Balance

Teeter Totters and where The Civil Conversation Project stands...er...sits.

A long time ago in a land far, far away, it was The Civil Conversation Project’s mission to provide a balanced view on what America’s Thing With Race looks like.

We conceived of the Civil Conversations Project in April 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and in the midst of worldwide protests that were trying to focus attention on America’s Thing With Race. We launched in November 2020 at the tail end of the Trump presidency. By then the angst over the murder of Mr. Floyd had subsided considerably and two months later the reign one of the two most outwardly racist presidents the country has ever endured was over. (Woodrow Wilson was extremely racist even by the Jim Crow/Birth of a Nation standards of his day 1913- 1921)

Politics is a lot like teeter-tottering. You sit on one side. Your playmate – or rival – sits on the other. Things ebb and flow. Sometimes you are up in the air with your feet dangling. Other times in the cycle you are at your low point. At all times you choose your position so that things balance out. But if your opponent moves further out, or gets bigger, in order to maintain the balance, you have to move further out as well.

America’s Thing With Race sat on its side of the teeter totter, and The Civil Conversations Project plopped ourselves down in an appropriate spot on the other side to balance things out. We stayed there and pretty much stayed out of politics. Our believe was then and remains now that if you want to change people’s behavior, you need to change the way people talk to each other. You’ve heard me say that race is complex. I compare it to the complexity of disarming a live nuclear warhead with no knowledge and with no instruction manual. It’s going to be a booger to get through all that without getting hurt.

Our American education system barely touches America’s false narrative about who we are or our racial history. Depending on the history professor, or which survey that you read, somewhere between 40% and 90% of American adults, students, and teachers do not know the primary cause of the Civil War. Early on, before the birth of The Civil Conversations Project, even one of our founders did not believe that slavery had been a major reason for America’s bloodiest war. “Maybe it was the fourth reason.”

It was the only reason.

Our school textbooks barely touch on it and some, in both Texas and Florida, refer to enslaved humans as immigrant workers. Ron DeSantis to this day feels like enslaved humans had the benefit of learning a trade that they could use when they were free. Evidently he did not know that in America - as opposed to slavery in the rest of the world - slaves were never set free. He didn’t know that any child born to an enslaved woman inherited her condition for his or her life. Evidently, he didn’t know that although slavery has been practiced over the entire globe, that America was the only country that ever justified it based on the superiority of one race over another. The only country where it was a lifelong condition. The only country where your children inherited your condition.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy held sway over all of the history books in the southern states all the way into the 60’s and kicked out any that did not support their narratives of happy slaves and loving masters.

A well loved enslaved human.

I spoke about this phenomenon to my friend Dwight Pitcaithley, Chief Historian for the National Park Service – the keeper of America’s history - and one of this country’s leading historians of the Civil War era. He chuckled and said, “Ahhh…the old ABS syndrome.” Anything But Slavery. I guess that in truth, I can’t really blame Ron. He probably learned what he had been taught, just as my cofounder had, and didn’t learn what he had not been taught.

All of us have been privy to or even participated in a passionate, angry, uninformed, and ignorant conversation about race in America. Myself included. So The Civil Conversations Project had as a mission to end America’s thing with race and our tool was to make information available so that readers could do their homework and go forward with informed, rather than merely passionate conversations.

Balance. We maintained our position on the teeter totter, our opponent maintained theirs. Then November 5^th, 2024 happened and on January 20^th, 2025 America once again installed one of the two most racist men as president the country had ever seen. But 2024 was different than 2016. In 2016, per the Southern Poverty Law Center, America was host to 917 White Supremacist groups. In 2024 that number had grown to 1,371

Trump’s first time around, some voters looked down, shuffled their feet, looked around to see who may have been watching, pulled the lever and claimed not to know Trump was a racist. By 2024 nobody in the entire world with an IQ above 20 could claim not to know.

In his first 100 days in office Trump issued 143 executive orders. It’s hard to pin down how many of those targeted brown people not only in this country but around the world, because there are a mix of not only DEI executive orders, but orders shuttering agencies that served poor people. A lot of poor people in America and around the world are Black or Brown.

With the swirl of a black Sharpie marker Trump issued an executive order on his first day back in the White House, cracking down on what he calls “illegal and radical” diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

With the anti-DEI campaign that began in his first term now topping the White House’s economic and cultural agenda, Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened investigations and prosecutions. The Federal Communications Commission opened probes into Comcast’s and Disney’s DEI programs.

Within days of taking office Trump ordered all 11 of the environmental justice offices of the EPA shuttered.

“I ended all of the lawless, so-called diversity, equity and inclusion bullshit all across the entire federal government and the private sector.”

He sent a letter to the French government instructing them that they had to abide by his new DEI policies. The French government laughed.

He opened our borders to White South Afrikaners and closed them to Black Haitians - people who are largely in poverty from American policies, support of France’s colonialism, and of course…American enslavement of humans, and citizens of all Muslim countries.

Within days of the inauguration, the administration abruptly fired General Charles Brown from his position as Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff while Pete Hegseth, the White, least qualified ever Secretary of Defense, who is unable to conduct a secure meeting, ridiculed the general – IN PUBLIC - for being hired not for his qualifications, but as a DEI hire. “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but will always doubt.”

Recently I have received some feedback – not a lot, but some – that I have moved considerably to the left…that I am taking on Trump…the Republican party. That I hate Republicans. That’s not true. I hate anyone who is trying to tear apart our democracy. I hate racist. The MAGA wing of the Republican party has their fair share. As does the Democratic Party. After all… this is America. America is a melting pot. Race and racism are baked into our foundation.

Our enemy has always been – and always will be – racism. But the landscape has changed. Our opponent has changed – grown much larger and heavier. Moved back – way back – and the teeter totter has become way out of balance. To keep it in balance, to do our job, to stay true to our mission, to make the difference and remain true to our thousands of readers and hundreds of supporters we had to change our position on the teeter totter, but not our mission or our tools. We remain an on-ramp for people who want to join the conversation on America’s Thing With Race. We remain a well of knowledge for people to go to who want to do their homework in order to engage in an informed rather than a merely emotional and pointless conversation.

We’re the same people. I have the same philosophy. I remain committed to a common ground. I remain committed to a country with both a Democratic Party and a Republican Party and the democracy that we could not have without both. I remain as opposed to the MAGA wing as I always have been and as much as I was to the Tea Party. I remain disgusted beyond words – not a phrase that writers often use - by politicians who have no concern sending fearless men and women into battle who may give their, “Last full measure of devotion”, but who they themselves so fear merely being primaried that they support every whim of a burgeoning and racist dictator.

In the last 13 months I’ve written 12 posts that have mentioned Trump. In all the years prior to that? Five.

I’d love it if both my opponent – racism – and I could meet in the middle…snuggled right up against the fulcrum. But America’s opponent has gotten much larger and has moved blatantly further back.

The large, hairy blob of racism on the left is my friend Jon Rizzo. Notice that I am actually on the far right!

Balance.