Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central, So how to be a
Speaker 1: young anti racist? That means you're already banned in Florida.
Speaker 1: So it's funny when we talk about race because we
Speaker 1: live in a country that, um, the Congress's in it
Speaker 1: voted for June tenth bill. But with the same nations
Speaker 1: that don't want to talk about slavery, they will have
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King and Robert E. Lee Day on the
Speaker 1: same days. So I think when it comes to racism,
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of people believe that if
Speaker 1: they're not actively saying the N word or doing their
Speaker 1: same bigger than things, that means they're not racist. So
Speaker 1: how can we start a conversation about being anti race
Speaker 1: when you're not quite sure how to quantify racism? We are,
Speaker 1: but I don't think a lot of people are. And
Speaker 1: I think that's that's the very point, because if you're
Speaker 1: not doing anything to challenge all of the injustice and
Speaker 1: all of the inequity in our society, then what happens,
Speaker 1: It persists, So therefore you're reinforcing it, So therefore you're
Speaker 1: being racist, And so we're encouraging people to actively try
Speaker 1: to dismantle us the structure, including young people. But what
Speaker 1: what is their incentive? Like, what would they being nick?
Speaker 1: What is there if this system is working for you
Speaker 1: or not, It doesn't cause you anywhere when you can
Speaker 1: sleep at night, why would you want to change the system?
Speaker 1: It doesn't. It seems to be going just as you intended.
Speaker 1: But is it actually working for you? Right? It seems
Speaker 1: like yes. I think for me, it's all about children, right, Like,
Speaker 1: even though this is a system that might seem like
Speaker 1: it's working for you, the world is actively changing. If
Speaker 1: your children are not prepared to live in a world
Speaker 1: and move to a world that have people that are
Speaker 1: different from them in positions of power, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: in trouble. Yeah, But then they try to remake the world.
Speaker 1: You see that literally where a nation that is run
Speaker 1: by the flintstones and the in the in the jet
Speaker 1: sinness and the stones are winning. You have to understand it.
Speaker 1: I don't believe a lot of people, For instance, I
Speaker 1: don't believe white people a lot of white people are
Speaker 1: actively racist. But I do believe that the notions of
Speaker 1: white supremacists. They don't agree with their methods, but they
Speaker 1: agree with their goal, which is to keep white people
Speaker 1: in charge. And so if that is the premise, then
Speaker 1: then what incentive, seriously would there be to make these
Speaker 1: changes that only destabilize what you know works for you.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things we've been showing and
Speaker 1: studying racism is that it's actually harming white people too.
Speaker 1: It's not harming them at the level it's harming people
Speaker 1: of color. But there are actually white people who are
Speaker 1: dying of police violence. They're not dying at the level
Speaker 1: of black and brown people. But more white people are
Speaker 1: dying of police violence in this country than other countries.
Speaker 1: More white people are incarcerated in this country than other countries,
Speaker 1: More white people are struggling to vote in this country
Speaker 1: compared to other countries. There were five million about poor
Speaker 1: whites in eighteen sixties whose poverty was directly connected to
Speaker 1: the enslavement of black But I think a lot of
Speaker 1: white people don't get this. When you pour you are,
Speaker 1: you are what you are like that. I don't think
Speaker 1: people understand that generally what hurts me hurts you. What
Speaker 1: is good for me is good for you. And I
Speaker 1: think that. But there is that thing and uh where
Speaker 1: where you know people will give their last time to
Speaker 1: keep things a certain way, as long as it hurts you, Like,
Speaker 1: look at what happened with the Obamacare Act. A lot
Speaker 1: of those people in those poor states are being hurt
Speaker 1: by that, but they don't care as long as you are. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the sense of optimism is in what you said earlier, children,
Speaker 1: because in children you have not minds there the whole
Speaker 1: different thing. But um, but in our children we can
Speaker 1: see the potential of things that we hope to never
Speaker 1: that we hope we can realize probably never will. So
Speaker 1: that is an angle. I think that it's probably substitut Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think when it comes to children, I have two
Speaker 1: of my own, and it's important for me that they
Speaker 1: enter a world that they feel empowered to change, which
Speaker 1: is why we wrote this book. Right. So, Dr Kendy
Speaker 1: wrote his memoir years ago and I latched onto it,
Speaker 1: slid into his deers, and asked if I could do
Speaker 1: a young reader's version, because it's important that young people
Speaker 1: have the tools. I get so many kids who are asking, well,
Speaker 1: what do I do? How do I help? What do
Speaker 1: I change? How can I get into this fight and
Speaker 1: do something about it? And so creating a text like
Speaker 1: how to be a young Anti Racist we're giving them
Speaker 1: information where they're learning these definitions or learning what racism
Speaker 1: actually what racism actually is. So racism is a system
Speaker 1: of ideas. So you have racist ideas and they are
Speaker 1: basically they're made to keep inequities going right, So the
Speaker 1: whole purpose of a book like How to Be a
Speaker 1: Young Anti Racist is to give young people terms that
Speaker 1: we can all agree on. That way we know what
Speaker 1: we're standing against, like racism. Having a term at definition
Speaker 1: for racism helps them see, Okay, this is what we're
Speaker 1: trying to fight. Because one of the things that happens
Speaker 1: is people who have historically been racist refused to define
Speaker 1: that term, of course, because it watches them to exonerate
Speaker 1: themselves consistently and constantly, and even young people therefore don't
Speaker 1: know what it is, so they can't even assess themselves
Speaker 1: and guide themselves. How would they know. We have a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are raised by people who moved
Speaker 1: out of places that black people are moving into. Right
Speaker 1: that was that was predicate that we're gonna move out
Speaker 1: of places that black people are moving into. But those
Speaker 1: are the people who have the conversation with the people
Speaker 1: who are now having the conversation with the team, so
Speaker 1: they don't think the thing that they did was racist.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's a level of obliviousness that you can't
Speaker 1: you can't quite quantify it is and and indeed are
Speaker 1: you know, the heartbeat of being racist is denial. And
Speaker 1: this denial is consistent and constant and in sitious. You know,
Speaker 1: it does give me hope when when I see people
Speaker 1: like your book beat my book in the New York
Speaker 1: Times best sellingness get say no, I'm just going And
Speaker 1: and it's interesting because then they came along at a
Speaker 1: time and you had written a good while back, but
Speaker 1: it resurfaced when the George Floyd protest was coming on.
Speaker 1: They really seemed a moment, uh, And they seems these
Speaker 1: inflection points where we can generally people are really open
Speaker 1: to listen. But the problem is it's so fast. You
Speaker 1: can only get attention so fast, and then we're onto
Speaker 1: the next thing. And I think that's that's not even
Speaker 1: a purposeful I think it's just the function of how
Speaker 1: we live. But if you could say a substitutive thing
Speaker 1: that people could do every day, like in practice, every day,
Speaker 1: where they could be an example, because every time somebody
Speaker 1: says something, if somebody deems hurtful, they automatically stop. I
Speaker 1: don't want to hear anymore. I'm tired of this already.
Speaker 1: We're a slaver for one of the years. But Jim
Speaker 1: crowing around you like trying to not be a slave
Speaker 1: as not we haven't had to put as much elbow
Speaker 1: greeps into that. But books like this and having conversations
Speaker 1: where people don't turn off are really the crux of
Speaker 1: what we need to be doing. And for young people,
Speaker 1: it's so much easier to, like it is to learn
Speaker 1: a language. It's got to be even easier to learn
Speaker 1: the love language. Right, it's gotta be easier to learn.
Speaker 1: And um, what do I because because I get angry,
Speaker 1: Like when black people do, it's called anger, when white
Speaker 1: people are doing it's called right this indignation. But it's
Speaker 1: really hard to come from a place of anger and
Speaker 1: try to be trying to cheat somebody something. So I
Speaker 1: think at least a media owners has to be lowering
Speaker 1: the temperature and listening, right, Yeah, And I mean, look,
Speaker 1: the book is really all about first turning inward. I
Speaker 1: think part of the issue is that we don't do
Speaker 1: a good job of humanizing ourselves. We don't give ourselves
Speaker 1: the space to be angry angry, we don't give ourselves
Speaker 1: a space to be sad. We don't give ourselves the
Speaker 1: space to have unpopular opinions right like we do. We're
Speaker 1: all usual. But even that, you know the fact that
Speaker 1: you're like, I'm angry, and I don't you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know how I feel about being angry, Like it
Speaker 1: makes sense that we're angry. So taking the time to
Speaker 1: look inward and figure out the beauty of how to
Speaker 1: be an anti racist. The adult book was that you
Speaker 1: get Abraham's whole story where he is very open about
Speaker 1: the racist ideas that he was holding. So taking that
Speaker 1: and distilling it down for young people so that they
Speaker 1: can see, oh dang, this thing that I'm thinking is
Speaker 1: probably a little racist. We had an event last night
Speaker 1: in Atlanta and our team moderator that was the first
Speaker 1: question she asked us. She was like, I read the
Speaker 1: book and it pointed out to me all of the
Speaker 1: ways that I have racist ideas, and it made me
Speaker 1: feel away about myself. What am I supposed to do?
Speaker 1: So then having that self compassion where you can see, Okay,
Speaker 1: yes I am a product of a racist environment. I
Speaker 1: probably have some racist ideas. Taking the time to give
Speaker 1: yourself some grace, you'll give other people some grace too,
Speaker 1: And that's how we kind of like get to a
Speaker 1: point where we're working together. The thing that's so frustrating
Speaker 1: for me is our our stories tend to start in
Speaker 1: the middle, Like we were something before this, and our
Speaker 1: stories seemed to start in the middle. So and it's
Speaker 1: just like, even what's going on in Florida, you don't
Speaker 1: even want us to learn our history, Like there was
Speaker 1: a time when enslave people couldn't learn and now it's
Speaker 1: illegal for us to learn about enslaved people. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's just like that. And you would have heard that
Speaker 1: had you not beat me in the New York Times
Speaker 1: best Sellers. And I think, I think that we have
Speaker 1: a lot to learn about how things work and to
Speaker 1: really half constructive conversations because it's so much more fulfilling
Speaker 1: to me to shout at somebody, but it doesn't really
Speaker 1: accomplish anything. And I'm really very proud that you write
Speaker 1: books like this. And I think the younger you start,
Speaker 1: I mean, you gotta not be an anti racist baby.
Speaker 1: You have the baby, ste you have the baby, What
Speaker 1: is the baby gonna do like, look you learning somewhere.
Speaker 1: You either learn to love people you learn to hate them,
Speaker 1: like I don't want chocolate milk I wanted. I'll be a
Speaker 1: a young Antasis and the young anti racers won't look
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