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What is up with us white people?

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(Laughter)

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I've been thinking about that a lot
the last few years,

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and I know I have company.

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Look, I get it --

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people of color have been asking
that question for centuries.

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But I think a growing number
of white folks are too,

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given what's been going on out there

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in our country.

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And notice I said,
"What's up with us white people?"

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because right now, I'm not talking
about those white people,

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the ones with the swastikas
and the hoods and the tiki torches.

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They are a problem and a threat.

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They perpetrate most of
the terrorism in our country,

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as you all in Charlottesville
know better than most.

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But I'm talking about something bigger
and more pervasive.

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I'm talking about all of us,

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white folks writ large.

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And maybe, especially,
people sort of like me,

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self-described progressive,

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don't want to be racist.

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Good white people.

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(Laughter)

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Any good white people in the room?

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(Laughter)

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I was raised to be that sort of person.

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I was a little kid in the '60s and '70s,

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and to give you some sense of my parents:

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actual public opinion polls at the time

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showed that only a small minority,
about 20 percent of white Americans,

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approved and supported

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Martin Luther King and his work
with the civil rights movement

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while Dr. King was still alive.

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I'm proud to say my parents
were in that group.

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Race got talked about in our house.

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And when the shows that dealt with race
would come on the television,

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they would sit us kids down,
made sure we watched:

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the Sidney Poitier movies, "Roots" ...

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The message was loud and clear,

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and I got it:

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racism is wrong; racists are bad people.

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At the same time,

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we lived in a very
white place in Minnesota.

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And I'll just speak for myself,

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I think that allowed me to believe
that those white racists on the TV screen

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were being beamed in
from some other place.

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It wasn't about us, really.

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I did not feel implicated.

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Now, I would say, I'm still in recovery
from that early impression.

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I got into journalism

51
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in part because I cared about things
like equality and justice.

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For a long time, racism
was just such a puzzle to me.

53
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Why is it still with us
when it's so clearly wrong?

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Why such a persistent force?

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Maybe I was puzzled because
I wasn't yet looking in the right place

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or asking the right questions.

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Have you noticed

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that when people in our mostly white media

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report on what they consider
to be racial issues,

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what we consider to be racial issues,

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what that usually means
is that we're pointing our cameras

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and our microphones and our gaze

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at people of color,

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asking questions like,

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"How are Black folks or Native Americans,
Latino or Asian Americans?

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How are they doing?"

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in a given community
or with respect to some issue --

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the economy, education.

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I've done my share
of that kind of journalism

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over many years.

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But then George Zimmerman
killed Trayvon Martin,

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followed by this unending string
of high-profile police shootings

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of unarmed Black people,

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the rise of the Black
Lives Matter movement,

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Dylann Roof and the Charleston massacre,

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#OscarsSoWhite --

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all the incidents from
the day-to-day of American life,

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these overtly racist incidents

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that we now get to see
because they're captured on smartphones

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and sent across the internet.

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And beneath those visible events,

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the stubborn data,

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the studies showing systemic racism
in every institution we have:

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housing segregation, job discrimination,

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the deeply racialized
inequities in our schools

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and criminal justice system.

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And what really did it for me,

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and I know I'm not alone in this, either:

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the rise of Donald Trump

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and the discovery that
a solid majority of white Americans

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would embrace or at least accept

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such a raw, bitter kind
of white identity politics.

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This was all disturbing to me
as a human being.

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As a journalist, I found myself
turning the lens around,

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thinking,

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"Wow, white folks are the story.

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Whiteness is a story,"

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And also thinking, "Can I do that?

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What would a podcast series
about whiteness sound like?"

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(Laughter)

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"And oh, by the way --
this could get uncomfortable."

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I had seen almost no journalism
that looked deeply at whiteness,

103
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but, of course, people of color
and especially Black intellectuals

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have made sharp critiques
of white supremacist culture

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for centuries,

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and I knew that in the last
two or three decades,

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scholars had done interesting work

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looking at race
through the frame of whiteness,

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what it is, how we got it,
how it works in the world.

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I started reading,

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and I reached out to some leading experts
on race and the history of race.

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One of the first questions I asked was,

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"Where did this idea
of being a white person

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come from in the first place?"

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Science is clear.

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We are one human race.

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We're all related,

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all descended from
a common ancestor in Africa.

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Some people walked out of Africa
into colder, darker places

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and lost a lot of their melanin,

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some of us more than others.

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(Laughter)

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But genetically, we are all
99.9 percent the same.

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There's more genetic diversity
within what we call racial groups

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than there is between racial groups.

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There's no gene for whiteness
or blackness or Asian-ness

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or what have you.

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So how did this happen?

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How did we get this thing?

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How did racism start?

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I think if you had asked me
to speculate on that,

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in my ignorance, some years ago,

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I probably would have said,

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"Well, I guess somewhere
back in deep history,

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people encountered one another,

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and they found each other strange.

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'Your skin is a different color,
your hair is different,

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you dress funny.

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I guess I'll just go ahead
and jump to the conclusion

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that since you're different

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that you're somehow less than me,

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and maybe that makes it OK
for me to mistreat you.'"

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Right?

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Is that something like
what we imagine or assume?

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And under that kind of scenario,

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it's all a big, tragic misunderstanding.

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But it seems that's wrong.

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First of all, race is a recent invention.

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It's just a few hundred years old.

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Before that, yes,
people divided themselves

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by religion, tribal group, language,

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things like that.

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But for most of human history,

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people had no notion of race.

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In Ancient Greece, for example --

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and I learned this from
the historian Nell Irvin Painter --

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the Greeks thought they were better
than the other people they knew about,

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but not because of some idea
that they were innately superior.

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They just thought that they'd developed
the most advanced culture.

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So they looked around at the Ethiopians,

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but also the Persians and the Celts,

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and they said, "They're all
kind of barbaric compared to us.

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Culturally, they're just not Greek."

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And yes, in the ancient world,
there was lots of slavery,

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but people enslaved people
who didn't look like them,

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and they often enslaved people who did.

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Did you know that the English word "slave"
is derived from the word "Slav"?

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Because Slavic people were enslaved
by all kinds of folks,

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including Western Europeans,

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for centuries.

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Slavery wasn't about race,

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either because no one
had thought up race yet.

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So who did?

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I put that question
to another leading historian,

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Ibram Kendi.

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I didn't expect
he would answer the question

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in the form of one person's
name and a date,

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as if we were talking
about the light bulb.

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(Laughter)

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But he did.

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(Laughter)

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He said, in his exhaustive research,

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he found what he believed to be
the first articulation of racist ideas.

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And he named the culprit.

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This guy should be more famous,

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or infamous.

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His name is Gomes de Zurara.

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Portuguese man.

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Wrote a book in the 1450s

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in which he did something
that no one had ever done before,

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according to Dr. Kendi.

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He lumped together
all the people of Africa --

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a vast, diverse continent --

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and he described them as a distinct group,

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inferior and beastly.

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Never mind that in that precolonial time

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some of the most sophisticated cultures
in the world were in Africa.

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Why would this guy make this claim?

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Turns out, it helps to follow the money.

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First of all, Zurara was hired
to write that book

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by the Portuguese king,

202
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and just a few years before,

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slave traders --

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here we go --

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slave traders tied to the Portuguese crown

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had effectively pioneered
the Atlantic slave trade.

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00:10:37,510 --> 00:10:41,533
They were the first Europeans
to sail directly to sub-Saharan Africa

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00:10:41,557 --> 00:10:44,205
to kidnap and enslave African people.

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So it was suddenly really helpful

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to have a story about
the inferiority of African people

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to justify this new trade

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to other people, to the church,

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to themselves.

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00:11:00,096 --> 00:11:02,540
And with the stroke of a pen,

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00:11:02,564 --> 00:11:05,510
Zurara invented both
blackness and whiteness,

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because he basically created
the notion of blackness

217
00:11:09,700 --> 00:11:12,740
through this description of Africans,

218
00:11:12,764 --> 00:11:15,195
and as Dr. Kendi says,

219
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blackness has no meaning
without whiteness.

220
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Other European countries followed
the Portuguese lead

221
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in looking to Africa
for human property and free labor

222
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and in adopting this fiction

223
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about the inferiority of African people.

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I found this clarifying.

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Racism didn't start
with a misunderstanding,

226
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it started with a lie.

227
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Meanwhile, over here in colonial America,

228
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the people now calling themselves white
got busy taking these racist ideas

229
00:11:54,178 --> 00:11:55,491
and turning them into law,

230
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laws that stripped all human rights
from the people they were calling Black

231
00:12:02,898 --> 00:12:07,390
and locking them into our particularly
vicious brand of chattel slavery,

232
00:12:07,414 --> 00:12:11,773
and laws that gave even
the poorest white people benefits,

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not big benefits in material terms

234
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but the right to not be enslaved for life,

235
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the right to not have your loved ones
torn from your arms and sold,

236
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and sometimes real goodies.

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The handouts of free land
in places like Virginia

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00:12:30,108 --> 00:12:31,798
to white people only

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started long before
the American Revolution

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and continued long after.

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Now, I can imagine

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there would be people listening to me --
if they're still listening --

243
00:12:46,690 --> 00:12:48,070
who might be thinking,

244
00:12:48,094 --> 00:12:52,456
"Come on, this is all ancient history.
Why does this matter?

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Things have changed.

246
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Can't we just get over it and move on?"

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Right?

248
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But I would argue, for me certainly,

249
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learning this history
has brought a real shift

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00:13:05,135 --> 00:13:07,567
in the way that I understand racism today.

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00:13:08,932 --> 00:13:12,412
To review, two quick takeaways
from what I've said so far:

252
00:13:12,436 --> 00:13:15,912
one, race is not a thing biologically,

253
00:13:15,936 --> 00:13:19,532
it's a story some people decided to tell;

254
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and two, people told that story

255
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to justify the brutal exploitation
of other human beings for profit.

256
00:13:28,379 --> 00:13:30,400
I didn't learn those two facts in school.

257
00:13:30,424 --> 00:13:32,192
I suspect most of us didn't.

258
00:13:32,216 --> 00:13:34,732
If you did, you had a special teacher.

259
00:13:35,324 --> 00:13:36,475
Right?

260
00:13:36,499 --> 00:13:37,678
But once they sink in,

261
00:13:38,845 --> 00:13:41,546
for one thing, it becomes clear

262
00:13:41,570 --> 00:13:45,549
that racism is not mainly
a problem of attitudes,

263
00:13:45,573 --> 00:13:47,297
of individual bigotry.

264
00:13:48,630 --> 00:13:50,536
No, it's a tool.

265
00:13:50,560 --> 00:13:54,791
It's a tool to divide us
and to prop up systems --

266
00:13:54,815 --> 00:13:57,603
economic, political and social systems

267
00:13:57,627 --> 00:14:00,784
that advantage some people
and disadvantage others.

268
00:14:01,510 --> 00:14:03,762
And it's a tool to convince
a lot of white folks

269
00:14:03,786 --> 00:14:09,974
who may or may not be getting a great deal
out of our highly stratified society

270
00:14:09,998 --> 00:14:11,929
to support the status quo.

271
00:14:12,971 --> 00:14:15,043
"Could be worse. At least I'm white."

272
00:14:17,575 --> 00:14:20,938
Once I grasped the origins of racism,

273
00:14:20,962 --> 00:14:24,896
I stopped being mystified by the fact
that it's still with us.

274
00:14:26,249 --> 00:14:27,819
I guess, you know, looking back,

275
00:14:27,843 --> 00:14:31,688
I thought about racism
as being sort of like the flat Earth --

276
00:14:31,712 --> 00:14:34,708
just bad, outdated thinking
that would fade away on its own

277
00:14:34,732 --> 00:14:35,966
before long.

278
00:14:37,962 --> 00:14:39,882
But no, this tool of whiteness

279
00:14:39,906 --> 00:14:42,751
is still doing the job
it was invented to do.

280
00:14:43,305 --> 00:14:45,606
Powerful people go to work every day,

281
00:14:45,630 --> 00:14:49,895
leveraging and reinforcing
this old weapon

282
00:14:49,919 --> 00:14:51,824
in the halls of power,

283
00:14:51,848 --> 00:14:54,527
in some broadcast studios
we could mention ...

284
00:14:55,596 --> 00:14:57,051
And we don't need to fuss over

285
00:14:57,075 --> 00:14:59,441
whether these people
believe what they're saying,

286
00:14:59,465 --> 00:15:01,400
whether they're really racist.

287
00:15:01,913 --> 00:15:03,543
That's not what it's about.

288
00:15:03,567 --> 00:15:06,793
It's about pocketbooks and power.

289
00:15:09,032 --> 00:15:12,865
Finally, I think
the biggest lesson of all --

290
00:15:12,889 --> 00:15:16,915
and let me talk in particular
to the white folks for a minute:

291
00:15:19,192 --> 00:15:22,347
once we understand that people
who look like us

292
00:15:22,371 --> 00:15:25,065
invented the very notion of race

293
00:15:26,415 --> 00:15:29,514
in order to advantage themselves and us,

294
00:15:29,538 --> 00:15:33,318
isn't it easier to see
that it's our problem to solve?

295
00:15:34,297 --> 00:15:36,097
It's a white people problem.

296
00:15:36,970 --> 00:15:39,171
I'm embarrassed to say
that for a long time,

297
00:15:39,195 --> 00:15:44,381
I thought of racism as being mainly
a struggle for people of color to fight,

298
00:15:44,405 --> 00:15:47,366
sort of like the people
on the TV screen when I was a kid.

299
00:15:48,620 --> 00:15:52,763
Or, as if I was on the sidelines
at a sports contest,

300
00:15:52,787 --> 00:15:54,577
on one side people of color,

301
00:15:54,601 --> 00:15:57,441
on the other those real racists,

302
00:15:57,465 --> 00:15:58,816
the Southern sheriff,

303
00:15:58,840 --> 00:16:00,102
the people in hoods.

304
00:16:00,643 --> 00:16:03,997
And I was sincerely rooting
for people of color to win the struggle.

305
00:16:05,407 --> 00:16:06,885
But no.

306
00:16:06,909 --> 00:16:08,803
There are no sidelines.

307
00:16:09,555 --> 00:16:10,869
We're all in it.

308
00:16:11,249 --> 00:16:12,972
We are implicated.

309
00:16:14,116 --> 00:16:17,021
And if I'm not joining the struggle
to dismantle a system

310
00:16:17,045 --> 00:16:19,364
that advantages me,

311
00:16:19,388 --> 00:16:20,842
I am complicit.

312
00:16:22,685 --> 00:16:24,769
This isn't about shame or guilt.

313
00:16:25,408 --> 00:16:27,436
White guilt doesn't get anything done,

314
00:16:27,460 --> 00:16:30,679
and honestly, I don't feel a lot of guilt.

315
00:16:30,703 --> 00:16:33,602
History isn't my fault or yours.

316
00:16:34,407 --> 00:16:38,129
What I do feel is a stronger sense
of responsibility

317
00:16:39,453 --> 00:16:40,811
to do something.

318
00:16:42,605 --> 00:16:47,162
All this has altered the way
that I think about and approach my work

319
00:16:47,186 --> 00:16:49,392
as a documentary storyteller

320
00:16:49,416 --> 00:16:50,694
and as a teacher.

321
00:16:51,559 --> 00:16:53,949
But beyond that, besides that,
what does it mean?

322
00:16:53,973 --> 00:16:55,750
What does it mean for any of us?

323
00:16:56,986 --> 00:16:59,719
Does it mean that we support leaders

324
00:16:59,743 --> 00:17:02,855
who want to push ahead
with a conversation about reparations?

325
00:17:03,675 --> 00:17:04,839
In our communities,

326
00:17:04,863 --> 00:17:09,883
are we finding people who are working
to transform unjust institutions

327
00:17:09,907 --> 00:17:11,444
and supporting that work?

328
00:17:12,313 --> 00:17:13,765
At my job,

329
00:17:13,789 --> 00:17:16,135
am I the white person
who shows up grudgingly

330
00:17:16,159 --> 00:17:18,980
for the diversity and equity meeting,

331
00:17:19,004 --> 00:17:21,756
or am I trying to figure out
how to be a real accomplice

332
00:17:21,780 --> 00:17:23,491
to my colleagues of color?

333
00:17:24,694 --> 00:17:27,250
Seems to me wherever we show up,

334
00:17:28,270 --> 00:17:32,625
we need to show up with humility
and vulnerability

335
00:17:32,649 --> 00:17:37,084
and a willingness to put down
this power that we did not earn.

336
00:17:40,876 --> 00:17:43,689
I believe we also stand to benefit

337
00:17:43,713 --> 00:17:45,823
if we could create a society

338
00:17:45,847 --> 00:17:49,599
that's not built on the exploitation
or oppression of anyone.

339
00:17:50,683 --> 00:17:53,837
But in the end we should do this,

340
00:17:53,861 --> 00:17:55,165
we should show up,

341
00:17:55,189 --> 00:17:57,000
figure out how to take action.

342
00:17:58,103 --> 00:17:59,669
Because it's right.

343
00:18:02,248 --> 00:18:03,457
Thank you.

344
00:18:03,481 --> 00:18:06,197
(Applause)