- At High Point University, we are focused on preparing students for the world as it is going to be.

- I'm Marc Randolph and I'm proud to be the entrepreneur-in-residence at the Premiere Life Skills University, High Point University.

- [Announcer] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

- [Narrator] Funding provided by Sidney & Rachel Strauss, Julia Courtney, and Scott Oxford.

[tense music] - It's not a forum to try to change anyone's position on anything, but to open up an avenue for conversation.

- And let's just go out on a limb and try something new and different.

- I have very strong opinions about things that I feel are ruining the dynamics of this country.

- I have opinions.

[laughs] - Nisha, how many of these things have we brought up and you didn't know what they were?

And that is why we have to talk about them.

- You know, I feel like with slavery, people are just tired of talking about it.

- I can remember the first time I was called the N word.

- The best way to really understand the people, listen to their voices, Indigenous voices, Hispanic voices, Ukrainian voices, you know.

I think learning from the people is what we need to be doing.

[tense music] - Have we truly reckoned with slavery in the United States?

I wanna bring that down tighter to say, have we truly reckoned with slavery and lynchings in the state of North Carolina?

- Absolutely not.

There's still sundown towns in this state.

If you are not white and you were caught in that town, once the sun goes down, you may not live to tell the story.

That is a sundown town.

- There used to be billboards in part of the state in some counties saying, in essence, for some of you, "don't be here after sundown."

- That is correct.

There are many places that I can't go.

There are many places that my combat vet status, it's not gonna save me.

It's not gonna save me because they're, when they say these things, now there's sometimes I can get a pass where, oh, well "you're one of the good ones, we don't mean you," until certain things happen.

And I promise you, when they say we don't mean you, they mean me.

They just don't wanna say it to my face.

- The summer of 2020, not only the pandemic, summer of George Floyd, statues coming down, were the statues the issue?

- It was everything behind it.

- Anna?

- It was everything that was under the undertone of what those statues were meaning to those people.

- Did it frustrate you?

- In a sense it did.

It frustrated me for the fact that there was people destroying property.

It wouldn't have even mattered if it was the statute.

It could have been a building like up in Washington state, you saw a bunch of protesting and.

- [David] Downtown Raleigh.

- Exactly, and I don't know the full amount and percentages of what were the age groups that were doing this, but, you know, why were they doing that action and did somebody not teach them any better to respect property and value, value life, like the person that got shot because he was in a riot.

It upset me.

- Fiaz, when you saw this happening three summers ago, did you understand why people were so upset with a figure that represented evil to them?

- What was said was because of the history, but that person or whoever that was, is done and gone.

And like she said, there's some representation, but the youth could not understand why should we honor somebody who has done so much wrong to us?

But I think just by removing that, have not taken any, you know, it was just a bandage situation.

It did not remove from the minds like we were saying.

I mean, to this day we are still discussing, you know, sundown towns, meaning that has not gone from the hearts.

It may have been erased with a marker, but it's really there still in the people.

That's where we need to really attach the subject that we need to remove it from the heart so that other people, whether you have a building in the name or statue, doesn't matter.

But really people begin to understand that they're well understood.

I think the youth got much upset at that time, - The way to work through.

And no, I don't think that we have fully reckoned with slavery.

The way to do that though is through learning and study and things like the "1619 Project" that is painful.

Those truths are, we have to face them so that we can learn from the mistakes of our past and heal our collective hearts to move forward.

- And that also comes through education.

- Absolutely.

- Have proper type of history and to explain, you know, why was this monument or statute put up here?

We understand you're angry and you're assimilating this action with this type of name on a person or the statute.

- But also we cannot whitewash our history in our schools.

And our children need to learn that yes, we had a statue of this person because they were revered in this way.

But here also the negative things that they did, and this is why their image is upsetting, traumatic, angering, whatever emotion to a certain population.

We cannot whitewash the truths.

You know the hue and cry about Critical Race Theory.

And it's, again, it's fear of sharing ideas, but we have to face those truths and we have to start doing that in our schools so that our children can learn to not repeat those mistakes of the past.

- But why is it so difficult to talk about slavery?

- 'Cause almost everybody in the room, especially if they are southern, either has something, some tie to it one way or the other.

If they are not from here or not from, you know, down south.

Maybe they do, maybe they don't.

But it's very hard to talk about something when it directly or indirectly affected your ancestors and your family.

- I feel like with slavery, people are just tired of talking about it.

They're tired of making everything about race.

Just like they're tired about talking about human sexuality.

And you know about, you know, it's some, we used to be able to come to the table and just talk about what needs to be talked about on the table.

You know.

- That is what needs to be talked about.

- Why?

- Because that's human issues; it's still happening.

- I cannot believe this, the sundown town is terrible.

Like I had no idea.

Like that is obnoxious.

And if there's a discriminary, if certain races are unable to leave a town at a certain time.

- No, they can't go to it after a certain time.

- So here's why we have to talk about that.

- That's wrong.

- Because Nisha, how many of these things have we brought up and you didn't know what they were and that is why we have to talk about them.

- You know what, I grew up in a town where we all kind of got along, we were assimilated with each other.

There were different races.

We never talked about race.

It never came up in New Jersey.

Not in my town in New Jersey.

And it was like, it wasn't even a big deal.

We could all come to the table.

We all had a great education.

We all, we talked about history and stuff like that, but we weren't southerners.

And so it was, it like when people I think sometimes come down south, they're like, what is this obsession?

And it's because it hasn't been buried yet here, but up there we don't even, it's not even a thing, I'm Indian.

I they didn't, like, nobody even acknowledged I was Indian.

It didn't matter what my race was.

- My dad was a career military man.

He did 26 years in the Army, so I was an Army brat.

I grew up in military housing for the first 13 years of my life.

Maybe racism didn't exist because we, I can remember the first time I was called the N-word and it was on post by somebody's parent, by a soldier.

And it's funny because like I said, I grew up in military housing.

You played with the kids that were there or you did not play.

If people found out that your family was racist, everybody would know within a quickness.

And nobody played with you because of your family.

Now, having said that, everybody, and I would almost say most people that are people of color can say the first time they heard a slur directed at them.

Most of my friends, especially, you know, I'm from here.

I grew up here for the last, you know, half of adolescence.

Most of my friends from here can tell you the exact first time a white person called them the N word.

And it was usually they did something that they didn't like.

And it's usually somebody that they respected until they said it.

So that's why we have to talk about these things.

- I was called a monkey on Facebook.

My children and I were in a picture with a Black representative and I, someone said effing monkeys.

And I don't care.

Like it just, it doesn't matter.

Say what you want.

- [Lee] But that's the thing.

- I reported it to Facebook because I wanted to make sure that my children and myself were safe.

- But that's the thing, words have weight.

Words have weight and meaning.

- Why don't you care?

- Because I don't want it to be obsessed with racism.

I don't care if something in that person's life caused them to be angry and bitter.

And you know what, God bless them.

I pray for healing for them.

But I don't wanna discuss it.

- When I hear you say I don't care, what that tells me is that you don't have enough of your own self value.

- [Nisha] No, I have.

- Because nobody should call you that.

- I have self value; I'm just not going to take it.

So I put up a little bit more thicker skin 'cause I don't want to obsess about it and say, make a big storm and cry about somebody being racist to me on a Facebook post.

Oh my gosh, it's no am I gonna go to work and still get paid tomorrow?

Yes.

- But not saying something enables that person - [Lee] To do it again.

to then call Lee a monkey.

- Why don't we just let them be?

'Cause obviously something bothered them, something triggered them to do that.

- What if they were a boss?

- [Leon] Thank you.

- Who have people or a manager who could impact the promotion of someone?

- Then you go to HR.

- But my point is, you don't know that when you see the post and if they're not called out, if we don't take a stand, we don't know what influence that person may be having on other people who are totally innocent of anything other than just being a human being.

- May get elected into office.

- I reported it through the correct channels.

I'm not gonna make a stink about it and cause everybody in my social media group to feel uncomfortable.

Like I just don't wanna hear it anymore.

- It's a human conscious, it hurts.

So when it does, you got to do something.

I know I learned it very difficult way to tell you the truth.

When I came here, I had the same stereotype that these guys are lazy goons.

And my argument was, if I could make it within less than 10 years, I'm stable.

I have a family, I have everything.

Well, and then I met an activist and so I said, "man, let me take you there."

So we went behind the hospital and it's New Jersey.

I won't name the hospital.

I said, people sitting there in the middle of the afternoon with, you know, brown envelopes sitting on their end enjoying themselves, is this where the progress is?

He said, "you don't know what you're talking about."

So he literally took me off at that time, even from the middle of the work, we went to the ghettos.

He said, "this is by design."

He said, "what these people are going through, you never went in there.

How would you know what is in there?"

How is it that you know you cannot come out of that cage even though there are no bars.

The people living in those conditions because they've been placed in a way with certain circumstances created for them that they're unable to come out.

- I think we probably stay on subject too long and it's almost to a nagging point, but it's like it shouldn't be brushed to the side like it's nonchalant.

- In my travels in the military, I can take the cornbread and banjos outta my accent when I need to.

I can almost have a Midwest, like for lack of a better term, newscaster accent when I need to, especially when I'm running my radios.

- [Katherine] Midwest newscaster.

[laughing] - Now if I go to say California and like when my, and my mom calls and I'm in San Francisco, obviously, and I'm sure you've experienced this as well, the folks that are from here, as soon as you start talking to a family member, what happens?

That accent drops back in.

- Code switching.

- Comes in even worse than it would've without that influence.

And then people change their perception of you.

So then when I go up north, the first thing they ask, "Ooh, you are from North Carolina.

Aren't they all racist?"

I'm like, for you to ask that is racist.

You guys just do it in a different way.

You guys redlined your towns, you guys, you know, by redlining, that was your sundown town.

It just was different.

The ghettos were more prevalent.

It's easy to say, we don't talk about this when it doesn't affect you.

It's easy to say, we don't talk about this when you don't really know anybody it affects.

And it's like you just sat here like I have Black friends, I have white friends, I have Asian friends.

If I walked around like, hey, my straight friend, everybody like, what is wrong with you?

- One of the things I hear coming up that if you stayed here on campus the last two nights you've seen this.

- Is this our solution?

- Absolutely.

- It depends on if that's what you truly believe is the answer for this country.

I love my country.

I love my country enough that I functionally signed a blank check to die for it by signing up.

I almost died for this country in Iraq.

So no one has the right to tell me who is and who is not patriotic.

I feel like I've earned that right more than anybody else except for Ashley.

That is one of the biggest pet peeves I have in my whole life with people who will tell me, oh these people don't do this and these people don't do that.

You don't know what I've done.

And that is definitely a read the room comment.

Normally I'm very snarky to people who do that.

And I'm a big fan of, hey, I'll drop you off at the recruiting station when you can do what I've done, Come back and tell me about it and see hoW it changed your life for the better or for the worse.

- [David] Pilar?

Is this a solution?

- I think so, but but again, if it is intentional and it is again going to the words, yes, liberty and justice for all.

And we really live it, not just saying it.

But definitely because I think for all of us, the majority is, it depends.

We, God really guides us in different ways, yes, for all of us.

Family has a very strong meaning for our culture.

And I know for all of us as a yes, even Nisha, when she talks about her kids and everything, you see her passion for that and for all of us.

And definitely we love this country.

Yes, I'm an immigrant, but I love this country because this is my country now.

I live in here.

I work for my country.

I believe and feel every single word that is in this card.

But again, needs to be intentional and real and again for everybody.

And I don't know what I don't know, but I need to know if we really want to be one country united.

Because if I don't know, we won't be.

- The one thing I do like about that is it does have God first, it has family second and then it has country third.

I don't think it has to be in particularly that order, but I feel like any religion that has a God, most of the religions that I've ever studied, have always stressed in proving yourself by believing what your God is telling you.

And if you are working and striving to improve, hopefully you're gonna be like Jake on the side of the road who stopped to help that person.

You're gonna see your countrymen as you need to help them.

That's what the old southerners used to be like.

You know, you've got your gentleman who would open the doors to help people.

- Jake would you put this in this order?

- Absolutely, look I put country before family.

You gotta take care of your own first before you can take care of anybody else.

And God's always first.

Like it's self-explanatory the way it's written.

Anybody else wanna comment on this?

- A lot of people don't know that the Constitution was based off the Haudenosaunee Confederacy where they went there and understood the democracy that was happening between the major five tribe nations of New York and learning how indigenous people were working together, our different nations, our different countries and really creating those relationships.

And so this country, even though right founded on that, they learned from the indigenous people how to work together.

The major part I learned that was left out of it was that the women's power in tribal communities, the matriarchal society that we had and this co this concept of power and how we balance it within our own tribal communities, traditionally didn't cause that power issue.

It wasn't a power struggle.

It was like two equal rivers flowing side by side, working together, hand in hand, both man and woman.

And so whenever it built the constitution and really removed women's power from that, it gave it that balance.

Then we get to the country that we have today.

I think it's in the right order.

I think it's appropriate.

- When I saw that last night in the room, I really reflected because it's so meaningful.

Well here we've been talking about my God or his God or there is the solution at least the one who created us all, what did he say about the rights and what rights have he given?

And in Islam and the Quran is very clear.

It says, we have created you from a single pair, a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes that you may recognize each other and not to despise each other.

And when I see this family, I just do not seclude everybody.

And this is my family.

My family comes first.

Now this is the human family of when we die, we do not take our passport with us.

We do not take our license and state license with us.

We are a human, so that's where the family comes from.

That we are one family by the, created by the one person one God.

Because he created us he knows what is best for us.

And that's why he said that they're all equal.

But your language is a blessing.

Your culture is a blessing.

It's not one or the other.

But just to, you know, to be superior to the other, they leaned on God, no, no, no.

God said like in other mythology, God said, I am superior to you because you're created that way.

That's where people started supremacy.

That I'm better than you because God says so.

No, God said every, he created it equal.

He could not have not liked what he created in this.

And God created, created in this and what he created in a white man.

I mean that, that's his creation.

Just like he created the environment and all the beautiful flowers and the trees that you see.

- One of the things that like I think that applies and I think we have a very hard time about in this country is deference to people that are elected into a position.

And the Bible also says that we're supposed to respect our leaders 'cause they've been put into place for a reason.

And yes, he's allowed kings to fall away like King Saul and that sort of thing.

So, that was of his own doing.

As a conservative Republican, I want to still be able to look at President Biden and say he's earned his role from some people's perspective and got the majority, you know, just like when President Trump was in office, he earned his role and got elected in by some sort of majority.

And I grew up with Trump, not in, I grew up admiring Trump.

And so there's, you know, something, you know, I will look at him as somebody that, you know, I always will admire.

And I may not look at a Democrat president the same way, but I wanna be able to be deferential without the hatred so we can have our elected officials come to the table and do their jobs.

- Learning, it becomes easier for some people, right?

But we have, I couldn't learn the way you do or the way, yeah, there's no way.

I'm not built that way, my brain doesn't work that way to process nuclear science.

Or teach research.

I mean it's, or to be able to run into a burning building.

- Curiosity, I mean I've always been a curious person.

Exactly.

- And Education can stifle fear.

And those fears can turn into new legislation, new laws.

- You can break down walls whenever you're, you become a curious person.

I wanna know more about East Indian culture.

I was excited to be able to meet with the, some of the indigenous people from India just last week.

You know, I've been to India, I've been to Poland, I've been lived in probably five years of my life has been outside the United States.

And in each country or each place I lived, always curious and want to understand more about Chinese culture, about Filipino culture, about Hispanic culture, you know, and in Germany, I was living there adopted by my Puerto Rican family.

In each place was being and building relationships with different cultures, religions, races, Muslim friends, you know, friends that, Buddhist, you know, a very curious person.

I've been to a lot of different temples in China.

I feel like that we're more the same than what we are different.

And whenever you are curious and wanting to learn, it does break down those walls and those stereotypes that maybe you were either fed through or maybe you developed on your own.

And so I just encourage everyone to be curious and want to learn and just learning your own way.

I built mine through relationships.

I didn't read books, right.

I think meeting people and talking to people from different cultures and backgrounds is the best way to really understand, like me and Nisha's conversations, the best way to really understand the people, listen to their voices, indigenous voices, Hispanic voices, you creating voices.

You know, I think learning from the people is what we need to be doing.

- Well on that note, I wanna say thank you very much so.

We have one more session and thank you.

- [Interviewer] What would you like people who see the show to take away from it?

- That we can have civilized conversations.

This is the most important thing.

I think listening to each other with a open mind, open heart, not yelling at each other, taking the emotion away from it a little bit and looking at the facts and actually listening.

I am the people that you've been talking about, or I am the person, I am the voice of those people who maybe you felt differently about.

And I think it humanizes the belief or the situation that you've been in.

- This weekend gave me great hope that, again, in spite of some pretty significant differences across the table, we could all still connect on a human level and genuinely appreciate each other and actually wanna see each other again.

And so that's quite encouraging and gives me hope.

- I knew that there were differences that probably still won't change their opinions.

That wasn't really the purpose of this, but it was the purpose to be heard.

I was proud that I could see some of the other participants acknowledging, yes, I realize you don't feel this way.

This is why it feels this way for me, but you can go ahead and believe what you need to believe.

The aha moment for me was to see that there was that commonality, even though there was so many different people there with different opinions, but yet they still were able to be in the same room and coexist without killing each other.

- [Announcer] Coming up on the NC Listening Project, - There's a mental health that needs to be addressed in this country.

- [Announcer] Funding provided by Sidney and Rachel Strauss, Julia Courtney, and Scott Oxford.

- [Narrator] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

- At High Point University, we are focused on preparing students for the world as it is going to be.

- I'm Mark Randolph and I'm proud to be the entrepreneur in residence at the Premier Life Skills University, High Point University.