Black murder is normal | Michael Smith | TEDxJacksonville

thank you this is me 24 years ago this month I'm 17 years old a senior in high school living in Orlando Florida and two weeks after this picture was taken my life went on a tremendous and continues to be on a tremendous journey two weeks after this picture was taken I dropped out in my private school in the middle of my senior year moved to a city outside of Atlanta called College Park Georgia and enrolled in ministry school it was that time that I got a new nickname and that nickname is white Mike now how I got the nickname white Mike is pretty simple I arrived at a church that had about a thousand people and when people would ask you know have you seen Mike and somebody said Mike who nobody knew my last name Smith was too hard so white Mike as who I became so this is white Mike on the day he graduated from ministry school this is white Mike teaching in the youth ministry this is white Mike doing an example on the stage with his pastor this is white Mike being ordained into ministry I think you're seeing a pattern this is white Mike's first roommate when he got there white Mike at work white Mike at social gatherings you can barely see white Mike in there white Mike with pastors I just returned from Atlanta pastors conference this pictures about 15 years old and it's the same picture from when I was here yesterday this is a white Mike's wedding party with white Mike's dad and white Mike has been on quite a journey the past 24 years now in this time I learned a lot of beautiful things about a lot of beautiful people I learned a lot of ugly things about my oh and I learned a lot of dark things about the nation in which we live but I also learned that I being white Mike specifically the white part have a lot of power white Mike has a question today and that's this how come when you turn on the radio in Jacksonville or New Orleans or Chicago or Little Rock the only people on the radio that talk about how great it is to kill each other Bleck how come that exists 15 stations on a dial go up go down the only people on the radio bragging about getting automatic weapons gunning each other down are black this right here is a song my pastoral vocabulary won't let me read the title ah but I will read this catch a young black male not paying attention at the red light with your ak-47 let me see you shoot it you're a killer you're a killer you're a killer you're a killer black male let me see you prove it why does this exist I'll take it even further because a lot of time racism exists and what we in what we don't know what we don't see where are the white killers on the radio where are the white ak-47 shooters where are the white drug dealers where are the white people on the radio that brag about what it's like to murder witnesses before trial the truth is they don't exist and the question is why why don't they exist do white people not kill people do white people not use ak-47s to shoot each other I mean we know do white people not do drugs and they're not deal drugs of course they do but why is it that it doesn't make it to our mainstream radio why is it that we don't hear it hundreds of times a day in hundreds of cities across the nation thousands of plays that say the idea that a black guy would kill another black guy is something to be celebrated something to be romanticized and why is it the white people don't do it and maybe that maybe it's because there's no white audience for it or maybe it's because it's not really marketable maybe because it's not get sponsors I don't know why it is or maybe it's because it's just not the white man's role or maybe when white people get up and talk about being drug dealers an ak-47 killers maybe it's even sicker than that maybe when white people do it they're accused of acting black the truth is in America black murder is normal black murders normal the idea that a black man or a black woman would be involved in a homicide either as a perpetrator or victim is so common so broadly accepted that it basically goes unnoticed the truth of matter is black families are affected by homicide at rates of ten times their white counterparts there will be more death in the form of homicide involving black people this year than any other form of violence that dominates our national conversation more than school shootings mall shootings mass shootings workplace shootings lovers twist lovers Trish that turned violent and buddy even more than in war and in terrorism no one will lose their life at greater numbers men black Americans involved in violence now is when you talk about what's going on in one segment of society and somehow tie it to what's going on someplace else you kind of lose people they detach this is our unknowing prejudice discrimination and racism are not the same we know prejudice it exists in human hearts and minds discrimination exists in hands and policies but racism is neither in hearts and minds nor is it really in policy as a matter of fact it doesn't take action to keep racism going it takes inaction it doesn't take hearts and minds to keep racism going it actually have to keep things out of people's mind racism is like the Millstone that churns along in the background it just goes generation in and generation out and keeps turning out the same generational outcomes racism is like the nicotine stains left on the walls after the smoking tenants move out they take the couch they take the clock they take the picture but the evidence that they've been there still remains now when I speak of black murder being normal I'm talking about the combination of commonality and palatability you know black murder in our country has not only comments not only frequent but it's an idea that we celebrate it's an idea that we say is is okay we actually make heroes and out of the notion heroes out of people that trivialized and romanticize it how common is black murder well in some demographics in the United States is very common according to the CDC they release a report every year called the LC OD leading cause of death and every year it's been this way year in and year out for the past decade as far back as they list on their site and black males ages 15 to 34 the number one cause of death is homicide the number one cause of death for white males it's number three and when you hear that you instantly go well yeah I mean that would seem right I mean I know I hear a black on black crime right here about urban crime so I guess yeah number one to number three a minute's a problem but really not that bad but the devil is always in the details the truth of the matter is that if I were to take everybody that dies and in this year every black male 15 to 34 and I brought him into a room December 31st said all of you have made it to the afterlife and I want to take a quick survey huh how many of you got here by cancer a few voices would say me how many of you got here by auto accidents me how many died of a heart attack on on an athletic field me now sir how many of you were gunned down by another human being and half the room would raise their hands every time I showed this information people always say well it's number three cause of death for white males what is the number one cause of death and without fail year after year it's called unintentional injuries accidents falling off a four-wheeler or crashing you know a go-kart or you know a bungee jumping without paying attention to you know knots and things like that so basically the American story is white kids are dying because they're clumsy and black kids are dying because they're gunned down Chicago just like New Orleans just like Jacksonville just like Little Rock how common is black murder the past three years there's been about twelve hundred and seventy victims of homicide 2012 all the way up to this week in 2014 and of those victims 64 were white now this transcends the simple diagnosis that we have well it's education its poverty its family structure as you study it locally nationally as you study a decade after decade it doesn't follow any of those easy answers something much deeper in much darker work how common is black murder well in my entire life 1973 to 2014 there has never been a year since I've been breathing that blacks have not been over-represented in homicide never been a year that you can go into a morgue and you don't see blacks over-represented it's the story of America it's certainly the story of America in my lifetime my question is what will be the first year that we see it a one to one ratio I mean if it's somewhere between seven to one and ten to one now I mean it when will it be one to one we would consider it a huge national victory if we ever got it two five two one two four two one two three two one violent crime has gone down over the past 40 years people say isn't that great now because prison has gone up over the past 40 years and no matter of fact that Brian violent crime has gone down or prison has gone up what's never closed is the gap there's always that gap six to one seven to one h1 usually it's the smartest person in the room at this point that yells out from the back so are you saying you want more white people killed and then all of a sudden I realized that's why we die in clumsy accidents all right here we go now the real question is why is this going on why is this the story of my life why is this a story my country and everyone in this room falls into one of two categories you're in one of two categories either there's something wrong with them some court deficiency and black people they're just prone to violence so we use anecdotal evidence to talk about that or there's something wrong with us and depending on what category you've fallen if there's something wrong with them you point fingers to do something if you say there's something wrong with us that you roll up your sleeves and you get busy well the truth is there is something wrong with us and this years ago we set off a bomb and that bomb affected our cultural soil it affected our definitions it affected our expectations it affected who we are how we describe ourselves and how we describe other people what we believe down to the core of our being it's in our air it's in our cultural water and it's passed down from generation to generation now again it would take me a few TED Talks to really get into this but the lines Obama's about lies it's about deep lies one of the lies is the blackness is somehow associated with criminality sexual deviance and violence that when you come across blackness that inherent in being black there's some sort of deviance violence and criminality associated and that's a derivative a greater lie which is that somehow black life is inferior to white life that the value of it is less that that if you were weighed in the scale the black life just weighs a little less that if you were trying to cash it in on the street you get a little less money for it and these are essential - these are the lives that help build our nation help build the Western world and and here's what's interesting about this is these lines are not only lines we've told about black people but told to them I was in the unsolved homicides meeting here in Jacksonville last year eleven undern unsolved homicides I was there with the families they were having a conversation with our Sheriff's Department and on the walls were all the pictures of the victims and you already know the vast majority the pictures were of black residents of Jacksonville there were white families there certainly and I'm not trying to say that it doesn't happen among the white community of course it does but I never forget a mom interrupted the detective she said excuse me I have a question he said yes ma'am she said I know you don't know who killed my daughter but I have a more important question he said what is that she said when you picked my daughter's body up off the side of the road she said how did you do it he's what do you mean how did I do it she said well did you pick her up when did you set her on the gurney and did you zip her up in the bag and did you slide her in the back of the van and did you shut the doors gently she started just pick her up slam her down zipper up and put it in she says I want to know how you treated my daughter's body when you picked it up off the ground she said did you treat it my he would treat a white man's daughter that's a very interesting question as though a mother doesn't have enough to deal with she also has to wonder that when the people working the crime did it did they work it as some of these personal precious life was solved or is it just another dead black kid on the street another mother popped up she said yeah I know you don't have the answer to who killed my son he says ma'am you know I would call you if I had it I want to call you she's I know I don't need a phone call she's but I do need to know that you pay attention to it and I do need to know that my son's death matters and here's why because she sees the files on her desk and hit on his desk in her mind and she sees the stacks in her mind of dead black kids and she sees the stacks of little white kids and she just wants to make sure then the common thing that happens all the time that her son's life is just as precious as everyone else's back murder is normal I mean when I talk about it none of you are really shocked the most you can say is well I didn't know it was that bad which brings up the real question about PAL ability are we comfortable with it being like this are we comfortable I'm 41 years old are we comfortable with living in a nation where this goes on well if we're not comfortable for not okay are we appalled and outraged and when I say we I mean we are we appalled an outrage that's the question there are certainly people all over the country doing it something about it but when I discovered that then then doing something about it is totally different than we doing something about it now a lot of things that you have to understand is this about racism and when I talk about prejudice discrimination and racism the answer lies right here it wouldn't seem like the answer is here but if you want to know how comfortable we are with black murder you just got to look at the marketplace when you see this photo one week after dr. King won the Montgomery bus court case and they decided to eliminate the racist policies in the Ardea discriminatory policies this is his picture it was a great victory and you know about the prejudice you know about the discrimination but right here on the front of the bus is the racism because racism exists in the unchecked and the unchallenged normal my question is 60 years later what in the world is a Pepsi ad doing on the front of a bus company that makes black people sit in the back what are the worlds of doing there I mean the Pepsi CEO look back on that today and go yeah you know yeah that was a fail shouldn't have done that are they ashamed are they ashamed that that they would call let me ask you this could they do it today if I started a bus company in Jacksonville say I got this great thing beautiful buses I want Pepsi's name on it they said let's do the deal I said deal is gays blacks and jews sit at the back they couldn't put their name on that why because his American attitudes changed as American definitions changes American norms change guess who else has to change the marketplace there's certain things they could get away with when that type of thing was normal that they can't get away with now the same thing not only goes with policy it goes with entertainment my favorite cartoon one of them all-time is Tom and Jerry this is mammy to shoes maybe two shoes you never saw except for a couple of times above the knees she was always the one yelling at Thomas the cat for what he was doing she was voiced by Lillian Randolph a great radio actress but here's the interesting thing white entertainers create white entertainment they carve out a black role in the black role that they saw fit was to play this stereotypical black woman that lasted up until the in the early 50s then huge protests broke out they said you know what we don't want to be portrayed like that anymore and to this day if you want to watch Tom and Jerry you go home you want to watch it on Netflix you want to watch it on Amazon this comes up on the screen it says what you're about to watch contain some racial stereotypes they were wrong then and they're wrong now they were commonplace we don't want to editor out because that will pretend that would make it like it never happened we're going to put her in but know that we know there's something wrong with this now we don't have maybe two shoes today you can't get away with it nobody nobody would put out there but we do have black people that get on the radio every day in white owned companies white own stations with white owned sponsors that play the role of hyper sexualized hyper criminalized male I asked these advertisers I say I've got a hundreds of songs a day that celebrates killing animals will you put them on your station they said no I've got hundreds of songs a day that talk about assaulting women and and abusing kids what you put them on your station they said no I said I got hundreds of songs a day to talk about murdering blacks would you put them on your stations they say well that depends depends on what whoo it's done by and who it's branded for because we can get black folks to sing about it we can brand it for our youngest black audiences I think there's money to be made I think there's American appetites to see these people that way I said how can you say that they said well look it's what these artists know it's what they black people create it's matter of fact our survey say it's what they want to hear which speaks of a sickness how do we live in a society where somebody says you know what I'm inspired to write a song that celebrates murdering another person and then a person says I'd like to put that on my station other person said I'd like to pay for it and there's people out here in the audience that go I'd love to hear it as long as it's black guys because even white people buy rap music by this type of stuff because we know that when we want to hear about killing each other we know who to turn to for that type of inspiration we call it our music we say we own it white people buy more wrapped in black people yeah but we're very careful to turn it down at the stoplight when other black people are there why because we know we're just pretending for them it's more authentic and real I always ask the companies what about your name what about your brand what about your value and the largest radio company in the world said this it's okay that we only have drug dealers on our black youth stations we only have murders on our Black Keys stations we support black charities we give out water at the Martin Luther King parade I think we've got it covered we've bought them off now people get upset the smartest guys in the room again you're talking about censorship I don't believe that I believe in sin I believe in free art make whatever you want I believe you should make music about anti-semitism I believe you should make music about killing dogs I believe in this country you should make music about bashing homosexuals and driving behind trucks I believe you should make music about stringing people up on on on trees I believe you should make music about killing whitey I believe she may call that music but I also believe that in the mainstream marketplace people should hesitate associating their name with certain content you know there's certain stuff you can't buy at the store certain stuff you can't get on iTunes because their brand doesn't want it but if you want to hear black people celebrating killing black people they got thousands and thousands and thousands of those teams to sell you I don't think it's about censorship I think it's about American cultural hypocrisy because here's the truth these black entertainers they can't sing just about anything there's some stuff that'll get them fired and they get dropped negative 5 negative on the wrists and they get disciplined all the time why because sometimes they step over the bounds a very famous case is what happened with Rick Ross Rick Ross's the Mamie two-shoes one of the many Mamie to issues of our day he's he's a black entertainer and a world carved out for him and a role carved out for him by white entertainment companies and one day he talked about in the middle of a song that celebrated kill and drugs and killing blacks he's made a reference to date rape and when he made that reference to date rape that set social media on fire that got a hundred thousand petitions in 24 hours hey buddy date rape is no joke that had white people standing outside a Reebok in New York saying you better take this seriously we're tired of a rape culture in America one line in one song move the masses and you don't Reebok did did they stand by them and say hey we believe in freedom of speech we believe in freedom of expression it's just a song calm down no they fired his tail on the spot the president came out and said this goes against our high standards he's gone against the values of our brand shame on Rick Ross we're disappointed he doesn't know how serious date-rape is when I saw that I thought wow how convenient isn't that amazing but here's what really happened it's not their brain it's not their values Rick Ross went off script he was hired to get black customers and they think that black customers go with black bait and in America black bait is the hyper criminalized hyper sexualized portrayal of black people and as long as he had sung about that the stuff that got him hired he still have a job at Reebok but when he touched other sensitivities that affect us he lost his job see the truth is it's not they that need to change it's we that need to change we we created the lives we created them for our profit we that we own the companies we own the record labels we only advertisers and we keep putting it out and it's this that's got to change I thought about it you know what I wonder if white Mike could get anybody's attention on this I stood outside of a Walmart and I said hey I don't think killing cops and killing blacks is very cool and you know what it only took seven weeks of Mike Mike standing out there and they wrote a letter and said yeah we don't think it's cool either we're gonna pull our name off of that the largest retailer in the world had never considered that maybe their commercial shouldn't be right before or after a song about young black men being gunned down and I realized this the black murder is normal but it should not be and I realized the importance at the coffee table at every headline every pastors gathering every family gathering to say you know what these black lives matter it's not just another black kid these are human beings I'm doing my best in every way shape and form talks like this everywhere I can go to say you know what I was born in a world where black murder was normal my kids were born into a world where black murders normal but I don't want to die in a world where black murderers normal and my five years or ten years away I don't know but I'm screaming as high as I can let's feel this pain and let's lift our voice to tell the lies they are not criminals they are not deviants and their lives are just as important as ours thank you very much you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,191,036

Rating: 4.7334199 out of 5

Keywords: tedx, black america, Life, English, TEDxTalks, media, ted x, ted, ted talk, tedx talks, United States, tedx talk, racism, Social Justice, ted talks

Id: 1DxHL2i3cZo

Length: 19min 29sec (1169 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 06 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/thegreatdimov]

How many of you have pastors that bring up topics like this ?