Yackety-yak about race.

• Author: Reed, Adolph, Jr.
• Position: Column

So what the heck is a "national conversation on race," anyway? Like so much in what passes for public discussion in America these days, the notion soothes and reassures, conveying a sense of gravitas, while at the same time having no clear, practical meaning whatsoever.

I remember hearing calls for this conversation a few years ago, first from former University of Pennsylvania President Sheldon Hackney, then from Lani Guinier and performance artist Anna Deveare Smith. At the time, it seemed to be just a well-intentioned soundbite, a way to express in newschat a concern with racial injustice and anger. As a mass-media metaphor, it seemed harmless enough: a way to evoke a national commitment to honesty and democracy. I couldn't imagine how this call could possibly translate into anything concrete, though. Who would participate in this conversation? Where would it be held? What would the ground rules be? And to what end?

I certainly didn't suspect that the notion would go anywhere; I presumed that it would have the shelf life of slogans from political ads. You know, like "Where's the beef?" or "It takes a village . . ." Well, I didn't take into account the significance of a New South, psychobabbling baby boomer whose political opportunism comes with cybertechie, New Age flourishes. As it turns out, this national-conversation idea is just Bill Clinton's cup of herbal tea.

Now that Clinton has glommed onto the national conversation, it won't just dissipate through the airwaves over time. He has decided to keep this strange idea alive by formalizing it into a Presidential race-relations advisory board. It just goes to show that Bipartisan Bill has the soul of a talk-show host. But the "conversation" also highlights the profound shift over the last generation in American liberals' ways of talking about racial inequality.

It's impossible, for instance, to imagine Lyndon Johnson using the Presidential bully pulpit to call for a national conversation on race in 1964 or 1965. For all his limitations--the Vietnam War chief among them--Johnson understood that the point in pursuing racial justice is not to stimulate conversation. When people like Everett Dirksen protested that the struggle for black civil rights should rely on efforts to change whites' individual attitudes rather than on changing laws. Johnson made it clear that he was less interested in changing people's hearts than their public behavior.

Johnson understood that assertive government...