Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Amanda Chu
Hi, guys.
(Audience) Hi.
Hi, Oprah, if you're watching. This is my only time for a shout-out.
But back to you guys ...
So, here in the audience, I know there are some parents, right?
Out of those of you who have kids,
how many of you have had "the talk" with them?
Right? Right?
It's weird, right? And it's awkward.
And I can guarantee you,
as someone who was once a child who received this talk,
it is just as awkward for us, if not more so, than you.
So I got that talk when I was about eight or nine,
and it was weird, guaranteed.
But when I was about 9 or 10 -
that's me -
I had an entirely different talk with my parents.
And I'm not really sure how they decided that this was the day to have this talk,
but one Sunday afternoon,
my dad said, "I have something to show you,
and afterwards, we're going to talk about it."
And then, he cued up a History Channel documentary,
and he said, "I don't want to hurt your feelings,
and I know that this might scare you,
but it's very important for you to hear."
So he cues up this History Channel documentary,
and the first images that I see are a very worked-up group of KKK members,
and then shortly after that, black men hanging from a tree.
Now,
he didn't make me watch the whole thing, because I was a very sensitive child.
But this talk that I had with my dad
is one that many black children in America have to have at least once in their lives,
about the discrimination and racism that they are likely to face at some point
because they are black.
And my dad said, "I don't mean to scare you,
but I just want you to know that someday,
someone might want to hurt you or even kill you because of who you are."
And I remember going to my bedroom afterwards
and laying on the bed
and staring at the ceiling and saying,
"Why do they hate us?"
Imagine that little girl wondering why people didn't like her already,
because of who she was.
Now, despite the severity of the talk,
when I went back to school on Monday,
I was pretty resilient, as most children are,
and I mentioned it to my friends,
and I realized that they were uncomfortable.
And I didn't realize until later
that is was because some of my friends
had not to have this particular kind of talk with their parents
about somehow confronting someone
who would one day think that they were beneath them
or want to hurt them because of who they were.
And after several other incidences that were similar,
I just realized that there were some groups
with whom I would not be able to discuss race.
And so, in groups
where even the differences between us were glaringly obvious,
I would avoid the topic
because I didn't want to make other people uncomfortable.
Fast-forward a few years from elementary school.
After I graduated from college,
I decided to use my journalism degree and teach English in South Korea.
It was an amazing experience,
in part due to the fantastic people that I met, from all corners of the world.
But moving across the world, let me tell you,
can come with just a few challenges,
as I'm sure you're aware.
How many of you have ever been the only one in a room,
the only one of your race, of your gender, of your sexuality?
How does it feel?
Some people are like, "Yeah ... it's fine. I felt alright."
For some people, it makes you feel incredibly vulnerable.
Now, imagine that feeling of discomfort combined with your dad's far-echoing words
of someone maybe not liking you simply because of who you are,
and take that feeling times a thousand
because you're the only one that looks like you pretty much in the whole country.
(Laughter)
Oh, goodness.
It was a fun time though, honestly.
But I did feel like I was under a microscope at all times.
I mean, I had some of the most interesting experiences.
Like, I was going up the escalator one day in e-mart,
and a man leaned so far over the railing to get a closer look at me
I thought we were going to make out.
I thought that that was it, I had a new husband, you know.
And some of my students would call me things like "Africa teacher,"
or "Jamaica teacher,"
which was easy enough to correct.
They just simply didn't know.
One time, I got into the taxi cab,
and the taxi driver was just as shocked to see me as pretty much anyone,
and after a frantic conversation in rapid-fire Korean,
he was asking to take my hand.
I thought, "In marriage? What's going on here?"
But it turned out that he just wanted to try to rub the brown off of it.
(Laughter)
Yeah! Yeah, that happened! It was real.
Now, that incident was more amusing than anything,
and these experiences that I had were more, you know, misunderstandings.
It wasn't like they were purposefully trying to hurt me at all.
Which was fine.
But there were other incidences where the whole purpose was to hurt me.
So, I go down to Ulsan one weekend to visit a couple of my friends.
Ulsan is this beautiful city on the southern coast of South Korea,
and they're far more used to seeing foreigners and tourists.
So I was really looking forward to a weekend
where fewer people stared at me, at least.
And my friends and I, we go out and we have a great time,
and we end the day in one of our favorite bars,
and all of a sudden, mid-conversation,
my friend to the left of me freezes like she has seen a ghost,
like someone has walked over her grave.
And she turns to the three Korean men sitting next to her
and starts yelling at them!
"What? What is going on?"
So, of course my friend and I are concerned.
Maybe they've said something inappropriate to her.
I'm kind of ready to throw down a little bit.
I mean, I'm small but mighty! Like, I'm ready to go!
(Laughter)
And instead,
she turns to me and she says, with tears in her eyes,
"They just called you a 'dumb nigger.'"
Yikes.
My other friend's reaction turns visceral.
Now she's yelling at them, now the bartenders are involved.
The guys are frantically trying to explain,
but it's just because they've been caught.
My friend who originally heard it has run to the bathroom, crying,
because she's so angry.
But you know what?
In all of the chaos, once I realized that that was the issue,
I got very calm
because this is exactly what I had been fearing since I was 10 years old,
watching a documentary
about the fact that someone might say exactly what this man had just said to me,
and I survived!
I always thought that such a blatant racist event
would feel like a knife through my chest.
And instead, it felt more like a paper cut -
quick sting,
little scar,
a reminder that this was not the worst that I would ever hear,
but that I would survive.
Now, not every part of my life in South Korea was this dramatic.
I'm just telling you guys the craziest parts.
Honestly, it was the greatest experience ever.
It really made me a stronger, more confident and resilient person.
And that newfound confidence
is probably why three months after I moved back home
and I got offered the job here in Bend,
I lapped at the opportunity.
It sounded like my dream job to be a storyteller,
and not just a news reporter.
And when I talked to my now boss on the phone,
he informed me that Bend was not very diverse ...
(Laughter)
And by "not very diverse,"
he meant that there were a lot of white people!
(Laughter)
Which was fine!
I said, "Well, you know, I moved to an entirely different country."
What was moving to an entirely different state?
The difference, ladies and gentlemen, is that, by moving to South Korea,
I had other people around me who recognized that feeling of outsiderness,
of feeling like a foreigner.
And here in Bend, I didn't really have that relatability,
and I was experiencing all of this in the public eye.
You see, journalists are not really allowed to have a public opinion.
We are unbiased figures of the community,
something that I've struggled with on certain topics,
but, for the most part, I understand,
because this is all that I ever wanted to do,
and it's part of the job.
But being the only one who looks like me on TV can pose unique challenges,
and I find myself putting myself into two categories quite often:
Anyssa the journalist and Anyssa the black chick.
Now, these two categories clashed for the first time last summer,
the same week that Philando Castile and Alton Stirling, two black men,
were shot and killed in two separate states,
the same week that five police officers were shot and killed in Dallas
in response to those shootings.
It was a tough week to be an American,
and it was certainly a tough week to be in news.
But the morning that I woke up,
two days after Alton Stirling had been shot,
to see the fairly graphic video of Philando Castile dying in his car,
I felt more exhausted than anything.
And I watched a few minutes of the video and got ready for work,
hopped in the car,
got ready to drive out,
and I got about 10 feet down the road, if that,
before I burst into tears.
And it's still very hard for me to talk about without getting emotional,
because these men are people that I could have known.
They could have been friends, family, co-workers that I'd had in the past.
And when I got to work and no one was talking about it,
I've never felt so alone.
I felt like it didn't matter, what had happened to these men.
I felt like I didn't matter,
and no one even noticed.
So after our morning meeting,
I asked our producer why we weren't covering the shootings,
and he said that we needed to find a way to localize it.
Fair enough.
So he suggested that we do man-on-the-street interviews,
and I wasn't that excited about it, but I figured, "Alright, here we go."
So my videographer and I go downtown,
and not many people were willing to talk about it.
You know, unpleasantness just doesn't belong
on a sunny summer day in Bend.
But we did get a couple who gave us a very modest opinion,
and I was feeling pretty good about myself
because I didn't think we were going to get anything.
So we were just talking about packing it in and getting ready to go,
when a man rolled up on his bike:
white man, mid-40s or so, very Bendite,
and he asked what we were doing.
So, we told him:
we were getting opinions on the shootings that had happened.
And he said, "I have opinions, but I don't want to say them on camera."
And we repeatedly asked him, "Are you sure? Are you sure?"
Because, you know, he wasn't going anywhere.
He definitely wanted to share his opinion.
And before we could get him convinced
that maybe he should just tell us while the camera was rolling,
he launches into this long opinion about everyone from Muslims to immigrants,
and then he tops it off by saying,
"I hate to say this, because you're black ..."
Let's just stop right there for a little mini lesson:
no good sentence ever ...
(Laughter)
starts with "I hate to be racist, but ..."
(Laughter)
So, he says,
"I hate to say this, because you're black,
but you guys are just built, stronger and faster,
and sometimes police have no choice but to shoot,
because they're afraid."
(Audience) Aww ...
"And black people are more violent, statistically.
You can look it up."
I go completely numb.
I cannot believe he has just said this to me.
And he said this to me on a sunny day, in the middle of downtown Bend,
as placidly as if he was telling me the sky was blue.
That was a knife.
So,
now that you guys have heard that,
a few weeks ago, we aired a story about me telling this exact same story,
and the backlash and comments were startling.
A lot of people were upset
over the fact that "I had made everyone in Bend look racist"
and said that they would never watch our show again.
Others suggested that if I wanted diversity,
I should just move!
And then, of course, there's the infamous "five black people in Bend" comment.
If there's anything I could take back,
it would be that.
I've just recently said that there were five of us in Bend,
and people countered with,
"I know at least 12 black people here in Bend."
(Laughter)
"13, even!"
(Laughter)
And to them I say, "I think you missed the point,"
and also kind of made mine.
Because it doesn't matter that you know 12 black people,
or 13 or 25 black people in Bend.
The fact that you can count us at all in a city of literally thousands
should give you pause.
I wasn't looking to give a Census Bureau count
or call everyone in the area racist.
My point remains
that we've got to find a way to comfortably talk about race.
As soon as I mentioned it, it was attack mode, defensive.
See, so often, people want to shy away from the fact that I'm black.
My least favorite phrase is "I don't see color."
And I get that you mean that you see us as equals,
but why can't you see me as your equal and black?
I would never say, "I don't see you as white."
(Laughter)
(Applause)
See, you should acknowledge that I'm black because I'm okay with it.
I want you to know that I am a professional woman
and I am black.
And I also want you to know
that even though there may be more than five of us,
sometimes I feel like the only one in a sea of literally thousands,
and that can be a real challenge, and exhausting,
on days when I'm already not having the greatest time.
I want you to know that living here in Bend
can be just as amazing as it was living in South Korea,
but it's also scary when I'm walking down the street
and I wonder who is walking past me
that's thinking the exact same thing that that man once said to me.
I don't want to leave you with oversimplified generalizations
like "all black people feel victimized," or "all white people are racist."
But in a community like Bend, where the majority is white,
I want to know: How can we learn together?
How can we hope to create a better community
if we never see each other's differences, but only our sameness?
If we take on each other's differences and see each other more fully,
think about how much better we can make not just Bend, but the world.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheering)