WEBVTT 00:00:00.634 --> 00:00:02.870 [Victor] ... I feel some disappointment, 00:00:02.870 --> 00:00:07.841 but uh it's very small, it's very small. 00:00:07.841 --> 00:00:11.311 And I can appreciate that it's difficult, 00:00:11.311 --> 00:00:16.117 cause y'know, I don't always stick up for me or other people of colour also. 00:00:16.117 --> 00:00:19.736 And in fact sometimes I'm the perpetrator. 00:00:23.429 --> 00:00:28.729 It feels very strange to me to have white men bearing witness to this conversation. 00:00:28.729 --> 00:00:31.131 And that feels real vulnerable to me. 00:00:31.131 --> 00:00:37.971 First of all, to share the sort of tender parts or the hurts of racism or internalized racism, 00:00:37.971 --> 00:00:42.142 and the way we play it out amongst ourselves as people of colour 00:00:42.142 --> 00:00:51.339 I feel like I want a higher level of trust between me and you, or me and you before I do that. 00:00:51.339 --> 00:00:59.126 And um, I'm really fearful that you'll listen, and nod your heads 00:00:59.126 --> 00:01:03.330 and say "uh huh, they're just as racist as we are" 00:01:03.330 --> 00:01:09.870 I want to hear your best reassurance that you'll not mis-use this information. 00:01:09.870 --> 00:01:13.974 You think maybe I would take this information and use it to incite racism? 00:01:13.974 --> 00:01:17.115 Not so, that's an unfounded fear, Victor. 00:01:18.460 --> 00:01:25.186 [Victor] With all due respect, I want to affirm that my fear is not unfounded, 00:01:25.186 --> 00:01:28.222 it's based on personal and collective history... 00:01:28.222 --> 00:01:29.824 [David C] ... experience with others... 00:01:29.824 --> 00:01:38.098 [Victor] And while it may or may not bear out in my relationship or our relationships with you, 00:01:38.098 --> 00:01:46.707 it is, it's foundation is sound as the raising and setting of the sun. 00:01:46.707 --> 00:01:51.445 And it feels really invalidating to hear you continually evaluating my experience 00:01:51.445 --> 00:01:55.916 or the experience of other men of colour in terms of whether it's founded or not. 00:01:55.916 --> 00:01:59.386 The foundation might not be visible to you, but that doesn't mean... 00:01:59.386 --> 00:02:04.658 [David C] The only relationship that you and I have, is what we have in these encounters. 00:02:04.658 --> 00:02:06.860 We didn't know each other before then, 00:02:06.860 --> 00:02:14.401 and I do not like you grouping me with all those with whom you have had experience. 00:02:14.401 --> 00:02:20.508 That's disturbing because perhaps I'm a little different being from up here. 00:02:20.508 --> 00:02:24.430 Removed from the cities where you live. 00:02:26.780 --> 00:02:29.159 I really, I, I, I feel for you people. 00:02:29.374 --> 00:02:30.918 [Victor] That answered my question. 00:02:30.918 --> 00:02:34.955 [David C] I do, and I don't know how to really portray that, 00:02:34.955 --> 00:02:38.625 except to say that I feel the hurt that you're experiencing. 00:02:38.625 --> 00:02:43.630 And I understand the distrust you have of white men, 00:02:43.630 --> 00:02:49.449 and it's interesting to me to see that distrust also exists between people of all colours. 00:02:50.643 --> 00:02:53.407 [Victor] It's not the same, though. 00:02:53.407 --> 00:03:01.715 Because what we do to each other pushes us down and lifts you up. 00:03:01.715 --> 00:03:11.297 And what you do to us, or what white folks do to us, pushes us down and pushes you up. 00:03:12.204 --> 00:03:14.961 Not the same. 00:03:14.961 --> 00:03:19.725 And my fear is that if we talked about it, that you would say it's the same. 00:03:22.903 --> 00:03:25.406 [Lee Mun Wah] I'd like to do something we haven't done today, 00:03:25.406 --> 00:03:27.470 Roberto, would you trade places with Gordon? 00:03:27.470 --> 00:03:29.176 [Roberto] Yes. 00:03:35.449 --> 00:03:45.253 [Gordon] What, um, a person of colour, a Latino does with a Black man, or any of that, 00:03:45.253 --> 00:03:48.995 doesn't seem any bit the same to me, 00:03:48.995 --> 00:03:50.964 and I don't even term it racism. 00:03:50.964 --> 00:03:52.632 [David C] What is the difference? 00:03:52.632 --> 00:03:55.970 [Gordon] A lot. They have little or no power. 00:03:55.970 --> 00:03:59.707 I'm not big on politics and understanding that whole thing, 00:03:59.707 --> 00:04:03.377 but it's, it's, to me it's a system 00:04:03.377 --> 00:04:10.045 that we, we consciously and unconsciously use to keep people of colour down. 00:04:10.383 --> 00:04:17.858 [David C] I understand the problem that people of colour have with the white race. 00:04:17.858 --> 00:04:28.273 And when we're talking here about a man of one colour offending or giving difficulties to 00:04:28.273 --> 00:04:30.104 a man of another colour, 00:04:30.104 --> 00:04:35.376 I look at that as I am a colour, they are a colour, each one is a colour, 00:04:35.376 --> 00:04:37.845 it's the same, man to man. 00:04:37.845 --> 00:04:42.387 Why is it differerent when it's one colour to another, than white to a colour? 00:04:43.307 --> 00:04:44.851 [Gordon] Because they've got the power... 00:04:44.851 --> 00:04:46.086 [David C] But we're on top... 00:04:46.086 --> 00:04:47.354 [Gordon] I've got the privilege... 00:04:47.354 --> 00:04:52.559 [David C] Yeah I hear you tell me all the time for many hours now that white is on top, 00:04:52.559 --> 00:04:56.964 and I believe you, and I believe that you have that feeling. 00:04:56.964 --> 00:05:00.958 I have never had that concept that white is on top, that I am on top. 00:05:01.727 --> 00:05:05.285 [Loren] Look at the CEOs of the companies that run this world... 00:05:05.439 --> 00:05:07.141 [David C] I agree with that... 00:05:07.141 --> 00:05:08.275 [Loren] They're all white men... 00:05:08.275 --> 00:05:09.310 [David C] I know that... 00:05:09.310 --> 00:05:12.813 [Loren] So, do you think they're gonna think about me or Hugh... 00:05:12.813 --> 00:05:14.181 [David C] Or me? 00:05:14.181 --> 00:05:18.218 [Loren] No, wait a minute, me or Hugh or David (L) when they make a decision? 00:05:18.664 --> 00:05:23.290 [David C] No, they're cut throat, they think nothing of people really... 00:05:23.290 --> 00:05:29.563 [Loren] But their decisions will most hurt people who look like us, not people who look like you. 00:05:29.563 --> 00:05:33.834 When we fight each other, when we don't take up for each other, 00:05:33.834 --> 00:05:37.304 that hurts us a lot more than it hurts you, 00:05:37.304 --> 00:05:41.975 and I never realized that until I sat here, and just sat back and listened 00:05:42.452 --> 00:05:46.246 to what Victor was saying, and then your response to it. 00:05:46.246 --> 00:05:52.152 But now it scares the shit out of me to even continue this conversation in this vein 00:05:52.152 --> 00:05:58.359 because y'know, I'm gonna multiply you by let's be nice and say the 20 million to 50 million 00:05:58.359 --> 00:06:05.664 who will see this film and think "why should we change? These rats can't get along with each other" 00:06:07.701 --> 00:06:12.005 I'm gettin' seriously depressed in here. 00:06:12.005 --> 00:06:13.473 Y'know, I was thinking we were making progress, 00:06:13.473 --> 00:06:16.484 and I don't even, I just don't feel like we're making much progress anymore. 00:06:18.812 --> 00:06:20.247 [Victor] How does that feel? 00:06:20.432 --> 00:06:22.449 It feels like shit. 00:06:22.449 --> 00:06:24.871 I'm ready to go outside and run my head through a wall. 00:06:24.871 --> 00:06:29.469 [Victor] What do you need from us? From me, or from the other men here? 00:06:30.491 --> 00:06:34.766 Just to know that we're all still unified, that we're all still working toward the same thing. 00:06:56.216 --> 00:07:00.236 Roberto, you were gonna say somethin'. 00:07:01.989 --> 00:07:07.895 I was just gonna ask Dave if he seems to be unaware of the statistics and the news stories, 00:07:07.895 --> 00:07:10.964 that come through the general media 00:07:10.964 --> 00:07:15.669 would tell you that a Black man and a white man laid off from a corporation, 00:07:15.669 --> 00:07:18.939 the white man's gonna be re-hired before the Black man... 00:07:18.939 --> 00:07:21.341 [David C] I'm aware of reports like that, yes. 00:07:21.341 --> 00:07:23.944 [Roberto] You are. What happens when you hear them? 00:07:23.944 --> 00:07:26.880 Do you dismiss them, or do you think they're incorrect, or... 00:07:26.880 --> 00:07:32.853 [David C] If I were in a position to hire, I'd hire the best man available. That's what I would do, 00:07:32.853 --> 00:07:34.888 and it wouldn't matter to me what colour he is. 00:07:34.888 --> 00:07:41.195 Among the whites, of my peers at any rate, my colleagues, my acquaintences, 00:07:41.195 --> 99:59:59.999 we are becoming more and more alarmed at the tendency or the trends 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to seek out and hire ethnic groups over the white, and that is disturbing to us in some ways. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Roberto] It should be. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [David C] And it is. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I have 5 daughters and they apply to different schools, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the minority races are many times given added points 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that give them a boost above the total points of the white race. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So you know, it's not just that it's all against you, there is much against us also. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Hugh] I am disturbed that anybody is not getting into college, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 including white women, including white men. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'm disturbed that white men are out of jobs. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 However, what I get back most is 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 pointing the finger at the people of colour and the women for taking the jobs 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and not at the corporate heads that are sending the factories to Mexico, to Indonesia, etc etc. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to make more money. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Lee Mun Wah] I want to just kind of play Devil's Advocate here and that is: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 what if I had said to you 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 "well, that's just a few folks, and that's not been my experience, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think your kids should just try a little harder, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think your girls should just y'know get those 3 or 4 more points, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I mean, I say everybody gets a chance in America to get education". 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 How would you feel if I said that to you, given some of the disturbance you are feeling? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [David C] That would be minimizing my feelings... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Lee Mun Wah] Does it make you feel like it's real, any more? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [David C] You hear me, but you don't want to put much importance on it, yeah. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Lee Mun Wah] And what you might end up doing is trying to defend that it actually does exist, huh. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [David C] It might do that, you bet. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Lee Mun Wah] You bet, yeah, just like the men in this room have been doing with you today. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [David C] Sure. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Lee Mun Wah] One story after another trying to tell you it's real. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You might even call in some of your friends to prove that it happened, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 maybe even show some documents. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's what I'm talking about. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I have allowed myself to feel in my soul in my heart what other men are experiencing, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and that has caused me to take down the walls and barriers that my mind has placed before me 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 regarding men of colour. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I have found that they are good men, and that I can love them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This will probably be difficult for me, but, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so you understand, I was raised by a father who was very much opinionated and racist, I would say. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Well, my father would always tell jokes about the coloured people, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that would put them down, or would demostrate to me that they were a inferior group of people. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The way he would refer to them, calling them "niggers", 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 um, implanted in me that they were an undesirable people. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And he demanded much of his children, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to the point where if we didn't obey, we were physically abused 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 by his boot or by a big mean strap. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I learned to anticipate what he wanted so that I could do it without ever incurring his abuse. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And in doing so, I learned to protect myself from outside harm, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or, or, any emotions that would cause me anguish or disturb me, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and I carried all of this into a pattern of working to avoid dealing with reality, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I guess I would say. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And all my life that's where I've been. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I work hard, I work long hours, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and I keep myself content in my work, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and I'm away fromt he pain and the strife of the real world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I know when you tell me your experiences, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I ted to minimize them so that I don't have to deal with them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But it's not that I don't want to, and it's not that I don't feel your anguish and pain 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 as people of colour. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I'm, I'm deeply hurt that you would consider my race as the oppressor, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because certainly I have never thought myself that way. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And that disturbs me to know that you consider me and my colour that way. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Please accept whatever I can do or say to you to relay to you the feeling 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that some of us white men really are not aware that we are such a problem to you. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And when we say to you "well just can't you be like us?", 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we don't really understand the differences between you and us. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Hugh] I'm really sorry that what has happened to you as a child being abused happened to you. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That that should never, that you didn't deserve that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You didn't deserve any of that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I appreciate you sharing with me how you survived that, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and how that survival is with you today. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And how hearing us, and hearing my story, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 how your survival, how that affects how you hear me, and what you hearand what you do with it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's really, um, important for me to know how you've survived. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And as a white man, to know how you dealt with things, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to know how you deal with things when they come your way, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that's what Victor was asking, I think, in asking "what does it mean to be white?". 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 "What is it like to be white?" 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I appreciate you for exploring that, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and for getting in touch with what it means to be white. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I appreciate your survival. I'm glad you made it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [David L] I just want to say that I appreciate very much your candor and your openness 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to hear us and to try to understand yourself a little more deeply. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I just also hope that you will keep in mind that there is no quick fix. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You don't change and become a non-racist overnight. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You I think have just barely tapped into what racism is all about. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Just kinda touched the surface of it.