-
I used to have this recurring dream
-
where I'd walk into a room
full of people,
-
and I'd try not to make
eye contact with anyone,
-
until someone notices me,
-
and I just panic.
-
And the person walks up to me,
-
and says, "Hi, my name is so-and-so,
-
and what is your name?"
-
And I'm just quiet, unable to respond.
-
After some awkward silence, he goes,
-
"Have you forgotten your name?"
-
And I'm still quiet.
-
And then, slowly, all the other people
in the room begin to turn toward me
-
and ask, almost in unison,
-
"Have you forgotten your name?"
-
As the chant gets louder,
I want to respond, but I don't.
-
I'm a visual artist.
-
Some of my work is humorous,
-
and some is a bit funny
-
but in a sad way.
-
And one thing that I really enjoy doing
-
is making these little animations
-
where I get to do the voiceover
for all kinds of characters.
-
I've been a bear.
-
(Video) Bear: Hi.
-
Safwat Saleem: I've been a whale.
-
(Video) Whale: Hi.
-
(Laughter)
-
SS: I've been a greeting card.
-
(Video) Greeting card: Hi.
-
(Laughter)
-
SS: And my personal favorite
is Frankenstein's monster.
-
(Video) Frankenstein's Monster: Grunt.
-
(Laughter)
-
SS: I just had to grunt a lot for that one.
-
A few years ago, I made
this educational video
-
about the history of video games,
-
and for that one I got to do the voice
of space invader.
-
(Video) Space Invader: Hi.
-
SS: A dream come true, really,
-
and when that video was posted online,
-
I just sat there on the computer hitting
refresh, excited to see the response.
-
And the first comment comes in.
-
(Video) Comment: Great job.
SS: Yes.
-
I hit refresh.
-
(Video) Comment: Excellent video.
I look forward to the next one.
-
SS: This was just the first
of a two-part video.
-
I was going to work
on the second one next.
-
I hit refresh.
-
(Video) Comment: Where is part TWO?
WHEREEEE? I need it NOWWWWW! :P
-
(Laughter)
-
SS: People other than my mom
were saying nice things about me,
-
on the Internet!
-
It felt like I had finally arrived.
-
I hit refresh.
-
(Video) Comment: His voice
is annoying no offense.
-
SS: Okay, no offense taken. Refresh.
-
(Video) Comment: Could you remake this
without peanut butter in your mouth?
-
SS: Okay, at least the feedback
is somewhat constructive. Right?
-
(Video) Comment: Please don't use
this narrator again
-
u can barely understand him.
-
SS: Refresh.
-
(Video) Comment: Couldn't follow
because of the Indian accent.
-
SS: Okay, okay, okay, two things.
-
Number one, I don't have
an Indian accent,
-
I have a Pakistani accent, okay?
-
And number two, I clearly
have a Pakistani accent.
-
(Laughter)
-
But comments like that kept coming in,
-
and so I figured I should just
ignore them and start working
-
on the second part of the video.
-
I recorded my audio,
-
but every time I sat down to edit,
-
I just could not do it.
-
Every single time, it would take me
back to my childhood
-
when I had a much harder time speaking.
-
I've stuttered for as long
as I can remember.
-
I was the kid in class
-
who would never raise his hand
when he had a question or knew the answer.
-
Every time the phone rang,
-
I would run to the bathroom so that
I would not have to answer it.
-
If it was for me, my parents would say
that I'm not around.
-
I spent a lot of time in the bathroom.
-
And I hated introducing myself,
-
especially in groups.
-
I'd always stutter on my name,
-
and there was usually someone who would
go, "Have you forgotten your name?"
-
And then everybody would laugh.
-
That joke never got old.
-
(Laughter)
-
I spent my childhood feeling
-
that if I spoke,
-
it would become obvious
-
that there was something wrong with me,
-
that I was not normal.
-
So I mostly stayed quiet.
-
And so you see, eventually for me to even
be able to use my voice in my work
-
was a huge step for me.
-
Every time I record audio,
I fumble my way through saying
-
each sentence many, many times,
-
and then I go back in
-
and pick the ones where I think
I suck the least.
-
(Audio) SS: Audio editing
is like Photoshop for your voice.
-
I can slow it down, speed it up,
make it deeper, add an echo.
-
And if I stutter along the way,
and if I stutter along the way,
-
I just go in and fix it. It's magic.
-
SS: And so using my highly edited voice
-
in my work was a way for me
to finally sound normal to myself.
-
But after the comments on the video,
-
it no longer made me feel normal.
-
And so I stopped
using my voice in my work.
-
And since then, I've thought a lot
about what it means to be normal.
-
And I've come to understand that normal
has a lot to do with expectations.
-
Let me give you an example.
-
I came across this story
-
about the Ancient Greek writer Homer.
-
Now, Homer mentions
very few colors in his writing,
-
and even when he does,
-
he seems to get them quite a bit wrong.
-
For example, the sea is described
as wine red,
-
people's faces are sometimes green,
and sheep are purple.
-
But it's not just Homer.
-
If you look at all
of the ancient literature --
-
Ancient Chinese, Icelandic,
Greek, Indian,
-
and even the original Hebrew Bible --
-
they all mention very few colors.
-
And the most popular theory
-
for why that might be the case
-
is that cultures begin
to recognize a color
-
only once they have the ability
to make that color.
-
So basically, if you can make a color,
-
only then can you see it.
-
A color like red, which was fairly easy
for many cultures to make,
-
they began to see that color
fairly early on,
-
but a color like blue,
which was much harder to make,
-
many cultures didn't begin to learn
how to make that color
-
until much later.
-
They didn't begin to see it
until much later as well.
-
So until then, even though
a color might be all around them,
-
they simply did not have
the ability to see it.
-
It was invisIble.
-
It was not a part of their normal.
-
And that story has helped
put my own experience into context.
-
So when I first read the comments
-
on the video,
-
my initial reaction was to take it
all very personally.
-
But the people commenting
did not know how self-conscious I am
-
about my voice,
-
and they were mostly reacting
to my accent,
-
that it is not normal
for a narrator to have an accent.
-
But what is normal anyway?
-
We know that reviewers will find
more spelling errors
-
in your writing
if they think you're black.
-
We know that professors are less likely
to help female or minority students.
-
And we know that resumes
with white-sounding names
-
get more callbacks than resumes
with black-sounding names.
-
Why is that?
-
Because of our expectations
of what is normal.
-
We think it is normal
-
when a black student has spelling errors.
-
We think it is normal
when a female or minority student
-
does not succeed.
-
And we think it is normal
that a white employee
-
is a better hire than a black employee.
-
But studies also show that
discrimination of this kind,
-
in most cases, is simply favoritism,
-
and it results more from wanting
to help people that you can relate to
-
than the desire to harm people
that you can't relate to.
-
And not relating to people
starts at a very early age.
-
Let me give you an example.
-
One library that keeps track of characters
in the children's book collection
-
every year, they found that in 2014,
only about 11 percent of the books
-
had a character of color,
-
and just the year before,
that number was about 8 percent,
-
even though half of American children
today come from a minority background.
-
Half.
-
So there are two big issues here.
-
Number one, children are told
that they can be anything,
-
that they can do anything, and yet
-
most stories that children
of color consume
-
are about people who are not like them.
-
And number two is that majority groups
don't get to realize the great extent
-
to which they are similar to minorities --
-
our everyday experiences, our hopes,
-
our dreams, our fears,
-
and our mutual love for hummus.
-
It's delicious.
-
(Laughter)
-
Just like the color blue
for Ancient Greeks,
-
minorities are not a part
of what we consider normal,
-
because normal is simply a construction
of what we've been exposed to,
-
and how visible it is around us.
-
And this is where things
get a bit difficult.
-
I can accept the pre-existing
notion of normal, that normal is good
-
and that anything outside of that
very narrow definition of normal is bad,
-
or I can challenge
that pre-existing notion of normal
-
with my work and with my voice
-
and with my accent
-
and by standing here on stage,
-
even though I'm scared shitless
and would rather be in the bathroom.
-
(Applause)
-
(Video) Sheep: And so I am now slowly
starting to use my voice in my work again,
-
and it feels good.
-
It does not mean I won't have a breakdown
the next time a couple dozen people
-
say that I talk like I have
peanut butter in my mouth.
-
(Laughter)
-
SS: It just means I now have
a much better understanding
-
of what's at stake,
-
and how giving up is not an option.
-
The Ancient Greeks did not just wake up
one day and realize
-
that the sky was blue.
-
It took centuries, even, for humans
to realize what we had been ignoring
-
for so long.
-
And so we must continuously challenge
our notion of normal,
-
because doing so is going to allow us
as a society to finally see the sky
-
for what it is.
-
(Video) Animals: Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Grunt.
-
SS: Thank you.
-
(Applause)