Reflections on Race

White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son--Tim Wise

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

Tim Wise, a renowned anti-racist writer and educator, shares his thoughts on racial inequality and systemic racism in America during a talk at UT Martin. With over 26 years of experience, Wise discusses the progress and setbacks in the fight for racial equity, emphasizing the importance of understanding systemic racism and white privilege. He highlights the historical roots of racism and the necessity for systemic change, while also addressing the backlash against concepts like critical race theory. Wise advocates for storytelling and personal connections as effective strategies for pushing forward this crucial dialogue. Through humor and insightful analysis, he calls for collective action and awareness in dismantling racial injustice.

Highlights

Tim Wise, an anti-racist educator, shares insights from over 26 years of experience. 🎤
He discusses the historical and ongoing impact of systemic racism in America. 📜
Wise highlights the importance of personal storytelling in promoting racial justice. 📝
He addresses the backlash to critical race theory and the importance of systemic change. ⚖️
Wise calls for collective action to dismantle racial injustice in all its forms. 💪

Key Takeaways

Tim Wise emphasizes the importance of understanding systemic racism and white privilege in America. 📚
He highlights the historical roots of racism and its ongoing impact on society. 🌍
Wise calls for storytelling and personal connections as effective tools in racial justice work. 📖
He discusses the backlash against concepts like critical race theory and systemic racism. 🔄
Wise encourages white individuals to join the fight for racial equity by acknowledging their privilege. 🤝

Overview

Tim Wise, recognized as a leading voice in anti-racist education, brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the conversation on racial equality. His presentation at UT Martin delves into the complexities of systemic racism in America, urging individuals to open their eyes to the ingrained inequalities that persist.

Using humor and engaging storytelling, Wise underscores the crucial role that narrative and personal connection play in advancing the fight against racial injustice. He speaks candidly about the historical underpinnings of racism and its enduring effects on society, encouraging listeners to become active participants in seeking systemic change.

Despite facing backlash against discussions of critical race theory and systemic racism, Wise remains steadfast in his call for action. He rallies allies to join the cause, particularly highlighting the responsibility of white individuals in confronting their privilege and supporting efforts for racial equity.

Chapters

00:30 - 05:00: Introduction and Background of Tim Wise This chapter, titled 'Introduction and Background of Tim Wise,' does not provide any specific information or content as the transcript only contains 'hmm.' Therefore, a summary cannot be generated from the available text.
05:00 - 10:00: Current Moment in Racial Justice The chapter titled 'Current Moment in Racial Justice' starts with an introduction by Dr. Anderson, one of the co-chairs of the civil rights conference. Dr. Anderson cautions about being overly loud in combination with a microphone before introducing the speaker, Mr. Tim Wise. Tim Wise is highlighted as one of the most prominent anti-racist writers and educators.
10:00 - 15:00: Backlash and Systemic Racism The chapter discusses the extensive career of an individual (referred to as Mr. Wise) over 26 years in the United States, where he has been actively engaging with audiences across all 50 states and more than 1500 educational institutions. Mr. Wise has focused on dismantling racial inequality by speaking at various professional conferences and community groups. Additionally, he has trained professionals from diverse sectors such as corporate, government, entertainment, media, law enforcement, military, and medical industries on anti-racism methods.
15:00 - 20:00: White Privilege and Systemic Racism The chapter delves into the topic of white privilege and systemic racism, featuring insights from Mr. Wise, an author and advisor with expertise in race relations. It highlights his contributions through books like 'Dispatches from the Race War' and 'White Like Me,' as well as his advisory role at Fisk University's Race Relation Institute.
20:00 - 25:00: Impact of Systemic Racism on White People The chapter explores the impact of systemic racism on white people, with insights from the experience and work of Tim Wise. Wise, who served as the youth coordinator and associate director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism, has been a prominent voice in documentaries and media discussing race, racism, and white privilege. His contributions are highlighted in works such as 'White Like Me: Race, Racism, and White Privilege in America' and 'The Great White Hoax: Donald Trump and the Politics of Race and Class in America.' Wise frequently appears on major news networks like CNN and MSNBC, and his views have been featured on programs like Nightline, CBS Sunday Morning, 20/20, and 48 Hours. The chapter likely delves into how systemic racism indirectly impacts white individuals by perpetuating an unjust society that affects everyone.
25:00 - 30:00: Conclusion and Call to Action In the concluding chapter, the speaker, Mr. Tim Wise, begins by expressing gratitude to those who came to the event despite the dreary and chilly weather. He acknowledges the convenience and temptation of staying home and watching events online, particularly through platforms like YouTube, and humorously admits that even he considered delivering his speech remotely from his hotel room. This humorous anecdote sets the stage for a call to action, encouraging personal engagement and the value of physically participating in such events, underscoring the importance of community and direct interaction.
30:00 - 60:00: Q&A Session The chapter titled 'Q&A Session' reflects a session where the speaker expresses gratitude to the audience for attending the session in person and acknowledges those watching from home or later through archived content. The focus of the discussion is on racial equity and racial justice in America, highlighting the importance of addressing these issues. The speaker appreciates the opportunity to engage in this important discussion at any time, but underscores its particular significance at the current moment.

White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son--Tim Wise Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 hmm
00:30 - 01:00 i do not trust apple okay we'll go ahead and get started i wanted to welcome everybody i'm gonna take a step back i'm very loud and i don't wanna me and a mic is a bad combination i'm dr anderson i'm one of the co-chairs of the civil rights conference and we are happy today to introduce one of our speakers mr tim wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and educators in the
01:00 - 01:30 united states he has spent the past 26 years speaking to audiences in all 50 states and over 1500 colleges and high school campuses at hundreds of professional academic conferences and to community groups across the country mr wise has also trained corporate government entertainment media law enforcement military and medical industry professionals on methods for dismantling racial inequality in their in their institutions and has provided anti-racism training
01:30 - 02:00 to educators and administrators nationwide and internationally mr wise is the author of nine books including his latest essay collection dispatches from the race war that is available for sale after this and mr wise is kind enough to be doing a book signing for us and the highly acclaimed memoir white like me reflections on race from a privileged son from 1999 to 2003 mr wise was an advisor to fisk university's race relation institute in nashville and in the early
02:00 - 02:30 90s he was the youth coordinator and associate director of the louisiana coalition against racism and nazism mr wise has been featured in several documentaries including white like me race racism and white privilege in america and the great white hoax donald trump and the politics of race and class in america mr wise appears regularly on cnn to msnbc to discuss race issues and has been featured on other shows such as nightline cbs sunday morning 2020 and 40 48 hours
02:30 - 03:00 please join me in welcoming mr tim wise thank you thank you very much first off i want to uh congratulate the hardy souls who actually you know came out in this weather i know it's a little dreary out it's a little chilly out and you have the option in this day and age of not coming out and just watching this on youtube which i almost felt like i would just stay in the hotel and give the speech on youtube so
03:00 - 03:30 i'm amazed that you came out i'm sort of amazed that i did so we're here and i appreciate you being here for those of you who didn't make the trek absolutely fine understandable sitting around enjoy the enjoy the program uh in your dorm or apartment or home wherever you're watching it and for those who get to see it afterward i assume it'll be archived i hope you enjoy it as well it is uh an honor to be able to come and talk to you it would be at any time about these issues of racial equity and and racial justice in america but it is especially important i think
03:30 - 04:00 that i do this now and that this particular month of events that i know you've been having here at ut martin has been happening at a really important time for this conversation to take place it is both an exciting but also an incredibly dangerous moment in the history of our country when it comes to the subject matter of race and racism exciting for obvious reasons because in the last couple of years we have been in the midst of what is really the the largest sustained racial justice uprising in
04:00 - 04:30 american history just in terms of the raw numbers of people involved in racial justice work of some type or another i'm not just talking about protest activity in the wake of the murder of george floyd though i am talking about that i'm also talking about the way that in the wake of that killing and especially in the first six months to a year after that you had millions of people in schools across the country in corporate america across the country in state agencies and federal agencies and local government agencies and non-profit
04:30 - 05:00 groups churches synagogues mosques etc really taking up this issue in ways that many of them had never done before obviously there were some who had been on this subject for many many years decades their entire lives but there were millions of folks especially those of us called white in this country who uh after the killing of george floyd sort of had the the veil lifted from our eyes a little bit about the reality of injustice in this country particularly as regards policing but then that sort of snowballed into
05:00 - 05:30 conversations about equity and injustice in the workplace equity and injustice in schools equity and injustice in housing in wealth accumulation and all the different arenas of human activity and so that's the exciting piece that that was happening and the narrative began to change right we saw within a few months of the beginning of that uprising terms like systemic racism being used on mainstream media programs i assure you having done this work for 30 years that that was something new
05:30 - 06:00 right the term systemic racism was not something that you would hear on abc nbc cbs even cnn and msnbc where i appear very rarely would you hear those terms used you weren't hearing those terms bandied about in corporate boardrooms or in most classrooms the same with the term white privilege something we'll talk a little bit about this evening as well when that term started to be heard in mainstream media i knew something was happening right these are concepts that we've talked about in the academic and
06:00 - 06:30 activist communities for a long time but when you i remember several years ago the first time i heard it actually bill o'reilly still had a show he was still relevant so i know that's been a minute but back in the day when bill o'reilly was still relevant and had a show i remember he did a program where he he spent three days in a row trying to debunk the idea of white privilege which is sort of funny right like why would you spend three days trying to debunk something that isn't real like that just seems like a waste of time right like if i were to come to you and say there is a tyrannosaurus rex
06:30 - 07:00 rampaging down the middle of times square right now bill what do you have to say i don't think he'd spend three days trying to disprove it right it would be like a two-minute thing it'd be like no there's not and that's stupid right so when you spend three days trying to debunk something you're sort of telling on yourself right you're sort of telling you're sort of acknowledging like i don't think i debunked it that first time i better try again he tried it again he's like yeah i still haven't gotten it right let me try one more time and that's when i knew that the racial justice work that many of us
07:00 - 07:30 have been engaged in was starting to penetrate didn't mean everybody was on the same page which is fine didn't mean that everybody was going to agree with the concept but at least the term was being heard the narrative was beginning to shift same thing with the term systemic racism but then came the danger part and it was all very predictable but i think some of the folks who were new to this work maybe weren't prepared for it right because all these new folks joined the movement thinking there was going to be change happen in a really dramatic and relatively fast fashion
07:30 - 08:00 because the movement grew so quickly right and if you're new to it you don't realize how long term this work is and so you get expectations way up here about what's going to happen and when it's going to happen and then six months go by and nine months go by and a year goes by and there hadn't been that much if anything that sort of fundamentally changed and people get burned out and they get cynical and they get skeptical about the prospects for change and then in that moment that that that nadir that sort of diminution of activism comes the
08:00 - 08:30 backlash that we all knew was coming right because carol anderson told us it would come if we didn't already know brilliant scholar at emory university who in her book white rage proves historically how in every era of american history every step forward for black people in particular you could say people of color generally but certainly for black folks every step forward every bit of progress has been met with a concomitant backlash of white rage it happened after abolition
08:30 - 09:00 right and when reconstruction was destroyed in the south it happened in the wake of the great migration when black folks started moving to the midwest and the north and out west for better jobs beginning in the 19 teens and 1920s met with violence met with overt acts of bigotry as a form of backlash to that progress it happened in the wake of desegregation obviously it happened in the wake of civil rights laws in the 1960s it happened again in the wake of affirmative action programs
09:00 - 09:30 it happened in the aftermath of the obama election even though that election didn't really materially change very much for black people in this country i mean systemically not that much change but that was a huge symbolic step forward in black america right to actually have the head of state be someone that looked fundamentally different and had a fundamentally different back story than every president before him shook some people up that's why they couldn't get it through their head that he was even american right that's why they had to continually
09:30 - 10:00 ask him for his papers the way we do folks coming over the southern border right just to prove that you really belong here in this house like you've got to prove a mod arbory belongs in that neighborhood and you barack obama you got to prove that you belong in that house called white right and so that backlash came in the aftermath of the obama election and then again in the aftermath of the uprising even though not that much has changed fundamentally in policing since that uprising if
10:00 - 10:30 anything right but the narrative progress is real right when those terms start to be used and understood and when you've got millions of young people entering the movement see that scares certain folks right who would rather keep the lid on things and keep things sort of the way they are when you start having young people especially young white people joining this movement in solidarity with black and brown peoples that is quite dangerous they expect black folks to complain about injustice because black folks been complaining about injustice for 400 years they sort
10:30 - 11:00 of know how to manage that or they think they do but when you have white folks actually joining that as well as tens of millions of young white folks did in the aftermath of the murder of george floyd all of a sudden the backlash became especially necessary that's why all the sudden they're attacking critical race theory which by the way they could not define if i were to put a gun to their heads and ask them to define it and tell them that if they got it wrong i would kill them they would all i'm not a violent person so i'm not actually fantasizing about this scenario i'm just letting you
11:00 - 11:30 know that they would all die all the people that are attacking it who have absolutely no idea what it is and can't be bothered to actually look it up i mean these are people who managed to research every fake covid cure known to man they'll listen to their cousin jimmy on facebook they'll get on reddit and listen to chia mama 417 explain how you know iodine will cure covet and how you can just like colloidal silver will get rid of cancer they can find all that but they can't google critical race theory
11:30 - 12:00 apparently right so go figure right but that's another kind of backlash another kind of rage you attack these ideas why now critical race theory was created in the late 70s and early 1980s and no one said anything about it right no one really cared outside of like you know sort of picayune debates in law schools which is where critical race theory is principally applied so why would all of a sudden it become necessary to attack critical race theory
12:00 - 12:30 because the timing coincides with this uprising and the idea is to shut down any conversation about racial injustice in america because you don't want those white folks to become allies you don't want those white folks to act in solidarity you don't want them to learn the truth about the history of the country and you say it's because you're trying to protect their fear that's what they say right we don't want white folks to feel bad about being white nobody's trying to make anybody feel bad about being white but if that is your concern there's a really easy solution teach about some different
12:30 - 13:00 white people right if you're feeling guilty about white folks and maybe you just need to focus a little less on andrew jackson and a little bit more on people like jeremiah evarts who was a white man who's one of his principal opponents to indigenous removal because there were white folks who stood up against that mess there were white folks who joined the abolitionist struggle whose names we don't know lydia marie child the grimke sisters john fee an abolitionist preacher who was defrocked from his church by the presbyterian synod because he refused to minister to slaveholders
13:00 - 13:30 founded berea college in kentucky right why don't we know these people's names why don't we teach these white anti-racist allies who acted in solidarity with black peoples right because if you're concerned that anti-racists like me are trying to make white people feel bad about being white and i'm telling you no there are these other role models that we could have why don't you want to teach about them that would be the solution to white guilt right you don't have to feel guilt and shame when you know you've got a choice to make and here are these examples of people who made that choice joan trump
13:30 - 14:00 our mulholland and the civil rights struggle bob and daddy zellner connie curry virginia foster durr like i could go down this list all these names of people who have fought some of them died for the cause of racial equity there haven't been enough of us i mean there have been enough who've died don't get me wrong i didn't mean it that way but there haven't been enough of us who joined in solidarity but we've always been there why don't we learn about those folks in school see the people that attack critical race theory don't talk about doing that they don't want that taught they just don't
14:00 - 14:30 want race talked about at all they don't want us to deal with what's real and that backlash now is dividing our country even more than it already was and we have to figure out collectively how to push through that and those of us who are white in particular are going to have to become very clear on why it's so important to engage this conversation even with our children in those early grades and i have a 20 and an 18 year old now but we started talking about race with
14:30 - 15:00 them i did in particular when they were very young watching disney films you can talk about race and class and gender while kids are watching the media that kids consume because there are subtle messages about all three of those things being delivered every single day in the movies and the television that they ingest right and the video games that they play and the videos that they watch on youtube and the advertising the marketing that's done to children done to their parents but through their children you know right so it's never too young to start talking
15:00 - 15:30 about these things we have so many folks in this country though that are afraid they don't know how to do it well so they'd rather just not do it at all and for most white americans we simply don't want to acknowledge the reality that black and brown peoples have known for very long in this country which is that systemic racism is fundamental and foundational to the country and if you say that in a public school in the state of tennessee this fall right you're going to risk getting fired i guess if you say it in florida they're going to be able to sue you i was just in indiana same thing right if you say what
15:30 - 16:00 i just said the systemic racism was fundamental and foundational to this country from its inception which by the way is not an opinion it's not an opinion it's not a debatable rebuttable presumption it's a fact and i'm going to prove it to you it doesn't take a lot of time if you need proof i'll i believe in evidence and proof so i'll give it to you but but people are backlashing against the teaching of that even even if it were just a theory even if it were just a perspective why shouldn't it be heard i mean is it just
16:00 - 16:30 outrageous is it like up there with men from mars you know creating stonehenge or something like is it is it just so outrageous that it shouldn't even be heard why would you want to shut down a theory if a theory is bad just debunk it if a theory is so outrageous just explain to me why it's wrong but none of the folks attacking anti-racist education what they call critical race theory ever actually bothered to explain what's wrong with it they just assume that their outrage is a rebuttal indignation is not an argument
16:30 - 17:00 right so racism was foundational to this country don't touch don't take my word for it take the words and the actions of those who were the founders and the initiators of the project known as the united states talk about what the very first congress in this country did after the ratification of the constitution right what's the first thing that congress did after the constitution was ratified in terms of legislation because you got to assume whatever they did first is their way of saying this is the most important thing
17:00 - 17:30 right like that makes sense you don't you don't do the most important thing like seventh you do it first right so you might think to yourself well gosh i don't know tim maybe the first thing they did was make sure that they had a sufficient army in case the brits decided to come back and have another run at it no that's not that's not what they did or you might say well maybe they needed to figure out the tax structure so they could figure out how to finance the government so maybe they did that first no no no they did that but they didn't do that first
17:30 - 18:00 right the very first substantive piece of legislation that congress passed after the constitution was ratified was a thing called the naturalization act of 1790. it's not something we learned about in history class very most very many of us in high school i certainly didn't and i was in ap history which they say is the history for the smart kids right but they apparently didn't think we were smart enough to handle this truth even in the 1980s let alone now with all this backlash happening what did the naturalization act of 1790 say the first
18:00 - 18:30 thing that congress decided to take care of what did it say it said that all free white persons and only free white persons could be citizens of the united states in other words the most important order of business in the mind of the founders and the first congress was to make sure that everybody understood before we dealt with the army before we dealt with taxes before we dealt with tariffs before we dealt with any of the economic stuff just make sure you all know that this new thing here is
18:30 - 19:00 for us and only us and nobody who is not white will be considered a citizen of the united states that tells me that white supremacy is there at the birth right it of course was there before that really going back to the colonial period but i'm just saying in the actual history of the country's laws it's there from the beginning again not an opinion there is no rebuttal to what i just said it happened and it reads exactly as i say it reads with the
19:00 - 19:30 intention that i suggest it had so then the question is do we understand what the legacy of that kind of germ of white supremacy is do we just assume that that doesn't matter that it doesn't bear fruit right do we assume that the policies that flowed from that assumption about who could be a citizen and who couldn't that those policies would create damage perhaps in their own time but not in hours as if somehow you just flick a switch you pass a law and all of the inertia of
19:30 - 20:00 the past several generations goes away i mean inertia we understand right we learn newton's first law of motion when we're kids in maybe elementary or middle school i don't know i don't depends on where you went to school when you learned it but certainly usually by middle school we're learning this concept of inertia so if i roll a ball down a hill it's going to keep going until it runs into something you pick it up or it meets a certain degree of level ground where the friction ultimately slows it down and stops it right we understand that but inertia isn't just a property of the physical universe it's a
20:00 - 20:30 property of the socioeconomic and the political and the cultural universe that which happens in one generation affects the next and the next and the next right on down the line and that's not just about race that's about everything y'all that's about our own family histories right you learn that when you go to therapy i've been in therapy for four years i highly recommend it if you haven't tried it um the thing you learn in therapy is you got to deal with your stuff and you'll be dealing with your stuff forever you don't ever stop dealing with it right you just try to learn how to
20:30 - 21:00 manage it and how to figure out where the damage comes from and stop creating the damage in your own life i mean that's what you do as an individual you gotta grapple with the past not just the pretty nobody goes to therapy to talk about the pretty right you go to therapy to talk about the not so pretty and if you have to do that as an individual to be healthy then i know that 330 million of us have to do it collectively to be healthy that shouldn't be a radical concept but people are so afraid of it we'd rather remain in
21:00 - 21:30 denial both about our history and the impact that it continues to have on the present the fact that right now the typical sort of median midpoint white family or household in this country has about 12 times the net worth of the median african-american household about 10 times out of the median latino household about eight times that of the median indigenous household depending on which data you're looking at right now the typical white household headed by a high school dropout has more
21:30 - 22:00 net worth on average than the typical black household headed by a college grad think about that the typical white household headed by someone that didn't even finish high school is higher than the typical net worth of a black household headed by someone who graduated from college suggesting that racial inequity is not a past problem but an ongoing problem and part of it rooted in that past because when you have certain groups of people allowed to accumulate wealth over the years and others not allowed to and then pass that down to their descendants
22:00 - 22:30 you will see those wealth disparities it's not because white folks worked harder black folks did some of the hardest work and brown folks have done some of the hardest work ever done on this land it's not that white folks have superior investment wisdom i mean good lord right i mean it was not black people that tanked wall street in 2008 in 2009. right wasn't poor people wasn't black folks wasn't brown folks wasn't undocumented just the the whitest richest smartest white boys on wall street
22:30 - 23:00 all of them very bright and gifted right or at least in the eyes of their parents right it was the best and brightest that tanked the economy so white folks aren't smarter with money that's not why we have more wealth we're not harder working that's not why we have more wealth we had a five lap head start and an eight lap race and look here's the way that goes if you have a five lap head start and eight lap race you are supposed to hit the tape first that is how that works right and in fact if you have a five lap hell if you just have a one lap head start you should hit the tape first unless you are
23:00 - 23:30 a slower runner but here's the problem right if you have that head start the odds are you will cross that tape first and then we'll pat you on the back for being fast not acknowledging the social context within which the head start was obtained right that's not to say that every white person has the same the same head start right because whiteness is mediated by other things it's mediated by socioeconomic status it's mediated by gender and sex it's mediated by sexuality and sexual orientation it's mediated by geographic
23:30 - 24:00 location of birth it's mediated by lots of things there's no there's no one system of privilege there's multiple ones right and every one of us in this room has got some area where we're the privileged group i guarantee it so it may not be race it may not be sex or gender but it might be being physically able-bodied in a world where disabled folks face real obstacles that's a privilege isn't it to not have to think about that right it might simply be uh you know being straight being cisgendered having a college degree
24:00 - 24:30 right um i'm five foot eight in a tall man's world i mean you know i'd like to be six two but i'm just not right and so people who are six two six they have the the privilege in that tall man's world in particular of not really knowing what it is to be anything but that but again not all these are the same i'm not saying they're all equal in terms of their social impact i'm just saying there's multiple ones right there's there's dozens of categories where certain people are the dominant group and other people are subordinate or often marginalized groups and all we're
24:30 - 25:00 really saying when we talk about something like white privilege is for us to analogize that and to recognize that when you have any kind of privilege you have the luxury don't you of being oblivious to other people's reality so that able-bodied person gets to be oblivious to what disabled folks face it doesn't make that able-bodied person a bigot doesn't make that able-bodied person ableist in the oppressive sense of that word right it doesn't mean that person is hard and hard-hearted and prejudiced toward people with disabilities it just
25:00 - 25:30 means that they have the luxury of not knowing some stuff and if you're oblivious to things the odds are you won't know anything about them even if you're a really good person who cares deeply you just have the luxury of not knowing everybody's oblivious to something i'm oblivious to calculus y'all because i never took it and the reason i didn't take it is thankfully the metro nashville public school system did not require it of me and if nashville public schools were not going to make me take calculus i was not going to volunteer for the abuse that was for damn sure right
25:30 - 26:00 just wasn't for me so i avoided it now if i were to stand up on the stage and try to do calculus for y'all if you've taken it you would know in like five seconds that i do not know what i am talking about you'd be like did he take the class no fool didn't you just listen i didn't take the class that's the point so i shouldn't be trying to talk about it like i know what i'm talking about but in this country we do have don't we a lot of white folks who think that we know if racism is real better than black and brown folks know if it's real and we never took the class metaphorically
26:00 - 26:30 speaking you know what i mean right they wrote the book we didn't even take the class and we trust our own judgment more than them we have a lot of men running around saying well i don't think rape culture is a thing oh okay i don't think sexism and patriarchy and misogyny are real but you know i've been a man for a long time i've been a guy for you know and white for 53 years so generally when a guy tells me there's no sexism i check with women that's just me right i i tend to i just want a verification i just need to check with
26:30 - 27:00 women and oddly they virtually never agree is that because those men are horrible awful mean nasty people i mean some of them are but most of them are perfectly lovely human beings but they have the luxury of not knowing what women experience straight and cisgendered folks same thing right able-bodied people same thing people who are christian in a mostly christian hegemonic society same thing we all got some area where we get to be oblivious but here's the problem when you're oblivious to other people's reality and you still
27:00 - 27:30 insist that you know it better than they do that creates greater conflict and instead of sitting back and listening and believing when people tell you what their experiences are you'll argue the point so when people say there's systemic racism you'll say there isn't even though you haven't done the research you haven't done the homework you don't even really know what's being said by it sometimes i've heard people say well when you say there's systemic racism tim you're just saying all white people are bigots no that the word system
27:30 - 28:00 says that that's not what i was talking about right not talking about you why are you taking it personally if i said systemic racism that's not about you at all you're an individual we're not talking about individual bigotry i'm not really interested in how many white people are or are not individually racist that's fascinating sociological data to compile for certain types of work it's not what systemic racism is about systemic racism is about the way that racial injustice is embedded in the institutional structures of the society
28:00 - 28:30 and especially when people are not trying to be bigoted that's the dirty little secret because at least the overt stuff we can see right the overt stuff is is is as horrifying as it is it's the easiest thing in the world to fight when it comes to racism because everybody can see it so you see those boys in charlottesville in 2017 and it's like oh nazis okay well most of us see that and see nazis apparently some see that and see a handful of good people mixed in with the nazis which is weird because if you were a good person at a rally full of nazis
28:30 - 29:00 you would leave but only after hitting the nazis that's what a good person would do you know that's what my my grandparents generation had a way of dealing with nazis somehow we seem to have forgotten what that is i don't know why but when we see that kind of overt racism we know it we can condemn it and most of us do i remember back in uh 1998 i think it was i was already doing this work and had been for several years i remember that was the year that a guy named james byrd black man in texas was dragged behind the truck
29:00 - 29:30 by two overtly racist clan members i believe or some other white supremacist organization killed by being dragged behind a truck down a dirt road and and it was a horrible crime it made a lot of news you know it was talked about pretty pretty much every day for weeks and a big national news story about racism which it should have been but what was fascinating is that very same year 1998 and this data by the way is the same still today roughly that same year according to the centers
29:30 - 30:00 for disease control there were about 50 000 black folks in this country who died who would not have died had they had the same access to high quality healthcare as white folks right so because of an institutional inequity and access to good health care 50 000 people died that didn't make the news i mean it did it was like on page b-24 of the new york times or something right small little story that very few people would have seen wasn't on television they didn't talk about it because it's hard to talk about 50 000
30:00 - 30:30 isn't it hell it's hard to talk about nearly a million dead from covid right unless you know someone then you can talk about them it's always easier to talk about the one person than it is these larger numbers because they sort of overwhelm us but the problem is also that it's easier to talk about racism when it's somebody being dragged behind a truck by identifiable hateful people that it is an institutional inequity where there's not a single bigot in the room necessarily right because then you can't identify a bigot then it's harder to look at because it's harder to distance yourself
30:30 - 31:00 from it you can distance yourself from those guys that drag james bird behind the truck you can distance yourself from those boys in charlotte's but you can distance yourself from david duke and you can say i'm not like those people but you're part of a system and a structure that denies equal access to good high quality health care which means we're all implicated in that and we'd rather not think about it we just want to divide the world into good people and bad people but here's the truth good people get caught up in bad systems all the time policing is actually a really good
31:00 - 31:30 example of that there are people who go into law enforcement for all the right reasons i've known some right the problem is if you go into a system that is structured on the basis of domination and control and specifically domination and control of certain communities don't be surprised when the system changes the good person more quickly than the good person changes the system because when the good person tries to challenge that system what happens to them they're the ones who get run out of that institution look up joe crystal and
31:30 - 32:00 michael wood jr these are two white former officers in the baltimore police department both of whom got into policing for exactly the right reasons one of them i can't remember which i think it was michael wood his parents had both been members of the nypd and they both both wood and crystal at roughly overlapping times while they were in the baltimore pd saw the corruption saw the brutality saw police officers planting drugs and weapons on suspects saw the racism and
32:00 - 32:30 they decided to call it out because that's not what policing meant to them and as soon as they called it out they were the ones who were having dead rats left on their dashboards in their cars or on their desks in the station they were the ones who when they would get called out uh to to make a run for uh for a crime that was being committed and they were the ones who were supposed to respond they wouldn't send backup for these two guys right just as a way to intimidate them and say this is what happens when you rat out your fellow officers right these were good men trying to do the right
32:30 - 33:00 thing you might have seen the video what was it like three weeks ago it was going around viral video i don't remember what community it was in but there was a police officer who came upon another officer brutalizing in the process of brutalizing a man of color and the it was a woman officer came upon a male officer both of them white saw the officer brutalizing this guy tried to get in between and de-escalate the situation she's trying to do the right thing the white officer grabs his colleague by the throat and shoves her up against the car because she's trying to de-escalate the
33:00 - 33:30 situation so now he's trying to hurt his colleague and the union came out and defended his actions right that's a system problem right because you can have all the you know we talk about good apples and bad apples man you can have lots of good apples but if they're either not willing to stand up to the bad ones or when they do they get run out of the orchard then what good is your fruit analysis right at that point it just doesn't matter at all right these three guys that stood around and watched derek chauvin kill george floyd just got convicted of something today i
33:30 - 34:00 didn't have a chance to read the article i guess failure to provide support i don't know if they got top line charges uh guilt but i mean here are three guys who would say oh well we're good cops you know we didn't do that that was that guy but if you stand around while other people are doing the deed then you're part of that problem too so it isn't about good people and bad people it's about good people caught up in bad systems right you have to change the system if you go into a sausage factory and stand at the end of the conveyor belt don't be surprised when it gives you sausage that's what it was meant to do right if you're waiting for the chicken
34:00 - 34:30 nuggets at the end of the belt you're going to be sorely disappointed right read the sign on the outside of the it says sausage it's going to give you sausage that's what it was programmed to do if you want different outcomes you have to change those systems but those of us in the white community are too often afraid to even acknowledge that there's something to change and it's been a long-standing problem even if you were to go back i mean this is how you know we're dealing with a sort of pathological denial here and i'm not saying that white people are incapable of knowing the truth i mean like i said
34:30 - 35:00 there have always been some who did know i named some of them those abolitionists and civil rights folks and those white folks who are joining the struggle right now clearly have a different viewpoint but white america writ large has been consistently and persistently in denial not just in 2022 that's one thing i can almost forgive that right i get it you look around in 2022 especially if you're a young person and you see all that old footage from birmingham in 63 which i realized first of all black and white film footage to young people might as well be moses with stone tablets i
35:00 - 35:30 mean it is incredibly antiquated and hard to imagine that that even is real right i don't think they make black and white televisions anymore right i mean this just seems so old school and so for young people i'm sure it seems like a million years ago um and so when you look at that and you think about segregation and you think about the the period of mass lynchings in the early part of the 20th century and you think about the death of reconstruction in the 1870s and you think about enslavement obviously before all of that i guess it's easy to say
35:30 - 36:00 well come on i mean compared to that look how much progress has been made and that would be disrespectful to the memories of the martyrs of the movement to deny that there has been some progress i'm not going to deny that that would disrespect their memories and it would disrespect their struggle of course there has been but the problem is that in every generation white folks have said that we've made all the progress we need to make that has been our line consistently that's not just in 2022 that's not just in 1992 or 1982. that was the same in
36:00 - 36:30 1962. keep in mind 1962 the civil rights laws hadn't even been passed yet civil rights act of 64. voting right 65 fair housing act 1968 1962 the civil rights movement is in full swing and that year the gallup organization asked white americans hey do you think black children have the same chance to get a good education as white children now this is 1962 y'all this is eight years after brown v board but long
36:30 - 37:00 before any school system had really implemented the strictures of that decision to create equity with all deliberate speed was the term right to desegregate the schools and create more equitable schools they didn't do it equitably speedy or anything else right 1962 it's an easy question that white america was asked by gallup do you think black children have the same chance to get a good education as white children the only logical rational answer is no and yet 85 out of 100 white people answered yes
37:00 - 37:30 even in 62 in 1963 gallup came back again and they asked a different question they said do you think that black people are treated they might have used the term negro at the time but they basically said do you think black folks are treated equally in your community in housing in employment and education so it's a bit broader scope all three of those areas and specifically do you think that they're treated equally in them and again it's 1963. the answer is no the laws haven't been passed the civil rights act is in full swing that's the
37:30 - 38:00 year of the march on washington you don't get 225 000 people on the mall in washington if everything's cool if everything's fine if everything's fair if everything's equitable right obviously something was wrong but when gallup asked white americans that question two out of three white folks even in 63 said yes everything is fine also in those years from 1961 all the way through 65 the clear majority upwards of 75 of white americans when asked do you think that it is proper for
38:00 - 38:30 black people to continue protesting for their rights and liberties upwards of 75 percent consistently said no that enough had been done and it was time for black people to quote take advantage of the opportunities they've been given this is before the laws have even had a chance to either be passed or implemented or have any real effect and most white folks were already ready to throw in the towel my guess is if we had had modern polling in the 1920s the same thing would have been viewed well you know it was really bad back during the slavery days but at least
38:30 - 39:00 we're past that but then the irony is you can go back to the days of enslavement if we had modern poland you know what would happen you know they had modern polling but we did have little southern town newspapers where the editorials would always say things like if these yankees would just leave us alone and get out of our business everything would be fine because we get along with everybody down here right one of the most prominent physicians of the 1850s was a guy named samuel cartwright he was a doctor whose theories were taught in medical schools around the country very prominent
39:00 - 39:30 physician also a defender of slavery and he came up with the idea of a mental illness that he ascribed to black people who actually ran away from the plantation because he believed you must be mentally ill to run away from the plantation couldn't just be because you want to get the hell out of out of enslavement you must be mentally ill you must have a problem he came up with this term a medical term drapetomania is what he called it right so even in the 1850s at the height of the most vicious of these forms of racial oppression you had prominent
39:30 - 40:00 white people that were like what nothing to see here y'all so i guess my question to you is if white america by and large not all white people clearly but if white america writ large in generation after generation after generation has not seen the problem for what it is even during periods when it obviously was a problem and we can all agree on that now looking back in retrospect what does that tell us about the powers of discernment held by white america writ large and this isn't a criticism of
40:00 - 40:30 white people's intelligence or their morality it is to say that when you don't have to know better you won't know better because you have the luxury of being oblivious that isn't a criticism of white people what it is is a criticism of how white supremacy affects the thinking of white folks and makes it hard for us to see what's right in front of us until 50 years later and then we look back and go oh my gosh it was really bad back then wasn't it my goodness so we don't know that's terrible my god look at that
40:30 - 41:00 right but grandma didn't think it was such a big deal mom and dad didn't think it was such a big deal which is probably why they don't want folks seeing those books in third grade and fourth grade and fifth grade they don't want folks learning about ruby bridges trying to go into that school in new orleans because grandma might have been the one throwing tomatoes at her head right that's the bottom line you don't really want to talk about the sit-ins in nashville because might have been your dad or your granddad right who was going down there pouring milkshakes and putting cigarettes out on the necks of the protesters who knows you just don't want to find out do you so you rather not
41:00 - 41:30 talk about it but we have to talk about it here's why we have to talk about it this is not and this is a piece that often gets left out a lot of times even by people in the racial justice movement it gets left out so it's not just left out by critics of it it's left out even by those of us who are in it and we have to make sure not to do this right we have to make it very clear that racial justice work it's not charity work right this is not something white people ought to do for black people or for folks of color more broadly right this is not charity work this is this is
41:30 - 42:00 self-help work what i mean by that is this system of racial inequity is also unhealthy for us this is not just a black issue a brown issue it's a white issue just like i would argue that sexism and patriarchy and misogyny are bad for men because they teach us a particular way of being a man which is if you haven't noticed incredibly dysfunctional way of being in the world not just for women but even for ourselves and for the boys that we raise for those who have sons right but racism too is incredibly dangerous for
42:00 - 42:30 us to indulge as white people we need to be concerned about racial inequity for our own sake as well what do i mean by that let me give you a few examples so last couple of days i was in indiana and i was speaking in northern indiana sort of up near gary and hammond which is not too far from chicago an area that in the 60s and the 70s was huge industrial hub all kinds of mills and plants operating there and then in the late 70s and throughout the 80s really got hollowed out by de-industrialization a lot of the
42:30 - 43:00 plants closed companies moved overseas to take advantage of cheaper wages a lack of labor unions lack of environmental regulation etc same story we hear today continues right started that started in places like gary and also places like you know pittsburgh and all throughout what they call the rust belt right all these sort of large industrial towns in the east and upper midwest starts in the late 70s and early 80s goes all throughout that decade into the 90s and for most of that time what was
43:00 - 43:30 interesting was the the dialogue the narrative that you heard from a lot of white americans when people in those communities were hit hard by that job loss those are heavily black communities by the way right disproportionately places like gary disproportionately black so when those communities were hollowed out by the loss of manufacturing jobs the people that were hardest hit were black folks and that's why their unemployment rates were consistently two to three to three and a half times higher all throughout that period right and a lot of times when white folks
43:30 - 44:00 would hear about that there wasn't a lot of sympathy that would attach people would say things like well you just need to move where the jobs are right pull yourself up by your bootstraps and go find a job if there's no jobs where you live you should go where there are jobs and now here we are 40 years later and that hollowing out of the industrial base and the manufacturing sector has continued and now you've got a lot of white towns and small towns pennsylvania and central pa and in ohio and all around the country that are closing down and what do we have those same kinds of communities saying when are you going to
44:00 - 44:30 bring the jobs back politicians i want you to bring those jobs back to my small dying town well wait a minute why don't you just get up and move oh you didn't mean that for you you meant that for them because you were judging them for not having a job but now that you lost your job you got a pink slip at the age of 52 and you don't know what you're going to do with yourself now because nobody's hiring and you're staring down the barrel of retirement but isn't it ironic because if you cared about de-industrialization when those were the victims if you hadn't had the luxury one
44:30 - 45:00 might say the privilege of ignoring their pain maybe you'd have done something to ensure that there were job opportunities for those folks that there were ways to retrain and rehire them for other kinds of jobs but because we didn't care about that because it wasn't hurting us 40 years later it comes back and it bites us on the behind too see that's what happens when you indulge in justice on that side of town just wait right just wait it's coming to get you think about the opioid crisis
45:00 - 45:30 why is it that we've had such excess death in white small town and rural communities among non-college educated working class white people since the late 1990s well obviously one reason is that the pharmaceutical companies pushed a lot of this stuff like oxy out into the public for profit reasons so there's that right without sufficient regulation but it's also right interesting to note the reaction to the opioid crisis as opposed to the first opioid crisis we had in the 70s
45:30 - 46:00 which was a heroin crisis mostly disproportionately in the cities affecting black folks and brown folks and then the crack epidemic in the 1980s disproportionately urban located affecting black folks and brown folks what was the rhetoric when it was black and brown folks in the 70s and in the 80s and early 90s the rhetoric was we don't need treatment we don't need rehab these people are moral reprobates and criminals and we need to put them in jail put them in prison cells put all the money in locking folks away three strikes are out etcetera etcetera etcetera there was no sympathy there was
46:00 - 46:30 no empathy there was no compassion or concern we treated drug use and drug addiction as a criminal matter not a public health matter then we're surprised that 30 and 40 years later there's no rehab for little jimmy john down at the trailer park there's a reason little jimmy john can't get rehab because you didn't put the money into rehab you have a prison cell waiting for him if you'd like that that's our only housing program for folks that have an addiction problem right so again the irony is we in the
46:30 - 47:00 white community had the privilege of ignoring that problem when it was just hitting those folks and now it's hitting us right once again you see that privilege tastes really good until it doesn't it works for you really well until it doesn't this is an important piece because sometimes people that talk about white privilege make it sound like it's just all good it's just win win win win always winning but actually it sets you up for a fall right all that winning sets you up because you don't know how to lose now you understand when you've been winning
47:00 - 47:30 all that time you don't know how to lose so when that plant closes down and that wasn't supposed to happen to you i had a guy write to me several years ago that he'd been unemployed for like 24 weeks and i guess he was like a public library reading one of my pieces about white privilege and he emailed me he's real angry he's like what white privilege i've been out of work for 24 weeks what do you have to say to me first i just said man i'm i'm terribly sorry because that is awful and i can't imagine how hard that must be because you got to show compassion you know it wouldn't have made any sense for me to say well you think you have it bad why don't you talk to some black people
47:30 - 48:00 like that wouldn't have been very nice right this guy was clearly hurting and i said man if i knew of any job opportunities that i could throw your way or anybody you know in your field i'd do it but i just don't i said but if you're willing to engage i'll give you this piece of analysis or i don't know way to help you think about it he said sure i got nothing else to do today so i said well his name was jeremy i said jeremy it's interesting to me that in the email that you sent to me one of the things you said was i did everything right i played by the rules
48:00 - 48:30 i worked hard i kept my nose clean i worked 50 and 60 hour weeks i worked on weekends i didn't take vacations i barely saw my kids for days at a time i did everything right and i said when you say it like that right and then he said this wasn't supposed to happen to me that was the infamous line you didn't say this wasn't supposed to happen like nobody should be unemployed for 24 weeks which i think is true like we ought to have enough job opportunities for people to not be unemployed that long but he didn't say that right what he said was it wasn't supposed to happen to him
48:30 - 49:00 because he had made all the right moral choices the implication being all those other poor suckers who were in my position they didn't play by the rules so it's okay if it happens to them but just not me you see in other words jeremy been winning so long he didn't know how to lose that privilege set him up for a fall and the minute that things went south in his world he didn't have the skin that was thick enough to be resilient jeremy should have been listening to black people for a few years and he would have known the system was a scam
49:00 - 49:30 if jeremy had been listening he would have known the boss didn't love him either right he would have known that that plant doesn't love you that plant loves money so if that plant wants to close down and move it's going to close down and move it doesn't care about your pension it doesn't care about your children it doesn't care about your neighborhood it doesn't care about your marriage it doesn't care about any of that it cares about money and black folks knew it because they'd been living that right but sometimes white folks have had the luxury of thinking that the system is exactly as it's been described and then we're not prepared for the reality
49:30 - 50:00 that's what privilege can do to you sets you up for a fall covet is an excellent example of this why do you think the united states has been the epicenter of failure on the planet when it comes to this thing we got the money we we got this vaccine turned out i mean you know like we did some stuff right pretty impressive and we're still the epicenter of failure with like 900 000 or whatever the number is now that have died why is it still happening we could make it just about politics and
50:00 - 50:30 that's the easy way out but let me say it's deeper than that go back to when this thing first became really a national story in march of 2020 when the lockdowns began and we all sort of started paying attention to it right what was really interesting is by the time that that happened we all started masking we all started distancing people were taking it pretty seriously even the president who didn't want to mask himself was telling other people grudgingly to do it course he thought we'd be back to normal by easter so that was incredibly naive but at least he was saying the right thing like take this seriously
50:30 - 51:00 tucker carlson conservative talk show host was on tv every night saying this is real y'all this is not the flu this is not just a cold you need to take it seriously there were other talk show hosts that were a lot less concerned than he was but he was very adamant that it was real that was in march april 7th something interesting happened the new york times front page story and the washington post front page story that day were about the data on who was doing the disproportionate dying from
51:00 - 51:30 covid and specifically that black folks were right that the mortality rates for black folks were like two and a half times the mortality rates for white folks that comes out on april 7th of 2020. now we all sort of knew that intuitively but we didn't have it really confirmed until then and all of a sudden what happens within two weeks of that news you have all these protests at state capitals white folks showing up with camouflage and semi-automatic weapons because semiautomatic weapons are known ways to kill you know viruses
51:30 - 52:00 right showing up with with heavy weaponry and camouflage demanding the right to get back to normal i want to go back to work i want to go back to the hair salon i want to go back to buffalo wild wings i want to go back to my life the way it was and by god this shutdown is wrong two weeks earlier they weren't saying that all of a sudden they're starting to think this isn't going to get them see because the data and the news are telling them it's mostly those people over there so even if they're not overtly racist or bigoted people they had the luxury of letting their guard down the day that that new york times
52:00 - 52:30 article comes out that night on tucker carlson's show that night he goes on and basically says you know the most important thing that we and he does it just like this because he always furrows his brow exactly like this like like there's some dead animal in front of him that he can't quite figure out what it is he says you know the most important thing is obviously that we need to figure out how to get our people back to work literally the day before he's talking about how deadly and dangerous covet is and then the story comes and maybe this is coincidence maybe it's a coincidence but i sort of doubt it i had brit hume on as
52:30 - 53:00 a guest that night and britt hume actually says you know it seems like maybe kovid wasn't as deadly as we thought well for whom like the story that morning said it was real deadly for these folks in this community but see now the white folks were hearing it and saying well maybe it's not as big a deal then the president comes out and says it's time to open things back up so we take our foot off the break y'all beginning in april and may and after that all through the summer and then what happens then we have another explosion and very interestingly here's the ironic point in april of 2020 only about 30 of the
53:00 - 53:30 deaths from covid were among white people like 29 or 30 the rest were folks of color black folks indigenous folks latinx folks right by december of 2020 58 of the people dying each month were white all throughout 2021 that number remained elevated and now 62 percent of all the people who have died from covet in this country are in fact white so when you take your foot off the break because you think it's not going to affect you and have the privilege of indulging someone else's pain
53:30 - 54:00 you wait around long enough and you're burying grandma right a lot of white folks in this country now that have lost loved ones because we didn't take it seriously enough and the only thing that i can assume as to why we didn't take it seriously enough is because we didn't see ourselves as the ones who were going to pay the price because if we had we wouldn't have taken that risk i mean what do you think if that article had said that white people were dying at three times the rate of black people do you think those white folks would have been going massless to the state capitol with guns demanding the right to go back to work no man they
54:00 - 54:30 would have been at the state capitol demanding the right to stay home in their pajamas and get checks sent to them every week right not and not it isn't just race either what if that story had had said um that it was young people rather than older people because we don't value older people the same way either right you hear that all the time in the wake of coveted people would say things like well but oh you lost a loved one but they were old right they were old they were like 80 right and they were sick right they had a pre-existing condition right what think about what that says what you're saying is there's a
54:30 - 55:00 hierarchy of human value and it's not just that white's up here and black and brown's down here it's that young is here and old is here and healthy is here and sick is here it's social darwinism applied to the modern era right it's just saying well but they had a pre-existing kid i mean they had asthma right so as if to say that they have asthma because they're like nine and they smoke right like somehow they brought it on themselves but that's what we do in this culture you know why because we have been taught something that is at the root of this and this is where i'll end and then we'll take some questions
55:00 - 55:30 the thing that keeps this going more than anything it's not it's not bigoted parents teaching their kids bigotry i mean that happens but that's not it something far more pernicious than that it's the fundamental foundational belief of this country's political ideology that we don't interrogate nearly enough what am i talking about that notion of rugged individualism right that notion of meritocracy that idea that if you work hard you can make it anybody can make it if they just work hard enough if you believe that and we've been
55:30 - 56:00 saying that we said that back during the period of enslavement for god's sake we said it when women couldn't vote we said it during segregation so we knew it was i mean we said it we knew it wasn't right just like when jefferson said all men are created equal endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights among these life liberty and the pursuit of happiness he owned 200 and something people when he said it so he didn't mean it we have this habit of saying stuff that we hadn't really processed and filtered right but this idea that all you got to do is work hard and you can make it that's a
56:00 - 56:30 race neutral idea in theory right you could have that same mentality in a society where everybody looked alike quote unquote racially or ethnically right or skin color-wise but if i tell you that as a child and that is the that is the the the cornerstone of the secular gospel if if america were a bible that would be genesis 1 1 right anybody can make it if they just work hard if i tell you that and you come to believe it and then you look around and what do you see you see white people up
56:30 - 57:00 here disproportionately not exclusively but disproportionately and you see black and brown folks down here disproportionately not exclusively but disproportionately what what do you what do you conclude rationally how do you how do you process that your default position given the ideology of rugged individualism tells you that these white people must be in some way superior or else they wouldn't be there and these black and brown folks must not want it as badly they must not try as hard they must have something wrong with their culture or their family
57:00 - 57:30 or their genes right racism becomes almost rational if you're not questioning that ideology by the way it's not just racism it does sexism too if you see men disproportionately up here and women disproportionately down here you start thinking well i guess those women just don't want those careers they just don't want to work as hard they're not as smart whatever right same thing with the class system oh the rich are just that brilliant listen y'all the the top one percent of people in this country in the mid 70s owned 22 of the financial wealth now
57:30 - 58:00 even that was pretty good right for one percent to own 22 of the paper so to speak the financial wealth is pretty impressive but now it's 48 do we actually think that the wealthiest 1 of americans like more than doubled their brain power in the last generation and a half like how do they do that like do they have more than 24 hours in a day that the rest of us have like jeff bezos has some type of wormhole that he goes into when he flies up into the air and his you know the thing he flies into the air and he just hides in the wormhole and gets work done
58:00 - 58:30 when the clock is stopped for the rest of us no right it has nothing to do with work effort it has to do with the way the economic system benefits some disproportionately to others but if you've been taught that where you end up is all about your own effort and you're never really interrogating that then it becomes really easy to go oh inequality what are you going to do right i mean there's nothing you can do about it and that's the worst thing of all that's worse i'd rather have a bigot to deal with than that right because at least the bigot i know
58:30 - 59:00 exactly where they're coming from right but the one that sort of goes right what do you do with that one that indifference right that lack of concern that assume that that assumption of normalcy when we look at inequality that's the death knell of justice that ensures that we'll never become the country that we've promised that we intend to become so we have to fight that and that's a hard battle right that's like going to church on sunday three rows deep in the pews and right after the minister finishes preaching you like raise your hand and you hop up on the chair you're like
59:00 - 59:30 that was nice but uh there's no god right so why are we here i mean this is sort of silly right like nobody responds well to they don't invite you back to the church when you do that they don't invite you back to the back room with the cookies and the punch they don't just tell you to go just leave right and so when you stand up and question the fundamental core assumptions of the country don't expect to be patted on the back for it in fact they'll tell you that that's un-american that's subversive that's what the critics of critical race theory and systemic racism analysis is teaching kids to hate their country no we're
59:30 - 60:00 trying to teach young people to love their country enough to make it what it says it is trying to actually subvert those who have subverted justice for far too long right yes it's revolutionary yes it is subversive it is trying to overthrow injustice and allow america to become what it said it was so many years ago but has never actually been there's nothing that is more patriotic and loving of country than that there is nothing that is more admirable than that that is the work that we have to continue and that those of us who are
60:00 - 60:30 white in particular have to join following those leaders of color who have done this work the hard way for 400 years too often without us we have to join that smaller tradition but meaningful tradition of solidarity and allyship and i appreciate so much the opportunity to add that voice to your month of incredible events thank you all so much for being here i appreciate you and i'll take some questions if you have a few of them for me thank you
60:30 - 61:00 shouldn't let me know i'm i'm going to ask you more of an academic question are you familiar with the concept of discursive hegemony by ernesto leclow and chantal moof you're going to have to describe i mean i am but you're going to need to describe it for me to make sure that i get it right it's the idea that a
61:00 - 61:30 definition by definition is excluding so when tj said all men are created equal there's always been an antagonism against that definition and those antagonisms have shown up in the civil rights movement in abolitionism and all of that fun stuff we're having dual antagonisms right now it seems to that idea of equality because as you said there's that backlash the idea that we've done enough
61:30 - 62:00 at the same time for those of us who are on this side yeah we notice we recognize that equality has not been reached on many fronts not just in race but in sex and in gender identity and non-gender identity and so i i guess my question to you is how would you rhetorically or discursively package
62:00 - 62:30 that because that's i think i think that's you know fundamentally we hear the words and that's where people freeze up yeah i mean there are reasons for that i think that um first i would say that i'm i'm a bit skeptical about the power of discourse alone to change people's thinking it's it's important narrative is important storytelling is incredibly
62:30 - 63:00 important i would say storytelling is more important than the academic analysis and the words that we use like i don't i don't get tripped up for instance about certain words if people want to choose other words to describe certain things because they think they're more pedagogically effective then they can do that i think the important thing is uh uh really two things that are critical one is the power of stories that describe the reality that we're trying to approach now tonight i did a little more analytically and politically i told a few stories but i you know in my book white like me my memoir to make all
63:00 - 63:30 these same points about privilege without any data without any scholarly analysis simply with personal stories and my guess is many of us have those stories including many white folks who have stories that demonstrate privilege in all of its different facets and its complications and i think the the discursive strategy for pushing back on on the critique of equity uh is is a storytelling strategy more than an analytical academic intellectual strategy because
63:30 - 64:00 what we know from from neuroscience and and the research on on uh brain science research is that people respond far better to stories and they do facts because they will always sort of find way in fact what we know is the more facts you give and the stronger analysis you give that counter someone's preconceived notions the more they double down on their first thought right and there's a lot of reasons for that that are evolutionary in in nature in some ways and makes it really hard to break through so i think we want to we want to ramp up the storytelling especially in small group settings we're
64:00 - 64:30 dealing with people in classrooms we're dealing with people in churches and non-profit organizations and community organizations where we really have the opportunity to delve deeply into some of this stuff and the second thing is is you have to actually engage and practice an action right so it's very important that we're out in the community meeting people and and forging relationships because you know it's funny whenever i do a zoom call and i've obviously done like so many people a lot of them in the last couple of years since covid um
64:30 - 65:00 i have this bookshelf behind me in my office that has all my books on it and and um i'd like to tell you that i've read all those books i have not i've i've read a lot of them and i know where they are if i need them or if my kids need them for a research paper but uh but i haven't read them all but but but the point is even if i had that would not be the source of what i do i don't do what i do because of some really great class i took in college although i took several on this subject
65:00 - 65:30 i don't do what i do because of some amazing book or film documentary youtube clip whatever right those have helped and they inform me and i know they inform others but i think if we really want long-term commitment to pushing back and changing this thing we have to have real relationship and and i say this as someone who for many years was somewhat skeptical of this because i would always hear people who i didn't think had a very radical political analysis talk about the importance of you know personal connections and hard
65:30 - 66:00 work and all that and i always felt that was very apolitical um but but then i actually reflected on my own history and i realized how critical that had been yes it's true uh that friendship and connection is not enough right we know every white person says they got black friends and we're usually lying i mean we so so we know that that is a trope that white folks have used for many generations when we want to get out of the conversation but just because friendship and connection isn't sufficient doesn't mean it isn't necessary because
66:00 - 66:30 when i think about why i do what i do it's not those books behind me on my zoom calls it's not the classes that i took it's effective when i was 11 years old i was on a baseball team in nashville with only two other three other white kids everybody else on the team is black and we went out to play uh scrimmage about 30 40 minutes outside in an ex-urban rural small town community and when we showed up the team wouldn't play us because they didn't want to play against the black team so they surrounded our car as we were about to leave and they were screaming the n-word at the black kids and they were screaming inward lover at the white kids
66:30 - 67:00 and the coach right i was 11. this is 1980 this is not 1950 right and that's why that and other examples like that because that day not only did i see what my friends what people i had an investment in people i loved and cared for right what they were experiencing at the hands of another person but i also saw those other white kids drawing a line in the sand and telling me that i'd crossed over right they put me on that side i'd now been excluded from the welcome table as james baldwin put it and so if we have
67:00 - 67:30 those experiences if we can create opportunities for our children and for our families and for ourselves to really get to know folks really get to know folks and have a personal investment in the well-being of other human beings who are different than ourselves and it becomes a lot easier to go forward and to do this work in a way that isn't relying on on discourse and and scholarship and analysis per se but is rooted in a real deep personal level understanding of what needs to needs to be done so i don't think there's any way to package it per se and i'm suspicious of any
67:30 - 68:00 packet you know it's like i i remember i was on this this is gonna sound like a made-up story but it's true i was on a cruise uh where i was invited to come on a cruise to give a talk about white privilege which i'm totally not making that up it was an idea cruise it was sort of like a ted talk in the sea kind of thing but still like when they call me and they're like do you want to go on a cruise ship and talk about white privilege i'm like yeah like what's but it's not even like a talk like all i have it's just performance art like i'm gonna go grab shrimp off
68:00 - 68:30 the buffet i'm gonna stand up at the podium i'm gonna go there the speech is over like we just talked about we're on a boat in the middle of the ocean talking about white privilege but i gave the talk and um and afterward these very well-meaning completely earnest and entirely aggravating people from silicon valley a lot of tech people were on the boat there's a lot of a lot of uh there was a bunch there was like it was weird it was like patrice colors from blm and and and then me and a bunch of activists and and progressive media people and then all these tech bros from the valley it was weird but
68:30 - 69:00 the tech bros were at my thing and they were like they're thinking you know their wheels are spinning the way that their wheel spins they come up to me afterward and they're like i think i've got an idea for an app that can track white privilege and i was and i was both fascinated and horrified right by like they're like they're like no really i've got an idea and i'm coding it right now and and it's going to be an app that'll give you like a privileged score and and i'm just like bro get back to me and just like you got to do a little bit more work talk to me
69:00 - 69:30 later you know but so i think there's like a way to package discourse that is that probably would be better than that but i think the whole concept of packaging it is is we're never going to be as good at marketing in that strict sense as the people for whom marketing was created which are the people who are trying to manipulate you usually for reasons that are not in your best interest so i think we have to play the long game that we're better at which i think we're very i think the storytelling and i think the actual making of human connection is is a strength for progressive people and for people who believe in justice and equity
69:30 - 70:00 and i think we want to play to our strengths whenever possible for sure yeah other questions any other questions okay wait wait but i'm [Music] right
70:00 - 70:30 because marketing was developed for not necessarily progressive right i find that in the moment [Music]
70:30 - 71:00 um i think i think the only way that you do it is the only way that that i've done it personally again this is a personal story thing right and so for me it's like how do you keep a movement from burning out is the same way that you keep individuals in that
71:00 - 71:30 movement from burning out the same strategies apply just on a broader collective scale and i can tell you that that for me what you know what keeps me from burning out and becoming despondent is both a recognition of the historical arc that we're involved in that this is a very long-term process and being able to let go a little bit i mean it's actually an insight from critical race theory a couple of insights from critical race theory right derek bell who's the founder essentially of
71:30 - 72:00 critical race theory uh the the father of it um now passed of course but uh professor bell's argument had two very important insights that um that he added to this conversation and more than that but these two were pertinent to your question one was that derek bell said in faces at the bottom of the well which came out i think in 93 or 94 that racism was likely to be a permanent feature of american life that it would probably never be fully conquered and defeated and when he said that as a
72:00 - 72:30 black man in america there were a lot of folks including black folks who were very upset at him for saying it like how can you be so skeptical and pessimistic and aren't you just sort of you know pissing on the graves of the of the martyrs of the movement that kind of thing and isn't that wrong and and then there were a lot of white folks who were upset how dare you because you know white folks have been told we can do anything that we want including ending racism by god so how dare you tell us that we can't and derek bell was just saying i'm not saying give up the struggle in fact i'm saying you'll be better in the struggle if you take a realistic assessment of the fact that it probably isn't going to change certainly
72:30 - 73:00 not entirely and definitely not in your lifetime once you let go of that it liberates you right it liberates you to say okay what can i do today and then what can i do tomorrow as opposed to always looking to see where the finish line is because when you're looking to see where the finish line is and you're really wanting to cross it so you can go on a vacation or something like do something else you're always frustrated because the finish line keeps getting further and further away the odds that anyone in this room today is going to be of the generation that finally ushers out this system that all these other
73:00 - 73:30 amazing people weren't able to destroy over all these generations those odds are very long and so what so so what what if we knew that it was never going to end does that relieve us relieve us of the obligation to try of course not james baldwin talked about this as well he said that we have an obligation as humans on this planet to earn our death i want you to think about what that means earn your death right by the way that you confront the conundrums of life is what he was talking about you earned the right to leave this place when you actually show
73:30 - 74:00 that you deserve to be here in the first place and how do you show that by doing something that only humans do which is organized for collective liberation that's a uniquely human thing right so uniquely human that that that even the animal rights movement had to be organized by people that's how unique it is like the mink couldn't do it themselves right the lab animals couldn't do it like humans had to do that's a unique thing so who in the world are we not to do the one thing that makes us human so to me if you take that viewpoint you don't get as burned
74:00 - 74:30 out you don't get as cynical it seems like a cynical argument but it actually fights against cynicism the second insight of bells was this notion of interest convergence that again people get very upset about but essentially what what professor bell said is look america's never really made moves for black folks unless it also was in the interest of white people that's just the truth and that and so let's work with that truth right he said for instance you know brown v board wasn't decided because the supreme court woke up and said oh my god look at all this segregation we've been tolerating right
74:30 - 75:00 that's why it was an 8-0 decision with one sitting out the decision abstaining from it those were not the most enlightened jurists at the time but they did the right thing why because we were in the middle of a cold war with the soviet union and the fight against colonialism was heating up in africa and in asia and in latin america so when you are in the middle of a propaganda campaign battle against your your sworn enemy the soviet union and you've got all these brown nations around the world that are going to be coming out from under the boot of oppression looking
75:00 - 75:30 around to see a model that they should choose you really don't want your model to be the one where the boot is on the neck of the brown person right so for purely propagandistic reasons you want to put on a better face and so the civil rights movement wins a lot of its victories not just because of the genius of its organizers also although that was important not just because of the genius of the narrative of king and others but because the timing was perfect the timing was perfect because there was a value in getting greater equity that would serve white folks as well and my
75:30 - 76:00 argument would be in the present if you want to push back on this stuff we need to find the points of interest convergence now as well even though it's unfortunate that it takes that we got to deal with what's real not what we prefer it'd be nice if everybody would fight racism because it's an evil system right it would be nice if everyone would do the right thing for the right reasons but i'm cool with people doing the right thing for the wrong reasons or for any reason if they'll just do the right thing and so if that's about not having to bury grandma from kovid because you take it seriously in the first three months then we'll do that if that's
76:00 - 76:30 about not having an opioid crisis that's ravaging and killing tens of thousands of white folks in excess of what it would otherwise do because we had the war on drugs rather than rehab and treatment then that's what we'll do right and so when we start finding those areas of interest convergence i think we can go to white folks and say look who who benefits from all this division who benefits from all this rhetoric about who from not talking about racism is that going to is that going to improve your life at all is that going to make your life any better i mean that that that's been the trick you know
76:30 - 77:00 that whiteness has done for 400 years since it was essentially created in the colonial era as a concept it was always about rich people who were now called white telling poor people now called white that their enemies were black and brown it's page one of the playbook of american politics and it hasn't served the interest of a single poor white person yet right and so i think as long as we can have that kind of conversation we can do an end run around some of this culture war rhetoric of the right by just saying like who who who benefits from this
77:00 - 77:30 you know and why and it's always about asking questions why are these people attacking this now why are they upset about this now what is the relationship between this attack on anti-racist thought and the uprising of two years ago you know is that a coincidence or do you think there's something to that well you know and i i think the more that we ask those kinds of probing questions and the more that we tell our own stories um the the better we can push back but it's going to take all kinds of strategies obviously to do it yes back there um
77:30 - 78:00 oh i'm sorry i thought we were there go ahead over here and then there okay oh sorry um i have uh some questions that may seem a little bit off topic but they lead up to an awesome question have you seen the lord of the rings um i hate to admit that i haven't but i it's like when somebody asked me if i've seen star wars i'm like the only person who's only seen the first one okay okay there you go you haven't either good no i haven't seen one but i know the story i know the story a little bit so go ahead so lord of the rings they're coming out with a new series which is um the rings
78:00 - 78:30 of power right and they've cast some people of color as characters that were potentially not originally supposed to be of color um and so there's kind of this accusation of wokeness um that's been going around especially on some of the internet forums that i'm sure of sure um i was wondering what you would recommend that i respond to that kind of accusation with because it's really frustrating because i don't know that i have the grasp of the rhetoric
78:30 - 79:00 uh in order to explain to them like why their accusation is wrong well i just find it fascinating when people take an entirely fictional story about entirely fictional beings in an entirely fictional world and assume that they're supposed to be white right which is the assumption here like why why do you was it's like that now this is a uh maybe an even more extreme example but it's part of the same thing when they when they cast the little mermaid in the real action version live-action version of little mermaid as a black as
79:00 - 79:30 a black woman as a black girl playing that role people lost their mind well ariel is white no ariel is a mermaid yo ariel ariel is not real ariel is a mermaid with a finn who lives in the water like this is not why does she have to i mean she's not a a girl she's not a redhead she's not from ireland like what like what she's she is a mermaid why can't she be black right or like when they made rue in the hunger games black and interestingly roo
79:30 - 80:00 was black in the book too folks just weren't paying attention and that's what the actual writer command said why'd you all not did y'all not get that like i didn't make it obvious but the way i was describing the community the way i was describing even some of the references to skin color like you should have picked up on it everybody just assumed roo was white and then when roo was black it's like oh how can you do that or how can you recast this person as white or that how can annie be how can annie annie the orphan this is not a daddy
80:00 - 80:30 warbucks is not real this is not a real story this could be anybody who cares right what i mean and it's look as soon as these folks will answer why they made jesus white then we can have the conversation about why the you know all these fantasy characters are are black or brown like you took a dude from the middle east who's a first century palestinian jew which is essentially north africa if you look at the map right we don't like to think of the middle east as north africa we prefer to call it asia minor and i think i know why right but you took a dude who's a first generation
80:30 - 81:00 palestinian jew and made him look like he is from bethlehem pennsylvania right and then and then and then you're worried about rue and you're worried about the little mermaid and you're worried about the characters and lord of the rings i mean i look i i think it just suggests to me that we've got a default and it doesn't make us bad people look when i read the hunger games i didn't pick up on ruby and black either necessarily i didn't i did picture a white child now it didn't bother me when uh it was a black actress playing or i was like oh that's cool and then when the author came out and said that i'm like wow that's fascinating i
81:00 - 81:30 wonder why even i thought that so it's it's a natural thing to sort of assume when you're reading a book or you're thinking about a a movie like i've always envisioned these characters in this particular way and i'll admit it's a little weird when you watch like like bridgerton and you see all these black folks in these like really prominent but like this is not really what this community would look like or like or like my wife is watching um what is it the the the thing about catherine the great uh it's it's a series also i think on netflix or called the great
81:30 - 82:00 right and there's like black people in like you know what 1700s russia or like i mean like i don't really think this is accurate but i mean but it's not enough to get flipped up about like who cares just watch the program it's a fantasy right it's a fiction if they now if they were to cast like you know albert einstein as asian dude that might be weird or something but because that's a real guy like you know you but these are fictional characters fantasy characters it seems a little bizarre to me for sure
82:00 - 82:30 right right right yeah ricky did you want to ask your question all right y'all we oh nope i lied don't nope come in now it's okay if it gets there's not a student my question is filler first of all
82:30 - 83:00 first of all that was a great presentation and i wish i could lecture like that and if i did i'd probably get a lot more out of my students so that was really awesome thank you but the the question i have is and this is not such a big issue here at the university because you know there's certain intellectual rules around knowledge here but do you have any thoughts or any advice on this this kind of climate we're living in now where any evidence to the contrary becomes just dismissible as fake news or
83:00 - 83:30 or just or just fake or just manufactured i mean we're living in this a world now where the intellectual relativism is at such an extreme yeah that you can just dismiss anything by saying it's not real or it's a conspiracy or you're making this up or you're liberal or whatever right how do you even engage in conversations with people in that context well sometimes you just can't and and the reality is that you know i've learned over the years that you can't save everybody i think the great the great uh downfall of liberal and progressive
83:30 - 84:00 minded people is that we have this un natural completely unhealthy and unrealistic faith in the power of pure reason and um and we sort of assume that if you present evidence to people that it'll work and the reality is that's not even really how we came to our views if we're really honest and humble radically humble we have to acknowledge that we all have preconceived notions and we might have picked those up in our homes we might have picked those up from our experiences and once we have our preconceived beliefs and notions we look very hard for evidence that confirms them and we all do this we engage in
84:00 - 84:30 epistemic closure we engage in in in uh selection bias and so um a confirmation bias and so if we can be honest enough to admit that about ourselves then we can have conversations with other people that are not so much about judging them for their beliefs and trying to push hours on them but saying hey you know let's let's have a discussion about why you think what you think not what you think so for instance a couple years ago i was asked by um i can't remember the school they really badly wanted me to come in and debate ben shapiro and i said um
84:30 - 85:00 i'm not going to debate ben i've done that before in an online form and it was just ridiculous i said but i'm not going to do it because i've done these debates before and when you do these debates i debated dinesh d'souza eight times you know i debate all these right-wing people and and every time it basically becomes a big pissing contest where i bring you know my crew comes in on this side of the room their crews on that side of the room and everybody leaves in the same crew nobody changes their mind or opens their mind or really listens they're just looking for the applause lines right um or the funny bits that you know and
85:00 - 85:30 i'll give them to them and then they'll go out and they'll be happy and these other people be angry and whatever um i did say though hey if you want ben and i to have a conversation about why we think what we think i would engage in a dialogue about that but the rules of that conversation would be that you cannot make any fact-based arguments at all about the subject that we're going to discuss all you're going to talk about is why the facts that you've seen have been convincing and why why for me they're not and vice versa because
85:30 - 86:00 clearly vin shapiro and i could look at and and any other person on the right we could look at the same information and come to very different conclusions there are reasons for that and the reasons are not well i'm smart and he's stupid or he's smart and i'm stupid the reasons for that are usually based on life experience right so the reason that i know white privilege is a thing is not again because of the books and the classes and the analysis it's because i've witnessed it over and over in my own life and my guess is ben shapiro's had a life where he didn't have that confrontation with that truth in the
86:00 - 86:30 same way right so that would be an interesting conversation because that doesn't mean that i'm looking at him and saying you're you're a jackass and a fool and an idiot for not knowing what i know it's just like oh do you see what this means ben this means that you're coming at it from a particular frame of reference which makes perfect sense for you and i'm coming at it from here and guess what those black and brown folks have been trying to tell us both the truth they're coming at it from their experience so let's have that conversation because i feel like if we can engage in that level of radical humility that person that we're then
86:30 - 87:00 presenting our viewpoint to maybe in the second round of go around maybe the first round is that why and the second and third round is the what and by the time we get to the what they don't feel they're being preached at they don't feel they're being looked down upon right they don't feel they're being judged for their view they feel like there's actually a conversation happening a couple years ago i was speaking right before thanksgiving this always happens when it's right before thanksgiving i'll go somewhere and students will say look thanksgiving is coming up and i'm going home and i've got this uncle and oh god it's going to be terrible and he's coming it's always an uncle it's never an aunt and it's
87:00 - 87:30 never it's never the dad it's always the dad's awful brother which i find fascinating but um anyway the uncle's coming and he's gonna do something terrible and what do i say and i said well the first thing you do let me tell you what you don't do first thing is you do not break out your intersectional feminist 101 class book textbook from class not because it's not good it's good stuff and your uncle probably could benefit from reading it but thanksgiving is not the time and the last thing that a 50 year old man wants to hear from anybody who is 19 is what they're learning up at the college right so so
87:30 - 88:00 in a sense so i mean just to be honest like nobody wants to be told that if they didn't also go up at the college so i would say do not do any of that what you should do instead is and when your uncle starts in or says something ask that person uncle friend colleague student in class tell me why you why you believe what you believe don't tell me what you believe i know i get it but why why why do you find that convincing because what i've learned in my experience is that when you ask someone to really
88:00 - 88:30 reflect on the y piece they themselves after a few minutes will start to come to a realization that they don't have a really great answer for that one they're confident about what they think they know but when they're actually asked to articulate why they know it as opposed to just think it they really don't you know they can't they can't really explain it to you but because you've asked them you've shown a degree of interest in them you've shown a certain degree of compassion you're you're letting them have a chance to explain so they don't feel judged they don't feel attacked and because you've
88:30 - 89:00 asked them they sometimes will then usually feel the need to reciprocate right like if i ask you well why do you think what you think then you're gonna listen to me when i explain why i think what i think and now we're actually having a conversation that isn't rooted in judgment or you're fake or know you're fake or i'm smart no you're smart no it's it's it's much more about hey isn't it interesting that we can look at the same information and see the world so incredibly differently what is that about let's talk about that because if we can have that at the very least the benefit is this it may not change
89:00 - 89:30 people's minds in fact um my guess is that political change is not is one at the margins it's not one with massive conversions of people one way or the other particularly on issues where there's deep psychological attachment to one's position and i think issues of race and sex and sexuality and gender and religion all fall into that category so the movement there is going to be very minimal i think winning is really about mobilization at that point i think it's about we just have to out organize the other side it isn't really about flipping their people it's about
89:30 - 90:00 protecting our people from being flipped inoculating people from being flipped and then just out organizing and beating them but but having said that at the very least if we take this rhetorical approach of questioning and humility and acknowledging our own biases acknowledging hey you know i could be wrong but i'm just telling you what i've seen the reason i wrote white like me the way that i wrote it as a memoir i just wanted to tell stories and not necessarily beat you over the head with what it means like i'll tell you a story about this encounter with cops that i had where i was clearly let off in ways
90:00 - 90:30 i would not have been had i been a person of color you tell me what it means i think i know what it means and i think you can probably tell where i'm going with it but you tell if it's not what i think it is and what these other students in the room think it is you tell me what you think it is and that's a passive approach that allows people to feel non-judgmental relationship between themselves and a professor or themselves and a colleague or a friend or a family member and i think at the very least what that gets us even if it doesn't flip people's thinking is it it brings down the heat
90:30 - 91:00 and the temperature in these conversations and that alone allows openings for other approaches that might bring about change or at the very least it reduces the danger level because right now we're at an incredibly dangerous place where the the narrative and the rhetoric and the discourse are at such an amped up level that that people are going to get hurt they're already getting hurt and so we need we need to bring down that volume considerably unless we want this thing to explode so if that's all that that does there's value in it and i think it
91:00 - 91:30 can probably accomplish more than that but at least that yeah thank you thank you so much let's all thank mr wise first time thank you thank you i'll be really quick cause i know everybody wants to get home to their everything mr wise will be signing his book if you want
91:30 - 92:00 you