I think in this country we have an issue with being honest with ourselves.
We have an issue with being honest about who we are, what has transpired in the course
of our history to marginalize groups of people.
And I think what often happens is that we get a diluted or myopic or a very one dimensional
perspective on what is taking place over the course of our nation’s history.
I remember receiving the news when Tamir Rice was killed, the 12-year-old boy in Cleveland
who was shot for in part playing with a toy gun.
The police killed him within two seconds of pulling up in the car.
And it immediately brought me back to a moment in my own childhood when I was playing with
the water guns and my father came and told me that I couldn’t do that.
That that was unacceptable.
And I didn’t really understand.
I was frustrated.
I was embarrassed that my father would do that in front of my friends.
I knew that he was the strict dad.
I called him after Tamir Rice had been killed and I had a conversation and I told him I
understand now.
I understand now in a way that I didn’t understand before.
And thank you even when I was kicking and screaming and saying that you were mean and
strict and wouldn’t let me, you know, have fun or be a kid.
I recognized that these were hard decisions for you to make.
So many people in black community, you know, black men in particular grew up having the
talk and getting the talk so to speak from their parents.
But I remember having conversations with some of my white friends and realizing that there
was no notion of ever having to have a conversation about how to interact with police about who
you are in the context of the larger criminal justice system.
We can’t move forward I think and have an honest conversation about race in this country
unless we’re grounding these conversations in an understanding of how each of us among
our differences navigate the world and understand, you know, potentially see the same thing but
understand it differently.
We have this sort of rugged individualism, this meritocracy, you know, that we are told
we exist in when that’s not really the case.
And that, you know, we have a lot of different people who are starting from very different
places in life as a result of their class, as a result of their gender, as a result of
their race.
And we have a difficult time as Americans.
I think contextualizing that and understanding the sort of socio historical realities that
have shaped our contemporary existence.
And so I think it’s hard for us to be honest about where we are if we’re not honest about
where we’ve come from.