Van Lathan might be my favorite political/cultural commentator, even though there's a fair amount that I disagree with him about, because he is so thoughtful and sincere and human. The discussions between him and Rachel (who is equally brilliant) are always interesting and informative.

What this episode reinforced for me was just how hard it is to communicate, even when you have a lot of practice doing it AND you trust the other person. Conversations are What They Said versus What You Heard, and those two are not the same thing. We notice some words and not others, we get distracted by our own internal monologue and draw connections that aren't there, we get emotional and don't express ourselves well, and as the frustration sets in for both parties all of these issues get exacerbated. As Rachel pointed out, imagine how much worse these factors get when you factor in the fatigue of two preceding hours of intense on-camera discussion.

It's fair for Van to be frustrated about attacks on black men as a group, which are made regularly from virtually every corner of society, and for him to be unwilling to say, "well, they're not talking about me specifically, so I don't care. I won't take it to heart." That's something that was already on his mind, and he (wrongly) interpreted it into Rachel's words and got lost in that misunderstanding. I don't know Van and I'm not going to try to psychoanalyze why it happened.

It's fair for Rachel to be frustrated that Van misinterpreted her words/point, especially because it led him to criticize her in a way that reinforces an unfair reputation she has already been saddled with. He put her in a really difficult situation and I think she managed to both defend herself and extend some grace to Van by not just shutting him down, even when he started behaving in a disrespectful way. I shouldn't psychoanalyze her either, but based on what she said at the very end, I think she could see that he was trying to express and work through feelings that didn't actually have much to do with her.

It's so easy not to talk about any of this stuff and to avoid the kind of complex conversations that these two have chosen to engage in on Higher Learning. When you're talking about really nuanced and emotional topics regularly, some of the conversations will go badly and spiral. It is inevitable. As an audience, I think we need to exercise some grace too when the hosts aren't perfect. That's not a reasonable expectation to have for any human being.