We Share This Tendency, After A Fashion

In a cozy corner of a trendy downtown restaurant on New Year’s Eve, two groups celebrated.

One group smoked cigars. The other needed no tobacco to light a fire.

The first group, made up of about 10 well-dressed thirty- to forty-somethings, reveled in a glass-enclosed private room in this pleasant establishment whose four-course, fixed-price meal cost $40.

At a table a few feet away, nine other revelers - equally stylish and every bit as comfortable - chatted their way into the new year.

Everyone in the private room was white. Everyone in the other group was black.

Having spent the evening with the second group, I can’t say who was in the glass room or what they discussed before greeting 1997. I can describe our gathering:

Two married couples, three single women and two bachelors, we were a businessman, a newspaper executive, four writers, a musician, a doctor and a lawyer, some of us friends, others complete strangers. As the words and ideas flew, our laughter became more raucous, our voices more electric and our shared good time more impossible to ignore.

What topics caused such emotion? What else?

Race and racism.

The subjects arose when we spoke of Ebonics (“The media act as if kids would be taught black English, rather than black English being used as a teacher’s tool!”); cultural history (“My father and his friends saw their friends die - how can they ever discount racism?”); the appeal of black race-baiters (“Many black leaders approach whites as supplicants - I like black folks who confront them.”); and even romance (“Because sisters outnumber them, brothers in D.C. think women should be grateful for their time. … Detroit’s black men are more appreciative.”)

Few opinions were universally accepted - especially those generated by the question: Can blacks be racist?

“That’s ridiculous - they can be and are,” said the doctor, a 39-year-old man. “Some blacks refuse to believe that good white people exist.”

“But people shouldn’t equate racism with prejudice,” countered a female feature writer. “Black folks’ prejudice doesn’t have the power structure behind it to affect white lives.”

Back and forth it went until the musician, glancing over at the laughing group behind the glass wall, wryly observed, “I bet they haven’t spent the whole evening talking about black people.”

They didn’t have to. Of course, no one forced us to talk about whites. But when you learn early on that certain members of a powerful group may judge you before you open your mouth, routinely malign your intelligence and morals, and supported your people’s physical and psychological enslavement - well, you wanna talk about it.

Again and again.

“I don’t think it’s possible for a group of black people to get together and not talk about race,” said the doctor. “Racism has been so powerful and insidious that it’s become a part of who we are. I’ve wondered: If racism were eliminated tomorrow, what would we talk about?”

I’d love to find out. In the meantime, I can’t ignore certain ironies: Most members of our well-educated group make a good living; several, through their jobs and professional contacts, have influence and even power.

And yet we seemed to share a race-rendered vulnerability, a sense that we can never relax, thanks to the turbulent straits in which many of our kinsmen remain, to our own contributions being devalued or ignored.

“White people don’t sit around talking about being white day in and day out, because they don’t have to deal with racism,” said a female writer, 32. “Those of us who are paranoid are paranoid with good reason.”

Listening to the group’s diverse opinions - and diversity among blacks is rarely acknowledged - I thought of some whites’ contempt for blacks’ “racial obsession,” and their weariness at hearing black folks “whining.”

Yet who wouldn’t prefer the irritation of hearing about racism to the hurt and outrage of experiencing it?

Talking about racism “isn’t necessarily a downer - it’s a release,” said the lawyer, 35, a few days after the gathering. “We had a wonderful time.”

So did the other group. At about 12:30 p.m., after the last glass of champagne had been consumed, the white revelers and the black ones exchanged handshakes and warm greetings of “Happy New Year!”

I went home, figuring I’d had a unique holiday - until a white friend told me about the all-white New Year’s gathering she’d attended. The main topic?

Criticizing D.C. Mayor Marion Barry for suggesting that a white city council member was racist in her response to the deficit problem of a local predominantly-black university.

“The discussion was, ‘Come on - how dare Barry say that? Why does he always pull out the race card?’ … It was overtly racial,” she recalled.

Sometimes we aren’t so different.

xxxx