PARIS, TEXAS — Ten days into a new American era, 100 white and black citizens of this polarized east Texas town tried their hand at the kind of racial reconciliation heralded by the inauguration of President Obama, gathering for a frank community talk on the long-taboo topic of race.
Things didn't go so well.
The black speakers at last week's meeting, led by two conciliation specialists from the Justice Department, mostly talked about incidents of discrimination, prejudice and unfairness they said they routinely suffered in Paris.
Their white listeners mostly glared back, their arms crossed.
The four-hour session ended with some participants screaming about the presence of three police cars outside the meeting hall and who had ordered them and why.
"We are not going to end on a note like that!" said Carmelita Pope-Freeman, the regional director of the Justice Department's community relations service. "I'm getting tired of it!"
Yet the mayor of the town, which became a national focus after the Chicago Tribune revealed several cases of alleged racial injustice in recent years, pronounced himself optimistic.
At least, he said, black and white citizens were talking to each other -- something that rarely happened before.
"Every city should have a dialogue like this," said Mayor Jesse James Freelen, whose town of 26,000 is 68% white and 22% black. "We didn't like all the negative publicity about our town. . . . But if the end result is that our community grows together, then it will all have been worth it."
First, the community had to vent, which was the purpose of the meeting. It was an early stage of a mediation program that the Justice Department has offered to other troubled towns -- in an echo of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission -- to help close deep racial fissures.
"I'm here to talk about racism. I don't see any sense in playing games, pretending it doesn't exist," said Brenda Cherry, the African American leader of a local civil rights group. "When you go in the schools and see mostly black kids sitting in detention, it's racism. In court, we get high bonds, we get longer sentences. If that's not racism, what is it?"
Jason Rogers, the youth pastor of a local black church, reminded the audience of the monument honoring fallen Confederate soldiers that sits on the front lawn of the county courthouse.
