The XX Factor: What women really think.

Tough Talks

We often talk here at Slate about how to have tough conversations. Whether it’s Bristol and Greta and their inability to be candid about teen pregnancy or Meghan’s stunning account of how badly we do at talking about death. Emily and I wrote several years ago about the brutal isolation that arises when you try to talk about pregnancy loss. So often the public call to real, brutal, and honest dialogue is met with a lot of earnestly nodding heads and a request to pass the remote. That said, it’s hard to ignore yesterday’s speech by Attorney General Eric Holder, who used the occasion of Black History Month to ask Americans to stop being “a nation of cowards” when it comes to talking about race. This was not a policy speech. Holder returned over and over to the idea that the “artificial” construct of Black History Month should be used “to foster a period of dialogue among the races.” The call here is for a public debate that is “nuanced” and “principled” and “spirited” and above all, honest. He doesn’t exactly tell us how to get there—he wants us to talk to our colleagues more and blend America's race history into our core curriculum. But it was an incredibly poignant speech about silence and the failures of political speech on hard questions. Here’s hoping it’s not met with more silence.