The one thing I would have to have an immediate bias
was towards the Middle East.
I identify as transgender, non-conforming.
It's not often assumed that I am part black.
Do you think that being gay is a choice?
I can't be sure.
Who should police the police?
The citizens.
That actually scares me.
If I had to have a conversation
with my kids about this,
I wouldn't know pretty much where to start.
How I treat and talk to my children
is very much reflective
of the environment that they walk into every day.
I'm a lawyer by trade.
- I better watch what I say. - (chuckles)
I've been a cop for 20 years.
We must understand that how we've been weaponized,
you know, against the black community.
Hello, everybody, my name is Jesse Williams.
I want to welcome everyone joining us today
as we discuss bias, conscious and unconscious bias
and its impact on us personally and the collective.
I am here now because I feel like
we're experiencing a real opportunity.
The real opportunity is in the public consciousness
with all that's happening in the world and in our nation.
We are primed, I think, to accept the possibility
that maybe we have some room for improvement.
Maybe there are some things
that we can learn about ourselves and each other
that will allow us to grow forward.
So part of that is acknowledging conscious
and unconscious bias,
the roles that we might be playing
in this whole equation.
I think it's incredibly important for us
to face it, talk about it, be open to that possibly.
Everyone has bias, myself included.
It is a real issue and it's something that we can address
and just learn more about.
It doesn't make anybody inherently wrong.
It's something that's worthy of exploring.
So over the next few hours we're going to do just that.
We're going to watch a series of conversations
between complete strangers meeting for the first time,
and they're going to discuss not only themselves,
but issues that bring up
the concept of bias in their lives.
This might be uncomfortable at times.
It certainly has moments of discomfort for them.
It might for you as well.
Feelings could be hurt.
But that's part of the process.
That's how growth happens.
So amidst that discomfort,
these are all opportunities for learning for us.
So before we dive deeper,
I do want to acknowledge how we've come here today,
that can't do that without thanking Procter & Gamble
for spreading the word and spearheading this effort.
That also includes BuzzFeed,
who's allowing us to use their platform,
so thank you so much.
For years P&G has been using their voice
and acting as a leading advertiser
to shine a light on inequality,
highlighting bias in particular
with their recent work in the last couple of years
and sparking a dialogue to promote understanding,
to promote action.
So I'm not going to do this alone.
We are going to dial up the incredible Freddie Ransome,
who is a content creator,
has a lot of insight around bias,
and she's going to help us
walk through this whole experience
and be a great asset to us today.
Hey, Jesse, how are you?
I'm great, how are you?
I'm good.
I'm excited for what today's going to hold.
Just to give everyone a little bit more detail
about the ins and outs of this experiment,
we've paired 14 strangers together to talk about bias.
And these are real people,
they are here because they want to have dialog
and they want to experience some personal growth.
So please be respectful to them in the comments,
even if you don't agree on what they're saying
because we're all friends here,
we're all just here to learn and take in new information
or just sort of spread light and share light to each other
in regards to experiences and personal biases.
It's interesting when talking to new people or strangers,
I think folks can relate
to being at a party or a new gathering,
you just find yourself kind of pouring your heart out
to somebody you just met.
I think the idea that won't definitely follow you
in your social circle or your family events,
you've got a little bit of freedom
to just kind of unload something,
to explore something, experiment,
play around with ideas
without it being kind of attached to you
like this static cling
and you're going to have to be accountable for it later.
We all carry with us learned assumptions, presumptions,
we all are a byproduct of media
and marketing and information
and cartoons and commercials.
Also, now is a good time just to let folks know
it's not only Freddie and myself participating today.
We are really lucky
to have an absolutely brilliant professor,
Dr. Charisse L'Pree,
sharing her incredible talents and wherewithal.
Professional L'Pree is at Syracuse University
where she currently focuses on how the media affects
the way we think about ourselves,
exactly what we're talking about,
our perceptions of ourselves and others.
We've been working with her
to bring an added layer of context
and facts into this discussion,
those pesky things that are necessary.
Beyond just watching, we're going to be posting
discussion prompts in the comments,
so pay attention to those if you could.
This allows us all to be able to join the conversation
from an informed perspective.
So be sure to add your thoughts
and questions there as well.
This is a safe space, so please
don't succumb to any habits.
We've all been in comment sections
and we can see how it can get childish and ugly quickly.
Let's elevate today, let's make that a safe space
so we can constructive conversations.
And now, while we have paired strangers together,
they're not entirely random.
We intentionally went about this in a curated fashion
to encourage discourse beyond their echo chamber.
These have been really expansive,
long conversations
when we've paired these strangers together,
so we've naturally had to edit them down for time.
We did that in the most responsible way.
So in order to catalyze these conversations,
we have passed along P&G's award-winning short film
called The Look to all of these pairings
so that they can watch it together
and it can be a great way to spark conversation about bias.
Let's start with our first pairing.
We have Chozy joining us from Atlanta, Georgia,
and we have Lynn in North Carolina.
So we have them dialed up and meeting each other
for the very first time for an interesting conversation.
All right, let's do it.
Hello.
Hi.
How 'ya doing?
Well, I'm well today and yourself?
I'm going great, just excited about this experience.
Isn't this something?
My name's Lynn.
Lynn?
Lynn.
Hi, my name is Chozy.
Oh come on, no.
[sighs]
Um, I can definitely relate to the beginning,
getting the weird looks for looking different.
I can't believe this stuff
still happens and I know it does
and I cannot understand why.
[sighs]
Yeah.
We still judge each other on the way we immediately appear.
Where do you think that comes from?
The reason I think a lot of people think that way,
which is not only in the U.S., it's a global thing,
is just lack of interaction
with people that are different than you.
I am originally from East Jerusalem, Palestine,
and I came here in 2001, three weeks before September 11.
So, when I came here I was saying, "I'm Middle Eastern,
I'm Palestinian, I'm Muslim," and it is just who I am.
I didn't think anything of it.
So September 11 happens
and all of a sudden there is this hate
for anybody that looks Middle Eastern.
So if you're brown, you're going to be a target.
It doesn't matter if you're Arab, Indian, Hispanic,
mixed black and white, just dark featured,
and a lot of people got
harassed and attacked on campus
at Georgia Southern.
And I was like I'm not going to go out and say
that I'm Middle Eastern.
I'm going to have to dodge it, lie it, try to be a chameleon.
But it's hard to be a chameleon
when the majority is black and white
and nobody looks like me.
What I'm hearing you say is
that it comes from non-exposure
to different types of people
and they're visually different
and we have to judge immediately.
The one kind of group that you can see my ignorance,
I think when I thought about biases towards people,
the one thing I would have an immediate bias
was towards whatever I would call;
and you're right, it's ignorance, the Middle East.
Because it's different and so, as we've had more immigrants
and as I've been able to meet more people,
you see, my views change.
And this is the only way
that we can break down these conclusions.
It's kind of embarrassing here
to admit that I've had these biases.
It's embarrassing.
But I have not really been able
to interact very much with people like yourself, Chozy,
so I don't know how the universe knew
that you're the person I probably needed
to talk most to.
Yeah.
I've been in churches here when I came to the U.S.
and I've been to Baptist churches.
And I'm looking around and I see
this poster of a white person
that looks like Kurt Cobain from Nirvana
with blonde hair, blue eyes, on a cross.
And I'm like, "Who is that?"
And he's like, "This is Jesus."
And I'm like, "What?!"
Jesus is from Bethlehem.
Jesus was a Jewish person from Bethlehem in Palestine.
If you go to Palestine right now,
nobody's blonde hair, blue eyes.
I'm considered light-skinned.
People are a little bit darker than me.
Yeah.
I don't care what the Census says that we are.
I'm not treated like I'm a white
person when I come to America.
I'm accepted by blacks more than whites.
Where I grew up in Northern California,
there was a lot of dissension with black people.
We didn't even have anybody from Palestine or Jerusalem.
We didn't have Jewish people.
And I drove through the part of town that was black
and because I was white, they threw a rock at me
because they were angry.
And that was when integration was starting
and they would bring black children and white people
and white children together.
We're people and we're doing the best we can,
and it's not real good.
But if we keep talking about it and meeting each other,
and if I can see your pain,
and maybe you can see my embarrassment,
because that's just who I am
and I'm still trying to change.
Let me let you picture this.
Four hundred years ago you've been brought to this country
in shackles, enslaved.
Let's say they traded your people for money.
They gave you freedom,
but everything you ever built they will burn
and they always will make you
feel like you're the bad person.
So no matter what you do and how high you get in life,
you will still be that slave.
How would you feel?
Would you throw a brick at somebody?
[sighs]
I would probably try to burn everything down
because it's so unfair.
It's so unfair.
I really honestly feel if I had been at the scene
where George Floyd was being killed,
because I'm a little white woman,
I probably could have jumped in there
and they would have been busy, because I'm not a threat.
It's called, "white privilege".
The police don't see me as a threat.
I've been pulled over and let go and they've said to me,
"If you were black I'd take you in, but you're not."
How do we change this, Chozy, how do we do this?
People need to be aware of their white privilege.
During 9/11 I was walking back to my dorm.
I don't know what's going on.
I've been in America for three weeks.
I walk in.
I'm looking at the big TV in the lobby.
I see a building on fire, people jumping and chaos.
And I'm like, "Oh, this looks like back home."
Why?
Because we see this every day, this is nothing new.
So from that day on, Middle Easterners and Muslims
have suffered ten times more till this day.
And they burned mosques, they killed Muslims,
they banned Muslims from coming to this country.
Well, I thought this country is based on freedom
to worship any, you know, to practice any religion.
I'm very moved by your description
of exactly how you were treated, Chozy,
and the ignorance that makes me cry.
It makes me really embarrassed.
But things are changing, people are moving all over
and we need to help people like you change it.
Actually change begins with people like you
that are thinking about these issues,
but still not taking action.
The smallest action you can take
is, number one, surround yourself
with people that are different than you.
Number two, talk to people, your family,
know how to talk to them
with having a constructive conversation
that can have criticism and some defense and offence.
But we have to unite the people.
We have to put our differences on the side.
We can't just keep bringing biased and prejudiced
and racist things that keep dividing us.
I'm so moved by what you said, Chozy,
and I understand that the actions that I take
are to talk, to be aware,
but talk to people especially as I meet them.
Because I'm probably not at all what I appear
and I didn't tell the producers
that, you know, I'm gay.
And certainly I've had beer bottles thrown at me
and I have not wanted to bother anybody,
I just wanted to be left alone and be myself,
whatever that is.
And I've pretended a lot
because I can get away with pretending.
So you're with a woman?
Yes, sir.
Okay, so you didn't mention that
so I'm glad you mentioned that because—
Well.
—then you would have kind of experienced
a lot more of what we experience.
I never really said too much about it
because I just felt like it's nobody's business
and, honestly, I lied about it because I could.
I mean you can't see that I'm gay.
As I've grown and seen
the things that people have gone through
and the way that gay men were treated in the '80s
with the AIDS epidemic
and losing so many people that were my friends
and no one cared, it does make sense
that if I had really stood up
and copped to the whole thing and made a stand
and said, "No, you don't treat people this way
because these people are me
and if you like me, then you like gay people, right?"
But here in Hendersonville, North Carolina,
I've been actually legally married
and that is a form of acceptance.
And I have nephews and nieces who have grown up
and they don't think a thing about this
because of their exposure to people that were gay
and they go, "Well, so, what's the big deal?"
I thank you for sharing that with me
because that's part of who you are.
There's no way to see that or tell that,
so that was a pretty interesting twist
and it kind of changed the whole aspect of this call
because I knew then
I can definitely relate and make you relate mostly
to what I've been feeling and have empathy as well
for what you've been going through.
And I know this struggle
because I'm from the Middle East;
and we're not open for that.
And my cousin is gay.
He thinks he tries to make a noise about it
so he can get the equality and the freedom,
and I want you to do the same.
So I had this epiphany while you were talking
that this is how bias changes
is that you've had this conversation with me,
and maybe you'll be with somebody
or your family in one way,
and they'll talk about something.
But you've had this experience; you'll go,
"Well, you know there was this time
I talked to this woman,"
and believe me, if I see anybody from Palestine
it's going to be,
"Well, you know I talked to this
man and he was from Palestine
and he's in this country and this is how he feels."
I want to thank you, Lynn, for doing this
and I want to also thank you for sharing with me
and being able to listen and respond
and have a very healthy conversation.
Thank you.
Well, Chozy, I think the best part about talking to you,
while I'm sitting here realizing
that, oh, I just came out to the entire world
and I did because of you
and because of what you and the people
that produced you have been through
and you made me understand [gasps] the pain.
And you've helped me really immeasurably.
Look at all the things I said.
I owe that to you, sir.
I do.
How about that?
Go figure.
Thank you, thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, so that was Chozy and Lynn;
really a little plot-twist towards the end.
I know for me personally, when I was watching the video
I was not expecting her
to say that she was a part of the queer community
and that she's married
and has this whole other part to her story that we were—
at least I was unaware of at the beginning.
So that was kind of interesting.
And I think also, kind of in real-time
this bias is sort of playing out.
It's like I'm thinking like, oh yeah, she's cis,
heterosexual, white woman
who, like you know,
probably hasn't really experienced a lot of turmoil
in terms of identity.
And that's just me making that assumption
and then to find out
that, oh, actually she has experienced this.
Okay, now I'm getting a better understanding of who she is.
Yeah, what was interesting to me
was how it impacted Chozy immediately.
It always makes folks feel more comfortable
having conversations with people who can
or are willing to understand them,
whatever that means,
and a big part of that is a shared actual experience.
Parents talking about how hard it is to have children,
they can relate to actual parents much better
than some single person with no kids, right?
Exactly.
It's really that basic.
So when Chozy thinks he's talking to somebody
who kind of fits all the dominant boxes,
most of them outside of gender,
to hear, well, you actually have to deal with identity,
with making yourself small, with making yourself quiet
with not always identifying yourself
in a way that would make you a target,
okay, we're actually on closer footing than I thought,
that makes me see you slightly different
or maybe feel more comfortable
expressing my experience
in a way that has a better shot of being received.
I think you watched Lynn certainly,
for lack of a better term, kind of mature and grow
and settle into her comfort zone.
Yeah, you love to see it.
And I can say, too,
I was really happy that Lynn was self-aware
in the fact and confident in admitting
that she lied about her sexuality for years
because she knew that she could.
She could sort of slide under the radar
as outwardly I guess presenting
as a straight, white woman
walking through the world.
And that was interesting because I think that
that sort of transcends in so many different scenarios
whether you can pass race-wise
or ethnically or in terms of religion, sexuality.
I think that we all could come to the table
with certain areas where we can pass
and we sort of use that for survival.
I don't necessarily think that it's that she's ashamed,
but a lot of times it's about safety.
So that's something that stood out to me.
A couple things that I clocked,
not because they were new but actually
because they're fairly common in my lived experience
is what bias can do is it can minimize or isolate
the experiences of others.
While Chozy explains some of his experience
in the discrimination that he goes through,
I mean can you imagine being a Palestinian
landing here three weeks before 9/11
in Atlanta, Georgia
[gasps]
—the fear that he has?
How do you go out and get coffee?
Every day you're going out and you could possibly be—
we saw hate crimes obviously skyrocket.
And as he described some of this,
you see what I've seen commonly
I imagine you have as well Freddie
is this kind of incredulousness
from your white acquaintance.
I had no idea, totally either blind
or reflectively presenting themselves
as blind
to the lived experiences of those around us.
Oh, no way, can you believe it?
I had no idea something like this would happen!
And so it's the combination of distancing,
minimizing that experience, whether consciously or not,
and then making the burden
of solving it on the person of color.
It's sort of the whole idea that racism is an issue
that the marginalized community has to solve
or it's like a black issue or an Asian issue
or whichever community that is.
And it is not.
It is a white issue, an issue of the oppressor
and of those with privilege and those in power.
Yeah.
All right, so let's move on to our next pairing
and it's going to be JC and Garnet,
both of whom are currently based in Arizona.
Hello?
Hi.
Hi, my name's Garnet.
I'm JC.
Hi, JC.
I love your outfit.
Thank you.
Where are you located?
I'm in Arizona. Where you at?
Oh, that's where I'm currently safer at home.
Really?
Yeah.
Now we're getting stared at.
Okay, now as this individual, I'm very nervous.
That was scary.
Yeah.
We're in court?
Are we the attorney?
I don't know.
Are we the judge? Are we the jury?
Oh, please let it be the judge.
Oh, thank God.
Yes.
[snaps fingers and laughs] [chuckles]
What got me the most
was the moment we were in the courtroom,
my mind thought,
okay, they're bringing out the defendant and it's his P.O.V..
I was viscerally relieved when that wasn't the case.
Yeah, automatically I'm like, oh my God, I'm nervous
and I'm nervous because I hope that this person
isn't going to get prosecuted for incorrect reasons.
So I think I was trying to compensate with like—
I hope he's the judge, I hope he's the attorney,
I hope he's the jury,
so I could also like breathe a
sigh of relief from it as well.
I think that I'm not immediately
identified by other people,
especially people who are white.
It's not often assumed that I'm part black.
It's just assumed that I'm not white,
which is not quite the same especially now.
For most of my adult life, I had a shaved head.
I used to get extra security screenings, pat-downs,
taken out of line, questioned in the back room
with no windows all the time.
And I was basically being racially profiled.
And it wasn't because I was part black.
It was because I looked Middle Eastern.
And my mom said,
"You need to shave your hair."
My first instinct was like, yeah, that's a good idea.
And then my next reaction was,
no, that's the opposite of what I want to do
because that would mean
I would be taking one more visibly
at-least-part-black individual out of the situation.
And that's exactly what people who hate black people
want to happen.
They just want fewer black people around.
Yes, your hair is political! [snaps fingers]
- [laughs]
- And I can relate to a lot of what you were talking about.
I also traveled a lot
as a flight attendant for the past six years.
- Okay.
And I also was getting profiled
a lot as like Middle Eastern.
And I've had pretty serious altercation
with one pilot in the cockpit
that was treating me really horribly
and they basically were pinning me
to the inside of the cockpit door
and it was just so, so, so scary [laughs] to have that.
That's tough. I'm sorry to hear that.
I'm 25 percent black and I'm 75 percent white.
I'm not American, I'm actually Canadian.
But it wasn't until I arrived here in the U.S.
that people started to regularly
recognize the black part of me
and mostly that were other black people.
And so I started to— I would go get my hair cut,
I would always seek out like the blackest barbershop
because whenever I walked into a place like that,
there was never like, "Who's this beige guy?"
[chuckles]
"What's he about?"
They automatically were like,
yeah, this guy's part black and
he's part of this community.
I identify as transgender non-conforming.
I basically wake up and every single day
is a little gender-reveal party to myself.
[laughs]
Really?
Because I just like go with the flow.
I feel like today I'm like,
"I'm feeling more masculine, I'm feeling more feminine."
But when I would go to work
and have to wear a uniform with a tie,
I would purposefully find like one or two things
to "express my gender,"
whether that was the woman's purse or something.
And I would get constantly asked by coworkers like,
"Is that really— are you allowed to do that?
They're not saying anything to you?
They're not writing you letters?"
And I'm like, "I'm wearing a bag, the same bag you have,
so why— like, no."
Yeah.
And it was really frustrating to have to constantly validate
my gender or like myself or even have to explain,
especially to folks
who didn't really want to be educated about it.
They were just sort of projecting
their own views onto me.
That would be really challenging,
definitely challenging.
I mean I was in my early 20s and I had a roommate.
And it was around that time
That I started to sort of come into
feeling out being part black
and wanting to embrace that part of myself
because, up until then, I hadn't.
I read Malcolm X's autobiography.
I even went and saw Louis Farrakhan speak.
I was just exploring.
And he kind of confronted me in
a way that I wasn't expecting.
And this is one of my best friends.
He said, "Why are you reading that?"
or, "Why are you getting into
all of this like black stuff?"
And I was like, "Well, you know, I'm part black."
And he's like, "Well, you're only 25 percent black,
so why don't you just get over it
and embrace the majority of yourself, which is white?"
And I was really angry
because the fact is that you only have to be
a little bit non-white
for people to see you as not white.
And that can really, for lack of a better word,
"color" your experience in the world.
Exactly.
When you are in white spaces
And you talk about your blackness,
how is that received?
That's a good question.
White people always want to ask
what my background is.
[gasps and laughs] Oh, God!
Yeah, same.
Where are you from?
You're like, "Oh, well, originally I'm from Calgary."
"Where are your parents from?"
- [laughing] - "Oh, well, my dad's from Calgary
and my mom's from Manitoba."
They're like, "No, but where are they really from?"
And I'm like, "Oh, I see, you're
wondering why I'm not white."
Because they want to get to what race I am,
where do I fit into their idea—
Yep.
—of who I should be or what I represent.
I understand exactly what you're saying.
Was there ever a time in your life when you found yourself
either suppressing a part of your identity,
whatever that may be,
in order to make a social situation or any situation
easier or more comfortable
for everyone in the room kind of thing?
I was like 12 or 13 years old
and I just wanted to be like a Manic Pixie Dream Girl
that sits on countertops and is cute and weird,
and I just wanted to be that for myself.
So I was expressing myself in that way
and I remember these men in my family
pulled me aside and they were,
"You're acting feminine and you need to like macho-up
because you're turning into like a young man,"
and blah-blah-blah-blah.
That's the way it felt,
oh my God, I'm doing something wrong
and this really hurts my family and I'm being shameful.
And that moment got internalized for years,
like 10, 14, whatever years.
Even if I'm trying to just change my diet,
I feel like I have to like almost
feel ashamed of my lifestyle
as I explain it to my family.
And it comes from just years and years
of never getting my needs met or being seen as who I am.
Mm.
Yeah.
And this might strike you as, I don't know,
I don't know how you're going to take this.
But a time when I've suppressed
something about myself is I like karaoke.
Yes!
[laughs] And when I was in Toronto,
I was a karaoke host for a long time, full time.
And the best place that I hosted at was a gay bar.
Yes.
And when I worked there,
I found myself inwardly embracing the fact
that maybe people thought I was gay
because I happened to be hosting
a karaoke show in a gay bar.
And I was happy about that.
This actually brings up
an important question that I think is relevant,
how do we consume and appreciate and amplify voices
that need to be heard without being appropriating
and/or gaining anything from it.
Because as an ally,
clearly I see you as an ally for LGBT community,
especially working and hosting in a gay bar
and being super comfortable in there.
But in what ways has your white passing experience,
how has that showed up for you?
I worked in a place
that was a very high-level, private-members club.
I don't even think there were any black members.
And I was witness to people talking about things
that were blatantly racist,
like telling N-word jokes and stuff.
I'm standing right there and I'm thinking to myself,
oh, they don't realize I'm part black.
And so at the moment, I just didn't say anything
because I didn't want to have that confrontation
in that environment.
I want to just do a quick little example I had
from when I was a flight attendant.
And I was in the back of the airplane and we were in flight
and all of a sudden I heard some music
or something happening in the cabin
and I instantly went to this black couple to go ask them
to turn off their phones or their speakers or whatever.
And when I went there they had nothing
and then I was like, "Excuse me,"
and then they just looked at me
and they're like, "What's up?"
And I'm like, oh my God;
I just did something that was super biased.
It just really showed me the bias that I had.
I was just so inappropriate.
JC, let me ask you a question.
Why do you think bias is dangerous?
I don't think bias itself is necessarily the danger.
It's not recognizing that you have bias that is dangerous.
That eventually trickles down to resentment and then to hate
and then to extreme actions that are just inexcusable
and dangerous for so many folks.
Do you think that knowing
that people have conscious and unconscious biases
do you think it's possible for people to overcome?
Not only do I think that it's possible
for people to overcome their biases,
I think people's lives depend on it right now.
People need to recognize their own bias
in how they can show up and fix those biases
for literally the survival of black people.
They can no longer just show up
by posting pictures on Instagram,
even walking in marches.
It's like do this now because it's
important right now in history,
but do this from now on and call it out when you see it
and call it out within yourself.
And also don't take offense to it
because you learned it somewhere,
but now you can unlearn it.
And after you do that,
you have the opportunity to change as well.
Well, and I think you're right.
And I think it's more important
to talk about, firstly,
our own bias, our personal bias,
because calling someone else's bias is easy to do
but it also creates confrontation.
But I think if people witness one another
acknowledging their own bias,
I think that will open up the ability for people
to have more sort of truthful, honest dialogue about it.
And it's sort of coming from the 'me'
rather than coming from the 'you'.
Yeah.
Well, I think this was a very interesting experience.
I want to come away from this dialogue
with a more open mind and open heart to strangers
and not automatically pass judgment on them
and just learn from them and see what they're all about.
My biggest takeaway is maybe how do we structure that?
And I actually think the video was helpful
in terms of opening up a dialogue.
It just really opened up the door for all these avenues
for our own experiences to come through
and it was really cool.
Yeah, if we're not that far
apart, maybe I'll bump into you.
[laughs]
Yeah, maybe I'll see you at the grocery store
or something. [LAUGHTER]
All right, bye.
Bye. [LAUGHTER]
All right, well, that quickly
became one of my favorite conversations of the day.
JC and Garnet spoke to a whole variety of things actually,
half of which that I can absolutely relate to
and trigger experiences of my own
in terms of ambiguity, in terms of race
and labeling and people's need to know what you are.
And I also learned a great deal
and appreciated JC kind of checking in
with Garnet about a couple of things
and talking about allyship versus appropriation
and how to be responsible and thoughtful in that process.
Yeah, I mean first of all, they were so cute.
It was such a pleasant conversation and I was like,
oh, like I hope they become actual friends after this.
Right.
Also, they're local so, yeah, it's actually doable.
Exactly, yeah.
And I think they were both incredibly respectful
and they had a lot of I think similarities
in some of their experiences of both living—
or I guess sort of being ambiguous
in how they present gender-wise
and also, you know, racially.
So I think that this was a
really productive conversation.
Right, yeah, very much highlights ingroup/outgroup
and the role that that plays.
I mean folks are making comments
because that's how they feel.
And we often check our surroundings,
"boys will be boys" locker-room conversation
is probably different in the locker-room
with a bunch of cis jocks
than it would be at Thanksgiving dinner
with a whole panoply of other folks.
So we constantly check.
We have our inside/outside conversations,
ingroup/outgroup conversations.
There's a default to what are you?
And this is coming from somebody
who my entire life probably the most common question
that has been asked of me,
the most popular three words to me is,
"What are you?" since I was very little.
And it's in the first five sentences of many interactions
since I was little, "What are you?"
And what is that question?
Why don't we talk and you'll find out what I am,
because represent themselves through their actions.
But you need some kind of label in order to categorize.
It's not always ill-intentioned,
but it's definitely annoying.
And for both of these folks,
it was nice to see them have a shared experience
because they probably don't get it-
who am I to say,
but it's possible they don't get it very often.
Garnet certainly seemed like he doesn't often get to relate
to people on that level of what it's like to be ambiguous
and always need to be labeled.
There is also I think is worth mentioning
a difference between ambiguity
and looking like you're a person of "color"
versus being black.
Anti-blackness is so specific
and it's filled with such vitriol and tradition,
in this country at least,
that it kind of stands on its own.
And by "kind of" I mean definitely.
I was looking at some of Professor L'Pree's notes
and she was saying
that based on some very specific research,
it is proven that when strangers
are walking about in the world
and we are passing each other on the streets
and standing in line behind each other
at restaurants or et cetera,
like those who are ethnically ambiguous
get started at way longer
than those who you're able to easily categorize
and put in a box.
And I wanted to know like have you ever found yourself
when you're walking through the world—
aside from because of the fact you're Jesse Williams
and you are well-known, but even before then,
have you ever experienced
really noticing people glaring at you
or knowing that someone
is really trying got figure you out?
Absolutely.
In my entire childhood coming up,
especially because I lived in entirely black areas,
entirely white areas, entirely poverty stricken' areas,
entirely kind of lower-middle class and big—
and we have a lot
of very insulated pockets in this country
and I've lived in many of them
and have not fit in any of them.
So, yeah, I've been the object of that kind of staring.
And because they don't know,
derision often comes with that.
I resent the fact that you're making it harder for me.
It's worth noting also
just that JC rightly pointed out to Garnet
we should be thinking about how to be an ally,
how to be a productive ally
without appropriating culture
and making sure you are still your authentic self
without kind of dibbing and dabbing
and sampling cultures without actually having any interest
in the roots of their history and how they're impacted
initial a multitude of ways.
All right, let's go into another
one of our conversations.
This one is between Marlee
and she's talking to Renee.
Hello?
Hi.
Hi!
How are you?
I'm great. How are you?
Good, I'm Marlee, nice to meet you.
And I'm Renee, nice to meet you as well.
So I've seen that happen.
I mean even in L.A., as liberal
and progressive of a place
that we think we live in.
Well, it's nothing new to me, nothing to us.
And it's something that we've come to expect,
something that we experience a lot
and basically pretty much all the time.
And it's a shame because it's based on what we look like.
You could have all the degrees in the world,
but it has nothing to do with any of that.
You know, I went to high school,
there was like one black family in my hometown
and there was a lot of that happening.
It happens every day. You see it every day.
I found myself breathing hard.
My heart started beating fast
because it's so typical and it makes me angry.
When we go into a store,
it doesn't matter how well-dressed we are,
sometimes we're followed immediately, we're assumed.
And it bothers me, it really does.
And it's so unfair.
Yeah, I just want to say to that, Renee,
that I'm bothered for you and it makes me so angry.
There's so much
that I'm learning and unlearning that I realize
just being born white and with a certain privilege
and where I grew up
that there's so much that's just innate
or learned behavior that you're learning.
And unlearning and I'm trying so hard to just grow
and break the cycle.
And it's like I just hope that we can keep moving forward.
Marlee, you know what I appreciate.
And I think this is what touches my heart so much
is that at least there's a willingness.
And that's what I hear so much from you,
there's a willingness to listen,
finally a willingness to listen
when, for so many years, it seemed as though
if we mentioned something like that,
you know, the looks, the stares,
what are you talking about?
What are you talking about somebody looked at you?
For some reason,
we weren't believed and the curtain has been pulled back
showing the truth of our lives,
the truth of what we've had to experience for so many years.
It's so true and I was protesting
a couple of days ago downtown
and this black man stopped me and he—
because we were holding "Black Lives Matter" sign—
and he's like, "It starts with you guys
who are here willing to fight,
put your bodies in front of us and just like stand up."
Because I had a similar experience—
and this is the only way I can relate where—
I'm never going to understand
and I know that because of my skin color.
I am very androgynous
in the way that I dress and express myself
and I've gotten threatening looks and those vibes.
I know what you're saying
where it's hard to explain to people
like what are you talking about,
where I've felt threatened
because people are afraid of the unknown.
They're afraid of what they don't know,
so them trying to figure me out,
is she a boy, is she a girl?
I was followed into a bathroom last fall
because they thought I was entering
the wrong bathroom for my assigned gender.
And that was the first time I felt fear.
I was shaking, and I'm shaking just talking about it
because I was like who's this person to come in here
and tell me that I'm not using the right bathroom
just based off of how I look?
But I have that default of like I'm white
and, as scared as I was,
I didn't think they were going to shoot me.
I'm never going to know to that extent.
It's frustrating, you see on Facebook
and I have a mixed bag of progressives and conservatives
because of where I'm from
and there are still so many people
that it hasn't clicked in in saying "All Lives Matter."
It just shows me that we have a long way to go,
but you're right, it's a start.
Why do you think that they don't get it?
Is it because they don't want to
or do they think that we're less tan?
I wish I could understand that.
I think it's everyone is trapped in their bubble
and doesn't have enough exposure.
They don't have friends who are of color.
Yeah, you can be nice to someone a person of color,
but that doesn't mean you have racist thoughts
or, like in that video,
you're not going to roll up your window.
They don't see who you are at work
versus who you are—
I know I'm a different person at work than I am here at home
with my girlfriend and my dog.
I feel sorry for them.
If they knew me,
they would recognize that I am a human being
just like they are.
They would recognize I'm a
child of God just like they are.
Why are we so hated in this country?
It makes me angry and it hurts.
And I have grandsons that I worry about.
(voice breaking) They're sweet as they could be.
And to have to worry about them
not coming home one day,
that's the hardest thing for any mother.
And then to hear George Floyd to call for his mama?
I don't have kids.
I would like to someday.
I was just wondering
if you could expand a little bit on that,
how that resonated with you
when George Floyd did call out for his mom.
I think that, as a mom,
I think that is the greatest joy I think
that I have ever had was to have children.
And it's just a miracle to me.
It doesn't matter what color you are,
the fact that you have this child
that you carried under your heart.
So I mean you would do
anything to protect that child.
To take it maliciously like that in front of people
and your child is begging for their life,
begging "I can't breathe," it's just unbearable.
There are no words, Marlee, there are just no words.
There's just so much I think
that we have to help people to understand.
How do you think you can, going forward,
help some people understand?
I think I just need to be more willing
to have these uncomfortable conversations,
especially with family.
It's so much easier for me
to not combat what they're saying
to make it easier for me.
But if I'm making it easier for me,
I'm not making it easier for you or people of color.
So I know that I need to start calling these people out
and it's a lot of energy, but it's worth the energy
if people are being murdered in cold blood.
Hey, Marlee, you said something
about when you're at work
that you hide your true self, something like that.
What was that about?
When I started working in the film industry—
I work in the art department primarily—
there was a lot of men, older men when I joined.
And I'm androgynous and I look like how most Cali boys look
with long blonde hair.
They would assume sometimes on my first day at a new job
that I was just some young guy.
There were some times
where I felt like I had to hush my voice
or not speak until spoken to so that they didn't hear
the tone of my voice or the high pitch
because I felt like they're going to respect me
first for being a man.
Like if there's something I don't know how to do
because I'm new,
they're not going to judge me like,
"Oh, because she's a young girl."
What made you decide that you wanted to be androgynous?
Looking back now—
and like I said, since I've moved out here
there's been so much more that I've discovered about myself,
in gender, in being queer,
in playing on the gender spectrum.
I have this vivid memory of when I was little.
I remember my dad and my brother
were outside playing.
My dad was mowing the grass.
My brother and I were playing with the ball.
And they both had their shirts off.
And I kept pulling my shirt off and my dad's like,
"No, you can't do that."
And I just didn't understand why that was taboo.
That's how I feel now.
I've had so many issues with body dysphoria
and ways that I feel about feminine parts of my body
that I just now have discovered.
But looking back there's been incidences
that were always there.
And it was definitely difficult.
I was like the black sheep of my family.
I definitely got made fun of a lot
because people just did not understand that.
I've recently learned that the black LGBTQIA community
is disproportionately marginalized.
Do you have any insight as to why that is?
Well, you know what, Marlee?
You're going to have to do me a favor, okay,
because they keep adding letters to that.
So would you do me a favor
and break down the new letters, please?
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
queer, intersex a-gender.
I came out as a lesbian when I was like 20.
I started to discover these parts of me
and realized it was always there,
but it was just kind of suppressed
because of the area that I grew up in.
Even my family, it was hard for them
because even though, like I say,
they're pretty progressive and open-minded,
it always comes down to, well, when it's your own kid
it's like a different story.
So I was just kind of circling back
just because I've been seeing so many parallels
in my own personal growth and struggles or obstacles
that I've had to face that,
like I said, it's not comparable
in a sense that I will ever fully understand,
but I think it's helpful in this
learning and unlearning process
of trying to draw your own
experiences as close as you can.
Back in the '60s,
we didn't really talk about that until I got older.
We didn't talk about those things.
Do you agree that
homosexuality is a sin or not, you know—
The way I was raised in the word from adulthood
is that homosexuality in and of itself
the lifestyle of homosexuality is a sin.
And in the Bible it does say,
"That a man shall not lie with a man."
So according to the Bible,
the Bible says everyone has to live out their own salvation.
You are going to live your life
according to the way you decide to live your life.
I'm not going to judge you.
That's not my place. [laughs]
Do you think that being gay is a choice?
I can't be sure.
I really can't be sure because I don't understand—
just like you say
that you don't understand what it's like to be black
and what you've experienced—
and to be honest with you, they are not the same thing.
They're not.
Being homosexual and being black,
I can't even equate the two things
because they're not the same thing.
But my not understanding homosexuality,
I don't know if it's a physical
thing, a spiritual thing,
a psychological thing... I have no idea.
I can tell you that, for me personally, it's not a choice.
There's been times with people not understanding sexuality
or my gender where there's been so many times
it's like, if I just didn't feel like this,
of course I would choose the easier route.
I would choose being straight
because that's how society is more accepting.
I guess if we were ever able to meet in person
and you saw someone give me the discriminatory look
or made a comment to me about my identity,
would you stand up for me?
Absolutely, I would stand up for you, Marlee, absolutely.
No one has a right to discriminate
against anyone, anyone.
No one has that right.
Yeah.
And not just me, but I guess or someone like me
or especially people in the black LGBTQ community.
That's right. No one has that right.
Thank you.
It's just crazy that we've never even met and don't—
and people are going to think this is like a plug,
I'm like we've never met. - [laughs]
- But already just in these two hours
I feel so connected to you
because you have been so open and willing to hear
things that I've struggled with
and I'm just beginning to only learn of the things
that you've struggled with.
But you've been willing to listen and learn
just like I'm willing to listen and learn.
And it's just really refreshing.
It is refreshing.
And I think that's the bottom line.
I think we have to be open and willing to listen and learn.
It doesn't mean that we're going to agree on everything.
Right. [LAUGHTER]
- Awesome. - Thank you. Take care.
- Talk soon, bye. -Bye!
So that was a really unique conversation.
They were both really respectful.
I think it was productive.
I think from jump initially when Renee was explaining
sort of her reaction to watching The Look
and saying—
she said she found herself breathing hard
and her heart started beating quickly,
once they entered the courtroom,
it's so interesting
because I completely relate to those feelings
when I'm in those types of uncomfortable situations.
It's like this visceral—
these body reactions that I get
that are subconscious and I don't realize that,
oh my gosh, I'm actually soaked
because I was sweating out of nervousness
for walking past this cop or something like that.
And even Marlee brought up
that she also experienced that
when she was walking into the restroom
and realized that she had been followed into the restroom.
And then her body just had this reaction
because it's just like this very specific reaction
that I would be so curious to know
like white people who check off
all of these boxes of power,
do they ever really experience these body reactions?
Sometimes I think we get into a bit of a suffer-off,
like a competitive suffering,
like measuring who's had it worse.
There is a difference between saying,
"I can relate to having that feeling,
I've gotten that feeling
when this has happened in a coffee shop."
But it's different than saying,
"I know exactly what that's like."
What I did appreciate was when Marlee was explaining
her experience of having those body reactions
and a little bit of fear when she realized
that she had been followed into the restroom
was that she said that she was really scared,
but she acknowledged that she wasn't scared for her life,
which is a key difference in I think the two experiences.
And I think that it was really beneficial
and productive for her to validate her feelings
and acknowledge that this is how she felt
in those moments, but that it is also not the same.
Yeah, that's exactly how it should be done.
You can have a relation to—
you can let somebody know they're seen
without making it equal.
And I thought it was interesting in Renee's answer,
if I have this right, Marlee asked about how she'd feel—
"Renee, how do you feel?
Do you think that it's a choice,
do you think that it's a sin?"
And if I have it correctly I feel like Renee answered
not from the outside how she thinks,
but what she was taught.
Taught.
Which that shows itself in other conversations
that we're going through today too is a bit of a pivot
from really receiving the question
kind of flush but saying,
"Ah, well, what I was taught was this."
Which is fine, it's important to know,
but it's not the answer.
It's not really confronting how
I feel and I wonder why that is.
Renee is very similar
to a lot of the older black women in my family.
- You know what I mean? - Sure.
Who are still trying to figure things out
and me having to explain
what non-binary is and all of these things
to the older black folks in my family.
So it's one of those things that can be frustrating
if you're not willing and open to learn.
Totally.
Especially, in fairness,
that is an ever-changing world of nomenclature
and I don't want to put people off from being curious
with this kind of cancel culture, that was offensive,
because I want folks who are absorbing this
to feel like they can ask questions.
Find a way to do it respectfully.
Maybe don't go "they keep" just saying,
"Hey, I feel like I may not be updated."
Yeah, I think in general my takeaway
from Renee and Marlee's conversation was that it was
more of sort of like that generational push and pull
based on keeping up
with what's happening in the LGBTQ community
and also what's happening in the black community.
Renee as a mother, really touching as a mother
and being concerned that your child will return safely home
and won't be killed or beaten
at the hands of those in privilege and in power,
a.k.a. the police.
So I think there were a lot of different topics
that were touched on with this conversation
and I kind of wish it could have gone longer
because I think that there was a lot more to unpack,
especially on Renee's end in learning more about Marlee
and the queer community and things of that nature.
Yeah, I would add I think that Renee, even after the call,
I would hope that she sits with the challenges
that were put before her,
the difference between what I was taught
and what I actually think.
And maybe you don't know what you think in that time
because now you're actually faced with somebody.
All right, Jesse,
so our next pairing will be Judy who's based in Texas,
and Martin who's based in Illinois.
This one was a doozy.
[LAUGHTER]
Stop what you're doing and watch this video.
Please watch this one, you guys.
I think it's important not only because of what happens,
but because we know folks with a lot of these perceptions
and we know the impact they can have.
So without further ado, we give you Martin and Judy.
Hello.
Hi.
How you doing? Judy, is it?
I'm Judy. What is your name?
I'm Martin.
A little bit of background about me.
I'm married. I've been married since 2002.
I have four boys
and they range in age from 34 all the way down to 8.
How old are you?
Now you're getting personal.
No, I'm 54.
You don't look like you should have a 34 year old.
Oh, no, no. I'm 54 years old.
- What? - I'm a grandfather.
Yes, the whole nine.
Oh, that's pretty cool.
What's your story, Judy?
I'm 53 and I have two daughters.
Well, it's a pleasure meeting you.
It's a pleasure meeting you.
Hmm.
I didn't like what I just saw there, but okay.
That wasn't very nice either,
them closing the elevator door on my man.
That's life in America.
Because the first thing you see when you see me
is a black man.
You have no idea what my educational background is,
what my financial background is, what my upbringing is.
So, all you know is that I'm black.
The first thing you see when I walk in the door.
I can honestly say
the only time I was ever afraid of being in a car
and pulling up my window was—
I don't know what you call it in Chicago.
I think Cabrini-Green.
But it was out of safety.
Other than that,
I've never really been afraid of black people
and I've always given everyone the benefit of the doubt.
But I don't look at things like that.
I have a lot of black friends.
You just gotta, I don't know.
You saw it in the film.
This guy's a judge.
He's probably brilliant, probably has money,
more money than both of us.
But yet, they looked at him
almost like he was a second-class citizen.
And that's what I mean, life in America.
I think like, just, what hurts me
is seeing a lot of black people
hurting their own people.
Do you see any of that?
Well, I do see that.
But always remember this, Judy.
People hurt the people that they live around.
So I also know from statistics
that white people hurt and kill
and fight other white people in their areas
because that's who they're around.
So, when I hear about black-on-black crime,
I get it because I see it.
I'm right outside of Chicago.
But I also know if you go into certain areas
where there's predominantly white people,
they hurt each other, too.
If you were in a situation where
someone pulled a gun on you,
no matter what color, and you pull your gun out,
is that trying to protect yourself
or is that you trying to kill somebody?
No, that's self-defense.
You see, the problem what—
the reason why we're probably on this line right now
is because what you've seen
and I'm sure you've seen on the news
if you've talked to your black friends
and they really talk to you,
then you'll know that there's black people unarmed
that are being killed by police.
Sometimes it's unprovoked.
Sometimes it's just because
the police officer "feared for his life",
but there was really nothing to fear.
You know, because the person was unarmed.
Like, if you look at what happened to George Floyd
or look at Eric Garner or look at Jonathan—
I could go on a laundry list of
black people that were killed
that were unarmed.
And I always say,
"Well then damn, that could have been me."
The problem we have as black people,
we can't have a bad day with the police.
You know, I can do like you could do.
You could say, "Hey, get the hell out of my face, you pig.
Why'd you pull me over?"
You could do that and get away with it.
I've seen it.
I can't do that.
The minute I even say, Judy,
if I say, "Well, why'd you pull me over?"
"You questioning me? Get out the car."
I've seen it.
It's like they're waiting for me to say the wrong thing
so that they could do the wrong
thing and this thing escalates.
That's why I always use that term, de-escalation, Judy,
because it doesn't have to get that way.
What I'm learning is right, wrong or indifferent;
no one is respecting the police force.
There's some bad ones in
there, but they're not all bad.
So, what's kind of scary for me is going forward,
who wants to join the police force?
They're damned if they do and they're damned if they don't.
You know, George Floyd.
He had a laundry list of bad crimes.
Trust me and believe in me,
that guy should not have done what he done.
What I don't like or what I don't agree with
if you don't mind me saying and help me understand this,
is to use him as a martyr.
We never said that George Floyd was our hero.
We just know that he died needlessly
and this death was the catalyst
that sparked this movement.
He wasn't combative.
He was subdued.
He was already in cuffs and surrounded by police officers.
Yeah, and he was on drugs.
Well, see he could have been on a lot of drugs,
but when you saw him at that point
where that officer's knee was on his neck,
there was no struggling.
Sure.
There was no wailing or hidden fighting.
He was already in cuffs, correct, Judy?
Absolutely.
Okay.
And this is why and I'm not getting on you
because I hear this all the time.
Whenever one of us dies
at the hand of the police or a vigilante,
we'll come up with something
that Trayvon Martin smoked reefer
or Eric Gardner shouldn't have been selling loose cigarettes.
You'll hear every type of way to justify those deaths.
And that's why I'm going, you see my thing to you is,
even if he was on drugs.
I think some people are under the impression
that we're idolizing some of these people
as heroes when we're not.
We're really more focused on the incident
and the injustice of the incident
then the person, their background, how it happened
versus kind of why it could have happened
or what their background was
because to us it's two different avenues.
My question to you is, what do police officers do?
And not in this case,
because obviously this guy and he's charged with murder
and that's the way it should be.
They are up against a lot of bad people.
And now they're afraid to defend themselves
because as soon as they do, they're ridiculed for it.
All we want them to do
is give us the same opportunity to surrender
and comply that they do with white people.
Let me give you a couple of instances.
If you remember, a guy named Dylann Roof
shot up nine black people in a church.
They took him to Burger King alive.
The Aurora killer who killed the people in the theater,
they took him alive.
I got a young man by the name of Tamir Rice,
12 years old in Ohio.
They pull up on him within less than two seconds, Judy,
that 12-year-old young man was dead.
So, my question is,
well, how did you not give him a chance to comply?
"Get on the ground, throw your weapon down."
You could have did that from the PA.
So, all we want is the same respect
and the same type of compassion
and a chance to surrender.
Give me a chance to at least go,
"Sir, I'm not doing anything.
Let me live and I can plead my case."
I understand what you're saying.
I think that the examples that you're using,
you're giving me a few.
There are more examples of black-on-black crime
than what you're giving me right now.
Wow.
And it's true.
Black-on-black crime is over the top.
I can give you all type of examples if you want me to.
I feel if they can stop doing that to each other,
I truly believe things would be better.
I wanted to interject because I've said this to people
and I want to get your take on it.
Black people know that gang bangers, drug dealers
and thieves kill and rob people.
We don't get when police do it.
You see? That's the difference.
Like, if you want to talk about black-on-black crime.
I got you. It's a problem.
It's an issue, but I don't expect a police officer
to be that gun wielding and shooting me down
like the gang banger did.
Like, I can't win.
I'm going to be honest with you.
I didn't see the whole thing.
It was disturbing enough
what the first police officer did.
I'll say this.
The other police officers should have said,
"We have him. He's under cuff, let's go."
That's wrong in my mind.
What they did was wrong.
Like, they should have stopped him
and put him in the court system to defend himself.
I believe that.
But I also believe
that not every white cop out there is a bad person
and only wants to kill black people.
Like, I don't believe that.
I think they try to do their job
and it's gotten a lot difficult to do that
because of these situations.
So, I understand that,
but I also know that they need to step up like you just said.
If they see a wrong doing, they need to step up.
What you're seeing on the news is the filming of it.
There's a bunch of black people getting beat up, killed,
choked out and abused
that you will never see because it wasn't taped.
But this has been going on for decades.
We've been being beaten and locked up for no reason
and the whole nine.
But now we're seeing it more on tape.
There's always an epidemic or a protest or something
right before an election.
I think that has something to do with it.
Black people are getting killed all the time.
It doesn't happen just in an election year.
When Sandra Bland or Trayvon Martin
or Eric Gardner or Freddie Gray.
Like, these things are happening
every several months, right?
You see it on the news.
So, it has nothing to do with an election cycle.
This just happened to happen at, you know, during this time,
but what's to stop something from happening in October,
right before the November election?
- Oh, it's going to. - It makes no sense.
You know why it's going to, Judy?
I absolutely believe it will.
Because it happens so often,
we can almost predict it'll be another video that comes out
at some point of somebody getting dragged around
or beaten around.
Why now? Like, why?
Because there's no excuse now.
But it made even white people say,
"He was not resisting arrest. He was already in handcuffs.
There were multiple cops around."
This was the one that you couldn't deny.
Like, you could go, "Well, Trayvon this.
Eric Gardner wasn't in cuffs, yet.
Rodney King wasn't in cuffs, yet. They were still a threat."
That's all I hear.
All I hear from my counterparts, white people,
they always can find a way to say,
"Well, you know, he bad guy."
With this one, even though George Floyd might have had
a background and history,
when he was being killed as you even pointed out,
he was subdued on his stomach, in cuffs, surrounded.
He wasn't going anywhere.
So, for him to die that way,
even the majority of everybody who saw that tape,
I don't know too many people that wouldn't agree with me
because at the end of the day if you're unarmed
and you weren't really a threat, you should be alive.
So, if they look me up and I'm driving and they pull me over,
they're going to find out I have a concealed carry permit.
Okay.
How do you think they should interact with me at that point?
Do you have a concealed weapon on you?
Yes or no?
You say, "Yes, sir, I do. It's right here."
Okay, you're being honest. They're being honest.
Hey, Judy, you remember Philando Castile?
Philando Castile was in another Michigan resident,
had a concealed carry permit.
He's not even driving.
His girlfriend's driving.
Tells the cop, "I have a concealed carry permit.
When I reach inside this glove compartment, you know,
you're going to see the weapon,
but this is where my insurance and registration is."
He opens up the glove compartment,
cop puts one right into his heart.
- And he was honest and open. - There's a bad one.
See, but that's our thing.
Like, even when we're honest and open
and totally transparent, we catch it.
Okay, let me ask you a question.
Who should police the police?
The citizens,
the same people that are putting mayors in their seats,
chief of police in their seat.
All you have to do is get what we call a citizen's panel.
It doesn't have to be a ton of people.
It could be six or seven people from different backgrounds
and let them look at the different scenarios
and say, "Okay, I think we got a bad egg here."
Scenarios, background, education.
Like, you just want some ordinary citizen
to start policing the police?
Don't those same ordinary citizens
act as jurors in the courtroom?
That actually scares me.
What scares us is a prosecutor
who works with the police
every single day to prosecute crimes,
now calling himself being unbiased and neutral
policing that police officer that killed my son.
Because of course you're not really neutral.
You're not non-biased. You work with guy every day.
You guys do coffee, go bowling.
How do I know you're going to give me justice for my kid?
We gotta do better. We can do better.
We just gotta figure out the system to put in place
to make and hold people accountable
and force them to do better,
because we can't keep doing this. We can't.
I agree.
What I got out of this whole conversation
is two people both believe things are wrong or right,
things need to be fixed.
And I believe we had a really good conversation.
And coming up with a good solution
from learning from Martin.
Yeah, and I feel that this conversation
was beneficial also because now I get a chance
to kind of see where people are coming
from outside of my community.
And I want to thank Judy
for her time taking part in this conversation,
being open and honest with us because it was great.
Thank you, Martin.
I agree.
It was really good.
Nice to meet you and hope to talk to you again.
Nice to meet you, too. It was a pleasure.
- Thank you. - You, too.
I don't know where to start with this one, Freddie.
I think that there is a whole lot to unpack here
and I am, you know,
grateful for the opportunity.
Because I think we checked a lot.
This conversation checks a lot of the boxes
that are... on popular belief
and on websites and comment threads.
So, firstly, I would like to point out we all know it.
The go-to distracting move
when talking about putting its boot on the neck of citizens
if those citizens happen to be black is the ever-distracting,
what about black-on-black crime?
I would say that whenever you're on a topic in a conversation
and the other people needs to change the subject,
they are conceding the point.
Yes.
As Martin rightly points out, crime is proximate.
Okay?
People eat, drink, worship,
often work in proximity to where they dwell.
So, there's that 85 percent of white people are killed
by the hands of other white folks.
There's very little difference in terms of those stats.
Again, George Floyd's murder as they were talking about,
there was no black-on-black crime involved.
You're just as effective talking
about how ham sandwiches are made.
She also, I want to know what you think about the default,
"I have black friends" move.
Classic, classic.
What does that mean?
When do we employ that?
When we're talking about sexual assault.
Oh, well my sister is a woman.
That has nothing to do with what we're talking about.
Is there some early elements of the conversation
that stood out to you?
Before we even jump into this,
I just want to say how important it is to really see
some of these conversations play out in real time.
Yeah.
Because you mentioned echo chambers earlier
and how we all are sort of you know
are inundated with our own echo chambers.
And it's all down to like who we follow on Instagram,
who we follow on Twitter, our news sources.
Like, everything is pretty much
like in line with, I think, our worldviews.
And so you know when you see things floating around like,
"Well, what about black-on-black crime?"
And, well, "You know, he was on drugs
so that's why it was okay," you know, things like that.
Those are all just kind of
like whispers in the air for me
because I don't surround myself with people
who speak that way or who talk
about these topics in that way.
So, to see it play out in real
time like this with Judy and Martin
was honestly really enlightening to me.
It was very triggering, you know,
throughout multiple parts of the conversation,
but I was like wow, like these really, you know,
people really have these beliefs
and are passionate about them.
It's not only like, "Well, I don't really know the answer,
but like this is what I think."
It's like, no Judy was very, very confident in her outlook
and on her view with these scenarios.
And so it was just, you know, it was really interesting
to also watch Martin
so gracefully, you know, give his point of view.
If I took anything from this conversation,
it's just how to be— it was how to graceful and patient.
This is a perfect example of the role that bias can play
and the connective thread between a simple bias
and the loss of life and violence upon someone else.
If I am predisposed, if I have been taught,
indoctrinated is a better word,
to believe that black people are more prone to violence,
black men are more prone to violence,
they're more likely to be criminals,
which is to say less worthy
of the rights which they are promised
and pay taxes for and its woven
into the fabric of this nation.
If they're more likely to be violent,
then when I see an example or really not see anything.
When I hear somebody on a comment thread
say they had a criminal history,
I'm more likely to make that pathology
to be violent offenders
when in the history of the world
clearly there is no one close
to as violent as the white male or white society.
It's not even close.
When you hear a new word,
you start hearing that word everywhere.
So, you're antennas only up for specific dog whistles,
specific catch phrases, specific terms and visuals.
So, she has this little mini-box of five clichés
and three sentences that just rotate.
Well black-on-black crime.
Well, that doesn't apply here.
Okay, but he had drugs in his system and he did crime before.
Okay.
Give me a list of crimes that are punishable
by spontaneous public execution.
There are none.
We have system of law and order.
You said we should follow it.
We should let the system take its course.
Why aren't we doing that when their skin is dark?
When white violence doesn't count,
but black violence can be amplified at any moment,
when black life never matters
because its value can be snatched away
in a second with a Tweet,
but white value is perpetual because its best effort,
it always has value whether you're shooting up a school
or a church,
you're given the benefit of the doubt.
It's a really tough mountain to climb
and Martin did an excellent job trying.
But I'm glad that we have this conversation on display
where you really have to be open
at the beginning of a conversation
to learn something.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think, too, Professor L'Pree had sort of flagged
the term "aversive racism"
which I think is really evident in this conversation
with Judy and Martin which is aversive racism
is the lack of contact with a group
creates stereotypes, right?
And so, I think it's pretty clear that like, you know,
Judy says that she has black friends, right.
That does not mean that she has made a habit
of surrounding herself with people who are unlike her own
in order to learn and sort of break down
some of those stereotypes throughout life.
So, you know she was saying that after The Look,
after they watched The Look
she was saying, "You know, I've never rolled up my windows
or locked my door except for when I was in Cabrini-Green."
Safety.
Yeah, for safety, right.
And I think, too, white people really like to,
instead of saying black neighborhoods,
they'll say, high-crime areas
which is just code for black neighborhoods
because of redlining
and because of the history of this country
in really segregating these communities
in ways that black people specifically cannot control.
So I think that was something that really stood out to me.
There was just so many points.
You know, I think that we could talk about this conversation,
you know, for hours
because there's just so much to unpack here.
But I think Martin did a really
good job of drawing parallels
to white criminals and how they're treated
versus how black suspects are treated.
And I think one of the quotes that stood out to me the most
was, "Give us a chance to surrender",
like they did Dylann Roof.
I want to just try to put it concisely
what Judy is a real example of...
is how your bias can come to any case
and remix and repurpose the entire experience.
If my bias for an unarmed, handcuffed man on the ground
is, "Well, he was violent."
Yeah, but not this time.
"Well, he had a history."
Yeah, but that wasn't part of this.
"Yeah, but he could have."
If you're lobbing, we weaponize our bias.
It gives a pre-checklist instead
of actually being present
and letting that person be a human being.
It really is worthy of examination.
And we have folks just like her in our family,
a lot of us do.
And that is where there's a real opportunity
to break some new ground here because what are you without,
as Toni Morrison said, "What are you without your racism?
Are you any good?
Is there a reason you're hiding from it?
What are you without it?
What if we can actually just talk about these individuals?"
That's the challenge.
So, for our next pairing, we're going to be joining Eric
who's based in Florida.
And Danielle who's based in Illinois.
And you guys, I was really nervous going into this one,
so tune in.
Hi, Eric.
Hi. Hi, Danielle.
I just saw your name pop up there.
How are you?
I'm great. How are you?
I am well.
So, what do you do for work?
I am in education.
So, I teach at a law school and I'm a lawyer by trade.
Oh, so I gotta watch what I say.
- No, that's awesome. - No. Please don't.
That's awesome.
I've been a cop for 20 years.
Okay.
So, my least favorite place is the courthouse.
Don't feel intimidated by the space.
Oh, please let him be the judge.
[chuckles]
Now, I love it.
That gave me chills. I like that.
I was taken by this black man
kind of going about his everyday life
and experiencing what I would call micro aggressions
just from the look.
And people automatically having certain opinions
or thoughts about that individual.
And, you know, changing their demeanor
because of just seeing him as a black man or black person.
You see that happen.
You know, people who drive through neighborhoods
and lock the doors.
If you lock them because it's a high crime area, okay.
If you lock them because you see somebody just walking,
totally different.
You know one thing that troubles me, Eric,
sometimes is seeing the different ways
in which officers have handled black offender,
I guess I'll call it an offender.
A black offender versus a white offender
and how white offenders can,
you know, honestly cut the complete fool
and still be arrested where, you know,
black folks just don't have that kind of experience.
And they end up harmed often and sometimes dead.
It's not acceptable what the
officers historically have done,
but I also, looking at the sheer number of encounters
you know that hey, not all of them are bad.
Eric, what is it like to be a police officer right now?
It's horrible.
Because we get judged
and this is going to sound very familiar,
by what others have done.
I understand as a police officer
this is kind of, you know, this is unfortunate.
You know, one of the things I would say
about the George Floyd situation
is there were officers that were surrounding him, right?
And none of those officers did anything.
And I'm not saying that every one police is like that
but what I am saying is
it seems like when officers see something wrong,
there is this kind of code of silence.
Like, you know, I'm not going to do anything about it.
And I think that also impacts
the perception of police officers.
If more officers said,
"We will not stand for this. This is not acceptable.
We do not want to perpetuate discrimination.
We don't want to perpetuate racism.
That is not who we are and what we are about
as opposed to kind of holding on to that themselves."
But not stepping up and, you know,
and breaking that code of silence.
Oh, I agree.
I think some of the things
that stop officers from saying something
is that if the person they observe doing it
is a senior officer,
they think well I'm a junior officer, what do I know?
Or if they're of higher rank,
well, one day I want to be to their rank
so I want them on my good side.
When these type of horrific events
go on in other parts of the country,
we talk about it because the best thing we can do
is to not have it happen to us.
But it's to talk about, well, why did this happen?
How can we keep from this happening here?
So, regarding the incidents around George Floyd,
I haven't seen enough to say, of the entire video to say
that officer did that to that man because he was black.
What I've seen was an officer who had a subdued subject
who was not flailing around on the ground,
keep his knee and obstruct his airway
from what I observed
and there was no need for that.
I hear you and understand the perspective of the department,
but I would just— I really challenge that
because I think that, you know, we're talking about bias.
And people have biases and police officers have biases.
I just find it hard to believe
that had he been a white man
or even a white and certainly a white woman,
the officer directly involved with the knee on his neck
as well as the officers that were surrounding,
that were standing there looking on
would have handled it that way.
Can you imagine that officer
having his knee on a white woman's neck
like that for 10 minutes?
That would not have happened, right?
I'm going to tell you,
I agree that do I think that I would see it
as a white lady and the officer knee?
No. I agree with you.
But you look at the Orlando police sergeant.
She was a black female.
She got murdered by a black suspect,
but there was no Black Lives Matter movement for that
and that's what frustrates me is you don't see
the outcry of police officers getting shot and killed.
And sometimes I scratch my head and I wonder.
I'm like why is that?
People have kind of misunderstood
that Black Lives Matter was an affirmation directly related
to black people being killed by the police.
If you are an officer and that is your line of work,
there's a potential
that someone you know may harm you,
may kill you whether they're black, white of what have you.
But the expectation in terms of on the flipside,
if you are a citizen
is that you will not be killed by the police.
You know, like you said.
We sign up.
We put on a badge, a gun
and we go to the work with the expectation to come home,
but the reality is you may not.
And a large part of me feels extremely sad
that the Black Lives Matter movement
has got intertwined with rioters because that's not it.
There's a big difference
between protesting and rioting.
You know, black folks are an oppressed community.
And we've been oppressed
for the 400 years that we've been here.
And, you know, slavery, all kinds of policies
that negatively affected our lives
and our abilities to live the American dream.
People have to understand the history
to really understand why those feelings are so deep seated.
When I think about, you know, what happened in Tulsa
and what happened in Rosewood where, you know,
black people who were sustaining their communities
and were thriving economically
were bombed and slaughtered by white people.
We have to keep in mind all of these experiences
so when you're looking at these people out there
who are protesting peacefully, who are rioting,
who are looting,
I think that it's all a combination
of just that frustration
however it went down,
it's gotten the attention that its needed to get.
So, I know that I'm anti-looting,
but I'm pro-protesting.
Okay, so why loot?
And I said, okay, because I've heard people say,
"We'll they're stealing,"
the looters are stealing
from the communities which they live in.
And then I saw something else that said,
"Property can be replaced, lives can't."
So, then that got me thinking.
So, if I'm a looter, other than just personal greed,
I'm stealing from a store.
The store typically has insurance.
So, the store will be made whole,
but I'm getting my media attention like you said.
I'm getting, you know,
I'm getting noticed whether it's good or bad
I'm getting noticed.
As much as I don't agree with it,
the insurance companies pay out.
Well, if you're paying out more money than you're bringing in,
that's a problem for business.
That's a problem for the COOs, the CEOs and who runs them?
Typically powerful white men.
How do they get in business?
Who do they know?
Typically politicians.
So, do I try to look at as that, that a looter is saying,
"This is the only way
I can get the powerful person's attention,
white, black, Hispanic, typically white,
if you look at the makeup of congress,
this is how I get their attention."
Do I agree with it? Absolutely not.
Have I tried to understand it? Yes.
That's great that you have tried to understand
and just broaden your perspective on it.
The recourse that people have to change unjust systems
is protesting, advocating, doing policy work
and trying to get to the root causes
of some of these issues,
so people are in the streets.
They're angry.
They're rioting because they're trying to get awareness
and attention to this issue
because for so long they've gone
through these different kind of measures of change
and recourse without action really being taken
or without action taken to the extent that it needs to be done.
To tell people how they should protest
and what they should do and what's appropriate
and what's not appropriate I think is out of line.
This country was founded by people who protested.
You know, the Boston Tea Party and all of these things,
they looted and tore things up and so on,
you know the feeling of desperation,
the feeling of not having is what pours
into the looting part of it
or the rioting part of it.
One of the things I'd love to see
is not just, hey we're here and we want change,
but what is acceptable.
Now the new thing is the disbanding and defunding
of police departments is the pushing.
What does a real reform look like?
What does defunding a police department look like?
The core that is about money.
Since we're paying them, we want accountability.
If money from policing is diverted to education,
you know, wouldn't that be helpful for the police?
I like that because it makes me go,
okay so it's maybe not a hundred percent a bad thing.
What can I do to say this is a step in the right direction?
One thing is just kind of
being educated on these issues.
You know, there's all kinds of ways to address,
to learn about bias because we all have them.
And there are not more officers
that are stepping up to say no.
This is not how these
situations should be addressed.
And this is, you know,
this is a result of, you know, a bias or whatever it is,
but officers taking on this issue.
I agree that you have got
to have a sense of this is the job you want to do.
Don't let anybody call anything into question.
Do the right thing all the time.
Thanks, Eric, for this opportunity
and joining in this very important conversation
that needs to be had.
We need that.
We are all dependent on each other for, you know,
having some actionable things take place.
We know that there is a process
that needs to get started.
But what I can tell you is I certainly appreciate you.
You represent the City of Chicago very well
so they should be very proud because I am a better person
for spending the last couple of hours with you.
Thank you, same here.
So, one of the first things that jumped out at me
in this conversation just at the outset,
I just want to have a through line
that several of these other conversations we have seen
this through line of one of the participants reacting
to The Look video
by mentioning whether they like it or not,
whether they agree with it or not.
And man, Eric really took me on a journey there sometimes
where my assumption based on what he does for a living
as a Deputy Sheriff
or maybe just the direction of his language sounded
like he was going to land somewhere
but he kind of took us on a ride
and actually had been quite thoughtful about,
he kind of took us through behind the curtain
as to how he processed things and weighed pros and cons
in an interesting way that was a little more fleshed out
than I think folks often do.
So, I actually appreciated
that a couple of times in the conversation
around has he broke down the rationale
or end result of so-called looting.
Yeah, yeah.
I think, too, something that jumped out
from jump in this video
was that as soon as Danielle told him
and revealed that she's a lawyer,
you could sort of see Eric's reaction to that.
And I think that, you know,
I think he was a little bit intimidated
By the fact that she's a lawyer
and they would be engaging in this conversation about bias.
And so, I do wonder
and if she had a different occupation
or if he a little bit more comfortable
and less like feel like he needed to stay on his toes,
would he have spoken to her
or spoken about this topic in the same way?
Eric made a distinction between pro-protesting,
"I'm against looting", but understanding that we can't—
when we talk about policing the major through line
is never the worst among them as the headline.
Protesting has very little to do with white agitation
and so-called anarchists people
bussing themselves into protest
to obviously be destroying property
and instigating property damage.
But it detracts.
It's easily,
if you're not interested in the subject matter,
detracts from the story.
It has to be addressed in a dominant fashion.
It eats up time and energy instead of talking
about the real frustration.
But he did land on an interesting point about looting
actually being the only way to get some people's attention.
Yeah, which was great.
It seemed like he had really thought it through
versus just saying, like, you know,
"These folks are taking advantage of the situation.
They're stealing. They're doing X, Y and Z."
Which is the way to deflect from the actual issue at hand
and I think that it's important
that we keep calling that out, these deflections
that keep coming up in these conversations.
And when we are in a time which we are now
of really having a public conversation
about transformational change around policing,
we're talking about defunding the police.
People are trying to figure out
what exactly that does and does not mean.
In order to really be present for
and active in that conversation,
you do need to understand some of the context
that they're laying out.
So, that's a step towards saying,
okay, if this is not working in
the way it claims to be working,
if it was we wouldn't have to talk about it.
If people felt both protected and served,
we'd be on to a different topic.
We defund things all the time.
We defund education, we defund health care,
we defund public assistance.
We reduce funding in those departments.
And I felt like Eric really started in a good place
and that he was open
and would be open to kind of understanding
that we actually have a lot of these mechanisms in place
and as a police officer I think he embodies
what a lot of deputy sheriffs or police officers,
however you define law enforcement in that case,
they know they're not the ones to call for.
They're exhausted.
They know they're not the ones
to call for mental health crises
or when you lost your dog
or for a neighbor's arguing with each other
about the sound or a driver
who pulled over to fall asleep.
You know, they know they're not the one
that they're spread thin on these issues.
And if they're only trained
to enforce criminal code with various forms of violence,
we're doing us all a favor by taking that off their plate
and putting that into a safer place.
So, I was glad to see that he was open
to kind of wrestle with an idea
and not have an easy, deflective quip.
Mm-hmm.
And I wanted to really quickly just touch on the idea
of around morality as a police officer or as a deputy sheriff
or just working in that field in general.
One thing that stuck out to me
was Eric was saying that when all else fails,
or, you know, if anything's ever in question,
I teach my trainees to always do the right thing.
And that is, it's too broad of an idea
when people's lives are in your hands, right.
So, it's like you know we're sure
that the police officer who was on George Floyd's neck
thought he was doing the right thing.
Sure.
Your bias directly affects what you think in that moment
is the right thing to do.
So if we're not all addressing our biases
and because they have the power to, you know,
really craft and mold the outcomes of these situations,
there's a larger conversation
that needs to be had within these police departments
because you know I mean, it all starts with bias.
And across the board can truly affect
whether someone lives or dies.
All right, let's dive into our next conversation.
We have Fred calling in from Pennsylvania
and we have Paul from Colorado.
There we go.
Sweet.
Hey, Fred, how you doing?
Good. How are you doing, Paul?
Oh, just peachy, man. [laughs]
Where you from?
Oh, you're a handsome lad.
[laughs] Thank you.
I am originally from Montreal.
Married with children?
I married a Puerto Rican women two years ago.
Out of that I got a 22 and a 21 year old.
They're gorgeous kids.
Very blessed.
Good, nice.
My oldest son's an engineer
and my daughters go to private school.
And my oldest, next oldest son was going to private school
as well for a while.
So, we're fortunate to be able to provide our kids with...
Yeah.
...you know, that kind of education.
Let me intercept here on what you just said that
"We're very fortunate that we can do this".
What does that mean?
That means that I grew up in a pretty rough neighborhood.
Okay.
I had very serious run-ins with the police as a child.
I've been arrested four times by the police.
I've been roughed up by the police several times
and had the unfortunate experience
of burying over 50 kids from gang violence.
And then, I had a kid die in my arms in '91.
And so, I've known death a lot.
And so, I say fortunate
because I've been able to ascend
in the job market in our region.
I'm the first black CEO
of the company I'm currently in charge of.
I can't relate to what you're talking about
because where I come from, we don't have these issues.
The biggest problem I had growing up as a kid,
it wasn't race for me.
I grew up French, okay?
I didn't learn to really speak English until I was 12.
Most of my education was all in French.
But my name was English.
That caused problems at school.
I got into a lot of fights in the schoolyard,
allies or whatever
because I had an English name
and I lived in a French sector.
A lot of bombs were going off in English sectors.
And my mom was very concerned about that
because I was going to school in an English area.
Then I ended up moving back to Colorado in 1996
and I've been here ever since.
I can't agree to a lot of the visuals I just saw
because that's just not who I am.
I've never been a part of that, never will.
And so, I find it disturbing.
And I think the idea, the deep idea has really not improved.
For me, unfortunately I resonated very much
with the video,
in particular him being a judge.
I have some level of recognition
in the City of Pittsburgh
and so actually I get treated differently
if I come into a place and I'm dressed down.
People don't even speak to me,
people that have known me for years.
And so, people are used to this suit being me.
I would say from a context perspective,
there has always been slavery all around the world
for millennia.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
The kind of slavery that took place in America
is the only one of its kind, chattel slavery.
For 246 years,
America used black people from the continent,
from sun up to sun down,
to create a super power in less than 200 years.
After 246 years of slavery,
it was followed by a 135 years of institutional racism.
Jim Crow laws, redlining, making it illegal for blacks
to have the same benefits of their white counterparts
even after they went to fight in the world wars.
And now in America
we have 55 years of alleged freedom and equity
which many of us in America don't see that way.
And I can tell you that my experiences
as a black man with education,
having went to school several times,
I am challenged every day by microaggressions.
I'm challenged when I walk in a store.
I know that feeling of sitting in a restaurant
and people being directed to sit near you.
And they go, "No, I want to sit over here."
What?
And you have to tell your child
it's okay when it's not okay.
And so, Paul, I was very interested
and struck by your experiences
and also struck by the fact that that video moved you
because you never had that experience and that's not you.
But were you able to, for a moment,
put yourself in that person's shoes and window
and just wonder for a brief moment
what that might feel like?
Well, let me interject here.
First of all, it's not that it didn't move me.
It did.
It pissed me off.
You know, Fred, I'm just not seeing
that this country as I mentioned earlier, is really improving.
Have you ever thought about,
or had to give the talk to your daughter
or to your new—
Son?
—children in your marriage about any kind of interaction
where their race or beliefs might cause them
some social discomfort or be challenged by authorities?
If I had to have a conversation with my kids about this,
it would be hard for me
because I wouldn't know pretty much where to start
because I mean, I haven't had this problem.
But you know what?
You have to because they're being bombarded with this
24 hours a day.
How I treat and talk to my children is very much reflective
of the environment that they walk into every day.
One of the most difficult conversations
I've had to have with my son is how to conduct yourself
when the police pulled him over
and they will get pulled over.
My most difficult conversation was years ago
having my oldest son drive one of my vehicles
and be pulled over by the police and harassed physically
because he was driving a very expensive vehicle.
Then the officer threw him up against the vehicle
and started harassing him
about what does his father do or mother do?
And so, you know, that really hurt us.
What you see today in the marching
and the sit-ins and the protesting
is really saying enough is enough.
You've had your foot on our necks
literally for 400 years
and we're not going to take it anymore.
Well, you know, I'm going to say something
about the protest movements, you know.
The change or the difference I found is that they became—
this became global.
You know, you were having different countries in the world
that were walking around with banners
on what happened to George, even my country.
Now, I've got some interesting feelings about this looting
and all the stuff that's going on behind the protestors
because that's not the message.
So, I think that that's something
that might have been thrown in the wash and tainted.
Why don't you look at the other side of the fence, you know?
The police department, you know, what they're dealing with.
Okay? They got a job to do,
but I think some of them unfortunately take that badge
and the equipment that comes with it a little too seriously.
And unfortunately, there's a problem there.
And it's everywhere in this country, okay?
We know.
We got a sideline of cops that work together as a unit.
They back each other up
and they're all part of a little clique
that sometimes causes problems like this.
And they feel because they have this uniform
they can take all this authority.
One of the things I honor about people
is when people are transparent and fully vulnerable
and I think that's something
that men in particular struggle with.
Our bravado, our disposition,
the things people expect us to do and focus on.
It really has created a false sense of control for us.
And so, you know, Paul, I feel like we come
from two different sides of the world.
There's some similarities in how we were raised.
I'll tell you something right now
in comparison to where we relate again,
is that growing up I didn't have anybody to guide me.
I didn't have a father, okay.
I didn't have a father to guide me,
to give me wisdom, to teach me to basically even back me up.
So, my whole life as a kid, I had like a mask on.
And I was always trying to be something that I wasn't
because I didn't feel I was good enough.
It's funny, the more that you talk,
the more we have similarities.
I grew up from a broken home.
My mother and father divorced when I was young.
Yep.
Because when you allow yourself
to listen to another person's perspective,
you realize that many of their experiences mirrors your own.
But when you dig deeper, and this is implicit biases,
I can look at him and he can look at me
and go, "Hey, that's a black guy."
I could go, "That's a white guy."
But after an hour and a half, two hours,
we're two different people who happen to have one brown skin,
one white skin.
But the people who possess those skins
are not defined by black or white.
And I think that's the importance
of having conversations about bias and implicit bias
is that it allows us to expand our own horizons
in a way to push us to new levels of understanding,
appreciation and patience
that is required for us to figure out
how we're going to turn this thing around.
I need Paul.
It's the totality of all of our experiences that are going
to offer solutions to the global phenomena we face.
I can just see us, you know,
bumping into each other in a bar
and we would have this conversation.
And I'm pretty sure you'd probably say,
"You're not from here, are you?"
And but there should be more people that are not from here.
When you find a kindred spirit,
it's really about honoring
their humanity in ways that allows the DNA of the exchange
to the conversation to live in a part of you
so that you always honor the person who moved you
or filled your vessel
with a different fluid that allows you
to have more diversity of thought, action and beliefs.
So, I appreciate that and thank you.
As I would say, "A la prochaine fois, mon ami,"
which means, "Until next time, my friend."
Oui.
As long as you don't say it twice.
That means, "You gotta go somewhere".
All right, man. Love you, buddy.
All right, love you, man. Appreciate you.
- Take care. - Yes, sir.
- Okay, bye-bye. - Bye-bye.
Well, that was a cute little ending to a conversation.
I felt like they had this like really beautiful camaraderie
and almost like a brotherhood by the end
which was really refreshing and nice to see.
Just a reminder you guys, these are strangers.
This was their first time ever speaking to
and meeting one another.
So the fact that they were able to share experiences
and sort of compare and contrast
and then you know end it on such a really loving note,
was really nice.
Yeah.
It was sweet.
I think that it's also an example
because they're very different.
They have very different experiences as were highlighted
through the conversation which we'll talk about
and some presuppositions and misunderstandings
of different understandings of reality.
But what it does show
is really for me the value of these conversations
because you start where you are.
It doesn't matter if you have 15
or 55, you start where you are
in terms of in terms of exposure
and wrestling with new ideas
being challenged on your position.
There is no too early in this case
we're talking about adults to have these conversations.
And I feel like Fred challenged Paul
on a lot of his presuppositions.
We talked about the aging up of black youth.
This making them—
you know, we've had studies that demonstrate
that there's after about nine, 10 years old
black minors become adults,
they get older than the way they actually are
to make them more threatening.
They are inflated.
Their persona has inflated
to make it more dangerous, menacing,
easy to be described as a threat.
These are things that Paul was familiar with,
but whenever he gets exposed to it,
he will be forever changed.
You can't unsee and unlearn historical context.
So that's really one of the beautiful things
about having these conversations.
I want to quickly jump into the idea of parenting
and sort of the difference between, you know,
how white people are raising their children
versus how black people are raising their children
and the conversations,
and how the conversations differ, right?
So, Paul was saying, you know, he wouldn't even know
where to start in terms of having these conversations
with his kids about racism, about bias, about prejudice
and how to be more aware of your own
so that you can make the lives of others,
who are different from you, better,
like help them have a little bit more of a better day
than they may have previously experienced
before coming in contact with them.
But then Fred was saying like after watching The Look
he was like, "Oh yeah, you know,
I can completely relate to all of these scenarios.
I've had the elevator door shut on me."
People have locked their doors when I've walked by
and, you know, and he wears suits for work.
So, he notices a real difference in how he's treated
when he's wearing suits
and then when he's out with his kids
and these microaggressions happen.
He has to sort of, you know, lay low,
not get too, you know, visually upset
and sort of to calm the situation
and to deescalate it, tell his kids,
"You know, it's okay. It's not a problem"
when it is a problem.
And I think that that's something
that I think that you know I can absolutely relate to
in terms of just sort of that, you know, how I was raised
versus I think, you know,
how some of my white counterparts were raised
who don't really deal with that.
Yeah, it's exhausting to have to consistently pace yourself
and be able to make it—
do I use all my energy on this now?
Do I change the whole experience in the room
or do I want to just get out of here and take a breath
and deal with it in the car or later?
The degree to which we don't have control
over the onslaught,
control over when the wave is going to crash on us
and what a luxury it is
to just not ever have to be confronted with this
or have to talk to your family about it
and just being able to go about your life
pursuing your dreams and interests.
And whether the realities of our experience
is not for you to agree.
It's not a matter of agree or disagree.
It's a matter of do I care or
do I not, and being interested.
I think a big takeaway for me
was also sort of had to do with the short film The Look.
And, you know,
black man walking through the world being mistreated.
And then the reveal at the end is that he's a judge.
But I think something to really highlight here
is that even if he was not the judge,
even if he was the bailiff or even if he was the custodian,
he still does not deserve to be treated
in any of those ways.
Even if people who belong in marginalized communities
are not stand-up citizens or aren't heroes,
they still deserve respect
and they still deserve to go home at the end of the day.
Decency, fairness and freedom
does not have to be re-earned
every time a black person steps outside of their house
when white people just get to be white.
All right.
Let's go into this conversation,
which really stood out to me.
This is between Kaylah who calls in from New York
and Angela calling in from California.
They're some gems.
Hi.
I'm Angela.
I'm Kaylah.
- Nice to meet you. - You too.
I feel like I have experienced
the look my whole life in high education,
in predominately white spaces,
like people assuming I don't belong somewhere
or wondering why I am somewhere.
For me what really stood out is having these stares.
And while I didn't grow up with that—
actually growing up it was quite the opposite,
no one seeing me as an Asian American.
And then now, in the time of COVID-19,
we go from invisibility to hypervisibility.
So when I walk out that door
I am hypervigilant of the ways in which I take up space.
If I sneeze, is someone going to give me a dirty look?
Are people going to scoot back when they see me
because I'm Asian?
And we too have been hurt by systemic injustice.
Yeah.
Everyone has their own biases,
everyone is biased in some way about something or somebody,
and then the line between just being biased and being racist
is like what you do after that.
I think it's important to talk about bias
because it dispels any taboo or stigma there is.
When you name it, when you call it out,
when you know what it is,
it kind of flashes a light on it.
It can no longer hide in the dark.
For my undergrad Capstone project
I did a case study on this woman.
This black woman who was in jail
and she was pregnant and she died in jail
because she had an ectopic pregnancy
and the officers and the nurses didn't help her.
The other inmates were saying like,
"Hi, can you hear her, she's like dying?"
and nobody did anything.
But in doing more research
we see that those same guards and nurses in that same jail
15 years earlier let the same exact thing happen
to another black women from the same exact cause.
When you're saying that too with the whole—
kind of the health disparities
between black and brown communities,
I'm thinking about the father of gynecology
perfected his fistula operation on slave women
without anesthetics.
Something that we talked about a lot in my classes
and in my extracurricular during my Master's
was that this kind of like general idea
that black children, and black women, girls in particular,
kind of seen as older than they are
and seen as like being able to withstand pain.
I think a lot of our understanding of this comes,
you know, growing up, is obviously in our history books.
And they don't talk about stuff like this
and they kind of paint the whole civil rights movement
as like, oh, Dr. King came and he fixed racism,
Rosa Parks fixed racism and now we're good, you know,
and kids are kind of growing up and they're like, you know,
they see these things happen and are like, wait,
but I thought like racism is fixed.
- No. - Yeah.
The first person to do the Rosa Parks thing
I guess and not get off the bus was this young,
dark-skinned girl who was pregnant,
but they didn't want her to be the face of the movement.
There's so many facets of bias and racism
within communities even, not just between communities.
My dad, he's very light-skinned and I tried to tell him one time
that colorism is a thing
and light-skinned privileges is a thing
and he was like, "No it's not.
When I go to places,
people will respect me because I'm me."
And I was just like, "Okay but"—
he almost couldn't recognize
that if we were to go someplace,
we wouldn't get the same reaction
because like me being a darker-skinned black woman
and him being a lighter-skinned man,
not only is there the lighter-skinned privilege,
but also just you being a man.
In a lot of spaces that holds a lot of weight.
I have also had a few conversations
regarding, I guess just like microaggressions.
One conversation was with my supervisor
because I experienced some microaggression at work.
And he is a white male.
He's in his 50s.
And first thing he says is,
"Angela, you know,
I will never be able to understand your experience.
I recognize that I am a white male,
but can you help me understand?"
And I literally broke down when he said that
because it was such a place of humility, that he took
and I strongly believe
that like the person in the conversation
in the room, that has the least power,
should not be the person to bring up
the hardest topic, right?
And I think that he created a space
where he recognized that
and he kind of lowered himself to elevate me.
I love that story.
My question for you
would also be like how does your community—
and I'm speaking specifically black community—
view Asian Americans?
I have personally seen and experienced
a fair amount of racism from—
I don't want to say the Asian community but specific people,
but I've also experienced the opposite.
But I do think that,
in particular when traveling abroad,
it's like something that I think about a lot,
just the way that anti-blackness is everywhere.
And, again, I don't think this is just in an Asian thing;
I think a lot of non-black communities
want to have the benefits of blackness,
but none of the other stuff that comes with it,
none of the negative things that come with it.
I think that there is a history of strife
between the Asian community and the black community
and I think a lot of it is designed.
The model minority, that term, that model minority term
was created by white people
as a way to perpetuate anti-blackness.
What the model minority myth is basically a term
that white people have created, saying that Asians,
you know, look how hard-working they are.
They are a group of people
that can pull themselves up by the boot straps.
Look how successful they can be in our society.
And then kind of pit that against the black community
and be like why aren't you doing anything?
If this group of immigrants can do this, why can't you?
To only justify like they're position of like,
oh, we're not racist; you're the problem.
Yeah.
So I think we must understand that,
how we've been used in that way,
like weaponized, you know, against the black community.
We have this like perpetual foreigner status.
We are a model minority until you're a perpetual foreigner.
It's kind of like the idea of like pet to threat.
Like we're good with you until like corona virus happens
and you're a threat, like your yellow peril.
Yeah, wow, yeah.
In kind of the beginning of the pandemic I guess,
I had like a little bit of a heated conversation
with a friend of mine
because he had been in Shanghai for work
and when he came back his coworker said something
like, "I hope you didn't bring anything back,
we're going to have to separate
one of the Asian American employees."
And he told me about it later and I said,
"Okay, so what did you say?"
And he said, "Nothing."
And I was so upset because in that moment
that person has enough either respect for you
or has enough of a relationship with you
to tell a joke like that,
then it's on you to use that position
to say, "Hey, this is not okay."
It's just unacceptable at this point
to not speak up about things,
especially when the other person is not in the room
to defend themselves.
I feel like you can't choose when to be like antiracist
because all these issues are connected
and all of these issues affect real human beings.
How do you think
Asian Americans can show up for black lives
in an Asian American way, however you perceive that?
For a start, I would just say like
using your own voice to speak out generally
and then also recognizing the privilege
that some people have to benefit
from black culture and blackness
but not have any of the bad implications of it.
And then also when you're elevated to a certain level,
making space for other people like you in that level;
whether you're a woman in the boardroom,
make room for other women in those spaces or make room
for other people of color in those spaces
I think is important.
I think often times the racial discourse
has been under a binary of black and white
and that kind of renders people in-between
as feeling invisible
or feeling irrelevant to the discourse.
And I think that's why a lot of people
feel like they can't speak up
because it's always about black and white, right?
Mm-hmm, yeah.
And so what would be helpful is to even offer space
to non-black people of color
to have those voices too,
because there is something
unique about their experiences.
That is going to contribute to allyship.
Just like I might expect friends of mine
to be allies for the black community,
I expect for myself to be an ally for other communities,
including the Asian American community,
including the Hispanic Latin communities,
including any and everybody.
I really enjoyed our conversation, Kaylah,
and like you said,
I think that we do have a lot in common
and everything that you were saying
my heart was like yes!
[laughs]
Even though our experiences are different,
that feeling of not being seen,
it's like the theme of our conversation, right?
Yeah, for sure.
Thank you for talking with me.
Yeah, thank you so much for everything
that you've shared with me.
I think it's just something that I really will treasure, thanks.
Bye!
I love the discussion around women's health.
They really sort of did a deep dive on women's health
in regards to especially black women, in particular,
and how our bodies have been used for centuries
within the medical field to test
and to prod and pry and figure things out.
And specifically from the "Father of Gynecology,"
J. Marion Sims,
he was perfecting his process on black women's bodies
only to blow up
and really start this whole sector of the medical field
that hadn't really been ironed out yet.
Black women are constantly kicked out of hospitals,
or left for dead and neglected
because they are not only not treated
as valuable human beings,
but their symptoms must be— that's also gendered—
because they must be hysterical because they're women.
They're considered to be stronger like oxen
because we're born here as chattels,
as pieces of animals, not human beings.
So all that stuff, all that bias, the slightest bias,
well, I just thought she was asymptomatic
or I thought that was probably just indigestion.
That is fueled by a bias,
like they're less reliable people
that can't be trusted to know themselves or others as well,
they're less mature.
Or they can handle it.
Yeah they're stronger.
Y'all, you're the face of undying strength.
Oh absolutely.
I mean, I can say myself, you know,
I've heard the term time and time again
in regards to the Asian American community
as being the "model minorities," that kind of thing.
And it totally makes sense, but I never—
like the way that she articulated
it was so eye-opening because she was saying
that term was developed by white people.
Absolutely.
In order to weaponize Asian people
to really separate the marginalized communities
from each other so that we can't band together
and we don't feel like we are sort of all in this together.
It's really a lot of that separation.
It's just like colorism and slavery,
white people in having the house slaves
and the field slaves,
really driving that friction between these communities.
One of the things
that I'm reminded of in this conversation
is, when I was studying the Black Panthers
I think in high school,
and learning about Japanese and Asian support
for the Black Panthers
and the term "yellow peril" and seeing it in (inaudible)
one of the first examples to me of one minority
standing up for the other.
We're used to seeing it around gender,
sexual orientation in this generation;
men standing up in the Me Too movement
and people advocating against sexual assault
or rape culture
or certainly straight cis culture standing up
and advocating for those in the LGBTQI community.
So we're used to the structures there,
but in minority community there
tends to be such isolation
which is both its strength and, in many ways,
possibly it's a weakness
because it creates separateness.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think it sort of brings
us back to the idea of allyship
versus appropriation
and making sure that if you are taking and appreciating
the cool parts of certain cultures
and like the parts that are like convenient,
that are fun right, that you're also doing research
and you're also acknowledging and amplifying the bad
that also goes on within those communities
in efforts to change.
So I think it's really just being intentional.
I think an example of that, Freddie, that has worked
to communicate this idea to others
is black women's hair styles have been banned,
made unprofessional, you can't wear them.
Or basically any hair styles that white folks can't do
are considered unprofessional for black women;
various braids, dreadlocks, twists,
Bantu knots, etcetera.
They're just considered unprofessional,
just happens to be primarily black hair expression.
But once you start seeing
pop-culture icons that are white
or not black wearing corn rows
and they rename them as something else
and they're on runways for Chanel and Dior
and durags and all these things
that we weren't allowed in
your establishment if we had our hair that way,
if we wore Tim boots, if we had drank this beer.
There's all types of codified racism, right?
An example of how to be an ally
is once you get in with that hair style
advocating that we all get in.
Yep.
If you just walk in and leave them all out in the cold,
that's when you're appropriating,
that's when you're actually not
down for anything but yourself.
Beautifully put.
Well, that completes this round of conversations.
I think we covered a lot of ground,
had people from all over the country being really personal
and having really productive conversations.
I think there's a lot to break down.
You're doing it in the comments of Dr. L'Pree.
And we've tried to do our part
by carrying you through some of these things
and sharing our thoughts, insights and experiences.
Yes.
Thank you so much to all the participants.
This was such a valuable experience
and hopefully all the viewers have enjoyed it
and learned something as well, because I definitely did.
Yeah, it does take some bravery.
I don't know if all of us would have signed up to go in blind
for these one-on-one conversations sight unseen
and for it to be broadcast around the world;
a hats-off to you all for stepping up
and being brave enough
to have some of these conversations.
I've taken a lot from this experience, I must say.
I think throughout we talked about
some of the commonalities that reared their heads,
not necessary good or bad
but in a way that really helps us
kind of understand exactly why we do exercises like this.
Do you have any ideas that stuck out to you
as particularly resonant
and where people showed some growth?
Yeah, I mean, I think everyone walked out, hopefully-
and I really do think based on what we were able to see,
I think everyone walked out of this experiment
a little bit more aware
and I think that, that is the goal.
You know, it's not about being perfect,
it's not about not having bias, we all have our biases.
So I think that it's really important
that you recognize them
and then what really counts
is what you do once you recognize them
and how you sort of affect change in the world.
I think a big take away for me
was also sort of had to do with the short film The Look
and, you know, black man walking through the world
being mistreated
and then the reveal at the end is that he's a judge.
And that's what we've seen so much of in this last year
is folks letting those biases tumble, tumble,
until they grow so heavy that they can't be stopped
and people just get out of control.
I'm glad that didn't happen in any of these conversations,
so we could actually have productive dialogue.
Really impressed by the ability
of a lot of our participants
to step up, to adjust, to not like what they hear
but still find a way to stay on an even keel
and have a productive conversation.
Yeah, I'm really happy we did this, and, again,
thankful to P&G and BuzzFeed for creating a space for it.
It's pretty damn smart.
Yes, thank you so much.
And it's been great chatting with you, Jesse,
and just getting to know you more
and really bounce ideas off of each other.
I mean I can't think of a better pairing with us, you know?
Yeah, for real, for real. Take this show on the road.
Yeah, yeah.
One of the main goals
for today's experiment and conversation
is for you to walk away with some more confidence,
some more tools, some more courage
to have similar conversations about bias
with the folks around you.
We've also created a resource guide for how to best have
these conversations and in, can't tress this enough,
a productive manner.
The only point is not just an exercise
in getting your bars off.
It's about actually how can you move the ball forward.
And it's not always the person I would say you're talking to.
It's the others that are listening as well.
So we've partnered with a few organizations
that are leading the charge in this department
and work with them to develop a detailed plan
to help in the best ways that we can.
And some of that includes learning
about historical and present-day experiences
that fuel systematic racism, that fuel inequality,
ways that you, where you live, wherever that is,
you can activate your local communities directly.
You can be an ally, an advocate, an activist.
You can certainly be antiracist.
We've talked before
and the choice that P&G put together
really does a good job of illustrating
that you can't be neutral on a moving train,
as Howard Zinn used to say.
You have to be anti-racist.
Donate to these organizations
that we've laid out that advanced equity and justice.
There are people that are spending their time and energy
on justice for folks, they need our support.
And they need our money obviously, also.
And we can't stress that enough.
All it takes is, in life these little pivot points,
where you're exposed to something
that you otherwise wouldn't,
might inform a lot of designs going forward.
So go ahead and share the video.
You could have some really interesting conversations,
not only for yourself but for others.
So go ahead and click the link on the video description
for a page with more details on how to learn,
how to activate and donate.
Freddie, I think we came, we saw, we learned.
I'm really pleasantly surprised.
I didn't know how this was going to go.
I was excited about it
but I'm proud of what we not only learned
and experienced, but shared with each other today.
So I want to thank you for your
time, energy, and expertise.
It really made a world of difference.
Yes. Thank you so much.
I honestly, I mean I loved talking about this stuff.
I could talk about it all day, so this is not work for me.
It's definitely something that is more than that for me,
so I'm happy to be a part of this whole experiment
and project as a whole.
And to everyone watching,
thank you so much for watching and stay safe,
stay loud, and create change.
That's right, peace.