Event, Conference Presentation, Fireside Chat, Interview, Panel
MI Forum: The Grace of Silence
- Michele Norris anticipates continuing engagement in race-related dialogues through travel-based Q&A sessions and expects the "your stories" website to accumulate a growing volume of submissions over an indefinite future timeframe.
- Norris plans to document a "hidden conversation" about race, a project that evolved into a memoir focusing on her family, with the expectation that elders and the older generation will "unburden themselves" regarding stories from the 2008 election era.
- She predicts that if her father had lived longer, he would have eventually experienced "historical disinhibition" to share previously silent narratives, while noting her own children will learn family history to understand their collective strength rather than entitlement.
- Norris forecasts a prolonged period before achieving a "post-racial" society, characterizing the term as a concept that gained ubiquity between 2007 and 2008 and describing the nation as still needing to move beyond a "cancerous social disease."
- The outlook includes predictions that honest race conversations will induce discomfort for those wishing to remain in their comfort zones, requiring participants to encounter disagreeable views and potential emotional unease to challenge those set in their ways.
- Norris expects her book and ongoing work to provoke reader self-reflection and discomfort, while noting she has not completed DNA testing and expresses a desire to know her specific ethnic composition.
- She projects that new generations offer time and hope for national progress, though she remains skeptical of the "post-racial America" goal, suggesting "Grace" as the singular word needed to heal the nation's "tormented soul."
- The summary includes expectations that studying genealogy will help European Americans understand the historical construction of race and whiteness, citing laws designed to prevent multi-racial rebellions among indentured servants as a foundational mechanism.
- Norris recommends specific academic and literary resources, such as Toni Morrison's A Mercy, for those investing time in understanding the "construction of racism" and its role as a tool to separate people and distribute power.