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Julie Jones's avatar

For context this is a part of a "Dialogue on Race " with Jim Lehrer hosting during the Clinton administration. The exchange is between President Clinton and Sherman Alexie, a Spokane Native and writer. The first comment is early in the show. Sherman Alexie's comment was near the end.

THE PRESIDENT (Clinton): Let me ask you something. I'd like to start, because I think this will help us to get to the race issue you talked about. Let's just talk about the Native American population.When I was running for President in 1992, I didn't know much about the American Indian condition, except that we had a significant but very small population of Indians in my home state, and that my grandmother was one-quarter Cherokee; that's all I knew. And I spent a lot of time going around to the reservations and to meet with leaders and to learn about the sort of nation-to-nation legal relationship that's supposed to exist between the U.S. government and the Native American tribes.

MR. LEHRER: How do you get people to talk about race?

MR. (Sherman)ALEXIE: Just walk into a room, I think. People are always talking about race. It's always coded language. They call it"class," or they use coded language. Nobody actually says, well, that's a black person, let's talk about being black, but it always ends up coming up. Usually what they'll do to me is come up and tell me they're Cherokee. (Laughter.) So that's usually what it amounts to.

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Victoria Rios's avatar

This was fucking incredible, thank you.

Signed,

A Mexican-American who lived in Madison and experienced there the most confusing and laughable forms of racism I’ve ever received

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