I’ve done a lot of work on race relations in my career, so let me be blunt. At this point in my life, the only racial solutions I care about are the ones that have a chance of reducing or ending the racial tension among us. If you advance something that is going to makes things worse, you will catch my ire. It doesn’t matter who you are: if you start pushing ideas that separate us and inhibit conversation then you have a foe in me.

Which brings me to the topic of the insane essay by Zack Linly entitled “It’s Time to Stop Talking about Racism with White People.” Come again? To stop talking? When have we even begun? When have we talked in meaningful ways? When have we listened to what other people are saying? When have we learned how to speak in a way that others can hear us? We know the foundation for any working relationship is communication. Linly wants us to stop communicating with each other. Short of directly advocating racial violence, it is hard to think of a less productive suggestion for race relations.

Linly wants to cut off conversation with whites because the whites he’s been talking to offer perspectives that he finds distasteful. They talk about how hard policing is. They bring up black on black crime. They point out that whites get shot, too. Then of course there’s the all lives matter argument. My problem is not that he disagrees. My problem is that he doesn’t even want to hear. The inevitable result is more racial alienation and no progress toward solutions everyone can live with. There is no way that having an embargo on interracial communication will improve race relations.

If this was only Linly’s attitude then we could just write it off as a fringe position, but a quick examination of the comments shows support for his position. There are others besides Linly, too, who have decided that communication with whites about race is not worth their time. Linly’s column is not an isolated opinion; it is a perspective that is increasing in popularity.

I have written before about the value of active listening. This means listening to understand others’ perspective. It does not mean merely waiting for someone to stop talking so that you can speak your zinger. I doubt those who are talking about not talking have ever tried to engage in active listening. I read their articles, and I get the sense that if whites do not agree with them then that’s it, just stop talking with them. That attitude insures that our racial strife will continue. We’ll never find solutions that people from all races can embrace that way.

This isn’t a one-way problem. There are plenty of whites, too, who won’t talk to people of color who disagree with their proposed solutions. They won’t proclaim that attitude in the Washington Post, since they know they’d be condemned as racists, but they are out there, and they are part of the problem too. As long the rest of us allow them, and activists like Linly, to establish barriers to productive interracial conversation, we will guarantee racial alienation for as far as we can see into the future.

I do not want that future. Yes, it’s demanding to talk with people we disagree with on racial issues. It’s tiring. Sometimes, with some people, there is a time to cut it off, if they clearly demonstrate an unwillingness to listen. But those of us who are sick of the racial status quo cannot write off entire groups of people because it gets tiring. Good things rarely come without effort. If we really want racial reconciliation, instead of racial alienation, we will seek productive dialogue. We will speak and we will also listen.

Unlike Linly, I am not ready to give up on the dream of leaving my son a world of greater racial understanding, connection and friendship. What about you? Will you keep working at it with me?