CAN WE TALK?

LAST OCTOBER, SHORTLY before the election, I came across a startling photo from Oakland, California, circa 1969. Two men stood side by side: a black guy in a beret and leather jacket and a white guy in a denim vest emblazoned with the Confederate flag. The white guy was part of the Young Patriots, a group made up of poor white Southerners. The black guy was a Black Panther. The two organizations, along with a Puerto Rican group called the Young Lords, had formed what they called the Rainbow Coalition—a name Jesse Jackson would revive and popularize 15 years later. They had teamed up to fight for low-income issues like fair wages and access to health care even though, when the Panthers first approached them, some of the Young Patriots were enamored with racist ideas and symbols. “It wasn’t easy to build an alliance,” former Black Panther Bobby Lee once recalled. “I had to run with those cats,