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America's dialogue on race has become a maddening monologue

Ruben Navarrette Jr. on

SAN DIEGO -- For years, people have told me to stop talking about race and ethnicity. That sort of dialogue, they warn, only divides Americans.

Little did I know the real reason they wanted me to pipe down was so I could hear them drone on about that very same topic -- on their terms.

Gaslighted by immigration and "the Squad," folks on Fox News and right-wing radio are once again obsessed with race talk. Some of the loudest voices -- Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin etc. -- are content to talk only to people who look like them. If you feel disempowered because, instead of 100% of the pie, you now have to make do with 99%, you have one heck of a support group in conservative media.

Yet, some readers still urge me to back off racial issues.

Hard pass. When the folks on the cultural right stop talking about race, I'll stop, too. Otherwise, it's unilateral disarmament. Besides, what's the point of a discussion about race in America that only involves white TV pundits, columnists and radio hosts?

Similar questions are surfacing in the presidential race, where Julian Castro has zeroed in on the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in newsrooms. The former secretary of housing and urban development believes there's a link between a U.S. media that is overwhelmingly white and the fact that the American public has such a one-dimensional view of what it means to be Latino. His presidential bid is energizing Latinos, and educating non-Latinos.

 

"It's a shame that so few of us have run for president before," Castro recently told BuzzFeed News. Calling for a "stronger pipeline" for people of color in both politics and media, he noted: "Our country is more diverse than ever, but newsrooms have not kept up with that, and the coverage suffers because of that."

We need more voices in the mix. America's dialogue on race has become a monologue. Familiar narratives have reemerged suggesting that nonwhite Americans are inferior, menacing and unpatriotic. Some whites even complain of "reverse racism" and insist that they're being targeted.

Not surprisingly, President Trump is leading the sprint to the bottom. "The 'Squad' is a very Racist group of troublemakers who are young, inexperienced, and not very smart," Trump tweeted last week.

Meanwhile, Republicans have gone from fending off accusations of racism to trying to run the discussion and dictate the terms. Some white folks are up in arms over three words: "people of color."

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