In Part 2 of our newest series, "Black and White on the Gray Issues," we discuss race relations between Black and White in the United States. In this episode, we speak with a woman who has a unique perspective on race relations in America.
00:00:09.000Welcome back for part two of the newest series, Black and White on the Gray Issues.
00:00:14.000Last time I took to the streets to see if relations between black and white Americans were actually as bad as legacy media would have you believe.
00:02:31.000I think because I can meet another African American person who's had a different upbringing than I do and I'm learning what their struggle looks like versus my struggle because it's very different.
00:02:42.000I think it's really truly about being open.
00:02:45.000Open to listening, open to learning and having the conversations.
00:02:50.000So, you're saying that in your day-to-day, your experiences have been good, probably because of your circle of friends.
00:02:55.000Compared to the media, it sounds like you're saying there is some division out there, but not so much in your circle of friends.
00:03:01.000Not within my circle of friends, because I choose them, right?
00:03:20.000So, there's complete division with racial divide, seeing our black boys in the private school arena getting in trouble where the white boys don't get in trouble for the same offense.
00:04:14.000I was raised in Canada where we had a zero-tolerance policy, so it didn't matter if you defended yourself or you started the fight, you were all suspended, which I think is morally reprehensible.
00:05:17.000Microaggressions meaning they say little things, they meaning non people of color will say little things not realizing that it's a microaggression, not realizing that it's hurtful, that it's racism because it's so micro.
00:05:35.000So, like, what would be an example of that?
00:05:42.000Things of that nature are... We didn't do that.
00:05:46.000It's just... Carrington, you want to give me some microaggressions?
00:05:54.000Well, you speak so well, even though I'm just using basic English.
00:05:58.000Because they assume I'm going to be speaking using AAVE or vernacular or verbonics, whatever you want to say it, put it as.
00:06:07.000But yeah, it's just things like that, little things.
00:06:09.000I remember in 6th grade, somebody said my hair looked like spaghetti hair because I had twist and I don't know what y'all... look it up, look up
00:06:18.000twist. I have like round twists in and they said my hair looks like burnt spaghetti.
00:06:22.000And that's a microaggression, right? You don't realize it, but it is hurtful in the long run and it makes you feel
00:07:31.000I think everyone thinks that racism is this thing that people go out and hurt people with, but a lot of the time it's just the way you think.
00:07:38.000You think white bodies and white people first, and don't necessarily think about people of color in your life, right?
00:07:43.000It's more so a mindset than blatant hurting people, you know what I mean?
00:07:49.000What would be, I guess, I'm sorry, are you comfortable talking with your mom?
00:07:53.000Okay, here, do you mind getting into this so I don't, because right now the camera's going to be going back and forth like a Wes Anderson film, so you see we're not trying to sandbag.
00:08:13.000Yeah, so, in other words, if you're talking about white people being racist, right, toward you, and that's a legitimate concern, of course, in some places you're going to have individual racists.
00:08:23.000It's a different conversation from systemic racism, right, or internalized racism, but we all acknowledge that.
00:08:28.000I will tell you this, the reason that a lot of white people don't have these kinds of conversations, like this, is because they're afraid of being accused of being... No, they're afraid of being accused of being racist.
00:08:39.000Well, see, that is an attack, to just say white fragility.
00:08:41.000What if someone, for example, we just interviewed every single black man that we interviewed today, every single one, said, yeah, the Black Lives Matter thing got out of hand, all lives matter, everyone's lives matter, and I don't think that was good for either community.
00:08:52.000Every single black man that we interviewed today.
00:08:54.000And if I were to say that same thing, right, because I don't think the problem is just race, and I think we do have a failed justice system, by the way.
00:09:00.000I think you'll miss it if you think it's just race.
00:09:03.000Well, we can't classify that as white fragility or microaggression.
00:09:07.000I disagree with every white man, every black man you spoke with today.
00:09:10.000But they're entitled to their opinion.
00:09:27.000Literally almost everybody in America does because of the way America works.
00:09:31.000Even black people have racist thoughts towards black people, right?
00:09:34.000So it's kind of hard to get out of there unless you're like not from America and even then it's pretty difficult.
00:09:40.000So literally everyone has some form of racist thoughts but white people it's just easier because they're not Black or they're not a person of color, they don't have the system around them necessarily to confront that, because they don't have to, right?
00:09:52.000So it takes more work on their part, right?
00:09:54.000And there's nothing really necessarily, well that's, it's not great, but there's nothing wrong with working more harder to get to a certain point, you know what I mean?
00:10:47.000I mean, everyone can be racist towards certain people, and when black people are called out for certain things in the black community that are not necessarily great for the black community, they get- sometimes they'll get defensive, especially if it's not somebody coming from the black community, because one, that could be seen as like, perceived hate because you never know who you're talking to, and also just because like, White fragility is a complicated subject because a lot of people feel it, you know what I mean?
00:11:08.000And it does hurt people, their emotions, so it's really hard to just kind of break that down.
00:11:14.000And I feel like that's really the issue, is people are not willing to break that down.
00:11:18.000Having white fragility is not a good thing, but most white people have it, so we have to work through it, you know what I mean?
00:11:23.000I think it's just because society puts this on other people.
00:11:26.000It's not necessarily white people's fault, it's society's fault for putting that on white people, and that's a lot of things with racism.
00:11:31.000Society puts things on black people, right?
00:11:34.000I think white people put it on themselves.
00:11:43.000Our society is based off of white supremacy from a historical standpoint, right?
00:11:47.000From the Tulsa Massacre to slavery to literally like all our presidents except for one being black from the long history period of time, right?
00:11:56.000Our society is based on the ideal of whiteness.
00:11:59.000We live from a nuclear household, one, two parent households, things like that.
00:12:03.000Black people can have two parent households, but that's not how our community has ever
00:12:07.000Even from Africa, we have been based on a village style of living and working together.
00:12:12.000It takes a whole village to raise a child, and Black people truly embody that.
00:12:15.000While white people tend to have more of a nuclear family, one parent, I mean two parents
00:12:19.000and a few children, and they work together, right?
00:12:21.000There's nothing certainly wrong with a nuclear family, but it does, it is like an embodiment of the American dream and whiteness, right?
00:12:27.000So because society's built on all this whiteness and all of these standpoints that are made for white people, they're just more used to that, right?
00:12:35.000And they're not really used to thinking outside the box and thinking about people of color, and that's what I'm talking about.
00:12:40.000And when they're confronted at the fact that they don't think about people of color, you get white fragility because they're scared, and they didn't want to realize that they Let me rephrase this.
00:12:49.000They didn't realize that they weren't thinking about people of color or they were in the back of their mind and they
00:13:26.000But you can't necessarily be racist towards white people because racism comes from discrimination plus a place in society where you get to have power, right?
00:13:42.000Right, so if you look at like more like racial context, if you look at like Bell, oh my god I forgot her name, Bell Hooks, and so many different racial scholars, that's the definition that is greatly read on in the academic space.
00:13:53.000So racism is discrimination plus power, essentially.
00:13:57.000So white people have more power than most people of color, all people of color in the United States, while some people of color don't have as much power.
00:14:03.000So punching up is not the same as punching down.
00:14:05.000Anybody can discriminate against anybody, that's just a fact.
00:14:08.000But racism is based on a system of power.
00:14:13.000Now, I don't know if this would be... Would you be open to the idea that some of those things...
00:14:20.000I don't know if you know this, but in the United States, there was a far lower divorce rate for a very long period of time, at the same time that black households had higher literacy rates.
00:15:35.000But do you think that the reason you choose to be married and have a nuclear household, did you make that decision because it was what you thought was best?
00:15:42.000Or do you think that's because of white supremacy, white fragility?
00:15:46.000Well, there's things that are implicit.
00:15:48.000And also, like, for my mom, it's just because she loves my dad.
00:15:51.000Our household's not that nuclear because we have so many people that support us outside of our house.
00:18:32.000And this was the first country to fight the bloodiest revolution in history in order to free the slaves, because they recognized that it was ungodly, based on the Judeo-Christian principles of the Sunday Emancipation Proclamation, We were not uniquely responsible for starting slavery, we were uniquely responsible for ending it in the modern world.
00:18:44.000And there are more slaves today than ever in recorded history.
00:18:51.00042 million, and someone says, so since there are more slaves on earth today, largely in the Middle East, in Africa, and in Asia, Also, you can't really say white people ended racism because black people fought to end racism.
00:19:00.000So white people are the reason we still exist in the first place.
00:19:03.000We would still be slaves if it was for you, baby.
00:20:18.000But what I am saying is that, because Quakers existed, you can't blame all, you know?
00:20:21.000I don't want to blame all, but I do think that because we fought... You can't say that all white people, there's Quakers and people that exist like that.
00:20:28.000I'm saying a lot of white people in the past did not want a change in slavery.
00:21:23.000The first person to say white fragility is something that can't be disproven That is the conversation where it cannot be productive because it starts from a racist premise.
00:21:32.000If I were to come in and say, hey, you know what, not enough black people and white people are talking about these issues, and that's because black people are incredibly fragile, that probably wouldn't be a productive conversation, right?
00:22:02.000You can say that and then we can then educate you on why.
00:22:06.000When I talk to you about right fragility, every time you come up with, like, this is racist, this is racist, this is racist, almost every single time.
00:22:13.000And I disagree with you on that because racism is power plus oppression, right?
00:22:18.000I mean power plus discrimination, right?
00:22:20.000And you can't have right fragility because there's no White people can't be... Refugility is not racist because it has no power behind it, right?
00:22:31.000Or it has... I mean, there has power behind it towards black people.
00:22:33.000That's why it is... Like, white people having refugility is racist.
00:23:54.000Any of those problems that you identify... Because there's one thing we've talked about today.
00:23:57.000Any of those problems that you just identified, for example, you talk about the prison-industrial complex, you talk about schools, you talk about government.
00:24:02.000Are any of those problems not racially based?
00:24:35.000I'm really waiting for them to go up in value.
00:24:37.000Do you realize that Ty the Beanie Baby Company right now owns the license for all the Disney princesses but he refuses to make one Disney princess and that happens to be Tiana.
00:26:19.000I think that the interrupting and the aggression and the implication that someone needs to back up when I have not taken any closer steps towards you.
00:26:24.000I don't care, but I feel uncomfortable.
00:29:50.000And that happens a lot often to people that have these conversations.
00:29:54.000When people get aggressive about something that hurts them, a lot of people will tell them they're being aggressive instead of looking deeper.
00:30:21.000The nuclear family does not make really anybody's lives better.
00:30:23.000It's the single biggest indicator that you have success, of ending up in prison, of graduating high school, of being illiterate, or having successful marriage or marriage.
00:30:29.000Having two parents, sure, that's useful.
00:30:30.000Having a mom and dad and them involved in your life.
00:31:05.000Statistically, there are more children in the black community.
00:31:09.000The single household is not even close and the family is not stepping in.
00:31:13.000And if you look at the tables, if you look at the statistics regarding literacy, regarding graduating high school, regarding crime, regarding how much money... I feel like that's more of a class issue.
00:31:34.000I'm telling you exactly what I think it is.
00:31:35.000I think it's very important for children to have parents in their lives.
00:31:38.000In psychology, because I plan on being a psychology major and I study this a lot, a lot of time for medical issues and things like that, people will often diagnose black children with behavioral issues instead of looking at other criteria.
00:34:18.000Okay, so... We don't want you to use anything with our face, our name, on it whatsoever, on anything having to do with you or your company.
00:34:36.000Now, if we want to have a conversation about, okay, fine, where you don't want to, but you did consent to this interview, it started off as friendly as all the others today, and now the law says, but that doesn't matter, the law says it doesn't matter.
00:35:18.000And you don't agree with it, that's fine.
00:35:19.000And you'll say it's privilege, and you'll say that obesity is because of white people, and you'll say that the murder is because of white mass murderers, but you haven't listened.
00:36:24.000But I would ask the question of yourselves, just like you asked me to check privilege, I would ask of yourselves Why is this the only one where that's the case?
00:37:07.000And I don't think because someone's white, they're going to do one thing.
00:37:10.000I think it's based on how they all think.
00:37:12.000I think it's everything we do as humans, it's based on how we think, you know?
00:37:15.000Can we find some common ground on this?
00:37:17.000If I'm going to take what you're just saying, and I believe that it's 100% genuine, can you listen to what I'm about to say, and just take it into consideration?
00:37:25.000So if you just said that you've never once, and you're rolling your eyes.
00:37:27.000One thing that I'm allowed to say, because everything I say, you say, well, no, that's, no, believe what I'm, I'm taking you as genuine at your word.
00:38:09.000And that's what we started off with, right?
00:38:10.000So, as we go with TV and media, if they're conditioned to think that, then...
00:38:14.000So let me ask you this, because I think this is where we're making headway.
00:38:17.000What you have expressed today, would that be more in line with everything that you see in television and media than what I am communicating?
00:38:24.000The idea of white fragility, white privilege, that it needs to be checked, that we're systemically racist?
00:38:27.000That's what you'll see on CNN and ABC and NBC and CBS, right?
00:38:35.000I think you can say the big word out loud and say white fragility is this XYZ and you can educate people, but it doesn't undo just only being exposed to certain people, right?
00:38:45.000So a lot of people, a lot of white people especially, live in white spaces.
00:38:48.000They're not really exposed to a lot of people of color, so that's how their brain thinks.
00:38:51.000It's not necessarily, like, it's not great, right?
00:38:54.000But it's not their fault, and I understand that.
00:38:56.000Just because something is not their fault doesn't mean it's not bad.
00:38:58.000Somebody could be, like, born with psychopathy, right?
00:39:03.000That's a trait you're born with most of the time, sometimes slightly raised, right?
00:39:47.000And I feel like they have to do the work now to get that out of their minds.
00:39:51.000So I think that's a fair state, and I think getting that out of your minds, people don't want to change, and that's where the right fragility comes from.
00:39:57.000It's not really because they're fragile, it's because they don't want to change the way they think, and they don't want to go against the grain, because they don't want to admit to themselves that they've been socialized in this way.
00:40:07.000And it's not their fault, but they think it's their fault, because it's the way they think.
00:40:09.000Yeah, I think that that is the most unproductive way of thinking of these issues that you can imagine, because there's no way to absorb new information There's no way to use a critical thinking lens, because no matter what I say, you will say, maybe it's not white people's fault, but it's because they're white.
00:40:25.000And if you're going to educate people... I don't think it's because they're white.
00:40:28.000I think this happens with Asian people as well, you know?
00:40:31.000I think, yeah, for example, affirmative action right there, being screwed by...
00:40:37.000I was talking about... Can you let me continue my sentence?
00:40:40.000I was talking... I wasn't finished with my answer.
00:40:42.000I was already talking before you did your answer.
00:40:45.000But what I was saying with Asian people, I was talking about sometimes Asian people have this idea of black folks because they're only... the black folks that are only shown a lot of the times are these bad stereotypes, especially overseas, right?
00:40:58.000And I feel like it's still bad, but it's not their fault.
00:41:00.000So they have to work through that, right?
00:41:02.000What if it's because they've been the victim of black violent crime at a disproportionate rate?
00:43:28.000I know you think it's not going to work, but if he chooses to air this without our consent, hopefully he airs this part because I want you to understand.
00:43:38.000Us being where we are and my kids in great schools and going off to college and successful children and a two-parent household and all of that.
00:43:48.000When we go into the inner city and we do work.
00:43:51.000And we volunteer and I'm listening to the other kids.
00:43:57.000One boy told me, I didn't know, and this is education, I didn't know that college was an option.
00:44:04.000I didn't know that smoking weed is not what people don't, that's what we do every day because that's what he sees.
00:44:12.000That mom, that was her parent, mother and father before.
00:44:16.000That parent was that mother and father before.
00:44:18.000So because they're in this level of the same thing, In a school that's a Title I school that's not giving them the education that the other schools are giving them, this becomes a cycle that they don't even know how to get out of.
00:44:44.000So seeing that and understanding that, even as an affluent black woman, seeing that our inner city kids don't know how to get out, don't have the education to get out, and that is so powerful.
00:46:19.000Now, I would just make two points, and allow you to just, for a moment, consider that this isn't coming from white privilege, but that it's a space in which I work, and maybe I am well-read enough to propose a solution that I think we could all at least take a step toward.
00:48:33.000My only disagreement there would be, in other words, I don't think that schools in South Dallas with black teachers, with black principals, I don't think that they're racist.
00:48:39.000I think that there's no accountability in the public school system.
00:48:46.000I'm just gonna say, I think that the reason they're saying that it's racist, because it's obviously not, right?
00:48:53.000I think it's because they probably have some other, like, financial reasoning behind it that's prohibiting you, and I think that's the biggest issue in America, or not the biggest, I think one of the biggest issues in America today is that our People up high are not doing what they need to do to help the people down below.
00:49:07.000I would certainly agree that we have a problem with government not representing their constituency and not acting in the best interest of the people.
00:49:39.000Right, but the idea behind school choices.
00:49:41.000So they would say school vouchers, and this is why I say this, because I think it's one of those things where I've never heard an argument against it that was valid, is sure, maybe, and I get this, and we go back to the idea of a family, right?
00:49:50.000Let's say it's a black boy who doesn't have a father who will drive him to another school, right?
00:49:54.000He's going to be more disadvantaged than someone who does have two parents, right?
00:49:58.000He is distinctly more disadvantaged right now by being a byproduct of what you said, and I agree with, his immediate environment.
00:50:05.000In other words, right now, where black children are disproportionately negatively affected is they have no choice, and so the school is a byproduct of the environment, and it's not worked.
00:50:15.000And so having the option to go anywhere else, and I say this because I'm from Canada, that's where I was raised.
00:50:22.000I was not raised in a wealthy household.
00:50:24.000I was raised in a three-bedroom apartment with four people, about 900 square feet.
00:50:27.000But I did get a much better education.
00:50:29.000The reason, I didn't know until I moved to the States, as long as I was willing to get on a bus, I could go to a choice of five different schools.
00:50:36.000And I came to the States, and I said, wait a second, you have to go to that school just because it's your zip code?
00:50:42.000People said, yeah, it's archaic, it's asinine, and if there's no other common ground, I think that's something that hopefully everyone can at least move toward.
00:50:50.000I think that's why, like, private school gives you such a bigger advantage, is because you get to choose where you want to go.
00:50:56.000And teachers get fired if they're bad.
00:51:02.000It depends on the private school, though, because there are some private schools who will not fire teachers who are, like, horrible people.
00:51:15.000Anywhere we go, I think the school system, and we've kind of shifted gears here in this conversation, but no matter what, the school system is just...
00:51:26.000I think that black and white and brown and Asian people should all be on this is one area we could all be on the same page as far as reform for public education.
00:51:35.000I wanted to leave it on a pause because I genuinely do want to hear and listen to you guys and I understand a lot of your points disagree with some but I'm glad that we found something that we can genuinely agree on because that has a real immaterial quantifiable effect on people's lives.
00:52:35.000Still, you can clearly see the difference between this conversation and all of the others that have taken place in this series, and I'd point out Largely, the difference seems to be that people who haven't had to think critically about their positions or defend them.
00:52:50.000If anything, what was said here could be modeled after every single legacy media and white suburbanite talking point.
00:52:56.000That being said, I respect anyone willing to take the time to speak and for that, I thank you.
00:53:00.000If you'd like to see more of Black and White and the Gray Issues, drop a like, comment, tell me what topics you would like to see most