And so it goes that the national conversation is over before it begins. The subject matter became instead about whether President Trump denounced white supremacists loudly enough, without wimpily declaring it a tie as to who did more damage in the Charlottesville melee.

I don’t want to insinuate that wow, isn’t this great because Charlottesville gives us the opportunity to talk, and listen. Because really, you guys the abounding racism in our country, is, well, mega-present and mega-tolerated.

When I first heard the white anti-racist Tim Wise talk, via a cd, more than ten years ago, I held my breath, and not all of it was enjoyable. When I read his book, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2004) it was a not entirely pleasant waking up experience. I was liberal and as Robin Di Angelo describes, I had something of a case of what she calls “white fragility”; I had thought I was good enough, that is, so I couldn’t be racist. Wrong.

A shout out to Bill Maher: this is not a liberal self-flagellating bleeding heart that lives to say “Mea Culpa” out loud. It is simply the recognition that the stuff we read about Chicago, Detroit and many other places, contains not only racism but also rabid violence. Christian Picciolini, ex-white supremacist, wants to show me the Chicago that is like a prison, though it has no actual walls. He is talking about black neighborhoods where it is stark and scary and where the atmosphere, police-wise and not, is not conducive to ease or to thriving.

I will go, and I am scared; in fact I am something of a scaredy-cat, having grown up—so to speak—in an all Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn (there was Carol Smith and she was Protestant and I felt bad for her) where being black meant being a maid or a doorman.

Aside from the fact that I know something about my own participation, certainly past, in racism, I am not completely blind. When I saw “I Am Not Your Negro” by James Baldwin in film and read the book, I felt devastated by what felt powerful, not because it was guilt provoking but because it was true.

What we are seeing now in America has altogether to do with white people, especially white males, gathering behind a macho male who speaks for them. He wants to “make America great again” as if America wasn’t based on more than hard work and worthy character structures. As if its economic prowess didn’t come also from taking land and life from Native Americans, and enslaving and then exploiting in different ways, African Americans.

It is not the fault of Donald Trump that we are not having a conversation. It may be, at least due in part to the huge need of many of us to be self-congratulating. I like Barack Obama; but when he would say, as with the massacre at Sandy Hook, “This is not who we are”, it rankled my nerves. Of course it is who we are; we are addicted to John Wayne, to guns, and to being shallow when it comes to evaluating why things happen on purpose that end up so badly.

How many white people in our country feel black people express resentment way too much, that they’ve been given and given, and they need to stop complaining. And the abuses in prisons with so many more black inmates—let’s just not talk about it.

The point is, here at least, is that we need mandatory field trips or something of the like to see neighborhoods we would associate with war torn areas from where refugees try to get to America. We need to talk to people who live and breathe racism all day long, about whether they care or not if Trump says out loud that he hates racism.

I’m only doing a little here. I’m talking about it more, seeking to get to know better my own conflicts and complicitness regarding racism. I believe Robin Di Angelo when she says that if we don’t talk about it, we are continuing to contribute to it.

In terms of talking about it out loud, as long as we are content to have our community leaders say they hate racism and no more, I believe we risk becoming part of the farce. It is not a farce, but of course. But when we get picky about whether the same leader who took advantage of the presence of a David Duke comes out loudly enough against racism, are we serious, or what.

We Americans are avid optimists—the white Americans, I mean. We are positive thinkers, we believe in the American Dream, and don’t like to think that much about the past. The liberals among us have been too easily content to feel guilty and the conservatives hate to be reminded and reminded again. When will those darker people stop whining?

Of course I am over-generalizing, but excuse me; I’m upset. I could be wrong but a little optimism came through more strongly, for me, when the former head of the NAACP in Charlottesville, at 89, told the New York Times he felt the statue should stay and be a reminder of history.

History may be our least popular subject because if we better knew the terms of endearment of so many of our decisions and our passivity, we would be upset. And perhaps we would have to change.

We need a conversation about the subject, but first we need someone to say out loud that racism is endemic in America. We are all a part of it, and we need to stop playing it like a team sport.

I know it can spoil the fun and the singing to suggest that none of us are immune. But at the same time I really do think we could have a fascinating time if we listened more, not to rhetoric, but to experience.