Speaker 1: Now you're taking food off his plate, just like you
Speaker 1: took food off the other person's plate, and both things
Speaker 1: are equally bad. But no, that's actually not what's happening.
Speaker 1: You have to understand the history in the context. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed. Throughout time, great tinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Abram X. Kendy, an
Speaker 1: American author, historian, and scholar of race and discriminatory policy
Speaker 1: in America. Abram is the director of the Center for
Speaker 1: Anti Racist Research at Boston University and received the National
Speaker 1: Book Award and National Book Award for Nonfiction for Stamped
Speaker 1: From the Beginning The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Today,
Speaker 1: Eric and Abram discuss his new book, How to Be
Speaker 1: An Anti Racist. Hi, Abram, welcome to the show. Hey,
Speaker 1: great to be on the show. It's a real pleasure
Speaker 1: to have you on. I have been spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time with your most recent book, How to Be
Speaker 1: An Anti Racist, although I guess it's not most recent
Speaker 1: because it looks like you published a children in the
Speaker 1: book in the last several days, so I didn't read
Speaker 1: that one yet. I'm a little bit behind on that one. Well, see,
Speaker 1: it's my most recent adult so I think, yeah, boy,
Speaker 1: this is one of those where I feel like I
Speaker 1: could talk with you for about four hours about all
Speaker 1: the ideas in this book. But we're going to be
Speaker 1: on uh slightly shorter time frame than that, so I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off, though we always start our shows
Speaker 1: off with the Parable of the two Wolves. In the
Speaker 1: Parable of the Two Wolves, there's a grandfather who's talking
Speaker 1: with his grandson. He says, in life, we all have
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us that are always a battle.
Speaker 1: One's a good wolf. Which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: He looks up his grandfather's his grandfather which one wins,
Speaker 1: and the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to ask you to start off what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. For me, what it means is that
Speaker 1: we should be focused on feeding in anti racist world,
Speaker 1: and we should be focused on feeding our system with
Speaker 1: anti racist policies, meaning policies that are leading to equity
Speaker 1: and justice. We should be focused on feeding our minds
Speaker 1: with anti racist ideas, meaning ideas that say that there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong or right with any racial group, that despite
Speaker 1: the differences in which people look, despite different cultures and
Speaker 1: ethnic groups, we're all on the same level. We're all equal,
Speaker 1: I mean, and if there are disparities, they must be
Speaker 1: the result of of racist policies, because there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with with groups of people. Yep. I love your book
Speaker 1: in that you spend a lot of time defining what
Speaker 1: things mean, which I think is a really important thing,
Speaker 1: and and I want to go through what a couple
Speaker 1: of those definitions are. But the first one I want
Speaker 1: to start with that I thought was really important is
Speaker 1: to define what a racist is, because you use that
Speaker 1: term very differently than most of us use that term.
Speaker 1: Will say that person is a racist, or you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a racist, but you describe being a racist
Speaker 1: or not a racist more around actions and behaviors and
Speaker 1: ideas that identity. Yeah, so most people think of a
Speaker 1: racist or even a not racist, or even they would
Speaker 1: have presumed that an anti racist are nouns, when when
Speaker 1: really their descriptive terms, they're more verbs and and and
Speaker 1: so I think that first and foremost, I define a
Speaker 1: racist as someone who is expressing a racist idea or
Speaker 1: supporting a racist policy with their action or inaction. So
Speaker 1: what's critical in that definition is someone who is, in
Speaker 1: other words, in the moments that we are expressing a
Speaker 1: racist idea that something is wrong with lattox immigrants or
Speaker 1: or black people or um, you know, Asian Americans, the
Speaker 1: times in which we're expressing those ideas were being racist.
Speaker 1: And if in the very next moment we are making
Speaker 1: the case that there's nothing wrong with any racial group
Speaker 1: of people in that very next moment would being anti
Speaker 1: racist If in one moment we are doing nothing in
Speaker 1: the face of racist policy, in the next moment we're
Speaker 1: challenging racist policy. We're going from racist too two anti racists.
Speaker 1: These are descriptive terms. And I don't think Americans and
Speaker 1: other people around the world realize that when they use
Speaker 1: the term racist and even not racist as identities, When
Speaker 1: they think of racist as an attack word, as a
Speaker 1: pejorative term, almost like the our word, they are trafficking
Speaker 1: and really white nationalist ideology. White nationalists have long advocated
Speaker 1: that racist is a term willed it at white people
Speaker 1: to hurt them and to attack them, and I don't
Speaker 1: think people realize that they hold so much white nationalist thought. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you say that racist and anti racists are like peelable
Speaker 1: name tags that are placed and replaced based on what
Speaker 1: someone is doing or not doing, supporting, or expressing in
Speaker 1: each moment. And I really think that's an important idea.
Speaker 1: And as you said, if we use it as an
Speaker 1: insultive term, and if we think it's a permanent identity,
Speaker 1: it's very hard for us to ever say, oh wait,
Speaker 1: I just expressed a racist viewpoint. Yeah, people are not
Speaker 1: gonna want to say that, because then they're gonna believe
Speaker 1: they admit the times they expressed the racistist viewpoint, they
Speaker 1: admit the times in which they were being racist, that
Speaker 1: the society's tattoo racist on their forehead. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: You talk about a couple other ideas that I thought
Speaker 1: were really interesting, and one of the ideas that was
Speaker 1: hard for me to wrap my head around was that
Speaker 1: the problem of race has always had at its core
Speaker 1: a problem of power. We tend to think, or at
Speaker 1: least I tended to think, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people tend to think that people are racist or
Speaker 1: racist policies are created out of ignorance or misunderstanding or
Speaker 1: perhaps in the worst case hate. But you really make
Speaker 1: the point that in the research you've done over and
Speaker 1: over that racist policies start out of a desire for power,
Speaker 1: or for gain or for wealth. The policy starts, and
Speaker 1: then the ideas come along to justify the policy. Let
Speaker 1: me take a contemporary example in which you've had some
Speaker 1: GOP politicians who recognize that more and more Americans are
Speaker 1: becoming more centrist or even more liberal, that you also
Speaker 1: have a growing percentage of people of color. And since
Speaker 1: because they probably were looking at those trends, particularly during
Speaker 1: the first term of the Obama administration, and seeing that
Speaker 1: those trends were not amicable, you know, to their political prospects.
Speaker 1: And so what happens is some of these folks weren't like, well,
Speaker 1: we're in a democracy, so there's naturally not much I
Speaker 1: can do, you know, majority sort of wins and rules. No,
Speaker 1: they said, well, when you don't have enough votes, you
Speaker 1: start figuring out way to suppress votes. And so then,
Speaker 1: out of political self interest, they started or continued to
Speaker 1: advocate for voter suppression policies like voter ID laws, and
Speaker 1: you know, those policies have been found to target African
Speaker 1: American voters with quote surgical precision, to quote a North
Speaker 1: Carolina court. But then they had to justify those policies.
Speaker 1: They had to explain to their voters and other Americans
Speaker 1: why they were instituting the voter ID policies, why are
Speaker 1: they were purging so many voters from voter roles, why
Speaker 1: they were cutting early voting programs, And the case that
Speaker 1: they made was voter fraud. So, in other words, they
Speaker 1: created this idea that all these people were voting fraudulently,
Speaker 1: which the data proved to be almost non existent problem,
Speaker 1: but it really harkened back to this idea that black
Speaker 1: and brown voters are essentially corrupting the system um and
Speaker 1: that was the dominant idea during the reconstruction era that
Speaker 1: ku kux klansmen and other neo confederates used to undermine
Speaker 1: these interracial Southern governments and and so then that was
Speaker 1: the racist idea. So you have the self interest the
Speaker 1: power leading to the racist policies. Then out of the
Speaker 1: racist policies and the need to justify them, project them,
Speaker 1: campaign for them, we're racist ideas, and then you had
Speaker 1: everyday Americans who were believing these ideas, who went on
Speaker 1: to believe, yes, you know, these black and brown people
Speaker 1: are voting fraudently and they're ruining this country. And then
Speaker 1: then some of them were obviously ignorant about who was
Speaker 1: actually corrupting the voting process, and then some of them
Speaker 1: were even hateful, and so then you had the racist
Speaker 1: policies leading to the racist ideas, and that's how historically
Speaker 1: it has been. You say that you don't prefer terms
Speaker 1: like systematic racism, institutional racism. You find that they are
Speaker 1: often confusing, and you prefer the simpler term racist policy
Speaker 1: because it's easier to describe what we're talking about. So yes,
Speaker 1: So when we when we talk about racism with an M,
Speaker 1: so are a C. I s m um that I
Speaker 1: spell it right? Racism Um. When we when we think
Speaker 1: about racism, racism is essentially structural, it's essentially systematic. Uh,
Speaker 1: it is essentially institutional. And I think it's critical for
Speaker 1: us to distinguish between racism with an MD with racist
Speaker 1: with a T. So racist is individual, Racist is an
Speaker 1: individual person or an idea or policy. And so I
Speaker 1: think first I wanted to convey that when we say racism,
Speaker 1: we're thinking we should be thinking about something systemic. So
Speaker 1: to me, systemic racism or institutional or structural racism, we
Speaker 1: don't need to add that extra sort of term. All
Speaker 1: racism is systemic if we're thinking about an individual, we
Speaker 1: use racists with a team. Secondly, I think for everyday people,
Speaker 1: you know, when you go into a barbershop, or you know,
Speaker 1: you go to a bus stop, you know, you go
Speaker 1: into a church basement around people who may not have
Speaker 1: ever read a book on racism intended a lecture and
Speaker 1: you say, oh, yes, you know, America is experiencing systemic racism,
Speaker 1: and you ask them, well, what does that mean? Many
Speaker 1: people may not even be able to say that. Even
Speaker 1: college students, even some people who study it, cannot coherently
Speaker 1: describe what that actually means. Right, And and so whenever
Speaker 1: we have terms that everyday people cannot understand, you know,
Speaker 1: we should think about different ways to explain. So that's
Speaker 1: why I use the term racist policies, because a racist policy, okay,
Speaker 1: people understand what a policy is, and then you're qualifying
Speaker 1: with a racist policy, and then people can then thinks,
Speaker 1: start thinking about their lives and seeing those racist policies,
Speaker 1: and then they begin to see, Okay, those policies are
Speaker 1: making up the structure. And so I want people to
Speaker 1: focus on not the structure. I want them to focus
Speaker 1: on really the veins that really make up the structure,
Speaker 1: so that um, they can begin the process of undermining.
Speaker 1: And so you say that no policy is racially neutral.
Speaker 1: It's either racist or anti racist. And as I thought
Speaker 1: about that, I I sort of found myself wandering into
Speaker 1: lots of policies that I was like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I can tell the difference. Like I, just
Speaker 1: for fun, I opened up I live in the state
Speaker 1: of Ohio. I looked up some of the recent bills
Speaker 1: in the state of Ohio, and I was like, this
Speaker 1: one and again it was exempt veterans disability severance pay
Speaker 1: from income tax. And I was like, well, I can't tell.
Speaker 1: And I know you don't know anything about that bill necessarily,
Speaker 1: and I know the devil is always in the details,
Speaker 1: but in general, saying, Okay, the severance pay that we
Speaker 1: paid veterans is not going to be taxed. We're going
Speaker 1: to exempt it from income tax. Does that seem to
Speaker 1: be an anti racist policy or or a racist policy?
Speaker 1: Because to me, I look at I go, well, it
Speaker 1: seems neutral. But I wanted to get your your sense
Speaker 1: of that because because you've obviously looked at it much
Speaker 1: more closely than I have. Not that policy, but these
Speaker 1: ideas so severants. So we're thinking about severance pay, we're
Speaker 1: thinking about something pay that can ultimately contribute to the
Speaker 1: wealth of a particular person or even once family, let's say,
Speaker 1: or even they're just annual income. Right, And so I
Speaker 1: think one way to assess whether that policy is indeed
Speaker 1: racists or anti racist is we currently have a growing
Speaker 1: racial wealth gap in the state of Ohio, or even
Speaker 1: an income gap. So then the question becomes, is that
Speaker 1: bill is that new measure growing that wealth gap or
Speaker 1: closing it? Is it growing the income gap between on
Speaker 1: average black people and white people in the state of Ohio,
Speaker 1: or is it closing it? What's what's the impact of it?
Speaker 1: And I think that's how we can sort of determine
Speaker 1: the answer as to whether that policy is indeed racist
Speaker 1: or anti racist. Let me give another example. You know,
Speaker 1: the tax bill uh that was passed I believe in
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven team you know, had no racial
Speaker 1: language in it. There was not a discussion about race there.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a statement of oh, that's past this bill
Speaker 1: to suppress the wealth of black people or increased the
Speaker 1: wealth of white people. But what has happened as a
Speaker 1: result of that bill There has been an even greater
Speaker 1: concentration of wealth among those who are super rich because
Speaker 1: obviously they're getting taxed less, and people who are super
Speaker 1: rich are disproportionately white. And so ultimately, what's happened as
Speaker 1: a result of that bill, it's grown the racial wealth gap.
Speaker 1: And so thereby it's a racist bill. So with the
Speaker 1: bill I brought up, if we wanted to know, we'd
Speaker 1: probably want to say, well, would we look at what
Speaker 1: percentage are people of color or would we just say
Speaker 1: if it's helping people of color put more money in
Speaker 1: their pocket based on this bill, it's an anti racist bill.
Speaker 1: And again I know we're going deep in the weeds here,
Speaker 1: which is not really where I meant to go in
Speaker 1: a thirty minute conversation, but here we are. So I
Speaker 1: think with veterans, so to give an example, I think
Speaker 1: that again it's not something that I'm knowledgeable of, but
Speaker 1: from my understanding, the military is one of the most
Speaker 1: desegregated sectors in our society. In other words, with some militaries,
Speaker 1: I believe the army. You know, black people are higher
Speaker 1: in their national population, so typically and you know in
Speaker 1: national sectors were under represented or in prisons will be overrepresented.
Speaker 1: But for my understanding and certain units of the armed forces,
Speaker 1: we are overrepresented. And so what that then means is if,
Speaker 1: for instance, in a sector where white people are overrepresented,
Speaker 1: the tax policy is allowing such that more people could
Speaker 1: keep their income, but in among veterans, where let's say,
Speaker 1: if it is the case that black people are overrepresented,
Speaker 1: the tax policies are making it such that people can
Speaker 1: keep less of their income, right and and so then
Speaker 1: a bill is sort of easing that. Then it may
Speaker 1: be an anti racist bill. Again, I'm not really sure,
Speaker 1: but I'm just sort of thinking out loud, right right, yea.
Speaker 1: I'm not looking for your opinion on that bill so
Speaker 1: much as your thought process. And you formed a center
Speaker 1: which the whole goal was to bring together policy people
Speaker 1: to really look at what policies are racist, what policies
Speaker 1: you're not, and to try and change the sort of
Speaker 1: policy that gets enacted. Well, certainly, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we've founded the Boston University Center for Anti Racist Research,
Speaker 1: and and certainly you know one of our goals will
Speaker 1: be to allow research to bear on sort of policies
Speaker 1: that are indeed maintaining or growing racial inequity and justice,
Speaker 1: so we then can see what policies need to be
Speaker 1: eliminated from our body politics. There's a term that generally
Speaker 1: I would have thought was a term that would be
Speaker 1: a positive term in the fight for racial equality, but
Speaker 1: you've described is not um and it's the term racial discrimination.
Speaker 1: You said, racist power has been basically common beered that
Speaker 1: term since the sixties, So talk to me about why
Speaker 1: that term has become something that's not helpful in being
Speaker 1: anti racist. So what's happened since the sixties is the
Speaker 1: term discrimination, especially because you know, people who were advocating
Speaker 1: against racism had long been making the case that one
Speaker 1: of the things that's happening as a result of racism
Speaker 1: is people of color are being discriminated against, and and
Speaker 1: so we need to end racial discrimination. And many of
Speaker 1: the laws pre sixties, though certainly not all of them,
Speaker 1: but many within the actual law, there were language that
Speaker 1: specify the ways in which let's say, black people should
Speaker 1: or could be discriminated against. And so by the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: when some of those laws were deemed unconstitutional or were
Speaker 1: disallowed from us, the proposed solution to that was for
Speaker 1: laws to not have any racial language in them. Right.
Speaker 1: The conception was that laws that have racial language of
Speaker 1: them discriminate, and then laws that don't apparently are neutral
Speaker 1: or race neutral. And so that's then would allow people
Speaker 1: who oppose affirm of action to make the case that
Speaker 1: affirm of action policies were a form of discrimination against
Speaker 1: white people, and thereby they were racists, and thereby they
Speaker 1: we're not allowing America to achieve its goals of equality,
Speaker 1: and thereby they should be eliminated. And what I sort
Speaker 1: of tried to make a case for it and how
Speaker 1: to be an anti racist and in a small section
Speaker 1: that probably could have been a Hope book, was that
Speaker 1: I think, like with everything else, we should be focused
Speaker 1: on the outcome of discrimination. In other words, there is
Speaker 1: a very different thing in which if you have a
Speaker 1: room that is a hundred percent white, and it's a
Speaker 1: hundred percent white because for a hundred years you've been
Speaker 1: discriminating against every non white person that have tried to
Speaker 1: come in, and you said, no, you can't come in
Speaker 1: this room. And that's one thing. It's another thing when
Speaker 1: that room is white and you're trying to equalize that room,
Speaker 1: You're trying to create more representative numbers of people in
Speaker 1: that room, and you're being barred from making the room larger.
Speaker 1: So then how do you go about um creating racial
Speaker 1: parity in that room? If you're not allowed for making
Speaker 1: the room larger, you can only have a hundred seats,
Speaker 1: how do you do that? Really? The only way to
Speaker 1: do that, again, if you're committed to racial parity and
Speaker 1: equity is two essentially discriminate, but it's a different outcome.
Speaker 1: One is the goal is equity, the other is the
Speaker 1: goal to maintained in equity. One is a temporary solution
Speaker 1: two equity is reached. The other is a permanent scenario
Speaker 1: which are permanently barring people who are not white until forever.
Speaker 1: I was just really playing with the term racist and
Speaker 1: anti racist discrimination. I think we should again be focused
Speaker 1: on outcomes, and I think that this is something that
Speaker 1: we do every single day with our children. To give
Speaker 1: an example, those of us who have multiple children, If
Speaker 1: one of our children goals, and you know, we've already
Speaker 1: served them dinner, and and one of them has taken
Speaker 1: off the plate of the other child, and so the
Speaker 1: other child has only a little bit right, and we
Speaker 1: have have any more food, how do we go about
Speaker 1: ensuring that those two children have an equitable amount of food.
Speaker 1: The only way we can do that is to take
Speaker 1: the food off the plate from the child who took
Speaker 1: the food. And so it's easy to call that discrimination.
Speaker 1: Now you're discriminating against that child because you're taking food off.
Speaker 1: It's play, and it's it's the same thing and now
Speaker 1: you're taking food off his plate, just like you took
Speaker 1: food off the other person's plate, and both things are
Speaker 1: equally bad. But no, that's actually not what's happening. You
Speaker 1: have to understand the history in the context. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: that section, you quoted uh US Supreme Court Justice Harry
Speaker 1: Blackmen and saying that in order to get beyond racism,
Speaker 1: we must first take account of race. There is no
Speaker 1: other way. And in order to treat some persons equally,
Speaker 1: we must treat them differently. And and it's just like,
Speaker 1: for instance, you have an under resource school and that
Speaker 1: school has far and away less resources than let's say,
Speaker 1: and it's majority black, that a majority white school down
Speaker 1: the road, and you want to go about ensuring that
Speaker 1: the two schools have a relatively equal amount of resources.
Speaker 1: You know in one school is getting I'm just throwing
Speaker 1: the numbers out there. You know has a five million
Speaker 1: dollar annual budget and the other has a two million
Speaker 1: dollar annual budget. You can then, okay, let's up that
Speaker 1: two million annual budget to five million. But then folks
Speaker 1: at that white school like, you're just scrimining and gets
Speaker 1: us because you're not giving us money to like, And
Speaker 1: and that's essentially the call of reverse discrimination. You say
Speaker 1: that a racist is somebody who sees problems in groups
Speaker 1: of people. They locate the problem in in a group
Speaker 1: of people, and an anti racist is someone who sees
Speaker 1: problems in policies. You say, Americans have long been trained
Speaker 1: to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty easy stake to make. People are in our faces.
Speaker 1: Policies are different. Yeah, it is easy. For instance, you
Speaker 1: have many Americans who it's easy for them, for instance,
Speaker 1: to blame those individual people who are engaged in violent
Speaker 1: crime in a neighborhood that's perceived as dangerous and and
Speaker 1: and and violent. It's a little bit harder. And you know,
Speaker 1: you see those people, it's easy to blame those people,
Speaker 1: and it's easy to say those people are violent, and
Speaker 1: it's easy to say, then the community is violent. It's
Speaker 1: much harder to to take a step back and and
Speaker 1: start to think about, Okay, what potential policies are affecting
Speaker 1: that community that could be leading to those higher levels
Speaker 1: of violent crime. Then what's happening in another community? And
Speaker 1: it's again, you know, for instance, when it comes to
Speaker 1: violent crime, we know, for instance that typically in the
Speaker 1: neighborhoods and higher levels of violent crime tend to have
Speaker 1: higher levels of poverty and unemployment. And so, but we
Speaker 1: can't see those macro issues of poverty and unemployment for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, as the cause of that violent crime, because
Speaker 1: we're only looking at those individual people, right, and we're
Speaker 1: only focused and outraged about the acts of those individual people.
Speaker 1: And certainly, you know, anytime anyone harms and other person,
Speaker 1: we should be outraged, But we should also realize that
Speaker 1: these aren't actually dangerous black neighborhoods. Because if I somehow
Speaker 1: it was the blackness of the people that was behind
Speaker 1: the violent crimes, in all black neighborhoods, no matter the
Speaker 1: levels of poverty and unemployment, would have the same levels
Speaker 1: of violent crime. But it just so happens that higher
Speaker 1: income black neighborhoods tend to have lower levels far lower
Speaker 1: levels of violent crime then extremely impoverished black neighborhoods. And
Speaker 1: so what that means is we actually do have dangerous
Speaker 1: unemployed neighborhoods. We have davids impoverished neighborhoods. But then that
Speaker 1: changes the calculations in terms of what is the deficiency. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you make a case in that part of the book
Speaker 1: that there's much more correlation between high crime and high
Speaker 1: unemployment than there is between say, high crime and a
Speaker 1: black neighborhood. And you look and you see where the
Speaker 1: real challenge is, and you persistently throughout the book encourage
Speaker 1: us to treat individual behavior as individual behavior, not racial,
Speaker 1: not ethnic, not cultural. You sort of dismantle all of
Speaker 1: that one thing after the other through the book, and
Speaker 1: it gets back to sort of this idea of we
Speaker 1: treat an individual's behavior as an individual's which makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. But I think there's another version of
Speaker 1: that that to be careful of, because that is also
Speaker 1: a tool of saying every individual is responsible only for themselves,
Speaker 1: and that each person should be able to succeed regardless
Speaker 1: of the circumstances. Is if all we're doing is looking
Speaker 1: at individuals, then shouldn't all individuals be able to succeed equally? Well,
Speaker 1: I think I could see sort of see how that
Speaker 1: transfers into that, And I think that it is critically
Speaker 1: important for us to do two things simultaneously. One, when
Speaker 1: we see an individual person acting negatively, we're seeing an
Speaker 1: individual person act negatively, right, Or if we if we
Speaker 1: see an individual person who is being lazy, we can
Speaker 1: put them in a group. We can put them in
Speaker 1: a group of lazy people. And it just so happens
Speaker 1: that there are people of all races in that group, right,
Speaker 1: it's not just black and brown people. And so if
Speaker 1: we're gonna group people, we should group in based specifically
Speaker 1: on that characteristic. And also we should probably group it
Speaker 1: if we want to be really precise in that time.
Speaker 1: In other words, in this moment, the lazy people right now,
Speaker 1: because that person just could be having a lazy day
Speaker 1: and every other day they work hard. Right, So I
Speaker 1: think there's that then simultaneous lee. If there are disparities
Speaker 1: between groups, we know thereby that there are all of
Speaker 1: these positive and negative characteristics among the individuals that make
Speaker 1: up any racial group, and all of those negativities and
Speaker 1: positivities make these two groups human, imperfect groups, and thereby equal.
Speaker 1: So thereby, if there's disparities between them, it can't be
Speaker 1: because there's something wrong with black people, because there are
Speaker 1: things wrong with black individuals, but there are things wrong
Speaker 1: with white individuals too, so it must be something else,
Speaker 1: and that's something else's policy. You've got a sentence, I'll
Speaker 1: just read, Uh, here before you wrap up, which I
Speaker 1: think really sums this up a lot for me, which
Speaker 1: you said one of racism's harms is the way it
Speaker 1: falls on the unexceptional black person who is asked to
Speaker 1: be extraordinary just to survive, and even worse, the black
Speaker 1: screw up who faces the abyss after one error, while
Speaker 1: the white screw up is handed second chances and empathy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean for black people who struggle to make mistakes,
Speaker 1: many people do not see them as a human being
Speaker 1: making a mistake, thereby a human being who can correct
Speaker 1: the mistake, thereby a human being who has the potential
Speaker 1: to be something great. What many people see is a
Speaker 1: black person, and they see that person's mistake as due
Speaker 1: to their blackness, and then they say that person can't
Speaker 1: change their blackness, so thereby they're always going to make
Speaker 1: those mistakes, so therefore let me not give them another chance,
Speaker 1: while with a white individual, they're more likely to understand
Speaker 1: and see the individuality and the humanity, and to be
Speaker 1: human is to make mistakes, um and to be empathetic
Speaker 1: is to give people second chances. And I've said on
Speaker 1: this show to listeners before, I'm one of those white
Speaker 1: people that got a second chance when I was I
Speaker 1: was four years old addicted to heroin, and when I
Speaker 1: was arrested, I was given chances that I doubt I
Speaker 1: would have been given had I been black. You know,
Speaker 1: I I benefited from from that, that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of lived it, you know, myself, firsthand.
Speaker 1: And I think it's important for all of us, and
Speaker 1: certainly white people, to to recognize that. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: diminish how hard it was for you to follow through
Speaker 1: on your second chance and how much work was needed. Um,
Speaker 1: but it does acknowledge that second chance, and it does
Speaker 1: acknowledge that other people, because of the color of the skin,
Speaker 1: they may not have had the opportunity to work as
Speaker 1: hard as you did. Because part of it is many
Speaker 1: people think if they just admit the opportunities that they've
Speaker 1: given that they're going to diminish all of the work
Speaker 1: that they put in. No, it doesn't disminish the work
Speaker 1: at all. What it says is other people haven't been
Speaker 1: given this, and you want other people to be given
Speaker 1: the same opportunities that you did because you believe other
Speaker 1: people could succeed and recover in the way. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: exactly right. Well, thank you so much for your time
Speaker 1: coming on the show and spending some time with us.
Speaker 1: Your books are excellent and highly recommended for people who
Speaker 1: are looking to learn more about ways to be anti
Speaker 1: racist in their own life. Thank you, You're welcome. Thank
Speaker 1: you you take care of you too. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
Speaker 1: monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When
Speaker 1: you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge, you
Speaker 1: get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way
Speaker 1: of saying thank you for your support now. We are
Speaker 1: so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to do what we do without their support,
Speaker 1: and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To
Speaker 1: learn more, make a donation at any level and become
Speaker 1: a member of the one you Feed community. Go to
Speaker 1: when you feed dot net slash Join The One You
Speaker 1: Feed podcast. Would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for
Speaker 1: supporting the show.