Grad - Chernoff

Abstract

While “free spaces” may well be a site of democratic change (Evans & Boyte, 1986), what types of discussions happen in such free spaces? How are issues of social difference, particularly that of race, handled in democratic public conversation?  Using ethnographic data, this paper explores the “democratic dilemma” of race (Minow, 1990) looking at a series of public conversations about arts, culture, and regional development.  This series of public conversations is in many ways a “cosmopolitan canopy” (Anderson, 2004), a place where people can interact civilly across social cleavages—and yet the salience of racial difference to a majority-white group emerges as both a pitfall and a possibility to new ways of understanding diversity and the importance of inclusive and representative public conversation for democratic change.