We caught the Leonard Pitts lecture at UNCG tonight.

He gave a thoughtful talk about race, history, and reconciliation -- about where we go from here.

He praised the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation project.

Both black anger and white guilt are corrosive, he said -- but they need to be recognized and dealt with instead of just sublimated and ignored.

He doesn't like Black History Month, he said, because black history is American history, and heroes need to be understood in context.

He handled a question about Hannah Arendt's argument against the concept of collective guilt by talking about collective responsibility and our capacity for the inverse of collective guilt, collective national pride over historical events in which we did not participate.

And he said one of his pet peeves is when people call things "racism" that aren't really racism.

Dinner beforehand at Saffron. Pretty much fun for a Monday night.

Comments

[Joe Killian]

Caught Pitts at the N&R this afternoon, where he talked with staffers for a little more than an hour. My favorite bit, which I wrote down:

"I don't know how you appeal to younger readers. I think younger readers, like older readers, are attracted to stories about their lives and their concerns. What doesn't work is just trying to use their language. Because trust me - by the time whatever it is gets into mainstream media, into the newspapers, to you and me, it's not what the kids are saying anymore. Fo' Shizzle."

I've heard Leonard Pitts say "Fo' Shizzle."

I win.

[Paul Elledge]

I like your taste in food, Ed.

[PotatoStew]

I just had lunch at Saffron for the first time last week. Yummy stuff.