Look Who's Talking

This is one of those posts that's really about saving a link for myself, but I am interested in these poll results asking Whites and Blacks about the amount of time we spend talking about race. The results aren't really surprising -- most Whites think we talk about race too much, most Blacks think we don't talk about it enough. The reason I'm interested is because I've noticed in several contexts a disjuncture between how different groups view how much time we devote to different issues. For example, in the sexual assault context, there is a "left" narrative that says we undersell the problem -- we need to "break the silence", we need to bring the problem to the surface -- and there is a "right" narrative that suggests that talk about sexual assault is ever-present to the point of absurdity -- everything is being called sexual assault, sexual assault talk is crowding out other related but important issues. Racism seems to also fit inside this mold; I suspect anti-Semitism does as well.