- I'll tell you what I think holds it back and keeps us from solving the problem is that the one thing that it requires us to lose, to challenge it, to undo it is our innocence.

And I don't mean innocence in the sense of not guilt, I mean innocence in the sense of naivete, right?

In other words, if we acknowledge anti-blackness and actually resolve to undo it, we have to admit that we have lived in a lie for almost 250 years now as a country and 400 years going back to the colonial era, that we are not the nation we were told we were, that we were not the country that we have celebrated.

We could be that, but we will not be that until we let go of the naivete, of the innocence, of the lie, of the amnesia, and insist on speaking truth about the past, how it got us here and where we're headed in the future.

- [Narrator] A Slice Of The Community is made possible by the support of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.

(upbeat music)