If you cannot name and frame the conflict well, you never have a chance at addressing it. Without naming it, there is never progress.

It was Mary Parker Follett, the social worker turned management scientist who once said that the question at hand is always about the conflict.

"One test of an organization is not how many conflicts you have" she said. And then talked of how conflicts are the essence of how people come together. So she said, it's not about *if* you have a conflict but what *are* your conflicts.

And since 2015, it's beyond clear (birtherism, "fine people on both sides", "stand back and stand by") that the central conflict in American political life is about race, or more specifically, racism.

Yet a lot of folks in power (media, pundits, publications, list makers, etc) have argued that it's not absolutely about racism.

That it was 'economic anxiety' or how he was "better at branding", or about her emails.

And even before that, tech leaders at Twitter, Google, Facebook were warned for over a decade at how enabling and profiting from misinformation and hate speech is harmful to our social fabric.

Yet each time they get caught, they do an apology tour.
So they get to do it again.

As @Isabelwilkerson wrote in Caste, the question is...

Given a choice between democracy & whiteness, which will one choose?

If you do not understand this as the central conflict, ask ... why you let yourself "not understand".

If you do get it, why do you not name it?