ring a person who is never voted to the polls this year. some kid is 18 and walked into the process, , registration and get them to the polls or vote early. get your voice as an american herd. >> host: never be complacent about the survival of our democracy. thank thank you, malcolm. really enjoyed the conversation. >> guest: it's my pleasure, julie. -- truly. .. "the plot to destroy democracy" explores the challenges involving white americans.

[inaudible conversations] [applause] >> i'm executive director of the american leadership forum and we would like to acknowledge the tribes whose land we are occupying this evening. [applause] >> we would also like to thank urban greece for church for organizing and switching spaces with us really quickly and putting this all together. there graciousness is amazing. and we would like to express deep gratitude to the afl interpreters who made this a more inclusive event.

[applause] >> welcome to an amazing evening with robin diangelo. it is heartening to see so many people in tacoma who came to learn and grow. >> i am erick seelbach from tech,. [applause] >> we would like to thank beacon press who helped us set up this event which expanded greatly to the now 400 of you here today. so much so that we are shown by c-span's booktv. [applause] >> not surprisingly we had books for sale. after the event we will have a signing that will start here and line up on this i'll. if you don't want to stay for the signing we will have copies

at king's books after the event. [applause] >> erick seelbach, i am honored to be here. the most important thing i might say tonight is the restrooms are all gender-neutral restrooms so if you go this way through the exit sign, if you go out this way there through the parlor to the left and are individually used restrooms. these conversations are critically important to me because as you may know the hiv epidemic has impacted people of color. for us to do work finding a end to the epidemic means we as an organization have work to do

around addressing our own racism as white folks working in the organization, so these conversations are part of the incredible equity work we are undertaking and these books in this kind of conversation help us figure out how to have those conversations so i am excited to introduce robin diangelo who received her phd from seattle where she served as a lecturer. she was twice awarded students choice award for educator of the year at the school of social work and served as tenured professor of multicultural education in massachusetts. many of us have participated in trainings with her in her 20 year career as a trainer and consultant. i give you doctor robin diangelo. [applause]

>> thank you so much. this is so rich and there is so much to say but i want to draw your attention to my race. i am white. check me out. part of being white is being raised not to see myself in racial terms. i understand some people have race but not really me. and it is not to see it as relevant to anything you can know about me. so what if i'm white? what does that have to do with anything? after 20 plus years of study, struggle, relationships, day in and day out talking to primarily white groups of people about racism, i really clear that i wait and i have a weight frame of reference. i have a white worldview, and not a universal human

experience but most particularly a white experience in this deeper it and biracial race. i'm coming from this position and i want to be explicit about it tonight at focusing on the majority of folks in this room who are also white. and impact the lives of people at the table for whom we are not in relationship. this is one of the most complexed nuanced social dilemmas and the beginning of this country and there are many roads in and all of them are important. it is not the only perspective but is one that is consistently missing. we have professional development on racism. we tend to study them. what are the struggles, triumphs, who are the heroes and talents, what do we need to know when working with them?

consistently left off the table is the question struggle in relation to whom? triumph in relation to whom or what? this slice is focusing on the weight role in this construct and i am going to move between reading a little bit, listen a little bit. you may not have heard me speak before and i went you to know that i enjoy using humor. it is my style and it is strategic. it is so tense and so charged and has so much anxiety for those of us who are white especially those who have done well. the laughter, it helps release that tension because we begin to the phone out or tends up. it is a strategy to keep us

open and so much of what we say and do is ridiculous. it is healthy for us to laugh at ourselves. if you can laugh at me, the way i thought about it and you recognize you have it that way hopefully again that makes it easy for you to move through that and i once to be clear that it can be unsettling to be white people laughing about racism and this is real, people are dying. it is a tragic, devastating construct. i went to name the strategy, it is never meant to minimize.

ima 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 the workplace and have been hired by their employer to lead them in a dialogue about race. the room is filled with tension and charged with hostility. i've just presented a definition of racism that includes the acknowledgment that white people hold social and institutional power over people of color. white men pounding his fist on the table. as he pounds he yells a white person can't get a job anymore. i'm 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 noticed the effect his outburst is having on the few people of color in the room? why are all the other white people sitting in silent agreement or tuning out? i have, after all, only

articulated a definition of racism. people in north america live in a society that is deeply separate and unequal by race and white people are the beneficiaries of that separation and inequality. as a result we are insulated from racial stress at the same time we come to feel entitled and deserving of our advantage. given how seldomly experience racial discomfort in the society we dominate we haven't had to build our racial stamina. socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority that we either are unaware of what could never admit to ourselves we become highly fragile in conversations about race. we considered a challenge to our racial worldview, a challenge to our identity as good moral people. this we proceed to connect the system of racism as an unfair moral offense. the smallest amount of racial stress is intolerable but there

may be suggesting that beating meaning white has region -- meaning triggers emotional responses such as anger, fear and guilt and behavior such as argumentation, violence and withdrawal from the stress inducing situation. these responses work to reinstate weight equilibrium as they repel the challenge, return a racial comfort and maintain our dominance in the racial hierarchy. i conceptualize this as white fragility. weight fragility is triggered by dominance and anxiety, born of superiority and entitlement. white fertility is a powerful means of white racial control and protection of white advantage. all right. so let's talk a little bit about the challenges of talking to white people about racism.

so the first challenges i've never met a white person who didn't have an opinion on racism. if you are not sure all white people have opinions on racism just bring it up next time you are around a bunch of white people and see how that goes. i don't think you can be born and raised or spent any significant time in the united states and not develop opinions about racism. if you are white and have not devoted years of sustained study, struggle and focus on this topic your opinions are limited, superficial and uninformed. how can i say that when i don't even know you? maybe you have been to costa rica. maybe you have muslim nieces and nephews. i can say this because nothing in dominant society gives us

the information we need to have a complex nuanced understanding or social dilemmas since the beginning of this country. you have to devote sustained study, struggle and focus to get the information you need in this society if you are white and the forces are pushing against you getting that. you can get to graduate school in this country without ever discussing racism, can you not? you can get through law school in this country. you can get through teacher education in this country without discussing racism. if you are in a progressive teacher education program you will have one required multicultural class. your faculty will take 10 years to get you the class, fight to keep the class and you might just be talking about how to introduce ethnic authors in february.

the first challenge for white people is humility. white progressives are my specialty and i suspect i'm in front of a bunch of weight progressives. [applause] >> i actually think white progressives are the most difficult and land the most harshly on people of color day in and day out. [applause] >> if you are white and wondering if it is you, yes, it is you. it is you. i know it is you because i know it is me. there's a couple reasons that is particularly challenging. we are more likely to be in this -- we can be complacent

and arrogant and really think we are good to go. of the topic comes up we put our energy to making sure you understand we are good to go, none of our energy that we need for the rest of our lives which is deep, ongoing, critical self-knowledge, education, relationship building, risk-taking and actual strategic antiracist action. in case i forget to say this later, niceness will not end racism. actually, this system beautifully reproduces racial inequality. racial inequality is growing, not shrinking and all the system needs is white people being really nice, go to lunch with your coworkers, smile at

people of color, do nothing else, because niceness is not courageous. it is not strategic, it won't get racism on the table and will not keep it on the table when everyone wants it off the table. when i applied for a job to go into the workplace and lead people in discussions of racism, i am a vegetarian. how could i be racist? i am vegetarian. i need to be vegan today but in the 90s that was pretty good. i'm being a little facetious but on some level i have a simplistic it is all about alternative this and open-mindedness. i'm really clear that that has not protected me. individualism is a precious ideology in this culture, very precious.

most white people don't understand socialization. we think we are all unique and special and untouched by forces that surround us. it doesn't matter if we say that we are. nothing could and nothing did exempt you from the forces of racism so the question is not if, but how. most white people, i why. you want to be individual and apply what you see that make you different from over here and figure out how all those brought you into the system because they did. nothing exempted you. we think if we don't see it isn't there or if you haven't

explained it enough it can't be valid. it is not dependent on whether white people see it or understand it and we tend to use our reaction as a way out rather than away in. if we start feeling unsettled or uncomfortable or defensive we just say that must mean they did it wrong as opposed to this is an incredible way in. what is so unsettling for me? what is that anger about? how can that help me see how -- what is threatening? what would it mean if it was true? it is a wonderful way and but we are used to not being uncomfortable racially that we don't take advantage of those moments and we don't understand

racism as a system. we think of it is individual, isolated cases. i have it in chapter 2, talking racism and white supremacy. a system, not an event but it is a brilliantly adapted system. it is a beautiful adaptation. a racist got reduced to a simple formula. always an individual who consciously does not like people based on race, must be conscious, and intentionally seeks to be mean to them. by that definition all white people are exempt from racism. it is the root of virtually all white defensiveness. it is a system, not an event and nothing could or did exempt us from its forces.

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 position to each other at as a white person i was socialized to be functionally illiterate on the subject of racism. part of my literacy has been to understand not just the collective experience people of color have or that i can. how do different groups experience it so in other words what i internalized about asian heritage people is different from what i internalized about african heritage people and i have different reactions in those groups have been set up differently in relation to each other and in relation to whiteness and having said that

i feel very clear after 20 plus years of talking to people about racism that there is something profoundly anti-black in this culture and the white mind black people are the ultimate racial other and 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 of blackness or most groups of color who is closer to whiteness and who's closer to blackness and how does that play out so just to drive home the point of it being a system i want to give you a glance at the trajectory of anti-blackness at the beginning of this country and this is deliberately dense and we can literally thing about state sanctioned organized crime.

other african-americans in this country and it begins with kidnapping, 300 years of enslavement, torture, race and brutality, and you see testifying against whites which made it functionally legal to kill black people in this country and you are now in my lifetime. a lot of white people seem to think racism end when enslavement ended. about a quarter of the way through, you are in my lifetime. let's take a 2 thirds of the way through and you're in 2018 with copious empirical evidence. employment discrimination, educational discrimination, laws of policing practices, subprime mortgages, mass

incarceration, disproportionate special referrals and punishments, testing, tracking, school funding, biased media representation, historical omissions and so much more. it is a system, not an event in the system we are in and i hope you can look at that slide and your friendliness and good intentions could not exempt you from it. african-americans are not, have never been in the position to do this to white people, white people have always been and continue to be in position to do this to african-americans so we can remove the word reverse from any discussion of racism. [applause] >> there is no such thing. all people have racial bias, they can have as much racial bias as i had. when you back a group's

collective bias with legal authority and institutional control it is transformative. you see how many times i have to repeat this? there's a reason. how do we cope with the trauma of racism? if we are using anti-blackness as an example we projected our sins onto black bodies. when you think about the narrative, lazy, shiftless, criminal, dangerous, i think you see that is a perversion of the actual direction of those things but today in addition to that we secured the system of racism and exempt ourselves from its forces and none of this has to be intentional. this is what society does and we are part of it. we've been impacted by it.

[laughter] >> that is last year's college champion jeopardy playoff. the board at the end of the grand champion around, one category was left untouched, the hardest that nobody wanted to lose. i don't think i could do justice to the profundity of that disconnect. if we do not know our history and cannot trace it into the present we are left with the most problematic explanations for current conditions and there's a lot going on in that category. civil war and civil rights because that is their history, that is the history of this country, the foundation, you cannot understand us history

and separate that out. it didn't happen in a vacuum and i want to give you an example. everything i'm saying is written in the book but i would rather say it and stand and read it. the power of the way we tell this story, everything is to help us see how we get socialized into a particular consciousness and what the impact of that consciousness is, individualism is a kind of consciousness we hold that is problematic. jackie robinson, do you know who jackie robinson was? every year on the anniversary of what we did we celebrate him. what is the tagline? jackie robinson broke the color line. i want you to think about the impact of that narrative, jackie robinson broke the color line. he did it. he was exceptional. he was an exception to his

group, his group is inferior. finally, one of them had what it took to break through and play with us. he's a special individual, an exception to his group, and that racism ended in sports when he broke the color line. imagine telling 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 was and he was exceptional. he was the first and most exceptional black ballplayer but regardless if he walked out on that field before we said he could the police would have removed him.

i tell this story not because i want to say how bad my people are because, one, it is true and 2, i need role models. who made that happen. what strategies did they use? how do they organize, what they say? can we draw from their lessons today when we look at sports? again, racism after the civil rights movement became an individual who doesn't like people based on race and is intentionally seeking to harm them and this is another thing we are not taught about witches most of our bias is not conscious and most by citizens conscious is driving our behavior it became this either or that protects racism, racism

is bad. how does it function. it is a big bad binary. we know what side we are on, they are ignorant, bigoted, prejudiced, mean-spirited, definitely bold and when they die off, i often -- if you ask me a question that begins don't you think, the answer is no. that's not an open question but i get asked, our young people today less racist? my answer is no. we have a generation that thinks they are and cannot engage critically whatsoever with race.

they are definitely southern. drive pickup trucks and around here they live in spice. i've never been to spice. racists must live there but who we ascribe racism to, not racists are good, we are open-minded and well intended, we are young, northern, we live in seattle, and rich, just moved there from wallingford. we are all going to head to portland really soon. you can't go there anymore, so

corporate. this is me poking fun at white progressives. i'm a huge white progressive. we need to get rid of this. if you are white and at any point in my talk you start to feel defensive or angry, see if it isn't that you can't let go of the definition. if you can't let go of this definition, i am insulting you, and saying you have racist patterns, i agree that i have offended you but this is not the definition i am using. the other thing that comes up whether we are conscious of it or not is i'm proceeding as if i can know something about you just because you are white and we don't like that either but as a sociologist i'm

comfortable general highlighting -- generalizing. social life is patterned in predictable and observable ways. what else do we have? racism is a form of new racism. it is a manifestation of racism that well-intentioned people who see themselves as educated and progressive are more likely to exhibit, under the surface of consciousness because it conflicts with consciously held beliefs of racial equality and justice. it is a subtle but insidious form and ways that allow them to maintain a positive self-image. i have lots of friends of color, by the content of their character. white people enact racism while maintaining a positive self-image in many ways, rationalizing racial

segregation is unfortunate but necessary to access good schools. rationalizing, people of color don't apply. avoiding direct racial language and using racially coded terms like urban, underprivileged, diverse, sketchy and good. denying we have few cross racial relationships by proclaiming how diverse the workplace is and attributing any quality between whites and people of color to causes other than racism. consider a conversation i had with a white friend who 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. she immediately added they also had to buy a gun. joan is afraid to leave the house. i 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 between my friend and me she repeated the story. through this tale the four of us fortified familiar images of the horror of black space andrew boundaries between us and them without ever having to directly name race or openly express our disdain for black space, it would not have the degree of social capital 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. very negative and stereotypical representations of blacks in that exchange, not naming race

provided plausible deniability. and preparing to share this incident i text my friend and after the name of the city the name of the city they had moved to. i wanted to confirm the assumption she was talking 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 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 $0.05 for that neighborhood. i assume it is a black neighborhood, i replied. yes. you get what you pay for. i would 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 am writing about this -- race -- reading about this in my book, the way white people talk about race without ever coming out and talking about race and there's an interesting response. i wouldn't want you to live there. it is too far away from me. all right. notice that when i simply asked what city the house is and she repeats the story about the neighborhood being so bad her friends need guns. when i ask if the neighborhood is black she is comfortable confirming that it is but when i tell her i'm interested in how whites talk about race without talking about race she switches the narrative, and our concern is about not wanting me to live so far away. this is a classic example of

holding deep racial disdain that surfaces in daily discourse but not being able to admit it because the disdain conflict with our self-image and professed beliefs. if the neighborhood is really dangerous why acknowledged this sign of racism. and perceptions of collectivity are influenced by race. white people will perceive danger by the presence of black people. we cannot trust our perceptions when it comes to race and crime but regardless whether the neighborhood is more or less dangerous than other neighborhoods, how it functions racially, what that means for white people engaged in it. for my friend in need this conversation did not increase our awareness of the danger of a 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 so this sets us up to say some superficial things. i do discourse analysis of my area of study and that is a critical study of language the

language doesn't describe some fixed reality. the language we have shapes perception of what we perceive as reality and i do tend to think in metaphors, listening and talking to white people and hearing the same narrative when the topic of racism comes up. i got this image in my mind of a dark aura.. what that signifies our two things. one, how superficial these narratives are. that is one piece. the dock appears to be floating. it looks like it is floating on the water but it is 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 of this bullshit on the top of the dock has not changed so we have to get under their and look at those pillars. how are we getting these outcomes despite how we see ourselves. i actually can't locate sound because i'm deaf in one the ear. who said that? >> why would they went to make that change if it puts them in a different light? >> we know that many of us don't, but i do believe those of us who are sincere about our desire for justice, when we can really understand how what we are doing is functioning, then

there is a cognitive dissonance we can't live with because what we process to value is not aligned with what we are practicing but we are taught not to see this so to keep going, this first set i think of as colorblind, two thirds of dominant white narratives when racism comes up in the first, most classic, is i was taught to treat everyone the same. anyone heard that one? 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 like you know you shouldn't judge, you are not judging, are you?

you can't treat everyone the same. you don't. you don't even want to because people have different needs but when i hear -- there is a buffalo in my head and the first thing and that bubble is this person doesn't understand basic socialization. this person doesn't understand culture. this person is not particularly self-aware. i want to give a heads up to the white people in this room. when people of color here say this they are generally not thinking i am talking to a world white person right now. usually some version of i rolling is going on in to even the wall. we are the least qualified to determine whether we see this. a friend of mine i often lead

with, african american woman, says this to me is the most dangerous white person. all of these are i don't see different if it do it has no meaning. in the past everyone struggles. my parents weren't racist which is why i'm not racist, my parents were racist, that is 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. that is why no one in the department gets along with her. this is another when i ask white folks to remove from your vocabulary along with reverse. anything on this topic that begins 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 is the result of decades of policies and practices that are facts today. the other one i want you to remove is well, yes but on the

human level. let's get racism off the table, let's go to the human level. i might not know what race has to do with my response to my coworker but all the research in implicit bias, race is shaping my response to my coworker, the fact that i'm white and female is shaping the way you hear me now whether you are aware of it or not. so again, all of these, i don't see it or it has no meaning. the question that never failed me in my work, to uncover how we pull this off, it is not true or false because we are going to argue and argue and argue if we apply that question. the question that has never failed me and i hope the white folks take it home today is how does this function in the conversation?

what happened when a white person invokes one of these narratives when racism comes up and if we apply that question you can see 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 in it. it doesn't have to be conscious. if you are here tonight, hopefully you are beyond colorblind. i forgot this one. children are so much more open. i'm sorry to say the following but it is the reality. by the age of 3 or 4, all children who grow up here understand it is better to be white. they do not miss the message, not a single person in this

room missed the message. it is not singular or isolated, not dependent on any one person, it is relentlessly circulating around us. all of us absorb it depending on whether we are or are not white but children by 3 understand it is better to be white. leaving them unattended because you project racial innocence on them is not helpful. so the progressives. what do we say? things like this. i work in a very diverse environment. i have people of color in my family. i'm not racist. i live in new york. i could walk down the streets of new york. this one gets used interchangeably with i'm not

racist. i am from canada. if you haven't heard these you are not talking to enough white people about racism. i'm not racist, i am from hawaii. it is the white people picked on in hawaii. i'm not racist, i from europe. i can't say how many times i heard that and okay. i'm not racist, i was in the military. apparently the -- no racism in those places. there's a name for this one. is the an occupation case. i've been near people of color and it stripped me of my racism. i want you to notice how often white people invoke proximity to people of color as evidence

of lack of racism. ever notice that? i grew up in an all-white neighborhood, there was even one family of color in the neighborhood i will make sure you know that and that they were the best friends of my family. i had one black teacher in my life but she was my favorite. how many of you in conversation with a white person have heard some version of these narratives right here? if we are really honest we have 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 are giving you their evidence, right? in my mind what is that evidence of? make sure you know because i not racist. is this not the evidence white people give for their lack of racism? for this to be good evidence, it must establish us from racism.

otherwise it is not -- a racist cannot work three cubicles from a person of color, could not have people of color in their family and can't live in new york but i can think of at least one racist that lives in new york. [applause]. all right. i have yet to be able to resist that joke when i'm in front of a progressive audience but that joke rests on good bed grinders. i want to be clear. that rests on the good bad binary, the idea but i'm not racist and he is. i want to name that. we are built on a continuum but we are both on that continuum. are you starting to see this

evidence? i want to ask a rhetorical question of people of color in this room. could racism person live 3 cubicles down from you? could someone who thinks they aren't racist but is the worst passive-aggressive racist you ever worked with work three cubicles down from you? do you have white people in your life you love deeply and who on occasion reveal their internalized white supremacy? could you be married to a white person and on occasion have them reveal a racist worldview? intimate relationships, potentially very meaningful but it doesn't exempt us or free us. i am married to a man, they he

fell in love with me his sexism did not disappear. again we know they can live in new york. all this evidence rests on, you see what it rests on? this idea that a racist cannot tolerate even the site of a person of color, cannot have proximity and if there is any regard at all we cannot be racist. i was in the peace corps. i voted for obama. i am on the equity team. what else if we got? i a minority myself. i have been to costa rica and take a class in college. any white person who says this to me, that arrogance.

i will never say that. i will not be free in my lifetime. i do less harm. i feel confident that i do less harm. i don't get even to when i do harm and i have repair skills. what you have just signaled to me is that you don't. and we don't like how white our neighborhood is but we have to move here for the school. what could we do? a real popular one in seattle. it is disingenuous. i think white people do like how white our neighborhoods are. measures of value by the absence of people of color. we do it every day. what is a good neighborhood if it isn't white? that is a powerful message. a segregated life is a good life. there is no inherent value in the perspectives or experiences of people of color. these are powerful messages and i have received them my whole

life. they showed me and i bring it to the table with me and i'm not interested in understanding that so i can feel guilty but so i can try to interrupt it. i don't think i have another one that might pop up. but unlike the first, i love it. i especially love it when children of color are children of the international workers from microsoft. we like the right doses from the right groups. if we apply the same question, not true or false or right or wrong but how do these narratives function? we get the same answer. they all exempt us from further engagement, take racism off the

table, close rather than open, protecting the current racial hierarchy and the white position in it. they are not anymore progressive. we have to ask ourselves have i ever examined what racism is and how it might be fun to me, ever thought about what i am saying is why i said and when i say it and how it might be impacting the conversation? we have to get under here and examined that. this is what i think are these pillars of new racism. how we keep getting these outcomes, good bad binary is effective at keeping us defensive and seeing ourselves as outside of it and as long as we are good people nothing more to worry about. deep implicit bias, individualism, universalism is the opposite, we can speak for

all of humanity, we don't speak from any particular position. people of color speak from their position. when we are interested in that we asked him to be on the divers the team. we won't pay them anymore. we will keep them on as he mentally bring up racism and then they won't it to be on the team anymore but we cover everything else. you know how many organizations automatically assign people of color to the race work? if we think deeply, what we think racism is and who we think has it, internal superiority. i do not believe any white person can miss the message of superiority. i am going to put out like this. as a result of being born and raised this society i have a

racist worldview, i have deep racist biases. i developed racist patterns and i have invested in a system of racism which is so comfortable and has served me well and helped me overcome the barriers i face and i have investments in not seeing any of that for what it would mean for my identity and what it would require me to do. i didn't choose it, don't even want it, got it. let's start from that premise. it is so liberating to start from that premise. so i can start defending, denying, hoping you won't notice and start getting to work figuring out what it is like in my life.

the power of segregation, in every 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 -- all of this socialization result in patterns. preference for racial segregation and no sense of loss about it. seeing ourselves as individuals, not understanding we bring our history with us and history matters and it is a history of harm. i might see myself as just robin, your friend but 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, most white people are apathetic about racial injustice. if you show us photographs and videos we will be upset about to have to change in a daily way, that is what i've concluded after doing this for a long time. inability or lack of interest in sustaining relationships with people of color. wanting to jump over the hard personal work and get to solutions. confusing not agreeing with not understanding. most white people are not qualified to agree or disagree. or you must have misunderstood me. if you give a white person

feedback on something racially problematic generally what you get back is if you think that, you must've misunderstood me. they explain and explain, then you break their spirits and they give up. what if that person understood me perfectly, they understood exactly what i meant. what i don't understand is what i meant inside a racist framework. focusing on our intentions on impact, that cancels out the impact. so when we are off our racial equilibrium or comfort, and which -- it is what i experience every day as i move through the world, really

comfortable, rare for me outside my racial comfort zone. comfort is really important, individual is important, seeing ourselves as just human. >> a couple of things going on that make us very irrational.

recall those moments and hell, yes, we knew, i could never admit that for what it would mean more for my identity. we kind of don't know and we do know and we can admit it. dominance and control. i am doing training for large-tech company and it's racial justice training and we were asked not to use the word white. [laughter] >> i swear to you. white people -- why do you have to say white, right?

[laughter] >> you do not name whiteness and you do not say white advantage. i get that you have opinion and i get that i don't know virtually anybody in the 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. and finally entitlement to people of color's bodies, feeling entitled to their labor, emotional labor, their psychic labor, their physical labor, just reaching in and violating their space, right, social worker who specializes in racial trauma and he talks about in particular black people, only having their own bodies for the

last 20, 25 years, a black man solemnly respectfully and quietly going down on one knee causes us to erupt, you will not control your own body, that's white. when any of that is interrupted, white fragility, i have never had to build my capacity, really, i think part of being white is not having to bear witness to the pain of racism on people of color. to refuse to bear witness to it and certainly refuse to bear witness to the pain i caused people of color and never being held accountable to do that. and so we just -- we don't have a much capacity to sustain the

simplest challenge or suggestion that white has meaning, much less that it has advantages. and so we don't respond very well but we respond effectively, right, you saw me up my racial equilibrium. ly do whatever it takes to repel the challenge, if i need to cry, that's a great strategy for white women. [applause] [laughter] >> i will cry, what's going to happen when i cry, trauma, given the history when white women claim distress, emmett teal. you become bad, we forget and

the transgression you were calling me on and i'm back in a very protective. if i need to withdraw, so it's very effective in that way and when i coin that term fragility i wanted to capture a couple of things, doesn't take much to set us off. white people are so mysy about racism. [laughter] >> we are so pissy. and that's our defensiveness is weponized, our hurt feelings are weponized and doesn't matter what you're aware of what you're doing or conscious what you're doing so pay attention because that's what it's doing. it's not fragile at all. i think that white fragility functions as a kind of white racial bullying.

i'm going make it so miserable for you to call me in to point out anything that you just won't do it because you risk real punishment. in years with having conversations with people of color, 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 life span, right? and so i'm not the 1%. i've never even been a manager but i can control the people of color in my orbit through my white fragility, so you stay in my place and i use my and i use you as diversity cover as long as you don't fundamental challenge me, right? we definitely see this in the

workplace, right? it will become a personal problem that you have, right? and it leverages behind it, the weight of history and institutional power. so, again, i ask personally not to particularly interested in what's causing the reaction, i'm interested in the impact of the reaction and that whatever it is we have to move past it. so with challenge we often have feelings. recognize your feelings, the white people have? we have all these feelings. [laughter] >> it only takes one angry white person to shut the whole program down as everybody scambles to adjust, adjust and coddle to

don't unsettle the white people and so we have these behaviors. it's usually how we behave. what claims do we make to justify behaving such ways? [laughter] >> i'm marched in the 60's, if you watched in the 60's and you're white, thank you. took this in college, i was a minority in japan. [laughter] >> the real oppression is class. you misunderstood me. you're playing the race card.

if you knew me you'd know i can't be racist. this is not welcoming to me. i hope you're laughing because you heard it all, okay, you are 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. yeah. the tone. [laughter] >> i am or no what it is to be oppressed and i don't feel safe. all right. so here is 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 privilege?

what's the need to safe feel safe from that position? you are safe. i think it is and i leg mate term coming from a white mouth on the topic of cross-racial dialogue and invokes deep images of danger. it's a provision of historical harm. if you don't feel comfortable, be honest and say, though, i don't feel comfortable. notice how safe has preciousness to it. everybody has to feel safe. okay. so y'all heard this, right? now we will ask ourselves what

could be under the dock that would lead to the claims? >> as a white person, i will be the judge of whether racism has occurred. my learning is finished. i know all i need to know. racism can only be intentional not having intended cancels it out. i don't know what else could be under there if we are behaving that way and saying those things. white people experience another form of oppression and have suffered cannot have racial privilege. if i'm a good person i can't be racist. my perspective is equal to yours you know that agree to disagree, let's agree that you're not informed to even have an opinion.

[laughter] >> i'm 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 someone is accused of racism 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 of people of color i can't be racist. [laughter] >> okay, that one get invoked when someone says i grew up in a small farm, the farm was 40 miles away, i know nothing about racism and i have no racism. okay, here is -- i would actually make that argument that you are less sheltered from

racism than you think you are because what were you left to rely on for your information? world view's objective. how does that function? okay. ultimately all of it protects racism, right. 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 white, all wearing suits, all conservative and all at -- oddly the most powerful committee in the whole nation. house supreme caucus. i show the picture because i want to amplify and help white people say what does it look like because if i haven't said it, the priority that white people have comes out of our pores, how does it come out of my pore, i don't know what that looks like, i will try to help you and by showing one that won't be hard to see that priority is coming out of the guys' pores, is that clear to you, these guys are sitting there being smartest people in the room, always been at the table, being seen as solving the

world's problem and if you walked in that room especially for those of us who are people of color or white women, if you walked in the room, with the kind of power and internalized superiority would be visceral? okay. so you kind of get what it's like when that is coming out, right? and if you would suggest to me these men that they really should get some women or people of color up in there, i don't know but i believe to my core they would feel contempt for that suggestion. they don't see any one of value missing from that table. is that fair to say? 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 in them, you have to say 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 them see their sexism. does that sound good? [laughter] >> you will go in there and help them? so you can imagine how that's going to go, right? all right. for all the people who can relate to that. 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, you want to be that one woman who help the white women see racism? that doesn't sound good to you? can you see that in this room i can 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 anymore lightly either. in fact, i think when white women do not back people of color, the hurt and detrail -- betrayal is deeper because we have way in and we use it as a way out. [applause] >> yeah. more universal's experience than there's human universal experience. 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. here is my question back if you're sitting there and that's my question, here is my question back to you, what has allowed you to remain ignorant on what to do about racism?

in 2018 why is that your question? that's actually sincere question to you because if you take out a piece of paper to start writing 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 failed to repair it. we as white people don't have a model for what this could look like. i used to be the director of equity for large nonprofit and on the equity team was myself, debra, a black woman, codirectors and marsha also a black woman who was executive assistant and we were the team and the organization hired a consultant web developer to come in and design a website for us for the organization and she was setting meetings with all of the

departments to interview us about what we do so shoe could make our page and so she made appointment with the equity team and 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 survey and she gives it to us and has questions about what we do but i find it annoying and tedious and frustrating and i shove it aside and i try to explain what we do. we go out into the different satellite offices and we do these antiracism training and we scare the white people. the office up there they said they don't want debra 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 of days later marsha came to me and said angela was

offended about the joke you made about black woman's hair and the moment she said i got it and i know better, right? but i was making my moves, right, i was showing that i was woke and the other white people weren't. i could make a joke about her hair because we had a relationship. that's all that was going on in the moment without me even being conscious of it. so i followed a series of steps to repair that. we have it up here. the first thing i did called my friend kristin and said, oh, my god, i need to talk to you and vented all of the embarrassment that i felt because i did not want to run that at angela. i didn't want to have a bit so that she could forgive me so i did it with kristin, another white woman, we put our heads

together and tried to get as clear as we could in which all of the ways what i did was racist so i could be able to own that and 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 in the meeting last week? and she said yes. now she -- she could have said no and kind of thought she would say no, i thought she was going to say what a hypocrite you are. i'm done with you. and if i wasn't able to hold that, then i wasn't going to make an authentic repair. i was prepared for that but she said, yes. we met, we sat down, i opened by owning, i never once explained what i meant or anything else. i did this, i did this, i did this and we talked and she said, i don't know you, i have no trust with you, i have no 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. and if you're white and you're not getting that, google hands off black woman's hair. something like that. and then i 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, right, because kristin as two white women, odds are we are going to miss something and she said something, yes, you did, something, the survey that you shoved aside, 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, right? 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, and she didn't say, if, if i'm going to be working with you you will run your racism at me again. the next time you do it would you like your feedback publicly or privately? [laughter] [applause] >> and i said, i think most white people would be private, 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 the patterns and gives me the opportunity to model nondefensiveness.

are we good, okay, let's move on. 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 has ever happened, so thank you. i'm sorry that that it happened at her expense but over and over people of color have said to me, we know we will run your stuff, we are not looking for perfection, we are looking for repair and where can i go -- where can we go when it happens, if we can't go anywhere, you might think we have a relationship, it won't do authentic. i want to just close by showing you what i think could be under the 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? i want you to imagine, if you're

person of color in the room, imagine your day would be like if white people were able to internalize this, being good or bad is not relevant, racism is a 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 rake ill 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, history matters. the question is not if but how. i'm hoping all of this goes through in the example i gave

with angela. you're welcome to take pictures but not only is it in the book but you can download it in handout in website. nothing exempts me from the forces of racism. whites are incorrespondencely invested in racism. i have conscious investments, i can't trust myself to i need to be accountable. bias is implicit. feedback from people of color is incredible risk, 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 with other white people who are willing to step down, if i'm not willing to step out there, could i get on the way of white folks that are?

thank you. given socialization is i am the one who doesn't understand the issue. racism hurts even kills people of color 24/7, interrupting it is more important than my ego feelings or self-image and i leave you with that. thank you so much. [applause] >> you can stand up, yeah. thank you. >> thank you so much. another round of applause.

[cheers and applause] >> if you haven't got your copy yet, king's books is still selling them back there. we heard a rumored that 150 copies were sold in seattle the other night. just saying. we can do better. [laughter] >> we will do 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 the aisle and get it signed and exit. >> 300 were sold in portland. [laughter] >> just kidding. i haven't been to portland yet but i will be there in 2 weeks. rips ris. >> that's it, thank you. [applause]

>> you're watching book tv on c-span2 and we are showing you the most top 10 events on book tv, best selling novelist david baldacci and discussed 35 novels including absolute power and most recently the falling. >> now book tv's monthly in-depth program with best selling novelist, author of over 40 books, most recently the fallen. >> you have been on tour for the last several weeks talking about your 36 adult novel the fallen. features number 4 in line for