Letâs Not, and Say We Did By WILLIAM KRISTOL Published: March 24, 2008; New York Times I shuddered only once while watching Barack Obamaâs speech last Tuesday. It wasnât when he posed the rhetorical questions: âWhy associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?â ... Nor was I shocked when Obama compared Reverend Wright, who was using his pulpit to propagate racial resentment, with his grandmother, who may have said privately a few things that made Obama cringe ... And I didnât shudder when Obama said he could no more disown Reverend Wright than he could disown the black community. The only part of the speech that made me shudder was this sentence: âBut race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.â As soon as I heard that, I knew what weâd have to endure. I knew that there would be a stampede of editorial boards, columnists and academics rushing not to ignore race. A national conversation about race! At long last! Of course, memories are short. In 1997 President Bill Clinton announced, with great fanfare, that he intended âto lead the American people in a great and unprecedented [if he did say so himself] conversation about race.â That conversation quickly went nowhere. And just as well. The last thing we need now is a heated national conversation about race. What we need instead are sober, results-oriented debates about economics, social mobility, education, family policy and the like â focused especially on how to help those who are struggling. Such policy debates can lead to real change â even âchange we can believe in.â âNational conversationsâ tend to be pointless and result-less. Or worse. Especially when theyâre about race. In 1969, Pat Moynihan, then serving on Richard Nixonâs White House staff, wrote Nixon a memo explaining that âthe issue of race could benefit from a period of âbenign neglect.â The subject has been too much talked about. ... We may need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades.â Moynihan, who was reacting against the wild escalation of racial rhetoric on all sides, was unfairly pilloried when the memo was leaked in 1970. But he was right then, and his argument is right now. Racial progress has in fact continued in America. A new national conversation about race isnât necessary to end what Obama calls the âracial stalemate weâve been stuck in for yearsâ â because weâre not stuck in such a stalemate. In fact, as Obama himself suggests in the same speech, younger Americans arenât stalemated. They come far closer than their grandparents and parents to routinely obeying Martin Luther Kingâs injunction to judge one another by the content of our character, not the color of our skin. Over the last several decades, weâve done pretty well in overcoming racial barriers and prejudice. Problems remain. But we wonât make progress if we now have to endure a din of race talk that will do more to divide us than to unite us, and more to confuse than to clarify. Luckily, Obama isnât really interested in getting enmeshed in a national conversation on race. He had avoided race talk before the Reverend Wright controversy erupted. And despite the speechâs catnip of a promised conversation on race tossed to eager commentators, itâs clear heâs more than willing to avoid it from now on. This is all for the best. With respect to having a national conversation on race, my recommendation is: Letâs not, and say we did. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/o...f=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin