Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
So I'm in a job interview,
and the interviewer asks me,
"Talk about a time you've been a victim of racism or discrimination."
I smirked because I knew to expect this question,
and smugly, I said, "I've never been a victim of racism or discrimination."
(Laughter)
Three months prior, I was sitting at a table with a group of colleagues,
and we were talking about privilege and prejudice,
and I said, "You know, I don't understand this privilege and prejudice thing.
People are successful because of the hard work that they put in.
I'm successful because of the hard work I've put in.
And if anyone isn't successful,
that's because they just haven't worked hard enough."
I'm sure we've heard these things before.
I grew up in Pikesville, a suburb of Baltimore.
It's an upper-middle-class area, Jewish.
My parents were young when we moved to this neighborhood,
and I remember there being a real sense of pride when we moved to the county.
"Wow, we live near white people now! We made it!"
(Laughter)
And even though I lived in an affluent zip code,
the mansions that I saw you couldn't find exactly on my street.
I went to school with many of the people who lived in those big houses.
I was in advanced classes in school, and so most of my classmates were white,
and I made real strong, awesome relationships with many of them.
They would say things like, "Jabari, tell us about how black people do this."
And, "Why can't they swim?"
(Laughter)
And all of these things.
So I would joke and laugh,
and try and, you know, give them some knowledge.
I began changing the way I dressed.
I was wearing American Eagle and Abercrombie - when I could fit it -
(Laughter)
and listening to pop and rock,
and for the most part, my family just made fun of me.
But one thing that my parents said -
that was pretty important, that I learned that it was -
they said, "Jabari, sweetheart, you're black."
(Laughter)
"And that means something.
You can have white friends, you can love them and you can trust them,
but at the end of the day, you're black, and that means something; racism is real."
Well, at that time, I thought these were just black people talking about racism!
Again!
Little did I know that it was much more than that.
So I ended up getting a job at a nonprofit.
I was doing low-income LGBT work in Baltimore city.
And I had this brilliant black queer woman as supervisor.
I was networking with leaders all over the city,
and I was really learning how systems interacted in people's lives:
housing, juvenile justice, education, transportation, healthcare.
I was also in school at the time.
I was a Gender and Women Studies major at UNBC,
and this program really helped me deeply study concepts
that I didn't really spend much time with in high school.
I learned about redlining.
I learned about state-sanctioned violence,
and how gender violence is often underscored by racial violence.
At the same time, this was 2015.
I had lived through the news of Eric Garner and Tamir Rice.
My lens was changing.
I was no longer a black boy going to school in Pikesville, Maryland.
I was becoming a black man, living and working in Baltimore city.
So for one of my job assignments,
I put together a training conference for colleagues all over the country.
I was the coordinator.
And when they arrived here in Baltimore, I got off the bus and I said,
"Hey, I'm Jabari! I'm the coordinator!"
And they looked at me and became confused
and visibly uncomfortable.
I remember it was raining that day,
and so I rented a van so that folks didn't have to walk around the training site
in the rain.
I said, "Come on in the van!" They said, "We'd rather walk."
The folks who were in the van with me referred to me as their chauffeur.
They told me I should hold doors for them.
At meals, they sat with me and they said,
"You know what? I'm going to sit with you so you don't think that we're being weird
or, God forbid, racist."
They were saying stereotypical things, comparisons, statements,
and at the end, I felt so emotionally drained.
I referred to my brilliant supervisor,
who happened to be a participant of the training,
and I said,
"Was that racism?"
And she said, "Yes, baby.
It is."
(Laughter)
And immediately, years of suppressed memories came back.
I remember laughing it off with my friends when they used the N-word.
I remember black peers making fun of me
because of the way I dressed and the way that I talked.
And most importantly,
I remember that message that my parents told me when I was young:
"You're black. Racism is real."
And I guess I never wanted to believe that we could really live in a world
where we treat each other this way.
So afterwards, I was studying
and learning of what I can do about this thing called racism.
I learned about internalized racism.
Internalized racism happens when black folks, people of color,
start to behave or act in manners that uphold whiteness and white supremacy.
Donna Bivens,
who is a consultant and a writer for the Women's Theological Center,
says that internalized racism is a system all in itself;
it has its own life,
and therefore, its own system of rewards and consequences;
and that black folks are unconsciously rewarded
when we participate in internalized racism.
And I read that and I said, "You know what? I feel that."
We are rewarded when we embrace white-standard English
and abandon African American vernacular English.
We are rewarded when we start to adopt white life styles
and styles of music which are almost always characterized as more luxurious.
These are things that I realized that were going on in my own life for ever.
I grieved for a really long time after that training.
Not only did I realized that racism exists,
but I was embarrassed!
I thought, "How could I learn it this way?
How could I abandon the narrative that my ancestors set forth?
How could I reject all of the wonderful evidence there was
that racism was real?"
But I've realized that there was no degree, no job, no pair of shoes,
no preference for medium-rare steaks
that's going to protect you from the violence of racism.
And I felt embarrassed that I learned in this way.
Even as I was preparing this speech, I wondered,
"How is this going to be received?
'Black kid grows up in rich, white neighborhood,
white people were mean to him, and that's how racism is,
that's how he learned it.'"
But it wasn't how Eric Garner or Tamir Rice or Rekia Boyd
or Korryn Gaines or Maya Hall or any of these people learned it.
So there was some privilege in how I grew up,
and I had to learn about that,
but that doesn't absolve me from being shot down in the streets,
because at the end of the day, I am black.
So today, I am a nonprofit leader in Baltimore.
I'm executive director of an organization
where I get to give back to LGBTQ youth every day,
particularly LGBTQ youth of color.
I'm also president of Baltimore's LGBT Community Center.
Being a black gay man, you really start to see how whiteness operates
even in spaces of inclusion and diversity.
I saw the millions of dollars and droves of support for marriage equality
but today hear the deafening silence
when we talk about the deaths and murders of trans women of color.
So this gay rights movement,
I wonder, what would the gay rights movement look like today
if being gay as something that only someone black could be?
So I've learned a couple of lessons.
First,
racism is real!
Internalized racism is real.
I'm a victim of it, and I'm learning to be a survivor of it.
Today, it's probably the most important lesson that I've ever learned.
I've learned to love myself in ways that I never thought that I could.
Because that's what internalized racism does,
it seeks to decimate your own culture.
But today, I walk proudly down the street as a black man,
as a gay man.
Two, I learned that black folks or people of color
can be operants of white supremacy if they're not checked,
but to no fault of their own.
Whiteness is pervasive, it's powerful,
and sometimes we don't even know how it shows up in our world.
But most importantly, three,
I've realized that being black in America
is one of the most unique, amazing and beautiful revolutionary things
that I could ever do.
And black love and black joy is something to be cherished and honored,
and I'm so proud that I've learned that lesson, and so grateful.
Thank you for listening to me.
(Applause) (Cheering)