Translator: Kristina Radovic Reviewer: Ivana Krivokuća
The year was 1999. I was 13 years old.
The location - a sleepover with all of my best girl friends.
The occasion - well, the new Destiny's Child album
"The Writings on the Wall" had just come out,
and we felt like listening to it for an entire night on repeat
was the only way to mark such a glorious occasion.
(Laughter)
Since that faithful day in 1999,
my love for Beyoncé has only gotten stronger,
and I know I'm not the only one.
(Applause)
Yes, shout out to the Beehive.
If you don't know who - (Laughter)
if you don't know who Destiny's Child is,
this was the girl group that Beyoncé was a part of
before she started her solo career.
Since then, Beyoncé has grown to be one of the best artists of our time.
With over a 100 million records sold, she's won 20 Grammys;
she's become the most nominated woman in Grammy history;
she has sold out world tours;
she has more statistics and has broken more records
than I'm going to use for my entire time today.
But Beyoncé is a woman at the top of her game,
and America has loved her.
On February 6, 2016, Beyoncé released a new single "Formation,"
complete with a music video
and the next day a Superbowl halftime performance.
Most of us are familiar with Beyoncé.
We've heard her music, we've seen her perform,
either live or on TV.
But this was a different Beyoncé.
We saw her paying homage to the Black Panters at the Superbowl.
We saw her standing against police brutality in her "Formation" video.
And this is one of the first times where we didn't see Beyoncé
singing something like "Bootylicious" or "Single Ladies."
And a lot of people didn't like it.
The critics came pouring in and I realized something.
America's reaction to Beyoncé highlighted a much more subtle,
more nuanced issue we have in our country.
See, we like Beyoncé when she's singing "Bootylicious" or "Single Ladies"
because she's sassy, she's sexual,
and she is a stereotype of what we want black women to be.
But when she shows a less monolithic character of herself ,
and ultimately of black women, we didn't like that as much.
Now we're in a space and time in our country
where racial tensions are high,
people are protesting, people are polarized,
and what we see everyday on our social media feeds and on the news
are people standing on extremes of every side of this issue.
But I want to argue that a lot of America's problem with race
comes from a smaller, more invisible form.
Sometimes, I think, when we talk about race,
a lot of us can think about slavery or foremost civil rights leaders
like Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks.
It feels like a reality of the distant past
that has little to do with how we live our everyday lives today.
I want to disagree, and here's why.
Terrence Roberts -
he's one of the Little Rock Nine; they were the first nine students
to integrate the Little Rock school system -
well, he talks about a principle that social psychologist Malcom Gladwell
highlights in his book "Outliers,"
except he frames around race.
In the book "Outliers,"
Gladwell talks about something called the "10,000 hour rule."
The "10,000 hour rule" is this:
if you spend 10,000 hours intentionally practicing something,
you become an expert on that thing.
But, here's the catch: once you become an expert in something,
about 70% of that action gets relegated to your subconscious.
You've put in the hours, you've done it enough,
and it becomes sort of automatic.
For example, if you were to ask gold medal gymnast Simone Biles
how she jumps on a three inch beam, does a no-handed cartwheel,
four flips off the back and lands squarely on her feet,
how she does it,
she'll only be able to give you about 30% of that answer.
Why?
She's put in her 10,000 hours, she's become an expert,
and when she gets on the beam, her body knows what to do.
It becomes automatic.
Okay, so what does any of this have to do with race?
Well, I want to give you some dates.
The first is 1619.
1619.
This represents the year
that the first Africans are brought to the US as slaves.
The second date is 1954.
1954 is the year of Brown vs Board of Education.
This is the case that was meant to disaggregate our country.
Now, for the sake of this example, let's assume that in 1954
our country integrated and everything was great.
We know that that's not the truth, but just track with me.
(Laughter)
So, 1619 to 1954.
This represents a span of 335 years.
Now, for these 335 years, our country intentionally practiced
the dehumanization of,
the abuse of,
the exploitation of
and the segregation from
black people in this country.
For those 335 years,
black people were owned as property,
were refused citizenship,
were treated as less than,
were bought and sold as commodity,
used for entertainment
and disregarded.
If you're wondering how that time breaks down,
those 335 years
represent 294 10,000 hour units.
So, our country became an expert 294 times
on the dehumanization of,
the oppression of,
the abuse of
and segregation from
black people in this country.
Remember, once you become an expert in something,
70% of that action gets relegated to your subconscious.
So, if we look around and we ask ourselves,
"Why are racial tensions still so high?
Why are so many parts of our country still so segregated?
What is going on?"
If we trust our automatic responses,
we'll only be able to give you about 30% of that answer.
Assuming that in 1954, when legally some things changed,
we've only even been trying to do something different for 62 years.
Okay, back to Beyoncé.
(Laughter)
What does any of this have to do with Beyoncé?
Well, Beyoncé is a black women.
A black women in America.
A country that has become an expert on expecting certain things from people
who look like Beyoncé.
They have been our entertainers, they have been our commodities,
they've been our sassy friends, our eye-rollers, our comedic relief,
and we don't even realize how deeply comfortable
we are with the roles that we have created for one another
until someone like Beyoncé shows us another side,
and we don't like it.
Our automatic responses tell us,
"No, she should be singing 'Bootylicious' or 'Single Ladies';
we like that Beyoncé.
That's the role she should fill."
You may be asking yourself, "So then what do we do?
How can we move beyond this?"
Well, a renowned poet and author Maya Angelou
has a beautiful quote that says this:
"First, recognize that I'm a black women.
And then, forget that I'm a black women."
We will not be able to move past race in this country
until we are willing to acknowledge what race has meant and continues to mean
for how we interact with one another,
what we expect from one another, how we see one another.
Please do not fall into the lie that we shouldn't see color.
Instead, face head on the fact that this country's expertise
in segregation, oppression and racism
has created subconscious realities of what we want each other to do,
where we think we should be,
how we think we should talk, live, where we should go,
and the only way to move past that is to move through it.
We can no longer rely on our automatic responses
to tell us how to treat one another.
Instead, we need to start intentionally practicing something else
and understand that we are working against a 335 year long deficit.
So for going to move past it, it's going to have to be intentional.
We have to start becoming experts in something different.
To put this all in Beyoncé terms:
you can have no longer have our "Bootylicious"
if you're not willing to understand our "Formation."
Thank you.
(Applause)