Not being directly, personally affected by it, you read all these statistics about the results of racism, about mortgages and glass ceilings and whatever, and it all seems so abstract; and then one figure smacks you between the eyes like a shovel. Piles of dead babies tend to have that effect.

and then

The most productive way we can deal with a thorny situation is to build as much common ground as possible, rather than sidetracking from the huge things that need doing on that common ground and focusing only on the wedge issues.

The second is a much better approach than the first. Tone down the rhetoric if you're actually trying to work toward a solution.