[music...]

RACE: The Final Frontier

no matter what channel you watch

no matter what feed you aggregate

it seems like everybody everywhere is talking about race right now

and when everybody everywhere is talking about race

that means sooner or later

you're gonna have to tell somebody that they said something that sounded racist.

So you need to be ready and have a plan in place

for how to approach the inevitable "that sounded racist" conversation

And I'm going to tell you how to do that.

The most important thing that you've got to do

is remember the difference between the What They Did conversation

and the What They Are conversation.

Those are two totally different conversations

and you need to make sure that you pick the right one.

The What-They-Did conversation focuses strictly on the person's words and actions

and explaining why what they did and what they said was unacceptable.

This is also known as the That Thing You Said Was Racist conversation

and that's the conversation that you wanna have.

The What They Are conversation on the other hand

takes things one step further

and uses what they did and what they said to draw conclusions about what kind of person they are.

This is also known as the I Think You Are A Racist conversation.

This is the conversation you don't wanna have.

Because that conversation takes us away from the facts of what they did

into speculation about what their motives and intentions

and those are things you can only guess at

you can't ever prove

and that makes it way too easy for them to de-rail your whole argument.

And that is the part that's crucial to understand.

When you say "I think he's a racist"

that's not a bad move because you might be wrong

that's a bad move because you might be right

because if that dude really is racist

you wanna make sure you hold him accounable and don't let him off easy

And even though intuitively it feels like the hardest way to hit him is just run up on him

and say "I think your ass is racist",

when you handle it that way, you're actually letting him off easy

because you're setting up a conversation that's way too simple for him to derail and duck out of.

Just think about how this plays out every time a politician or a celebrity gets caught out there

It always starts out as a What They Did conversation

but as soon as the celebrity and their defenders get on camera

they start doing Judo flips and switching it into a What They Are conversation

"I have known this person for years and I know for a fact that they are not a racist,

and how dare you claim to know what's inside their soul just because they made one little joke

about watermelon tap-dancing and going back to Africa!"

And then you try to explain that we don't need to see inside their soul

to know that they shouldn't have said all that about the watermelon

and you try to focus on the facts of the situation

but by then it's too late

because the What They Are conversation is a rhetorical Bermuda Triangle

where everything drowns in a sea of empty posturing

until somebody just blames it all on hip-hop

and we forget the whole thing ever happened.

Don't let this happen to you.

When somebody picks my pocket

I'm not going to be chasing them down so I can figure out whether he feels like he's a thief

deep down in his heart.

I'm gonna be chasing him down so I can get my wallet back.

I don't care what he is

but I need to hold him accountable for what he did

and that's how we need to approach these conversations about race.

Treat them like they took your wallet

and focus on the part that matters:

holding each person accountable for the impact of their words and actions.

I don't care what you are.

I care about what you did.