Bruce A. Jacobs - Race Manners: Navigating the Minefield Between Black and White Americans

An enlightening and balanced view of racial conflict. Jacobs deftly defuses explosive scenarios by offering alternative interpretations and by dispensing sensitive advice to both sides. A primer for understanding another persons point of view on the issues of race, Race Manners is a must read for those who wish to clarify racial dilemmas.

Norine Dresser, Los Angeles Times columnist

Race Manners advances racial understanding. It provides the clearest road map for what each of us can do to lower suspicion by examining how our own preconceptions lead to actions which block meaningful dialogue . A call to extraordinary action.

Raleigh News & Observer

With a journalists eye and a poets ear, Jacobs acknowledges and examines the complexities behind all types of racially charged encounters. He insightfully points out rational and irrational behaviors, suggests reasons for them, and makes common-sense suggestions to ease the reader out of many racial quagmires . A rare exception, a book that unflinchingly looks at even the most mundane aspects of racism and offers practical advice to counter its insidious effects.

Baltimore City Paper

Jacobss book has shown up right on time. Race Manners is a guided tour through the perspectives that have become arguments that have come to compete for our passions in the discussion of race relations in this country . He boldly excavates racial dilemmas from the long record of socioeconomic inequality, the broad concept of personal respect, and the delicate brushstrokes of cross-cultural etiquette.

OC Weekly

A guidebook for Americans on how to think constructively about race Eloquent Wise.

Arizona Republic

Required reading Race Manners could generate the kinds of questions that could change American history.

Springfield Republican

The best book I have read on American race relations.

Bob Koch, WXXI-FM, Rochester

An impressive contribution that exposes the underlying silliness as well as noxiousness of American racial attitudes.

Kirkus Reviews

A frank, intelligent guide intended for both whites and blacks Jacobs challenges preconceptions and entrenched myths.

Publishers Weekly

Since first discovering Race Manners, I have recommended it to clients all over the nation. The feedback was universally positive and came from the highest levels of diversity leadership.

Sondra Thiederman,
consultant and author of Making Diversity Work

Arcade Publishing
New York

Copyright 1999, 2006, 2011 by Bruce A. Jacobs

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jacobs, Bruce A.

Race manners : navigating the minefield between black and white Americans / Bruce A. Jacobs.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-61145-031-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. United States Race relations. 2. African Americans Life skills guides. 3. Whites United States Life skills guides. I. Title.

E185.615.J297 2011

305.800973 dc22

2011001759

Printed in the United States of America

For my mother and father,
who gave me this life

To expand the universe
one pushes out
the plate glass windows.

Stephen Jonas, 1961

If you see yourself in others
then who can you harm?

Buddha

OUT IN THE OPEN

MATTERS OF OPINION

IDENTITY

JUST BETWEEN US

hut up!

Yeah, Im talking to you, you ignorant slime. You traitor. With ideas like yours, you dont even deserve to be an American. You people dont have a clue. Why dont you just go sign up with the enemy? Yeah. You scum-sucking rodent. You dumb-as-mud specimen. Why dont you just SHUT UP!

Welcome to the new American conversation. How are you liking it so far?

If youre not with us, youre against us. If you dont get your way, youre a victim of persecution. If you challenge official wisdom, youre told to watch what you say. And if you dare to call in and challenge the choreographed tirades of any of the barking attack hosts who now dominate much of radio and TV opinion programming, youre set up as fodder for ridicule by an audience drunk on derision and scorn.

Call it the profit-driven trivialization of news and discourse. Our nation is engulfed in it as never before. And in spite of the sheer volume of our outpourings of verbosity, our actual understanding of one another as peoples of different colors, orientations, and beliefs who share a nation and a planet is poorer than ever.

How did we get to this? And how can we get out of it?

I suggest that what we are now caught up in, in all of its small-minded fury, is the personalizing of political and cultural difference. We have cheapened our measure of public discourse to the point where our disagreements and conflicts register more as mere attacks on one another than as substantial challenges to one anothers ideas and actions.

There is a method to the madness. For the centralized corporate news operations that now dominate the industry, it is more profitable to have mediocre reporters covering car crashes and passively repeating accusations, and talk show guests shouting at one another on cardboard sets in the studio, than it is to send good reporters out to dig up important stories and to have well-informed guests in the studio engaging in respectful debate. So, for the sake of profit and cheap dramatic impact, news operations have dialed back the pursuit of actual journalism. Instead, the people who read the news to us and who hold forth on talk shows have heightened the personal, entertaining aspect of politics. Reporters tend to highlight personal scandal, matters of campaign style, charisma, who got in the best licks in a debate a sort of sports-coverage form of political reporting. And for the pundits, the coveted coin of todays realm is anger: shouting, interrupting, mocking, sneering. Its all about the show.

Meanwhile, the ideas and principles we are supposed to be fighting about our actual reasons for caring in the first place are sucked out of the conversation. What is left is rude, crude, shallow attacking and counterattacking. Most of us claim to dislike it. But we watch and listen to it anyway.