White in Philly -- But We Can't Say That

I started watching a CNN “panel discussion” on Robert Huber’s article, “Being White in Philly,” but had to turn it off after the first talking head felt qualified to talk on the subject after admitting he hadn’t read the article. 

I shut it off. I didn’t get to hear what the fired-up-looking fat black lady in the middle was going to say, or the other chubby white guy after her.

I wanted to read the article first. 

Here it is.

If you haven’t read it yet, read it. It’s less about being white or being black and a lot more about being decent human beings. It’s not about what one can or can’t say, being white on the subject of race. It’s not about being race-blind, either. 

It’s about this: 

Engage, Jen is saying-—engage people, connect with them, without assuming what their lives are like, or judging them. It’s good advice. Because she’s right—the gulf is so wide that there’s much we don’t know about each other. 

Jen meets a little girl, one of many at a neighborhood swimming pool. The little girl says she’s the luckiest girl in the world, because she lives right across the street from the pool. She points out her house – a beaten-down row.

She is warning me, with this story, Huber writes. I’d told her about driving up North Broad Street and how miserable I believed living there must be. There’s a certain arrogance in my judgment, Jen is telling me. I might not know what people are truly experiencing. 

As she was leaving the pool that summer day, Jen saw three or four older girls modeling her, with their hands out, teaching the younger ones to swim. 

Engage, Jen is saying-—engage people, connect with them, without assuming what their lives are like, or judging them. It’s good advice. Because she’s right—the gulf is so wide that there’s much we don’t know about each other. 

Huber continues: 

But this is how I see it: We need to bridge the conversational divide so that there are no longer two private dialogues in Philadelphia—white people talking to other whites, and black people to blacks—but a city in which it is okay to speak openly about race. That feels like a lot to ask, a leap of faith for everyone. It also seems like the only place to go, the necessary next step. 

Meanwhile, when I drive through North Philly to visit my son, I continue to feel both profoundly sad and a blind desire to escape. 

Though I wonder: Am I allowed to say even that? 

I see the same kind of thing where I live, though not race-based. It’s religion-based, with Mormons talking to Mormons and “non-Mormons” talking to other non-Mormons, neither group really understanding, nor wanting to understand, what the other group really thinks, or is like, or whatever. We have the same between Hispanics and whites. 

So the solution is to engage. And that’s hard, for a hermit like me. 

So I went back and watched the CNN piece. And watched four people dance around what Huber wrote. Only one good point brought up: Huber should have talked with some black folks – though how do we know that he didn’t – to bring some balance to the piece.

But these talking heads showed they were empty heads. Their ideas? Chubby White Guy No. 2 wants the magazine to “go back to what city magazines do best – best brunch features.” And the fired-up black lady said this: “Give us one more Rocky movie, that will make all the middle class white people happy.” 

Engage, Jen is saying-—engage people, connect with them, without assuming what their lives are like, or judging them. It’s good advice. Because she’s right—the gulf is so wide that there’s much we don’t know about each other. 

No, they don’t get it, do they?

Most everybody seems to have missed that point as well. From the talking heads dancing around the point to Huber’s fellow writers also dancing around the point but using sham deflection topics such as balance and journalism in which they can couch their answer: No, Mr. Huber, you can’t even say just that. There’s no engagement, at least among the people who “matter” in their own eyes.