Getting race on the table
(calm instrumental music) - White fragility is meant to capture the defensiveness that so many white people display when our world views, our identities, or our racial positions are challenged. And it's a very familiar dynamic, right. I think there's a reason that that term resonated for so many people. I mean even if you yourself are displaying white fragility, it's fairly recognizable that, in general, white people are really defensive when the topic is racism and when they are challenged racially or cross-racially. So the fragility part is meant to capture how easy it is to trigger than defensiveness. For many white people, the mere suggestion that being white has meaning will set us off. Another thing that will set us off is generalizing about white people. Right now, I am generalizing about white people and that questions a very precious ideology, which is most white people are raised to see ourselves as individuals. We don't like being generalized about, and yet, social life is patterned and observable and predictable in describable ways. And while we are, of course, all unique individuals, we're also members of social groups and that membership is profound. That membership matters. We can literally predict whether my mother and I were going to survive my birth and how long I'm going to live based on my race. We need to be willing to grapple with the collective experiences we have as a result of being members of a particular group that has profound meaning for our lives. We live in a society that is deeply separate and unequal by race. I think we all know that. How we would explain why that is might vary, but that it's separate and unequal is very, very clear. (calm instrumental music) While we who are white tend to be fragile in that it doesn't take much to upset us around race, the impact of our response is not fragile at all. It's a kind of weaponized defensiveness, weaponized hurt feelings, and it functions really, really effectively to repel the challenge. You know, as a white person, I move through the world racially comfortable virtually 24/7. It is exceptional for me to be outside of my racial comfort zone and most of my life, I've been warned not to go outside my racial comfort zone. And so on the rare occasion when I am uncomfortable racially it's a kind of throwing off of my racial equilibrium and I need to get back into that. And so I will do whatever it takes to repel the challenge and get back into it. We make it so miserable for people of color to talk to us about our inevitable and often unaware racist patterns that we cannot help develop from being socialized into a culture in which racism is the bedrock and the foundation. We make it so miserable for them to talk to us about it that most of the time they don't. And we just have to understand that most people of color that are working or living in primarily white environments take home way more daily slights and hurts and insults than they bother talking to us about because they're experience is they're going to risk more punishment. They're going to lose the relationship. They're going to have their experience minimized, explained away. They're going to cause the person to feel attacked or hurt, and in that way, white fragility functions as a kind of everyday white racial control. None of that has to be intentional or conscious, but that is how it functions. And there's a question that's never failed me in my efforts to unpack, "How do we pull this off?" How do so many of us who are white individually feel so free of racism and yet we live in a society that is so profoundly separate and unequal by race? And the question that's never failed me is not, "Is this true or is this false? "Is this right or is this wrong?" But, "How does it function? "How do these narratives that I tell, how do they function?" When I tell you, "Well, I'm just an individual, "why can't we all just be individuals?" When I tell you, "I was taught to treat everyone the same." When I tell you, "But it's focusing on race that divides us." When I tell you, "But I have lots of friends of color." Those narratives have not changed our outcome and they function to take race off the table and to exempt the person from any further engagement. And in doing that, they function to protect the current racial hierarchy and the white position within it. It doesn't have to be what I'm intending to do, but it is the impact of those narratives. (calm instrumental music)
Understanding what it means to be white, challenging what it means to be racist
(relaxing electronic music) - All systems of oppression are highly adaptive, and they can adapt to challenges and incorporate them, they can allow for exceptions, and I think the most effective adaptation of the system of racism to the challenges of the civil rights movement was to reduce a racist to a very simple formula. A racist is an individual, always an individual, not a system, who consciously does not like people based on race, must be conscious, and who intentionally seeks to be mean to them. Individual, conscious, intent. And if that is my definition of a racist, then your suggestion that anything I've said or done is racist, or has a racist impact, I'm going to hear that as, you just said I was a bad person, you just put me over there in that category, and most of my bias, anyway, is unconscious. I'm not intending, I'm not aware. So, now I'm going to need to defend my moral character, and I will, and we've all seen it! It seems to be virtually impossible, based on that definition, for the average white person to look deeply at their socialization. To look at the inevitability of internalizing racist biases, developing racist patterns, and having investments in the system of racism, which is pretty comfortable for us and serves us really well. I think that definition of a racist, that either/or, what I call the good/bad binary, is the root of virtually all white defensiveness on this topic, because it makes it virtually impossible to talk to the average white person about the inevitably absorption of a racist worldview (relaxing electronic music) that we get by being, literally swimming in racist water! I'm going to use a term here that I understand is charged, and that's white supremacy. I'm very comfortable with the term. Yes, it includes extremists we might think of as white nationalists, or neo-nazis. It also is a highly descriptive sociological term for the water we swim in, for the society we live in, a society that holds one people up as the human ideal, as the norm for humanity, and everyone else as a particular kind of human, and a deficient one. So, I live in a society that from the time I open my eyes, in myriad ways both implicit and explicit, has conveyed to me that I am inherently superior because I'm white! The research shows that all children by age three to four understand it's better to be white. All children. Me, I got that message, you got that message, everyone gets it, you can't miss it, and it's not isolated, it's not singular, it's not dependent on any one person, it's relentlessly circulating. And so internalized superiority is another great challenge or barrier for white people wanting to push through this or address this. We can talk about individualism and how that functions, and universalism and white solidarity, but I think the hardest one for us to face is internalized superiority. And yet, when you accept that you got that message, you couldn't help it, you can then get to work trying to challenge that message, rather than inadvertently protect it through your defensiveness and your refusal to engage with it. And so we simply can't get where we need to go from the current paradigm that says only mean, intentional individuals could ever perpetrate or participate in racism. When you change your paradigm, it's so transformative and liberating. So, what we need to do is think very differently (relaxing electronic music) about what racism is. I think one of the most hostile, toxic environments for people of color, day-in and day-out, is unexamined whiteness. The average white person cannot answer the question, "What does it mean to be white?" In my workshops, I will pose that question, and pair people up to reflect. I will give them one minute, and so often white people cannot fill 60 seconds on that question. Or they answer it by telling a cross-racial experience. So, I ask you what does it mean to be white, you start telling me about your friend who was black when you were a little boy. That's not answering the question! But it reveals how deeply we define race by the presence of people of color, and how difficult it is for us to see whiteness in racial terms. To see white space, white segregation as teeming with race, as racialized. And every moment that I spend in white space, I am being deeply reinforced in the white world view, and probably most profoundly, in a lack of a sense that I've lost anything of value. I want you to just take in for a moment the message that white segregation makes a space good. White people measure the value of our schools and our neighborhoods by the absence of people of color. I know exactly what a good school is, and what a good neighborhood is. And I know what's happening when it's comin' up, and I know what's happening when it's comin' down, and I know what's happening when it's sketchy. These are racially coded narratives, and they have shaped me deeply to position white segregation as good. Every moment that I function in that kind of water, I'm being reinforced in internalized superiority, quite frankly. If I can't answer the question, "What does it mean to be white?" I am not going to be able to hold what it means not to be white. I am not going to be able to validate or affirm an alternative experience, when I don't even know what mine is. I'm going to need to get race off the table, and that, let's just go to the human experience, right? Oh, why can't we all just be human beings here? Why do we have to talk about race? I'm going to invalidate your experience because I can't hold it! It's so challenging, it's like it's, I'm a fish and I'm in water, and I'm moving with the current, and you're trying to take me out of the water and it's unbearable. (relaxing electronic music) A really classic pattern when I'm giving a talk about whiteness is for white people to sit there and think about all of the ways they're an exception to everything I'm talking about. So, if I'm saying most white people x, but you're a y, "Aha, I was a y!" (chuckles) We often say with some smugness. Therefore, I am exempt from what you're talking about. Well, nothing could exempt you from the forces of racism in this country, and so that changes the question from if you've been shaped by those forces to how have you been shaped by those forces. Racism circulates 24/7, 365. So, you're talkin' about x, I was a y, how did y set me up in the overall structure? Because it did! It set me up differently than x set you up, right? Perhaps you're an Ashkenazi jew of European descent? You got set up in the racial hierarchy different than I did as a gentile catholic of Italian descent. And it's actually incredibly liberating and transformative to start from the premise that of course I've internalized all of this, and then I can stop defending, deflecting, denying, hoping you won't notice. (chuckles) Minimizing, explaining. And I can just let go of that and get to work (relaxing electronic music) trying to figure out well, what does this socialization look like in my life?
Acknowledging racial resentment
(slow, pulsing music) - I have a pretty rare job. Day in and day out, for the last 20 years, I have talked to primarily white groups of people about what it means to be white. And when I began, I used to be really careful to avoid what people will call the black-white binary, and to make sure I was as inclusive as possible. But after 20 years, I feel really clear, there is something profoundly anti-black in this culture, and that there are poles. White is on one end, and black is on the other, and where you are positioned in relation to those poles will shape how you experience your life and your racialization. And the closer you are to white, the more benefits you get. That does not mean that groups that we call white adjacent, the groups of color that are closer to white, or more comfortable for white people, Asian heritage people, for example, overall are more comfortable for white people, it does not mean they don't experience racism. But that white adjacency kind of ameliorates it a little bit. The closer you are to black, the more intensified is the racism. And anti-blackness cuts across every group, including black people. The darker you are, the more intense is the marginalization. (slow, pulsing music) You don't have to scratch very hard on white people for anti-blackness to erupt. Nothing seems to turn the crank of white resentment like thinking black people got something over on us, something that they did not deserve, because the message is that they're inherently deserving. Any moment of black advancement, as Carol Anderson argues in her book, "White Rage", is met with a backlash of white rage and resentment. I think we're in a current moment of that after eight years of Obama. And I don't know that anything will bring it to the surface like bringing up affirmative action. It's just incredible to me, the resentment white people have around a program, basically a toothless program, that we've practically dismantled, that was intended to just at least say you have to include people of color in your searches. You are not required to hire people of color, but you have to include qualified people of color, and then you have to be able to say why you didn't hire them. All of the research in implicit bias is clear that it's not a pipeline issue. It is a racial bias issue. Black people are discriminated against in the workplace. I have been in 100% white workplaces and heard white people bitterly complaining that, because of affirmative action, white people can't get jobs anymore. It's delusional. You're looking around going, "Where are they?" But it's so tenacious, this resentment. (slow, pulsing music)
Thinking critically about our words and actions
(slow, pulsing music) - The overarching question that frames our exploration in my workshops is what does it mean to be white in a society that proclaims it doesn't really mean anything, and yet is profoundly separate and unequal by race? And so that's the question that frames our exploration, and everything we do is meant to unpack what that means. And I use a metaphor. Picture a dock over the water, and the metaphor of a dock is meant to signify two key things. One, how surface or superficial so much of the evidence that white people give for their lack of racism, that's one aspect of the dock, but the dock also looks like it's just floating on the water. If you look at it from above, it looks like it's just floating on the water. But it's not. It's resting on an entire structure underneath, submerged under the water, that props that dock up. There are pillars embedded in the ocean floor that that dock is resting on. And so what I do in my workshops is try to get us off the top, with all that stuff we say, for example, I was taught to treat everyone the same, I grew up in a really diverse environment, I was in Teach For America, I have people of color in my family, I marched in the 60s, everyone struggles, but if you work hard, all that. All that, that has not changed our outcomes, by the way, but that white people use as their evidence that they are free of racism. And I take it and I say let's go underneath to the structure beneath that. What system of meaning are you drawing from that would lead you to make that claim in such a separate and unequal society? And maybe more importantly, how does that claim function in the conversation? There's so little in our society that compels those of us who are white to think critically about what it is we're saying. I mean, how often has a white person ever been asked, "So if that's the evidence you're giving me "for your lack of racism, "what's your definition of racism?" (slow, pulsing music) Let's take probably the number one of the set I call the colorblind narratives. The number one is "I was taught to treat everyone the same." Well, first of all, no you were not. Sorry, none of us were taught to treat everyone the same, it's not humanly possible, you cannot be taught to treat everyone the same. Human beings are not and cannot be objective. You can only make sense of perception through the meaning-making framework you were conditioned to make meaning through. And it's not an objective framework. And when I hear that from a white person, "I was taught to treat everyone the same," I think, well, this person doesn't understand basic socialization. This person doesn't understand culture. This person is not self-aware. And so, in my workshops, I give a heads-up to white people, and I say I need you to know that, when people of color hear us say that, they're generally not thinking, "All right, I'm talking to a woke white person right now." They're rolling their eyes. A wall is going up, it isn't convincing. These narratives do not do what we think they do, but we're so seldom accountable to people of color. We so seldom talk to them in any authentic way, much less receive a challenge on that narrative. And there's a black woman that I work with, her name is Erin Trent Johnson, and she says, "When I hear a white person say "I was taught to treat everyone the same, "I'm thinking this is a dangerous white person. "I'm not going to be able to be real with this person "because they're refusing to see my reality." (slow, pulsing music) For so many white people, we think that the answer to racism is friendliness. If you notice the evidence that most white people will give for why they're not racist, one of their top pieces of evidence is, "I know people of color. "I have friends of color." And so, if we look at that evidence as a way to understand the deeper structure of meaning, it's actually quite revealing. In order for a claim like that, "I know people of color, I have friends of color," in order for a claim like that to be good evidence of my lack of racism, a racist can't be able to do that. Otherwise it's not good evidence, right? This is what distinguishes me from a racist, I have people of color in my life, I live in New York City, I was in Teach For America, I went to a diverse school, these are all the claims that white people will make for their lack of racism. Well, that must mean a racist cannot live in New York City, could not know or speak to or be friendly to people of color, could not be in the Peace Corps, etc. And I'm hoping you can see right now how ridiculous that evidence is, because even an avowed racist can do all of those things. So, most white people believe that niceness is all it takes. And the status quo of our society is the reproduction of racial inequality. That's what it does, it's the default of all of our institutions, our norms, and our policies. It's what our society does, it's what it's always done. Our outcomes are not improving. By many measures, our outcomes of racial disparity are increasing. And all this system needs to keep on keeping on reproducing racial inequality with whites benefiting from it is for white people just to be really nice. Be really nice, go ahead. Smile at your coworkers of color, go to lunch on occasion, and do nothing else, and you will uphold that system. Because niceness is not courageous. Niceness is not anti-racism. Niceness will not get racism on the table, and it will not keep it on the table when everyone wants it off the table. I suppose it's better than not being nice, but it takes strategic, intentional anti-racist action. It is a lifelong process that I will never be finished from. (slow, pulsing music)
A thoughtful approach to educating ourselves about racism
(contemplative music) - Sometimes in our enthusiasm, those of us who are white when we first learn about this, we want to rush over to people of color and have them teach us about racism. And we definitely do not want to go ahead and do that for a couple of reasons. First of all, there are plenty of people of color who have provided that information and are happy to give it and generally be paid to do so. They write books, they give talks, they have videos. But just to go up to anybody and ask that is a fairly invasive and threatening question. You're asking them to risk something very vulnerable when there's no mutuality and no trust built. You're asking them to kind of open their chest and share something that's very sensitive, and their experience most likely has been that if you don't like what you hear, you're going to invalidate it. It's not for people of color to carry that burden. It's for those of us who are white to be talking to each other and to also seek out the information that people of color have volunteered to give us. My voice cannot be the only voice. There's no way we can understand what we need to understand without the voices of people of color, and overwhelmingly those voices, but we have to be really thoughtful about how we get that information and how we engage. (contemplative music) I often use the analogy, imagine I'm in the workplace, I have a coworker, it's a man. You know, he's friendly to me and everything, but we've never gone to lunch or anything. We say good morning. And one day he just walks up to me and says, "Oh, I heard all about the Me Too movement. "Have you ever been sexually harassed at work? "Or have you ever been raped?" I'm hoping that you would know that that is an incredibly threatening and vulnerable question to be asked by a man that I don't know that well. When I don't understand a piece of racism, I just imagine that a man is saying to me, right, I just imagine men that I don't have much of a relationship with suddenly wanting me to tell them about all my experiences I've had around male violence. That's going to feel really weird to me, and I have no idea what the response is going to be. (contemplative music)
What you can do
(tender music) - The number one question I get when I give a talk is okay, okay, now what do I do? And that question has bothered me for a long time. One to be really honest, I think it's disingenuous. I don't think white people really want to know what to do, unless it's the most simplistic thing, which is just keep being friendly. That question tends to function as a way to jump over the hard, personal work and just get to the answer or get to the solution. It's a little bit arrogant for folks who have never in their life thought deeply about this and after an hour, they want to get the answer and go fix it. At the same time, we can't wait till we have it all figured out. And so I will offer a challenging question back. And then I will answer the what do we do? So my reply to that question is, what about your life has allowed you to be a full functioning professional, educated adult and not know what to do about racism? How have you managed not to know? Why is that your question? People of color have been telling us this for a very long time. So that question is meant to be a challenge. It's also sincere, take out a piece of paper and start writing down why you don't know? Probably on the first of your list is going to be, I wasn't educated on this. I don't talk about race. I don't really have relationships across race, or not many. And when I do, we don't talk about race. I haven't cared enough. There's your map, and when you get, I haven't cared enough, if you can look at yourself in the mirror and say that, then carry on as you always have but do it with honesty. If you can't look at yourself in the mirror and say, "I don't really care." Great, use that motivation to get involved. So probably the number one thing we could do next is take the initiative and go look it up. There's so much good information out there. My website is filled with lists and resources. I will never forget talking to a multiracial group, and putting the question out to the people of color. What would it be like if when white people ran their inevitable and often unaware of racism, you could give us feedback on that and have us receive it with grace, reflect on the behavior and seek to change it? What would that be like for you? And I'll never forget this man of color raising his hand and saying, "It would be revolutionary." And I just want my white listeners to take that in, revolutionary, that's a pretty strong word for just receiving the feedback, reflecting, and seeking to change their behavior. That's how difficult we are, that that's a revolution. That's also how easy it is, but we can't get there from the current paradigm. So work really hard to change your paradigm. And not only will your inner personal relationships change, so will our institutions because we will see that they do. (tender music) My area of study is discourse analysis, and that is the critical examination of language, of narratives. That I grew up thinking that words are just objective neutral things that describe something. And now I understand that the words or the language we have to describe things shapes the way we see things. And as a white person studying racism, and how white people get conditioned into the racist system, whenever a narrative comes up really quickly, whenever a white narrative surfaces really easily, I think it's a red flag, I think it's worth looking at. And guilt and shame are really quick for white people, right? So, "Oh this just makes me feel so guilty." And so I would challenge anyone who says that to actually ask yourself on a daily basis, how often do you feel racial guilt as a white person? Honestly, 0? 2%? 10%? When race comes up and you get challenged, is that when you feel guilty? But walking through your daily life, how often do you feel racial guilt? The other day I was walking into Whole Foods and I had to step over a black man lying in the gutter and I felt a moment of racial guilt until I got into Whole Foods and then reindeer chairs were on sale, and I was really excited about that, and forgot all about it. There's something that we really need to look at in this jumping to this makes me feel too guilty. The antidote to guilt is action. I feel guilty about things I have not repaired or addressed. And I don't feel guilty anymore when I've repaired or addressed them. There's the kind of, "I don't want to feel so bad kind of guilt" and the, "How dare you try to make me feel guilty." If you don't see that there's anything to feel guilty about, then relax. I am clear that as a result of being born and raised in this society, I've a racist worldview. I have racist biases. I have been exposed to racist discourse my whole life. I have racist patterns. I have investments in the system just like it is because it's so comfortable for me and it serves me. I don't feel guilt about that, because I didn't choose it. One, and two because I'm doing the best I can to address it. (tender music) I try to be a little less white. I'm really clear that I am not going to be free of my conditioning, and racism is not going to end in my lifetime. The question I ask myself is, how do I do a little less harm? And how do I know, right? Am I in any given moment behaving in anti-racist ways? Not, I'm already done, I'm never racist, right? Not I'm a terrible person, I'm always racist. In any given moment, how am I doing? And how do I know? And that keeps me humble, and it keeps me accountable. So for me to do less harm is no small thing. Because it could literally be one more hour on a person of color's life who didn't have to take home my nonsense and agonize all night long whether it was worth it to talk to me, or they should just suck it up yet again, less they risk my lashing out in defensiveness. So for me to be less white is to be less oppressive racially, to be less arrogant, to be less certain, to be less defensive, to be less ignorant, quite frankly, to be more humble, to listen, to believe, to break with apathy, to break with white solidarity. It's not easy, it's a lifelong process but nothing is more rewarding. (tender music)
Keeping the work going within our organizations
(light music) - When I begin a workshop, I start with a disclaimer. We're not going to solve race relations today. I may not even give you the answer in the way that you're looking for the answer. My goal is to raise your consciousness, to help you see something that you did not see before that you can't not see when you leave the room and that you're so unsettled by not having seen that before that you're motivated to keep going on, but if you don't keep going on after this, it's functionally fairly meaningless, right? So you have to put structures in place. If I'm in a workplace, those structures can range from monthly affinity groups, cross racial discussions, ongoing professional development, changing every interview question you have so that, when anyone applies to your organization, they leave thinking oh my goodness, if I'm going to work for that company, I'm going to be held accountable to grapple with these issues. Then, I also offer a question bank for the people listening to the answers because, many times, interview committees themselves don't even know how to assess what is a good answer, right? We talk about how to start leadership meetings. We introduce something called the racial equity toolkit, how to look at any decision you're making and apply some really simple questions to it. Who's at the table? Who's not at the table? How will this impact those who are not at the table? How do you know? How might you get that information? So it's a broad, kind of cross the organization, keeping that conversation on the table and challenging ourselves not to be thinking about them in isolation. In other words, lots of times, you'll have an all-white group come together and try to figure out how to appeal to more people of color without ever asking the people of color that they're looking to appeal to, right? Another common idea I like to challenge is this idea that it's all about just adding more people of color. Let's just recruit more people of color, but we don't change in any way the consciousness of the people that are already at the table and that have been at the table all along. So you can add as many people of color as you want if you haven't addressed whiteness. If you haven't addressed the water you're putting them into, they may survive in your workplace. They're likely not to thrive. (light music) (light music) (light music) (light music)
Getting race on the table (calm instrumental music) - White fragility is meant to capture the defensiveness that so many white people display when our world views, our identities, or our racial positions are challenged. And it's a very familiar dynamic, right. I think there's a reason that that term resonated for so many people. I mean even if you yourself are displaying white fragility, it's fairly recognizable that, in general, white people are really defensive when the topic is racism and when they are challenged racially or cross-racially. So the fragility part is meant to capture how easy it is to trigger than defensiveness. For many white people, the mere suggestion that being white has meaning will set us off. Another thing that will set us off is generalizing about white people. Right now, I am generalizing about white people and that questions a very precious ideology, which is most white people are raised to see ourselves as individuals. We don't like being generalized about, and yet, social life is patterned and observable and predictable in describable ways. And while we are, of course, all unique individuals, we're also members of social groups and that membership is profound. That membership matters. We can literally predict whether my mother and I were going to survive my birth and how long I'm going to live based on my race. We need to be willing to grapple with the collective experiences we have as a result of being members of a particular group that has profound meaning for our lives. We live in a society that is deeply separate and unequal by race. I think we all know that. How we would explain why that is might vary, but that it's separate and unequal is very, very clear. (calm instrumental music) While we who are white tend to be fragile in that it doesn't take much to upset us around race, the impact of our response is not fragile at all. It's a kind of weaponized defensiveness, weaponized hurt feelings, and it functions really, really effectively to repel the challenge. You know, as a white person, I move through the world racially comfortable virtually 24/7. It is exceptional for me to be outside of my racial comfort zone and most of my life, I've been warned not to go outside my racial comfort zone. And so on the rare occasion when I am uncomfortable racially it's a kind of throwing off of my racial equilibrium and I need to get back into that. And so I will do whatever it takes to repel the challenge and get back into it. We make it so miserable for people of color to talk to us about our inevitable and often unaware racist patterns that we cannot help develop from being socialized into a culture in which racism is the bedrock and the foundation. We make it so miserable for them to talk to us about it that most of the time they don't. And we just have to understand that most people of color that are working or living in primarily white environments take home way more daily slights and hurts and insults than they bother talking to us about because they're experience is they're going to risk more punishment. They're going to lose the relationship. They're going to have their experience minimized, explained away. They're going to cause the person to feel attacked or hurt, and in that way, white fragility functions as a kind of everyday white racial control. None of that has to be intentional or conscious, but that is how it functions. And there's a question that's never failed me in my efforts to unpack, "How do we pull this off?" How do so many of us who are white individually feel so free of racism and yet we live in a society that is so profoundly separate and unequal by race? And the question that's never failed me is not, "Is this true or is this false? "Is this right or is this wrong?" But, "How does it function? "How do these narratives that I tell, how do they function?" When I tell you, "Well, I'm just an individual, "why can't we all just be individuals?" When I tell you, "I was taught to treat everyone the same." When I tell you, "But it's focusing on race that divides us." When I tell you, "But I have lots of friends of color." Those narratives have not changed our outcome and they function to take race off the table and to exempt the person from any further engagement. And in doing that, they function to protect the current racial hierarchy and the white position within it. It doesn't have to be what I'm intending to do, but it is the impact of those narratives. (calm instrumental music)
Understanding what it means to be white, challenging what it means to be racist (relaxing electronic music) - All systems of oppression are highly adaptive, and they can adapt to challenges and incorporate them, they can allow for exceptions, and I think the most effective adaptation of the system of racism to the challenges of the civil rights movement was to reduce a racist to a very simple formula. A racist is an individual, always an individual, not a system, who consciously does not like people based on race, must be conscious, and who intentionally seeks to be mean to them. Individual, conscious, intent. And if that is my definition of a racist, then your suggestion that anything I've said or done is racist, or has a racist impact, I'm going to hear that as, you just said I was a bad person, you just put me over there in that category, and most of my bias, anyway, is unconscious. I'm not intending, I'm not aware. So, now I'm going to need to defend my moral character, and I will, and we've all seen it! It seems to be virtually impossible, based on that definition, for the average white person to look deeply at their socialization. To look at the inevitability of internalizing racist biases, developing racist patterns, and having investments in the system of racism, which is pretty comfortable for us and serves us really well. I think that definition of a racist, that either/or, what I call the good/bad binary, is the root of virtually all white defensiveness on this topic, because it makes it virtually impossible to talk to the average white person about the inevitably absorption of a racist worldview (relaxing electronic music) that we get by being, literally swimming in racist water! I'm going to use a term here that I understand is charged, and that's white supremacy. I'm very comfortable with the term. Yes, it includes extremists we might think of as white nationalists, or neo-nazis. It also is a highly descriptive sociological term for the water we swim in, for the society we live in, a society that holds one people up as the human ideal, as the norm for humanity, and everyone else as a particular kind of human, and a deficient one. So, I live in a society that from the time I open my eyes, in myriad ways both implicit and explicit, has conveyed to me that I am inherently superior because I'm white! The research shows that all children by age three to four understand it's better to be white. All children. Me, I got that message, you got that message, everyone gets it, you can't miss it, and it's not isolated, it's not singular, it's not dependent on any one person, it's relentlessly circulating. And so internalized superiority is another great challenge or barrier for white people wanting to push through this or address this. We can talk about individualism and how that functions, and universalism and white solidarity, but I think the hardest one for us to face is internalized superiority. And yet, when you accept that you got that message, you couldn't help it, you can then get to work trying to challenge that message, rather than inadvertently protect it through your defensiveness and your refusal to engage with it. And so we simply can't get where we need to go from the current paradigm that says only mean, intentional individuals could ever perpetrate or participate in racism. When you change your paradigm, it's so transformative and liberating. So, what we need to do is think very differently (relaxing electronic music) about what racism is. I think one of the most hostile, toxic environments for people of color, day-in and day-out, is unexamined whiteness. The average white person cannot answer the question, "What does it mean to be white?" In my workshops, I will pose that question, and pair people up to reflect. I will give them one minute, and so often white people cannot fill 60 seconds on that question. Or they answer it by telling a cross-racial experience. So, I ask you what does it mean to be white, you start telling me about your friend who was black when you were a little boy. That's not answering the question! But it reveals how deeply we define race by the presence of people of color, and how difficult it is for us to see whiteness in racial terms. To see white space, white segregation as teeming with race, as racialized. And every moment that I spend in white space, I am being deeply reinforced in the white world view, and probably most profoundly, in a lack of a sense that I've lost anything of value. I want you to just take in for a moment the message that white segregation makes a space good. White people measure the value of our schools and our neighborhoods by the absence of people of color. I know exactly what a good school is, and what a good neighborhood is. And I know what's happening when it's comin' up, and I know what's happening when it's comin' down, and I know what's happening when it's sketchy. These are racially coded narratives, and they have shaped me deeply to position white segregation as good. Every moment that I function in that kind of water, I'm being reinforced in internalized superiority, quite frankly. If I can't answer the question, "What does it mean to be white?" I am not going to be able to hold what it means not to be white. I am not going to be able to validate or affirm an alternative experience, when I don't even know what mine is. I'm going to need to get race off the table, and that, let's just go to the human experience, right? Oh, why can't we all just be human beings here? Why do we have to talk about race? I'm going to invalidate your experience because I can't hold it! It's so challenging, it's like it's, I'm a fish and I'm in water, and I'm moving with the current, and you're trying to take me out of the water and it's unbearable. (relaxing electronic music) A really classic pattern when I'm giving a talk about whiteness is for white people to sit there and think about all of the ways they're an exception to everything I'm talking about. So, if I'm saying most white people x, but you're a y, "Aha, I was a y!" (chuckles) We often say with some smugness. Therefore, I am exempt from what you're talking about. Well, nothing could exempt you from the forces of racism in this country, and so that changes the question from if you've been shaped by those forces to how have you been shaped by those forces. Racism circulates 24/7, 365. So, you're talkin' about x, I was a y, how did y set me up in the overall structure? Because it did! It set me up differently than x set you up, right? Perhaps you're an Ashkenazi jew of European descent? You got set up in the racial hierarchy different than I did as a gentile catholic of Italian descent. And it's actually incredibly liberating and transformative to start from the premise that of course I've internalized all of this, and then I can stop defending, deflecting, denying, hoping you won't notice. (chuckles) Minimizing, explaining. And I can just let go of that and get to work (relaxing electronic music) trying to figure out well, what does this socialization look like in my life?
Acknowledging racial resentment (slow, pulsing music) - I have a pretty rare job. Day in and day out, for the last 20 years, I have talked to primarily white groups of people about what it means to be white. And when I began, I used to be really careful to avoid what people will call the black-white binary, and to make sure I was as inclusive as possible. But after 20 years, I feel really clear, there is something profoundly anti-black in this culture, and that there are poles. White is on one end, and black is on the other, and where you are positioned in relation to those poles will shape how you experience your life and your racialization. And the closer you are to white, the more benefits you get. That does not mean that groups that we call white adjacent, the groups of color that are closer to white, or more comfortable for white people, Asian heritage people, for example, overall are more comfortable for white people, it does not mean they don't experience racism. But that white adjacency kind of ameliorates it a little bit. The closer you are to black, the more intensified is the racism. And anti-blackness cuts across every group, including black people. The darker you are, the more intense is the marginalization. (slow, pulsing music) You don't have to scratch very hard on white people for anti-blackness to erupt. Nothing seems to turn the crank of white resentment like thinking black people got something over on us, something that they did not deserve, because the message is that they're inherently deserving. Any moment of black advancement, as Carol Anderson argues in her book, "White Rage", is met with a backlash of white rage and resentment. I think we're in a current moment of that after eight years of Obama. And I don't know that anything will bring it to the surface like bringing up affirmative action. It's just incredible to me, the resentment white people have around a program, basically a toothless program, that we've practically dismantled, that was intended to just at least say you have to include people of color in your searches. You are not required to hire people of color, but you have to include qualified people of color, and then you have to be able to say why you didn't hire them. All of the research in implicit bias is clear that it's not a pipeline issue. It is a racial bias issue. Black people are discriminated against in the workplace. I have been in 100% white workplaces and heard white people bitterly complaining that, because of affirmative action, white people can't get jobs anymore. It's delusional. You're looking around going, "Where are they?" But it's so tenacious, this resentment. (slow, pulsing music)
Thinking critically about our words and actions (slow, pulsing music) - The overarching question that frames our exploration in my workshops is what does it mean to be white in a society that proclaims it doesn't really mean anything, and yet is profoundly separate and unequal by race? And so that's the question that frames our exploration, and everything we do is meant to unpack what that means. And I use a metaphor. Picture a dock over the water, and the metaphor of a dock is meant to signify two key things. One, how surface or superficial so much of the evidence that white people give for their lack of racism, that's one aspect of the dock, but the dock also looks like it's just floating on the water. If you look at it from above, it looks like it's just floating on the water. But it's not. It's resting on an entire structure underneath, submerged under the water, that props that dock up. There are pillars embedded in the ocean floor that that dock is resting on. And so what I do in my workshops is try to get us off the top, with all that stuff we say, for example, I was taught to treat everyone the same, I grew up in a really diverse environment, I was in Teach For America, I have people of color in my family, I marched in the 60s, everyone struggles, but if you work hard, all that. All that, that has not changed our outcomes, by the way, but that white people use as their evidence that they are free of racism. And I take it and I say let's go underneath to the structure beneath that. What system of meaning are you drawing from that would lead you to make that claim in such a separate and unequal society? And maybe more importantly, how does that claim function in the conversation? There's so little in our society that compels those of us who are white to think critically about what it is we're saying. I mean, how often has a white person ever been asked, "So if that's the evidence you're giving me "for your lack of racism, "what's your definition of racism?" (slow, pulsing music) Let's take probably the number one of the set I call the colorblind narratives. The number one is "I was taught to treat everyone the same." Well, first of all, no you were not. Sorry, none of us were taught to treat everyone the same, it's not humanly possible, you cannot be taught to treat everyone the same. Human beings are not and cannot be objective. You can only make sense of perception through the meaning-making framework you were conditioned to make meaning through. And it's not an objective framework. And when I hear that from a white person, "I was taught to treat everyone the same," I think, well, this person doesn't understand basic socialization. This person doesn't understand culture. This person is not self-aware. And so, in my workshops, I give a heads-up to white people, and I say I need you to know that, when people of color hear us say that, they're generally not thinking, "All right, I'm talking to a woke white person right now." They're rolling their eyes. A wall is going up, it isn't convincing. These narratives do not do what we think they do, but we're so seldom accountable to people of color. We so seldom talk to them in any authentic way, much less receive a challenge on that narrative. And there's a black woman that I work with, her name is Erin Trent Johnson, and she says, "When I hear a white person say "I was taught to treat everyone the same, "I'm thinking this is a dangerous white person. "I'm not going to be able to be real with this person "because they're refusing to see my reality." (slow, pulsing music) For so many white people, we think that the answer to racism is friendliness. If you notice the evidence that most white people will give for why they're not racist, one of their top pieces of evidence is, "I know people of color. "I have friends of color." And so, if we look at that evidence as a way to understand the deeper structure of meaning, it's actually quite revealing. In order for a claim like that, "I know people of color, I have friends of color," in order for a claim like that to be good evidence of my lack of racism, a racist can't be able to do that. Otherwise it's not good evidence, right? This is what distinguishes me from a racist, I have people of color in my life, I live in New York City, I was in Teach For America, I went to a diverse school, these are all the claims that white people will make for their lack of racism. Well, that must mean a racist cannot live in New York City, could not know or speak to or be friendly to people of color, could not be in the Peace Corps, etc. And I'm hoping you can see right now how ridiculous that evidence is, because even an avowed racist can do all of those things. So, most white people believe that niceness is all it takes. And the status quo of our society is the reproduction of racial inequality. That's what it does, it's the default of all of our institutions, our norms, and our policies. It's what our society does, it's what it's always done. Our outcomes are not improving. By many measures, our outcomes of racial disparity are increasing. And all this system needs to keep on keeping on reproducing racial inequality with whites benefiting from it is for white people just to be really nice. Be really nice, go ahead. Smile at your coworkers of color, go to lunch on occasion, and do nothing else, and you will uphold that system. Because niceness is not courageous. Niceness is not anti-racism. Niceness will not get racism on the table, and it will not keep it on the table when everyone wants it off the table. I suppose it's better than not being nice, but it takes strategic, intentional anti-racist action. It is a lifelong process that I will never be finished from. (slow, pulsing music)
A thoughtful approach to educating ourselves about racism (contemplative music) - Sometimes in our enthusiasm, those of us who are white when we first learn about this, we want to rush over to people of color and have them teach us about racism. And we definitely do not want to go ahead and do that for a couple of reasons. First of all, there are plenty of people of color who have provided that information and are happy to give it and generally be paid to do so. They write books, they give talks, they have videos. But just to go up to anybody and ask that is a fairly invasive and threatening question. You're asking them to risk something very vulnerable when there's no mutuality and no trust built. You're asking them to kind of open their chest and share something that's very sensitive, and their experience most likely has been that if you don't like what you hear, you're going to invalidate it. It's not for people of color to carry that burden. It's for those of us who are white to be talking to each other and to also seek out the information that people of color have volunteered to give us. My voice cannot be the only voice. There's no way we can understand what we need to understand without the voices of people of color, and overwhelmingly those voices, but we have to be really thoughtful about how we get that information and how we engage. (contemplative music) I often use the analogy, imagine I'm in the workplace, I have a coworker, it's a man. You know, he's friendly to me and everything, but we've never gone to lunch or anything. We say good morning. And one day he just walks up to me and says, "Oh, I heard all about the Me Too movement. "Have you ever been sexually harassed at work? "Or have you ever been raped?" I'm hoping that you would know that that is an incredibly threatening and vulnerable question to be asked by a man that I don't know that well. When I don't understand a piece of racism, I just imagine that a man is saying to me, right, I just imagine men that I don't have much of a relationship with suddenly wanting me to tell them about all my experiences I've had around male violence. That's going to feel really weird to me, and I have no idea what the response is going to be. (contemplative music)
What you can do (tender music) - The number one question I get when I give a talk is okay, okay, now what do I do? And that question has bothered me for a long time. One to be really honest, I think it's disingenuous. I don't think white people really want to know what to do, unless it's the most simplistic thing, which is just keep being friendly. That question tends to function as a way to jump over the hard, personal work and just get to the answer or get to the solution. It's a little bit arrogant for folks who have never in their life thought deeply about this and after an hour, they want to get the answer and go fix it. At the same time, we can't wait till we have it all figured out. And so I will offer a challenging question back. And then I will answer the what do we do? So my reply to that question is, what about your life has allowed you to be a full functioning professional, educated adult and not know what to do about racism? How have you managed not to know? Why is that your question? People of color have been telling us this for a very long time. So that question is meant to be a challenge. It's also sincere, take out a piece of paper and start writing down why you don't know? Probably on the first of your list is going to be, I wasn't educated on this. I don't talk about race. I don't really have relationships across race, or not many. And when I do, we don't talk about race. I haven't cared enough. There's your map, and when you get, I haven't cared enough, if you can look at yourself in the mirror and say that, then carry on as you always have but do it with honesty. If you can't look at yourself in the mirror and say, "I don't really care." Great, use that motivation to get involved. So probably the number one thing we could do next is take the initiative and go look it up. There's so much good information out there. My website is filled with lists and resources. I will never forget talking to a multiracial group, and putting the question out to the people of color. What would it be like if when white people ran their inevitable and often unaware of racism, you could give us feedback on that and have us receive it with grace, reflect on the behavior and seek to change it? What would that be like for you? And I'll never forget this man of color raising his hand and saying, "It would be revolutionary." And I just want my white listeners to take that in, revolutionary, that's a pretty strong word for just receiving the feedback, reflecting, and seeking to change their behavior. That's how difficult we are, that that's a revolution. That's also how easy it is, but we can't get there from the current paradigm. So work really hard to change your paradigm. And not only will your inner personal relationships change, so will our institutions because we will see that they do. (tender music) My area of study is discourse analysis, and that is the critical examination of language, of narratives. That I grew up thinking that words are just objective neutral things that describe something. And now I understand that the words or the language we have to describe things shapes the way we see things. And as a white person studying racism, and how white people get conditioned into the racist system, whenever a narrative comes up really quickly, whenever a white narrative surfaces really easily, I think it's a red flag, I think it's worth looking at. And guilt and shame are really quick for white people, right? So, "Oh this just makes me feel so guilty." And so I would challenge anyone who says that to actually ask yourself on a daily basis, how often do you feel racial guilt as a white person? Honestly, 0? 2%? 10%? When race comes up and you get challenged, is that when you feel guilty? But walking through your daily life, how often do you feel racial guilt? The other day I was walking into Whole Foods and I had to step over a black man lying in the gutter and I felt a moment of racial guilt until I got into Whole Foods and then reindeer chairs were on sale, and I was really excited about that, and forgot all about it. There's something that we really need to look at in this jumping to this makes me feel too guilty. The antidote to guilt is action. I feel guilty about things I have not repaired or addressed. And I don't feel guilty anymore when I've repaired or addressed them. There's the kind of, "I don't want to feel so bad kind of guilt" and the, "How dare you try to make me feel guilty." If you don't see that there's anything to feel guilty about, then relax. I am clear that as a result of being born and raised in this society, I've a racist worldview. I have racist biases. I have been exposed to racist discourse my whole life. I have racist patterns. I have investments in the system just like it is because it's so comfortable for me and it serves me. I don't feel guilt about that, because I didn't choose it. One, and two because I'm doing the best I can to address it. (tender music) I try to be a little less white. I'm really clear that I am not going to be free of my conditioning, and racism is not going to end in my lifetime. The question I ask myself is, how do I do a little less harm? And how do I know, right? Am I in any given moment behaving in anti-racist ways? Not, I'm already done, I'm never racist, right? Not I'm a terrible person, I'm always racist. In any given moment, how am I doing? And how do I know? And that keeps me humble, and it keeps me accountable. So for me to do less harm is no small thing. Because it could literally be one more hour on a person of color's life who didn't have to take home my nonsense and agonize all night long whether it was worth it to talk to me, or they should just suck it up yet again, less they risk my lashing out in defensiveness. So for me to be less white is to be less oppressive racially, to be less arrogant, to be less certain, to be less defensive, to be less ignorant, quite frankly, to be more humble, to listen, to believe, to break with apathy, to break with white solidarity. It's not easy, it's a lifelong process but nothing is more rewarding. (tender music)
Keeping the work going within our organizations (light music) - When I begin a workshop, I start with a disclaimer. We're not going to solve race relations today. I may not even give you the answer in the way that you're looking for the answer. My goal is to raise your consciousness, to help you see something that you did not see before that you can't not see when you leave the room and that you're so unsettled by not having seen that before that you're motivated to keep going on, but if you don't keep going on after this, it's functionally fairly meaningless, right? So you have to put structures in place. If I'm in a workplace, those structures can range from monthly affinity groups, cross racial discussions, ongoing professional development, changing every interview question you have so that, when anyone applies to your organization, they leave thinking oh my goodness, if I'm going to work for that company, I'm going to be held accountable to grapple with these issues. Then, I also offer a question bank for the people listening to the answers because, many times, interview committees themselves don't even know how to assess what is a good answer, right? We talk about how to start leadership meetings. We introduce something called the racial equity toolkit, how to look at any decision you're making and apply some really simple questions to it. Who's at the table? Who's not at the table? How will this impact those who are not at the table? How do you know? How might you get that information? So it's a broad, kind of cross the organization, keeping that conversation on the table and challenging ourselves not to be thinking about them in isolation. In other words, lots of times, you'll have an all-white group come together and try to figure out how to appeal to more people of color without ever asking the people of color that they're looking to appeal to, right? Another common idea I like to challenge is this idea that it's all about just adding more people of color. Let's just recruit more people of color, but we don't change in any way the consciousness of the people that are already at the table and that have been at the table all along. So you can add as many people of color as you want if you haven't addressed whiteness. If you haven't addressed the water you're putting them into, they may survive in your workplace. They're likely not to thrive. (light music) (light music) (light music) (light music)