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- For me, racism is ugly.
I think it looks like something that is ugly.
And sometimes you see it.
So there are these overt actions
that are in place that you can,
often, these one-on-one acts of meanness that we might see
when someone engages another person
and it's obvious that there's racism.
For me, while I abhor those things,
I'm much more interested in us thinking seriously
about institutionalized forms of racism,
where structures kind of limit someone's choices
based on their race.
And so it could be, as I've said,
if we look at who's incarcerated,
who gets charged with crimes,
what sentencing kinds of things happen
for similar kinds of things, that's one form of it.
And as it turns out, we need to have data.
We need to have numbers to begin to demonstrate
the way those institutions work.
So for me, it's an ugly thing, and it's individualized,
but it's also built into many of the institutions
in which we live and function everyday.
- When I think about what does racism look like,
I see nothing but pop-up images throughout the years.
I think that racism looks like expatriation of land.
I think racism looks like the devastation of communities
through disease warfare.
When I think about racism,
I think about medical trials and forced abortions,
I think about Tuskegee Airmen.
When I think about what racism looks like,
I think about lynchings.
When I think about what racism looks like,
I think about long lines of individuals standing,
begging for food, looking for jobs.
When I think about what racism looks like,
I think about the bus boycott.
I think about individual people,
I think about large social movements.
I think about slogans, terms such as Black Lives Matter.
I think about the debates
between Black Lives Matter and all lives matter.
When I think about what racism looks like,
I think about the ways that we have consistently over time
since the construction of what we call America,
have struggled to accept each other's humanity.
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- It's not just race.
I think it's the connection to the sense about,
these myths about particular kinds of races
that end up impacting me.
But it's also a place where I find resonance
with other people who might look like me
and a place for shared experiences.
So race for me in and of itself isn't bad, right?
I think it's racism that ends up being a negative thing.
I also feel like there are moments
where these shared experiences allow us to be able to have
meaningful conversations with each other
about those experiences.
- I guess when I think about race
and how it impacts my life,
I think more so about how racism impacts my life
and my freedom of mobility,
mobility, both in the way I move my body
and the way I choose not to move my body
and the ability to speak and the ways I'm heard.
For instance, my ability to show human characteristics
such as hurt, sadness, despair, anger
at times could mean my livelihood.
So when I think about how race impacts me,
I think about how racism and the construction of race
really impacts my ability to give
full expressions of my humanity.
- Growing up in North Carolina, a former Confederate state,
where I was called, for instance, the N-word
as early as 7 years old,
that was always a part of part of my reality,
but on the opposite side of the coin, if there are two,
as Bryan was mentioning, there's also been
a place of home and affirmation.
So I always like to tell the story that growing up,
my grandmother, for Christmas, there would be
the Santa Claus that you would put on the door
and they were always white,
but my grandmother would take brown shoe polish
and cover the Santa Claus, right?
Because it was always an affirmation of our humanity,
our affirmation that we mattered
and that we needed to see images that looked like us.
And so those stories of existing in a sharing economy
where you always look out for someone else,
where you always protect your neighbor,
where you give, despite how little we might have,
it became a place where I could.
- And the abundance in that.
- And the abundance.
- Of not having, right, but nonetheless being so rich.
- Right, so it became a place of strength, of pride.
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- When I think about how we communicate
who and what we are to each other in public places
and the notion of civility, of treating people
the way you want to be treated, of being kind,
of being gracious, of being nice,
what if being honest was dangerous, right?
And the notion of being honest and being truthful
is understood as not being civil
because that honesty actually undermines
my role or expected role to be subordinate.
- But one of the things in a very simple way
that my mom and I joke about a lot
is how our tone of voice changes
depending on who we're around
or who we have to pick up the phone for.
And I've even noticed as being a professor here,
on the days that I'm extremely tired
and I can't get my tone up one octave,
I realize that I have to almost provide a disclaimer
to my colleagues to let them know,
because I see them getting uncomfortable.
- [Ersula] I'm not angry.
- I'm not upset, I'm not frustrated.
- [Ersula] This has nothing to do with you.
- I'm literally just so tired that this is
the tone in which I'm speaking.
But I had to realize that I was doing that
to make others feel comfortable.
- Right.
- So I think part of what I hear from this, as well, is
how can we have a conversation where we can
at least work toward not holding our emotions back,
but where our emotions are a part of it.
We must understand that it will be messy,
and that is OK.
- [Ersula] That is OK.
- That there are going to be fumbles
and we're going to make mistakes.
- [Ersula] We're going to embrace all of that.
- That's OK.
But that we should be quicker to ask a question
for clarification rather than get ready
to be in a posture of debate.
So I think the two things that we,
probably the most important thing for me
is to lead with humility.
So I'm going into this conversation,
knowing that there's a lot for me to learn.
There's actually maybe more for me to learn
out of this exchange than it is for me to contribute.
It doesn't mean that I don't have anything to contribute,
but I'm coming in with the posture of humility.
I want to listen, I want to learn.
I know that I'm going to be uncomfortable.
And I think that's important too,
because I think too often when we get,
and our colleague, Dr. Howard Stevenson, talks about this,
in racist encounters, when you feel embarrassed
because you've made a mistake,
people either operate out of fear
instead of just being able to sit comfortably
in that embarrassment, saying that they were wrong
instead of trying to double down in their power,
and then it gets into a debate, right?
So how can we learn to exist within this messiness
with humility so that we can engage in deep listening?
- I love that answer.
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