-
I was on a long road trip this summer,
-
and I was having
a wonderful time listening
-
Not Synced
to the amazing Isabel Wilkerson's
"Warmth of Other Suns."
-
Not Synced
It documents six million black folks
-
Not Synced
fleeing the South from 1915 to 1970
-
Not Synced
looking for a respite
from all the brutality
-
Not Synced
and trying to get to a better
opportunity up North,
-
Not Synced
and it was filled with stories
of the resilience and the brilliance
-
Not Synced
of African-Americans,
-
Not Synced
and it was also really hard to hear
-
Not Synced
all the stories of the horrors
and the humility,
-
Not Synced
and all the humiliations.
-
Not Synced
It was especially hard to hear
about the beatings and the burnings
-
Not Synced
and the lynchings of black men.
-
Not Synced
And I said, "You know,
this is a little deep.
-
Not Synced
I need a break. I'm going
to turn on the radio."
-
Not Synced
I turned it on, and there it was:
-
Not Synced
Ferguson, Missouri.
-
Not Synced
Michael Brown,
-
Not Synced
18-year old black man,
-
Not Synced
unarmed, shot by a white police officer,
-
Not Synced
laid on the ground dead,
-
Not Synced
blood running for four hours
-
Not Synced
while his grandmother and little children
-
Not Synced
and his neighbors watched in horror,
-
Not Synced
and I thought,
-
Not Synced
here it is again,
-
Not Synced
This violence, this brutality
against black men
-
Not Synced
has been going on for centuries.
-
Not Synced
I mean, it's the same story.
-
Not Synced
It's just different names.
-
Not Synced
It could have been Amadou Diallo.
-
Not Synced
It could have been Sean Bell.
-
Not Synced
It could have been Oscar Grant.
-
Not Synced
It could have been Trayvon Martin.
-
Not Synced
This violence, this brutality,
-
Not Synced
is really something that's part
of our national psyche.
-
Not Synced
It's part of our collective history.
-
Not Synced
What are we going to do about it?
-
Not Synced
You know that part of us that still
-
Not Synced
crosses the street,
-
Not Synced
locks the doors,
-
Not Synced
clutches the purses,
-
Not Synced
when we see young black men?
-
Not Synced
That part.
-
Not Synced
I mean, I know we're not
shooting people down in the street,
-
Not Synced
but I'm saying that the same
stereotypes and prejudices
-
Not Synced
that fuel those kinds of tragic incidents
-
Not Synced
are in us.
-
Not Synced
We've been schooled in them as well.
-
Not Synced
I believe that we can stop
these types of incidents,
-
Not Synced
these Fergusons from happening,
-
Not Synced
by looking within
-
Not Synced
and being willing to change ourselves.
-
Not Synced
So I have a call to action for you.
-
Not Synced
There are three things that I want
to offer us today to think about
-
Not Synced
as ways to stop Ferguson
from happening again;
-
Not Synced
three things that I think will help us
-
Not Synced
reform our images of young black men;
-
Not Synced
three things that I'm hoping
-
Not Synced
will not only protect them
-
Not Synced
but will open the world
so that they can thrive.
-
Not Synced
Can you imagine that?
-
Not Synced
Can you imagine our country
embracing young black men,
-
Not Synced
seeing them as part of our future,
-
Not Synced
giving them that kind of openness,
-
Not Synced
that kind of grace we give
to people we love?
-
Not Synced
How much better would our lives be?
How much better would our country be?
-
Not Synced
Let me just start with number one.
-
Not Synced
We gotta get out of denial.
-
Not Synced
Stop trying to be good people.
-
Not Synced
We need real people.
-
Not Synced
You know, I do a lot of diversity work,
-
Not Synced
and people will come up to me
at the beginning of the workshop.
-
Not Synced
They're like, "Oh, Ms. Diversity Lady,
we're so glad you're here"
-
Not Synced
-- (Laughter) --
-
Not Synced
"but we don't have a biased bone in our body."
-
Not Synced
And I'm like, "Really?
-
Not Synced
Because I do this work every day,
and I see all my biases."
-
Not Synced
I mean, not too long ago, I was on a plane
-
Not Synced
and I heard the voice of a woman
coming over the P.A. system,
-
Not Synced
and I was just so excited, so thrilled.
-
Not Synced
I was like, "Yes, women,
we are rocking it.
-
Not Synced
We are now in the stratosphere." You know?
-
Not Synced
It was all good, and then it started
getting turbulent and bumpy,
-
Not Synced
and I was like,
-
Not Synced
"I hope she can drive."
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
I know. Right.
-
Not Synced
But it's not even like
I knew that was a bias
-
Not Synced
until I was coming back on the other leg
and there's always a guy driving
-
Not Synced
and it's often turbulent and bumpy,
-
Not Synced
and I've never questioned
the confidence of the male driver.
-
Not Synced
The pilot is good.
-
Not Synced
Now, here's the problem.
-
Not Synced
It's like if you ask me explicitly,
-
Not Synced
I would say "Female pilot awesome."
-
Not Synced
But it appears that when things get funky
and a little troublesome, a little risky,
-
Not Synced
I lean on a bias that I didn't
even know thatI had.
-
Not Synced
You know, fast-moving planes in the sky,
-
Not Synced
I want a guy.
-
Not Synced
That's my default.
-
Not Synced
Men are my default.
-
Not Synced
Who is your default?
-
Not Synced
Who do you trust?
-
Not Synced
Who are you afraid of?
-
Not Synced
Who do you implicitly feel connected to?
-
Not Synced
Who do you run away from?
-
Not Synced
I'm going to tell you
what we have learned.
-
Not Synced
The implicit association test,
-
Not Synced
which measures unconscious bias,
-
Not Synced
you can go online and take it.
-
Not Synced
Five million people have taken it.
-
Not Synced
Turns out, our default is white.
-
Not Synced
We like white people.
-
Not Synced
We prefer white. What do I mean by that?
-
Not Synced
When people are shown images of black men
-
Not Synced
and white men,
-
Not Synced
we are more quickly able to associate
-
Not Synced
that picture with a positive word,
that white person with a positive word,
-
Not Synced
when we are trying to associate
positive with a black face,
-
Not Synced
and vice versa.
-
Not Synced
When we see a black face,
-
Not Synced
it is easier for us to connect
-
Not Synced
black with negative
-
Not Synced
than it is white with negative.
-
Not Synced
Seventy percent of white people
taking that test prefer white.
-
Not Synced
Fifty percent of black people
taking that test prefer white.
-
Not Synced
You see, we were all outside
when the contamination came down.
-
Not Synced
What do we do about the fact
that our brain automatically associates?
-
Not Synced
You know, one of the things
-
Not Synced
that you probably are thinking about,
-
Not Synced
and you're probably like, you know what,
-
Not Synced
I'm just going to double down
on my color-blindness.
-
Not Synced
Yes, I'm going to recommit to that.
-
Not Synced
I'm going to suggest to you no.
-
Not Synced
We've gone about as far as we can go
trying to make a difference
-
Not Synced
trying to not see color.
-
Not Synced
The problem was never that we saw color.
-
Not Synced
It was what we did when we saw the color.
-
Not Synced
It's a false ideal.
-
Not Synced
And while we're busy pretending not to see
-
Not Synced
we are not being aware of the ways
in which racial difference
-
Not Synced
is changing people's possibilities,
-
Not Synced
that's keeping them from thriving,
-
Not Synced
and sometimes it's causing them
-
Not Synced
an early death.
-
Not Synced
So in fact, what the scientists
are telling us is no way.
-
Not Synced
Don't even think about color blindness.
-
Not Synced
In fact, what they're suggesting is,
-
Not Synced
stare at awesome black people.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
Look at them directly in their faces
-
Not Synced
and memorize them,
-
Not Synced
because when we look
at awesome folks who are black,
-
Not Synced
it helps to dissociate
-
Not Synced
the association that happens
automatically in our brain.
-
Not Synced
Why do you think I'm showing you
these beautiful black men behind me?
-
Not Synced
There were so many, I had to cut them.
-
Not Synced
Okay, so here's the thing:
-
Not Synced
I'm trying to reset your automatic
associations about who black men are.
-
Not Synced
I'm trying to remind you
-
Not Synced
that young black men
-
Not Synced
grow up to be amazing human beings
-
Not Synced
who have changed our lives
-
Not Synced
and made them better.
-
Not Synced
So here's the thing.
-
Not Synced
The other possibility in science,
-
Not Synced
and it's only temporarily changing
our automatic assumptions,
-
Not Synced
but one thing we know
-
Not Synced
is that if you take a white person
who is, like, odious, that you know,
-
Not Synced
and stick it up next to a person of color,
-
Not Synced
a black person, who is fabulous,
-
Not Synced
than that sometimes actually
causes us to disassociate too.
-
Not Synced
So think, like, Jeffrey Dahmer
and Colin Powell.
-
Not Synced
Like, just stare at them, right?
-
Not Synced
But these are the things.
So go looking for your bias.
-
Not Synced
Please, please, just get out of denial
-
Not Synced
and go looking for disconfirming data
that will prove that in fact
-
Not Synced
your old stereotypes are wrong.
-
Not Synced
Okay, so that's number one: number two,
-
Not Synced
what I'm going to say is move toward
young black men instead of away from them.
-
Not Synced
And, you know, it's not
the hardest thing to do,
-
Not Synced
but it's one of these things where
-
Not Synced
you have to be conscious
and intentional about it.
-
Not Synced
You know, I was on
a Wall Street area one time,
-
Not Synced
several years ago when
I was with a colleague of mine,
-
Not Synced
and she's really wonderful
and she does diversity work with me
-
Not Synced
and she's a woman of color, she's Korean.
-
Not Synced
And we were outside,
it was late at night,
-
Not Synced
and we were sort of wondering where
we were going, we were lost.
-
Not Synced
And I saw this person across the street,
and I was thinking, "Oh great, black guy."
-
Not Synced
You know, I was going toward him
without even thinking about it.
-
Not Synced
And she was like,
"Oh, that's interesting."
-
Not Synced
The guy across the street, you know,
he was a black guy.
-
Not Synced
I think black guys generally
know where they're going.
-
Not Synced
I don't know why exactly I think that,
but that's what I think.
-
Not Synced
So she was saying, "Oh, you
were going, 'Yay, a black guy'?"
-
Not Synced
She said, "I was going,
'Ooh, a black guy.'"
-
Not Synced
Other direction. Same need,
same guy, same clothes,
-
Not Synced
same time, same street,
different reaction.
-
Not Synced
And she said, "I feel so bad.
I'm a diversity consultant.
-
Not Synced
I did the black guy thing.
I'm a woman of color. Oh my God!"
-
Not Synced
And I said, "You know what? Please.
We really need to relax about this."
-
Not Synced
I mean, you gotta realize
I go way back with black guys.
-
Not Synced
My dad is a black guy.
You see what I'm saying?
-
Not Synced
I've got a 6'5" black guy son.
I was married to a black guy.
-
Not Synced
My black guy thing
is so wide and so deep
-
Not Synced
that I can pretty much sort
and figure out who that black guy is,
-
Not Synced
and he was my black guy.
-
Not Synced
He said, "Yes ladies, I know
where you're going. I'll take you there."
-
Not Synced
You know, biases are the stories
we make up about people
-
Not Synced
before we know who they actually are.
-
Not Synced
But how are we going to know who they are
-
Not Synced
when we've been told to avoid
-
Not Synced
and be afraid of them?
-
Not Synced
So I'm going to tell you
to walk toward your discomfort.
-
Not Synced
And I'm not asking you
to take any crazy risks.
-
Not Synced
I'm saying, just do an inventory,
-
Not Synced
expand your social
and professional circles.
-
Not Synced
Who's in your circle?
-
Not Synced
Who's missing?
-
Not Synced
How many authentic relationships
-
Not Synced
do you have with young black people,
-
Not Synced
folks, men, women?
-
Not Synced
Or any other major difference
from who you are
-
Not Synced
and how you roll, so to speak?
-
Not Synced
Because you know what?
Just look around your periphery.
-
Not Synced
There may be somebody at work,
in your classroom,
-
Not Synced
in your house of worship, somewhere,
there's some black young guy there.
-
Not Synced
And you're nice. You say hi.
-
Not Synced
I'm saying go deeper, closer, further,
-
Not Synced
and build the kinds of relationships,
that actually cause you to see
-
Not Synced
the holistic person
-
Not Synced
and to really go against the stereotypes.
-
Not Synced
I know some of you are out there,
-
Not Synced
I know because I have some white
friends in particular that will say,
-
Not Synced
"You have no idea how awkward I am.
-
Not Synced
Like, I don't think this
is going to work for me.
-
Not Synced
I'm sure I'm going to blow this."
-
Not Synced
Okay, maybe,
-
Not Synced
but this thing is not about perfection.
-
Not Synced
It's about connection.
-
Not Synced
And you're not going to get comfortable
-
Not Synced
before you get uncomfortable.
-
Not Synced
I mean, you just have to do it.
-
Not Synced
And young black men,
what I'm saying is
-
Not Synced
if someone comes your way genuine
and authentically, take the invitation.
-
Not Synced
Not everyone is out to get you.
-
Not Synced
Go looking for those people
who can see your humanity.
-
Not Synced
You know, it's the empathy
and the compassion
-
Not Synced
that comes out of having relationships
-
Not Synced
with people who are different from you.
-
Not Synced
Something really powerful
and beautiful happens:
-
Not Synced
you start to realize that they are you,
-
Not Synced
that they are part of you,
-
Not Synced
that they are you in your family,
-
Not Synced
and then we cease to be bystanders
-
Not Synced
and we become actors,
we become advocates,
-
Not Synced
and we become allies.
-
Not Synced
So go away from your comfort
into a bigger, brighter thing,
-
Not Synced
because that is how we will stop
another Ferguson from happening.
-
Not Synced
That's how we create a community
-
Not Synced
where everybody, especially
young black men, can thrive.
-
Not Synced
So this last thing is going to be harder,
-
Not Synced
and I know it, but I'm just going
to put it out there anyway.
-
Not Synced
When we see something, we have to have
the courage to say something,
-
Not Synced
even to the people we love.
-
Not Synced
You know, it's holidays
and it's going to be a time
-
Not Synced
when we're sitting around the table
-
Not Synced
and having a good time.
-
Not Synced
Many of us, anyways, will be in holidays,
-
Not Synced
and you go to listen to
the conversations around the table.
-
Not Synced
You start to say things like,
"Grandma's a bigot."
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
"Uncle Joe is racist."
-
Not Synced
And you know, we love Grandma
and we love Uncle Joe. We do.
-
Not Synced
But what they're saying is wrong,
-
Not Synced
and we need to be able to say something,
-
Not Synced
because you know who else is at the table?
-
Not Synced
Children are at the table.
-
Not Synced
And we wonder why these biases don't die
-
Not Synced
and move from generation to generation?
-
Not Synced
Because we're not saying anything.
-
Not Synced
We gotta be willing to say, "Grandma,
we don't call people that anymore."
-
Not Synced
"Uncle Joe, it isn't true
that he deserved that.
-
Not Synced
No one deserves that."
-
Not Synced
And we've got to be willing
-
Not Synced
to not shelter our children
from the ugliness of racism
-
Not Synced
when black parents don't
have the luxury to do so,
-
Not Synced
especially those who have
-
Not Synced
young black sons.
-
Not Synced
We gotta take our lovely darlings,
-
Not Synced
our future, and we've got to tell them
-
Not Synced
we have an amazing country
-
Not Synced
with incredible ideals.
-
Not Synced
We have worked incredibly hard,
and we have made some progress,
-
Not Synced
but we are not done.
-
Not Synced
We still have in us this old stuff
-
Not Synced
about superiority and it is causing us
-
Not Synced
to embed those further
into our institutions
-
Not Synced
and our society and generations,
-
Not Synced
and it is making for despair
-
Not Synced
and disparities and a devastating
devaluing of young black men.
-
Not Synced
We still struggle, you have to tell them,
-
Not Synced
with seeing both the color
-
Not Synced
and the character of young black men,
-
Not Synced
but that you, and you expect them
-
Not Synced
to be part of the forces of change
-
Not Synced
in this society
-
Not Synced
that will stand against injustice
-
Not Synced
and is really above all other things
-
Not Synced
to make a society where
-
Not Synced
young black men can be seen
for all of who they are.
-
Not Synced
So many amazing black men,
-
Not Synced
those who are the most amazing
statesmen that have ever lived,
-
Not Synced
brave soldiers,
-
Not Synced
awesome, hardworking laborers.
-
Not Synced
These are people who
are powerful preachers.
-
Not Synced
They are incredible scientists
and artists and writers.
-
Not Synced
They are dynamic comedians.
-
Not Synced
They are doting grandpas,
-
Not Synced
caring sons.
-
Not Synced
They are strong fathers,
-
Not Synced
and they are young men
-
Not Synced
with dreams of their own.
-
Not Synced
Thank you.
-
Not Synced
(Applause)