Let’s talk about race. We know it’s going to be awkward, no matter how well-intentioned. We know it makes both blacks and whites uncomfortable. We know that it’s fraught with 238 years of history, most of it a sad, sorry legacy of aggression, domination and persecution by whites against a people who ― it must never be forgotten ― originally were brought to the new country to be put in bondage and servitude.

Not much of a welcome. Emancipation was declared in 1863, but it wasn’t accompanied by any kind of economic justice. Too many Americans believed that the black race was inherently inferior. Vestiges of that attitude remain. So does the problem of economic justice.

Of course there has been progress. In 1959, 4 percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage. That number is now 87 percent (the breakdown is 96 percent of blacks; 84 percent of whites). Over the centuries, whites grudgingly allowed blacks to move into “their” neighborhoods, but then either fled or found subtle but effective ways to marginalize where they could live in those communities.

Whites stopped letting corporations like U.S. Steel have young black men be arrested on the trumped-up charge of vagrancy so they could be put in the company’s custody to finish out their sentences as free laborers.

More than a century after Emancipation, whites allowed blacks to eat at the same lunch counters, drink from the same water fountains, swim in the same municipal pools, go to the same schools and use the same toilets. It took an act of Congress 50 years ago to guarantee the right to vote ― a right that the current Supreme Court has watered down.

Progress occurred grudgingly, and then because of courts, federal intervention and activists who would not go away, either via intimidation or coercion. Some of them were murdered for their beliefs. In 2008, progress was manifested in the election of a black president.

What didn’t happen was economic equality. Not even close. The 2011 census tells us that the net worth of the average black household in the United States was $6,314, compared with $110,500 for the average white household.

The wealth gap by race in the United States is roughly 40 percent greater today that it was in 1967. It is greater than the gap that existed in South Africa during apartheid, when whites owned about 15 times as much as blacks. Today, whites in America own almost 18 times what blacks own.

What didn’t happen was equality in the criminal justice system. Crime is a function of poverty. ProPublica, the online investigative journalism enterprise, issued a report last month showing that young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than young white men.

From 2010 to 2012, black teens ages 15 to 19 were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while whites of those ages were killed at a rate of 1.47 per million. Blacks account for 13 percent of the U.S. population; for 60 percent of those in prison. A black man has a 28 percent chance of going to prison during his lifetime; a white man has a 4 percent chance.

America’s prisons are full of men and women who have received disparate sentences for similar crimes because of the color of their skin.

All of this makes the race conversation difficult. So does this: Human beings are tribal by nature. We identify with those who look like us. Nearly 20 years ago, many blacks cheered the jury acquittal of O.J. Simpson in the murder of his wife and her friend, while whites were aghast.

The response to the Simpson verdict was complex. While many African-Americans did not think Mr. Simpson was innocent, they viewed the jury’s verdict as a rebuke to the nation’s history of racial crimes. Payback of a kind.

Further evidence that our views are still tribal: In 1995, 68 percent of whites thought Simpson was guilty of the double murder; 60 percent of blacks thought he was innocent. A recent CNN poll showed that 77 percent of whites did not think Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson should be charged with murder in the death of Michael Brown; 54 percent of nonwhites (blacks, Latinos and Asians) thought he should.

White guilt and good intentions are not enough to erase the history. Black anger and protest aren’t either. For that matter, neither is a conversation about race. But it’s a start. We must begin to know our neighbors. If you talk to someone, share your goals and thoughts and hopes, it’s harder for him to hate you. It’s more difficult to be prejudiced against someone you know.

The experts in communication tell us that if we start the conversation by talking about what we have in common, we are more likely to have a productive discussion.

One example of building a beach of understanding one grain of sand at a time is going on in Chattanooga, Tennessee, courtesy of former Kirkwood High School principal Franklin McCallie.

Mr. McCallie and his wife, Tresa McCallie, started out a couple of years ago inviting black and white people into their home for coffee, cake and conversation. It began with 50 or so guests at a time, the mix always intentionally a third black and two-thirds white because, as Mr. McCallie puts it, the whites have more to learn. The goal is to come as strangers, leave as friends.

It sounds trite. Simplistic. Maybe it is. But it’s also been successful in demystifying the “other,” in creating relationships and understanding between blacks and whites.

Young people are better at these conversations than older ones. They have it on social media, which they used last week to summon each other by the thousands in cities across the country to stand up for equal justice the wake of the St. Louis County grand jury’s decision not to indict Mr. Wilson.

Whatever the venue or medium, let’s have this conversation. Let’s tell our stories so that we can begin to understand why we think the way we do.

(Editorial, St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

(Tribune Content Agency)