structural roots of racism. My perspective accepts the inevitability of what McPhail terms complicity, but it also rejects racial essentialism by understanding the goal of dialogue as the construction of interracial interests, not the recognition or discovery of a metaphysical coherence. The question is not whether rhetoric creates difference but whether that same rhetoric can construct a set of interests that acknowledges difference and then motivates us to realign differences so that one community does not enjoy eternal privilege at the expense of another.

There are good reasons to be concerned about the problems of race in the United States. In 2002, Glenn C. Loury published a study of racial disparity based on recent economic and demographic data.⁶ He concluded that society maintains a racial stigma that castigates African Americans and thereby perpetuates disparities in income, achievement, health, and legal sanction.⁷ It is possible to disagree with Loury's interpretations, but it is hard to dispute the data. The approximate median income of black and white families in America differs by almost $18,000, and that disparity has remained remarkably constant from 1980 to 1999. In 1999, the largest percentage of employed white men held managerial and professional jobs (29...