[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.