authors about their latest

work. >> i'm so delighted to have this opportunity to sit down and talk with you robin d'angelo if i may call you robin. >> thank you so much, it's an honor. >> i want to begin with what seems like a basic question. it's the moment in the book where you were actually dealing with the kind of tension between class and race. and you told your story. and i thought it really important to kind of begin

with your journey to this work. help a little bit about, talk about you. and the way in which your upbringing shapes how you approach education. >> sure. i'll talk about the aspects of my life and upbringing that ithink is so relevant to the work that i do today . the two pieces and one i'm not sure i write about in the book and that is that my mother died when i was 11 years old.she died of leukemia. this was the late 50s, early 60s. at that time didn't talk about those things. it probably seems shocking to people today but cancer was a shameful thing and we were told not to speak about it and when she died we were told not to talk about it. afterwards either. so it was a traumatic experience for me but i don't think it had to be that traumatic if we hadbeen able

to talk about . i was 11 years old. so from an early age i couldn't articulate it this way at that time but i did understand the relationship between violence and suffering. it was this huge elephant in the room and by god, i couldn't talk about that then but i'm going to talk about this elephant now. i also grew up in poverty because my mother was a single mother struggling with cancer. he couldn't keep a job. she couldn't keep us housed. we were often left with strangers for long period'sof time. she couldn't keep us fed or based . quite sure i wasn't clean as a child and i had a lot of shame. and i'll never forget that moment that all of that crystallized for me , when my sister took us to visit a friend and as often happens

when the adults get together the children begin to play and we were playing and it came time to leave and i was the last one out the door and i overheard one of the little girls asked her mother what's wrong with them? that was the literal question she asked. what's wrong with them and i stopped, riveted. i wanted to hear that answer and her mother went like this . therefore. and i won't ever forget that moment. i even feel chills now because it was when i realized there's something about us that's shameful and everyone can see it but nobody should speak of it. and i share that cause when i realized much later in life that i participated in somebody else's oppression that was unbearable to me. i cannot know the black experience but i can tap into the shame of poverty. and discrimination based on being poor and not wanting to

put it in a form that for anybody else. i also always knew i was white. and i just have to look at what people who are poor or working-class say they don't have privilege. i have to say come on. i always knew i was white. i always knew it was better tobe white . and in fact, we use black people to ameliorate some of our class chains. i can remember being hungry, being out in public in the park and seems foodleft out and reaching for that food . and being admonished not to touch it. because you don't know who touched it. could have been language at the time was colored, don't sit there. you don't know who sat there. it could have been a colored person. the message was clear. had a colored person touched that it would be dirty . iwas actually dirty . in those moments i wasn't

poor anymore. i wasn't shameful anymore. it was a form of ejecting our dirt and shame onto black people. and it was a way that we align ourselves or i would say realigned ourselves with the dominant white culture that our propertyseparated us from . i don't have less racism because i grew up poor. ijust learned my place in the racial hierarchy . from a different class position that i would have learned had i been middle-class . i would have learned there too, justdifferent lessons . >> this i thought it important to begin their and kind of give a sense of your own journey. the way in which you use your biography to as a way to disrupt the kind of falls in some ways false dichotomy of the story which is the most important. but i think it's important that we start with your story.

that there's a journey to this work. talk a little bit about before we get to the actual book. talk about how life fragility change your life. this book has been, the former was this extraordinary bit, new york times bestseller. number one. out had it transformed you because a lot of the stories in the new book coming out of your travels around the country doing this extraordinary work. >> like the light of what people, particularly it's a form of oppression in their life and of course we don't experience racial oppression but with experience other forms and for a lot of us, we thoughtlong and deep about how unjust life is for us . but rarely i was in my 30s before i ever considered how i've been benefiting and that in a large part of my wetness allowed me to navigate my

property. i didn't go tocollege until i was in my 30s . but of course, once i got there, i fit in. i was reflected everywhere by all my teachers and by the curriculum. and i graduated not knowing whati can do got this position as what we called in the 90s a diverse city trainer . and i've been doing this kind of work now for about 25 years. i went on to get my phd. i've been writing and publishing on racism and white racial identity for decades. but mostly in academia and i know you're an academic and you know that if anybody reads the peer-reviewed articles we write mark sometimes, maybe it grabs students. and i had written the article white fragility about the frustration of trying to talk to white people about racism. so being a diversey trainer

going day in and day out . going against my socialization which most white people are taught not to talk about racism and every day i walked into rooms filled with whitepeople and say we're going to talk about racism . most often ending side-by-side with the black facilitator who was the only person of color in most of those rooms . and just being stunned at the hostility to the conversation . that the meanness. i mean, we can be really mean. on this topic and driving home with that cofacilitator and bearing witness, it's part of being white is never having to bear witness to seeing racism on black people and rarely being held accountable for the things that you caused . and so experience of academia, kind of brought me to be writing and somebody

somewhere quoted from white fragility the article and it exploded. i apparently captured in language and dynamic that something familiar certainly to black people but also once i needed from the ears of white people and it's harder to deny a sharedexperience . so i was getting emails from around the world.about that. about that article and i knew that it would be useful to develop it more further and to make it accessible because it's an academic. we know how to do that, it's not my favorite way to write you have to do it in academia. i wanted to make it acceptable. and more plain language. so i went to a nonacademic publisher, a nonprofit publisher, beacon press. i knew there would be an audience for the book based

on the reaction to the article but who could dream. it's still on the list in three years, who could dream of that. i don't, i wasn't prepared for the depth of backlash from all sides of the spectrum. i expected it from theright . you expect that, that doesn't get to you in the same way. but i didn't expect it to that degree from the left so that's been a problem. >> that's interesting you didn't expect it from theleft . there's a sense in which the left is not, i wouldn't want to say it. i don't want to overgeneralize but they are caught within the crosshairs of this book. there's a sense in which i remember this moment . he was a kind of testifying before congress about his friend. and he said something to the

effect that he was skeptical of those who wanted to do something for him as opposed to with him and he had seen how white liberals had responded to the cold war, to the mccarthy era and how they betrayed them so there's this deep suspicion involved as well as doctor king's message from the birmingham jail at the beginning of the book. so say a little bit about nice racism, what is this and who are these people who are the nice racists that you're talking to? >> it's me. we have to start with the basic foundation of systemic racism so let's proceed from that premise . that racism occurs in explicit acts but it's actually a structure that's in fused across society and it is the norm.

it's not an aberration. it's reproduced 24 seven 365. it's a highly adaptive system . where we are with voters rights we thought in 1965 we settled that. and we're in a very serious place right now. so it adapts to challenges and it keeps on keeping on. so if it is the system we are all shaped by it. we are all shaped by it. and so for those of us who are white we have to change our questions from i've been shaped by this to how have i been shaped by it.you cannot be exempt from the cultural water that you swim in . so nice racism is meant to capture the well intended white progresses. the moderate who is more concerned with a lack of conflict. who's more concerned with

comfort and saving face then racial injustice. there's so much handwringing about white people feeling guilty. for me that's a great example . oh my goodness, white people may feel somethingunpleasant . in looking at racism and we're going to compare that to what we watched in front of our own eyes this summer with george floyd ahmaud arbery and so forth. a canes term it was moderate, in baldwin's term it was liberal but today we say progresses . i think we do the most daily harm. and i don't want to speak for you. you can correct me if imiss the . but odds are in a daily basis you're not interacting with white nationals and if you are interacting with white nationalists you're aware

that you're interacting with and to some ways you know how to protect yourself. on a daily basis especially in academia your most likely interacting with colleagues just like me and we are the ones that send you home off and exhausted. those thousand daily cuts, that maddening insidious thumb. i can't get my fingers on this but yet again we reproduced racism in our outcomes, in our hiring and in our policy . it's themore subtle , it's the smileon the face . it's the gas lighting. it's the denying. >> you invoke guilt and you make a distinction between guilt and shame. >> it's just a condensed version. guilt is generally what you feel about something you've done and feel responsible for and shame is generally something you inherently are.

so guilt is i did that and shame is i am that. and my area of scholarship is discourse analysis so language is political. language is not objective, it's not neutral and language shapes prescription so i'm very attentive to how we frame conversations and position ourselves. and i noticed that white progressives, those who would voluntarily attend a talk or watch a video like this will pretty freely talk about feeling shame and i don't know what to do but not guilt. that's interesting to me. this is a pattern and as a sociologist i think patterns are rich sources of insight. so how does it function?

i feel guilty i'm responsible for something and reparative action would be to somehow address what i have done. if i feel shame i just am bad and there's nothing i can do. i'm is also from responsibility and shame tends to elicit sympathy, support. if i say i feel so ashamed i'm such a bad person most people around me will reassure me. no, nobody should feel shame. we're all inherently good. this is a popular progressive mantra. so it functions in the environment in ways that actually i think garner more social capital. >> in some ways i think you use the formulation the fact that i feel bad actually establishes that i'm a decent person and i'm a good person. but what's interesting is as

you know in a certain type of political theory circle is the absence of shame in our politics that represents a certain type of problem problem. click chris lebron writes about the fact that people thought that shame could move trump around . there's no feeling of shame but on the right, it's the absence of shame that allows them to do x, y, and z and it seems to me after reading nice racism it's the prevalence of shame on the left if it's a binary but it's the prevalence of shame on the left that actually enables in certain interesting sorts of ways so i found this talk about a feeling of guilt as really a kind of critical intervention because there seems to be always at least in my work and my conversation, i'm not

in the zone that you're in. but there's this sense in which we cannot sit in our discomfort because as we find ourselves not only feeling guilty but feeling shameful and feeling a sense that we're not in fact decent and that comes up the works everywhere. we can't get to where we want to be. >> shame is a very unpleasant feeling. with guilt, shame is probably worse but can we pop up, can we bear it? can we build our capacity to feel at and move through and that's the key. there is a question that has never failed me in my efforts to unpack. how do we keep getting out? virtually every white person you talk to, even those caught on cameraengaging in racism will claim that they are not . how do we keep getting

racists is what edward noble leo calls racism without racism. the question that has really served me in trying to figure that out is not is it right or wrong, is it right or wrong that you feel shame west and mark know. that we could split hairs over forever. it's how does it function and how does it function in context? if it functions to motivate you to build your capacity to move through it, to change the way you understand what's being said then it's functioning in a constructive way but if it's functioning to excuse your inaction, to be the reason you don't engage because everyone around you to walk on eggshells and be so careful and don't do this and don't do that, then it's functioning to protect the racist status quo. >> so chapter 5 stood out for

me. it's the longest chapter and it is a detailed accounting of what you call the moves of white progressives and i found itfascinating . from credentialing to outwoking and i thought about the debates we saw in the bernie sanders campaign to bernie sanders black lives matter or some of the conversations we overheard with occupy wall street. at the very moment occupy is taking off black lives matter , we were wondering why aren't these groups coming together? it's like abolitionism and true soil, why are they going in different directions . talk about the movement of white progressivism and why you thought it was so

important to lay out because i didn't have language for what that was. that seems familiar. talk about that and lay out why it's in some ways at the heart of the book. >> i appreciate you if i understand you correctly acknowledging that it's relevant. you've experienced these moves. you've been on the receiving end of these moves. i am an educator and i think one of the things is breaking it down and showing what it looks like. you know, here's how i can help you understand what you're doing and how it's functioning. so if the book is about the ways in which we treat racial harm , i to make that very clear and i've been observing it, receiving it, participating in it. i'm not outside anything i write about for 20+ years. so i just wanted the opportunity to say all right.

let's take it apart, what do we do? so credentialing is a big one because it's so predictable that the moment a white progressives encounters a black person or engages across race they're going to need to feel the need to establish that they're not racist. and unfortunately most of the ways we seek to do that are not remotely convincing. and i've been in enough conversations with black colleagues and friends who are like our eyes are rolling on the inside . another piece would be your making a fool of yourself. we're making a full of ourselves. i want to know if i came out of the bathroom and my start was tucked up into my pantyhose and my body was showing and you came up to me and said heads up. it's visible.

i would be like my god, thank you somuch and pull my skirt down .i wouldn't say how dare you, note it isn't and everybody had better proceed as if they don't see anything and of course that's white fragility. but i see two overall categories of credentialing. colorblind, white progressives are less likely to go into colorblind. we're going to go into proximity . and have you noticed how often white people will use proximity to black people as their evidence that they are free of racism. you know, i had a black roommate in college. i went to this school. i work on a diverse team i traveled the world . i live in a big city therefore i have activity and want what i try to help people do with that is say okay, if your evidence that you're not racist isthat you can tolerate proximity . you can walk down the street in a large major city and

cast black people and not lose it. then in order for that to be good evidence, it has to not be possible by somebody's was racist otherwise that's not good evidence. so apparently, racists can't have proximity to black people and i think right here we see that's ridiculous . that's absurd. we can go all the way back to the days of enslavement and jim crow and we're quite clear that white racists had proximity pretty intimate proximity at times to black people. and so i want them to see what they're doing when they do that. that they're not convincing anybody. and to reveal the underlying framework that their operating under. and we just cannot get where

we need to go from that framework that says racism consists of individual acts of intentional meanness. that's what most people's white definition is, that's why most white people will say they're not racist and to support their case their friends will say how nice they are. he's a nice guy. he can't be racist. those things are mutually exclusive. >> i had this experience on television with my good friend senator claire mccaskill. citizen one from missouri, described before the people act. and senator mansion amendments is his version, his response to it. and when stacy abrams endorsed manchin's compromise blood described as the stacy abrams playbook and what he's

trying to do is put a black face on it and the response was he's not embracing it, he's a nice guy. it was exactly this language. talk about how outwoke. >> i had about that example. that's where i take notes. yes. so outwoking is a move that white people often make. i'm more down than you are. i know more about this than you do. i'm actually more down than you and now i'm going to call you out. i've been studying this for three months and i'm going to tell robin d'angelo how long she is. i just got the call back. sometimes i'll go to youtube

and now see something. five reasons why robin d'angelo is wrong. and the top one will be she says all white people are racist,can you believe that . what i want to ask is much every white person to do is take a moment and define yourself what is the criteria by which you would grant that somebody's racist. what is the criteria? i don't think many white peoplehave thought deeply about that . if you're astounded that i would say all white people are racist, then tell me what you think it takes. and is probably going to come down to some version of individual conscious meanness across base and that's the framework. that paradigm just couldn't be more effective at protectingracism . because it one exempts virtually all white people . guarantees distance. guarantees that then nice

people couldn't possibly participate and weend up with racism without racist . and so let me just be clear since i said it. when i say all white people are racist what i mean is that we live in a society in which it confuses racist ideology ideology is circling all thetime . the vast majority of white people live segregated lives not only feel no loss about that which for me is the deepest message of all. that i could go cradle to grave as most white people will with no authentic sustained relationship with black people. and not only not feel anything of value has been missed. defined my life as gaining value from the absence of blacks. >> like, what's a good school . what's a good neighborhood. what's happening when a neighborhood is going up.

or coming up, what's happening when it's coming down. what are we talking about when a violent crime happens and somebody has to stay on camera you wouldn't believe that would ever happen here . that's, you already know what kind of neighborhood we're talking about and it begs thequestion where should that happen . so. >> this is a key play, my own work i talk about the value. this belief that some people because of thecolor of their skin but to be valued more . and that valuation evidences itself in the distribution of advantaged discipline where some people are treated with a generalized sense of disregard. >> ..

when i read this, i never really thought about it in this way, that we know what our social groups are homogeneous, right, for the most part, that when people talk about network racism, they're talking about the fact our networks are so homogeneous that opportunities are passed along in certain because that's it's all e networks they are not robust. i'm playing ball with my friends dad and the like. this segregated world, white world, right, which of course all of these benefits and advantages almost as you put it earlier this is the water you

swim in. you can't come out of that without even a drop on you. it reminds me of that moment in their hidden world where he says racism comes to as natural as language, as this kentucky born guy. what do you make of that? >> guest: it such an important point because it's such a sticking point. this gets us up against very precious ideology of individualism, which causes lots of white people to melt down into white frigidity, you don't know me, how can you say that about me? it's true i don't know all of you. i don't know most of the white people i'm talking about. that's what each individual white person to look at all right how have i been shaped by this? was my class position, magenta, what is been my life experiences within a society that white

supremacy, the idea that white is the stand-in for human, the ideal human, and the further you are away from that standard, the less human as argued, it's really an argument that the white body is the standard by which all bodies humanity shall be measured, and so the further you are away from that whiteness, then the less human you are, right? that's the society we live in. we are all shaped by it so that's why say we change the question from if two how. -- two how. i don't think anyone would argue the moment a baby is born and the declaration is made, boy or girl, a whole set of socialization kicks in and you cannot avoid it. the blanket they wrap you in is going to be shaped i whatever

gender they see you as. you can resist it but you will have to resist it and not to resisted every step of the way from everyone you meet. they will be responded to you consciously or not as a male or female. these categories categories are being challenged but none of us can be exempt from it come from gender conditioning. and yet we think we can be exempt from racial conditioning. so if that framework is helpful i i would offer it to white people to think, to use. >> host: sorry, go ahead and try to i a thought because i can imagine what i call that yeah, but. white folks listening but yeah, but, and he says he lives a secular life overall. the difference is black people who may also lived separate from white people, one, that is the result of decades and decades and decades of policies and

practices that were forced on black people. this idea people prefer to live with her own i don't think some people prefer to live with her own with all the resources and some prefer with none of the resources. that's been imposed and so now it seems natural that it is the result of the policies. and you are not sitting at the table as a homogeneous group of people making decisions that affect my life. but my group is sitting at the table making decisions that affect your life. can you see that picture in your mind of the governor of georgia surrounded by other white people signing the voting restrictions with the picture of the plantation? behind him. so yes, biden administration will be the most diverse administration we have ever had, but not one person listening right now was raised in a society which biden's administration was in office. all of our conditioning doesn't unravel the moment there some

diversity in front of us. the people who are enacting these policies, banning whether you could, you or i could be having this conversation on the college campus, who has the power to ban these conversations? nacho group. my group. >> host: just listening to you and reminded me of a moment in the book that he found really interesting, and it's these deeply personal moments. my social group, predominantly black, people of color because it's exhausting at times, right? then yet to make the decision, you wrote about this in the book, the people who are in your close groups who happen to be white, who are white, make a distinction. there's a distinction between

being white and happening to be white. let's make that distinction. you have to make a decision in those moments, , do i risk our friendship to tell him or her what she just did, or what he just did wax do i just let that slide or do we just move on? to have to interpret the drums today? that is, always being asked to give an account for why a, b, and c, right? there's not only the broad macro question but also the internal demands that are placed on relationships, interracial relationships. i've got this in your own book when you found yourself doing certain things you would call your black friends and say, who do similar work, and they would have to walk you through it,

right? what kind of labor that is, that's an additional kind of labor you don't have with other kinds. does it make sense? >> guest: absolute. there are two concepts that are useful for me and one is allostatic load and that refers to chronic pressure lots of people carry allostatic load, but racial weathering is the result of allostatic load that is due to the stress of living and a society in which systemic racism is the foundation. all that i can you come here and i just said that thing, it's coming from a racist assumption. it's coming from a bias that i'm oblivious to it and i say it and i carry on. i had a great time at the party and you are sending that hours agonizing, is it worth it? what i risk losing the relationship? how often has since gone well

for me? you know what, it's not worth it. unfortunately, as it argued in white for julie, often the punishment gets worse not better. that's what i see white for julie as a kind of every day white racial bullying, a a fof everyday white racial control, right? we have this interaction and then you have to think that whether it's worth it to talk to me, and baby futures, no, it's not. i've got to get to the day, a country to give get my family at home, and so i didn't get called in. i wasn't accountable. racism got to fly. you got to bear the brunt of it and we keep on keeping on with me being comfortable and you being uncomfortable. i want to share a really powerful moment that drives this home. i was in front of a -- back

anything we could be in front of groups, and i've gone over white fragility and all of these dynamics and i post a question to the people of color in the room. i said how often have you tried to get a white person feedback on our inevitable and often unaware racist habits and assumptions, and have it go well for you? they laughed. they rolled their eyes. the number one response is never. the number two response is, rarely. i followed up by saying, asking, welcome what he could give us that feedback? and have us receive it with grace, reflect and seek to change our behavior, what would that be like? i'll never forget this black man raised his hand and he said, it would be revolutionary. revolutionary is a really strong word, right?

that's a difficult white people are, but that is a frickin', if i may, revolution, give us the feedback and have us receive it with grace, reflect and seek to change. that's a difficult we are. on the other hand, that doesn't seem like a very tall order. it really doesn't but it is a tall order from the current paradigm that says only that people. that guarantees i'll have to defend myself and then you well be in a position of deciding whether it's worth it. >> host: this is a wonderful way of handing out, right? the work speaks to the cross racial interracial relationships, kind of personal interactions, how they run aground in which allies are pushing this as a philanthropic issue. they are not seeing themselves.

they understand instances decently. we can go through all that. we are in a moment where we're seeing this work at the macro level, in very, very clear ways. senator tim scott declares america is not a racist country. vice president harris echoes, we are not a racist country have to do with our racism. okay. another kind of moment, critical race theory as a catchall phrase for the kind of work that you do, the kind of work that even room does. this effort to re-narrate 1619 project, right? all of these are a tense to kind of tell a different story about

our beginnings, about who we are, confronting our wrongdoings and the like, and we see the depths of the vitriol. we see the intensity of the response. reading "nice racism," we see it broadly across the country at large. bring the two together, talk about "nice racism" and talk about we are as a country in this moment which is supposed to be, supposed to be a moment of profound possibility and transformation trick to precisely because it is a moment of profound possibility we are seeing incredibly amplified efforts to stop it from being that moment. so carol anderson so beautifully argues in white rage, every inch a black progress has been met by white rage. i believe the current moment is a backlash to obama presidency. i think this blocking of critical race theory is a reaction to what happened this summer. and that more impolite people

are being awoken and galvanized to get involved. the forces that are invested in racial justice are deep, but the forces that are invested in maintaining a racist status quo are also very, very deep. and for the most part have the reins of power. so i see both those sides, if you will, absolutely amplified. i don't believe those who want to protect the racist status quo can come out and say that. they can't so they have to find the bogeyman, which have always been effective at doing. the southern strategy where you manipulate the white populists and racial animus. you caused them to be afraid. you reinforced this idea of scarcity, that any game for you as a loss for me.

heather mickey talks about that in the sum of us, that jonathan talks about it in dying of whiteness, right? critical race theory, and registered tim white call it conservative racist theory -- i just heard tim white dashed it's a standard standard for anyone who acknowledges that systemic racism is real. it's the perfect standing in a way to cover that. you have the word critical, and outside of academia a lot of people here that as meaning criticism, and that sounds bad, right? critical thinking means thinking deeply with nuance and with education. then you have the word theory. that sounds like some radical crackpot thing. if it is just a theory then it's not true or established and its such a perfect little mima to

dismiss the conversation. it is being protected. there's a part of me that doesn't want to talk about it because i don't want to reinforce the legitimacy of is it right or wrong? let me be clear. true critical race theory of course comes out and legal scholarship, like kimberly or derek bell. i'm not a critical race theorist but, of course, it's been applied, the premises that racism is structured into the society. and that absolutely -- >> host: like you switch the question, to how come with regard to the critical race theory debate, i want to ask the question why. why critical race theory, why now? so it seems to me that these

moments, to attack 1619, all of this is aimed at as we sit at the beginning of this particular conversation is aimed at arresting change, to limit the scope of remedy. we are not bad so we can't engage in this wholesale transformation of who we are. we are not that, we are this year instead of debating crt on its merits, because at least then we know what it is, we need to ask ourselves why is is being asked. i want to get to this, seems to me this is where -- at the level of politics, because you have two sites as you describe them, and i don't want to make all of

those persons on the right daily callers, progressive subscribers or white nationals or the like. they seem to be, there seems to be some level of solidarity with regards to maintaining the idea that america must remain a white nation. on the other side you have nice racism. those who are fighting for a more just america who claim, this is what makes your books are interesting to me at a certain level, is that among those who are supposedly fighting against those folks come you have joe manchin and the like, and you can use your text to see what he's doing in real time at the love of politics. talk a little bit about what does it mean for these people to

be on the side of a more just world? >> guest: yeah. i hope white people keep fighting. i hope nice white people are out there fighting. unfortunately, i haven't seen that the energy that we saw last summer is being sustained. running down to approach us on some level is exciting and exhilarating, but the daily work of putting racism on the table looking at your policies and practices in the workplace, challenging one another, that's the really hard stuff. and in case i don't say earlier, or later, it takes courage, it takes commitment but it also takes courage, and niceness is not courageous. so my point around that is that so many white people see the present of niceness as an indicator of absence of racism. and a culture of niceness is

actually one that prevents us having difficult conversations about racism. it's generally a culture that's nice for me but not necessarily nice for you. there's this idea that the way that i experienced the world was must be the way you explained ee world, so i find our campus to be a very welcoming place, wouldn't you feel it to be a welcoming place? or this idea that if a policy displayed to everybody then it is there, even if the outcomes are not going to be the same. right? so it takes a lot of commitment and courage, and that i want to see sustained and this ties back. the moment i think i've arrived i will be complacent. i'm also going to be defensive about any feedback to the contrary. any idea, this is why one of the chapters is called there is no choir. the moment i think i am the

choir, i'm going to be part of the problem. there is a level of humility that white people need to have, a level of understanding that this construct is hundreds of years old at this point back to its nuanced, complicated, charged. it's not simple. it's not going to change just because we are friends. and so my learning will never be finished. >> host: what about my trauma, robin? >> guest: i'm curious, you teach in college classrooms i assume and when you talk about race you may see some of these moves. so there's a chapter called what about my trauma? that's a pattern i often see amongst progressive white people, that as soon as we start having hard conversations where they become implicated, we're not going to talk about it out

here, with likely to talk to everybody else's challenges, we're going to whatever we talk about we're going to connect to do so. what does it look like in your life? the number one question i get when i give a talk is how do i tell my friend about racism? i reply like this. how would i tell you about your racism? the question always implies it's not me. i'm good to go, i have to go forth and tell other people. as soon as it starts to implicate us, many white progresses will move into their own pain and her own approach. maybe you could imagine if it starts getting hard i start feeling implicated and i'm going to start talking about growing up poor and others people said that thing about me when i was young and had that hurt me, and now i'm going be a victim. right? one going to say this conversation bringing up my old

traumas and i can't continue in this conversation. i wanted to call, call that in. and again ask people to think deeply, so how this function in the conversation, what happens to the conversation when you move to that place. i also want to push -- people are wrong. i'm not denying you have trauma but i am going to hold firm that talking about racism is in and of itself traumatic. >> host: so here we are -- >> guest: for white people. >> host: here we are. we've had this wonderful conversation. people have come to you. they have read white for julie. they are going to read "nice racism." hopefully it will read some of those articles, too. the scholarship that informs it all year what is the source of hope for the work that you do

and what you've seen over the years of doing this work? where is your source? not that we have to end with hope, the typical american narrative the talk about what you see on the immediate horizon as he continued to do this work. >> guest: you know i'm an educated cybersex a little bit about the politics but before i sailed what has given me hope, i think hope is political. because it tries behaviors and responses, just like i think emotions are political. because they are informed by the framework through which we are making meaning which is why if you told me 20 years ago what you're doing is racist, i would've interpreted that to a particular framework and would've had a set of emotions, and they would have triggered some responses which would've been at the time white for julie. today at a different framework and have different feelings if you were to say that to me. and hope function similarly. it doesn't function the same for black people as a test for white

people. i can't speak to your relationship to that concept, but what i can tell you is after 25 years of doing this work and seeing where we are right now, do i struggle with hopelessness? yes ideal. and i cannot go there -- yes, i do. as a white person i cannot succumb to it. because the moment i do, great, give up, give up and do does it serve? what does that serve? because it's a system that benefits me if i give up hope within it, if i give up hope to fight it, i continue to benefit from it. on the other hand, too much hope can make me call in and can cause me to be complacent and there were lots of white folks who felt completely hopeful following the civil rights movement of the '60s, and look where we are. so it is something i navigate, i

have to push to it. but what gives me hope is there's a couple maybe concrete things that on the stage, the world stage at the democratic debate, reparation for black people was discussed with absolute legitimacy. i didn't think that would happen in my lifetime. ta-nehisi coates article on reparations is brilliant and powerful and started to make headway in the culture. there was a time when you couldn't critique capitalism, and there's a a time when you couldn't say white supremacy. and now from the president office, i'm talking about biden, jesus saying systemic racism -- he is saying systemic racism is among the urgent issue of our time. that's incredible and it gives me hope and it's tempered by the

fact we will see what happens when he isn't president anymore, whether that be four years from now or 12 years from now. >> it is been an absolute delight to have an opportunity to talk with you and am reminded of a wonderful phrase from tammy baldwin who says hope is every day. if you have to end in everyday that means you're battling the spirit.

"the war on small business." >> so now i'm very excited to introduce tonight speakers. science journalist lauren has used nearly every medium to produce award-winning journalism for pbs nova including documentaries, podcast, short form video series, interactive games, blogs and more. her articles on memory and on addiction have been featured in the "boston globe" stats on dark magazine the atlantic in "scientific american." this book in particular was