many families talking about being black and brown in
America today and in the past can be really hard and
it's our Newsy Tonight Focus joining us tonight is a
familiar face to all of our viewers movies like The
Best Man, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Brown Sugar
and my personal favorite onstag Rent. I mean rent and
the 90s changed my life. Also now the author of why a
conversation about race Taye Diggs. Mr Diggs. Thanks
for being here. Thank you for having me. This book is
very much inspired by this moment real life. Do these
draw in real conversations you've had um similar,
similar conversations Um yeah, this, I was inspired to
write this because of Uh, some of the talks to me and
my 12 year old son have had and um during this
conversation, I was struck with the idea that sometimes
in life and this is one of the reasons why I went ahead
and wrote the book. Um, as a parent, sometimes the
answers to some of the questions that were asked aren'
tied up and uh, and a tiny little colorful book. Um
sometimes it's it's not about right or wrong or um
black or white or up or down. Sometimes uh, the
answering these questions can be uncomfortable and
there isn't necessarily an answer or not answer that
that that is going to make, you know, either party
happy and I wanted to to to experiment with that in
this book. You know what I mean I'm sure Children all
across the globe we're looking at what was happening
here in America during Black lives matter and, and
wondering what the deal was. An I wanted to, to do my
best to give an accurate portrayal of at least my
perspective as as high as the way that it applies to my
son as well. Well, I wonder how you even got to that
because the kids in your book, they get these really
succinct answers, You know, these really wonderful
grandparents and parents to questions that entire text
books have been written about, you know, what's your
process for distilling that because they are such
complex topics. I mean, I don't want to get to woo woo
here, but I really feel like sometimes, you know, the
words just kind of come to me and, and I'm just writing
them down, you know, whether, you know, people can
choose to believe what they want, but that's how I know
something is kind of supposed to come through me when,
when I don't have much thought and, and it just comes
out and, and, and this is one of those, one of those
situations. Um, I owe a lot to kind of the writing
style that I used to my mother in the way that she read
to me and there was always like, she always read mo
of me that had a certain rhythm to them. And uh, and I
love the fact that, you know, uh, some of the little
sentences, they kind of come back. Um, you know, almost
like the chorus of the song. So you know, all of that
kind of lends itself to, to, to my writing and more
specifically to the, to this book in this book, you
focus on injustices. The preface to it calls them
straightforward and challenging conversations. Why did
you choose that approach Honest I just was trying to
be as uh, as honest as as I could because I was just
telling someone else just as a person, I I lean more
towards, you know, um, seeing the bright side, seeing
the positive side, trying to be positive. Um, but I
think just in, in the world we've come to a point where
that's not necessarily working. And in order for for
us, I think this is just my opinion to really get to
the bottom of some of these issues. It's gonna have t
get a little uncomfortable. And I think we've been
avoiding that for a long time. And, and I think, you
know, for me, I wanted to include my kid, you know, in
that discussion where this is the truth. And uh, you
know, instead of saying, you know what, what's
happening, whether, whether it be right or wrong,
let's, let's try to figure out why. And uh, and, and
that it seemed to be pretty accurate to me, this is
kind of the height of the book. And I wanted to read
just a piece of it and, and really understand here
child asks the family. Finally, all the elders are
gathered and they asked why are those buildings burning
And the family answers, well, little one when we get
tired of shouting and not being heard when we have
cried so many tears from always getting hurt when we
scream out for help and continue to get ignored when we
march and March and March, but are not really moving.
When all this happens, sometimes buildings must burn.
The buildings burn for us. The anger burning those
buildings is us. The word must sticks out. I was
intentional. What did you mean by buildings must burn I
just feel like that's what's what's happening in, in in
the world, you know, um and you know, it's, it's, it's,
it can be as you can imagine it can get tiring becau
that's, that's how the world works. You know, I mean
you take a damn and you fill it with water and you
know, after a while you don't take care of that dam,
the water is going to burst. You know, like with
dealing with my son. If I, if I'm busy with work and he
keeps asking me to play with him, I'm going to see him,
um deal with, deal with me in a different way. And I
feel like that's what's happening with, with, with,
with, with the world with, with the pandemic with black
last matter with, you know, you know, the the ozone
that we need to kind of deal with these situations f
um we're going to, we're going to to be uh faced with
deeper problems on a deeper level. And I think that's
that's what's going on right now. It sounds like to me
that you were trying to get us to really talk about
some things that are really hard as they are and and
really hard to talk about by the end, we see the family
praying for peace is and what do we do and and they
pray and and even visually it gets lighter and
brighter. I personally pray eve day. I love that, you
know, prayers in there. But I also wonder any thoughts
on what what we can do ourselves and our communitie
think talking like talking about these, these issues
seriously without the idea of fixing them in the
moment. You know, without the idea of, you know, in
this conversation, what can I say that will make you
feel better I don't think that's I think we have to
literally get our hands dirty and talk about how we
actually actually feel and, and uh and start there
other than that, I don't, I don't know, you know what I
mean But I think The Desire the Desire is a good thing
and I think it can start there. The book is why so many
people would be, it would be too scared to take on such
big topics and you just dive right in Taye Diggs. We
appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Thank you,
man, this is great. This is great. I appreciate it.