[Music] [Music] >>Eugene- Hello and welcome to Minds That Matter.

I'm Eugene Williams your host.

Tim Wise doesn't consider himself to be an expert on race, but he sure has a lot to say.

He says that invariably, white Americans don't see what people of color see and experience and that there's a denial of racism in social justice in America.

Please welcome author, essayist, educator and anti-racist activist Tim Wise.

[applause] It's a, it's a pleasure to welcome you to Minds That Matter, which is an apropos kind of title for some of the things that you're talking about these days.

>>Tim- Well I suppose.

We'll see.

We'’ll see.

We'’ll see how this works.

>>Eugene- Well, what I did was I went through and I did just a background research on you and so I've got some wonderful photographs of you.

>>Tim- Oh, this is doubtful.

>>Eugene- [laughs] At a very... >>Tim- That'’s not one, I hope they get better.

>>Eugene- At a very young age.

At a very young age.

So this is you with Mom and Dad.

And then this is you with some really interesting hair and then this is you here, preparing for what is it you do now.

>>Tim- Well, I was singing there.

I was singing Jim Croce as I recall.

>>Eugene- So my question.

>>Tim- You can ignore the drug paraphernalia in the back.

>>Eugene- [laughs] >>Tim- That was my parents'’.

>>Eugene- Ok.

So my question to you is, throughout your formative years, when did you realize that there was something called privilege, and that you were actually privileged.

>>Tim- Right about the time I put those pants on, and wasn'’t disciplined for it, I knew there was privilege.

Um, teasing of course.

Uh, you know, there'’s a process of discovery of those kinds of concepts.

I don'’t think privilege was in any way, shape or form one of the first things that I came to understand about race.

That was a little bit further down in the process.

I mean when I was a child even at the time that some of those pictures were taken you know was already certainly being exposed to the concept of race and racialization and what that meant.

Now I didn't have the cognitive skills to put it all together at five and six years old, but I had been in in preschool at historically black college my earliest childhood experiences were really in a black social context.

Those were my peers, those were the women that ran the program the preschool program at TSU were mostly black women, so I was certainly gaining a sense of the meaning at some level of race.

What it meant to not always be the norm, because I wasn't the norm in that situation.

You know I was the abnorm, I was sort of the one that was the fish out of water, and so I think that gave me a certain Cornerstone understanding of what it means to be white, and what it means to be a person of color normally is the one who is in the minority, normally is the one who's out of out of place.

>>Eugene- What were those feelings like?

That feeling of difference, you know, kind of being the only one minority, and a different type.

>>Tim-Well, at three, you don'’t really think a lot about it.

I mean at 3 and 4 years old it doesn't have much of an impact on you.

What it does, however, is it imprints in you a sense of, of connectivity to others that other white folks in 1972, is what I'm talking about, might not of had.

And the reason that's important is that, 23 years later, when I was doing community work in public housing projects in New Orleans, and I'm working with black women who were sort of telling me what's up when it comes to their lives, and what's going on in their communities.

Because of that early imprinting, where I was learning to respect black authority, right, as a kid, as teachers, I'm not going to be in that moment, I'm not going to be the white guy that looks at these black women and says, Are you sure you're not crazy?

Are you sure you're not seeing things?

Maybe I know your reality better than you do.

Because I think that's something that frankly we do a lot in this country.

White folks ignore when people that, or just don't believe when people of color talk about the things they face, and I had luckily been conditioned to have a different response, so I think that awareness was there, privilege came much, much later.

That was after I'd gone through college.

That was, you know, watching the way in which even my activism as a college student doing anti-apartheid work in the 1980s at Tulane University in New Orleans was protected by campus police, even at a time that New Orleans police were literally murdering a black man by the name of Adolf Archie, who they perceived to have killed one of their own.

And seeing the contrast between the way that police were treating average everyday black folks in the city of New Orleans, and the way law enforcement was treating really relatively white advantage and privileged, mostly white students, at Tulane is where that sort of dynamic came into focus for me, I think of the first time.

>>Eugene- It sounds like you were pretty insightful, even at an early age, though.

>>Tim- Ah, I was very bright, yes.

>>Eugene- [Laughter] >>Tim- Horribly, horribly, horribly advanced for my age.

But I mean, but that goes back, I mean I'm making fun of it because it really isn't about me.

I mean the truth is, I was put in situations early on that gave me, that I was very fortunate to have, that gave me certain ability to see things.

And if I'm not in those situations, my intelligence doesn't get me to the point where I see this.

It'’s not about being bright, it's about having had some opportunities that others didn't have, and and, that becomes critical.

Because there other people, every bit as smart, every bit as capable, every bit as insightful, about other things, but if you're in a context where you never have to confront these issues, or you're isolated from the other, you're not around people of color, you're not playing ball on teams that are mostly black guys, you're not hanging out in the cafeteria, you're not on the playground with folks.

I went to schools that were forty to forty-five percent black.

People who don't have that experience are going to have a different context.

It's not either better or worse, necessarily, but it certainly is different and I think it's certainly makes it hard to see certain things that others of us get to see.

>>Eugene- In your first book, you write that being white means something.

What does that mean today?

>>Tim- I think it means a lot of the same things that it that it has always meant.

And among the things that it is always meant historically is that to be white has meant to have certain advantages, opportunities, head starts, immunities from negative mistreatment that people of color generally do not enjoy.

And again these are generalities.

it doesn't apply to every single person in the same way.

I think one of the things about whiteness historically is, that to be white is to have the privilege of being oblivious to the reality of people of color.

That was true in the 1850s, where most white Southerners were firmly convinced that enslaved human beings were happy, and considered themselves to be family, which was an absurdity, but it's something that our people believed very deeply.

In the 1890s white folks believed segregation was totally normal and everyone was fine with it.

In the nineteen-sixties Gallup polls which found that two-thirds of white Americans, in 1963 now, before the Civil Rights Act was even passed, two-thirds of white Americans said that blacks were treated fully equally in employment, housing, and education.

In 1962, 85 per cent of whites said that black children had just as good a chance to to get a good education as white children.

Now these are delusional beliefs in retrospect, this is before the civil rights laws are even passed.

It's the height of the Civil Rights Movement, but to be white in those days, was to have the luxury of not knowing the truth, because you didn't have to know it.

And here's the thing, with all the stuff that is changed, and a lot has, that still hasn't.

White people still don't have to know black and brown reality in order to get jobs as teachers, in order to get jobs as doctors, in order to get jobs as nurses, or lawyers, or social workers, or psychologists, or anything.

You don't have to know black and brown truth to be deemed competent and educated.

And that hasn't changed.

>>Eugene- One more question in this section, and then we'’re going to move on to an even more, I guess, kind of somewhat volatile topic.

OK?

>>Tim- It can'’t be more volatile than those pants, So, I think were... >>Eugene- But the dog makes up for it.

So, so, so when did you have the epiphany, that you wanted to actually speak out on these types of issues?

When did that happen?

At what point did you realize, Hey.

It all clicked?

>>Tim- In 1990 I graduate from Tulane University, and um, that happens to be the year, many folks will recall, in Louisiana that David Duke, former clan leader, white supremacist, lifelong Neo-Nazi, was running for the United States Senate.

And I happen to be connected to the people that started the main opposition group to Duke.

I became the associate director of that group, and so in 1990 he runs for Senate.

He loses, but he does get 60% of the white vote, frighteningly.

Six, zero percent of the white vote.

In 1991 he runs for governor.

He loses again, but he gets 55% of the white votes.

He is still getting the clear majority of white voters.

And many of us, not just myself, all of us who were involved in that effort, I remember sitting around with them, collectively, and then also with my own thoughts wondering, what does this mean, that 6 out of 10 people who signed the census form the same way that we do, voted for a Nazi?

And it's not like they didn't know he was a Nazi.

Everybody knew.

There were babies in utero that knew that this man was a Nazi.

Like, you couldn't have missed that, right?

But they still voted for him.

I knew, one thing I knew was it didn't mean that they themselves were Nazis.

I knew that 6 out of 10 white people were not Nazis, but they were willing to vote for a guy that was.

And so as I sat there I realized, that was what my work was going to have to be, because black folks saved us in Louisiana.

They had 89% turnout and all but like two guys voted against Duke.

There'’re always two.

There were two black guys voted for him, I don't know what happened.

But, um, but you know clearly, black people went out and saved white people from electing a national socialist, from electing a white supremacist, and at some point I sat there and said, you know what, it'’s not black folks job to save me and my people.

That's on me.

That's white folk'’s job.

We have to save ourselves.

Because we like to preach self-help to black people.

And we like to, we like to preach self-help to Latino folk and poor folk of all colors but when it comes to White middle-class folk who made that almost happen, we needed to help ourselves.

And that was the moment where I realized it couldn't just be a hobby.

You know, that it had to be, had to be something more permanent.

>>Eugene- Well, we all appreciate your willingness to speak out on some of these topics.

Let'’s move to, Race and Society.

And the question that I want to ask you here is, as a society, are we inherently racist?

>>Tim- No, I don't think, I don't think any society or people are inherently racist, in the sense of it being sort of an immutable essential characteristic of the society.

Now having said that, I do want to say that I think there are ideological narratives in our country in particular, which lend themselves almost inevitably to the conclusion that it is racist, and to a racist Society.

The only reason I don't call that inherent, is because these ideals don't have to guide our country, but they do.

So for instance, the one thing that we've all been taught, whether or not we have been taught racism by our parents, or bigotry by our parents, the one thing that we've all been taught, whether we are white or people of color, whether we are rich or poor, whether we live in the South and Midwest and Northeast the West Coast, regardless of religion or any of that, is sort of the secular Gospel of America.

The foundational myth of our country.

Which is what the idea that wherever you end up it's all about you.

Rugged individualism.

This idea that you can be anything if you just work hard.

Now aside from the fact that we know it's not that simple, we all know people who've worked hard, have nothing to show for it.

We know people that were born on third base, think they had a triple.

Haven't actually had to work very hard in their entire lives.

So we know it's more complicated, but beyond that, think about the detriment of that belief, which is demonstrably false.

Historically, black folks did the hardest work, and were not rewarded for it.

Demonstrably today, people of color continue to do the hardest work.

So it's demonstrably false, but if you were taught that, and we all were taught that, and then you look around, and you see disproportionately white people up here, on the hierarchy, and you see people of color here, then it becomes logical, doesn't it, in a weird twisted way, to decide, well, I guess these people just must be better.

And I guess these people must be inferior, cuz if they weren't they wouldn't be there.

And that of course ignores history.

You know that's talking about what we see now is if history didn't happen.

it shows of total lack of sociological imagination, a total lack of historical knowledge, a complete ignorance of everything that happened before yesterday.

Right?

But the reality is people do that all the time.

And they go, well, these people clearly don't want it as much.

Our society has always taught that, and if we teach that and we don't interrogate the inequality that we see, then we're going to come to conclusions that do promote racism, that promote classism.

I'm looking down on poor people regardless of race, and looking down on women as women, promotes sexism, because men will be disproportionately here under a system of patriarchy and misogyny, women will be disproportionately here.

So we're in a culture that isn't inherently racist, sexist in classes cuz we chosen that narrative, but because we've chosen that narrative, we end up with a lot of people who I think become very confused and ultimately make conclusions, directly or indirectly, consciously or subconsciously, that leave them down racist paths and sexist paths.

>>Eugene- If you change that, if you change that teaching, if you blow that idea up, then it changes people'’s moral code.

>>Tim- I don'’t know if it changes their moral code, it certainly changes the way they approach life.

And I think, hopefully, in a better way.

You know, here's the thing, we'’re the only society in the history of the world that'’s pumped that rhetoric.

I mean no other society was founded on that myth, right?

And I realize there are, there are, positive things about the myth.

I get it, right?

I have two daughters, and I understand why we tell them, you can be anything you want, if you're willing to work hard.

The difference is, as a parent, I insist on putting an asterisk at the end of that statement that I give my daughters.

And the asterisks says, by the way, for that to be true you're going to have to not just work hard as the individuals you are, you're going to have to work hard to overcome sexism and the obstacles that some men, and sadly some women, will put in your place.

In other words, it isn't enough to be the best you, it isn't enough to work hard as an individual, you have to work collectively to overcome obstacles.

And you know, every time I tell parents that I say that, there are always parents that say, oh my god, you shouldn't burden your daughters with that.

That's going to make them think that they'’re permanent victims.

No, it's preparing them for the world as it is, not the world of some fantasy land.

It's like, if I don't do that it would be like sending my girls down a dark alley, where there's an electric fence at the end, but I don't want to tell them about the fence, because I wouldn't want them to be neurotic.

No.

I don't want them to be electrocuted.

>>Eugene- Yeah >>Tim- So my primary concern is telling them, if you go down there and don't have a strategy for overcoming, I don't know, the electric fence that the world doesn't want to tell you was there, you'’re going to end up knocked on your rear end and you're going to wonder why daddy didn't prepare you.

And so I believe the same is true, we talk, about this notion of merit and individualism.

It's not that hard work isn't important.

It'’s that if we do not interrogate the the intricacies of that mythology, and if we don't interrogate it and subjected to critique we are setting people up.

We are setting people of color up to internalized oppression.

We are setting poor people up to internalize oppression.

We are setting women up to internalize oppression.

And we'’re telling men, and we'’re telling white folks, especially who are male, and we're telling folks who have money to believe that they'’re superior and to me that cost is too high.

>>Eugene- The various groups... [Applause] >>Eugene- The various groups, that exist in our society, we all have different narratives.

I mean the narrative that you just explained is one that, to me, sounds more like a, you know, a white person'’s narrative.

>>Tim- That'’s right.

>>Eugene- Black folks don'’t have that narrative.

>>Tim- Right.

>>Eugene- It'’s totally different.

>>Tim- Right.

>>Eugene- And I'’m assuming that, you know, for lack of a better term, Hispanics, or other ethnic groups don'’t have that same type of narrative either.

>>Tim- Well, you'’re hit with it though.

I mean, I think the thing about people of color is folks of color, as a survival skill, learn to question that narrative.

It's not that you haven't been hit with it.

You'’ve been taught it.

Everyone'’s been taught that narrative in this country.

Even newcomers who come here who were new immigrants from around the world are taught that narrative.

But the good news, I think is, that for the most part folks of color have learned to question it, because to not question it is to internalize hatred.

To not question it is to feel completely adrift, and, and bereft of hope.

But I think white Americans have historically not questioned it and here's why that is dangerous.

If white folks are told all of our lives this notion that all we gotta do is work hard, play by the rules, everything will be alright, and then, the economy shifts, and we see manufacturing jobs gone that we used to count on.

Black folks never counted on them.

Brown folks never counted on them.

>>Eugene- right >>Tim- White working-class folks did.

If we see coal mining jobs disappearing, and we didn't count on that because we knew, my granddaddy worked in the coal mine, and my Daddy worked in the coal mine.

I'm working in the coal mine.

My son's going to work in the coal mine.

We're the ones who don't know how to cope with the shift.

People with color of had to adapt, because that's the name of the game.

And so, in a way, in a way that irony of privilege, the irony of privilege is it makes you soft.

It sets you up to not know how to adapt when the world comes crashing down around you.

And oh my God I'm out of work for 26 weeks now.

Well, that ain'’t new for black people.

That's not new for Latino folks.

That's not new for a whole lot of people of color.

But when the recession hit and you had white Americans, middle class now, not just poor and working class, middle class and above, CEO's that lost their jobs.

They were out of work for a year-and-a-half.

They had no idea how to deal with that, because, in the back of their mind that voice says, if you're not doing well, it's your own fault.

See?

So then I got to find somebody else to blame.

>>Eugene- Mmm hmm >>Tim- And I wonder who I'm going to blame.

>>Eugene- Yeah >>Tim- See I'’m gonna blame brown people from south of a certain border.

And I'm going to blame black people for taking all the jobs.

And I'm going to blame, you know, other people.

I'm going to deflect cuz I don't want to blame myself.

But the nation's telling me to.

So now I'm caught between some very bad options.

Either I blame myself, or I scapegoat others, and neither one of them actually get at the heart of the problem.

>>Eugene- One last question in this section, then I'm going to pull up a quote that you, that you said.

And the question is this: Race dialogue fatigue.

Do you think people get tired of hearing about racism?

>>Tim- Well.

I'm sure they do.

My guess is that some people get more tired living with it.

Um, so I think that... [Applause] You know...

I get tired of hearing about a lot of things, but if I'm living it, it'’s probably worse.

You know, and I think the people who get tired of hearing about it, are mostly white folks.

And we've always felt that way.

We've always said, oh can't we move on.

This isn't a new thing.

We didn't just start saying that the last eight, nine, ten years.

>>Eugene- Yeah >>Tim- White folks in the sixties, like I said, according to the polling, didn't think we needed to worry about this.

In the 1850s, 1890s, 1930s, in every generation, I think white folks have said, oh, come on, we made all of this progress.

But you know, Malcolm X said something about, if you put a knife into my heart 12 inches, and pull it out 6, you don't call that progress, because it still in there, and you need to pull it out the rest of the way.

And I think that until the knife is, metaphorically speaking, removed, and until people are no longer living with institutional racism and inequality, then we'’re just gonna have to talk about it a little bit more, and we're gonna have, cuz, it's really and truly, if you'’re burdened by the discussion, >>Eugene- Yeah >>Tim- If you're burdened by the discussion, then clearly, you are living a pretty privileged existence.

If that's the worst thing that happens to you.

Um, you'’re living a pretty privileged life.

[Applause] >>Eugene- Your quote, says "“Inequality is rationalized as merely reflecting differences between productive and unproductive people.

"” >>Tim- Right.

So it goes back to what I just said.

I mean, we have this notion of meritocracy.

This idea that the winners were there because they're better.

And again we, we believe this even though, keep in mind, this ideology has been with us since the beginning of the country.

This ideology existed all through segregation.

Now how could a rational person say that the reason that black folks were on the bottom of the structure under segregation, was because they were unproductive.

No rational person could believe that the obstacles and barriers weren't instrumental in that, and yet the ideology said, yeah, let'’s not talk about that, right?

And so I think what we want to keep in mind is that, this ideology was just so foundational to the country, has been with us even at moments of intense oppression, which ought to tell you how absurd it is.

Um, the most productive people, the people whose work made this country possible and actually created the wealth that funded the Revolution, were black and brown unpaid laborers, who were working to construct levees, who were working to cultivate crops.

I mean that was the productive labor.

Rich white folks were sitting on the porch on their plantation house, sucking down mint juleps, talking about how gosh darn hot it was out here, and we don't, good thing we don't have to pick our own cotton.

You know, and I can make fun of these people cuz these are my family, right.

>>Eugene- [Laughs] >>Tim- But like, literally, they would sit around, and, and they would go in in carriages, and have big fancy balls, while their enslaved labor was doing all the hard work.

So we inverted who was productive and who was unproductive.

We actually flipped it.

We indicted the most productive people, while we sit around and did absolutely nothing.

And yet, when you go to those plantation homes they always tell you, well, you know, the owner of this Plantation created jobs for 500 people.

Or this person, this person helped produce 500 acres of land.

No, he didn't do anything.

>>Eugene- Yeah >>Tim- He sat around and made other people do it.

So the myth always been with us, and it's incredibly dangerous.

>>Eugene- Once again, one of those kind of unusual narratives has been kind of put out there.

>>Tim- Right, right.

>>Eugene- All right, let'’s move on to, Politics.

OK?

Question for you.

Do you think, or do you feel that the Obama presidency, was it impacted by racism?

>>Tim- Is that a trick question?

>>Eugene- [Laughter] >>Tim- Or a rhetorical one?

Um, well of course.

You know, from the very beginning, there was a narrative that was spun by certain people about President Obama.

>>Eugene- Uh huh >>Tim- First, that he wasn't actually an American, and even eligible to be president.

I seem to recall certain relatively prominent individuals who pumped that particular inherently racist notion.

That is, indeed, not only ignorance to a level almost unheard of, I mean to be perfectly honest, if you believe that Barack Obama wasn't born in America, you're really, not, how you manage to walk and brush your teeth and, and function is beyond me.

But, but , in addition to that, it was a racist notion, because it was pumped by the very same people who were trying to "“other"” him as a foreign outsider, or a Manchurian Candidate trying to destroy America.

People that were at the Tea Party rallies with their signs, that had a picture of Barack Obama dressed as an African witch doctor with a bone through his nose, >>Eugene- Yeah >>Tim- Were the same people pumping birtherism, the same people who were saying Rush Limbaugh said on the radio that, uh, you know, Rush Limbaugh used to be relevant, some of you will remember.

He said, he said on the radio that Barack Obama's role model was Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, and that any day now Obama was going to confiscate the farms of white people.

This was all intended to jin up racial anxiety, fear and resentment of a black president at a time of economic decline, where white folks were being confronted with real economic hardship for the first time at that level in maybe 80 years, since the Great Depression.

So I think there were politicians and individuals who took advantage of white racial anxiety.

Who took advantage of the demographic shift, the cultural shift, and the way that that has thrown some people off-balance, and used that as a way to attack the administration as being racially incendiary, when the reality, is that Barack Obama went out of his way, almost in a painful way, that made some of us quite uncomfortable in the other direction, to avoid the topic of race.

To mollify white folks, to try to prove to white people that, oh, no, no, I don't really mean it like that.

Or I don't think like that, or I'm different than this idea, or I'’m different than that idea, the fact that he had to go to such lengths to make white folks think that he wasn't racially incendiary, is actually proof of the privilege that even he, the most powerful man in the world for eight years, had to sort of bow to, and had to sort of scrape to, all the stuff that I've said sitting in this room in just the last few minutes every one of these things were things that Barack Obama probably knows at least as well or better than I, and not one of them could he have said, and he was the president of the United States.

And that ought to tell you something.

[Applause] >>Eugene- Based on the narrative that you discussed a while ago, and what you just said about the Obama administration, were you surprised with the outcome of the most recent presidential election?

>>Tim- There's a difference between surprise and shock.

>>Eugene- Uh huh >>Tim- I was surprised only because, I can read polls, and I thought that they would be correct in certain States in ways that they were not.

Now the national polling was actually pretty accurate, but the state by state was off.

So I was surprised.

I didn't expect that.

But, no one who does this work, and I don't think there are very many people of color, generally, whether they do this work or not, they do as a matter of living every day, I don't think many people of color were shocked by the possibility that white folks might do this.

You know, like, I know, and it was white folks who did it.

Let's be very clear.

I mean, it really was.

There was a sketch on SNL you know, the week after the election, where Dave Chappelle had come on the show and Chris Rock came back on the show.

And it was a brilliant sketch, because it was these, you know, four white folks in some Brooklyn loft that they've gentrified.

Right, and they've got their black friend, played by Dave Chappelle, and they're all sitting around sure that Hillary Clinton is going to win, and Chappelle's like, yeah, it's going to be a long night.

You know, and, and then as all the sudden the returns come in, they can't believe it, and then all of the sudden Chris Rock shows up, the two of them are laughing like, yeah, we completely knew this was going to happen.

And the white folks are like this is the most racist thing that'’s ever happened in America!

And Chris Rock says, really?

The most racist thing that's ever happened?

You know because again, there's a different understanding.

So, surprised?

Yes.

As I think many millions of people were.

Shocked?

No.

Because for eight years there has been this rumbling of backlash.

And Carol Anderson is a brilliant scholar at Emory University, just wrote a book, came out last year, called White Rage, and she talks about how, in every era of American History, steps forward for black folks have been met by pushback, and white rage, and resentment, and backlash.

It happened after reconstruction.

It happened after the Great Migration to the north.

It happened after desegregation.

It happened after the Civil Rights Movement.

And it began to happen after the Obama election in 2008.

And I think culminated in, in part in the in the most recent election of Donald Trump.

>>Eugene- Does the American political process actually promote institutional racism?

>>Tim- Well, in some ways, yeah.

I think one can say that.

I don't know if it's the political process so much as it is the various institutions of America that continue to perpetuate themselves intergenerationally.

At least in one regard I think we can see this election as, as evidence though of, of confirmation of your question.

So for instance, I don'’t think people give this enough thought, but let's be perfectly honest, the reason Donald Trump is president today, is because of the Electoral College.

He lost by 3 million votes.

Um, so he wins The Electoral College.

The Electoral College was created at the Constitutional Convention in large measure because the slave-holding states and leaders of places like Virginia and South Carolina had come to the convention to demand something other than direct democracy.

Why?

Because if you allow the vote for the president to be based on the, on the overall population, well 40% of their population can't vote.

40% of their population are enslaved.

Then they only are counted as three-fifths of a human.

So if you give the apportionment in terms of voting, based on population and you've got two fifths of your population discounted by two fifths, you'’re going to hurt yourself.

So you create an Electoral College system that actually inflates the value of your state, the power of your state.

So, let's understand we have a political system that is antiquated, that traces back to individuals that wanted to maintain white supremacy and 200 and 230 years after the fact, right, that system, created to protect white supremacy, is what just elected our president.

Which is why, when white folks say, why do we have to keep talking about slavery?

That's why.

Right there.

[Applause] Another quote from you.

"“Conservatives are seeking to repeal the twentieth century in the interests of the affluent minority, and with no concern for the well-being of the masses, who increasingly suffer the consequences of rising inequality and economic insecurity.

"” >>Tim- Hmm.

Yeah.

>>Eugene- [Laughter] Lot of big words.

>>Tim- I said it, I must have meant it.

>>Eugene- Yeah >>Tim- I can'’t remember what came right before or after that, I'’m sure it'’s fascinating.

Well, I think there'’s, you know, there'’s some real truth to that.

If you look at, you know, if you think about, I'’ll just give you two examples.

Um, when the Tea Party phenomenon took off in o nine and twenty ten, what was their slogan?

Their slogan was, I want my country back.

And I remember asking them, sort of, what did they mean?

>>Eugene- Right >>Tim- Right.

And the same thing with the pretty little "Make America Great Again" hat.

Those were cute.

You know, and I remember asking people, When was it great?

You know, what, what era are we talking about?

Now, most people didn't go back a full century, to the early 1900s.

Though a few did.

A few people were, I want to go back to before there was income tax.

Yeah, cuz you know the 1910s were really good.

>>Eugene- They were just wonderful.

>>Tim- Yeah, they were fantastic.

But, but, most people they didn'’t want to repeal the entire twentieth century.

>>Eugene- Uh huh >>Tim- They certainly wanted to repeal a substantial amount of what was done in the name of the Have Nots in the 20th century.

Because they would pick dates that, that corresponded with, you know, before we started doing all of these government things, for these people, now, interestingly, it was well after we'd started doing government things for white people.

You know, that I would ask people what year you want.

You say you want to take your country back to when?

And I had one woman said 1957.

I said, oh, ok. Why do you like 1957 so much?

And she said, well, because government was small, and taxes were low.

That'’s utter nonsense.

Government was huge if you were white, in 1957.

You had the FHA Loans.

You had the VA loans.

You had the GI Bill.

These things for the first 30 years, were essentially off-limits to people of color, particularly FHA.

You'’d had the Homestead Act since 1862,which got a lot of white folks in this state and other states around the Midwest, farmland that they wouldn't have had otherwise.

So, government had been very large for a very long time.

It was only because in the sixties and seventies you start to associate government with people of color that now we want to repeal all that stuff.

Oh, we just don't want it for those people.

We discovered our inner libertarian the minute that people of color gained access to the stuff we already had.

Taxes were huge.

1957 the top tax rate was 91%.

And there were 14 tax brackets that were higher than anything we have today.

And yet, if you ask most conservatives, do you think taxes are higher or lower than they were in the fifties, they will, every single one of them, almost without fail, say oh, they'’re much much higher, it's out of control.

Taxes are out of control.

And it's absolute nonsense.

On the top marginal tax earners, or income earners.

It is certainly true, however, on working-class people.

Because sales taxes have gone up, but they're not worried about that.

Payroll taxes have gone up on working people, but they're not really worried about that.

So they're trying to repeal the advances of the 20th century vis a vis working people, in a way that I think is pretty transparent and obvious.

>>Eugene- Justice and Legal System.

Why is there such hostility associated with the concept of Black Lives Matter?

>>Tim- Well I think if you, again, this goes to the history of whiteness, and the inability, or the, or the obliviousness to black reality right?

If white Americans don't by and large, and I think we don't, know the historic relationship of law enforcement to black people, than Black Lives Matter, as a slogan, or movement, makes no sense.

If you don't realize that black folks experiences with police start with slave patrols, and they extend to the enforcement of Black Codes, and the catching of runaways.

And they extend to the enforcement of segregation.

It was cops who enforced segregation.

It was cops that turned water cannons on children in Birmingham.

It was cops who beat folks on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

It was cops that pulled protesters off the sit in stools.

It was cops that enforced the War on Drugs.

So if black folks experiencing, see, black folks experience with cops is not, officer friendly that comes to get your cat out of the tree.

By and large, that is not their reality.

That doesn't mean, that doesn't mean that every cop is bad or brutal or racist.

It means you got to understand the historical relationship, if you want to understand the anger and the frustration.

And so when folks say black lives matter, particularly, in relation to law enforcement mistreatment of them, they are demanding that we, that we acknowledge something that has never been acknowledged.

Because the history of law enforcement in Black space is not one that apparently believes that black lives matter, at least not equally, and so folks come back with, oh, all lives matter.

But see, White America has a long history of saying, all, and not meaning it.

We said, All men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.

Among these, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but that was Thomas Jefferson writing at a time when he owned about three hundred other human beings.

So he didn't mean it.

And then in the 1880s, in the 1880s, when we have the Pledge of Allegiance, which was then updated it several times in the twenties and finally in the 1950s, the last line of the Pledge says what?

With liberty and justice for all.

There's that word again.

All.

But if we didn't mean it 1880s.

We didn't mean it in the 1920s.

We surely didn't mean it the 1950s.

So, until we actually start including black folks in all which we've never done, we're just going to have to get used to black folks reminding us that they're part of it.

>>Eugene- In our society, everybody talks about feeling safe.

And of course the criminal justice system is supposed to be one of those things that, of course, hopefully, helps you to feel safe.

The concept of safety in the black community >>Tim- Yeah >>Eugene- Means that, for a lot of us, you know, you don'’t want to have, you know, tons and tons of, uh, you know, other folks coming in to your community telling you what to do.

Policing you.

>>Tim- right >>Eugene- For the white community, a lot of times it means, police those folks, over there, so they don'’t come to our community.

>>Tim- Right.

>>Eugene- Talk about that a little bit.

>>Tim- Exactly.

Well there'’s no doubt that that is, the law enforcement structure in the criminal justice system has always been, about protecting the haves from the have-nots.

Right?

Whether those are racial haves, economic haves, or a combination of that.

And that'’s what slave patrols were.

It was about catching people who were running away, taking other people's property, IE, their own bodies, away from the people who had paid for them, and giving them back, to the people who owned them.

Or keeping them in line and some other way.

So, that's always been the relationship.

It wasn't really about safety.

It wasn't really about protection.

It was about monitoring and controlling and limiting freedom.

So let'’s just be clear about that.

That doesn't mean that when people want to become cops that that's their goal, is to be an authoritarian.

Lots of people become police for the right reason.

The problem is the culture is one that encourages this mindset of domination and control, and looking at the people in the community as the enemy.

Which is why right now, great example, think about what happened after, after Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson.

The tanks roll in.

Now keep in mind, these are tanks that have been decommissioned from the war zones in Afghanistan or Iraq.

And they'’re being used on the streets of America against citizens of this country, by law enforcement, who roll in, in military equipment and wearing camouflage.

Now, I want you to ask yourself, why do cops need camo?

Right?

First of all, what is camouflage look like?

It either, if it's Vietnam era, it's green to blend in in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

If it is more modern, it is tan colored, khaki colored, to blend in, I guess, with a sand dune, and what we call the Middle East.

Okay.

I don't know if you've been to Ferguson, but they ain't got sand dunes, and they don't have jungles.

So if you roll up in Ferguson, or in any urban environment with camo, what you are saying is very clear.

You're not there to hide from the elements and blend in.

You'’re there to say, I am at war, this might as well be Fallujah, and you are the enemy.

Which is why people of color understand safety very, very differently than white folks do.

And until we do something about that cultural mindset of the justice system, we're not going to solve these problems.

>>Eugene- Wow.

[Applause] >>Eugene- Another quote.

"“Something is askew when we speak of justice and liberty for all in our nation, while discussing large swaths of our nation'’s people as barely worthy of human consideration.

"” Strong quote.

>>Tim- Right, well, I mean, relatively self-explanatory.

When we discuss people, whether it's black folks in the cities, whether it's new immigrants, be they documented or not, whether it's refugees from places like Syria, or other nations coming in, looking for not only safety from, from far worse situations, but also for opportunity, and we speak of them in this, again, almost animalistic dehumanized way, assuming the worst about them, assuming that somehow they're coming for different reasons.

Think about this with immigrants and with refugees.

This is what you'll hear regularly.

Well, you know, we came for freedom and liberty, and they're just coming to take advantage of "“stuff"”.

Right?

Well the reality is Europeans came for stuff.

We didn'’t come for liberty and freedom.

Because if we had come for that we would have set that up.

We did not.

We set up tyranny for some.

We took other people's land.

We took other people's labor.

We actually tyrannized each other.

We spent most of our time in the colonies trying to figure out who the witch was.

So we didn't believe in liberty and freedom.

We believed in tyranny.

Only we didn't want the king to impose it.

We wanted to do it.

So we came for land.

We came for stuff that we couldn't get in England.

And now when people come over a border, right, in the same way that our families would have if they'd lived right next door.

Right?

We look at them, and we judge them, and we say that there's somehow criminals and lawbreakers by definition.

But the reality is the only reason that our families came, quote on quote, legally, is there was no law to break, because we made the laws.

And we're the ones who said that the Naturalization Act of 1790 said all white people and only white people can be citizens of the United States.

So you create a law that basically allows all your people to come in and then you pat yourself on the back for being law-abiding.

You don't get kudos for not breaking a law that isn't even on the books.

You don't get any extra brownie points for that.

Right?

But, so we talk about others in this way that demeans their motivations, when in fact they're coming for the very same reason that our ancestors came.

Those of us who came voluntarily, not the same reason that black folks came, because it wasn't voluntary, and not the same reason indigenous people were here, they were already here.

But for those of us from Europe who make such a big deal.

of you know, newcomers to the country and talk about them in really dehumanizing ways, we might want to remember how our people were talked about, and how they were viewed.

But unfortunately, we have a view of our ancestors as being these noblemen.

Oh, you know we came with these principles.

No, our people were the losers of Europe.

I mean let's be clear, they were the losers of Europe.

You know the king didn't get on the boat.

There's a reason.

The king, the king was doing pretty well.

The king didn't, people the king liked didn't even get on the boat.

Like, the winners stayed put.

If you were winning, you did not leave.

The losers got on the boat, and there's nothing wrong with being the loser of the society.

But if you don't view yourself as the loser, but you view those people as the loser, you can't see yourself in them, and that's where we're at right now.

>>Eugene- Yeah.

Let's talk about change.

Is there any hope for our society?

>>Tim- Yeah.

I mean there'’s amazing possibilities, I think.

I don't like the word hope so much because as philosopher Derek Jensen says, he says, you know hope gives away your agency, right?

Hope gives away your power and your control.

It's like I fly every week.

I hope the plane doesn't crash.

Right?

But, but that's because I got no control.

I can't do anything else, I don't know how to fly it, so I have to just hope.

If we're talking about Justice, we can't just hope.

Right?

We have to act.

And I think there are people in this country right now, and there always have been, who are clearly on the side of justice and prepared to fight for it, and even die for it, if need be.

So I certainly am optimistic on that level.

James Baldwin had the best way of saying it, as is true with most things, and so I'll just tell you what he said.

Back in 1963, Baldwin was in a studio with Kenneth Clark, the great sociologist, and Clark asked him whether he was an optimist or a pessimist.

And Baldwin, Very, in a way that only he, that you know, if you go back and look at his video, you know how he did this, he sort of sighed a very deep and pensive sigh, and he took a drag on his cigarette, because it was 1963, you could still smoke in the studio, and he said, "“I wish you hadn'’t asked me that, but, since you did, I'll offer an answer"”, he said.

"“I guess I'm an optimist, because I'm alive.

"” And, I mean, you know, really, and he says "” to be a pessimist is to conclude that life is just an academic matter, and it's not.

"” In other words what he was saying was, as long as your drawing breath, you have to assume that there's a hope that we can get better, and get it right, and create a just society, even if you knew it wasn't true.

See that, for me'’s the thing, even if there were, you know, some Heavenly Body that was able to, or, Heavenly power that was able to write in the clouds tomorrow, yeah Justice isn't coming.

And I knew for a fact, it wasn't ever going to happen, that's still wouldn't relieve me or any of us from doing the work to get as close as possible.

Because whether or not it is ultimately attainable, what makes us human, and innocent, is the capacity to fight for justice.

It'’s the thing that separates us from other species.

Because, you know, other species are altruistic, other species can work together for things.

Most other species are smarter than us.

They don't poison their own land base.

They don't make weapons.

They don't make weapons that can destroy the planet.

So we're not the smartest and we're not the kindest.

But we are, perhaps, the only species that has the capacity to organize for collective liberation and justice.

And if that's the one thing that makes us different, and we refuse to do it, then we have abrogated our responsibility as human beings on this planet.

[Applause] >>Eugene- Help us act.

Tell us two or three things that we, in this arena, can do to act and to change and make things better.

>>Tim- Number one, I think we have to do a better job of interrogating our own history, how we came to where we are.

One of the things I argue in Under the Affluence is that, part of becoming a nation that is more open to people, whether they're poor folks, whether it's folks of color different from the dominant racial norm, whether it's new immigrants, is to have a much more humble understanding of our own beginnings.

We tend to want to believe that whatever we got, we did it on our own.

That's the rugged individualism narrative.

And so we believe that.

And I know why we want to believe it, but I want us to really interrogate where we come from because we've all had help.

Some of it was racially coded.

Some of it was gendered.

Some of it was about class.

Some of it was just about luck.

The people who came into our lives at just the right moment and mentored us, or offered us that first job.

And I think if we would all be considerably more humble about how circumstances beyond our control have brought us to where we are, that none of us have gotten where we are on our own, that our parents did not in fact, lift themselves completely up by their bootstraps, that there were always individuals or systems or structures or circumstances that intervene, we'd be better off.

So that's number one, we be able to look at each other with the far less judgement.

The second point is to, is to have a clear-headed understanding of the history of this country.

To confront it openly, as South Africa did with the Truth and Reconciliation process.

As has happened in Rwanda.

As is happening now in Northern Ireland, where folks are sitting down and having an honest conversation unafraid to do that.

You know Nazi Germany after, after the Nazi regime fell, Germany has done that for the last 67 years.

They have engaged in a process of non-forgetting.

We in this country like to forget.

We engage in amnesia as a national sacrament.

And in Germany, they actually are very clear about what was done, and yet in this country we know more about what was done in Germany, than we know what has been done in this country.

Which tells us a lot.

The, the third thing, the third thing is, learn to listen to those people of color who have always been out there.

In other words, you know dance with the ones who brung you, as the saying goes.

Right?

And so if people of color have been leading this fight always, and have been the ones out there, sort of the barometers of what's real in this country when it comes to race, we got to learn to listen to them as white folks, and people of color have to learn to trust your gut instincts, because everything in this Society tells folks of color that you're seeing things, that you're exaggerating, but people of color have been on it from the beginning.

And need to stay on it.

And white folks need to learn how to follow the leadership of people of color.

Take direction from people of color.

Join those movements that are already out there.

Which brings me to number four.

Which is, you don't have to go searching for things to do with a big national, huge level.

There are organizations and individuals in your own communities that are working on housing equity, that are working on educational equity, that are working on Criminal Justice Reform, that are working on job creation.

Talk to those people.

Get involved with those people.

Make yourself indispensable to those groups, and push forward on an agenda that you can join.

You don'’t have to recreate the wheel.

That wheel has already been created.

Those folks are out there doing the work.

They just need more bodies prepared to join that struggle.

[Applause] >>Eugene- Last quote, and then we are going to take some audience questions .And the quote reads "“Those who hoard wealth harm the overall well-being of most Americans.

The problem is not a culture of poverty, rather, it is a culture of predatory affluence.

"” >>Tim- Right.

So right now, Corporate America, collectively, is sitting on, or at least was the time this book came out, which was a year-and-a-half ago, the number could have gone up or down a little but I doubt it's changed by much, was sitting on 3 trillion dollars of cash reserves.

3 trillion dollars of cash reserves that they were not using to create new jobs.

That they were not using to build new plants and equipment.

That they were not using to fund public projects of any kind.

They were sitting on it, paying out benefits to shareholders.

Doing stock BuyBacks ,with their profits right now over 90% of profits for lot of companies are going just to buy back their own stock, which keeps the stock price inflated, which works very well for top Executives and people who have stock shares.

Doesn't work so well for employees or potential employees who they could be hiring with that money.

So when you hoard wealth in the name of the very narrow few, you end up damaging the country.

You limit the ability of folks to get jobs and move up the ladder to make greater incomes.

You keep us in a society where a very small handful of people have a disproportionate share of the wealth.

Which is not good, not only for the economy, it's also not good for public policy and politics, because ultimately it leads to anti-democratic outcomes.

If a very small group of people have a disproportionate share of the wealth, they are going to be able to influence the decisions of politicians, in both of our major parties, and we see them do that on a regular basis.

So much so, that you can become president, promising to drain the swamp of these people, and then go hire the very crocodiles that you said you were about to get rid of, because, because our entire political and economic system is predicated on the financialization of the economy, and both Democrats and Republicans are beholden to that historically, in the last, let's say at least 20 to 30 years, that's the problem.

And it doesn't help anyone, and that'’s one of the reasons people were angry.

The problem being, they'’re not focusing that anger on that group.

As I said, 37 people, same wealth as the bottom one half of the population.

There are 6 people, whose last names happened to be Walton, that are the Walmart heirs, that actually have the same amount, that actually have the same amount as the bottom 40% of the American population.

There 58 people on this planet that have the same amount of wealth as the poorest three and a half billion people on the planet.

That's half of all humanity.

When you put all of that together what we see is an economic system that is failing the vast majority of people on this globe, the vast majority of people in this country, for the benefit and the aggrandizement of a very few.

And all I can say is I hope that their gated communities are locked and prepared, because at some point the guillotines come.

And so I think equality is probably a pretty good bet for everyone, at this point.

>>Eugene- Well, that is a great spot right there to open it up for questions and comments from the audience.

We'’ll put the microphone up.

>>Mallory- My name is Mallory Luetz, and I am a sophomore history and secondary ed major here at Washburn.

What is the best way to handle a friend or a peer who makes a racist remark?

>>Tim- Um, well it's, it's hard because I don't know if the questioner is envisioning this friend or peer being same race as themselves or if they're opposite race or differently raced from themselves.

Obviously, if a person of color is in the presence of a white peer, for instance, who makes a racist comment, or tells a racist joke, that's a very different conversation then if a white person is with another white person and the white person tells a racist joke, thinking that the other white person won't mind it.

In the first instance, you have someone whose friendship I would seriously question because I can't imagine that a white person would say something racist in front of a person of color, if that person of color were truly a friend.

But those of us who are white, when we have a friend or a relative or someone who does that, I think that as with most things, the response has to be one that is intended to throw off the person who said that, and make them question whether or not they can get away with that in the presence of white people.

Cuz the only reason most people make racist comments, or for that matter sexist comments, or for that matter homophobic comments, or for that matter islamophobic comments, is because they figure the person they're saying it in front of won'’t mind.

And what I would always do in that sort of situation, is try to get them to think about, why they assumed, I, as a white person, would be chill with that.

Why I would be okay with that.

You know the thing I tend to do in that situation is look at the person and I ask them, why do you think so little of white people?

Right, because keep in mind that joke wasn't aimed at white people, it was aimed at people of color, or whatever.

And that throws them, right?

Because they might be expecting me to go, oh, that's terrible, that's horrible, you shouldn'’t say that.

I say why do you think so little of white people.

At which point they do that thing that dogs do when they hear a high-pitch whistle, which is they do, that, with their head.

>>Eugene- [chuckles] >>Tim-And then, and then I'll say, you know cuz it seems to me sort of odd that you would assume that I'm okay with that, just because I'm white.

It says to me that you don't think very much of white folks.

In fact, what it says is, you must assume all white people are racist.

And not just that we're all racist, but that were the kind of racist who likes to hear racist humor.

So why do you hate your own people so much?

Discuss.

You know, and, and, and that works also.

At the very least, they run from you, and, but see the reason it works is, they don't know the next time, right?

When they're going to say something racist they have to ask themselves, is this person I'm telling this joke to or making it, is this a real white person, or is this one of those, not so real white people, that isn't going to appreciate it.

And if you keep racists off balance, they get worse at doing what they do, which has value, you know.

>>Terek- Is there a such thing as black racism?

>>Tim- So here'’s the thing.

Here's how I explain this answer that I'’m about to give.

Racism by definition to me, and this is not just to me, it's a grammatical thing, right?

If you have a word that ends with I-S-M, an ISM, it is almost by definition two things, an ideology and a system.

So you think of other examples, communism, socialism, capitalism, fascism.

These are ideologies.

They'’re ways of viewing the world, seeing the world.

They'’re also ways of organizing it.

Right?

As a system.

At the level of the system, which is where people die and it's where people's lives are profoundly affected, I do not believe it is possible for black folks or other people of color to practice racism at that level, because they rarely if ever are going to be in a position of ultimate power to do so.

Even when they are President of the United States.

Like I said, even if Barack Obama deeply in his heart could not stand white people, for which there is zero evidence, at all.

But what was he going to do to white folks?

But what was he going to do to us?

Nothing.

He had to get our votes, right?

So, at a systemic level people of color can't really, effectively, exercise racism.

Now, at the ideological level, I will be more than happy for the sake of argument to say, that at the ideological level anybody can be racist.

Anybody can have a racist belief.

But it's like I can be a capitalist up here, in North Korea, but I ain't getting very far with that, right?

I can't actually effectuate my Capitalist thinking in the capitalism in practice.

I could be a communist in a capitalist economy, but I'm not getting very far with that.

It's sort of like, I guess the analogy I would use, if you have a stationary combustion engine, and there's no fuel that's going to that engine to make it operate.

It's still an engine.

But it'’s not going to get you from point A to point B.

Once you add the fuel to it, is when it's operational, and so the fuel is equivalent to power, right?

So I can say, yeah, okay, there might be such a thing as black racism as a stationary combustion engine that just sits there, and sort of hurts your feelings, right?

But it's not going to do very much to you because it doesn't have the power to do so, and that makes it qualitatively different and quantitatively different.

Both of them may be equally objectionable.

It might be just as immoral for a person of color to believe I'm inferior, as it is for me to believe they're inferior, put a person of color who believes I'm inferior is not going to be the bank officer.

Is not going to be the employer.

Is not going to be the cop.

I'm sure there black cops that get tired of white spoiled college kids, and high school students in privileged areas around the country, but they're not profiling them, and they're not pulling em over out of the car and beating them with clubs, and they're not shooting them by in large.

So in that regard, even if you have bigotry, prejudice, or what we could call racism, you're a person of color, you are very limited in what you're able to get away with, with that attitude.

Whereas, white folks can take a pen and zone you out of existence, right?

And, and, and bring in a, a bulldozer to knock down your house.

You know, black folks in Baltimore can get mad at white cops, and throw some Molotov cocktails to the CVS, and white Baltimore can come in and knock down entire black neighborhoods to make way for the interstate.

Now you tell me which one is more effective.

It'’s pretty obvious.

Pretty obvious.

>>Mallory- Do you think that school integration did more harm or more good to Black communities?

>>Tim- Well, I think there's always good and bad things that come from the way we move forward if we do it without proper foresight.

I think in a group, look, integration was a vital thing in the sense that, there was no way that in the 1950s and afterward, in this or any other community, that separate but equal could ever be equal.

There was simply no way.

The resource disparities were too great.

The ideological rationalizations for those disparities were too embedded.

So integration was a necessary step.

Desegregation and integration were necessary steps, and I think for many people, many millions of people, they improved educational outcomes, and we have some data to suggest that.

Here's the problem, right?

Under segregation, there were, there was a different ideology that black folks developed about the purpose of schooling.

And it made sense, right?

Because under segregation, black folks mentality of why you go to school couldn't be the white folks mentality.

White folks mentality was very individualistic.

You go to school so you can get into a good college, so you can get a good job, so you can be successful and support your family.

Well black folks under segregation knew that if that was their mentality, they could be very frustrated.

Because they weren't going to be able to get that great job, and they weren'’t going to be able to move up the same way, so the mentality, as Theresa Perry, brilliant educational theorist puts it, was freedom for literacy and literacy for freedom.

The idea that being literate and educated was about collective uplift, and that mentality permeated segregated communities.

The kids knew the teachers loved them, because they live three doors down, right?

They knew the counselors love them cuz they lived on the block.

They knew the principal loved them cuz they did house visits.

Now, we could have integrated more than just the bodies.

We could have integrated the philosophies, but we did not.

So the problem wasn't integration.

The problem was we integrated the bodies and we colorized the room the way Ted Turner colorizes old movies for TNT, but we did not in fact colorize the philosophy.

We basically took black folks, put them in mostly white institutions under a white paradigm, of what education is for.

If we had blended the paradigms, then integration could have done a lot of things it did not accomplish.

So it wasn't the mixing that was the problem, it was the partial, sort of, half-hearted mixing, that that led to, I think, a reduction in the collective vision of Education, into this hyper individualistic thing.

That nowadays, if you think about it, what's the one thing, I talk to teachers all the time and they say, you know I try to Inspire my kids of color to get an education so they can, get out.

I want you to think about that phrase for a minute, right.

What does it mean that we'’re telling young people of colo,r that the best thing they can do is get an education so they can leave everyone and everything they know behind.

When we tell children that, we are telling them, everything you are from is broken, and bad, and you should want to get out of here and never look back again.

That is a completely retrograde, backward mentality.

Rather than saying that, we should be saying, that the purpose of education is to liberate your community and your people from the clutches of a system that wasn't set up for you, but that you're here to take back anyway.

That's a very different message.

[Applause] >>Eugene- This this is been a truly provocative discussion.

One that we hope will resonate with activists and critics alike.

Please join me in thanking Mr. Tim Weiss for making this appearance on Minds That Matter.

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