WEBVTT 00:00:01.523 --> 00:00:04.714 What is up with us white people? NOTE Paragraph 00:00:04.738 --> 00:00:06.364 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:07.685 --> 00:00:10.284 I've been thinking about that a lot the last few years, 00:00:10.308 --> 00:00:11.772 and I know I have company. 00:00:12.271 --> 00:00:13.579 Look, I get it -- 00:00:13.603 --> 00:00:16.589 people of color have been asking that question for centuries. 00:00:17.335 --> 00:00:21.664 But I think a growing number of white folks are too, 00:00:21.688 --> 00:00:24.681 given what's been going on out there 00:00:24.705 --> 00:00:25.970 in our country. 00:00:27.537 --> 00:00:30.882 And notice I said, "What's up with us white people?" 00:00:30.906 --> 00:00:34.868 because right now, I'm not talking about those white people, 00:00:34.892 --> 00:00:38.694 the ones with the swastikas and the hoods and the tiki torches. 00:00:39.400 --> 00:00:42.489 They are a problem and a threat. 00:00:42.513 --> 00:00:45.020 They perpetrate most of the terrorism in our country, 00:00:45.044 --> 00:00:48.689 as you all in Charlottesville know better than most. 00:00:49.331 --> 00:00:53.046 But I'm talking about something bigger and more pervasive. 00:00:53.070 --> 00:00:55.356 I'm talking about all of us, 00:00:55.380 --> 00:00:57.380 white folks writ large. 00:00:57.803 --> 00:01:00.682 And maybe, especially, people sort of like me, 00:01:00.706 --> 00:01:03.284 self-described progressive, 00:01:03.308 --> 00:01:05.048 don't want to be racist. 00:01:05.883 --> 00:01:07.365 Good white people. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:07.818 --> 00:01:09.091 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:09.115 --> 00:01:11.022 Any good white people in the room? NOTE Paragraph 00:01:11.046 --> 00:01:12.125 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:12.149 --> 00:01:15.708 I was raised to be that sort of person. 00:01:15.732 --> 00:01:18.200 I was a little kid in the '60s and '70s, 00:01:18.224 --> 00:01:21.059 and to give you some sense of my parents: 00:01:21.083 --> 00:01:23.701 actual public opinion polls at the time 00:01:23.725 --> 00:01:28.642 showed that only a small minority, about 20 percent of white Americans, 00:01:28.666 --> 00:01:31.026 approved and supported 00:01:31.050 --> 00:01:34.291 Martin Luther King and his work with the civil rights movement 00:01:34.315 --> 00:01:36.867 while Dr. King was still alive. 00:01:38.004 --> 00:01:40.729 I'm proud to say my parents were in that group. 00:01:41.212 --> 00:01:44.029 Race got talked about in our house. 00:01:44.577 --> 00:01:48.757 And when the shows that dealt with race would come on the television, 00:01:48.781 --> 00:01:51.954 they would sit us kids down, made sure we watched: 00:01:51.978 --> 00:01:54.837 the Sidney Poitier movies, "Roots" ... 00:01:56.238 --> 00:01:57.922 The message was loud and clear, 00:01:57.946 --> 00:01:59.172 and I got it: 00:01:59.910 --> 00:02:03.592 racism is wrong; racists are bad people. 00:02:04.602 --> 00:02:05.998 At the same time, 00:02:06.022 --> 00:02:09.159 we lived in a very white place in Minnesota. 00:02:09.848 --> 00:02:11.454 And I'll just speak for myself, 00:02:11.478 --> 00:02:17.433 I think that allowed me to believe that those white racists on the TV screen 00:02:17.457 --> 00:02:20.037 were being beamed in from some other place. 00:02:20.870 --> 00:02:22.881 It wasn't about us, really. 00:02:23.580 --> 00:02:25.530 I did not feel implicated. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:27.249 --> 00:02:31.003 Now, I would say, I'm still in recovery from that early impression. 00:02:32.263 --> 00:02:33.934 I got into journalism 00:02:33.958 --> 00:02:39.341 in part because I cared about things like equality and justice. 00:02:40.563 --> 00:02:44.215 For a long time, racism was just such a puzzle to me. 00:02:44.894 --> 00:02:48.689 Why is it still with us when it's so clearly wrong? 00:02:49.418 --> 00:02:52.521 Why such a persistent force? 00:02:53.743 --> 00:02:57.144 Maybe I was puzzled because I wasn't yet looking in the right place 00:02:57.168 --> 00:02:59.303 or asking the right questions. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:00.621 --> 00:03:02.022 Have you noticed 00:03:02.046 --> 00:03:07.508 that when people in our mostly white media 00:03:07.532 --> 00:03:10.218 report on what they consider to be racial issues, 00:03:10.242 --> 00:03:12.752 what we consider to be racial issues, 00:03:12.776 --> 00:03:15.587 what that usually means is that we're pointing our cameras 00:03:15.611 --> 00:03:17.481 and our microphones and our gaze 00:03:17.505 --> 00:03:19.513 at people of color, 00:03:19.537 --> 00:03:21.691 asking questions like, 00:03:21.715 --> 00:03:26.668 "How are Black folks or Native Americans, Latino or Asian Americans? 00:03:26.692 --> 00:03:28.788 How are they doing?" 00:03:28.812 --> 00:03:32.064 in a given community or with respect to some issue -- 00:03:32.088 --> 00:03:33.978 the economy, education. 00:03:35.538 --> 00:03:39.464 I've done my share of that kind of journalism 00:03:39.488 --> 00:03:40.873 over many years. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:42.524 --> 00:03:45.145 But then George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, 00:03:46.621 --> 00:03:51.233 followed by this unending string of high-profile police shootings 00:03:51.257 --> 00:03:52.976 of unarmed Black people, 00:03:53.000 --> 00:03:55.521 the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, 00:03:55.545 --> 00:03:58.608 Dylann Roof and the Charleston massacre, 00:03:58.632 --> 00:04:00.286 #OscarsSoWhite -- 00:04:01.334 --> 00:04:06.455 all the incidents from the day-to-day of American life, 00:04:06.479 --> 00:04:08.204 these overtly racist incidents 00:04:08.228 --> 00:04:11.151 that we now get to see because they're captured on smartphones 00:04:11.175 --> 00:04:12.857 and sent across the internet. 00:04:14.019 --> 00:04:16.675 And beneath those visible events, 00:04:16.699 --> 00:04:18.403 the stubborn data, 00:04:18.427 --> 00:04:22.802 the studies showing systemic racism in every institution we have: 00:04:23.692 --> 00:04:26.947 housing segregation, job discrimination, 00:04:26.971 --> 00:04:29.782 the deeply racialized inequities in our schools 00:04:29.806 --> 00:04:31.606 and criminal justice system. 00:04:32.718 --> 00:04:34.285 And what really did it for me, 00:04:34.309 --> 00:04:36.286 and I know I'm not alone in this, either: 00:04:37.377 --> 00:04:39.356 the rise of Donald Trump 00:04:39.380 --> 00:04:44.811 and the discovery that a solid majority of white Americans 00:04:44.835 --> 00:04:47.904 would embrace or at least accept 00:04:47.928 --> 00:04:52.514 such a raw, bitter kind of white identity politics. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:55.405 --> 00:04:58.224 This was all disturbing to me as a human being. 00:04:58.778 --> 00:05:04.308 As a journalist, I found myself turning the lens around, 00:05:04.332 --> 00:05:06.052 thinking, 00:05:06.076 --> 00:05:08.842 "Wow, white folks are the story. 00:05:08.866 --> 00:05:11.317 Whiteness is a story," 00:05:12.562 --> 00:05:15.532 And also thinking, "Can I do that? 00:05:16.208 --> 00:05:19.413 What would a podcast series about whiteness sound like?" NOTE Paragraph 00:05:19.437 --> 00:05:20.839 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:05:20.863 --> 00:05:23.696 "And oh, by the way -- this could get uncomfortable." 00:05:26.402 --> 00:05:31.338 I had seen almost no journalism that looked deeply at whiteness, 00:05:31.362 --> 00:05:35.320 but, of course, people of color and especially Black intellectuals 00:05:35.344 --> 00:05:37.988 have made sharp critiques of white supremacist culture 00:05:38.012 --> 00:05:39.463 for centuries, 00:05:39.487 --> 00:05:41.835 and I knew that in the last two or three decades, 00:05:41.859 --> 00:05:44.438 scholars had done interesting work 00:05:44.462 --> 00:05:47.955 looking at race through the frame of whiteness, 00:05:47.979 --> 00:05:51.483 what it is, how we got it, how it works in the world. 00:05:53.030 --> 00:05:54.873 I started reading, 00:05:54.897 --> 00:05:59.780 and I reached out to some leading experts on race and the history of race. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:01.748 --> 00:06:04.198 One of the first questions I asked was, 00:06:04.222 --> 00:06:07.865 "Where did this idea of being a white person 00:06:07.889 --> 00:06:09.538 come from in the first place?" 00:06:10.592 --> 00:06:12.984 Science is clear. 00:06:13.008 --> 00:06:15.152 We are one human race. 00:06:15.730 --> 00:06:16.973 We're all related, 00:06:16.997 --> 00:06:19.843 all descended from a common ancestor in Africa. 00:06:20.772 --> 00:06:24.517 Some people walked out of Africa into colder, darker places 00:06:24.541 --> 00:06:27.093 and lost a lot of their melanin, 00:06:27.117 --> 00:06:28.862 some of us more than others. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:28.886 --> 00:06:30.115 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:06:31.037 --> 00:06:36.133 But genetically, we are all 99.9 percent the same. 00:06:36.157 --> 00:06:41.359 There's more genetic diversity within what we call racial groups 00:06:41.383 --> 00:06:44.012 than there is between racial groups. 00:06:44.036 --> 00:06:47.983 There's no gene for whiteness or blackness or Asian-ness 00:06:48.007 --> 00:06:49.440 or what have you. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:50.411 --> 00:06:52.406 So how did this happen? 00:06:52.430 --> 00:06:54.383 How did we get this thing? 00:06:54.407 --> 00:06:56.497 How did racism start? 00:06:57.797 --> 00:07:01.303 I think if you had asked me to speculate on that, 00:07:01.327 --> 00:07:04.349 in my ignorance, some years ago, 00:07:04.373 --> 00:07:06.291 I probably would have said, 00:07:06.315 --> 00:07:10.930 "Well, I guess somewhere back in deep history, 00:07:10.954 --> 00:07:12.920 people encountered one another, 00:07:12.944 --> 00:07:15.302 and they found each other strange. 00:07:15.326 --> 00:07:17.971 'Your skin is a different color, your hair is different, 00:07:17.995 --> 00:07:19.533 you dress funny. 00:07:19.557 --> 00:07:22.120 I guess I'll just go ahead and jump to the conclusion 00:07:22.144 --> 00:07:23.448 that since you're different 00:07:23.472 --> 00:07:25.597 that you're somehow less than me, 00:07:25.621 --> 00:07:28.709 and maybe that makes it OK for me to mistreat you.'" 00:07:29.284 --> 00:07:30.438 Right? 00:07:30.462 --> 00:07:33.803 Is that something like what we imagine or assume? 00:07:34.613 --> 00:07:36.217 And under that kind of scenario, 00:07:36.241 --> 00:07:39.600 it's all a big, tragic misunderstanding. 00:07:41.334 --> 00:07:43.444 But it seems that's wrong. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:44.397 --> 00:07:47.258 First of all, race is a recent invention. 00:07:47.282 --> 00:07:49.084 It's just a few hundred years old. 00:07:49.892 --> 00:07:53.521 Before that, yes, people divided themselves 00:07:53.545 --> 00:07:57.439 by religion, tribal group, language, 00:07:57.463 --> 00:07:58.635 things like that. 00:07:58.659 --> 00:08:00.103 But for most of human history, 00:08:00.127 --> 00:08:02.469 people had no notion of race. 00:08:03.665 --> 00:08:05.330 In Ancient Greece, for example -- 00:08:05.354 --> 00:08:09.141 and I learned this from the historian Nell Irvin Painter -- 00:08:09.165 --> 00:08:13.584 the Greeks thought they were better than the other people they knew about, 00:08:13.608 --> 00:08:17.528 but not because of some idea that they were innately superior. 00:08:17.552 --> 00:08:21.475 They just thought that they'd developed the most advanced culture. 00:08:22.369 --> 00:08:25.721 So they looked around at the Ethiopians, 00:08:25.745 --> 00:08:27.841 but also the Persians and the Celts, 00:08:27.865 --> 00:08:30.807 and they said, "They're all kind of barbaric compared to us. 00:08:31.477 --> 00:08:34.534 Culturally, they're just not Greek." NOTE Paragraph 00:08:35.938 --> 00:08:39.939 And yes, in the ancient world, there was lots of slavery, 00:08:39.963 --> 00:08:42.748 but people enslaved people who didn't look like them, 00:08:42.772 --> 00:08:45.138 and they often enslaved people who did. 00:08:45.686 --> 00:08:50.981 Did you know that the English word "slave" is derived from the word "Slav"? 00:08:51.922 --> 00:08:55.936 Because Slavic people were enslaved by all kinds of folks, 00:08:55.960 --> 00:08:57.647 including Western Europeans, 00:08:57.671 --> 00:09:00.053 for centuries. 00:09:00.680 --> 00:09:02.838 Slavery wasn't about race, 00:09:02.862 --> 00:09:05.992 either because no one had thought up race yet. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:07.421 --> 00:09:08.675 So who did? 00:09:09.404 --> 00:09:12.618 I put that question to another leading historian, 00:09:12.642 --> 00:09:14.087 Ibram Kendi. 00:09:14.555 --> 00:09:16.851 I didn't expect he would answer the question 00:09:16.875 --> 00:09:19.414 in the form of one person's name and a date, 00:09:19.438 --> 00:09:21.546 as if we were talking about the light bulb. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:21.570 --> 00:09:22.616 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:09:23.037 --> 00:09:24.319 But he did. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:24.343 --> 00:09:25.999 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:09:26.519 --> 00:09:29.007 He said, in his exhaustive research, 00:09:29.031 --> 00:09:33.376 he found what he believed to be the first articulation of racist ideas. 00:09:33.970 --> 00:09:36.001 And he named the culprit. 00:09:36.025 --> 00:09:37.510 This guy should be more famous, 00:09:37.534 --> 00:09:38.720 or infamous. 00:09:38.744 --> 00:09:41.224 His name is Gomes de Zurara. 00:09:41.993 --> 00:09:43.172 Portuguese man. 00:09:43.196 --> 00:09:46.102 Wrote a book in the 1450s 00:09:46.126 --> 00:09:48.933 in which he did something that no one had ever done before, 00:09:48.957 --> 00:09:50.313 according to Dr. Kendi. 00:09:50.892 --> 00:09:54.408 He lumped together all the people of Africa -- 00:09:54.432 --> 00:09:56.288 a vast, diverse continent -- 00:09:57.407 --> 00:10:00.499 and he described them as a distinct group, 00:10:00.523 --> 00:10:02.999 inferior and beastly. 00:10:04.391 --> 00:10:06.770 Never mind that in that precolonial time 00:10:06.794 --> 00:10:10.746 some of the most sophisticated cultures in the world were in Africa. 00:10:12.176 --> 00:10:15.443 Why would this guy make this claim? NOTE Paragraph 00:10:16.779 --> 00:10:19.102 Turns out, it helps to follow the money. 00:10:19.859 --> 00:10:22.803 First of all, Zurara was hired to write that book 00:10:22.827 --> 00:10:25.082 by the Portuguese king, 00:10:25.106 --> 00:10:26.946 and just a few years before, 00:10:26.970 --> 00:10:29.075 slave traders -- 00:10:29.099 --> 00:10:30.406 here we go -- 00:10:30.430 --> 00:10:33.199 slave traders tied to the Portuguese crown 00:10:34.133 --> 00:10:37.486 had effectively pioneered the Atlantic slave trade. 00:10:37.510 --> 00:10:41.533 They were the first Europeans to sail directly to sub-Saharan Africa 00:10:41.557 --> 00:10:44.205 to kidnap and enslave African people. 00:10:45.041 --> 00:10:47.526 So it was suddenly really helpful 00:10:47.550 --> 00:10:52.052 to have a story about the inferiority of African people 00:10:52.076 --> 00:10:54.107 to justify this new trade 00:10:55.206 --> 00:10:56.876 to other people, to the church, 00:10:56.900 --> 00:10:58.499 to themselves. 00:11:00.096 --> 00:11:02.540 And with the stroke of a pen, 00:11:02.564 --> 00:11:05.510 Zurara invented both blackness and whiteness, 00:11:05.534 --> 00:11:09.676 because he basically created the notion of blackness 00:11:09.700 --> 00:11:12.740 through this description of Africans, 00:11:12.764 --> 00:11:15.195 and as Dr. Kendi says, 00:11:15.219 --> 00:11:17.946 blackness has no meaning without whiteness. 00:11:18.727 --> 00:11:22.951 Other European countries followed the Portuguese lead 00:11:24.059 --> 00:11:28.344 in looking to Africa for human property and free labor 00:11:28.368 --> 00:11:31.295 and in adopting this fiction 00:11:31.319 --> 00:11:33.859 about the inferiority of African people. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:35.552 --> 00:11:37.811 I found this clarifying. 00:11:39.221 --> 00:11:41.397 Racism didn't start with a misunderstanding, 00:11:41.421 --> 00:11:43.091 it started with a lie. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:45.107 --> 00:11:47.825 Meanwhile, over here in colonial America, 00:11:47.849 --> 00:11:54.154 the people now calling themselves white got busy taking these racist ideas 00:11:54.178 --> 00:11:55.491 and turning them into law, 00:11:56.866 --> 00:12:02.874 laws that stripped all human rights from the people they were calling Black 00:12:02.898 --> 00:12:07.390 and locking them into our particularly vicious brand of chattel slavery, 00:12:07.414 --> 00:12:11.773 and laws that gave even the poorest white people benefits, 00:12:11.797 --> 00:12:15.316 not big benefits in material terms 00:12:15.340 --> 00:12:17.729 but the right to not be enslaved for life, 00:12:18.777 --> 00:12:22.754 the right to not have your loved ones torn from your arms and sold, 00:12:22.778 --> 00:12:25.125 and sometimes real goodies. 00:12:25.149 --> 00:12:30.084 The handouts of free land in places like Virginia 00:12:30.108 --> 00:12:31.798 to white people only 00:12:31.822 --> 00:12:35.810 started long before the American Revolution 00:12:35.834 --> 00:12:37.699 and continued long after. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:40.026 --> 00:12:42.294 Now, I can imagine 00:12:42.318 --> 00:12:46.666 there would be people listening to me -- if they're still listening -- 00:12:46.690 --> 00:12:48.070 who might be thinking, 00:12:48.094 --> 00:12:52.456 "Come on, this is all ancient history. Why does this matter? 00:12:52.480 --> 00:12:53.743 Things have changed. 00:12:53.767 --> 00:12:55.981 Can't we just get over it and move on?" 00:12:56.905 --> 00:12:58.056 Right? 00:12:58.421 --> 00:13:01.840 But I would argue, for me certainly, 00:13:02.896 --> 00:13:05.111 learning this history has brought a real shift 00:13:05.135 --> 00:13:07.567 in the way that I understand racism today. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:08.932 --> 00:13:12.412 To review, two quick takeaways from what I've said so far: 00:13:12.436 --> 00:13:15.912 one, race is not a thing biologically, 00:13:15.936 --> 00:13:19.532 it's a story some people decided to tell; 00:13:19.556 --> 00:13:21.514 and two, people told that story 00:13:21.538 --> 00:13:27.207 to justify the brutal exploitation of other human beings for profit. 00:13:28.379 --> 00:13:30.400 I didn't learn those two facts in school. 00:13:30.424 --> 00:13:32.192 I suspect most of us didn't. 00:13:32.216 --> 00:13:34.732 If you did, you had a special teacher. 00:13:35.324 --> 00:13:36.475 Right? 00:13:36.499 --> 00:13:37.678 But once they sink in, 00:13:38.845 --> 00:13:41.546 for one thing, it becomes clear 00:13:41.570 --> 00:13:45.549 that racism is not mainly a problem of attitudes, 00:13:45.573 --> 00:13:47.297 of individual bigotry. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:48.630 --> 00:13:50.536 No, it's a tool. 00:13:50.560 --> 00:13:54.791 It's a tool to divide us and to prop up systems -- 00:13:54.815 --> 00:13:57.603 economic, political and social systems 00:13:57.627 --> 00:14:00.784 that advantage some people and disadvantage others. 00:14:01.510 --> 00:14:03.762 And it's a tool to convince a lot of white folks 00:14:03.786 --> 00:14:09.974 who may or may not be getting a great deal out of our highly stratified society 00:14:09.998 --> 00:14:11.929 to support the status quo. 00:14:12.971 --> 00:14:15.043 "Could be worse. At least I'm white." 00:14:17.575 --> 00:14:20.938 Once I grasped the origins of racism, 00:14:20.962 --> 00:14:24.896 I stopped being mystified by the fact that it's still with us. 00:14:26.249 --> 00:14:27.819 I guess, you know, looking back, 00:14:27.843 --> 00:14:31.688 I thought about racism as being sort of like the flat Earth -- 00:14:31.712 --> 00:14:34.708 just bad, outdated thinking that would fade away on its own 00:14:34.732 --> 00:14:35.966 before long. 00:14:37.962 --> 00:14:39.882 But no, this tool of whiteness 00:14:39.906 --> 00:14:42.751 is still doing the job it was invented to do. 00:14:43.305 --> 00:14:45.606 Powerful people go to work every day, 00:14:45.630 --> 00:14:49.895 leveraging and reinforcing this old weapon 00:14:49.919 --> 00:14:51.824 in the halls of power, 00:14:51.848 --> 00:14:54.527 in some broadcast studios we could mention ... 00:14:55.596 --> 00:14:57.051 And we don't need to fuss over 00:14:57.075 --> 00:14:59.441 whether these people believe what they're saying, 00:14:59.465 --> 00:15:01.400 whether they're really racist. 00:15:01.913 --> 00:15:03.543 That's not what it's about. 00:15:03.567 --> 00:15:06.793 It's about pocketbooks and power. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:09.032 --> 00:15:12.865 Finally, I think the biggest lesson of all -- 00:15:12.889 --> 00:15:16.915 and let me talk in particular to the white folks for a minute: 00:15:19.192 --> 00:15:22.347 once we understand that people who look like us 00:15:22.371 --> 00:15:25.065 invented the very notion of race 00:15:26.415 --> 00:15:29.514 in order to advantage themselves and us, 00:15:29.538 --> 00:15:33.318 isn't it easier to see that it's our problem to solve? 00:15:34.297 --> 00:15:36.097 It's a white people problem. 00:15:36.970 --> 00:15:39.171 I'm embarrassed to say that for a long time, 00:15:39.195 --> 00:15:44.381 I thought of racism as being mainly a struggle for people of color to fight, 00:15:44.405 --> 00:15:47.366 sort of like the people on the TV screen when I was a kid. 00:15:48.620 --> 00:15:52.763 Or, as if I was on the sidelines at a sports contest, 00:15:52.787 --> 00:15:54.577 on one side people of color, 00:15:54.601 --> 00:15:57.441 on the other those real racists, 00:15:57.465 --> 00:15:58.816 the Southern sheriff, 00:15:58.840 --> 00:16:00.102 the people in hoods. 00:16:00.643 --> 00:16:03.997 And I was sincerely rooting for people of color to win the struggle. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:05.407 --> 00:16:06.885 But no. 00:16:06.909 --> 00:16:08.803 There are no sidelines. 00:16:09.555 --> 00:16:10.869 We're all in it. 00:16:11.249 --> 00:16:12.972 We are implicated. 00:16:14.116 --> 00:16:17.021 And if I'm not joining the struggle to dismantle a system 00:16:17.045 --> 00:16:19.364 that advantages me, 00:16:19.388 --> 00:16:20.842 I am complicit. 00:16:22.685 --> 00:16:24.769 This isn't about shame or guilt. 00:16:25.408 --> 00:16:27.436 White guilt doesn't get anything done, 00:16:27.460 --> 00:16:30.679 and honestly, I don't feel a lot of guilt. 00:16:30.703 --> 00:16:33.602 History isn't my fault or yours. 00:16:34.407 --> 00:16:38.129 What I do feel is a stronger sense of responsibility 00:16:39.453 --> 00:16:40.811 to do something. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:42.605 --> 00:16:47.162 All this has altered the way that I think about and approach my work 00:16:47.186 --> 00:16:49.392 as a documentary storyteller 00:16:49.416 --> 00:16:50.694 and as a teacher. 00:16:51.559 --> 00:16:53.949 But beyond that, besides that, what does it mean? 00:16:53.973 --> 00:16:55.750 What does it mean for any of us? 00:16:56.986 --> 00:16:59.719 Does it mean that we support leaders 00:16:59.743 --> 00:17:02.855 who want to push ahead with a conversation about reparations? 00:17:03.675 --> 00:17:04.839 In our communities, 00:17:04.863 --> 00:17:09.883 are we finding people who are working to transform unjust institutions 00:17:09.907 --> 00:17:11.444 and supporting that work? 00:17:12.313 --> 00:17:13.765 At my job, 00:17:13.789 --> 00:17:16.135 am I the white person who shows up grudgingly 00:17:16.159 --> 00:17:18.980 for the diversity and equity meeting, 00:17:19.004 --> 00:17:21.756 or am I trying to figure out how to be a real accomplice 00:17:21.780 --> 00:17:23.491 to my colleagues of color? 00:17:24.694 --> 00:17:27.250 Seems to me wherever we show up, 00:17:28.270 --> 00:17:32.625 we need to show up with humility and vulnerability 00:17:32.649 --> 00:17:37.084 and a willingness to put down this power that we did not earn. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:40.876 --> 00:17:43.689 I believe we also stand to benefit 00:17:43.713 --> 00:17:45.823 if we could create a society 00:17:45.847 --> 00:17:49.599 that's not built on the exploitation or oppression of anyone. 00:17:50.683 --> 00:17:53.837 But in the end we should do this, 00:17:53.861 --> 00:17:55.165 we should show up, 00:17:55.189 --> 00:17:57.000 figure out how to take action. 00:17:58.103 --> 00:17:59.669 Because it's right. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:02.248 --> 00:18:03.457 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:03.481 --> 00:18:06.197 (Applause)