Racial Healing

``We have run away from race for far too long,'' declares Yale law professor Dalton, who describes himself as a mostly genial black man whose cross-racial conversations rarely stray from safe topics. He insightfully argues for engagement about race, explaining why he wouldn't want to be defined by his blackness yet wouldn't want to be seen as raceless. He advises whites, especially those who falsely equate ethnicity with race, to recognize the benefits of skin privilege. Blacks, he says, must better account for the enduring imprint of slavery on the national psyche, and must do more to maintain community and reassess their culture. Dalton's personal anecdotes resonate: he is regularly forced to defend his marriage to a white woman; he suggests that integration must take place under a setting of equality, not white domination, as in his integrated gospel group. Dalton offers no political program, but he observes that, were racial hierarchy vitiated, there would be far less pressure for group representation in every workplace and school. (Oct.)