Race and public deliberation

Although deliberation has a central place in democratic theory, scholars kn ow little about how it actually works. Most deliberative theorists emphasiz e the many good consequences of deliberation. By contrast, Mansbridge sugge sts that deliberation in certain circumstances may exacerbate conflict. Sch olarship on racial politics suggests that each hypothesis is complicated by implicitly racial language. Using a quasi-experiment, we contrast the rhet oric in two town meetings about school desegregation: a segregated meeting with homogeneous interests, in which segregated Whites unanimously argued a gainst desegregation, and an integrated meeting with heterogeneous interest s, in which segregated Whites argued against integrated Whites, Hispanics, and African Americans. We find that (a) deliberation at the segregated meet ing maintained consensus among segregated Whites; (b) these citizens used c oded rhetoric that appeared universal, well-reasoned, and focused on the co mmon good, but in fact advanced their group interest; (c) deliberation at t he integrated meeting maintained the conflict between segregated Whites and others; and (d) there, rhetoric that seemed universal to segregated Whites was decoded by the integrated audience as racist and group interested. We highlight the problem posed by the contested meaning of language and sugges t ways to make deliberation more effective.