WEBVTT - Integration, Not Assimilation 0:00:11.760 --> 0:00:14.760 Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:19.239 me your Girl, Danielle Moody recording from the Home Bunker. Folks, 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:23.959 I am really excited to bring you this conversation with 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:29.880 author and CNN journalist John Blake, who is penned the 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.680 book More Than I Imagined, And I have to tell 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:40.959 you that this conversation with John was one of the 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:49.680 most i opening, provocative conversations that I've had in a 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:56.720 really long time. And in his book, John tells the 0:00:56.800 --> 0:01:01.960 story of hiding the fact being closeted in his terms 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:07.240 about being biracial and having a white mother that he 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:13.600 didn't meet until he was about seventeen years old. In 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:19.520 the essay that he wrote for CNN back in April 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:23.520 of this year, it's entitled What a Black Man Discovered 0:01:23.640 --> 0:01:27.360 when he Met the White Mother He Never knew. Folks, 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:31.920 if you don't run out and buy John's book more 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:35.640 than I imagine, than I plead with you to go over 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:39.840 to CNN dot com and read What a Black Man 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:42.759 Discovered when he Met the White Mother He Never Knew. 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:51.640 The essay is beautiful, the story is beyond compelling, but 0:01:51.840 --> 0:02:00.560 John's story mirrors the kinds of conversations vulnerability and expandiveness 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:06.640 we need to be having in this moment when the 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:13.239 Republican white supremacist Party is working over time to push 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:19.040 us further and further apart as a society. And I 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:23.959 think now more than ever, that's when you reach your 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:31.080 arms out for those who are reaching back. And so 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:37.280 this was a robust conversation. It was one that honestly 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:40.600 I could have had for hours and hours and hours. 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:45.000 And so without further ado, I bring you a really 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:54.160 in depth conversation with author, journalist, writer John Blake. Folks, 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:58.320 I am very excited to welcome to OKF Daily for 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:03.520 the very first time award winning CNN journalist and author 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:13.280 John Blake, whose latest book, More Than I Imagined is Your 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:17.640 Personal Narrative. His personal narrative about being raised in the 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:22.320 inner City of Baltimore in the nineteen seventies and being 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:26.960 I guess, in your words, you say closeted by racial 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:34.040 man until you, in fact meet your white mother, and John, 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:38.640 I have to say that your essay, which I want 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:44.800 to tell folks, the title of your essay at CNN, 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:48.000 which came out in the spring of this year, What 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:51.400 a Black Man Discovered when he met the white mother 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:55.560 he never knew was one of the most captivating essays, 0:03:56.040 --> 0:04:01.160 which I know is the inspiration and is a directly 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:06.280 taken from your book. Pieces I've read in a long time, 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:14.520 and I read a lot. I read a lot, and 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:16.720 one of the things I want to I want to 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:20.760 jump in with is something that stood out to me 0:04:21.320 --> 0:04:26.360 in the essay that I have personally been grappling with 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:32.800 probably since I started this show, which is when you 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:38.640 wrote facts don't change people relationships do? 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:39.920 Yeah? 0:04:40.120 --> 0:04:45.400 Yeah, I mean, John, I'm just going to say, please, please, 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:49.839 please talk to me so that I can stop looking 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:56.520 for statistics, that I can stop looking to shove truth 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:03.039 in people's faces and pray to some God that they 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:11.440 will wake up from this racist maga coma that they 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:15.680 have been seduced to be in. But that if we're honest, 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:22.120 this country has been gripped by since it's creation. But 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:26.680 reading that in Black and White, facts don't change people 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:30.120 relationships do, I said, well, God, damn, I have to 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:30.680 start over. 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:37.120 So you know, it's funny you mentioned that because so 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:41.280 many people cite that quote, and it seems like the 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:45.280 enlarges with people's you know, memories and to me, it's 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:48.200 kind of a dangerous quote because I don't want to 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:52.080 imply that facts aren't important. I mean, I'm a journalist 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:55.440 like you, so I revere facts. I know that facts 0:05:55.480 --> 0:06:01.720 are very important. But that quote comes from twenty five years, 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:04.280 twenty five plus years of being a journalist writing about 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:09.080 race and politics. I've covered so many racial reckonings that 0:06:09.160 --> 0:06:12.360 come and go. And to give you an idea about 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:16.240 how old I am, I wrote about Clarence Thomas' nomination 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:20.719 to the Supreme Court. I covered the Rodney King protest 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:25.080 in nineteen ninety two. So I've seen these racial awakenings 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:29.599 come in America and go, and we write these hard 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:34.440 hitting stories about race. We thought I thought that all 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:37.920 these videos of people like George Floyd would decisively shift 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:43.440 racial attitudes. And yet after George Floyd, more white Americans voted. 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:47.679 More Americans voted for Trump than any other president before 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:51.880 besides Joe Biden. So I asked myself, as a journalist, 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:57.479 what shifts racial attitudes? Because it's definitely not facts and information. 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:00.520 It's helpful, but that's not the decisive thing. And then 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:04.320 I looked at my family. So you mentioned your question. 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:07.679 You know, the maga coma, the maga madness. The white 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:10.760 members of my family were caught up in their own madness, 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:15.320 their own racism. These were people, you know, brief description, 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:18.640 who rejected me at birth. My mother disappeared from my 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:21.040 life right after I was born. There was no explanation. 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:24.520 Her family wanted nothing to do with me because my 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:27.360 father is black. These were people who freely used the 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:30.000 N word, who thought that white and black people should 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:34.000 be kept apart. And yet today we're family. We have 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:37.480 this close, close, beautiful relationship. And I asked myself, how 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:41.560 did that happen? And it came through relationships. It came 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:44.800 through us getting to know one another year after year, 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:47.880 time after time. And to me, that's why I said 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:49.920 that when I looked at me, when I looked at 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:52.880 when I looked at a lot of social science things 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:58.800 that really changed people, it's really being in relationships. Those 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:01.600 are the things that decisively shift racial attitudes. And I 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:04.120 think we've forgotten that. You know, a long time ago, 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:07.960 I'm going to mention a word that is so uncool 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:10.240 that you might boot me off the show for saying it. 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:14.280 But people used to talk about this thing called integration. Yeah, 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:16.080 you know when King talked about it, I have a dream, 0:08:16.120 --> 0:08:18.200 you know all these when he dreamt of a day 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:20.440 where white and black people would sit together at the 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.560 table brotherhood. There was an understanding that in the fight 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:25.800 for racial justice, yes you have to pass the Voting 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:27.880 Rights Act, Yes you have to do all these things, 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:31.920 but you also have to put people in situations where 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:34.200 they will be around people who see the world differently, 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:37.800 and in doing so, people will see their common humanity 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:41.240 and change also occurs there. So that's what happened to 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.480 my family, and I begin to see that that's what 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:47.360 really changed them, not all this knowledge I had about racism. 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:49.880 So that's why I put that quote in that essay 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:50.440 that you read. 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:53.920 And I will say this that it isn't and I 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:59.280 didn't interpret it as sax don't like that, sex don't 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:06.360 matter what. But what it like stung was that you 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:10.120 cannot change people that you are not willing to engage. 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:15.120 That's a beautiful point. And in my situation, I was 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:20.120 forced to engage with white family members who were captured 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:23.640 by racism and didn't want anything to do with me, 0:09:23.760 --> 0:09:26.439 because I had to come together with them to take 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:28.680 care of my mom. And as I mentioned in the 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:32.160 estimate essay. I first met my mom at seventeen. It 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:34.959 was this totally unexpected meeting, and the place where a 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:38.439 met her was a mental institution. She had been institutionalized 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:41.480 for schizophrenia. So I had to come together and become 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:45.040 her caretaker. And to do that successfully, I had to 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:47.679 work together with my white relatives, the same ones who 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.480 wanted nothing to do with me. Now, I never thought 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:54.880 that that relationship would change me and change them, but 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:57.160 it did. So I tried to figure out, like, how 0:09:57.160 --> 0:09:59.240 does this stuff happen? And I read a lot of 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:01.360 literature about it, and it keeps on going back to 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:05.440 the same thing, bringing people together. There is a reason 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:10.480 why racist white Americans have fought through our history so 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:14.400 much against bringing black and white people together. You know, 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:18.440 segregation wasn't just created because white people hated black people. 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:22.480 Segregation was created because white people, white elite people knew 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:25.800 that if white working class and black and brown working 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:29.520 class people ever lived together, went to school together, they 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:32.640 would notice that they had common interest yep. So I 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:35.560 think it's really important that integration that we see for 0:10:35.600 --> 0:10:39.520 what it is. It's not assimilation, meaning that we learn 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:41.559 how to be more white and to mean more dulcile 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:42.480 and just be like them. 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:42.599 No. 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:46.160 To me, integration is about power. It's about sharing space 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:49.640 but also sharing power. But in doing so, that's the 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:51.280 thing that shifts racial attitudes. 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:58.559 You know, you speak, you know in such a logical 0:10:58.600 --> 0:11:04.960 way and in such an easy way, because I I 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:09.880 think about your aunt, yeah who you know who we 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:14.640 write about, and you know said, well, I didn't not 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:17.760 come to see you because you were black, Like it's 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:21.560 because you were in Catholic right, Like, let's just live 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:25.120 in the river of denial, right like it wasn't you know, 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:29.520 because and you please share the story of your of 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:32.920 your of your father and your mother, and your father 0:11:33.800 --> 0:11:37.520 going to your mother's neighborhood, going to her home. Yeah, 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:41.880 please tell tell the listeners what happened in nineteen sixty three. 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:45.160 Okay, So when I was born in the mid sixties, 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:49.360 interracial marriage was illegal in much of the country. It 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:51.679 wasn't like it is today. There was no Obama or 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:55.880 Kamala Harris in public, in pop culture, in the public eye. 0:11:56.760 --> 0:12:01.200 Interracial marriages were illegal, and if a black man could 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:03.240 be seen with a white woman in public, he could 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:07.600 literally be killed. And yet my father during that time decided, 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:11.079 for whatever reason, that he was going to date my mom, 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:13.880 And so when he went to visit her for a 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:18.760 date in Baltimore, he took a cab there, and first 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:20.320 a cab driver I didn't even want to take him 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:23.000 there because black people didn't go there, but he convinced 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:24.760 him to do so. And when he knocked on my 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:29.920 mother's door, her father answered the door and he physically 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:34.560 assaulted my father, called him the inWORD, and had him arrested. 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:37.920 And yet despite that, my mother decided to date my 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:41.800 father and to have two black kids with him. And 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:45.679 that's the world that they lived in. But to give 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:47.720 you an idea, you know my family, and this is 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:49.760 part of a strange part of my story. That same 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:53.720 father that assaulted my father, who called him the inWORD, 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:57.240 my maternal grandfather, is somebody that I was able to 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:01.960 reconcile with. But none of this happened unless you'd engage 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:03.920 with people who see the world differently. And it's very 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:06.199 difficult to do because you know, Frankly, as a journalist 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:11.040 who covers race, I get tired of black people. We're 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:15.840 always trying to understand them, we always have to forgive them. 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:20.000 It is so tiring, and so I can understand people 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:22.040 who don't want to do that, but I was forced 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:24.079 to do it because this is my family and I 0:13:24.080 --> 0:13:25.200 got to take care of my mom, and I have 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:28.679 to understand these people. But in doing so, I learned 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:31.040 so much and it changed me. I just didn't change them, 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:33.200 but they changed me. So I thought it was a 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:35.280 beautiful story. And we don't really hear those type of 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:36.880 stories about race right now. 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:39.520 No, because see, I mean, the only stories that we 0:13:39.640 --> 0:13:45.640 hear right are the story that we just heard recently 0:13:46.440 --> 0:13:50.959 in Texas. Black mother goes to confront her white neighbor. Yeah, 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:56.960 mother of four, she's dead, yeight ye. Black boy sent 0:13:57.000 --> 0:13:59.640 to go pick up his little brother, knocks on the 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:03.240 wrong door. Right, who shot in the head? 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:04.040 Right? 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:06.400 Do you know what I'm saying. I know you like 0:14:06.559 --> 0:14:13.360 your your father's story. That interaction has been so normalized, yes, 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:19.560 but the escalation in it is that people are shot 0:14:20.040 --> 0:14:25.760 dead right or harmed in their tracks simply for daring 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:28.960 to do what your father to do what your father did. 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:31.240 And so for me, I'm just like laying out just 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:35.400 those two stories. There are like two thousand more in 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:43.960 the last two years that sound like nineteen sixty three. 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:44.880 And go ahead. I'm sorry, I don't want to interview. 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:47.640 No, I was just gonna say that for me, it 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:50.680 does become I tell people all the time who listen 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:54.520 to woke a app, I'm exhausted all the goddamn time, right, 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:57.840 like I am. You know, I tell people to really, 0:14:58.240 --> 0:15:02.120 you know, particularly people of color, he particularly activists who 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:06.200 are on the front lines, particularly journalists, to take really 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:10.040 good care of their mental and emotional well being, right 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:14.040 because this work is designed to wear you down, right, 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:17.720 And you know, And so I ask you, like you 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:24.120 made these inroads, did you feel like you had to 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:30.600 drop your preconceived notions, your anger because you were hiding 0:15:31.280 --> 0:15:35.480 before you said I was closeted as biracial. I'm checking 0:15:35.840 --> 0:15:39.000 other boxes that say that my mom is black. That 0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:42.480 was not the case. So what did you have to 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:46.560 shift in order to allow for space? 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:50.440 Well, I want to say two things today. One is 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:53.800 when you were talking about how this work wears you down, 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:57.560 and I can totally relate to that. But for all 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:00.880 those stories that are tragic, the ones you rightly mentioned, 0:16:01.440 --> 0:16:03.880 I think there are other stories out there where people 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:06.080 find a way to connect. We just don't really hear 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:09.320 about them. I think it's really important that we tell 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:13.840 these stories about racism that show people finding a way 0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:17.280 to get past it, because if we keep on telling 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:22.200 the same story that implies or says that America is 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:25.120 so racist, it will never change, that white people will 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:27.640 never change. If that's the only story we're telling, what 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:31.600 incentive does white America have to change? What hope do 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:34.520 we have that we can ever make a multiracial democracy work. 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:37.720 So the stories we tell are incredibly important to give 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:40.880 people the energy. It was this writer I like, she 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:45.640 said that action without hope is impossible, and we're telling 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:47.880 hopeless stories. People aren't going to have hope. They're not 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:50.480 going to think they can change things. So that's fun. 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:52.480 But two, you ask me about what did I have 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:55.320 to do to shift to make these to me that 0:16:55.840 --> 0:16:58.240 the quick answer is I had to get a little humility. 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:01.440 I had to Like you mentioned my mother's sister. I 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:04.840 talked about my mother's sister in that essay. He was 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:08.240 a woman's stone cold racist as far as I was concerned, 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:11.280 who denied when I met her in my mid twenties 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:14.399 that race had racism had anything to do with her 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:17.840 absence from my life. So I was very angry at her, 0:17:18.440 --> 0:17:20.159 and she would try to reach out to me and 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:23.639 establaghe this relationship. But I tell this story about how 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:27.760 I went to Lowe's one weekend to buy something for 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:32.960 my home improvement project, and I could myself racially profiling 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:35.639 a black man, meaning there was a black man and 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:38.240 a white man behind the counter. The white man was 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:42.160 on the phone, but I waited till he was off 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:43.640 the phone to ask him for help. But I didn't 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:46.080 ask the black man who was free. And only later 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:49.600 did I realized that, and that I began to realize, 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:53.000 you know, racism is so powerful that it can even 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:56.240 infect black people. And we know what happened with Tyree Nichols. 0:17:56.320 --> 0:17:59.640 He was beating the black out. So I said, let 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:03.400 me a little grace to my aunt, this woman who denied, 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:06.199 who denies her own racism because she grew up in 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:08.600 this all white world. She's not aware of these things. 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:12.560 And when I did that, our relationship began to shift. 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:14.439 I didn't preach to her, I didn't condemn her for 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:17.400 a racism. I started to just try to understand where 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:19.560 she come and came from to build this common ground. 0:18:20.040 --> 0:18:22.120 And so with a little humility like with in her, 0:18:22.320 --> 0:18:23.960 A little bit of that is in me as well. 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:26.560 So it's not the sexy thing to say. It's so 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:29.199 much easier to just condemn, and it feels good and 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:31.320 we should And I don't get me wrong, I'm not 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:34.480 saying we shouldn't be angry. Somebody told me once an interview, 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:37.119 or you're not angry anyone like hell no, it is 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:39.359 right to be angry when you see black people struck 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:41.520 down like that. It is healthy, you know. But I'm 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:44.119 not talking I'm talking about this all consuming anger that 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:47.120 takes you out where you see all white people this way, 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:50.080 are any group that way? That's that is not good. 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:52.720 And so when I saw when I approached my aunt, 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:56.320 my white aunt, with this kind of humility, that really 0:18:56.680 --> 0:19:01.040 helped our relationship and now we're like this family. She 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:04.199 maybe the beneficiary in her will. I never would have 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:06.520 predicted that, but it happened. 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:13.280 What you're stating, and the story that your book, your 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:19.080 story unveils for us, is that what we have to 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:22.600 understand is that there are concerted efforts that are being 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:27.240 made by people in high up places that see the 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:31.440 rest of us as pieces on a chessboard that they 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:35.640 move around, and they keep apart in order to win 0:19:36.160 --> 0:19:41.639 their game. Right, right, there is money made right in 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:45.239 the dissension. In the dissension, there is money that is 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:49.720 made in the misery. Right And and I you know, 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:54.520 and the place that I come to, though, John, is 0:19:54.560 --> 0:20:01.639 that how do you see moving from the place that 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:06.439 we are in right now in this country, which is 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:13.840 a tinderbox, back to a place of conversation When your 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:20.439 book is probably banned in Florida, when your book is 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:26.040 probably banned in Texas, in Alabama, in all of these places, 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:31.280 where are the are are the roots of the trees 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:33.000 are soaked with black people's blood? 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:33.800 Mm hm. 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:38.919 So how do we move into the place that we 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:42.439 need to do, where narrative, where conversation and storytelling is 0:20:42.440 --> 0:20:45.760 so important, when we don't even have those books anymore? 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:50.400 Well, that's a that's a very good question, and it's tough. 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:57.280 In I would say two things. One is, I think 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:01.600 one of the most important things we can do is 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:06.240 to not lose hope in telling those type of stories. 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:12.040 And I said earlier that action without hope is impossible. 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:16.520 And what I sense from people like yourself, people who've 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:18.480 been writing about race and try to tell these stories 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:23.159 to change America. I sense exhaustion, you know, like, just 0:21:23.240 --> 0:21:25.320 how do we get past that? And I think when 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:27.280 we get to that point, it can be easy to 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:30.240 say nothing's ever going to change. Like I had a 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:33.240 guy tell me the other day that racism is embedded 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:36.680 in our DNA, that people can't change. So I think 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:40.400 one is we can't give into that kind of hopelessness. 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:43.359 And one of the easier said to done. I know, 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:46.720 but one of the things that really helped me is 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:48.919 that I looked at my mom and her life. So 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:52.560 I'm like, I asked myself, how do people who seem 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:55.560 like they have no power deal with people who seem 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:56.800 like they have a lot of power, and how do 0:21:56.880 --> 0:22:00.520 they change things? So when my mother met my father 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:03.920 in the mid sixties, over ninety percent of Americans opposed 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:07.760 in a racial marriage. About a year ago pol was taken, 0:22:08.400 --> 0:22:11.800 and now something like ninety four percent approve of interracial marriage. 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:15.359 And it cuts across all political racial lines. And so 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:18.360 I asked myself, how did that dramatic shift take place 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:21.480 in a lifetime. And you know, because a black man 0:22:21.480 --> 0:22:24.200 could be killed, like I said before, just walking in 0:22:24.280 --> 0:22:27.680 public book and now you see biracial children, interracial couples, 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:30.800 it's no big deal. How did that happen? And I 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:33.919 think part of the things that happened is that ordinary 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:36.640 people like my mom and dad, they did not give 0:22:36.640 --> 0:22:41.040 into hopelessness. They saw these all these antimessgenation laws as absurd, 0:22:41.440 --> 0:22:43.960 and they acted. They didn't wait for judges of politicians 0:22:44.000 --> 0:22:46.640 to decide. They said, I'm going to love who I'm 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:49.840 gonna love, regardless of skin color. And when enough of 0:22:49.880 --> 0:22:52.840 them started doing that, it created a chain effect, a 0:22:52.920 --> 0:22:57.480 ripple effect, until it changed norms, and then the politicians 0:22:57.680 --> 0:23:00.440 and the judges had no choice but to decide. This 0:23:00.600 --> 0:23:03.720 was the same dynamic in gay marriage. If you remember, 0:23:03.800 --> 0:23:06.680 not too long ago, George W. Bush ran against gay 0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:11.160 marriage and ran and won. But all these game less 0:23:11.320 --> 0:23:15.119 people came out to their husband, you know, to their families, 0:23:15.119 --> 0:23:18.080 to their friends and their jobs, and that shifted that 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:21.520 norm and then the Supreme Court and the politician's followed. 0:23:21.560 --> 0:23:23.440 So one of my favorite writers a guy named Eric 0:23:23.480 --> 0:23:27.080 lou and he says norms changed before policy changes. So 0:23:27.119 --> 0:23:30.040 I think what I've learned from my mom is that 0:23:30.040 --> 0:23:31.840 people who seem like they have that that they have 0:23:31.920 --> 0:23:35.040 no power when they act on their conscience, on their convictions, 0:23:35.480 --> 0:23:38.520 they can have tremendous power. They can change norms. And 0:23:38.520 --> 0:23:41.360 when you change norms, the laws and the policy will 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:44.040 eventually follow. So to me, that means what we do 0:23:44.080 --> 0:23:46.240 in our private life, what we do in our actions, 0:23:46.440 --> 0:23:49.320 that really matters, and we can't give up hope. So 0:23:49.440 --> 0:23:51.880 that's that's one of the things that gives me hope. 0:23:51.880 --> 0:23:53.280 And two, one of the things that gives me hope, 0:23:53.320 --> 0:23:56.160 and I talk about this in the book, is that 0:23:57.000 --> 0:23:59.280 I think one of the things you get white Americans 0:23:59.400 --> 0:24:02.000 to brace change is to stress that it's in their 0:24:02.040 --> 0:24:05.000 self interest. Okay, if you're going to appeal to a 0:24:05.000 --> 0:24:07.680 group's morality, like do this because it's the right thing, 0:24:08.040 --> 0:24:10.520 that's pretty weak argument. But if you look at some 0:24:10.560 --> 0:24:13.359 of the biggest changes we've had in history, with the 0:24:13.400 --> 0:24:16.600 passage of civil rights laws, white Americans have decided what's 0:24:16.640 --> 0:24:19.119 in their interest. Why did the Voting Rights Act and 0:24:19.119 --> 0:24:21.000 the Civil Rights Act and all those laws passed the 0:24:21.040 --> 0:24:24.119 mid sixties. A huge part, as you probably know, was 0:24:24.119 --> 0:24:26.840 because of the Cold War. We were engaged in this 0:24:26.880 --> 0:24:31.119 big competition with Russia, and we look like hypocrites. We 0:24:31.160 --> 0:24:34.679 are all engaged with another great power competition with China, 0:24:34.800 --> 0:24:38.320 where they say democracy doesn't work. So I believe that 0:24:38.800 --> 0:24:41.520 when White America gets to the point they realize we 0:24:41.680 --> 0:24:45.880 have to make this work if we're going to be vital, prosperous, 0:24:46.000 --> 0:24:49.119 remain a superpower, particularly when we have such a the 0:24:49.240 --> 0:24:52.960 very demographic change in our country. I think when many 0:24:53.000 --> 0:24:54.720 of them start to see it in their self interest, 0:24:54.800 --> 0:24:57.120 that also gives me hope that they will be changed. 0:24:57.160 --> 0:24:59.760 And that was a very long answer, but sorry about that. 0:25:00.400 --> 0:25:03.199 But yeah, no, not a very long answer. But I 0:25:03.240 --> 0:25:09.080 want to ask you a final question. You know, as 0:25:09.119 --> 0:25:17.800 a journalist, John, what responsibility do you think that journalism 0:25:18.880 --> 0:25:25.359 bears now as we are watching our democracy circle the drain, 0:25:26.359 --> 0:25:35.160