- Anti-Blackness is a universal standard.

It shows up in every facet in every culture.

It's not just unique to the US, it's a global issue.

- Anti-Blackness and racism are the tool.

It is the machine.

It is, these are the tools of white supremacy.

- The weight of being a darker skinned person.

And having to move through society who tells you that, like you're less valuable because you're a dark skin.

It is a heavy thing to carry.

It is heartbreaking.

- That was the first moment where I looked in the mirror and I was like, I should be praying for blue eyes and blonde hair.

- We are a nation founded on opportunity and equality.

And as citizens, we have a responsibility to live up to those values, but we have to be willing to confront the issues that contradict those values.

Discrimination based on race is one of those issues.

In the public discourse around discrimination, the terms racism and white privilege are heard a lot.

But what about anti-Blackness?

If that's a new term for you, anti-Blackness strips Blackness of value, which has created a system to oppress Black people.

While there is no simple solution, it is our hope that this program empowers you to begin a conversation, because if we have a greater understanding of the root of anti-Blackness, we are better equipped to dismantle harmful structures and institutions that preserve it.

Welcome, and thank you for joining us.

I'm Jerome Moore, a producer of Nashville Public Television.

We are joined by Cathy Carrillo, Youth Community Organizer with Walk Bike Nashville; Kosar Kosar, the Multicultural Organizer for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, also known as TIRRC.

We also have Erica Perry, Organizer and Movement Lawyer with the Black National Assembly; and Filmmaker, Speaker, and Writer, Molly Secours.

Welcome, everyone.

- And I'm gonna go ahead and throw it to you first, Molly.

What does it mean to love Blackness?

- To love Blackness means to be able to listen, hear, speak, and acknowledge people beyond the boundaries of systemic and institutional illusion of race.

- Hm.

How about you, Kosar?

What does it mean to love Blackness?

- First and foremost, I think it's being true to myself, being true to my community, to my people, learning, to embrace myself.

And it's something that's ongoing, you know.

Anti-Blackness, I think, has been very, you know, systematically ingrained in our society, in our education system, in how we were raised, whether, you know, through our cultures, through media, and so it's something that, you know, we have to always continue to uproot.

And I think I, as a Black person, have to kind of, you know, center myself in, do those reflections and like, wait, wait, you know, this isn't, this isn't loving myself, this isn't loving my Blackness, like right.

I need to, you know, learn to love myself and learn to do that, and I think that's been a process.

- Erica.

- I think Dr. King talks about love is what justice looks like in action.

And so I really think about loving Blackness or loving Black people means that we are actively fighting for justice for Black people in every facet of society.

And so that means we're working on policy, that means we're organizing our family and friends, both not to be anti-Black, but also to correct laws and institutions that are harmful to Black people on purpose.

I think it's also accepting Black people in the fullness that we are, and so Black people are not monolithic.

Black people show up in so many different ways.

And so it's both the responsibility of Black people to love ourselves and our totality.

And then also the responsibility for folks who call themselves committed to justice, or have a heart of compassion, to also appreciate and honor Black people in the way that we exist.

- Cathy, throw it to you.

- I think oftentimes people think of love as like an emotion that just happens, but it's, no, is something you work at.

And I think for myself, loving Blackness means acknowledging the work that I have to do in order to help my community understand what anti-Blackness means, in order to understand what, how that's affected me and my life and the way that it's affected me and my culture and what it's going to mean for me and my children, right, and so I think to me, loving Blackness is really about putting in the work, acknowledging the work that has to be done, acknowledging the history of what work has already been done.

And then also learning to be quiet, right?

Learning when to be quiet, learning when there are other voices that need to be heard before mine, because it's important to use my privilege and my proximity to whiteness to be able to uplift those voices.

- And I wanted to add that I didn't even start thinking about this until probably 20 years ago when I started looking at my whiteness.

I didn't understand Black Power.

I didn't understand Black Is Beautiful.

I mean, I'm a little bit older, so these movements went, I didn't understand those until I started looking at what it meant to be white and because a lot of white people have questions around, well, why do they have to have, you know, Black Miss America?

Why does there have to be Black, because most of the time, people that I know that haven't delved into their own whiteness don't understand what someone who has grown up in Black skin has gone through, in terms of standards of beauty, standards of acceptability, so it took, you know, it was a long time before I actually understood it or even wrestled with the question myself.

- Well, and that I wanna go to you for this, Kosar.

Like we all have different shades, right, of skin color.

And so when did you become like aware of your Blackness and your skin color?

Culturally, you know, just in the United States.

And like when you start to mean like, oh, that's, you know, my skin is a little different, I'm getting treated a little different, just based on my skin color.

- Yeah.

You know, I can't think of a time where, you know, I kind of pondered like, oh, you know, I'm, you know, Black, I've, you know, was born in it.

I think it became more salient, I think, as I, you know, started to grow and started to kind of interact with people that, you know, weren't within my community or, you know, in my family.

And so there were definitely times where, you know, I was reminded, oh, I'm Black, whether it was, you know, through playing with kids and, you know, having them say certain things that I have to kind of like, you know, ultimately, and over time just become desensitized to, I express myself through my Blackness.

And I think something that Erica mentioned, you know, I believe that through the struggles that we've gone through as Black people, that we've learned to love ourselves because of, you know, through that struggle, that's I think something that I've kind of grown into and I think now this is my identity.

This is, you know, me, I'm a Black person.

That's, you know, first and foremost.

- How about you, Erica?

Like when is the first time you really start realizing your skin color, your Blackness, and how it affected your experience in life?

- I was really sitting with this question for a while, and I couldn't pinpoint a experience where somebody who wasn't Black, right?

When I was younger, told me I was Black.

It was the first time I knew, like I was, it was in celebration, right?

It was in church and it was with family.

It was like, oh, like, this is what Black people have done throughout history.

This is who Black people are in Paris, Tennessee, 'cause that's my family.

This is what it means to be Black in Nashville, and that's because I went to Black churches.

And so I think the first time I really was like, oh, we Black in here and this is what it was to be Black.

(group laughs) It was in celebration, and that was because I was embraced by an amazing community of Black folks, and they were able to celebrate me before the world could actually harm me, right, before the world could tell me that something was wrong with being Black so that I was, I was prepared for it, right, and so I was able to be like, actually this idea you have around what it means to be Black in your decision to be racist or misogynistic to me because I'm a young Black girl who has on certain types of clothes, that's not gonna work.

I'm gonna stand up to that because I had already been told that it was okay and beautiful to be a Black girl.

And so, I think that my experience, and we might sit with other people and be like, oh yeah, we have a similar experience where our culture and our people surrounded us and celebrated us in such a way that we were prepared to face a world that did not love us, that did not care for us, but it had a safe haven at home, and at church, and at community.

- Cathy, you're not Black, but you are a person of color.

And so, when were you really have made aware of your skin color?

- This is an interesting question for me, because my dad is actually Afro-Peruano, which means that he is Black-descendancy Peruvian.

And my grandfather was born on a plantation in Peru.

And so, to me, skin color and colorism was evident from the moment I was born, because I didn't need to look as dark as my dad.

If I spent too much sun time in the sun, then I would look as dark as my dad, right, and that was where like, no, like, you are more fair-skinned, and that was celebrated in my family, that out of all of my family members, I was more fair-skinned and lighter, and that like proximity to whiteness was celebrated and considered something beneficial.

And so I was told from a very young age, don't spend too much time in the sun, right, or like my hair was like slick straight, and they, it needed to be that way, and I remember my family wanted so much, because as an immigrant, you come to the United States and you're expected to assimilate, right, you're expected to come in here, and you're expected to do all the things, and so oftentimes we wanted to just present the more European, or more like good things of our immigrant experience, rather than the things that I identify with now, which is really the indigenous and Afro-Peruvian roots of my culture.

And I, yeah, I remember specifically in third grade we were reading a story about a girl who was a missionary, and she prayed to God when she was little to give her blue eyes and blonde hair.

And later she ends up being a missionary in like a foreign country and that her brown skin and dark eyes actually helped her like blend into, which is the whole thing of itself.

But I remember that was the first moment where I looked in the mirror and I was like, I should be praying for blue, blue eyes and blonde hair, feeling ashamed of my skin, and asking my family why it was that we were this color.

And it was the first time that I remember my mom understanding that the words that she had spoken, this imagery that they had pushed had had that much of an effect on me where I was looking at myself in the mirror and praying for blonde hair and blue eyes, like.

- It's an indoctrination.

- It's an indoctrination, right, and I think, um... - Anti-Blackness is woven into every facet of society, from like Band-Aids, like Vaseline, we don't need a Juneteenth to Vaseline.

(group laughs) It's woven into everything from what we see on TV to how we read about people who have darker skin, and so it's like, I just wanna name that.

And like what you're experiencing is very valid and also like the weight of being a darker skin person.

And having to move through society, who tells you that, like, you're less valuable because you're a dark skin or because your hair is like thicker and can lock, you know, like this, and so, and the fact that like teachers practice it without having strong anti-bias and colorism training.

It's practiced in the courtroom.

We know that the data suggests that people who are lighter skin and not Black get less, have better sentencing, isn't the right word, but get less years than people who are darker skin.

And even when it comes to being pulled over by the police.

Or what it looks like to experience it at the bank, and so it's woven into everything, and so I just needed to name that, like it penetrates every facet of our society.

And it's heartbreaking.

It is a heavy thing to carry.

- Just dive into that correlation of like anti-Blackness and just dealing with everyday racism, right.

And so I wanna throw that to you, Molly, about how does, how do those two correlate for you anti-Blackness and just racism?

- Well, I think anti-Blackness and racism are the tool.

It is the machine.

It is, these are the tools of white supremacy, and they didn't just start in the last 30 years, 50 years, whatever.

I mean, it goes back to Bacon's Rebellion where white indentured servants, European white indentured servants, were starting to team up with freed Black people and started raising hell because of everything that was happening, and what they did, very quickly, they began giving preference and deference to people of white skin.

And so they separated them and got them to pitted against one another, and that there was a lot of demonization and degradation, and it was the beginning of the lesser, you know, these people are lesser and you are more because of, you know, you're not sitting in the sun all the time, so you're not as dark.

I mean, all that kind of thing.

And so the roots of this are so old and people have internalized these notions.

- Right.

- You know, anti-Blackness is a universal standard.

It shows up, I think Erica mentioned, in every facet in every way possible in every culture, you know, it's not just unique to the US, it's a global issue.

And so I think the, you know, the best way to combat white supremacy and racism is to have an anti-Black politic, to actively fight and stand in solidarity for Black people.

- Well, you bring up something I think is a good pivot point as far as the solidarity-building, right?

And the perception of like Blackness itself, it looks different, right, it looks different in the immigrant community, it looks different in the Latinx community, refugee community, even in the Black American community, right.

Blackness, the perception of it can, it can look different.

And so I would love for us to talk about the perception of Blackness on those many levels, how can we build solidarity, because if I have one bad experience with a Black immigrant, then I might have my own biases, perception, stereotypes that I'm practicing Black hate, which happens all the time, because we don't do enough of this.

We don't communicate and have conversation.

I'm gonna start with you, Cathy, on the perception of Blackness in the Latinx community.

And what's, that looks like, and what your, what your experience has been.

- It is an ongoing conversation and struggle with the people you love.

Like, I had an experience with a man.

I was putting on some music and I started dancing and he was like, you don't need to move like that.

And the, the word he uses (speaks Spanish), which is literally translated as "the Black man is going to grab you."

And I thought he actually meant, like there was a Black man, like near me that was like going to grab me, like, as a woman, I was like, wait, what?

And I looked around and I was like, there's nobody around me.

And he said, no, that's how you refer to the devil.

And I was like, whoa.

And so I had to, I had to stop.

I turned the music off and I pulled that person aside, and I was like, let's talk about this.

Why does that mean that to you?

And he goes, well, you know, to me, the devil is Black.

And I was like, why is the devil Black?

Because the devil represents sin.

It's like, why is sin Black?

Right?

Like what is that?

Why is that what we're equating?

Right.

And I think like a lot of times we can also blame media.

We can blame history.

We can blame all of these things that bring the attention to Black equaling bad, right.

And having the opportunity to call it out in the moment, have the uncomfortable conversation of why is that what we're equating and bringing it back and bringing it, being very intentional about saying that like, that is the purpose of white supremacy, is to divide us, is to say, you have more against each other than you do in common, is to distract us from the realization that the reality is that Latinx, lighter skin like Latinx folks, and Black Americans have so much in common, especially here in Nashville, when it comes to struggles of transportation, when it comes to struggles of policing, when it comes to struggles of housing, we are literally dealing with these same issues, but we are divided because of skin tone.

And even within the Latinx community themselves, oftentimes we will fight amongst who is the better immigrant, right?

Who is the better immigrant, because there is this idea that you're supposed to come and you're supposed to assimilate and you're supposed to be this, just the proximity to whiteness, all of the learn English, all of these things.

- You know, when people, immigrants come here, and refugees come here, it's they wanna make, you know, a life for themselves, and they know the plight of, you know, African Americans here in this country.

Don't wanna generalize but, you know, the first thing that comes to mind is we don't wanna be, you know, treated like them, and so then it's like they try to simulate and try to, you know, you know, become part of this model minority myth.

And we see that with, you know, the Asian American community, you know, the Middle Eastern community.

And then I think specific with the Black immigrant community, I think there is that recognition that, yes, you know, we're all Black people, but I think there's a need to kind of like create a divide, I think, specific to kind of Black immigrants and also like African Americans.

At the end of the day, you know, if you're stopped by a police officer, they're not gonna care if you're Somali, or Ethiopian, or Haitian, they're gonna see that you're Black.

We've started having conversations specific with Black immigrant communities here in Tennessee.

We created this Black Immigrant Caucus.

And one of our goals is to ultimately, you know, educate ourselves kind of about, you know, issues that affect Black Americans, Black, you know, immigrants, Black refugees.

And that's, I think one thing that we're hoping to do, we're trying to partner with the Black National Assembly, hopefully to try to really kickstart a lot of these conversations and to uproot a lot of these anti-Black, you know, white supremacist notions and beliefs.

- So I organized a lot in Memphis, which is predominantly Black.

And then I came back and was like, let's engage in multiracial organizing, and was immediately heartbroken by the like ways in which people are anti-Black and they, they say they wanna be in solidarity with you.

They say, oh, actually we understand that housing, transportation, the criminal legal system impact us very similarly, but will not confront their anti-Blackness.

And so I think the answer to both like folks needing to confront anti-Blackness as people who are not Black and call themselves wanting to be in solidarity, and Black people who are Black and have internalized anti-Blackness is creating infrastructure for people to be able to address that.

And so I've been proposing for a while that folks who are doing racial justice work, or doing any kind of justice work, should be, should actually go through trainings to be able to address and start to unpack the anti-Blackness.

- I think we've all called it out that the encompasses thing that is driving anti-Blackness is white supremacy.

- [Molly] Exactly.

- And I truly believe the best work is done on white people is by white people.

And so you being an anti-racist and doing that work, how can the white supremacy be addressed by white folks?

And what role do they play in combating anti-Blackness?

- Oh, a big role.

It took me so long to unpack this thing called whiteness and what it meant and that when I'm talk... when I'm talking with other white people who haven't gotten to that place, where they do the work inside first, you can't go out and do activism if you haven't done the work.

That's, I've been around a lot of people, a lot of other white people, myself included in the early days.

And before I hadn't done some really intense internal work, I was probably more dangerous than I was helpful.

And I discovered that when I went to the World Conference Against Racism in 2001, and I went there as a board member of the Race Relations Institute at Fisk, I was one of the only white advisory board members.

And I went over there and that's when I discovered that, you know, white supremacy wasn't an American thing.

And it was from every single corner of the globe.

And I learned to just sit and shut up, you know, for probably the first time in my life, and just listen.

- We wanna dismantle this thing, right.

And that looks different for different people.

What are some ways that community, institutions, organizations can combat and start to really dismantle anti-Blackness?

- Yeah.

I think first it's important to acknowledge that anti-Blackness and white supremacy is about power, right?

So the first thing is to join an organization, right?

If you Black join a Black National Assembly, right, so that we can organize to address the way that anti-Blackness shows up and who gets what grants, right.

When it comes to, there are business grants, are Black business is gonna actually have access to those grants?

Like Black businesses who are like, my Board is Black, I am Black, my employees are Black.

And so I think that a part of it is both in that acknowledgement and not letting our public officials or people who have so power in our city get away with like saying cute things on Juneteenth and saying nice things about John Lewis, but not actually putting into practice.

And so, for me, it's to do the real work of organizing our communities and a part of organizing's relationship building.

And it's being able to be transformed, right, to confront both the way the anti-Blackness is aligned with misogynoir and sexism and homophobia and transphobia, right, and how those things work together to harm our community, right, and even xenophobia.

So thinking about how we address the way that white supremacy and bias has forced us to separate the ways in which they harm us so that we have less power.

And so that I think is the first few steps.

- I think, absolutely, it starts with joining an organization, it starts with making the commitment to not just be an ally, but to be anti-racist, take the trainings, do the readings, join a group, sit down, be quiet, and be willing to have the uncomfortable conversations.

You have to be able to put yourself in those spaces and be willing to call it out when it happens.

It means doing it with your family.

It means doing it with your loved ones.

It means doing it with your friends, doing it with the people that you have been homies with for forever and being like, you know what, that was kind of racist, that thing that you said was kind of racist, and being upfront about it, because if you are not willing to do it within your own little circle, then it's gonna be a lot, a lot harder to be able to do it outside in the public.

And so start with where you're at, but make a commitment, stick to that, join an organization, and help balance out the power.

- Yeah.

One way I think that we at TIRRC specifically been, I think, trying to tackle this is by having transformative conversations.

And so we've done deep canvassing where, you know, instead of just knocking on the door, "Hey, who are you voting for?

"You're not voting for this person?

Okay, bye," it's, you know, you're standing there and asking them more questions.

And so we've done specific campaigns around anti-Blackness and we've been door-knocking and talking to people and trying to kind of shift the narrative and hopefully move them across a needle to where, you know, they can go from, you know, a one to maybe a three, maybe a four, maybe a five.

And I think that's something that's been very, very successful and has been a tool that, you know, the LGBTQ rights movement has been using for a long time.

It was used when the landmark same-sex marriage was ruled.

And so it's something that's proven to be successful, you know, instead of just writing people off and saying, you know, they're not redeemable, we can't talk to them.

We've seen that it works and that it, that we can move people kind of across the needle.

And so that's something one way that we've been tackling it, and we've had a lot of ally communities volunteer to do that work.

And so it's not just, you know, you know, Black people, you know, knocking on doors and talking to people.

I think we really want, you know, white people to come and be the ones to try to shift that narrative, because, you know, as you said, you know, they're the ones that created the problem, so they should be the ones also fixing it.

- As a white person, one thing that I encourage anybody that I talk to, when I go out and talk, or in my book, or whatever it was, is to see, how do I, for instance, let's say, criminal justice, how do I as a white person, if I, how do I contribute to the disproportionate number of Black and brown men in prison, brown men and women, in prison.

If I'm not aware that I harbor an internalized fear, innate fear, of Black and brown people, then I'm going to be that person that sees three young guys come through the alley, carrying a basketball, and I call the police because I heard that any young Black males entering the neighborhood with hoodies on, you know, are wanted for something.

And that's the, I've been in that situation before.

So if I'm not aware of that, that's how I contribute to the disproportionate number of people going into criminal justice.

- I appreciate y'all, you know, confronting anti-Blackness in you all unique way and having this conversation with me and hopefully we wake some people up, we make some people aware and we make it a part of our daily lives.

'Cause it's like flossing, right?

You don't get rid of plaque by flossing once a year or just on one holiday, right, you gotta floss every, twice a day.

And that's how people should be trying to confront anti- Blackness, like twice a day, you need to be trying to confront it and call it out.

So I appreciate y'all calling it out every day and y'all work that y'all do and just embodying it, which is not easy.

So thank you all.

Thank you for this conversation.

(percussive electronic music)