let the teachers be the true professionals they really want to be. the downside is we have to - - i think investing and great teacher education.make it very competitive the way the top-performing countries do it . that's where we can really invest. all of the other bells and whistles are add-ons. if you don't have great teachers, with the question why we're doing what were doing. >> vicki alger's book miseducation came out in 2016. this is a quick update. if you'd like to see the full - - you can go to booktv@cspan.org. ...

i'm the executive director or the american leadership forum and we want to first acknowledge the puyallup tribe whose land we are occupying this evening. [applause] >> we'd also like to thank urban grace church profusely for organizing and switching spaces with us really quickly and pulling this together. their graciousness is amazing. [applause] >> and we'd like to express our deep gratitude to the asl interprets who came to make that's more inclusive event. [applause]

so welcome to an mading evening with dr. robin diangelo, it's heartening to see so many people in tacoma who came out to learn and growing to. >> hello, i'm sweet pea from kings books here in tacoma. hi. we'd also like to thank beacon press, the publisher of white fragility who helped us set are this event who expanded to greatly to the now 400 of you today, so much we're being fund my c-span's booktv. -- filmed by c-span's book tv. unsurprisingly we have books for table. the book table is at the end of the hallway. after the event we'll have a signing that will start here and line up on this aisle. if you do not want to stay for the signing he we'll have copies at kings book after our events.

in. [applause] >> good evening, i'm the executive director of -- the aids foundation and honored to be here. [applause] >> perhaps the most important thing i may say tonight is the restrooms are all gender neutral restrooms so if you go to exit sign, they're down some stairs. go out this way, they are through the parlor to the left and there are individual use restrooms downstairs as well. so, these kinds of conversations are really critically important to me because as you may know the hiv epidemic has disproportionately impacted people of color, so for us to do work finding the end to the epidemic means we as an organization have a lot of work to do around addressing our own

racism as white folks working in an organization we have a lot to do in the community. these kind conversations are part of the incredible equities work year undertaking and these books and this kind of conversation help us figure out how to have those conversations in their. so i'm really excited to introduce dr. robert diang lot. she served as a lecturer at the university of washington. the was twice swearedded, students award for teacher of the 'er and was atonnured professor of multicultural education as westfield state university in massachusetts and many of us have participated in trainings with her in her 20-year career as a trainer and consultant. so give you dr. robin diangelo. [applause]

>> all right. thank you so much. there's so much -- this is so rich and there's so much to say but i just want to start by drawing your attention to my race, i'm white. check me out. part of being white i was not raised to see myself in racial terms. in other words that somebody had race but know me and i was not raised to see it as relevant to anything you could know about me, so what if i'm white? what does that have to do with anything well, after a good 20-plus years of study, struggle, relationship building, estate making and day in and day out talking to primary my white groups of people about racism, i'm really clear i'm white. and i have a white frame of reference, a white world view, and i move through the world with a white experience, and it is not just a universal human experience. it is most particularly a white

experience in a society that is deeply separate unequal by race. so while i'm always coming from that position perspective, i want to speak to the peeks in the room who are mostly white and the people at the table making decisionses that impact the lives of people who are not at those tables and with whom we are not in relationships and this the most complex, nuanced social dilemma since the beginning of the country. and there are many roads and they're important. this is not only only perspective but is consistently missing. we have professional development on racism, we tend to study them, right? what are their struggles, what irtheir triumphs, who are their heros heros and heroines and what do we deknow know when working them. i left off the table is the

question, struggles in relation to whom? triumphs in relation to whom or what? so this little slice is focusing on the white role in this construct. i'm going to move between reading a little bit, listen a little bit, and some of you may not have heard me speak before and i want you to know i enjoy using humor. some of that is my style. and also it is strategic. this is so tense and so charged and has so much anxiety for us who are white, especially if it's done well -- [laughter] [applause] -- that the laughter it helps release the tension. you begin to kind of zone out or tense up and so it is a strategy to keep us open. right? and so much of what we say and

do is ridiculous. right? and then i am mocking it a little bit. think it's healthy for us to laugh at ourselves and if i can -- if you can laugh at me, owning kind of a way i have thought about it and you recognize you have thought about it that way, hopefully again that makes it easier for you to move through that. i want to be real request clear that it can be a little bit unsettling to be primarily with white people laughing out racism and this is real, people are dying. it's a tragic, devastating construct. and so i just kind of want to name that that is a strategy i'm using but it is not ever meant to minimize. i am a white woman. i'm standing beside a black woman. we are facing a group of white people seated in front of us.

we are in their workplace and have been hired by their flyer lead them in a dialogue about race. the room is filled with tension and charged with hostility. i have just presented a definition of racism that includes the acknowledgment that white people hope social and institutional power over people of color. a white man is pounding his fist on the table. as he pounds, he yells, a white person can't gate job anymore. i look around the room and see 40 employees, 38 of whom are white. why is this white man so angry? why is he being so careless about the impact of his anger? why doesn't he notice the effect his outburst is having on he few people of color in the room? why are all the other white people either sitting in silent agreement or tuning out? i have after all only articulated a definition of racism.

white people in north america live in a society that i deeply separate and unequal by race and white pipe are the beneficiaries of the separation and inequality. as a result, we are insulated from racial stress at the same time we come to feel entitled to and deserve offering our advantage. giving how seldom we experience racial discomfort in society we dominate we have not had to build our racial stamina. socialized in a deep by sense of superiority we are unaware of are cannotted a notice ourselves we become highly fragile in conversations about race. we consider challenge to our racial world views as a challenge to our very identities as good, moral people. thus we perceive any attempt to connect us to the system of racism is unsettling and unfair moral offense. the smallest amount of racial stress is intolerable the mere suggestion that being white mass

meaning often triggers a rage of defensive responses. these chloe motions such as anger, sphere guilt and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress inducing situation. these responses work to reinstate white equal lib brohm as they repel the challenge, are you oregon racial comfort and maintain or dominance in the racial hire aker -- hierarchy. white fragility is triggered by dominance and anxiety, born of superiority and entitlement. white frag justice is not week mass. fan it is a powerful means of white racial control and the protection of white advantage. all right. so, let's talk a little bit about the challenges of talking to white people about racism. the first challenge is, i've

never meat white person who didn't have an opinion on racism. have you? if you're not sure at that time all wheat people have opinions on racism, bring it up the next time you're around white people and see how that goes. i don't think you can be born and raised or spend any significant time in the united states and not develop opinions about racism. if you are white, and you have not devoted years of sustained study, struggle and focus on this topic, your opinions are necessarily limited, superficial and uninformed. now, how can i say that? i don't even know you, after all. after all, maybe you have been to costa rica. maybe you have multiracial nieces and nephews. right? i can say this because nothing in dominant society gives us the

information we need to have the complex nuances or understand offering argue by he in most complex, knew-and-ed social dill lamp ma since the beginning of the country. you have to devote years of sustained study, struggle and focus to get the information you need in this sew if you are white and the fore are pushing against you getting that. you can get through graduate school in this country without ever discussing racism. can you not? >> yes. >> you can get through law school and n this country, you can get through teacher education, in this country, without discussing racism. and if you're in a progressive teacher education program, you'll have one required multicultural class. your factually will have fought ten years to get you the class. still be fighting to keep the class and that doesn't mean you'll talk but racism. might just talk but hoe so introduce ethnic authors in february.

so, the first challenge for white people is humanity. and by the way, white progressives are my specialty. and i suspect i'm in front of a whole bunch of white progressives. [applause] >> the work i do with the white progressives. think that white progressives are the most difficult and land the motor hashly on people of color day in and day out. we their ones. so if you're white and sitting here wondering if it's you, yes, it's you. it's you. just it's you. and i know it's you because i know it's me. right? so there's a couple reasons why i think we are particularly challenges and one is we are actually more likely to be in the presence of people of color and can be incredibly come place

sent and airing-do complacent and arrogant and we think we're good to go. if the topic comes up we put our energy to make sure you understand we're good to go and none of our energy what we need do for the rest of our lives, which is deep, ongoing, critical self-knowledge, education relationship building, risk taking, and actual strategic intentional antiracist actions. so in case forget to say this later, niceness will not end racism. actually, this system beautfully reproduces racial inequality. that's what it does. racial inequality is actually growing, it's not shrinking. and all the system needs to keep keeping on is white people being really nice. do to lunch with coworkers and smile at people of color and do nothing else because niceness is

not courageous. it's not strategic. it won't get racism on the table and it will not keep it on the table when everyone want its off the table i. like to joke when i first plied for a job as a diversity trainer, my job was to good out into the workplace and lead people in discussions of race sim erring thoughts, well, of course i'm quarterfinals for that job. i'm a vegetarian. how can i be racist? i'm vegetarian. that was the '90,i'm vegan today but in the '90s, that was pretty good eye. i'm being a little facetious but at some level i have this simplistic, it's all about alternativeness and open mindedness. so, i'm really clear that that has not protected me. vividdism is an incredibly precious ideology in this culture, very precious, and so

most white people apparently don't understand socialization. that is what i've concluded. and we think we actually are all unique and special and untouched by the forces that surround us and just as a matter of deciding we are, or saying that we are. right? so, nothing could and nothing did exempt you from the forts of racism and so the question is not if but how, and if i'm saying, you know, most white people x and you're sitting here going, i'm y, okay. so most white miami x, you're y, then you want to be an individual? apply all the ys you see that make you differs from over here x and figure out how all those ys set you up into this system because they did. nothing exempt you. we do tend to think if we don't see it, it sent there or you haven't explained it enough, it

can't be valid. it's really not dependent whether white specie it or understand it and we tend to use our reactions as a way out rather than a way in. so, we start feeling unsettled or uncomfortable or defensive, then we just say that must mean they did it wrong. as opposed to, okay, this is actually an incredible way in. what is so unsettling for me? what is that anger about? how can that help me see how i-come to make me of race, what is threatening about it in what it would mean if that was true. it's such a wonderful way in but we're so used to not being uncomfortable racially that we often don't take advantage of those moments. and we don't understand racism as a system.

we tend to think about it as individual isolated cases. matter of fact i think i have it in chapter 2, i talk about racism and white supremacy. a system, not an event. but post civil rights, it's a brilliant readaptive system. post civil right made a beautiful adaptation, most visual rights a racist was reduced to a very simple formula, an individual, always an individual, who consciously does not like people based on race, must be conscious. and intentionally seeks to be mean to them. and by that definition virtually all white people are exempt from racism. and i actually think it's the root of virtually all white defensiveness also. it's a system, not an event and nothing could and and nothing did exempt us from the forces. so, while all groups of color in this society, all people who are

perceived and defined as not white, experience racism and we have to understand how different groups of color experience racism, how they've been positioned in relationship to each other. in other words, as a white person, i was socialized to be functionally illiterate on the topic of racism. and part of my gaining literacy has been to understand not just the collective experience that people of color have under racism -- to the degree i can -- but how do different groups experience it. so, in other words, what i've internalize at asia heritage people is different than what i internalize but from yack people and indigenous people and have different ralks and they have been set up differently in relation to each other and in relation show whiteness. and having say that, i feel very, very clear, after 20-plus

years of talking to white people about racism, that there is something profoundly antiblack in this culture. and that in the white mind, black people are the ultimate racial other, and that there are bookends, white and black, and how you experience racism will have to do with what is your proximity, your perceived proximity to whiteness or to blackness. even amongst groups color whose closer to whiteness and who is closer to blackness and how does that play out? so just to really drive home this point of it being a system, i just want no give you one glance at the trajectory of antiblackness since the beginning of the country and this slide is deliberately dense. so, we can think about it as state sanctioned organized crime, quite frankly. against african-americans in

this country. and it begins with kidnapping and 300 years of enslavement, torture, repair and brutality and carries on and a quartzer of the way through you see bans on at thing against whites, which made it functionally legal to kill black peep and you're now -- black people and you're now in my life time. white people seem the thing racism ended when enslavement ended. a quarter of the way through you're in my lifetime and now let's pick it up about two-thirds of the way through and you are in 2018 with copious empirical evidence. employment discrimination, educational discrimination, laws and policing practices, white night, subprime mortgages, mass incarceration, schoolings to prison pipeline, differ

proportionates punishments, testing, tracking, school funding, biased media representation, historical omissions, and so much more. it's a system, not an event and it's the system written -- i hope you can look at that slide and get that your friendliness and your good intentions- -- no not exempt you from it. african-americans are not, have never ben in the position to do this to white people. white people have always been and continue to be in the position to do this to african-americans. and so we can removal the word "reverse" from any discussion of racism. [applause] there's no such thing. automatic people have racial bias and they can have as much racial bias as i have but when you back a group's collective bias with legal authority and

institutional control, it is transformative. you see how many time is have to repeat this. there's a reason. so how did we cope with the moral trauma of racism? again, if we'ring antiblackness as an example, historically we projected our sins on to black bodies. when you think about the narrative, lazy, shiftless, criminal, dangerous, you see that is a perversion of the actual direction of those things. but today in addition to that, we obscure the system of racism and we exempt ourselves from its forces and whether -- again, none of this has to be intentional. this is what society dispossess we are part of it. we have been impacted by it.

[laughter] that is last year's college champion jeopardy playoff. that's the board at the end of the grand champion round and as we can see one category was left untouched, clearly the hardest and nobody want today lose. i don't think i can do justice to the profundity of that disconnect. if we do not know our history and we cannot trace it into the present, we are leather with the most problematic explanations for current conditions. there's lot that it going on with that category. the first thing is you know what's behind he categorying are right? civil war and civil rights, because that's their history. no. that's the history of this country. that's the foundation. you cannot understand u.s. history and separate that out. it didn't happen in a vacuum.

i want to give you an example. everything i'm saying is written in the book, but i just rather say it than stand there and read it. let me give you an example of the power of the way that we tell the story, and of course everything i'm doing here is to help us see how we get socialized in a consciousness, those who are white, and then what the impact of that consciousness is. individualism is a kind of consciousness that we hold. it's problematic. so, jackie robinson, you now who he was. yeah, and every year on the anniversary of what he did we celebrate him what's the tag line? jackie robinson, he -- >> broke the color line. >> so i want you think about the impact of that narrative. jackie robinson broke the color line. her did it. he was exceptional. he was an exception to his

group. subtext, his group is inferior. finally, one of them had what it took to break through and play with us. so he is knew very special individual who is an exception to his group. and now -- oh, by the way texas other thing that conveys, and racism ended in sports. when he broke the color line. imagine we told the story like this. jackie robinson, the first black man that whites allowed to play major league baseball. because that is the story. it wasn't up to him. no matter how exceptional he bass -- and he was exceptional dish still doubt he what's first and most exceptional black ball player, but regardless, if he walked out on that field before we said he could, the police would have removed him. so is a want us to tell the

story the sacked way, not because i wanted to say how bad white people are because, one, it's true, and, two, i need role models. who made that happen? what strategies did they use? how did they organize? what did they face? can we draw from their lessons today when we look at racism in sports? so, again, racism after the civil rights movement became an individual who consciously didn't like people based on race and is intentionally seeks to harm them. another thing that wear not taught about is that most of our bias notice conscious and most of it that isn't conscious is actually driving our behavior, not what we think is. so, it became this either/or. that actually protects the system of racism. looks progressive, right?

racism is bad post civil rights. how does it function in it protects the system of racism. i'll show you that. i think about it as the good/bad binary. racist bad north raises are good. we all know which size -- side we are. in they're ignorant, big wroted, prejudiced, mean spirit, definitely old, and when they die off, there will be no more racism. actually, i often get asked if i -- die think -- by the way if you ask me a question that givens, dope you think, the answer will be, no. that's not an open question. but i get asked, young people today less racist? and my answer is, no. we have raised a generation that can things they and are cannot engage critically what so every -- whatsoever with race and that leads to actually a

really unsupportive environment for people of colonel. they're definitely southern. drive pickup trucks and i'm pretty sure around here they live in sites. i never been to fife but on the way to tacoma i sea fife and say, racist must live there. who we ascribe racism to. and not racists are good. we're educated and progressive and open minded and well intended, we're young, northern, we live in seattle, on finney ridge. en inen in just moved there from wallingford. but we're all going to head to portland really soon. seattle is so corporate. a can't even go to whole foods

anymore, it's so corporate. this is me poking a little fun at us white progressives because, again, i'm a huge white progressive. and so we really need to get rid of this. and again, if you're white and at any point tonight in my talk you start to feel defensive or angry, see if it isn't that you can't let go of this definition. if you can't let go of the definition, i agree with you, i'm insulting you. if this what you think racism and is i am saying you have racist pattern, i agree i've offended you but this is not the definition i'm using. the other thing that comes up for white people, whether we're conscious or not, is that i'm perceiving as if i know something about you just because you're white and we don't like that, either, but as a sociologist, i'm really comfortable generalizing.

social life is patterned in predictable observable ways. what else do we have reverse racism is a form of what sociologies call knew racism and so reverse racism ammann fess station after race sim that well spending people who see themes at educated and progressive are more lukely to exhibit. exists under the surface of con thus something but its conflict wiz consciously held belief ourselves racial equality and justice. aversesive racism assortsle and insideus fomenter as -- allow them to maintain a positive self-image. for example, i have lots of friend of color. i just judge people by the content of their character. white people enact racism while maintaining a positive self image in many weighed, rationalizing racial segregation as unfortune but necessary to

access good schools. rationalizing that our workplaces are virtually all white abuse people of color just don't apply. avoiding direct racial language in using racially coded terms such as urban, underprivileged, diverse, sketchy, and good. denying we have few cross-racial relationship biz proclaim hour diverse our community or workplace and is attributing on equal between whites and people of color to causes other than racism. consider conversation i had with a white friend. she was telling me about a white couple she new who just moved to northern' bought a house for a mere $25,000. of course she immediately added the also had to buy a gun and joan is afraid to leave the house. immediate my knew they bought a home in a black neighborhood. a moment of white racialbanding

between the couple who shared the story of i racial danger with my friend, and then between my friend and me as she repeated the story. through this tale, the four of us, fortified familiar images of the horror of black space and drew boundaries between us and them, without ever having to directly name race or openly express our disdain for black space. and notice that the need for a gun is a keep part of this story. it would not have the degree of social capital it hold if the emphasis were on the price of the house alone. rather, the story's emotional power rests on why a house would be that cheap, because it is in a black neighborhood where white people literally might not get out alive. yet while very negative and injury typical representations of blacks were in that exchange,

not naming race is -- in preparing to share the incident i texts my friend and asked her the name of the city her friends had moved testimony also wanted to confirm my assumption that she was talk us about a black neighborhood. i share the text exchange here. hey, what city did you say your friends bought a house in for 25,000? she replied: new orleans. they said they live in a very bad neighborhood and the each have to have a gun to protect. thes. wouldn't pay five cents for that neighborhood. i assume it's a black neighborhood, i reply. yes. you get what you pay for. i'd rather pay 500,000 and live somewhere where i wasn't afraid. i reply, i wasn't asking because i want to live there. i i'm writing about this -- [laughter] --

[applause] -- i'm writing about this in my book, the way they white beam talk but race out who e without every coming and it and talking tout race and then there's an interesting response. i wouldn't want you to live there. it's too far away from me. [laughter] >> all right. notice that when i simply asked what city the house is in, she repeats the story about the neighborhood being so bad that her friends need gunses. when i ask if the neighborhood is black she is comfortable confirming it is. but when i tell her i'm interested in how whites talk about race without talking but race, she switch this anyway temperature. now her concern is about not wanting know live so far away. this is a classic example of aversesive racism, holding deep

racial disdain that surfaces in daily discourse but not being able to admit it because the dane conflicts with our self-image and professes beliefs. reader made be asking themself is the neighborhood is really dangerous, why is acknowledging this danger a sign of racism? research and implicit bias shown that perception of criminal activity are influences by race. white people will perceive danger simply by a the presence of black people. we cannot trust our perceptions when it comes to race and crime. but regardless of whether the neighborhood is actually more or less dangerous than other neighborhoods, what is salient about this exchange is how it functions racially and what that means for the white people engaged in it. for my friend in need, this conversation did not increase our awareness of the danger of some specific neighborhood. rather, the exchange reinforces

our fundamental beliefs but black people, tony morrison used the phrase race talk to capture the explicit insection into everyday life of racial signs and symbols that have no meaning other than positioning african-americans in into the lowest level of the racial hierarchy. casual race talk is a key component of white racial framing because it accomplishes the interconnected goals of elevating whites while demeaning people of color. race talk always implies a racial us and them. so this sets us up to say some pretty superficial thing. i do discourse analysis. that's my area of study and that's a critical study of language. that language doesn't describe some fixed reality. the language we have shapes our

perception of what we would perceive as reality. and i do tend to think in metaphors and so listen to and talking to white miami and hearing the same narratives again and again, when the topic of racism comes up issue got this nick my mind of a dock or a pier, and what that signifies are two things. one, how surface or superficial these narratives are. that's one piece. the dock appears to be floating. if you looked from above, looks like it's floating on the water but it's not just floating on the water. it is resting on an entire structure underneath, submerged beneath the water, that props it up. there are literally pillars in the ocean floor that dock rests on, and everything i do in my work is seeking to get us off the top of the dock, because all

dock bullshit on the top of the dock has not changed our outcome so we have to get under there and look at the pillars. how are we getting these outcomes, despite how we see ourselves. so when i listen -- -- i actually can't locate sound because i'm deaf in one ear, who said that? >> white people want to do senate why do they want to make that -- if puts them into a different light? >> well, i think we know that many of us don't but i do believe that those of white house are sincere about our desire to -- for justice, when we can really understand how what we're doing is function -- i couldn't do this if i didn't

have some hope -- that's -- there's a cognitive dissidence we can't live with anymore because what we profess to value is not aligned with what wear actually practicing but a we are taught not to see this. so, i am going to keep going. so this first set i think of as color blind. 0so there's two sets of dominant white narratives when racism comes up. the firsts most classic is, i was taught to treat everyone the same. anybody ever heard that one? all right. you ready? not one single person in this room is taught to treat everyone the same. you weren't. you don't. you couldn't be. cuckoo be told. could lecture you and lecture you, just like y'all know you shouldn't judge, right? you're not judging, are you? no judging. that's what i mean. you can't treat everyone the same. you don't.

and you don't even want to because people have different needs. but when i hear this white person -- there's a buzz over my head and the first thing in the bubble is, oh, this person doesn't understand basic socialization. this person doesn't understand culture. this person is not particularly self-aware. and i just need to give you a thousands the white people the room. when people of color hear us say this they're generally not thinking, i'm talking to a woke white person right now. [laughter] usually some version of eye-rolling is going on and maybe even a wall. we are the least qualified to determine whether we really see this. so, a friend of mine that it often lead with, an african-american woman, says this to me is the most dangerous

white person. so all of these are basically, i don't see it and if i do it has no meaning. the past, everything struggles, my parents weren't racist, so i'm not racist empty i parents were racist, that's why i'm not racist. doesn't matter what comes first. what comes second, not me. so and so just happened to be -- fill it in -- but that has nothing to do with why no one in the department gets along with her. and this is another one i like to ask white folks to removal from your vocabulary along with reverse, anything on the topic that begins we i with just happened to be, including your neighborhood just happens to be white. remove that from your vocabulary because it doesn't just happen to be white. it's the result of decades of policies and practices that were deinjure in the past and de facto today. the other one i want you to remove is, well, yes, but i'm --

but on human level. i might not know what race has to do with my response toy my coworker but all the resketch preliminaries bias says race shape mist response to my coworker. the fact i'm white and a female is shaping the way you hear, whether you're aware of it or not. so, again, all of these i don't see it. or it has no meaning. there's question that has never failed me in my work to uncover how we pull this off. and it is not is this true or is this false? we'll argue and argue if with apply that question. that's a very binary question. the question that is never failed me and i hope all the white folks take it home with them today-is how does this function in the conversation? what happens when a white person

invokes one of these narratives when racism comes up? if we apply that question, i think you can see that all of them function to exempt the person from any part of the problem. to take racism off the table. to close rather than open the exploration and indoing that to protect the racial hierarchy and the white position win it. it doesn't have to be conscious. that's how i functions in the conversation. well, if you're here today hopefully you're beyond color blind. okay? i frog this one. children are so much more open. i'm really sorry to say the following but it is the reality. by the age of three to four, all children who grow up here understand that it's better to be white. they do not miss the message, not a single person in this room missed the message. it's not singular.

it's not isolated. it's nye dependent on one persons relentlessly circulating around us off. owl are abusive if with a different impact depending if we are or not white but children by flee understand it's better to be white. so, leaving them unattended because you project racial innocence on them is not helpful. so, the progressives. what do we say? we say things like this. oh, i work in a very diverse environment. i have people north my family. me? i'm not racist. used to police in new jersey yeah. yeah -- i used to live in new york. could walk down the streets of new york and never lost my shit so i guess i'm -- right? this one gets -- used interchangeably with i'm not

racist, i'm forgot canada. -- i'm from canada. you have not heard these you're note talking to enough people but racism. i'm not racist, i'm from hawaii. you know it's the white people picked on in hawaii. i'm knock racist, i'm from europe. i can't tell you how many times i've heard that and i'm just like, okay. and i'm not racist, i was in the military. apparently there's no simple in those places. dish there's no racism in those places. sociologists have a name for this one. this is calling the inknock calculation case -- inoculation of case. i'm never ben people of color and i stripped me of my racism and how often white people invoke proximity to people of color as an evidence of lack of racism. grew up inline almost all whewing neighborhood but tiff

through was family ol' color i'll make shower you'll know that and they are were at the our bess friend. only had unblack teach but she was my favorite. so how many of you in a conversation with a white person have heard some version of these narratives right sneer these three. it will toe be honest we said some version of these narratives let's do some discourse analysis. when a white person invokes one of these narratives in a conversation about racism they're giving you their evidence. in my mind, what is that evidence of? we want to make sure you know because i'm not racist. is this not the evidence white people give for their lack of racism? so in order for this to be good evidence, it must distinguish us from racists. otherwise it's not very good evidence. and that would mean racists can't do those things. so apparent lay racist could not

work three club cubicles downed from a person of color, could not have people of color in their family and can't live in new york. but i could think of even ate least one racist that lives in new york. [applause] all right. now, i have yet to be able to resist that joke when i'm in front of a progressive audience, but that joke rests on the good-bad binary. rests on the good/bad binary. rests on the idea i'm not racist and he is. want to name that. in fact i actually just think we're both on a continuum but we're both on that continuum. okay. so, are you starting to see this pretty thin evidence? so i'm going to ask a rhetorical

question to the people of color in this room. could a racist work threw cubicles down from you? uh-huh. could someone who thinks they aren't racist but is the worst passive aggressive damn racist you if worked with, work three cubicles down from you? and do you have white people in your life whom you love deeply and who on occasion reveal their internalized white supremacy? white people did you hear senate could you even be nicer a white person and still on occasion have them reveal they have a racist world view? okay. intimate relationships is potentially very, very meaningful, but it doesn't exempt us or free us. i guarantee you i'm married to a -- the day he fell in love

with me his sexism did not disappear. and again, we know that they can't live in new york. all of this evidence rested on, again -- you see it rest on the idea, apparently, a racist cannot tolerate even the sight of a person of color, cannot have proximity and if there's any fond regard we can not be racist. i was in the peace corps. i voted for obama. i'm on the equity team. what else have we go. i'm a minority myself. i already know all this. i've been to costa rica and i took a class in college and any white person who says this to me, oh, god, that arrogance. i will never say that. i will not be free in my lifetime.

yes, i do less harm. feel confident i do less harm. i don't get defensive when i do harm and i have really good repair skills but i will never know all this, and what you have just signaled to me is you don't. and we don't like how white our neighborhood is but we had to move here for the schools. what could we do? this is a real popular one in seattle. i think it's disingenuous, i think white people like how white our neighborhood are. white people measure the value of our space biz the absence of pipe of color and we do it every day. what is it a good neighborhood if it isn't white? that's a powerful message, segregated life is a good life. there's no inherent value in the privilege or experience offices people of color. these are powerful messages. and i received in any whole life. they shape me and i bring it to

the table with me. and i'm not interested in understanding that so i can feel guilty. i'm understand understanding that so i can try to interrupt it. so, i don't thick have another one on there. might pop up. but unlike the first set, this is color celebrate. i love it. i especially love it in monter to sorrytle when the -- montesorri children of golf are the children of the international people at microsoft women like the right doses from the right groups. so, if we apply the same question, not true/falls, right/wrong, how do these narratives function any conversation wi, be the same answer. they all exempt us from any further engagement, take racism off the table, close rather than

open, protect the current racial hierarchy and the white position win it. anywhere not actually anymore progressive and you i think as white people we have to ask yourselves, have i ever examined what i think racism and is how that might be functionings? ever thought critically what i'm saying and why i say it and when i say it and how it might be impacting the conversation? so we have really get to get under here and examine that. so this is what i think-these pillars of new racism. how we keep getting these outcomes them good/bad binary is fabulously effective at keeping us defensive and seeing ourselves as outside of it and that as long as we're good people, nothing more to worry about. deep implicit bias. individualism. universalism is the opposite. that we can speak for all of humanity. that we don't speak for many

particular position. people of color speak from their position and win we're interested in that, we'll ask them to be on the diversity team. and we won't pay them anymore and we'll keep them on the team until the bring up racism and they can't be on then team anymore. you know how many organizations automatically assign the people of dollar the race work? it is -- if we think deeply but it's very revealing about what we think race and is who we think has it. internalized superiority. i do not believe any white person can miss the message of superiority. and so i'm just going to put it out there like this. as a result of being born and raised in this society, i have a racist world view. i have deep racist biases.

i have developed racist pat z. and i have investment in the system of racism which is so comfortable and has served me very well and definitely helped explore come some of the barriers faces and i also have investment in not seeing any of that. for what it would mean for my identity and for it would actually require me to do. i didn't choose it. don't even want it. got it. so like let's just -- let's start from that premier mills. so liberating to start from that premise. it's not if. it's how. i stop self-depending and hope you point notice and figure out what does it like like in my life? and then the power of segregation. if not in the immediate, just every, every kind of institution

and realm of life. all of this is raining down on all of us 24/7 and we don't have umbrellas. how, not if. so how does a race shape the lives of white people all of this socialization riversness patterns. -- results in patterns. preference proper racial segregation and no sense of loss about it. seeing ourselves as individuals, not understanding that we bring our history with us and history matters, and it's a history of harm. i might see myself as just robin, your friend, but the people of color in my life see me as robin, my white friend. assuming everyone is having our experience or could have our experience, arrogance, lack of

humility, unwillingness to listen, dismissing what we don't understand. apathy towards racial injustice. i think most white people are fairly aned the tick but racial injustice. show us the photographers and videos we'll be very upset but to actually have to change in a daily way, that's just what i have concluded after doing this for a long time. inability or lack of interest in sustaining relationships with people of color. wanting -- this the big one -- want topping jump over the hard personal work and just get to solutions. confusing not agreeing with not understanding. and i think most white people are not qualified to agree or disagree. and kind of like you muss have misunderstood me you give a

white person feedback on something they're don at racially problem mat yuck you get back, if you think that you must have misin other words me. then we begin to explain and explain and explain until we just break their spirit and they give up. but what if, that person understood me perfectly and even understood exactly what i meant, what i don't understand is how what i meant comes out of a racist framework. and focusing on our intentions over impact. it's apparently we think that cancelled out the impact. so, when we are off our racial equillibrum, our comfort, we have responses. what engenders white racial equilibrium. it is what i experience every day as i move through the world. just kind of really comfortable,

really rare for me to be outside of my racial comfort zone. comfort is really important. individualism is important. seeing ourselves as just human. obliviousness. ... >> there's a couple things going on that make us very irrational.one is we really are taught to get used to it. i can sincerely recall those moments when i'm just like, i

had no idea. okay. so it's true. we are oblivious. and oh hell yes, we know i always knew. but i could not ever admit that. for what it would mean for my identity. both of those things are actually true. it's like this stew inside of us that makes us really irrational. we kind of don't know but we do know but we can't admit it. apathy.dominance and control. i am doing some training for a large tech company and its racial justice training but we were asked not to use the word white. i swear to you. [laughter]

why do you have to say white? [laughter] do not name whiteness and you do not name white advantage. okay. we are very ignorant. we are taught to be ignorant. i get that you have opinions and life experiences and i don't know virtually anyone in this room but i hope i've made my case. but you add the arrogance to that and it's a bit of a deadly combination. finally, entitlement to people of colors bodies. feeling really entitled to their labor. their emotional labor. their psychic labor. their physical labor. this reaching and violating their space. - - is a social worker who specializes in racial trauma.

he talked about in particular black people only having dominion over their own bodies for just the last say 20+ years. so that a black man solemnly respectfully and quietly going down on one knee causes us to erupt with on bridge. you will not control your own body. that's "white fragility". when any of that is interrupted, "white fragility" and es. so i've never had to bill build my capacity. i think part of being white is not having to refuse to their witness to the pain i've caused people of color.

and never being held accountable to do that. so we don't have much capacity to sustain the simplest challenge or suggestion that white has meaning. much less that it has advantages. so we don't respond very well but we spun respond very effectively. you saw me up my racial equilibrium. i found that intolerable, it must stop. i will do whatever it takes to repel that challenge. if i need to cry, that's a great strategy for white women. [laughter] i will cry. what will happen when i cry? besides triggering racial trauma with people of color given the history of what happened when white women claim racial distress. aside from that, what happens? all of the resources are - - to

me. we forgot all about the transgression you were trying to call me and on and i'm back in a very protected - - we need to get back up and withdraw. it's very effective in that way. when i coined that term, fragility, i wanted to capture a couple things but how fragile we are in it doesn't take much to set us all. i've got to say, white people are so pissy about racism. that's our defensiveness point it's weapon nine. our tears are recognized. our hurt feelings or weapon iced. it doesn't matter if you're aware or conscious, pay attention because it's what you're doing. so we are fragile and it doesn't take much to set us off but it's not fragile at all, impact. i think that "white fragility"

functions as a white racial bullying. i'm going to make it so miserable for you to point out anything that you just won't do it. because you - - more punishment. i know that people of color take-home way more of our racist aggression then they bother talking to us about because it's probably going to get worse. and i think it's connected to lifespan. so i'm not the one percent. i've never even been amanager. but i can control the people in of color in my orbits for my "white fragility". so that you stay in your place and i stay in mine. and i get to use you as diversity cover as long as you

don't fundamentally challenge me. we definitely see this in the workplace. it would become a personal problem that you have. and it leverages behind it the weight of history and institutional power. so again, i am personally not particularly interested in what's causing the reaction i'm interested in the impact of the reaction. and whatever it is, we will have to deal with it and move past it. so when we are challenged, we often have feelings, right? you recognize these feelings that white people have? we have all these feelings. it only takes one angry white person to shut the whole

program down as everyone scrambles to adjust and adjust and coddle to don't, unsettled the white people. so we have these feelings and behaviors, right? it's usually how we behave if we are feeling those ways. so what claims do we make in order to justify behaving such ways? [chuckling] >> if you grew up in the 60s and you are white, thank you. i was a minority in japan. the real oppression is class.

you misunderstood me. you're playing the race card. if you know me you know i can't be racist. this is not welcoming to me. hopefully your laughing because you've heard it all. you're making me feel guilty. just to answer your question, i want to make it harder for white people to do this. because it's been named now so that's my goal. it was just one little innocent thing. some people find offense where there is none. you hurt my feelings. this is just political correctness. [laughter] >> yeah, the tone. i am or know what it is to be oppressed. and i don't feel safe. all right.

so we want to ask why people who need to feel safe in recent discussions. what does safety mean from a position of cultural and financial privilege? what does it mean to feel safe from that? you are safe. i think it's an illegitimate term coming from a white mouth on the topic of cross racial dialogue. [applause] i write about everything that i'm talking about. i have an article called, getting slammed.white depictions of cross racial dialogs. it's a perversion. of the true direction of historical - - if you don't feel comfortable, then the more honest and say. i don't feel comfortable. notice how safe has some preciousness to it. everybody has to feel safe.

so, you all heard of this, right? so now we will ask ourselves, what to be under that dog that would lead to these? as a white person, i will be the judge if whether racism has occurred. my learning is finished.i know all i need to know. racism can only be intentional. not having intended it, cancels it out. i don't know what could be under there if we are behaving that and saying those things white people expands another form of oppression or have suffered, cannot be racist. my unexamined perspective is equal to yours. [chuckling] >> you know that, let's agree

to disagree. let's agree that you're not even - - to have an opinion. [applause] >> i am entitled to remain comfortable. as a white person, i know the best way to challenge racism and you're doing it wrong. nice people can't be racist. apparently, because whenever someone is accused of racism in the press, they gather their friends to say, he's a nice person. if i can't see it, it's not legitimate. if i have no proximity to people of color, i can't be racist. that one gets invoked when they say i grew up on a small farm. the nearest form was 40 miles away. i know nothing about racism and i have no racism.

i would actually make the argument that you are less sheltered from racism than you think you are. what were you left to rely on for your information? my worldview is objective and yours is not. how does that function? >> okay. ultimately, all of it protects race. all right. i love this picture. because it's such a visual of

institutionalized power. a visual representation. these are all men, all white, all wearing suits, all conservative and at arguably the most powerful table in the whole nation. i show this picture because i want to amplify and help white people see, what does it look like? because i am saying, all of this internalized superiority comes out of our - - but you might be thinking, how does it come out of my pores. i don't know what that looks like i'm going to try to help you by showing that internalized superiority is coming out of these guys pores. these guys are sitting there at the combination of a lifetime of expecting to be sitting

there. of being the smartest people in the room. of always being at the table. of being seen as solving the world's problems. if you walked in that room, especially for those of us or people of color or white women. if you walked in that room, with the kind of power and internalizedsuperiority these men have . wouldn't it be the most visceral. you kind of get what it's like when that's coming out. if you were to suggest to these men that they really should get some women or people of color up in there, i don't know in my core if they would feel contempt for that suggestion. they don't see anyone of value missing from that table.is that fair to say? i will acknowledge i can't know that but i'm pretty darn sure that they don't see anyone missing. they haven't been taught to see other voices of value.

so what does that look like for me? right. i want all of those people that identified women, imagine ethical in there all by yourself because they've asked you to come in and seehelp them see their sexism. you're going there and help them. you can imagine how that's going to go. for all of you that can relate to that. now i want you to imagine that this group really needs a woman of color on their board. does that sound good to you? you want to be that one woman helping these white women see their racism? that doesn't sound good to you? can you see that in this room, i could walk in that room and just be feeling so much sexism. and i can be in this room,

perpetrating racism. and white women don't land any more likely either. i think when white women do not back people of color, the hurt and the betrayal is deeper. because we have a potential way in and we use it as a way out. [applause] >> there's no more universal women's experience then there is a universal human experience. maybe in the spiritual but not in the physical world we live in. so where do we go from here? what might have on here? i hate this question. i actually do because i just see it as just disingenuous. here's my question back to you.

what has allowed you to remain ignorant about what to do about racism?in 2018, why is that your question? that's actually a sincere question to you. because if you take out a piece of paper and start writing down what you don't know what to do, you will have your math and none of it will be simple or easy. want to close with a personal example of transgression that i made recently. some racism i recently perpetrated in a meeting. and how i sought to repair it. we as white people don't have a model. i don't think for what this could look like. i used to be a director of equity for a large nonprofit. on the equity team which is myself, a black woman, we were codirectors and marcia are also a black woman who was the executive assistant. so we were the team. the organization hired a consultant web developer to

design a website for us. and she was setting meetings with all of the departments to interview is about what we do so she can make our page. so she made an appointment with the equity team. it was the afternoon and we came in the meeting and the web developer was also a black woman. angela. so we sit down and she has this survey. she gives it to us and it's got these questions about what we do but i find it annoying and tedious and frustrating.so i shove it aside and i say look, i try to expire what we do. we go out into different satellite offices and we do these antiracism training and we scare the white people. in fact, the office up there says they don't ever want debra back in the office but i guess her hair scared them. i wish i could say to you i

recognized what i had said and done but i didn't. couple days later, marcia came to me and said, angela was really offended about that joke you made about black women's hair. the moment she said it, i got it and i know better. but i was making my moves, right. i was credentialing myself. i was showing i was woke and these other white people, weren't paid i could make a joke about her hair because we had a relationship. so i followed a series of steps to repair that.the first and we did is i called my friend christine is that i need to talk to you. and i vented all of the embarrassment that i felt because i did not want to run that at angela. i don't want her at all to even get a whiff of it so that she

felt pressure to take care of me or absolving me. once i vented it, we put our heads together and we try to get as clear as we could about all the ways in which what i did was racist. so i would be able to go in there and on that. when i felt that, i called angela and i said, would you be willing to grant me the opportunity to repair the racism that i perpetrated toward you in the meeting last week? and she said, yes. she could have said no and i thought she would no. i thought she would say, what a hypocrite you are. i am done with you. if i wasn't able to hold that, then i wasn't going to make an authentic repair. but she said yes. so we met, we sat down. i never once explained what i meant. i just said, i did this, i did this. and we talked. she said, i don't know you.

i have no trust or relationship with you. and i do not want to be joking about a black woman's hair in a professional meeting with a white woman i have no relationship with. if you're white and you're not getting that, google hands off black women's hair. then i also owned that i was making myself better than other white people which is not helpful. and then i asked her, did i miss anything? this is the next step. because christine and i as to white women, all thought we were going to miss something to so she said yes you did actually. that survey you so shoved asid , i wrote that survey. and i have spent my life justifying my intelligence to white people. that was like - - i immediately

got it. of course it hadn't occurred to me that she wrote it. how dismissive i was. i owned that and i apologized. and then i said, is there anything else that needs to be said or heard that we might move forward? and she said, yes. the next time you do it, hold that for a minute. she did say if. the next time you do it, would you like your feedback publicly or privately? [applause] >> and i said, i think most people would say oh my god, privately. i said, publicly please. for a couple reasons. one i think it's important that other white people see i am not

free of these patterns. and it gives me the opportunity to model non-defensiveness. are we good? let's move on. and we actually had a closer relationship one of the things she said to me was this happens every day. what you're doing right now clearly has ever happened so thank you. i'm sorry it happened at her expense. but over and over, people of color have said to me, we know you are going to run your stuff you were not looking for perfection. we are looking for repair and where can we go when it happens? if we can't go anywhere, you might think we have a relationship but it won't be authentic. i want to just close by showing you what i think could be under that dock if we had a transformed structure. we cannot get to where we need

to go from the current. i want you to imagine. just imagine what your daily life would be like if white people were really able to internalize this. being good or bad is not relevant. racism is a multilayer system infused and everything. whites have blinders on racism, i have blinders. racism is complex. i don't have to understand it for it to be valid. white comfort maintains the racial status quo. discomfort is necessary and important. i must not confuse comfort with safety. i am safe in conversations of race. the antidote to guilt is action. i bring my history with me. history matters. the question is not if but how.

i'm hoping all this came through in the example i gave with angela. and you are welcome to take pictures but not only is it in the book, you can download it from a handout on my website. nothing exempts me from the forces of racism. whites are unconsciously invested in racism and i have unconsciousinvestments. i need to be in accountable. bias is implicit. feedback from people of color is an incredible risk across the history of harm. it's about trust, no matter how it's given. feedback on white racism is difficult to give but feedback is not as relevant as the feedback itself. it takes courage to break with white solidarity. how do i support other white people were willing to step out

there, rather than tear them down. if i'm not willing to step out there, at least get out of the way of white folks that are. thank you. given socialization, it is likely i am the one that doesn't understand the issue. racism hurts even - - [indiscernible]. i leave you with that. thank you so much. [applause] [cheering and applause] >> thank you so much.

another round of applause. [cheering and applause] >> if you haven't gotten your copy yet, king's books is still selling them back there. we heard a rumor that 150 copies were sold in seattle the other night just saying.we can do better. we will do signing at this table here. we would ask you lineup in this aisle and around that way to make the flow easier. >> but 300 were sold in portland. [laughter] >> i haven't been to portland yet but i'm going there in a few weeks though. >> that's it, thank you. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> you are watching book tv on c-span2. television for serious readers. here's tonight's lineup.7:00 p.m. eastern, - - provides a history of union general william sherman's 1864 march to the sea. 8:20 pm, journalist - - provides a history of the progressive movement and its role in politics today. 9:20 pm, with korean defector - - discusses her book, in order to live. the north koreans girl journey to freedom. on book tvs afterwards, deal huguely shares his thoughts on race in america. he's interviewed by hakeem jeffrey of new york. we wrap up our programming at 11:00 p.m. with former homeland

security secretary michael - - on safeguarding national security and information privacy in the digital age. that all happens tonight on c-span2's book tv. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. television for serious readers. king's books... >> guest: gee, i wasn't prepared for that question. [laughter] it never comes up. my father was the novelist, saul bellow, a