Speaker 1: Hey, fam I'm Jada Pinkett Smith and this is the
Speaker 1: Red Table Pop podcast all your favorite episodes from the
Speaker 1: Facebook Watch show in audio produced by Westbrook Audio and
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Please don't forget to rate and review
Speaker 1: on Apple podcasts in America. We're dealing with so much hate.
Speaker 1: What makes someone turn violent? And unlikely person is joining
Speaker 1: the table. You had never had a thought of the
Speaker 1: people that I'm deshumanizing. Also our children. He led the
Speaker 1: largest and most active neo Nazi group. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of years viewing hate until he met her. I have
Speaker 1: spent most of my life being afraid of men like that.
Speaker 1: What was the moment where you realize, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: why did I stay so long? Why did I do this?
Speaker 1: And you feel really stupid? By three years, our kids
Speaker 1: have an adult like concept of race inside the minds
Speaker 1: of mass shooters. The killers that you've interviewed all had
Speaker 1: one thing in common. What is it? And the NFL
Speaker 1: player who took a stand against hate? There was a
Speaker 1: point in my life where I wouldn't have been able
Speaker 1: to set at the table. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Unless we understand the root of hatred, this will keep happening.
Speaker 1: So today is going to be um intense. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: say the least, I'm already suttressed in America right now.
Speaker 1: We're dealing with so much hate that's being expressed in
Speaker 1: so many different ways. You know, White supremacy was deemed
Speaker 1: like the number one problem, Yeah, the number one threat
Speaker 1: to to America. But I've always been so interested in
Speaker 1: how the human mind even gets to a point where
Speaker 1: these things are acceptable. When someone shoots up a church,
Speaker 1: or when someone shoots up a grocery store, grocery store, school,
Speaker 1: or when someone calls you a nigger to your face,
Speaker 1: that feels like another It is another level. And that's
Speaker 1: why we wanted to do the show today, to understand
Speaker 1: the psychology of hate. So, an award winning Pakistani filmmaker
Speaker 1: was so fed up with racist attacks against her she
Speaker 1: made the bold decision to turn her camera on behatersd
Speaker 1: a Con is no stranger to hate. Growing up Muslim
Speaker 1: in Norway, she was targeted by Muslim extremists who didn't
Speaker 1: want her speaking out about women's rights. By age seventeen,
Speaker 1: she was in so much danger she fled the country.
Speaker 1: Dia later received a barrage of very serious death threats
Speaker 1: from white supremacists when she made comments promoting diversity. She
Speaker 1: was tired of living her life in fear and made
Speaker 1: the courageous choice to reach out to the leaders of
Speaker 1: several hate groups, not to confront them, but to understand them.
Speaker 1: She bravely sat face to face with America's most vocal
Speaker 1: white supremacists, who are taught to hurt and hate people
Speaker 1: who look like her. That's the clan, Yes, this is
Speaker 1: the cliant head to you. Yes, I'm a racist, and
Speaker 1: I absolutely despised Jews, Jews and homosexuals. They I think
Speaker 1: they should be exterminated, every single one of them. He's
Speaker 1: been a member of the white power movement for many
Speaker 1: years and previously was a grand Dragon of the Ku
Speaker 1: Klux Klan Ken is exactly the kind of person I've
Speaker 1: always been afraid of. I've thrown out flyers denouncing Syrian
Speaker 1: refugees coming over here in the Muslim neighborhoods at the mosque.
Speaker 1: So as you know, I am a woman of color,
Speaker 1: and what I want to ask here is am I
Speaker 1: your enemy? You're not subjectively mine enemy, but what you
Speaker 1: are promoting will lead to the disappearance of my people
Speaker 1: in my culture. I gotta say here and now, that's
Speaker 1: my type of girl. Yes, wow, I just can't image
Speaker 1: keep you cool, man, when you're sitting with somebody like that.
Speaker 1: You know, I have spent most of my life feeling abused, persecuted, targeted, victimized,
Speaker 1: being afraid of men likely, But I knew what they
Speaker 1: wanted from me. They need me to be emotional or
Speaker 1: to lose it, and I did not want to give
Speaker 1: them that. To me, that was crucial. When I started
Speaker 1: getting all these death threats, the police were like, you
Speaker 1: need to take this very seriously because the threats ended
Speaker 1: up on very violent racist websites. So I had to
Speaker 1: make a decision. Do I be afraid or do I
Speaker 1: make a choice that I've never made before, which is
Speaker 1: to go and confront them, but not meet them, to
Speaker 1: argue and to fight and to push back like that,
Speaker 1: but to sit with them and see can they recognize
Speaker 1: my humanity and can I recognize this? But when someone
Speaker 1: says that they think that a group of people should
Speaker 1: be exterminated, I just can't see a world where you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: all right. The thing is you are thinking of this
Speaker 1: very rationally and very logically. Fear and hate is not rational.
Speaker 1: The way a lot of people process the fear is
Speaker 1: that they have to defend themselves, so they don't perceive
Speaker 1: people of color as victims. They perceived themselves as the victims.
Speaker 1: So they need to tell themselves that they're doing the
Speaker 1: right thing. And the only way you can justify violence
Speaker 1: and justify hatred is by putting yourself in the place
Speaker 1: of I am under attack. My survival is on the line,
Speaker 1: so I have to defend myself, my people, my family
Speaker 1: against all these invaders. A lot of my friends are like,
Speaker 1: why do you keep, you know, filming with these crazy people.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're just forget them. I mean they're just
Speaker 1: beyond any kind of approach. Forget it. I have to say,
Speaker 1: it does feel like they're beyond help. I used to
Speaker 1: be like that. I've gone to anti racist protests most
Speaker 1: of my life. I have flipped them off, I have
Speaker 1: shouted at them, I have thrown stuff with them, and
Speaker 1: it felt great. But he didn't do anything. I've done
Speaker 1: that my whole life, and I have accomplished more by
Speaker 1: sitting face to face with these guys than any of that.
Speaker 1: Hate is not something that you can confront with. My
Speaker 1: facts against your facts because it's emotional. You have to
Speaker 1: be able to reach somebody's heart, and even the heart
Speaker 1: of somebody who feels very very dark and very very lost.
Speaker 1: You have to look for the light. So while filming
Speaker 1: this is really interesting, hard. It's sitting here like im now,
Speaker 1: But we're gonna keep going so maybe we can get
Speaker 1: you guys kids, Why why am We're We're on two
Speaker 1: opposite spectrums and they're like they're like are on the
Speaker 1: same body. It just feels like they are not deserving now.
Speaker 1: While filming, DM Met Scoop, leader of the largest and
Speaker 1: most active neo Nazi group in the United States. Where
Speaker 1: a white civil rights organization here in America were white nationalists,
Speaker 1: just as Martin Luther King did for the blacks, our
Speaker 1: mission is pretty much the same. We feel that the
Speaker 1: white race in general is under a full assault. We
Speaker 1: feel that the whites are going to be a minority
Speaker 1: here in this country. We must secure the existence of
Speaker 1: our race in the future for white children. We like
Speaker 1: a homeland of our own for white people. Why did
Speaker 1: you move to Detroit? Perfect recruitment grounds. Anytime you're in
Speaker 1: an area where the economy is suffering, it's somewhere that
Speaker 1: our message resonates with the people. I joined Jeff at
Speaker 1: the next event. The biggest fall right riley in recent
Speaker 1: is in Charlottesville. We are the forces of white and civilization,
Speaker 1: and we are fighting against the poor. A darkness a
Speaker 1: mile away from us. This happens, anti racist protester Heather
Speaker 1: Hair is killed by a car driven by a far
Speaker 1: right protester. Jeff says many of his followers think jobs
Speaker 1: are being taken by immigrants. He thinks it's part of
Speaker 1: a plot against the white race. I decided to show
Speaker 1: him the photo of me with my father, taken at
Speaker 1: an antique stremism rally when I was six years old.
Speaker 1: So that's my dad. People who representatively represent made a
Speaker 1: six year old child for your hated The movement that
Speaker 1: you are a part of has real life effect on
Speaker 1: people like me. How does it make you feel uncomfortable?
Speaker 1: I don't like it. We are still a whites only organization.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna convince me different. Jeff has come a
Speaker 1: long way since then, which is why we allowed him
Speaker 1: into our home. What made you decide at first to
Speaker 1: have a conversation with Dia, who well, typically in my
Speaker 1: role at that time when I involved in the movement,
Speaker 1: being involved in media stuff was a way to get
Speaker 1: out the message. So for me, it was propaganda. There
Speaker 1: was an opportunity to spread the word. What was the
Speaker 1: moment where you realized, wait a minute. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of things that she said, but specifically, what really
Speaker 1: really got to me was when you're involved in these
Speaker 1: kind of movements, a lot of the people think that
Speaker 1: they're doing something good, something noble, something honorable. They're fighting
Speaker 1: for their p so they think they think that way.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's right, it's certainly not, but that's
Speaker 1: how they think. That's the psychology of it. And when
Speaker 1: she was talking to me about how she felt as
Speaker 1: a child, how racism, how hatred made her feel diminished
Speaker 1: or less than, something inside of me snapped. It felt
Speaker 1: like getting kicked in the chest by a horse. I
Speaker 1: could literally sense her paint and that didn't sit well
Speaker 1: with me. Here's this wonderful person sitting across from me
Speaker 1: telling a very humanistic story, very personal story, and I
Speaker 1: think back to my own children and the reasons why
Speaker 1: I was involved in the movement. If it's affecting her
Speaker 1: in that manner, she's just one person, how many millions
Speaker 1: of people? Is it affecting in that way? How can
Speaker 1: I reconcile that? So in my mind, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: justify it. Maybe it's not about hate. I kept telling
Speaker 1: myself that. But is it truly is? Was that the
Speaker 1: first time you had had contact with a person of
Speaker 1: color in that way, in that way the very human aspect. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you've got an opportunity to feel the humanity. Is
Speaker 1: that it? Yes? That is absolutely it. When when you
Speaker 1: go into these type of movements and you get involved
Speaker 1: in say far right extremism, you start dehumanizing other people.
Speaker 1: Once you start to humanizing others, you lose your humanity
Speaker 1: in the process, and none of them see that. But
Speaker 1: that's what it is. This moment when talking to Dia.
Speaker 1: In your mind, you had never had a thought process
Speaker 1: of the people that I'm dehumanizing, you know, like also
Speaker 1: our children in this day and age. That never really
Speaker 1: crossed your mind until that moment. You compartmentalize that stuff,
Speaker 1: And that's a really good question. You look back and
Speaker 1: you go, wow, why didn't I figure this out? Where
Speaker 1: was that disconnect? And you're in this echo chamber or
Speaker 1: it's like a bubble as the way I explained it,
Speaker 1: and everybody you know is in there, and they reinforce
Speaker 1: those belief systems. So a lot of times when people
Speaker 1: on the outside are pushing back at that and saying
Speaker 1: this is wrong, and it says, hey, we all know that.
Speaker 1: Everybody at the table knows that, but to the extremest
Speaker 1: they're like, nope, I'm right, because you're all pushing back.
Speaker 1: Idea's approach was trying to understand that total and posing
Speaker 1: questions to get the person to start questioning themselves what
Speaker 1: about this or why why don't you look at it this?
Speaker 1: And then starts the gears turning. And that was very
Speaker 1: conscious on my part, as well as not trying to
Speaker 1: condemn him or fight him or try to out argue him,
Speaker 1: because if I was to do that, then that they
Speaker 1: would close, he would become hardened, and he would double down.
Speaker 1: And I'm looking for a crack. I know it's there.
Speaker 1: I have to somehow locate it. And as soon as
Speaker 1: you find it, then you try to keep chipping and
Speaker 1: chipping and chipping. Was there anything in your own childhood?
Speaker 1: I didn't have a bad childhood growing up, so I
Speaker 1: don't think it was that I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what led you down that path in the first place.
Speaker 1: So for me, my grandfather fought in Hitler's army in
Speaker 1: World War Two. Now, my family was not for this stuff.
Speaker 1: They are actually against it and tried desperately for years
Speaker 1: to get me out. But it was that fascination with
Speaker 1: his history, my grandfather and my great uncle's fought that
Speaker 1: was the opening to the rabbit hole. That was the
Speaker 1: entry point. I don't blame anybody for it. It's my
Speaker 1: own fault. I take a full responsibility for it, and
Speaker 1: my involvement in that life caused my family great irreparable harm.
Speaker 1: My mother's career was destroyed, and it really really damaged
Speaker 1: my family a lot. Wow. So when you decided to
Speaker 1: remove yourself as you had this new awakening, you had
Speaker 1: a lot of amends to make. Yeah, how did that go?
Speaker 1: Most of the damage that I did my rhetoric and
Speaker 1: that the hateful stuff that I spewed for so long
Speaker 1: was to minority communities, and especially my hatred was directed
Speaker 1: at Jewish community in particular. So since I've been out,
Speaker 1: I went to the Jewish community. I met with the
Speaker 1: Simon Weison Fall Center, who I'm now a consultant for Today.
Speaker 1: Named after a survivor of four different concentration camps during
Speaker 1: the Holocaust who then became a prominent Nazi hunter, The
Speaker 1: Simon Weisenthall Center is a global organization that confronts anti Semitism,
Speaker 1: hate and terrorism. The Center uses Jeff to educate students, teachers,
Speaker 1: and law enforcement about how people become radicalized in what
Speaker 1: modern anti semitism looks like. There's a lot of guilt,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of shame and embarrassment um having lived
Speaker 1: that life. So I try to help wherever I can.
Speaker 1: I run a nonprofit organization called Beyond Barriers that deals
Speaker 1: with extremist disengagements. We're bringing people out those organizations all
Speaker 1: the time. My passion is with the schools. If we
Speaker 1: can get young people to confront biases. Really what a
Speaker 1: lot of hate is based on, this fear. To get
Speaker 1: past those fears, that's where we can make a difference.
Speaker 1: So where do you feel as though those fears come from, specifically,
Speaker 1: like dealing with young people, is it's something that's taught
Speaker 1: in the home. It can be if if it's taught
Speaker 1: in the home, it's more difficult for them to overcome
Speaker 1: because they're hearing that garbage from their parents as their
Speaker 1: family members very you know, old anti Semitic tropes and
Speaker 1: things like that. You know you're talking about going into
Speaker 1: the schools. But what did you do to change your
Speaker 1: own thinking? You were in this life for how long?
Speaker 1: Twenty seven years total a lifetime, A lifetime. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a lot of years spewing hate. How did you reform yourself?
Speaker 1: So there was people that helped me. I've met a
Speaker 1: man that works with me today by the name of
Speaker 1: Darryl Davis, and he's a black musician played with Chuck Berry.
Speaker 1: If he talked about how racism and hate affected him
Speaker 1: as a child and it didn't sit right, Daryld was
Speaker 1: a really important figure in working through those things. Darryl
Speaker 1: Davis is an internationally known R and B artists and
Speaker 1: activists who stands up to hate by engaging with members
Speaker 1: of the KKK and other extremist groups. He has helped
Speaker 1: hundreds of people confront their deeply rooted racism. When I
Speaker 1: first left, I call it my decompression period, where you
Speaker 1: feel like your brain and everything is going. You're just
Speaker 1: like a sponge almost because you're going. Why did I
Speaker 1: stay so long, why did I do this? And you
Speaker 1: feel really stupid and ignorant, and then you want to
Speaker 1: figure out how can I fix this? But that first
Speaker 1: six months especially was so difficult because you you there
Speaker 1: was so much to process, and then going to work
Speaker 1: trying to repair some of that damage, Donna learning more
Speaker 1: about different people. It was almost like re educating yourself,
Speaker 1: having that first experience going to a synagogue and talking
Speaker 1: to everybody there, the outpouring of love and compassion and forgiveness.
Speaker 1: I didn't have any right to ask for forgiveness, which
Speaker 1: I didn't. I still don't feel I have that right
Speaker 1: to ask. But people came up and hugged me. It
Speaker 1: just blew me away. It was really, I'm sure part
Speaker 1: of the healing process, the transforcation and being able to
Speaker 1: deprogram the idea that these people are not human exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm still learning every single day to be a better person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'll be doing that for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. Must be rough, right. So, according to
Speaker 1: the FBI, Jewish people in America, who are only two
Speaker 1: percent of the population or the target of more than
Speaker 1: half of all religious hate crimes. Every year we document
Speaker 1: anti Semitic incidents. In two thousand twenty one, we tallied
Speaker 1: twenty seven hundred plus anti Semitic incidents, the highest number ever.
Speaker 1: This includes harassment, vandalism, and assault. And we've been doing
Speaker 1: this for forty something years. So we are in a
Speaker 1: moment now where the data is telling us that something
Speaker 1: is not normal. It's trending in the wrong direction. Social
Speaker 1: media and the ability for the normalization of hatred, including
Speaker 1: anti Semitism, to spread is key. When you look at
Speaker 1: FBI hate crime data, we are at very high levels.
Speaker 1: The truth is the FBI hate crime data doesn't even
Speaker 1: you know, scratch the surface. FBI data under counts it.
Speaker 1: We have also seen a series of mass shootings in
Speaker 1: this country, some targeting the Jewish community, others targeting African
Speaker 1: American community, the Hispanic community. And when you're looking at
Speaker 1: you know, the deadliest year against the trans community, the
Speaker 1: highest number of anti Semitic incidents report it to a
Speaker 1: d L. We need to ask ourselves what is happening?
Speaker 1: Why is hate becoming so common and normalist white supremacy
Speaker 1: and hatred knows no borders. So Dr Ibram x Kendy
Speaker 1: is the director of Boston University Center for Anti Racist
Speaker 1: Research and author of the new book How to Raise
Speaker 1: an Anti Racist. Welcome to the table, Dr Kendy, how
Speaker 1: did you feel about what Jeff was sharing at the table?
Speaker 1: What you shared shows both the power of the human
Speaker 1: being to change, but then also courage to begin this process.
Speaker 1: Can you give us some insight about where hate comes from?
Speaker 1: Scholars have consistently shown that no one is born right,
Speaker 1: no one is born holding sexist or racist or anti
Speaker 1: Semitic ideas. But kids are born into an unequal world,
Speaker 1: and they're born into a world in which they've taught
Speaker 1: that certain people have more because they are more, and
Speaker 1: other people have less because there are less. And then
Speaker 1: as they sort of come of age and people start
Speaker 1: telling them that the source of their struggles are those
Speaker 1: other people who don't look like them, that causes them
Speaker 1: to then hate them. So in a way, kids in
Speaker 1: our society, we almost provide them with this unfortunate foundation
Speaker 1: to hate, the idea of just needing someone to blame exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think it's important for us to just get
Speaker 1: at the root. The roots of bigotry are very powerful
Speaker 1: people who are instituting policies and rules that lead to
Speaker 1: inequities and inequality between groups, and then those powerful people
Speaker 1: produce hate to then justify those inequities, and then people
Speaker 1: consume the cycle those ideas and that causes them to
Speaker 1: become ignorant and hateful. So probably one of the most
Speaker 1: obvious examples during the enslavement era, right, you had people
Speaker 1: who were enslaving black people to make money, and then
Speaker 1: they produced racist ideas that said these people were fit
Speaker 1: for enslavement. People then consume those ideas and believe them
Speaker 1: and became hateful. That's happened with sexism, that's happening with Oh,
Speaker 1: poor people are poor because they don't want to work
Speaker 1: hard as opposed to the policies that people put in
Speaker 1: play exactly, Like that's the route. Yeah, it's all steeped
Speaker 1: in feory. We all have our fears, right, and I think,
Speaker 1: like when when we've been talking about the psychology of hate,
Speaker 1: there's something that can always be addressed in us all
Speaker 1: and understanding how not to add to the energy of hate.
Speaker 1: It's a really deep subject and it's something we all
Speaker 1: have to participate in. If you don't have the resources,
Speaker 1: I think it's very hard. I've filmed with this other
Speaker 1: neo Nazi. He's armed as well now. And one of
Speaker 1: the things he said, he said, as a child, he
Speaker 1: was beaten by his stepfather like he would beat a
Speaker 1: grown man. And he said, this group finally recruited him
Speaker 1: and said, you know, we have your back. And one night,
Speaker 1: he said, they went out looking for somebody to to beat,
Speaker 1: and he said, I started beating this guy said. I
Speaker 1: looked in his eyes and he said I saw something
Speaker 1: that I'd never seen before. And he said I loved it,
Speaker 1: and I'm going, what was it? He said, fear? He said,
Speaker 1: you know, for me, somebody who was afraid my entire life,
Speaker 1: now somebody else was afraid of me. The I hate
Speaker 1: to say this, I really hate to say this. Some
Speaker 1: people feel powerless just like he did, and don't do that. Yes,
Speaker 1: So that's also the part that my mind just malfunction,
Speaker 1: like it just I don't understand. So I have grappled
Speaker 1: with this very same thing. I filmed with mostly extremists,
Speaker 1: and they're talking about the racism that they feel, the
Speaker 1: alienation that they felt when I'm sitting there going me too,
Speaker 1: me too, me too, me too? And then I was
Speaker 1: left with that question too, and I was going, why
Speaker 1: do I pick up a camera and you pick up
Speaker 1: a gun? What is the difference? Because on top of
Speaker 1: all the stuff, I'm a woman, so I've also had
Speaker 1: to deal with all of that. You don't see me
Speaker 1: strapping a bomb to me? What? And finally I came
Speaker 1: to the realization it matters who shows up in your
Speaker 1: life when you're at your most broken, at your most vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Who do you have that will set the path for
Speaker 1: for the gun or the camera. What I think is
Speaker 1: really important also to say is this is trying to
Speaker 1: understand extremist mindset and violent people's mindset. Is not to
Speaker 1: justify it, excuse it, or diminish it. And we cannot
Speaker 1: underestimate the devastation that it causes. And I also think
Speaker 1: it's really important to say I don't think that it
Speaker 1: is the burden and responsibility of people of color to
Speaker 1: have to reform white supremacists. Why should it be the
Speaker 1: responsibility of oppressed people of abused women to have, for example,
Speaker 1: to reform the guy who beats her. I agree that
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be the responsibility of absolutely people, particularly in
Speaker 1: in white supremacist spaces. The people who can be the
Speaker 1: most powerful are the white people. If a white person
Speaker 1: stands up and says no, that's wrong, there's going to
Speaker 1: be a certain level of respect shown to that. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: Dr Kendy. You have ways to raise an anti racist child.
Speaker 1: What are they? We have to teach empathy, but it's
Speaker 1: important for us to be clear that there are people
Speaker 1: who are only empathetic to people who look like and
Speaker 1: so we also have to teach kids how to be
Speaker 1: critical thinkers. You know, we have to teach kids how
Speaker 1: to ask questions. We also have to make sure our
Speaker 1: kids are being raised in a diverse environment, so not
Speaker 1: just the na borhood in schools, but the toy box,
Speaker 1: the library, even your friends. So one study found that
Speaker 1: the racial attitudes of white children are more correlated to
Speaker 1: the number of friends of color that a white mother
Speaker 1: has than the white mother's racial attitudes. I have a
Speaker 1: six year old daughter, money, and of course I want
Speaker 1: her to to see her brown skin is beautiful. I
Speaker 1: want her to understand her kinky here is beautiful. But
Speaker 1: I also want her to understand that people would differently
Speaker 1: shape eyes are just as beautiful as she. And so
Speaker 1: even if you're raising a black child, it's still important.
Speaker 1: Part of the challenge is we don't really know just
Speaker 1: how early kids are learning these ideas. One scholar found
Speaker 1: that by three years our kids have an adult like
Speaker 1: concept of race. Another scholar found that most white preschoolers
Speaker 1: choose a black person as looking bad. Then we think like,
Speaker 1: how could kids so young? I think these ideas well,
Speaker 1: racist ideas are extremely simple. Dark is bad, it's light
Speaker 1: is good. At this moment, when you're seeing all of
Speaker 1: the white supremacists who are engaging in mass shootings, government
Speaker 1: officials are documenting the number of white supremacists who are
Speaker 1: targeting children online, particularly through multiplayer video games, on memes,
Speaker 1: targeting through the BRECT messages. Parents and teachers are trying
Speaker 1: to decide whether they're going to talk to their kids
Speaker 1: about race. They don't understand it's already been talk So
Speaker 1: the question is who do you want to talk to you? Right? Right,
Speaker 1: that's the real question. Right. That's a good point. That's
Speaker 1: a really good point. We're gonna listen to this mom.
Speaker 1: It's really important for New York Times op ed racists
Speaker 1: are recruiting. Watch your white sons went viral. Here's her
Speaker 1: message as a mom with two teen boys, I was
Speaker 1: watching over my son's shoulder, as he was rolling through
Speaker 1: social media, and what I didn't expect was that I
Speaker 1: would see racist, anti Semitic, homophobic, anti trans, very anti
Speaker 1: woman content not from them, but in their timelines. And
Speaker 1: it was disturbing in a way that was super subtle,
Speaker 1: things that they may not have noticed. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: go back. And I was so alarmed because it was
Speaker 1: so low key, and by hitting it, he had favorited it.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, their pages were just full of
Speaker 1: this stuff that was really problematic. It was terrifying. That's
Speaker 1: why I wrote that New York Times op ed. I
Speaker 1: just wanted other parents to know there's somebody out there
Speaker 1: that might be wanting to indoctrinate your kid into hateful ideology.
Speaker 1: That just blew my mind. Oh my god, that's terrible.
Speaker 1: You know, white parents think, well, I don't want to
Speaker 1: like talk to them about race because I don't want
Speaker 1: to make them racist. When they're being talked to by
Speaker 1: white supremacists. You have to understand that also in the past,
Speaker 1: like four or five years, a lot of the shootings
Speaker 1: have been done by younger white men. Yes, we have
Speaker 1: doctor Gillian Peterson, the forensic psychologist who conducted the largest
Speaker 1: study of mass shooters in the United States. Dr Gillian,
Speaker 1: can you tell us the killers that you've interviewed all
Speaker 1: had one thing in common. Yeah, The similar goal is
Speaker 1: always to cause as much destruction and death and pain
Speaker 1: and fear as possible, because that's what gets your anger
Speaker 1: and your grievance into the headlines of perpetrators. If you
Speaker 1: go back in their background to figure out, how does
Speaker 1: an eighteen year old kid get to the point where
Speaker 1: he's so angry that he's going to go out and
Speaker 1: murder as many people as possible, how do we find
Speaker 1: that prior to kind of that hate, there is this
Speaker 1: self hate that you see these perpetrators who are lonely,
Speaker 1: who are depressed, who are actively suicidal, many of them
Speaker 1: have attempted suicide before, and then they hit this point.
Speaker 1: One perpetrators sister described it to us. She said, it
Speaker 1: stopped being what's wrong with me and started being what's
Speaker 1: wrong with everybody else? And whose fault is this? Right?
Speaker 1: And it's that flip that now they're going on these
Speaker 1: dark internet sites, they're falling down the rabbit hole. They're
Speaker 1: studying other mass shooters, and mass shootings are meant to
Speaker 1: be watched. They're meant to be witnessed. It's a way
Speaker 1: to have this notoriety that they don't have in their life.
Speaker 1: It's a way to gain this sense of power where
Speaker 1: everyone is now talking about something. Dr Jillian said, it
Speaker 1: was just so powerful. People went from hating themselves to
Speaker 1: hating other people. So the totality of that is that
Speaker 1: people are the problem, and that's what we're taught. That
Speaker 1: people are the source of our pain, right as opposed
Speaker 1: to policies, as opposed to conditions. I'm glad you just
Speaker 1: pointed that out, because that's real. It's like we're always
Speaker 1: targeting each other at some level. Dr Jillian, Why is
Speaker 1: it that the majority of mess shooters have been young,
Speaker 1: white males, specifically when it comes to going into schools.
Speaker 1: What is that about? So in schools, the most likely
Speaker 1: perpetrator is going to be fifteen to eighteen year old
Speaker 1: student of that school who is white, who's actively suicidal,
Speaker 1: and who's usually using their parents guns. A lot of
Speaker 1: them study other shooters, in particular the Columbine shooting. On
Speaker 1: April twelfth, graders at Columbine High School went on a
Speaker 1: shooting rampage, murdering twelve of their classmates and one teacher.
Speaker 1: Millions watched in horror as it unfolded on live television.
Speaker 1: It became one of the most publicized tragedies in US history.
Speaker 1: We were getting shot all around me. There was a
Speaker 1: guy at a table right next to the next to
Speaker 1: me and her, and they just shot him. Before Columbine
Speaker 1: school shootings were extremely rare, this horrific massacre inspired the
Speaker 1: so called Columbine Effect, a disturbing blueprint for future school shooters. Wow,
Speaker 1: they really kind of see themselves in those shooters. They
Speaker 1: identify with them. They in some cases become obsessed. They
Speaker 1: go visit the school, they spend their time on these
Speaker 1: dark websites that really celebrate those shootings. And so I
Speaker 1: think that validation and seeing how those Columbine shooters ended
Speaker 1: up on the page of Time magazine, it's that quest
Speaker 1: for notoriety that they're looking for. Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: important not to name the shooters. The media can talk
Speaker 1: about it, give all the details, but just not mention
Speaker 1: the name. The far right and the extremism, that's one
Speaker 1: of the things they're looking for, to be martyrs, sent
Speaker 1: to make copycats and things like that, and Buffalo. That
Speaker 1: was a specific target, right, But it seems like it's
Speaker 1: not always like a racial target that I just want
Speaker 1: to get as many people as I can. Yeah, perpetrators
Speaker 1: choose a target that represents their grievance with the world.
Speaker 1: So school shooters are typically upset with their classmates in
Speaker 1: their peers. Workplace shooters have typically just been fired and
Speaker 1: are angry at the workplace. And then there's people who
Speaker 1: decide that the source of everything wrong in their lives
Speaker 1: is a racial group, or a religious group, or it's women,
Speaker 1: and so they choose sites that represent those things. But
Speaker 1: I think we had this idea that people who do
Speaker 1: us are these monsters and they're on the outside, but
Speaker 1: really they're kids in our kids schools, there in our workplaces.
Speaker 1: There are neighbors, and so we need to all be
Speaker 1: thinking about this. There are people we know. My thought is,
Speaker 1: I've heard and seen a lot of terrible things that
Speaker 1: happened to black kids in school in general, but I've
Speaker 1: never seen a black kid trying to shoot up with school.
Speaker 1: You're basically saying the pressures that you see that young
Speaker 1: black people go Black people face, specifically in the education
Speaker 1: education explode that way. We don't. We don't express our
Speaker 1: frustrations in that way. It's very interesting to me. That's
Speaker 1: a really good point. There's kind of this white male
Speaker 1: entitlement to what I've owed in this world. I expect
Speaker 1: to have a girlfriend and be wealthy and be respected
Speaker 1: or have resources, and so when I don't get those things,
Speaker 1: my anger and rage is very intense. Call it an
Speaker 1: entitled grievance, right, it's I'm angry because I have a
Speaker 1: different expectation. The world owes me this and I haven't
Speaker 1: gotten it, so it must be somebody's fault. And we
Speaker 1: as black people definitely don't have it. But that's a
Speaker 1: very deep thing entitled grievance. I mean, can you imagine
Speaker 1: if you're in a white child, that's just the constant,
Speaker 1: consistent message you're special because you're white, and then you
Speaker 1: enter into the world in the world is like you
Speaker 1: ain't special, right, and so that that collies. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: very interesting. There's an other elephant in the room. We're
Speaker 1: focusing on the white part of it, but there's another
Speaker 1: consistent thing here. What about the male nous of this.
Speaker 1: Why are so many of the men Because to me,
Speaker 1: there's also a crisis of masculinity and its relationship to violence.
Speaker 1: That has to be spoken about as well. So we
Speaker 1: have studied a hundred and eighty perpetrators of mass shootings.
Speaker 1: You killed four more people in a public space, and
Speaker 1: of those under an eight, we have two women in
Speaker 1: the sample. So it's mail, and to be honest, it's
Speaker 1: not that different than all homicides which are over mail.
Speaker 1: There's good psychological research that shows when men feel shame
Speaker 1: or powerless or anger or sadness, they go out with it, right,
Speaker 1: Their harm goes out, and when women feel those same things,
Speaker 1: it goes in, so higher rates of self harm and
Speaker 1: anxiety and depression and eating disorders and all those. That's
Speaker 1: how it comes out sort of differently between the genders. Right,
Speaker 1: So the men tend to explode, women tend to implode. Yeah, exactly, Yes,
Speaker 1: that means to be discussed. Oh so, Dr Jillian, you
Speaker 1: say that mass shootings are preventable. How so in our search,
Speaker 1: we came up with thirty three different potential solutions, things
Speaker 1: like holding social media companies accountable for the hateful rhetoric
Speaker 1: that happens on their platforms, teaching ourselves how to spot
Speaker 1: the warning signs of this and knowing where to report it.
Speaker 1: I would say, if only somebody had got involved at
Speaker 1: when he was doing this at ten, if only when
Speaker 1: this seventeen year old told his teacher like in Buffalo,
Speaker 1: he was thinking about a murder suicide? Right? If only?
Speaker 1: If only? And none of those solutions we identified are
Speaker 1: perfect on their own, but when you start layering them
Speaker 1: on top of each other, that's when you start seeing progress.
Speaker 1: Who wow? All right? When NFL lineman Zach Banner saw
Speaker 1: that another player posted quotes attributed to Adolph Hitler, he
Speaker 1: knew he had to say something. He made this video
Speaker 1: that went viral. There's a common misbelief amongst black and
Speaker 1: brown people that Jewish people are just like any other
Speaker 1: white race. They don't understand that Jewish people deal with
Speaker 1: the same amount of hate. And uh, I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to get emotional right now, but when we talk about
Speaker 1: the black lives matter, and we talk about elevating ourselves,
Speaker 1: we can't do that while stepping on the back of
Speaker 1: other people. Welcomesider PA, Thank you for having me so
Speaker 1: what made you post that video? When a colleague messes up,
Speaker 1: you have to hold them accountable. Thank everyone in the
Speaker 1: workplace should have that type of mentality, especially when we
Speaker 1: talk about these difficult subjects. I saw tweeting about anti
Speaker 1: Semitic comments and I had to look up what anti
Speaker 1: Semitism was. And I think that's important to be able
Speaker 1: to tell the difference between different hates, Different hates that
Speaker 1: we deal with as black and brown people, different hates
Speaker 1: that Muslims have to deal with. Jews. I didn't even
Speaker 1: think I could say Jew because every time we hear it,
Speaker 1: it's in a negative connotation. It's also important to understand
Speaker 1: not all Jews are white and fair skin. There's black Jews,
Speaker 1: and taking that time to do that men, the amount
Speaker 1: of research and speaking out and saying obviously this isn't correct,
Speaker 1: we can't do this. And I was Steeler for five years.
Speaker 1: In eighteen, in Pittsburgh, somebody walked in the Tree of
Speaker 1: Life Synagogue and said all Jews must die and gunned
Speaker 1: down ten plus people. Those little Jewish boys and girls
Speaker 1: cried the same tears that the I did in second
Speaker 1: grade when I read about the clan bombing that church
Speaker 1: in Birmingham and killing those four little black girls. You
Speaker 1: talked about empathy earlier. It's surprising to me is when
Speaker 1: people aren't empathetic and how hard it is to create
Speaker 1: empathy in people, especially as an adult. But it's also
Speaker 1: important to understand that I educated myself. Jews welcomed me
Speaker 1: in their homes for the just about dinners and into
Speaker 1: their temple. Jeff, can I ask you a question, just
Speaker 1: in the life that you've lived in the past, what
Speaker 1: was it about your organization that felt as though Jews
Speaker 1: had to be targeted most? The belief in that type
Speaker 1: of environment is that they control all the banks, they
Speaker 1: control all the media. It's not based in reality, but
Speaker 1: these are the old stereo stereotypes, and it's easier to
Speaker 1: place the blame on someone else rather than take take
Speaker 1: account for and go, you know what, I need to
Speaker 1: work harder, I need to try more. It's easier to
Speaker 1: just say it's it's there for black people's fault, it's
Speaker 1: Jewish people's fault, it's Hispanic people's. It's not accurate, it's
Speaker 1: not true, but it's easier for them. We do that.
Speaker 1: In our interpersonal relationships and our friendships and our romantic relationships.
Speaker 1: Things go hey wire, and then we don't sit back
Speaker 1: to say, wait, I said that thing, or I did
Speaker 1: that thing anyway. It's just like, no, you made it go,
Speaker 1: hey wire, you said you love me, and now what's gone.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, we do that when people we say
Speaker 1: we love that, trying to say that we all have
Speaker 1: seeds and that some are more extreme than others. On
Speaker 1: the same continuous Zack, what you did by go going
Speaker 1: to meet someone different from you is something anyone can
Speaker 1: do today. Everyone can. One of the best ways we
Speaker 1: can do it is break bread black people, Jews, Muslims.
Speaker 1: Urge you to keep welcoming those people that you disagree
Speaker 1: with naturally. Yeah, there was a point in my life
Speaker 1: where I wouldn't have been able to set at the
Speaker 1: table with you. Same here. I'm not gonna lie. I
Speaker 1: had a little bit of a thing earlier that old
Speaker 1: him made me cringe as well, because I can't see
Speaker 1: how you would want to exterminate somebody and also try
Speaker 1: to keep a culture when you didn't have culture before
Speaker 1: we came in the first place. And you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, And I don't say that in in terms
Speaker 1: of conflict. I just say that in understanding my defects
Speaker 1: and your defects exactly. And it's it was a beautiful
Speaker 1: learning moment because even as a mother sitting here, I
Speaker 1: was like, should I switch season? I said no. If
Speaker 1: two years for somebody would have said to me, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be sitting next to Jeff, the Nazi guy, he's
Speaker 1: going to be your friend, You're going to consider him
Speaker 1: to be your brother, I would not only laugh at you,
Speaker 1: I will feel insulted that you would think I could
Speaker 1: do that with a guy like that. Right, And just
Speaker 1: like you were saying, when we take that time to
Speaker 1: have the courage to step outside of our comfort zone
Speaker 1: and just to get to know the spirit and the
Speaker 1: humanity of people, even when they might not even see
Speaker 1: their own humanity. You know. So this has been a
Speaker 1: beautiful I'm telling you, this was a gangster table. You two,
Speaker 1: the two of you, Yeah, you having these conversations are
Speaker 1: uplifting and like closing it and what you said was
Speaker 1: absolutely beautiful. That's what can make people change. Absolutely absolutely,
Speaker 1: thank you, Thank you. We really appreciate it. It's powerful
Speaker 1: to actually witness it and see someone who has made
Speaker 1: the change. And before we go, we'd like to leave
Speaker 1: everyone with some hope. Meet these special young people trying
Speaker 1: to break the cycle of hate. I'm fighting to protect
Speaker 1: women of color and our bodily autonomy. I'm fighting for
Speaker 1: the mental health of black men. I'm fighting to uproot
Speaker 1: any and all systems of white supremacy and encourage other
Speaker 1: young black and brown people to have the nerve to
Speaker 1: do the same. I love to be able to advocate
Speaker 1: for immigrant communities and migrant communities. I've lived undocumentedly for
Speaker 1: the majority of my life. My entire life struggle has
Speaker 1: showed me that I need to stand boldly and be
Speaker 1: able to create change that I want to see my
Speaker 1: kids grow up in. The changes I'm fighting for are
Speaker 1: important because our rights are continuously coming under attack. If
Speaker 1: I do not do this work, my rights and the
Speaker 1: rights of the people that are closest to me will
Speaker 1: be stripped away, and I cannot allow that to happen.
Speaker 1: I care about making change because I care about my
Speaker 1: community and my system one getting a hurt. I know
Speaker 1: that need to do something. You might know me as
Speaker 1: a little as Flint, even though I'm nels a little anymore.
Speaker 1: The change I'm fighting for is clean water, because no
Speaker 1: can in Americas have to do with having talked to
Speaker 1: drinking water. When people think that it's just fantastastic drinking water.
Speaker 1: They're wrong America as a water crisis, not just Flint.
Speaker 1: As an Afro Cuban, trans and queer woman, I use
Speaker 1: my art a liberation of queer and trans black people
Speaker 1: by creating meaningful, impactful, and authentic representations of my community
Speaker 1: in the media. We have social media, one post and
Speaker 1: a movement is going vibral. We can literally text our
Speaker 1: friends about where the next process is yachta, that is
Speaker 1: hello in my dinner language. I am from the Dinna Nation.
Speaker 1: The change I am creating is important because it is
Speaker 1: rooted in Indigenous worldview that we are relatives to Mother
Speaker 1: Earth and we must fight to protect her. To join
Speaker 1: the Red Table Talk family and become a part of
Speaker 1: the converse station, follow us at Facebook dot com slash
Speaker 1: red table Talk. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Speaker 1: Red Table Talk podcast produced by Facebook, Watch, Westbrook Audio,
Speaker 1: and I Heart Radio.