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I'm a human rights lawyer.
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I've been a human rights
lawyer for 30 years,
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and this is what I know.
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Once there was a man alone in a room.
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And his name was Alton.
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And then seven other men, seven strangers,
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rushed into his room and dragged him out.
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And they held him
in a horizontal, crucifix position.
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One on each arm,
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two on each leg,
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and the seventh man held Alton's neck
in a vice-like grip
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between his forearms.
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And Alton was struggling for breath
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and saying, "I can't breathe,"
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just as George Floyd said,
"I can't breathe."
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But they didn't stop.
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And soon, Alton was dead.
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When I was asked to represent
his mother and his brother and his sister
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in the inquest into his death,
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they asked me, "How could it happen?"
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And I didn't have an answer.
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Because Alton had injuries
all over his body.
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He had bruising to his neck and his torso.
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He had injuries to his arms and his legs.
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He had blood in his eyes,
his ears and his nose.
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But they claimed no one knew anything.
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They claimed that they couldn't
explain how he died.
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For Alton had two problems.
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Firstly, the corridor in which he died
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was a prison corridor.
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And secondly, he was Black.
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So I want to talk to you today
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about Alton's mother's question.
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How could such a thing
happen in our country?
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How can these things happen
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in countries across the world?
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How can they happen still,
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and what could we do to stop it?
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For three decades,
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I've been representing the families
of people of color
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who have been killed in state custody
in the United Kingdom.
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And I've done human rights work
across four continents.
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And what I've learned is this:
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that if we want to do
something about racism,
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we have to first understand what it is.
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So let's talk about
this thing called race.
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What exactly is it?
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A fact of our lives?
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One of the most powerful
forces in the world?
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Something we don't particularly
want to talk about?
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It is all these things,
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but it is something else.
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It is a myth.
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There is no such thing as race.
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Scientific research shows
that race is an illusion.
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For example,
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someone of European descent
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might be genetically closer
to an Asian person
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than to someone else of European descent.
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So if race isn't a biological fact,
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what actually is it?
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It is a social construct.
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Which means it's been invented.
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But by whom and for what reason?
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As a species, we share 99.9 percent
of DNA with everybody else.
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But visible external characteristics,
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like hair type and skin color,
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have been used in order
to promote this racist genetic lie
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about the supposed
racial genetic differences.
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Racism has been endemic for centuries.
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The Nazis, of course, were very keen
to promote the racist lie.
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But also, in the United States,
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there were eugenic experiments
and eugenic laws.
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And in Australia,
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children of dual Aboriginal heritage
were confiscated from their parents
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in order to create a white Australia.
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This kind of thinking is rising again
with alt-right groups
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hankering after racially pure homelands.
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How does this work?
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You see, we don't have
social inequalities because of race.
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We have social inequalities
that are justified by race.
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I started to understand this
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when I was representing
anti-apartheid activists.
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And they showed me how apartheid
was a system of social exploitation
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and discrimination
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that was justified by race.
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By the supposed superiority
of white people
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and the supposed inferiority
of Black people.
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The apartheid regime said it was nature
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and so it was inevitable
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and there was nothing
you could do about it.
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The Mother Nature lie gives
discrimination and injustice a pass.
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I've also found it in cases
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where people suffer from the legacy
of colonization and empire.
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I've seen similar effects amongst people
of the same color in Africa.
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And how people of certain castes
are looked down upon in India.
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The victims may be different,
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but the mechanism --
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the labeling and the lies --
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is exactly the same.
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And so you can see why people
are so keen to embrace the race thing.
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Because it gives the privileged,
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people like us,
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a get out of jail free card.
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The simple truth is that race is a system.
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It's like oxygen, like an atmosphere.
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It flows everywhere in our society.
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It infects everybody it touches.
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It protects power and privilege.
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Whose?
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Well, look around you.
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So what is it like for people of color,
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people like me,
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to try to speak to white people
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about racism?
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Many, many white people
find it extremely difficult to do.
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Some white people say
they know nothing about it.
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Others say that our societies
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may not even suffer from racism at all.
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So if you are a white person
who is wondering about all of this,
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there is a thought experiment
that you can do.
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Because here's the truth.
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You know.
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You already know.
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So ask yourself this:
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Would you, would you really
want your son or your daughter,
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your brother or your sister,
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to marry a practicing Muslim
from the Middle East?
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Or someone recently arrived
from South Asia, who is a Hindu?
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Or an asylum seeker
from Sub-Saharan Africa?
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Or someone who's recently crossed
the US-Mexican border?
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You may not have a total objection,
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but you may have a concern.
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A qualm that scratches
at the back of your brain.
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It's not because
of the color of their skin.
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But because you know
that in countries like ours,
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as things stand now,
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their life prospects are likely
to be affected by this union.
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And you realize that you do know,
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you do understand
that people will judge them.
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And in a hundred ways,
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those judgments will impact their lives
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and the lives of their children.
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At that moment,
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you are connecting with a powerful truth.
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Which is that you know
systemic racism is real.
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So why do you not want to talk about race?
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Because it's uncomfortable, certainly.
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But that's only part of the answer.
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The bigger truth is far more damaging.
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Your bristling isn't just defensiveness.
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It is a defense mechanism.
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It defends the system of privilege
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and the unequal division
of wealth and power.
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Fragility gives racial inequality a pass.
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Who are the winners and losers?
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Well look at the data.
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In income.
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In health inequalities.
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In school exclusion.
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In career prospects.
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In stop and search.
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Look at how people of color
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have been disproportionately
dying of COVID.
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So if the racial myth invisibilizes
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and the fragility response silences,
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what choices are you left with?
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The binary choice between
you being a racist and a non-racist.
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Or is there another way?
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Because almost everyone in this TED Talk
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will say that they are non-racist.
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But we have to face it,
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being non-something is not enough.
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The third choice
is being actively anti-racist.
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So if you agree that Black lives matter,
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ask yourself,
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"How do Black lives matter in my life?"
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"What have I done to show
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that Black lives matter to me?"
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By adopting a visible, conscious,
active anti-racist stance,
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what was once invisible is made visible.
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What was once silenced,
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is shouted out loud and clear.
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But that still is not enough.
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After weeks of bitter
struggle at the inquest,
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the all-white jury returned
to the courtroom in Alton's case.
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There was a moment of complete silence
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when the foreperson stood
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and then he announced the verdict.
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And it was unlawful killing.
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And at that moment,
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all hell broke loose in the courtroom.
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And there was just this deafening noise.
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People were screaming,
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Alton's sister got up
into the aisle to my left
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and she was pointing
at the prison officers
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and shouting at them,
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"You killed my brother!
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You killed my brother!"
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And the family desperately wanted
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that the prison officers
who were responsible for Alton's death
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should be prosecuted.
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We all desperately wanted that.
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But not a single one of them
was prosecuted.
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So we took the chief prosecutor to court,
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the director of public prosecutions.
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And the highest judge in the land,
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the Lord Chief Justice,
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agreed that the decision not to prosecute
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was fatally flawed and unlawful.
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Every day during Alton's case,
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his brother would sit
on the courtroom steps
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and he would say to me,
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"Train them up good today, Mr. D."
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But when he realized
that nobody would ever be prosecuted
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for the killing of his brother,
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it crushed him.
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And he died a few years later
in a psychiatric hospital.
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So how does Alton's death connect to you
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and to the racism and privilege
in our societies?
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What do I want from you?
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What I want from myself
is to be put out of a job.
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You see, families come to me
who are grieving
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and I see the hope in their eyes.
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And I have to tell them
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that the chances
of anybody ever being prosecuted
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for being involved
in the killing of their loved ones
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are very remote.
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I saw these grieving faces
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in the springtime of my career.
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And I still see them
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now that I'm entering the autumn of it.
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And the summer season was full of blood.
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And somehow I think
that the blood is on my hands,
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even though I know rationally
that that is not the case.
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But I could not bring back
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Alton or Gareth or Zahid
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or any of the others,
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which is all their grieving
families ever wanted.
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So I'm asking you to see through the lies.
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And to see through one of the most
disempowering lies of them all.
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That what we do will not
and cannot make a difference.
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I'm sure they said that to Rosa Parks
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and to Martin Luther King
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and to Nelson Mandela.
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And they just went ahead
and did it anyway.
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And I tried to think of them
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as I was cross-examining
the prison officers.
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And I would say to each of them,
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"Look at Mrs. Manning, Alton's mother,
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and you tell her why her son is dead."
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And not a single one of them
could look at her.
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They wanted her to be invisible.
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Sadly, realizing that no one
would be prosecuted for her boy's death,
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she sank into a deep depression
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and she died.
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But I'll never forget how,
in the chaos and mayhem,
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when that verdict was announced,
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I turned to her and said,
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"Mrs. Manning, I'm very sorry
for your family."
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And she looked at me and said,
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"Mr. Dias, you are family."
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And she pointed at the prison officers
and the jury and she said,
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"And they are family.
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But families bicker and fight,
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but we've got to sort it out.
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And we've got to find a way."
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So how do we sort it out and when?
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Dr. King taught us
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the time is always right
to do the right thing.
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These contentious deaths in state custody
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have taken place in prisons
and in police stations.
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But finally, the spotlight
has been shone on them
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by the horrendous death of George Floyd.
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Now we can't say that we didn't know.
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The COVID crisis and George Floyd's death
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have shocked us out of our complacency.
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They put the world in flux,
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because what has been seen
cannot be unseen.
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So right now is a historic
moment of change.
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Now is the time to take action
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in our spheres of influence,
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and we all have them.
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We have voting power,
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we have pocket power,
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where we spend our money
and what we spend it on.
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We have the power to confront racism
wherever and whenever we find it.
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Those of you listening today,
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who have benefited from that privilege,
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have the opportunity
to turn it on its head
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and to demand that society changes.
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Ultimately what happens
is now in our hands.
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And this is what I know.
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When someone in state custody
says, "I can't breathe,"
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they are in mortal danger.
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But when a society doesn't challenge
the oxygen of racism
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that everyone breathes every day,
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the hope for racial justice
and equality in that society
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is also in mortal danger.
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There can't be any more Altons,
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and Gareths and Zahids,
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and Olasenis and Jimmys and Seans
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and Sherrys and Breonnas
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and Christophers and Georges.
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But this isn't just about deaths,
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but about life.
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And about our human flourishing together.
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And all of us are needed for that.
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Racism wants to stay invisible.
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Expose it.
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Racism wants your silence.
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Make a noise.
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Racism wants your apathy.
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Make a commitment now to use your voice
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and your privilege and your power
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to fight for racial justice always,
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and to join the crescendo of voices
calling for change.
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And to be part of the hope.
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Will you join us?