There are so many people
trapped in their minds
academically.
And so, many elitists that they
never ever
Come down to see
the real issues.
They have these theories,
these concepts,
they write papers about them,
they write editorials about them
But they never get their hands
dirty.
And I really wish that a lot
of people who think
certain thoughts,
would first see
if those theories, those things
that they're saying
are really true or not.
And I'm, there they're going
to discover that for us,
Liberalism has not been
our best friend.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
It is hard to dismantle
a system when for many of us,
this system was set up
to maintain the status
quo of power and privilege.
And the origins of capitalism
cannot be separated from
the origins of racism.
Are that weak of a people.
White fragility is essentially
the defensive reaction
or response that White people
have in learning
about their relationship,
with the structure of racism.
We are constantly coming up
with these new ideas,
these new concepts that only
drive us further apart.
WOMAN: Babies are taught to be
racist or anti-racist.
There's no neutrality.
You're always going to be
racist actually.
Black people are not
a weak race.
I want to draw your attention
to the fact that I'm White.
To be White is to see oneself
outside of race.
And it's taken me
many, many years to be
able to draw people's attention
to my race
and see any significance in it.
We are not a race that always
requires the benevolence
of other people in order for us
to succeed.
Down one path is the path
of racism, the path of bigotry,
and discrimination of inequity
and death.
MAN: This is what you call
bad faith.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
What many Americans fighting
today's culture wars,
from systemic racism,
anti-racism, to critical race
theory, fail to realize
is that they're fighting
an old enemy well known
to Blacks, bad faith.
Unfortunately,
in our community at times
we're always blaming the White
person or the system
or systemic racism or the way
that our community is.
MAN: Racism in America
has always made
the classic struggle
between good faith
and bad faith much harder
for Blacks.
How do you keep good faith
in America when you constantly
are told that you are oppressed?
The victim of White supremacy.
COREY BROOKS: When you deal
with this area of the South
side, the first thought is, OK,
we need the government to come
in and just do this and do that
and do this and do that.
But it's very damaging,
because what it does
is it makes the government take
the place of a person's
mentality.
MAN: Bad faith is faithlessness,
a disbelief in our power to make
a life, a disbelief in America
and her principles
so that we end up giving up even
before started.
There's nothing
wrong with the United States
of America as an idea.
It is the best idea and the best
system that exists
in this world.
And if you do want to tear
this idea down, if you do
want to tear the system down,
then you must replace it
with something that's better.
MAN: Where does this bad faith
come from?
MALCOLM X: That white person
that you see calling himself
a liberal is the most dangerous
thing
in the entire Western
hemisphere.
He's the most deceitful.
He's like a fox.
COREY BROOKS: It's put us
in a weaker position to make us
believe and think that we cannot
succeed.
MAN: This liberalism that Pastor
Brooks refer to is post 60s
liberalism.
MAN: The white liberal differs
from the White conservative
only in one way.
Both want power,
but the white liberal is the one
who has perfected the art
of posing as the Negros friend
and benefactor.
And by winning the friendship
and support of the Negro,
the white liberal is able to use
the Negro as a pawn or a weapon
in this political football game.
MAN: Unlike classic liberalism
and its focus
on individual development,
post 60s liberalism derives
its power from America's
original sin, which is not
slavery, but simply
the use of race
as a means to power.
From the beginning,
post 60s liberalism failed
to recognize
the gradual upward progress.
Many Blacks made
in the first half
of the 20th century.
Many bought homes
for their largely intact
families.
These Blacks possess good faith
even as segregation reigned
everywhere.
COREY BROOKS: From Alabama,
Arkansas, Tennessee,
Mississippi, Kentucky,
these families came to Chicago
and they moved to Bronzeville,
they moved to the Woodlawn area,
and they created businesses,
there were doctors,
there were lawyers,
there were businesses,
there was jazz clubs.
It was a very thriving
community.
MAN: Instead of building
upon this progress,
post 60s liberalism ushered
in an era of dependency.
COREY BROOKS: Now you're going
to see social programs in place,
you're going to see businesses
not existing.
And if they do exist, they're
not owned by individuals
from our community.
They're own from people outside
of our community.
You're going to see schools that
are dilapidated,
schools that are inefficient
and not working.
You're going to see a community
that is not thriving.
You're going to see a community
that is just trying to survive.
MAN: Since the use of race
as a means to power cannot lead
to adequate and honest
development, it was largely
Whites seeking redemption from
historical racism that benefited
most from this power.
This failure
of Black development contributed
to the creation
of a permanent Black underclass.
It was this failure that
generated bad faith.
Red lining, blockbusting,
and other segregation practices
drew lines around many
of these neighborhoods.
But it was the post 60s
liberalism and it's bad faith
that built the walls
around those who lived there.
WOMAN: Just because I do not
want critical race theory taught
to my children in school
does not mean that I am
a racist.
MAN: You're teaching children
to hate others because
of their skin color.
MAN: Instead of admitting
its failure in places
like the South side,
post 60s liberalism marched
further left and upward
into America's middle
and upper classes.
COREY BROOKS: CRT is another one
of those new things that
is coming up to the surface.
Although it's been here
for some time,
now is being used,
is being politicized,
is being used as something
to drive even a deeper wedge
into our society.
MAN: Critical race theory
is teaching that White people
are bad.
That would teach my daughter
that her mother--
WOMAN: All of these lessons
have the intent to make
our children feel disgust
towards our nation.
MAN: Most of these Americans
had turned a blind eye
to the devastating impact
of bad faith
on poor Black communities.
And now the rot that neglect
created has come back to bite
them.
WOMAN: We'll look back and be
responsible for the dismantling
of the greatest country
in the world
by reverting to teaching hate
and that race is
a determining factor on where
your destiny lies.
MAN: The White man you heard
on the South side became White
supremacy.
The system or the man
became systemic racism,
White people became White
privilege or White fragility,
acting White became mirrored
as White supremacy,
racism is everywhere became
critical race theory.
All of these mantras
lead to one product, bad faith.
WOMAN: Black and White children,
Hispanic children, you know why
they get along, because they
don't look
at each other's color,
so you're the racist.
Not them, not us, you're judging
and dividing.
You're causing segregation.
Everything that we fought for,
everything that I fought
for for years.
MAN: Bad faith knows and I
believe that we are making
progress as a people
and as a nation.
MAN: I will not let any person
tell me that this country,
that this nation that we live in
needs to be tore down,
because then you're telling me
that my grandparents marching,
my great grandparents doing
whatever they could do so they
could vote
and making
sure that certain laws
and getting hosed down,
get bitten by dogs,
you're telling me that they
didn't do anything,
and there was no progress that
has been made.
And I don't get upset easily,
but that would upset me.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MAN: Back on the South
side where bad faith stripped
the boot straps for many boots,
Pastor Brooks and Pastor Grooms
work every day
to spread good faith,
the source of power that opens
possibility itself.
We need that good faith
that type of faith that says,
listen, we may have differences,
we may come
from different places,
but at the end of the day,
we can make life better
for everybody.
MAN: These pastors work
through their church
and the non-profit community
center, Project HOOD,
to reduce violence in one
of America's toughest
neighborhoods.
The pastors offer classes
ranging from construction
to electrical engineering.
WOMAN: This is
the specifications that was
installed for this house,
and how many square foot?
1,350.
Now, you take your square foot,
which is what?
1,700 and you multiply 3 VA,
your numbers are going to be
different.
MAN: That's how you win.
We had women that signed up
for an electrician class,
and they worked hard.
They had challenging moments,
and I guarantee you
every last one of them thought
the same thing that I thought
my first day of basic training
what in the world
am I doing here.
MAN: The pastors know
that the stronger the individual
makes oneself,
the more of an asset
that individual is to friends,
family, and society at large.
MAN: And because they stuck
with it, they are licensed
electricians and they are now
able to do and become
electrician.
[APPLAUSE]
MAN: Ladies, I would like
to congratulate you all.
This is just the beginning
of a great year.
This year there are many more
challenges in the future.
MAN: The task before these two
admirable pastors is
a daunting one.
Bad faith has deeply scarred
the South side of Chicago.
None of the billions of dollars
flowing through the diversity
industry will ever reach them.
These two pastors work on.
MAN: --quote I will leave you
guys with is that poverty ran
in my family
until it ran into me.
So you guys have to [INAUDIBLE].
[NOISE FROM THE CROWD]
MAN: Good faith
is the only antidote to what
ails the South side and America
at large.
It is our only hope.
[LAUGHTER]
COREY BROOKS: That mindset
and mentality of Martin Luther
King when he said that he dreams
of a time
and looks toward a place
where all of God's children
can be all of God's children,
where people are not judged
by the color of their skin
but by the content
of their character.
And I think when you take
that thought that we need
a place where people are judged
not by the content--
not by their color
but by the content
of their character,
that
is a meaningful deep statement
in it.
I try to live my life like that.
I don't want to judge people
by their color, I want to judge
people by the content
of their character.
And I hope and pray that that
dream that Martin Luther King
had that it would be lived out
in all of society,
that eventually, we can get
to the place
where character and the content
of character matters
more than color ever could.
[MUSIC PLAYING]