Racial baggage and unfinished business

In this Washington Post editorial, Eugene Robinson takes Bill Bennett to task for his statements about race, crime, and abortion. If you want to know what I think about Bennett and what he said, read this post and this post, or just scroll down.

Instead, I want to talk a little about what Eugene Robinson says, when he writes:

"Shouldn't we conclude that...[Bennett] associates 'black' with 'criminal'?"

and

"I have a thought experiment of my own: If we put our racial baggage on the table and talk about it, we'll begin to take care of a lot of unfinished business."

I have heard this idea a lot - that America's race relations have "unfinished business," and that the solution is to have a "dialogue" about it. Clinton was one main supporter of this idea. But it occurs to me:
If white people really participate in a frank and honest discussion about race, they will speak what's undoubtedly on many of their minds - that they are afraid of black men and associate black men with violence and crime. Robinson was right about Bennett - but if he thinks that Bennett's view is a minority one among whites, he's wrong. Something tells me that having a lot of white people say "we think black men are more likely to be violent than whites" would not be conducive to good race relations...not exactly the kind of baggage-expunging dialogue that Clinton envisioned.

But the (scientifically proven) truth is, a significant percentage of white people are afraid of black men. Why? Racist stereotypes definitely have something to do with it, but so does the fact that the black murder rate is 7 times higher than the white murder rate (although the gap is narrowing). Violence is a deep-rooted and widespread problem in many black communities, and many white people are therefore afraid of black men, and this is just a fact.

And this fear that white people have of black men hurts black people economically. It stops white people from shopping in black areas, having black friends and business partners, and marrying black women. It provides psychological ammunition to the real racists in this country, who relish any opportunity to divide whites from blacks.

So if people really are ready to hear about whites' fear of black men in a national "race dialogue," then let's start that dialogue right away. But if it doesn't face this fact, it will be empty and hollow.