first impulse behind these efforts may have been to inoculate people against racism, so they could be purged of bias once and for all. But as people began to realize the complexity of the issues, and the increasing diversity of their communities, they began to see this as valuable, ongoing work. Instead of settling for a level playing field, where everyone would be treated uniformly by teachers, judges, principals, and police, communities began trying to build arenas where the players acknowledged differences openly, cooperated continually, and recognized each other as equals. In so doing, citizens and local leaders began to see race as a mandate for democratic governance.“ There is a kind of natural progression here,” says Roger Stancil, city manager of Fayetteville, North Carolina.“ When you get different kinds of people talking to each other, they figure out they have interests in common and they start to act on them. They realize that they won’ t always agree, but they want to help each other anyway, and they begin to see how important it is that everyone is at the table.” Changing the table? But while the efforts to engage citizens on race may have brought more people to the table, they may not have changed the table itself. That is, the tactics of successful small-group processes, proactive network-based recruitment, and collaborative action were not incorporated into the way that official public meetings are structured, or even the way that crime watch groups and neighborhood associations operate. Those productive engagement tactics are still used, perhaps more than ever, but they occur almost entirely within the context of temporary projects that focus on a crisis or controversial policy decision. In her essay,“ Participatory Democracy Revisited,” Carole Pateman argues that most examples of public participation today“ leave intact the conventional institutional structures and political meaning of‘ democracy.’” They do not, in her words,“ democratize democracy.” In the absence of these more systemic changes, for most American cities the benefits of public engagement on race may have been meaningful but temporary. Certainly the fraying of policecommunity relations, the evidence of racial profiling by officers, and the persistence of race-based achievement gaps in student test scores do not demonstrate great progress in our efforts to build more cohesive and equitable communities. As we consider how we might move forward, in the United States and in other countries, we should bear in mind the natural link between engagement and race, as well as the unfinished business of engagement on race. In order to bring people together on all kinds of issues, you have to acknowledge the differences between people, affirm that all cultures and groups are valued, and give people a sense that their past experiences with discrimination and bias will be rectified, or at least not repeated. In turn, it is difficult to make progress on issues of race without bringing a diverse array of people to the table. The two enterprises, improving engagement and increasing intercultural understanding, complement and probably require one another. Meanwhile, people trying to engage citizens, on race or any other issue, should be thinking about the long term and not just the decision or crisis of the
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