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Race: 'It's a Human Problem'

washingtonpost.com: Welcome, Mr. Coleman, to washingtonpost.com. We're pleased to have you here today.

Jonathan Coleman: Thank you for having me.

washingtonpost.com: You go to a great deal of effort to distinguish between "race" and "class" in your book. How much of an issue is the confusion of these two terms, and why is it so problematic?

Jonathan Coleman: I think it's a fairly significant issue because people, both whites and blacks, often wrongly see things in terms of race when it's not, often ( in the case of blacks, primarily) holding on to race in ways that are not helpful, ways that prevent them from moving forward. All of us need to embrace the "gray areas," to take each aspect of the issue as it presents itself, take each person as he presents himself.

Reston, Va.: You've written about many disparate topics (although human nature is at the crux of them). Why race? And why did you choose to focus on Milwaukee?

Jonathan Coleman: I wanted to explore why this has continued to be such a vexing problem for all of us, and why so many whites are in denial that there is even a dilemma at all. I don't want to be sitting around 50 years from now, still wondering why a divide still exists between us. It's a human problem, and it ties in to my enduring interest in human behavior. I chose Milwaukee for a variety of reasons: the revival of the Black Panther Party by Alderman Michael McGee and his casting a threat of urban guerrilla warfare over the city if certain demands weren't met; the fact that it is one of the most segregated areas of the country; the shift in the economy from manufacturing to service, resulting in the loss of many jobs, jobs that countless numbers of blacks had migrated North for and supported families on; the implementation of the Afrocentric curriculum into some of the schools; a sense that it was a representative place, a place that could serve as a window onto America.

washingtonpost.com: A questioner in suburban Virginia asked me to pose this question: Do you think Clinton's race initiatives will be able to address problems throughout the nation? In any one region?

Jonathan Coleman: The key to the president's race initiative will be what he does once Dr. Franklin turns in his report next June. Will the president expend the considerable political capital he has to address the problems? Or will the report wind up on a shelf somewhere, collecting dust? The president will need to risk something--the same sort of risk many of us need to take in being willing to address each other more honestly about this subject.

LaPlata, Md.: Have you kept up with Dr. Carsey's life since he left Charles County? Do you talk with him?

washingtonpost.com: Readers in the Washington area are particularly interested in your book "Exit the Rainmaker," and several questions have been posed, this one being typical. Any updates on the story there?

Jonathan Coleman: Jay Carsey is currently living in Jacksonville, Florida, and has been there since early 1993. He follows the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Redskins (he still regrets giving up his season tickets), reads the New York Times avidly and wants to write a book about community colleges.

washingtonpost.com: This weekend in Washington several hundred thousand men participated in the "Promise Keepers" rally, a Christian men's gathering with racial healing as one of its tenets. What do you think of the efforts of the Promise Keepers on this front?

Jonathan Coleman: The Promise Keepers make me nervous, but then again I have always been made nervous by anything that seems too heavily--zealously--religious. As for the racial tenet, I actually am pleased by that--mainly because I feel that black and white churches could do a better job of working together in order to confront the issue of race.

Bethesda, Md.: Mr. Coleman,

You say in your book that "laws have only taken us so far." I've heard people argue that affirmative action was great but that its time has come. What are your thoughts about legal measures that can be taken in the future with regard to racism? Is it feasible to consider legal action, or should we now focus more on social alternatives for dealing with institutional racism?

Jonathan Coleman: I think affirmative action continues to be a necessary measure because the fact is white America, white males in particular, have not yielded all that much. A survey in 1995 showed that only 7 percent of whites could honestly say that they had adversely affected by affirmative action, but nearly 80 percent said they were opposed to it. The fact that Berkeley's law school opened its doors last month with I believe no entering black students is something none of us should feel comfortable with.

Though it's impossible for us to legislate one's thoughts and feelings, we still need things like affirmative action in place because without measures like it, people in charge would not have, sadly, enough impetus to do, as cliched as it sounds, the right thing. I have found in my years of working on race that people are constantly calculating. Calculating what is good for them and their family balanced by what role, if any, they have in contributing to the common good. Unfortunately, those two things are not as balanced as they should be and need to be.

washingtonpost.com: You have managed to paint both an intimate and a non-intrusive picture of the lives and actions of many individuals in Milwaukee. How much do you see that you decide not to publish because it could be too intimate? How fine a line do you walk?

Jonathan Coleman: Anything that I left out, I left out because it didn't advance the story that I was trying to tell. In writing non-fiction about people who are living, you are always walking a fine line, carrying a burden to be fair that, in my opinion, should always be there. That's not to say that you shouldn't write negative things about people, but only if your reporting leads you to that. This, obviously, is a sensitive subject to write about but writing honestly about it, with the help of my "collaborators," is one of the ways to help move things forward.

McLean, Va.: The Post recently reported on a confrontation between a black dean and a white police officer at the southern university where you teach -- the kind of incident one typically associates with the South. Is the South's reputation on race relations overstated in ways that it distracts from real racial problems in other parts of the country, like Milwaukee?

Jonathan Coleman: The short answer is yes. One of the reasons that I chose Milwaukee to write about was knowing, as everyone does or should, that Martin Luther King had made zero progress when he went to Chicago in the '60s. And because the Kerner Commission report had come about as a result of the 1967 riots in a number of northern cities.

washingtonpost.com: A correspondent from the Dominican Republic points out that "in the States, one drop of African blood makes you black" and that many people who are ethnically a very small percentage African still identify as black or African-American. Do you have any thoughts on why this peculiar condition exists?

Jonathan Coleman: It didn't use to be one-drop, but as white America often does, we kept changing the rules. That's partly why I say in the book that Catch-22 still applies to the dilemma of race: blacks can do anything they want to do in America -- just as long as they check with whites first.

Herndon, Va.: What do you think will be the final outcome of your book after a decade? Do you intend to supplement your line of thought through more books?

Jonathan Coleman: I wish I knew. Every writer secretly hopes that what he or she has written will endure. I do think the book's contribution is that you actually hear from people whose lives are affected by race on a daily basis -- and from people who are in denial about this. I honestly don't know what my next project is. I do know that this became an even bigger challenge than I initially expected -- and I knew it was a lot to take on even then.

Rockville, Md.: Mr. Coleman, I'm intrigued by the title of your first book, "At Mother's Request." What was that book about?

Jonathan Coleman: This was the story of a woman named Frances Schreuder who persuaded her son to kill her father -- the boy's grandfather -- out in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was later made into a mini-series starring Stefanie Powers.

Washington, D.C.: You say the president will have to risk something to improve race relations. What? People who know Clinton say he truly wants to make a difference in this realm. And he is a second-termer, with the freedom that goes along with that. So what precisely should he do?

Jonathan Coleman: As a character in my book named Carvis Braxton says, "Watch their hips, not their lips."

Alexandria, Va.: In what ways do Blacks Americans use race to their advantage as you mentioned earlier in this interview?

Jonathan Coleman: Blacks essentially play the race card, when necessary as a counter to white privilege.

washingtonpost.com: Mr. Coleman, many thanks for joining us today for such an open discussion about your work and about race relations in America today.

Jonathan Coleman: This was my first experience in responding online and despite being a complete novice and somewhat skeptical about the Internet I've enjoyed it.

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