Long before Barack Obama suggested it, we were doing it – having a dialogue about race, that is.

Of course, "having a dialogue" sounds awfully formal for the kind of friendly bull sessions we've had for years as colleagues and cubicle neighbors here at the newspaper.

But in light of Mr. Obama's suggestion that we all try more honest talk instead of tiptoeing around racial issues in this country, we thought we might experiment with converting our newsroom chats into a wider discussion in written form.

So for the next four days, we'll be a couple of East Texas guys sitting around talking about race. Nothing is off limits. We want to put some questions to each other about things normally not discussed in racially mixed company.

You may have noticed that one of us is black and the other white. But that sure doesn't mean we pretend to speak for all those who look like us. We're just offering our own perspectives – and hope you will do the same. We'll provide ways for you to join the discussion.

STEVE: I'll lead off with an issue that has been bugging me, James. Why can't blacks admit that the worst of their problems these days are self-inflicted?

Of course racial injustices still exist. And we must tackle them. But they don't do near the damage done by unwed mothers, absent fathers, glorification of crime, dropping out of school and so forth.

Yet the only time I see blacks arise in any massive way is when there's an isolated incident of discrimination like in Jena, La. How about a march to decry the 70 percent of black babies born outside of marriage?

JAMES: Steve, your questions point up the deep disconnect between white and black America.

We think our collective story is largely one of success, a tale of a resilient people brought to the shores of America in bondage, enduring centuries of slavery and Jim Crowism – whose vestiges are ever-present, by the way – just to gain an equal foothold in American society.

Yet the question that always seems to be first and foremost on many white Americans' minds is this: "What's wrong with you people?"

And they readily spout off a string of statistics that reinforces stereotypes they already imagine and presume to be true.

You say, for example, that "racial injustices still exist," but that "they don't do near the damage done" by "self-inflicted" problems.

That's a big and faulty assumption, Steve.

I'll grant you this: You won't find any reasonable black person I know who thinks the black population overall has its act entirely together. Yes, unwed mothers, absent fathers and high-school dropouts are red flags. Worse still, they all feed the cycle of poverty and despair that, sadly, describes the condition of too many black Americans but, luckily, doesn't define black America as a whole.

But, Steve, I submit that a dual criminal justice system, which, historically speaking, treats black defendants more harshly than whites, is rather damaging. It has lingering, lifelong effects. Black people get that.

That's why black America reacted so differently to the O.J. verdict. They saw it as what my erstwhile colleague Malcolm Gladwell might call a tipping point: It suggested that a black man – at least one with bountiful resources – can actually get a fair trial.

Call it a Pyrrhic victory.

And, Steve, what do you make of the issue of discrimination in the workplace? Are you of the mind that it doesn't exist? Change your name from Steve to Shaquille (or from Sally to Shaquana) and see how that coveted job interview goes – if you get a callback, that is.

Isn't that cold reality just as damaging, if not more so, than some of the chronic problems you've cited? Take away a man's shovel, and he can't work for a day. Take away his hope, and he may never want to work again.

Finally, brother, if you think black Americans aren't speaking out against debilitating problems of our own creation – and against the institutional barriers I mentioned – well, that's not the case at all.

Did you forget the Million Man March in 1995? That was far bigger than anything that took place in Jena.

Truth is, the question of how to best tackle our faults and problems is an ancient debate in the black community. It's also an incomplete assignment.

I happen to believe that both W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington are right. We must emphasize the value and necessity of education more and stress the benefits of individual initiative and self-help programs in the black community.

Yes, we must take full ownership of destructive patterns of behavior – having babies out of wedlock, glorifying gangsta culture, dropping out of school. All of which may wrongly signal to wary whites that we black folks have closed our eyes and ears to the American dream.

We haven't. Yet, because the story of our collective success hasn't been told often enough or forcefully enough, folks like me are constantly fending off that nagging question.

You know the one: What's wrong with you people?A four-day series