>> we want this film to save lives. >> i lived that character. >> we will be able to see change. >> you can see the conflict playing now in arenas, on the streets, in marchs and in the anonymous alleyways of social media, not race war, but ugly cascades of charges and counter charges. black lives matter versus all lives matter, taking account of america's real race history versus charges of political correctness. preacher, theologian, social

activist, jim wallace says that we can tease open the endless knots of conflict in america's original sin. it's the "inside story". welcome to "inside story," i'mray suarez. one of the ubiquitous symbols of the abolition movement of the set century was a slave on one knee, chains trailing from his wrists with a legend, am i not a brother and a man? i never thought that i would live to see americans answer both questions in the negative more than they did 10 years ago, 20 years, measured year after year by national pollsters, and they're

widening. people think they have less income rather than more year after year. one emblem of that divide is the black lives matter movement. why is the question, am i not a brother, the insistence that black lives matter, is controversial, instead of self evident. here's aljazeera's michael shure. >> reporter: in 2015, black lives matter protests erupted around the country, including in charleston, south carolina. for many, on the surface, it looks far different than anything that this country has seen before. >> we don't really want a seat at the table. >> reporter: he's a leader of black lives matter in charleston. >> we don't want to amplify our voice within the structure. went to develop our power in such a way that we can pull out of the structure, have the

opportunity and the ability to create our own structure, and then if we want to talk power to power, let's talk power to power. >> reporter: for many black lives matter activists, integration was only a partial success. it lot african-americans a seat at the table, but not a seat in the room, especially issues of law enforcement. and policing that lead some to view it as violence. in a september mar is poll, 59% of white americans called black lives matter a distraction, with 41% saying that the movement advocates violence, quite different than the movement of the 1960s, right? >> but that's not the case. >> reporter: cleveland sellers of the coordinating committee doesn't think so. >> the perception of the movement is different than the relates of the civil rights movement. >> reporter: the poll, taken

in 1963, showed that most americans, northerners included, opposed the march on washington, fearing that it was a call to uprising, and breaking point for the civil rights movement, the death of a young black man. >> . >> our whole plans of operation, what we did after that, and how we did those things work, point out that black lives matter. >> the criticism over organization for the black lives matter is different than when america was dealing with 2s own growing pains. >> we didn't know what we were doing, and didn't know what we were talking about. didn't know anything. >> but they knew something had to be done, and that's something that they share with today's activists. >> as long as it's people that are willing to answer the call

to justice, we're all good. >> reporter: michael shure, aljazeera, charleston, south carolina. >> my guest on today's "inside story" is jail wallace, president and founder of sojourners, and founder of america's original sin, racism, white privilege and a bridge to new america. welcome to the program. its hopeful, a bridge to new america, but every chapter, i finished and said to myself, yeah, but. and it was the but that was bothering me. to have reconciliation, don't you have to be recognition of the original wrong that has been done? >> absolutely. because a lot of white folks like to think that it was slavery that was the sin, and that has pax and my grandparents had slaves, they did, and it was really what we did, what we said about the kidnapped africans that we were going to make into this chattel

property for this enormous economic of slaves. and we said way back then u. that black lives, indigenous lives matter less. you can't do this to people and think that they're made in the image of god. so you have to make them less than they are. so a kid in ferguson said last year, i still feel like i'm treated like three-fifths of a person. a black teenager, and we have to go back to that and say, black lives matter, the whole movement is a direct response to our country saying that black lives don't matter. so going back is the way to go forward. and i think those young people that we were just talking about, out there night after night after night, and there wouldn't have been a ferguson report or department of justice

report if they have hadn't done that every single day. so he likes to tell me, we don't just need allies, with you we need accomplices. the only way to mike black lives matter. >> but far more people are sitting in front of their televisions than will ever walk the streets in ferguson, and shouting and holding up signs, look at these kids, no one is oppressing them, no one is marginalizing them. i'm not oppressing them. so even a plea for understanding and it's hard to not that. >> one young man in ferguson, he said we always ask the protesters what we want. yeah? i said what do you want? he said i want an education, i want a job, i want a family. my son is going to college next

year, he wants an education, a job and a family. so when we see young people narglized from all three of those things, when we get proximity to the problem, we understand how they're feeling. i just came back to this book tour, and we had these very deep, rich conversations, not as multiracial, multi-culture, and they were blacks and aces saying we want to build this bridge to a new america. went to change this. we have troubled waters. the big political fact in this country, as you know, for decades, we're no longer a white majority nation, we're a nation of minorities. and how do we build that bridge? i think that the younger

generation wants to do that, but a lot of older white citizens with no proximity are afraid of that, and their fears are being preyed upon politically. >> there you go, that demographic reality, which is going to come true sometime in the 2040s, they tell us, makes people tighten their grip instead of surrendering and saying look, it's going to be a different america, instead they hunker down and say, no, i don't want the country that i grew up with to be a different place. i don't want it to be run by different people. >> so my son, in a local elementary school, blocks from here, in a 5th grade class at a public school, and i told him about all of undocumented people, they can't get healthcare, protection, and families are being destroyed, and he said why don't we fix

that? shouldn't congress fix that? and he said what did they say? i said well, they're afraid. he said afraid of what? and it hit me, i looked at the class, african-american, hispanic, african-american, white, somali, and it's everything. i said they're afraid of you. i said why are you afraid of us? because you look like the new america that we're becoming, and tell me, is it working? yeah, it's working great. it's really cool. so all around the country, i'm seeing very multiracial crowds of young people, especially saying this diversity that's emerging and becoming more and more evident is our best gift, and not a threat. it's that transformation that's occurring right now, and it's not going to be easy, it's going to be a battle.

our original sin won't be overcome easily, and that's the battle that we're in now. so i, after being around the country and listening to a conversation underneath the media conversation, underneath, it's not going to be easy, but i think there's real hope here. >> america's original sin. jim wallace on race in america.

>> you're watching "inside story," i'm ray suarez. jim wallace is with me, pastor and theologian. we're looking at the race in america and the future of what he calls america's original sin in his new book. white privilege, just the use of the phrase, white privilege, and trying to discuss if such a thing exists, and you get into a fight. especially at a time of severe economic distress for millions of white americans. the very suggestion that they enjoy any kind of privilege just drives them crazy, and i can understand that. >> sure, you have a lot of white working class people feeling marginalized. they have lost incomes and jobs, and homes, and even their families. in the past, we have seen movements that are populist, bringing people together with

common interests and problems, and others who use these problems to divide to make people afraid of the others. the others are to blame. the immigrants are to blame for the lack of jobs, and even though it's not true, it's a fear that's easily used. so how do we bring people together for what is marge lieding both blacks and whites? before i came over, my son, who is a high school student, came over briefly with one of his classmates on the baseball team. and my kid is white and his friend is african-american, and his best friends are the guys on the team. and so they're big buddies, and they're all together all the time. but i know that my son, walking out of that house, is less of a danger than his friend walking outside of his house even in the same neighborhood. so those are realities that we have to be honest about.

my son, luke, i wrote this book after trayvon martin was killed. and everyone knows that my big, six foot son, luke, if a white kid was in the same place trayvon martin was doing the same thing, he would have come back to me, and trayvon martin would be going to college next year. those are marginalized. and no matter who they are, we have to deal with those issues, and they feel that neither wall street or washington cares about them and they don't. so how do you bring young people together to solve big problems and not use people's fears and anger and resentment to divide people from one another. >> well, trayvon martin is a good example. what did president obama do? not anything untoward, he didn't call for the march of 1 million people into sanford, florida, he said if i had a

son, he would look like trayvon, which is not only obvious, but true. and i mean, it was it was hardly setting a flag on fire. but he had just overturned the tables in the temple and people said something crazy. and people bring it up today, two and a half years later, as a real offense that he said that, and he somehow politicized the shooting of trayvon martin by george zimmerman. >> what i'm saying, as a white man, that if my son, even in a hoody was down there at the same time, this would not have happened to him and that's not politicizing it. >> what i'm saying, we have such a hard time even talking about the easy parking lots of a difficult situation. >> because as you know, in 1964 and 65, linden johnson said if we democrats support civil rights and voting rights, we'll lose the entire south.

it was a pivotal and political moment. and that has happened. it was a white strategy, and the republicans have taken the south. and with the notion of this being the white party. there are republicans who say we don't want that, but they're losing in the party, in the base. this is another moment like that, this whole notion of the country changing demographically. it is changing, and it's going to change. and the question is how much conflict will there be? how will there be a way to be a better place? it's going to be a battle. but repentance is the language of sin, and repentance doesn't meaning sorry for the past. it means turning around and going in a different direction. so i talked about how we can change our racial geography,

through our sports, being a baseball coach in little league. how do we listen to each other's stories? the kids have had the talk from their moms and dads. and the parents don't know what's going on. how do we have that conversation between white parents and black parents, who both should say it's wrong, and the kids should be able to trust law enforcement in their own communities. >> there we go again. it's a simple conversation. and you and i understand what you're saying implicitly, and yet the mayor de blasio of new york, the new york police union went berserk. it's when you acknowledge that there's a problem, that there's a chorus, a great chorus of people ready to shout you down, that you acknowledged some of

this country's dirty laundry. >> but then you have people saying back to that police un, if there are so many stories from black parents and, don't tell me it's a few bad apples. this is going to be a multiracial conversation about truth telling in america. so those who want to protect the past, who want to continue the original sin, the head of the police department in new york, braxton, called this america's original sin, and he's acknowledging, they policed the slave system. and there's a history here, and that's real. so churches are going to say this is real, this is going to change, and i see across the country a new generation saying, we need to make our

policing fair, and we need criminal justice for both my son, luke, and his son, cameron, who was over this afternoon. >> i want to talk more about the role of the church when we come back, we're here with jim wallace.

>> welcome back to "inside story". i'm ray suarez. jim wallace is with me, pastor, theologian, activist and the author of "america's original sin, racism, white privilege and the bridge to new america." you talk about martin luther king's letter from the birmingham jail. and one of the things that he does in the letter is take the church, capital t, capital c, to task for it. he writes, is organized religion tooinex trickibly bound to the status quo to save our nation in and i feel that the status quo at a time when people are leaving church, and at a time when more and more people have no religious affiliation, they would rather play it safe than be the

prophetic voice that you call for. >> i think that's true, and i hear people around the country agreeing when i say something like, if white christians were more christian than white, black parents wouldn't fear for their children. that's a tough statement, but i heard christians wrestling with those things, and young people leaving the church,och, they're playing it safe and not showing the courage to change things to make a difference in their lives. that's what the young generation wants. to make a change in their world. the galatians text that you and i know well, in christ, there's no jew or gentile, bond or free, male or female. those are the categories of race, class and gender, and i've learned that that text was used at the baptisms of all of the new converts in the early church.

so they're coming to say, in this place, in this community, we're overcoming those barriers, and undermining them and tearing down the walls, so if you don't want to be part of them, you better go somewhere else. so in this nation, faith can play that world, and around the world, we're a very multicultural, navigate the way, and i think it's a very powerful diversity. >> you're right about dying to whiteness, which is a great phrase, but it sounds buddhist for a christian thre theologiand the understanding that we posses. >> when i talk to a lot of people in this country who have european ethnicities, they don't identify with it. they say something like, i never can tell you swedes from you germans, or you irish from

the italians. because when you came to america, you all became white people. the whole idea of a white race was a social con struck, and we justified it with slavery, so to say this is an illusion, in europe, we were different countries, and here, we became white people. so it's a long history. i think the rightness of whiteness, the entitlement of whiteness, the normality of whiteness, which is part of the culture. one kid was asked for white privilege, and if you don't see white privilege, you got it. so getting free of that is getting free of illusions, and how do we understand ourselves to be people who really, who

really believe that racial justice and equality was at the heart of the church's message, he would say, and he was relying to be a microcosm of the world by saying, therefore we should passively rights and voting rights. so how does the faith live by exactly and get it's over house in order and then begin to change things in the public square and criminal

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