>> that's not an open question. but i get asked are young people today less racist, and my be answer is, no -- my answer is, no. we have a generation that certainly thinks that they are and cannot engage critically whatsoever with race. and create a very -- that leads to, actually, a really, really unsupportive environment for people of color, right? they're definitely southern. [laughter] drive pickup trucks, we'll get a little classism in here, and i'm pretty sure around here they

live in fais. [laughter] yeah. i'm never been to fais. i'm always like, ooh, i think the racists must live there. [laughter] a little classism always in there. and we're good, we're educated and progressive, we're op-minded -- open-minded, we're well tended, we're young, we live in seattle -- [laughter] on finney ridge. [laughter] just moved there from wallingford, but we're all going to head to portland really soon, because seattle's so corporate. you can't even go to whole foods anymore, it's so corporate. okay. [laughter] this is me poking a little fun at us white progressives because, again, i am a huge white progressive. and so we really need to get rid of this. and again, if you're white and

is at any point tonight in my talk you start to feel sensitive or angry, see if it isn't that you can't let go of this definition. if you can't let go of this definition, i agree with you, i'm saying -- i'm insulting you. right? if this is what you think racism is and i'm saying you have racist patterns, then i agree that 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 of it or not is that i'm perceived as if i could 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. [laughter] social life is patterned in predictable and observable ways. all right. what else do we have? so aversive racism is a form of what sociologists call new

racism. so it's a manifestation of racism that well intentioned people who see themselves as educated and progressive are more likely to exhibit. it exists under the surface of consciousness because it conflicts with consciously held beliefs of racial equality and justice. aversive racism is a subtle but insidious form as aversive racists a act in ways that allow them to maintain a positive self-image. i have lots of friends of color. i judge people by their character. rationalizing racial segregation as unfortunate but necessary to access good schools. rationalizing that our workplaces are virtually all white because people of color just don't apply. avoiding direct racial language and using racially coded terms such as urban, underprivileged,

diverse, sketchy and good. denying that we have few cross-racial relationships by proclaiming how diverse our community, our workplace is. and attributing inequality between whites and people of color to causes other than racism. so consider a conversation i had with a white friend. she was telling me about a white couple she knew who had just moved to new orleans and bought a house for a mere $25,000. of course, she immediately added, they also had to buy a gun, and joan is afraid to leave the house. i immediately knew they had bought a home in a black neighborhood. this was a moment of white racial bonding between the couple who shared the story of 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 key part of this story. it would not have the degree of social capital it holds 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 stereotypical representations of blacks were reinfossed in that ex-- reinforced in that exchange, not naming race provided plausible deniability. in fact, in preparing to share this incident, i texted my friend and asked her the name of the city her friends had moved to. i also wanted to confirm my assumption that she was talking about a black neighborhood. i share the text exchange here.

[laughter] hey. what city did you say your friends had bought a house in for $25,000? she replies, new orleans. they said they live in a very bad neighborhood, and they each have to have a gun to protect themselves. i 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'm writing about this -- [laughter] [applause] i'm writing about this in my book, the way that white people talk about race without ever coming out and talking about race. and then there's an interesting response.

[laughter] i wouldn't want you to live there, it's too far away from me! [laughter] all right. notice that when i simply ask what city the house is in, she repeats the story about the neighborhood being so bad that her friends need guns. when i ask if the neighborhood is black, she is comfortable confirming that it is. but when i tell her that i'm interested in how whites talk about race without talking about race, she switches the narrative. now her concern is about not wanting me to live so far away. this is a classic example of aversive racism. hoping deep racial disdain that surfaces in daily discourse but not being able to admit it because the disdain conflicts with our self-m image and professed beliefs. now, readers may be asking themselves, but if the neighborhood is really

dangerous, why is is acknowledging this a sign of racism? white people will perceive danger simply by 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 and me, this conversation did not increase our awareness of the danger of some specific neighborhood. rather, the exchange reinforced our fundamental beliefs about black people. toni morrison uses the term race talk to capture, quote, the explicit insertion into everyday life of racial signs and symbols that have no meaning other than positioning african-americans

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 things. so i do discourse analysis. that's my area of study. and that's a critical study of language. language doesn't describe some fixed reality. the language that we have actually shapes our perception of what we would perceive as reality, right? and i do tend to think in metaphors, and so listening and talking to white people day in and day out and hearing the same narratives again and again when the topic of racism comes up, i

got in this image in my mind of a dock or a pier. and is what that -- and what that signifies are two things. one, how surface or superficial these narratives are, right? that's one piece. but the dock appears to be floating, right? if you looked at it from above, it would look like it was just 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 that dock rests on, and everything i do in my work is seeking to get us off the top of the dock. because all that bullshit on the top of the dock has not changed our outcomes. so we have to get under there and look at those pillars. how are we getting these

outcomes despite how we see ourselves? all right? okay. so when i -- >> [inaudible] >> i actually can't locate unsound because i'm deaf in one ear, so who said that? >> i was saying why do black people want to do that? why do they want to make that -- [inaudible] puts them in a different light? >> well, i think we know that many of us don't, but i do, i do believe that those of us who are sincere about our desire to, for justice, when we can really understand how what we're doing is function -- i mean, i couldn't do this if i didn't have some hope -- then there's a cognitive dissonance that we can'tly with anymore. because -- can't live with anymore. because what we profess to value is not aligned with what we're actually practicing, but we're taught not to see this, right? so i'm going to keep going.

so this first set i think of as color blind, right? so there's kind of two sets of dominant white narratives, and probably the first, most classic is i was taught to treat everyone the same. anybody ever heard that one? [laughter] all right. you ready? not one single person in this room was taught to treat everyone the same. you weren't. you don't. you couldn't be. you could be told. i could lecture you and lecture you just like you all know you shouldn't judge, right? so you're not judging, right? [laughter] no judging. okay. that's what it means. 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 from a white person, there's a bubble over my head. and the first thing in that bubble is, oh, this person doesn't understand basic socialization. [laughter] this person doesn't understand

culture. this person is not particularly self-aware. and i just need to give you a heads up, to the white people in this room. when people of color hear us say this, they're generally not thinking, all right, i am talking to a, -- to a 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, whether we really see this. so a friend of mine that i 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, right? in the past everyone struggles. of my parents weren't racist, that's why i'm not racist. oh, my parents were racist,

that's why not racist. doesn't matter what comes first. what comes second, not me. so and and so, fill it in, that has nothing to do with why no one in the department doesn't get along with her. anything on this topic that begins with just happened -- including that your neighborhood just happens to be white. just remove that from your vocabulary, because it doesn't just happen to be white, it's the results of decades of policies and practices that were de facto in the past and are de factod today. the other one i'd like you to remove is, well, yes, but on the human level. [laughter] let's get racism off the table. let's all go to the human level, okay? i might not know what race has to do with my response to my coworker, but all the research and implicit bias says race is

shaping my response to my coworker. the fact that i am white and that i am a female is shaping the way you hear me right now when you're aware of it or not, right? so again, all of these, i don't see it or it has no meaning. and there's a question that has never failed me in my be work to uncover how we, how we pull this off. and it is not is this true or is this false. because if we're going to argue and argue and argue if we apply that question. that's a very binary question. the question that has never failed me, and i hope all the white people 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? and 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 in doing that, to protect the racial hierarchy and the white position within it, right? and, again, it doesn't have to be conscious. that's how it functions in the conversation. well, if you're here tonight, hopefully you're beyond color blind, okay? oh, i forgot this one. children are so much more open. i'm really sorry to say the following, but it's the reality. by the age of 3 to 4, 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 relentlessly circumstance circumstance -- circulating around us. all of us absorb it, but children by 3 understand it's better to be white.

so leaving them unattended because you project racial innocence on them is not helpful. so the progressives. [laughter] what do we say? we say things like this: oh, i work in a very diverse environment. i have people of color in my family. me? i'm not racist. i used to live in new york. [laughter] yeah. yeah. no. i could walk down the streets of new york, and i never lost my shit, so i guess -- [laughter] this one gets used interchangeably with i'm not racist, i'm from canada. [laughter] if you haven't heard these, you're not talking to enough white people about racism. i'm not racist, i'm from hawaii. oh, you know, it's the white people picked on in hawaii. i'm not racist, i'm from europe.

[laughter] i can't tell you how many times i've heard that, and i'm just like, okay. [laughter] and i'm not racist, i was in the military. apparently there is no racism in those places. [laughter] i mean, it's -- sociologists actually have a name for this one. this is called the inoculation case. i've been near people of color, and it stripped me of my racism. [laughter] and i want you to notice how often white people invoke proximity to people of color as an evidence of a lack of racism. you ever notice that? i grew up in an almost all-white neighborhood, but by god, if there was even one family of color in that neighborhood, i'm going to make sure you know that and that they were the best friends of my family. i only had one black teacher my whole life, but she was my favorite, okay? so how many of you in a conversation with a white person have heard some version of these narratives right here, these

three? all right. and if we're being honest, some version of these narratives. okay? so 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, right? in my mind, what is that my evidence of? what do i want to make sure you know? >> i'm a good person. >> 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, right in and that would mean racists can't do those things. so apparently a racist could not work three cubicles down from a person of color. [laughter] could not have people of color in their family. and can't live in new york. [laughter] but i could think of even at least one racist that lives in new york, so -- [laughter]

[applause] all right. now, i have yet to be able to resist that joke when i'm in front of a progressive audience, but -- [laughter] that joke rests on a good/bad binary. i want to be the really clear. that rests on good/bad binary. it rests on the idea that i'm not racist and he is. i want to name that. and, actually, i think we're both on a continuum. but, you know, 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 three cubicles down from you? [laughter] uh-huh. could someone who thinks they aren't racist but is the worst

passive aggressive damn racist you've ever had to work with work three cubicles down from you? okay. 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 that? could you even be manly to a white person and still on occasion have them reveal they have a racist world view? i mean, intimate relationship is potentially very meaningful, but it doesn't exempt us or free us, right? i guarantee you, i'm married to a sikh man. the day he fell in love with me, his sexism did not disappear. [laughter] all right. and again, we know they can live in new york. so all of this evidence rests on, again, you see what it rests

on? this idea, apparently, that a racist cannot tolerate even the sight of a person of color, cannot have proximity, and if there's any fond regard at all, we cannot be racist. i was in the peace corps. [laughter] i voted for obama. i'm on the equity team. what else have we got? i'm a minority myself. okay? i already know all this. i told you, i've been to coast that the' ca -- costa rica. any white person who says this to me, oh, god, that arrogance, right? i will never say that. i are not be free in -- i will not be free my lifetime. yes, i do less harm, i feel confident that 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 that you don't.

and you 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 many seattle. and i think it's disingenuous. i think white people do like how white our neighborhoods are. white people measure the value of our spaces by the absence of people of color. we do it every day. what is a good neighborhood if it isn't white? wow, that's a powerful message. a segregated life is a good life? there's no inherent value in the perspectives or experiences of people of color? these are powerful messages. and i've received them my 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 interested in understanding that so i can try to interrupt it. all right. so i don't think i have another one on there. it might pop up.

but unlike the first set, this is color celebrate, right? i love it. i especially love it in the montessori school when the children of color are the children of the international workers that come from microsoft. we like that, you know? we like the right doses from the right groups. so if we apply this same question -- not true/false, right/wrong, but how do these narratives function in the conversation -- we get the same answer. they all exempt us from any further engage, take racism off the table, close rather than open, protect the current racial hierarchy and the white position within it. so they're not actually any more progressive. and i think as white people we really have to ask ourselves have i ever examined what i think racism is and how that might be functioning? have i ever thought critically about what i'm saying and why i

say it and when i say it and how it might actually be impacting the conversation? we've really got to get under here and examine that. so this is, this is what i think are these pillars of new racism, right? how we keep getting these outcomes. the good/bad binary is just fabulously effective at keeping us defensive and seeing ourselves as outside of it and that, you know, as long as we're good people, nothing more to worry about. deep implicit bias, individualism, universalism is kind of the opposite, right? that we can speak for all of humanity. that we don't speak from any particular position. people of color, of course, speak from their position. and when we're interested in that, we'll ask them to be on the diversity team. [laughter] and we won't pay them any more, and we'll keep them on the team until they bring up racism, and

then they won't get to be on that team anymore. but we, of course, can cover everything else. right? do you know how many organizations automatically assign the people of color to the race work? right? it's, if we think deeply about it, it's very revealing about, again, what we think race is and 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, 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 patterns. and i have investment in the system of racism which is so comfortable and has served me very well and definitely helped me overcome some of the barriers i faced. and i also have investments in

not seeing any of that. for what it would mean for my identity and for what it would actually require me to do. right? i didn't choose it, don't even want it, got it. so, like, let's just -- let's just start from that premise. it's actually so liberating to start from that premise. it's not if, it's how. right so i can stop defending, denying, hoping you won't notice and just start getting to work to figure out what's it look like in my life, right? and then the power of segregation. it's not an immediate in 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. right? how, not if.

so how does race shape the lives of white people? well, this, all of this socialization results in some patterns. all right. preference for 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. yeah. assuming everyone is having our experience or could have our experience, arrogance, lack of humility, unwilling areness to listen -- unwillingness to listen. dismissing what we don't understand. p apathy towards racial injustice. i actually think most white people are fairly apathetic about racial injustice. if you show us those photographs

and those videos, we'll be very upset. but to actually have to change in a daily way, that's just what i've concluded after doing this for a really long time. inability or lack of interest in sustaining relationships with people of color. wanting -- oh, this is a big one. wanting to jump over the hard person at work and just get to solutions, right? confusing not agreeing with not understanding. and i think most white people are not qualified to agree or disagree. right? and just kind of like, well, you must have misunderstood me. if you give a white person feedback on something they've said or done is racially problematic, generally what you're going to get back is if you think that, you must have misunderstood me, right? and so then we begin to explain and explain and explain until we just break their spirits, and they give up.

[laughter] what if, you know what? that person understood me perfectly. they understood exactly what i meant, i don't understand what i meant comes out of a racist framework. and focusing on our intentions over impact. it's, apparently, we think that cancels out the impact, right? so when we are off our racial equilibrium, our comfort, we have responses. and so what engenders white racial equilibrium. and i just think about white racial equilibrium is what i experience every day as i move through the world, right? just kind of really comfortable, it's really rare for me to be outside of my racial comfort zone, right? comfort's really important, individualism's really important, seeing ourselves as just human, obliviousness and a

refusal to know, right? we are not innocent of race. we are not racially innocent. and, yes, there's race happening in white space and white neighborhoods, right? sometimes i would imagine that people of color sometimes scratch their heads and just say how do you not know this? how do you not see this? actually, i do not believe you don't see this. all right. so there's a couple things going on that make us ver irrational. one is we really are taught to be oblivious to it. i can sincerely, you know, 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. [laughter] we know. i always knew. but i could not ever admit that. for what it would mean for my

identity. right? and both those things are actually true, which is what makes -- it's like the stew inside of us that makes us really irrational. we kind of don't know and know, but we can't admit it. apathy. dominance and control. i am doing some training for a large tech company, and it's racial justice training, but we were asked not to use the word "white." [laughter] i swear to you, okay? so apparently, you know, that's really -- white people don't like, why do you have to say "white"? [laughter] so part, of course, white equilibrium is you do not name whiteness, and you do not name white advantage. we're very ignorant. we're taught to be ignorant. remember, i get that you have

opinions, and i get that you have life experiences, and i get that 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. right? and finally, entitlement to people of color's bodies. feeling really entitled to their labor, their emotion allay boar, their psychic -- emotional labor, their psychic labor, just reaching in and violating their space, right? a social worker who specializes in racial trauma talks about in particular black people only having dominion over their own bodies for just the last, say, 20 plus years. right? so in that a black -- so that a black man solemnly, respectfully and quietly going down on one knee causes us to erupt with

umbrage. you will not control your own body. that's white fragility. when any of that is interrupted, all right, white fragility ensues. so i have never had to build my capacity really. i mean, i think part of being white is not having to bear witness to the pain of rayism on people of color -- of racism on people of color. of to refuse to bear witness to it. and to, certainly, refuse to be a witness to the pain i've caused people of color, right? and never being held accountable to do that. and so we just, we don't have much capacity to sustain the simplest challenge or suggestion that white has meaning, much less that it has advantages, right? and so we don't respond very well, but we respond very

effectively. right? so you throw me off my racial equilibrium, i find 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. [applause] [laughter] i will cry. and what's going happen when i cry besides triggering racial trauma for people of color? given the history of what's happened when white women claim racial distress? emmitt till, anyone? okay. aside from that what happens? be all the resources in the room rally to me. you become bad. we forgot be all about the transgression that you were trying to call me in on. and i'm back in a very protected and insular place. if i need to get my back up, if i need to withdraw. so it's very effective in that way. and when i coined that term

fragility, i wanted to capture a couple things. you know, one, again, how fragile we are and that it doesn't take much to set us off. of i've just got to say something. white people are so pissy about racism. [laughter] we are so pissy, so mean. you know, and that's -- our defensiveness is weaponized. our tears are weaponized. our hurt feelings are weaponized. and it doesn't matter if that's what you're aware you're doing or conscious that you're doing, pay attention because that's what it's doing, all right? and so we're fragile in that it doesn't take much to set us off, but it's not fragile at all in its impact. i think that white fragility functions as a kind of white racial bullying. i'm going to make it so miserable for you to call me in, to point out anything that you just won't do it. because you risk more punishment.

just in my years of having these conversations also with people of color, i know that that people of color take home way more of our racist aggression than they bother talking to us about because it's probably going to get worse. and i think it's connected to high -- to life span, right? and so i'm not the 1%. i've never, i've never even been a manager. but i can control the people of color in my orbit through my white fragility. so that you stay in your mace and i stay in mine -- 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, right? we definitely see this in the workplace, right? it will become a personal problem that you have. and it leverages behind it the weight of history and

institutional power. so again, i actually am personally not particularly interested in what's causing the reaction. i'm interested in the impact of the reaction. and that whatever it is, we're going to have to deal with it and move past it, right? so when we are challenged, we often have feelingsing, right? -- feelings, right? recognize these feelings that white people have? [laughter] okay, we have all these feelings. i'm doing this racial justice contract, and it only takes one angry white person to shut the whole program down. as everybody scrambles to adjust and adjust and adjust and adjust and coddle to don't unsettle the white people. and so when we have these feelings, we have these behaviors, right? that's usually how we behave if we're feeling those ways.

so what claims do we make in order to justify behaving such ways? [laughter] i want you to fix these. here's what i've got to say about that. two things. if you marched in the '60s and you're right, thank you. and two, damn, i wish i marched in the '60s. i'd be certified of -- as free of racism for the rest of my life are. [laughter] took this in college, i was a minority in japan. [laughter] the real oppression is class. you misunderstood me. you're playing the race a card. if you knew me, you'd know i can't be racist. this is not welcoming to me. [laughter] i hope you're laughing because you've heard it all, okay? you're making me feel guilty. and just to your question, like,

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. right? some people find offense where there is none. you hurt my feelings. this is just political correctness. [laughter] yeah, the tone. uh-huh. i am or know what it is to be oppressed, and i don't feel safe. all right. so here's what i want to ask white people who need to feel safe in racial discussions. what does safety mean from a position of social, historical, institutional, cultural power and privilege? [laughter] [applause] what does it mean to need to feel safe from that position? you are safe. i think it is an illegitimate term coming from a white mouth

on the topic of cross-racial dialogue. [applause] and it invokes deep -- [applause] images of danger. and i write about everything that i'm talking about. i have an article called "getting slammed: white depictions of cross-racial dialogues as arenas of violence." and it's a perversion of the true direction of historical harm. if you don't feel comfortable, then be a little more honest and say i don't feel comfortable. notice how safe has some preciousness to it. so as soon as we invoke that, ooh, everybody has to feel safe. okay. so you all heard this, right? so now we're going to ask ourselves what could be under that dock that would lead to these claims? as a white person, i will be the judge of whether racism has

occurred. [laughter] my learning is finished. i know all i need to know. racism can only be intentional. not having intended it cancels it out. just notice, right? i don't know what else could be under there if we're behaving that way and saying those things, right? white people experience another form of z oppression or have suffered cannot have racial privilege. if i'm a good person, i can't be racist. my unexamined perspective is equal to yours. [laughter] you know that let's agree to disagree? no, let's agree that you're not informed enough to even have an opinion. [laughter] [applause] i'm entitled to remain comfortable. as a white person, i know the best way to challenge racism,

and you're doing it wrong. [laughter] nice people can't be racist. apparently, because whenever someone's accused of racism in the press, they gather their friends to say he's a nice person. [laughter] okay? if i can't see it, it's not legitimate. if i have any proximity to people of color, i can't be racist. if i have no proximity to people of color, i can't be racist. [laughter] okay. that one gets invoked when someone says, you know, i grew up on a small farm, and the nearest farm was 40 miles away, so i know nothing -- [laughter] about racism, and i have no racism. okay. so i would actually make the argument that you are less sheltered from racism than you you think you are because what were you left to rely on for your information? my world view's objective, yours is not.

so how does that function? okay. ultimately, all of it protects racism. all right. [laughter] i love this picture. [laughter] because it's such a visual, it's such a visual of institutionalized power, right? visual representation. these are all men, all white, all wearing suits, all conservatives and all arguably the most powerful committee at the most powerful table in the whole nation. this is the house freedom

caucus. and i show this picture because i want to really amplify and help white people see what does it look like. because i'm saying, and if i haven't said it yet i'm going to say it now, all this internalized superiority that white people have comes out of our pores. and you might be sitting here thinking, how does it come out of my pores? like i don't know what that looks like. i'm going to try to help you, and i'm going to try to do it by showing one that won't be so hard to see, that internalized superiority is coming out of these guys' pores. right? is that pretty clear to you? these guys are sitting there at the culmination 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. and if you walked in that room, especially for those of us who are people of color or white women, if you walked in that room, would they kind of would

the kind of power be wafting off of them? would it be almost visceral? okay. so you kind of get what it's like when that is coming out, right? and if you were to suggest to these men that they really should get some women or people of color up in there -- [laughter] i don't know, but i believe to my core they would feel contempt for that suggestion. they don't see anyone of value missing from that table. is that fair to say? again, i'll acknowledge i can't know that, but i'm pretty darn sure they don't see anyone missing. they haven't been taught to see other voices as valuable. and if you can see it in them, then you've got to say, so what does that look like for me? right? and i want all those people who identify as women in the room, imagine, you have to go in there all by yourself, because they've asked you to come in and help you see their sex im. [laughter] sexism.

does that sound good? you going to go in there and help 'em? [laughter] so you can just imagine how that's going to go, right? all right. so for all the people who identify as women who can relate to that. and now i want you to imagine that this group really needs a woman of color on their board. women of color, does that sound good to you? do you want to go in there and be that one woman, help 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 could be in this room perpetrating racism. and white women don't land any more lightly either. in fact, 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 woman's experience than there is a universal human experience. maybe at the spiritual level but not in the physical world we live in, okay? so where do we go from here? what do i have on here? [laughter] i hate this question. i actually do because i just see it as very disingenuous. so here's my question back if you're sitting here and that's your question. here's my question back to you. what has allowed you to remain ignorant about a what to do about racism? in 2018 why is that your question. and that's actually a sincere question to you. because if you take out a piece of paper and start writing down why you don't know what to do, you'll have your map. and none of it will be simple. none of it will be easy.

i 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. because we, as white people, don't have a model, i don't think, for what this could look like. so i used to be a director of equity for a large nonprofit, and on the equity team it was myself, deborah, a black woman. we were co-directors, and then marsha, also a black woman, who was the executive assistant. so we were the team. and the organization hired a consultant web developer to come in and design a web site for us, for the organization. and she was setting meetings with all the departments to interview us about what we do so she could make our page. and so she made an appointment with the equity team. and it was the afternoon, and we came to the meeting, and the web

developer was also a black woman. angela. so we sit down, and she has this survey, and she gives it to us. it's got all these questions about what we do, but i find it really annoying and tedious and a little bit frustrating, so i shove it aside, and i say, look -- i try to explain what we do. we go out into the different satellite offices, and we do these anti-racism trainings, and we scare the white people. in fact, the office up there, they said they don't ever want deborah back in the office. i guess her hair scared them. she has locked hair. i wish i could say to you that i recognized what i had said and done, but i didn't. a couple days later marsha came to me and said angela was really offended about that joke you made about black women's hair. and the moment she said it, i got it, and i know better. right? but i was making my moves, right? i was credentialing myself. i was showing that i was woke

and these other white people weren't and that i had, i could make a joke about her hair because we had a relationship, right? that's all what about what was g on in that moment without me being conscious of it. so i followed a series of steps to repair that. the first thing i did was i called my friend christine, and i said, oh, my god, i need to talk to you. and i vented all the embarrassment that i felt because i did not want to run that at angela. right? i didn't want to at all have her get even a whiff of it so that she felt pressure to take care of me, absolve me, forgive me, reassure me. so i did it with christine, another white woman. once i kind of vented it, we put our heads together, and we tried to get

>> google hands off black women's , something like that, all right? laugh -- [laughter] and then i also owned that i was kind of 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, right? because christine and i, as two white women, you know, odds are we're going to miss something. so she said, yes, you did, actually. that survey you so glibly shovedded aside, i wrote that survey. and i have spent my life justifying my intelligence to white people. whoo, that was like -- i immediately got it. of course, it hadn't occurred to me that she wrote it, right? how glib and dismissive i was. i owned that, 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 -- and i just want you to hold that for a minute. she didn't say "if." she said if i'm going to be working with you, you're going to run your racism at me. the next time you do it, would you like your feedback publicly or privately? [laughter] [applause] and i said, i think most people would be like, oh, my god, privately. i said publicly, please. for a couple of reasons. one, i think it's really important that other white people see that i'm not free of these patterns. and it gives me the opportunity to model nondefensiveness. okay? are we good? yeah, we're good. okay, let's move on. and we moved on, and we actually had a closer relationship. one of the things she said to me was this happens to us every day, what you're doing right now

rarely, if ever, happens. so thank you, you know? and i'm sorry that it happened at her expense, but over and over people of color have said to me we know you're going to, we're going to run your stuff. we're not looking for perfection. we're looking for repair, and where can i go, where can we go when it happens. and if we can't go anywhere, you might think we have a relationship. it won't be awe innocent ec. right -- i authentic. so i want to just close by showing you what i think could be under that dock if we had a transformed structure, if you will, the pillars were transformed. we cannot get where we need to go from the current, right? and i want you to the imagine, if you're a person of color in the room, 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 mull the city layeredded system in-- multilayered system infused in everything. whites have blinders on racism, i have some 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 group's history with me. history matters. the question is not if, but how. and i'm hoping all of this kind of came through in the example i gave with angela, right? and you're welcome to take pictures, but not only is it in the book, you can download it on a handout from my web site. [laughter] nothing exempts me from the forces of racism.

whites are unconsciously invested in racism. i have unconscious investments. i can't trust myself to -- i need to be accountable. bias is implies it. i don't expect to be aware of mine without a lot of ongoing effort. feedback from people of color is an incredible risk across a history of harm. it's a moment of trust. no matter how it's given. feedback on white racism is difficult to give. how i receive feedback is not as relevant as the feedback itself. it takes courage to break with white solidarity. how do i support other white people who are willing to step out there rather than tear them down? how do i -- if i'm not willing to step out there, could i at least get out of the way of some white folks that are? [applause] thank you. given socialization it's more likely that i am the one who doesn't understand the issue. [laughter] racism hurts even kills people of color 24/7.

interrupting it is more important than my ego's feelings or self-image. and i leave you with that. thank you so much. [applause] you can stand up, yeah. [applause] thank you. >> thank you. so much. another round of applause. [cheers and applause] if you haven't got your copy yet, kings books is still selling them back there. we heard a rumor that 150 copies were sold in seattle the other night.

[laughter] just saying. we can do better. [laughter] we will do a signing over at this table here. we would ask that you line up in this aisle and around that way to make the flow easier so you can come down this aisle, get it signed and then exit -- >> 300 were sold in portland. [laughter] >> ooh! >> just kidding. i haven't been to portland yet, but i'm going there in two weeks, so -- [laughter] >> that's it, thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they're reading this summer. >> this summer i've just finished a book from karl rove

that is the triumph of william mckinley, and it's why the election of 189 6 still matters. it was a really, really good read because you don't realize how many issues that they dealt with then that we're still dealing with today. of all things, one of the major issues that was a concern was trade. and another issue besides that was currency, whether to go to the silver or gold standard and the arguments that occurred. and what was really wild is this was one of the first times the big bosses weren't really controlling it, that the local election was really, really good. and mckinley did what was known as the porch campaign. he sat on his porch and people came to him. it isn't quite like that anymore, but it was a great read. of course, i'm also -- i always try to have one book with politics, one book kind of fiction and one w