- [Narrator] The death of George Floyd brought renewed focus on racism in 2020, but some argue it is the coronavirus pandemic that has laid bare the racism ingrained in our institutions.

you will see particularly Black and Brown people, who are in these positions, who have been deemed as essential workers.

However, they do not have and generally their employers do not have additional funds to be able to offer them the correct amount of protection, to protect them and their families.

Many of them live in housing where they're going to be in close contact with people which puts them again at a higher risk.

Many of them do not have adequate health insurance if they have any at all.

And we know also where we see that more minorities and people of color are actually facing the brinks of being evicted or foreclosed because they have not gotten more stimulus money to help them and their unemployment.

And their unemployment checks are now being cut or they're running out.

And in terms of just the housing stock that is available if you wanna talk about that, that is also, as we know, that goes way back to the days of redlining and predatory loaning and all of those kinds of things that have impacted Black and Brown and people of color more so than it has White Americans because in terms of the policies - [Karen] I'm gonna play devil's advocate here.

What would you say to the people who would say, the housing is available, they can move anywhere they want, - [Cheryl] I would say you need to prove that in realistic terms.

So even if that housing is there, there's no guarantee number one that you will be able to move there and be welcomed there.

And that you'll be able to get a mortgage and a loan for there to move there although there are Truth in Lending guidelines, there's still loaning practices that make it tougher for people of color to get mortgages.

- [Jay] Systemic racism has existed since the Emancipation Proclamation.

And we see it all over the place in housing, we see it in corporate America where it's the pink elephant in the room, but it's not spoken of, and for those who do speak up about it, then they're largely ostracized, demoralized, and just a system that's designed And for years Black people have told the community, the police, anyone who would listen, that they were treated differently than their white counterparts.

And it's only even with these cell phones capturing what is going on that it's still difficult to get a lot of people to understand the lived reality of individuals.

You know, when people tell me that the police officers need to undergo implicit bias training.

Well, that's helpful up to a point, but it has not resulted in changes.

And they will oftentimes say there's only a few bad apples.

But I know from my studies that good people can do bad things based upon the cultural context of an organization that is present there.

but our military in order to make it easier for soldiers to harm and kill the so-called enemy, the enemy is de-humanize.

The Vietnamese, when we fought were called gooks or slant eyes or German krauts.

Those are labels meant to say that they are de-human, they are not human beings kill them.

We are not connected to them at all.

And I see racism thriving in very much the same way that we see people of color as sub-human aliens.

because the system wasn't created for Black Americans to thrive in ever and if we arrest a certain amount of people and we put them around other people who have done bad things, the story is going to continue to be true.

War on Drugs policies have produced far different outcomes for communities of color.

Although minorities use and sell drugs at a similar rate as whites, 57% of those incarcerated in state prisons for drug offenses are Black or Latino.

And I don't wanna blame police I wanna blame the policy that allows police to do that.

So it's police are just doing their job.

They're just doing what the policy dictates.

They're just doing what they feel is right.

In some instances, but it's not.

It is really criminalizing, like I said people for being Black and writing a narrative that African American communities are not safe.

That African American people can't be safe without being overly policed.

So that narrative has to change not just in our community, within police departments, they have to realize too, that the numbers don't indicate that that's been a successful system, that we need more, programs in place to deal with mental health, that deal with depression, that deal with addiction, that deal with stress management.

And that will help make a better community and a safer community for police to work in.

- [Karen] By making the neighborhood feel and that's where the conversation has to start.

When it looks at reforming the system, when it looks at talking about things that are sticky subjects, like what does police defunding really look like?

And to a point where somebody in education says, but is it okay that we spend more on defense than education?

If that officer was more educated, if George Floyd was more educated, it was more readily available to him, would that situation have even happened?

- [Karen] What do you think of, a lot of it government has played such a part in instituting policies that at their core sometimes are racist or allow for racism interpretations, or racist interpretations.

And so that's why we're working and calling on government to now work to help to eradicate, and to revise policies and to look at those types of things to be able to better reflect the diversity of this country.

but if we're truly to disarm and dismantle it, I think that the answer lies in pre-K through 12.

If our parents, if our caretakers, if our teachers really had a anti-bias curriculum, we would nip these biases at the bud before, we become adults.

I mean, for you and me, we may be a lost cause, we have to unlearn everything to really do that struggle.

But it would be so much easier if we didn't have these fears and biases instilled in us to begin with.