Clint Smith: In Thomas Jefferson's memoir
Notes on the State of Virginia he wrote that
the slave is incapable of love.
The slave is incapable of possessing and sustaining
complex emotion and that black people are
inferior to whites in both the endowments
of body and mind.
And so, for me, that's interesting because
the man who's largely considered the intellectual
founding father of this country, responsible
in Iarge part for the conception of the Declaration
of Independence and the constitution, didn't
think I was fully human.
And so there's an entire history from the
very inception of this country of black people
being dehumanized by the state and people
who represent the state.
And so that's why I think it's important to
have this socio-historical context and understanding
so that when we see police killing black men
and women in the streets, we recognize that
this isn't sort of something happening out
of nowhere.
That this is actually consistent with the
narrative that has been given about and to
black people throughout this country's history.
Robin DiAngelo: The mainstream definition
of a racist is an individual—always an individual,
not a system—who consciously does not like
people based on race—must be conscious—and
intentionally seeks to be mean to them—must
be intentional.
And that definition, I believe, is the root
of virtually all white defensiveness on this
topic.
It makes it virtually impossible to talk to
the average white person about the inevitable
absorption of a racist world view that we
get from living in a society in which racism
is the foundation.
So I live in a society that from the time
I open my eyes, in myriad ways, both implicit
and explicit has conveyed to me that I am
inherently superior because I'm white.
The research shows that all children by age
three to four understand it's better to be
white.
All children.
Me.
I got that message.
You got that message.
Everyone gets it.
You can't miss it and it's not isolated.
It's not singular.
It's not dependent on any one person.
It's relentlessly circulating.
James Arthur Baldwin: In the case of an American
negro born in that glittering republic, and
in the moment you were born, since you don't
know any better, every stick and stone and
every face is white.
And since you have not yet seen a mirror you
suppose that you are too.
It comes as a great shock, around the age
of five or six or seven, to discover the flag
to which you have pledged allegiance, along
with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance
to you.
It comes as a great shock to discover that
Gary Cooper killing off the Indians when you
were rooting for Gary Cooper—that the Indians
were you.
Clint Smith: I remember receiving the news
when Tamir Rice was killed, a 12-year-old
boy in Cleveland who was shot in the park
playing with a toy gun.
Police killed him within two seconds of pulling
up in the car.
And it immediately brought me back to a moment
in my own childhood when I was playing with
water guns and my father came and told me
I couldn't do that—that it was unacceptable.
I didn't really understand.
I was frustrated.
I was embarrassed that my father would do
that in front of my friends.
That he was the strict dad.
I called him after Tamir Rice had been killed
and I had a conversation and I told him I
understand now.
James Blake: I saw someone running towards
me and as he got to me I was smiling thinking
this was some sort of a friendly encounter—a
fan or someone that was just a long-lost friend
or something, but he quickly dispelled that
myth in my head and slammed me to the ground
and had his knee in my back and cuffed me
and told me to not say a word and just listen
to whatever he had to say.
So I did what he said and they said it was
just a case of mistaken identity but as it
was happening I was pretty much in shock.
Clint Smith: So many people in the black community,
young black men in particular, grew up having
the talk and getting the talk, so to speak,
from their parents.
But I remember having conversations with some
of my white friends and realizing there was
no notion of ever having to have a conversation
about how to interact with police, who you
are in the context of the larger criminal
justice system.
James Arthur Baldwin: It comes as a great
shock to discover that the country, which
is your birthplace and to which you own your
life and your identity, has not in its whole
system of reality evolved anyplace for you.
The disaffection, the demoralization and the
gap between one person and another only on
the basis of the color of their skins begins
there.
And accelerates, accelerates throughout a
whole lifetime so that presently you realize
you're 30 and having a terrible time managing
to trust your countrymen.
By the time you are 30, you have been through
a certain kind of mill and the most serious
effect of the mill you've been through is,
again, not the catalog of disaster—the policeman,
the taxi drivers, the waiters, the landlady,
the landlord, the banks, the insurance companies,
the millions of details 24 hours of every
day which spell out to you that you are a
worthless human being.
It is not that, because by that time you've
begun to see it happening in your daughter
or your son or your niece or your nephew.
You are 30 by now and nothing you have done
has helped you to escape the trap.
And what is worse than that is that nothing
you have done and, as far as you can tell,
nothing you can do will save your son or your
daughter from meeting the same disaster and
not impossibly coming to the same end.
Robin DiAngelo: Most white people are not
going to do anything different.
Even those who are open to the message, if
it is not sustained, it won't make much of
an impact.
I often say when I'm in front of a group ""Everything
outside of this room will compel you not to
see this anymore.""
The forces are incredibly seductive.
The forces of white solidarity, the forces
of keeping other white people comfortable,
the forces to not see or name any of this.
And if you don't put some kind of structure
around yourself to keep you focused there
you're going to slip right back into the status
quo.
For so many white people we think that the
answer to racism is friendliness.
If you notice the evidence that most white
people will give for why they're not racist,
one of their top pieces of evidence is ""I
know people of color.
I have friends of color.""
Donald Trump: We had a case where we had an
African American guy who was a fan of mine.
Great fan, great guy.
In fact, I want to find out what's going on
with him.
You know what – look at my African American
over here.
Look at him.
Joe Biden: If you have a problem figuring
out whether you're for me or Trump then you
ain't black.
Robin DiAngelo: It's actually quite revealing.
So, in order for a claim like that—'I know
people of color.
I have friends of color.'—in order for a
claim like that to be good evidence of my
lack of racism, a racist can't be able to
do that otherwise it's not good evidence.
'This is what distinguishes me from a racist.
I have people of color in my life.
I live in New York City.
I was in Teach for America.
I went to a diverse school.'
These are all the claims that white people
will make for their lack of racism.
Well, that must mean a racist cannot live
in New York City, could not know or speak
to or be friendly to people of color, could
not be in the Peace Corps, et cetera.
And I'm hoping you can see right now how ridiculous
that evidence is because even an avowed racist
can do all of those things.
So, most white people believe that niceness
is all it takes and the status quo of our
society is the reproduction of racial inequality.
That's what it does.
It's a default of all of our institutions,
our norms and our policies.
It's what our society does.
It's what it's always done.
Our outcomes are not improving.
By many measures, our outcomes of racial disparity
are increasing.
Mary Bassett: New York has gotten healthier
and healthier in recent years and our life
expectancy now exceeds that of the United
States as a whole.
So, on average, New York City is definitely
a place to live to be healthy.
But that average doesn't disclose the huge
variation that we see by neighborhood.
And we find that the community district, actually,
Brownsville, which was a neighborhood that
I moved to when I was a little girl when I
came to New York, has a life expectancy that
is 11 years shorter than the Financial District.
Now, Brownsville, if we considered it a country,
is doing a little bit worse than Peru, a little
bit better than Samoa and about the same as
Sri Lanka in terms of life expectancy.
We're talking about in a city that is one
of the richest cities in the world, in the
country that is the richest country in the
world, we have neighborhoods where the patterns
of health look like those of a developing
country.
That's not acceptable.
In fact it's unconscionable.
The first thing that people might think in
trying to explain that is that the people
in Brownsville are making a whole set of bad
choices.
They're not careful about what they eat.
They smoke too much.
They don't exercise enough and that's why
they're unhealthy.
The ""lifestyle"" hypothesis is really powerful
and, in many ways, it replaced the genetic
hypothesis as an explanation for the poor
health of the black population.
But let's unpack what we mean by lifestyle.
Nobody picks a substandard building to live
in with terrible issues of rodent infestation
and indoor allergens that trigger asthma.
That's not a lifestyle choice.
No one picks a neighborhood because they want
to feel unsafe there so that they won't use
the park, or no one picks a neighborhood where
there are no grocery stores or supermarkets
that carry a range of vegetables that allow
them to make the healthy choices we want them
to make.
So, when we talk about lifestyle, we're often
mixing it up with poverty and all the constraints
that poor, segregated neighborhoods place
on people's ability to live a healthy life.
James Arthur Baldwin: From a very literal
point of view, the harbors and the ports and
the railroads are the country.
The economy, especially of the Southern states,
could not conceivably be what it has become
if they had not had and do not still have,
indeed, and for so long, so many generations,
cheap labor.
I am stating very seriously—and this is
not an overstatement—that I picked the cotton
and I carried it to market and I built the
railroads under someone else's whip for nothing.
For nothing.
The Southern oligarchy, which has, until today,
so much power in Washington and therefore
some power in the world was created by my
labor and my sweat and the violation of my
women and the murder of my children.
This in the land of the free and the home
of the brave.
And no one can challenge that statement.
It is a matter of historical record.
Liza Jessie Peterson: People should be concerned
with the issue of mass incarceration because
it is a human rights crisis that is happening
right in front of our face and it's being
cloaked with ""crime and punishment.""
The 13th Amendment in the Constitution, in
the United States Constitution, it says that
slavery is illegal.
So we can't have slavery anymore—except
for punishment of a crime.
If you are convicted of a crime then you're
exempt from that 13th Amendment.
So that means that you're allowed to work
as a slave, slave labor, slave wages.
So you have people working for ten cents an
hour, eleven cents an hour, doing agriculture,
clothing lines, computer parts, airplane parts,
military equipment, food that we buy organically
grown.
These things are being manufactured in prisons.
So you have corporations, companies, who are
profiting off of people incarcerated.
So there is an incentive for hyper-criminalization
of a population to keep capitalism running
on a well oiled machine of slave labor which
is the foundation for this country.
Let's not forget that the fabric, the very
fabric of this country, is rooted in slavery.
Slave labor for hundreds of years.
So there is huge capital that was amassed.
Systems and industries that were created from
slave labor.
So how does this system continue to operate?
Well it just kind of shifted and now we have
mass incarceration.
We have people who are literally working for
five cents, seven cents, ten cents an hour.
Malcolm X (El-Haji Malik El-Shabazz): To devise
some kind of method or strategy to offset
some of the events or repetition of the events
that have taken place here in Los Angeles
recently, we have to go to the root.
We have to go to the cause.
Dealing with the condition itself is not enough
and it is because of our effort toward getting
straight to the root that people oft times
think we're dealing in hate.
We are oppressed.
We are exploited.
We are downtrodden.
We are denied not only civil rights but even
human rights.
So the only way we're going to get some of
this oppression and exploitation away from
us or aside from us is come together against
a common enemy.
Who taught you to hate the texture of your
hair?
Who taught you to hate the color of your skin
to such extent that you bleach to get like
the white man?
Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose
and the shape of your lips?
Who taught you to hate yourself from the top
of your head to the soles of your feet?
Who taught you to hate your own kind?
Who taught you to hate the race that you belong
to, so much so that you don't want to be around
each other?
No, before you come asking 'Mr. Mohammad,
does he teach hate?' you should ask yourself
who taught you to hate being what God gave
you?
And I, for one, as a Muslim, believe that
the white man is intelligent enough.
If he were made to realize how black people
really feel and how fed up we are without
that old compromise and sweet talk.
Stop sweet talking him.
Tell him how you feel.
Tell him what kind of hell you've been catching
and let him know that if he's not ready to
clean his house up, if he's not ready to clean
his house up, he shouldn't have a house.
It should catch on fire.
And burn down.
Robin DiAngelo: I'm going to use a term here
that I understand is charged and that is white
supremacy.
I'm very comfortable with the term.
Yes, it includes extremists we might think
of as white nationalists or neo-Nazis.
It also is a highly descriptive sociological
term for the water we swim in, for the society
we live in.
A society that holds white people up as the
human ideal, as the norm for humanity and
everyone else as a particular kind of human
and a deficient one.
Clint Smith: Part of what's happened now is
that we live in a hyper-documented era in
which everything is being captured on camera
phones and videos and gone viral and shared
on different social media platforms.
And a lot of people are saying 'Where did
all of this come from.
Like how are the police doing this.
Why are they doing this.
This just happened out of nowhere?'
When actually this has been happening for
an incredibly long time.
In black communities, we've been experiencing
disproportionate incarceration, we've been
experiencing stop and frisk, we've been experiencing
police brutality on an ongoing basis for decades
and decades and centuries.
Wesley Lowery: The major question that lies
at the heart of our inability to deal with
and to actually create changes to a system
that would lead to the decrease in use of
fatal force is our refusal to believe black
and brown people.
Black and brown people have been saying for
generations that this was the case, that they
were being beat up.
They were being pulled over.
They were getting arrested on fraudulent charges.
And we essentially for generations said 'We
don't believe you.'
Clint Smith: What's happened now is that now
there's sort of these primary sources, so
to speak, these empirical evidence of these
events transpiring in America and the world
is being forced to look themselves in the
mirror and reckon with how so many of us have
been complicit in allowing such a thing to
take place for so long and to really be forced
to ask ourselves what are we doing or what
are we not doing to allow this state-sanctioned
violence against black and brown bodies to
continue?
Black children in this country in part necessitate
a different means of parenting in the sense
that it is important to inform a black child
of the realities that exist around them without
making that child feel as if it is their fault.
Racism isn't a child's fault.
Systemic oppression isn't a child's fault.
At the same time, you have to teach that child
how to navigate a world that is often taught
to fear them.
My mother and my father had ongoing conversations
with me throughout my childhood and my adolescence
and my teenage years and even now as a young
adult about understanding the way that I was
seen even if I wasn't able to see that myself.
To recognize that when I went out with a group
of my white friends or if I'm in an interracial
relationship or if I am engaged in certain
activities, that those things are perceived
differently because I am a black man and the
United States and the world has certain sort
of stereotype or caricature of who they believe
black men to be and that there are people
judging me before I ever open my mouth.
That there are people who have decided who
I am before I've ever had an opportunity to
show them or to engage with them.
And that this exists in every sort of realm
of class.
And I think that was an important thing for
my parents to teach me as well is that, I
come from a home of two parents with professional
degrees and I attend Harvard University where
I'm getting my doctorate.
I think a lot of people can operate under
this assumption, they'll say 'Oh, Clint.
You made it.
You've transcended racism and you've moved
beyond these oppressive forces and obstacles
that have sought to keep you down.'
And the reality is that's not true.
The reality is that I still get followed around
in stores wearing my Harvard paraphernalia.
The reality is that I still can't catch a
cab on Massachusetts Avenue.
The reality is that there are people who,
white women will cross the street when walking
towards me on the sidewalk at nighttime and
those—it doesn't matter where I where my
pants, it doesn't matter how well I speak
or how smart I am or what my house looks like
because I'm a black man and that is the first
thing people see and that is it immediately
for them triggers an implicit biases that
they have been socialized to believe about
who we are and what we do or do not do.
Robin DiAngelo: We simply can't get where
we need to go from the current paradigm that
says only mean, intentional individuals could
ever perpetrate or participate in racism.
What we need to do is think very differently
about what racism is.
James Arthur Baldwin: I was taught in American
history books that Africa had no history and
neither did I.
That I was a savage about whom the less said
the better, who had been saved by Europe and
brought to America.
And, of course I believed it.
I didn't have much choice.
William Barr: Well, history is written by
the winners so it largely depends on who's
writing the history.
James Arthur Baldwin: This dream is at the
expense of the American negro.
