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What to Learn in Obama’s ‘Teachable’ Race Moment?

by JESSE WASHINGTON, AP National Writer , July 31, 2009

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Diverse Photo

You can’t solve a problem if you don’t discuss it.

That’s why some say that despite all the accusations and emotions hindering the resolution of the Henry Louis Gates Jr. imbroglio, there is opportunity for racial progress in President Barack Obama’s “teachable moment” sitdown with Gates and Sgt. James Crowley.

“If nothing else, it's an important national symbol of a discussion that needs to be held,” said Clarence B. Jones, once a confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. and author of What Would Martin Say?

“If it’s just regarded as the president bringing two guys together to clear the air, then it’s meaningless,” said Jones. “But if it’s really intended to say in effect to the country, ‘Look, the difficulties that occurred here are really emblematic of deeper issues,’ it can work.”

Beyond the symbolic, the meeting is an opportunity for the White cop, the Black Harvard scholar and the biracial president “to say that they’re wrong when they are wrong, to learn from one another’s perspective as opposed to defending their own perspective,” said Tali Hairston, director of the John Perkins Center for

Reconciliation, Leadership Training and Community Development at Seattle Pacific University.

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Comments posted here may be reprinted in Diverse: Issues In Higher Education magazine, and may be edited for purposes of clarity and/or space.



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