Michael Eric Dyson ‘Tears We Cannot Stop’

[Applause] thank you thank you mama no well thank all of you for coming here tonight and for having me you know michael eric dyson's brilliance first enchanted me about eight years ago as i said in the stands of seattle center's memorial stadium to watch my brother's high school graduation of the keynote speaker i kept asking myself who was this brother who could marry the gravity of an ella baker with the eloquence of a james baldwin and still flirt with the lyricism of sean jay-z carter and all why switching so seamlessly from the words of aristotle to dr dre in rapid succession i've never forgotten the wisdom he imparted on the graduates that day speaking of the moral necessity for a unified understanding of the nation's targeted ills he said in this boeing 747 known as america it does not matter if you are in the front or the back of the plane because when we experience turbulence the entire plane shakes forgive me for stating the obvious but we live in times that grow ever more turbulent by the day in a country where facts now compete against alternative facts [Applause] we're moving towards a genuine truth and reconciliation with our nation's barbaric history of slavery and native american genocide is increasingly difficult because in this country it seems ever impossible to agree on just what exactly the truth actually is more than half of americans believe that reverse racism is more of a threat to our society than systemic and institutional racism are even though it is the latter brand of racism which continues to mercifully wreck its havoc on black brown hispanic asian and native bodies in varying degrees emerging from this murky haze last july during the searing aftermath of the deaths of alton sterling and philando castile at the hands of law enforcement and the fatal shootings of four dallas police officers by madman was a new york times op-ed written by michael eric dyson entitled death in black and white dyson's awards spoke of the pain experienced by black americans that go that goes unshared and misunderstood too often to quote a young white mother i interviewed for a story on race and police violence recently she told me i can never know what it is like to be a black person in america because if my son was killed by unarmed and minding his business it would be a crime as others look to sweep similar concerns of black grievance pain and death covering from covering them under the rug of color blindness dyson in another refusal to be silent about racism's persistent ills gave an admonishment to white america in his op-ed it read day in and day out we feel powerless to make our black lives matter we feel powerless to make you believe that our black lives should matter we feel powerless to keep you from killing black people in front of their loved ones we feel powerless to keep you from shooting hate inside our muscles with well choreographed white rage but we have rage too most of us keep our rage inside we are afraid that when the tears begin to flow we cannot stop them instead we damage our bodies with high blood pressure sicken our souls with depression but we cannot hate you not really not most of us that is our gift to you we cannot halt you that is our curse those who are enlightened by dyson's words recognize them for what they were the truth as i proudly learned in my profession as a journalist with the south seattle emerald the truth owes us no comfort no reassurance nor any consolation no the truth simply owes us an unflinching reflection of who we are and essential to our future as a society is what we do with that truth and crafting in us a design for what we can be as a nation for that we owe the truth and those who tell it a debt of gratitude that is why it's my profound honor to bring such a truth teller to the stage today often considered one of the nation's most preeminent social thinkers michael eric dyson is a bestselling author a political analyst for msnbc and a contributing opinion writer for the new york times his work covers a variety of topics including race politics religion and culture michael's books include making malcolm x i may not get there with you and his latest tears we cannot stop a sermon the white america a three-time naacp award winner who has been called a street fighter in a student tie and the john cole train of rhetoric we are pleased to welcome him to our stage this evening and joining michael is seattle's own jennifer wiley jennifer is the principal at franklin high school a school with a student body oh give it up for franklin quakers [Applause] franklin has a student body of over 1 300 students of whom over 90 are students of color please put your hands together for michael eric dyson and jennifer wiley thank you [Applause] [Applause] good evening it's pretty amazing it's on yeah so um dr dyson dr dice and i have been in conversation together for nearly a decade now [Music] and ironically you stood in front of the franklin student body in november of 2008 uh important important time in history yeah right those were the days those are the days and we'll get an opportunity to talk about how there might be some changes um since then before too long but um first of all i just wanted to thank you for this opportunity and uh the the not just this the symbolism that it represents but just the real um challenges that whiteness surfaces you know particularly for those of us who are white you know and and um the call to action that you are asking us to wrestle you know be self reflective and really critical about the truth that we think we know and how it operates in the world for us and in so many cases against others and it's very uncomfortable conversation i'm uncomfortable now you know if you don't recognize that but i dare say that you offer some some opportunity on the other side of this discomfort and i want to go there with you and and i love the possibility of what that offers more than my comfort you know so bear with me dr dyson has allowed me to stumble aloud with him for a long time and as the principal of any school frankly but in particular the school i am the school of it's really important that i do not fear failure and stumbling aloud and figuring out how to brush myself off and pick back up and keep going because it's not my comfort that matters at the end of that it's the it's it's the lives of our young people um dr dyson's been with us many times at franklin so he knows our community well that said in in one of our many uh verbose text messages he outpaces me my boss is in the audience so i thought i'd note that um by a long long shot you shared with me that this book was one of the most difficult you know pieces of writing that you did uh most challenging and and most you can you help us to get inside your head as a writer and as a human right um and how you came to be at this title and and this structure well first of all i want to thank um town hall for this extraordinary event sister katie and brother marcus for that beautiful and moving introduction and dr wily and i have been uh chopping it up for for a decade and i've learned so much from her one of the most courageous and creative uh educators i know in the land regardless of race class gender sexual orientation uh whether uh obama or again sorry i didn't mean this life to post so quickly [Music] but a brother can dream so um um you know it was extremely difficult first of all because i wrote this book you know i i feel like prince uh i was when i wrote this so sue me if i go too fast um or slow me i i wrote this in the aftermath of that op-ed that uh our dear brothers spoke of and um i wanted to get on paper metaphorically i had a computer screen um what i felt and it was important to feel and not just think i wanted thinking feeling and feeling thinking and you know i've written and 19 other books and edited one so this is my 20th book in aggregate and you know i've given a lot of analysis to a lot of things in a different forms and i've played with genres because i'm rhetorically curious but the one form that i haven't fully expatiated in is the thing that i've been doing first as they say in the old black baptist church i had my burning before i had my learning right i could tune up a little bit [Music] you don't have me so um i was um taken aback by the events and i wanted to communicate something to my white brothers and sisters that there is trauma and there is pain there is suffering and grief and as you so eloquently put it all hands on deck and all investments have to be up for redeliberation and to think about what that might mean to encourage white brothers and sisters to be a bit more introspective and to think about what privilege is what innocence is and i didn't want to use a bunch of jargon you know uh because that can be off-putting it's great for tenure um and so don't be crazy you know use it as necessary i was reminded i ran into uh professor hedwig hedwig lee uh from university of washington a brilliant brilliant sociologist and uh thinking about her lucid uh expressions all scholars therefore are not captive uh to this jargon but i didn't want to get ensconced in the jargon i wanted people to feel what i was saying so i wanted to write as deeply and profoundly and as eloquently as i could muster but i wanted the pathos to be the womb in which i just hated these ideas so that my imagination could be the midwife for whatever revelation i might offer um and i knew that white brothers and sisters some of them might you know initially find this extremely difficult to endure because the truth is you know for all of the discourse of president trump his ostensible commitment to a noteworthy and courageous truth under the banner of political correctness and being politically incorrect for all of that what i understood is that many white brothers and sisters who claim that they want political incorrectness mean that they want to be able to say what they've always said or think what they've always thought about people of color or men want to do that toward women or straight people want to do that toward gay people but they don't really want to do it to themselves and you know many white brothers and sisters have not heard the unexpirated the unabridged dictionary of black grief have not heard the the thesaurus the thesaurus of of of of agony and trauma that we endure and the words that spill out of us because the pain is so is so powerful it's so palpable and i wanted to share that in a way and to do it in a jeremy ad and a sermon where i get to call my congregation beloved because i've preached hundreds and thousands of sermons and they're often difficult to deliver and even more difficult to hear if they're done right if i ain't on your toes or in your pew then i'm not really in your mind and i'm not really in the spirit so in that sense i wanted to deliver a sermon not condescendingly not speaking ex cathedra as if god god self spoke through me the one aspires to a bit of that revelation grasping after the hymn of the garment of truth but i wanted to really expose myself and admit that it is hard it is difficult to grapple with whiteness because whiteness has been a force that has been humiliating and horrifying and haunting and to people of color and to white brothers and sisters themselves and so i wanted to to find a form where i could say that and a genre that allowed me to articulate that and to get down there in the stench the muck and mire and then work my way out of it by sharing my insight with whoever would listen [Applause] i always appreciate that you say these amazing things because that clap time really helps me sneak in a read and think up the next ques the next question so you break down this notion of whiteness this this well at the same time you say it doesn't exist that we invented it and yet it's so powerful and potent and you know pernicious and all of those sorts of things walk us through that that's a great question i i you know and i talk about theodore allen has a book the invention of whiteness two volumes as a matter of fact uh a white thinker who tries to help us understand whiteness so in my sermon the first part of the sermon uh is the invention of whiteness uh inventing whiteness and you know i start by saying you know the ugly secret is there's almost no such thing as white people and yet so many of them of you exist and i mean of course not that you don't have corpuscles and mitochondria pectoralis majors and latissimus dorsi okay that's all i know of anatomy um okay gluteus maximus seattle a rapper okay good good good um so um i i knew that it would be hard for white brothers and sisters to get that how you beautifully put it that it is at once a fiction right it's invented people are not born with a genetic imprint about whiteness or black or red or yellow or native versus exotic or foreign right we're not born with that imprinted in our blood or brains or our bodies though they bear the imprint of our particular discursive and cultural frameworks race depends upon the society in which it exists to determine its meaning and i wanted to say it's not in your genes or your blouses for that matter i didn't say that there it is not coded it is created now in the academy i said i didn't want to use any jargon but we talk about social construction of race now people hear that and they think aha i got you there you you people of color are always obsessed with race but it's a social construct therefore you can deconstruct it you know you can but it's easier said than done right cab passing you by cap sir it's a projection of your unconscious it's a ruinous reach of your imagination zoom right because race is nevertheless powerful and potent and has force and function and energy and facticity to the degree that we consent to it that we believe in it and invest in it and so i wanted to talk about that as james baldwin said it's a it is a fiction the fiction of our collective identity and many white brothers and sisters think of themselves i'm i'm irish or polish or italian or norwegian or wherever they might emerge from but when we come to america the crucible of race pulverizes whiteness into something that is real though a fictional projection drawn from those various ethnicities um i'm reminded today i was on a michael medved show had a very wonderful conversation a very thoughtful man we stand on opposite sides of the political spectrum but we had an interesting and engaging conversation and in light of what has risen on the right it is so refreshing to speak to an intelligent engaging reflective conservative right and so uh somebody was saying well you know we don't even i've never thought about myself as white so i'm not sure that works i said you make him a point because when you're white you don't have to think about whiteness right when you're white one of the privileges is not to know you're white and to be deeply ensconced in an innocence that will not melt away that refuses to give way to a broader conception of more complicated and nuanced humanity and identity and it is interesting dr wily that you know in the aftermath of this last election a lot of people are saying well we've got to get rid of identity politics even our dear friend bernie sanders said look it's easier to talk about racism or sexism than it is to talk about economic inequality in goldman and sex and i'm like uh slow down mace you're killing them not sure that's true right and isn't it interesting that people excoriate hillary clinton and what she failed to do and how she failed to do it while she was a victim of sexism so deep and profound we couldn't even name it right well she's not interesting she ain't trying to be your girlfriend right we ain't trying to run a messiah because ain't jesus on the throne right these are human beings but women don't get a chance to be flawed like men right john boehner cries it is the manifestation of a profound masculinity that's vulnerable she cries there's no crying in baseball right so hillary clinton is said to have ignored the white working class so in the name of transcending identity politics we must pay attention to the white working class am i the only one to find that interesting trey zonta resont right shouldn't pronounce the t it's french so isn't it interesting that whiteness gets read is universal and there's human and therefore american because there's a black working class and a brown working class and a yellow and a red working class there are native peoples on so-called plots of land reservations where they occupy a status beneath any other human being in this nation rendered invisible i think about my dear friend josie ross a local superstar intellectual who's here tonight my brother and so when we think about um the reality that whiteness gets obliterated eviscerated disappeared and many white brothers and sisters get mad why do you people keep talking about race as if we are inventing it and we ain't made the game we just revealing it don't hate the player that game was created by somebody else and so it's interesting to me that we're now uh chided for identity politics and even from the left with my dear uh friend dr uh senator sanders when the reality is is that politics of identity have always been at the heart of american identity they just didn't get named and they didn't get named because they were universal and they were universal because they were invisible and they were invisible because they were white and the whiteness never got expressed as particular identity because it was never a burden that white brothers and sister sisters had to carry so of course white brothers and sisters don't think about themselves as white often because men don't think about themselves as gendered right you tell a man what about gender yeah the women you know we got to look let me see are you missing your masculinity are you missing missing your often toxic masculinity are we missing the way in which our masculine identity carries force and weight in fact and and and and real consequence and imposes trauma and the degree to which we are incapable of acknowledging our own masculinity and how it operates in the privileges of male supremacy that are unconscious to us that women walking from their house to their car have to think about the possibility of predatory behavior right in ways that men never do that women can be grabbed in their orifices right now i gotta put a pen right here why my man trump and others got to blame hip-hop when they were trying to justify grabbing that's not hip-hop sorry don't blame hip-hop for that the the great philosopher christopher wallace some say the x makes the sex spectacular make me look you from your neck to your back the tongue delivering chills up that spine that ass is mine if it's all right with you that's permission that's consent if you are engaged in the reciprocal act of erotic imagination then allow us to participate not let me grab that right even though there are moments where we have to to chide them for that so back to my point the reality is this that whiteness has been invented and invented for a purpose in history has been made white and invisible and history has been made american and american has been made white and anything black or brown or red or yellow stands against it is uncomfortable this is why for for the last eight years this magnificent man who just recently evacuated the oval office but not clearly our hearts even if we don't have to think he was perfect he wasn't he missed opportunities he denied realities he too betrothed himself to a courtship of denial but in comparison can we rewrite the constitution can you get a third term can you work out the fdr rule right so yes it is invented it is created doesn't mean that it's not true uh if it's not quote real because it has real lasting effect and power and what i'm asking white brothers and sisters to do is to renounce whiteness in favor of a deeper more profound humanity that can be accessed [Applause] so let's talk a little bit about a charitable model of justice right king talks king echoed augustine right augustine about uh not a substitute for justice withheld right right um and i think just in my own work i'll just out myself here a little more um we live in what we'd like to believe is a very progressive liberal city right um and without a doubt no shortage of good intentions um no shortage of heart you know nor no shortage of love or even some imagination beyond into a more a deeper humanity as you suggest and yet although we're very well resourced and we're hyper degreed somehow we still live separately our children go to school separately when it's time to redistribute resources and have conversations about resources there's all kinds of game-changing trickery um and and whatnot you know and you can speak to these things far better than i i live them um and battle them daily um and and see the effects in the dimming lights of our students eyes right so can you speak to um good intentions versus justice yeah i'm trying to get some book sales tonight i just yeah yeah that's half my audience man i'm just he speaks to it in the book right some good recipes in the book that's right i hit them there yeah no that's um it's a brilliant point actually um and look it's hard for all of us as human beings to close that gap that t.s eliot spoke about speak about a conservative intellectual with with genius between the ideal and the reality he said falls the shadow and there is a real sense right shadow and act of course is the title of ralph ellison's essays taken from that same poem the the reality is that we have to underscore the magnificent effort of those liberal intentions in light of what we're confronting right now right this trumpian world in which we exist of alternative facts alternate facts like the starters might not be available so the bench warmers have to step in a facticity i am the backup fact i haven't played for a while but you know for the last eight years we've had been arrested but right now we're about to start so in this era where there is such naked and boldly defiant resistance and intransigence and recalcitrance and every other big term we can use right to really conjure just how horrifying what we are all collectively facing is we celebrate and acknowledge the legitimate effort of people of conscience and good will to do the right thing but you've hit on what dr king often talked about as you so insightfully say echoing saint augustine make me pure lord but just not now let me ask some more fun before i get righteous that's what always amazes me when i passed the church is all the old people were righteous and stuff you're just too old to do sin your name is you ain't converted you just tired you're exhausted this is pre-viagra so it so you know there is a sense in which dr king said that charity is a poor substitute for justice as you said with hell and [Music] charity is never a suitable basis for the distribution of resources especially justice because you get tired of giving even compassion which is critical empathy which is necessary cannot be the predicate for the distribution of that good because you might get exhausted or disinclined to change your mind but if it's real and right it should be true and it should be done regardless or as the brothers say irregardless that's belt and suspender we want those pants held up and so it is it is it is a difficult thing to say to white brothers and sisters who are on the right road dig deeper right i'm a man i consider myself a feminist but we know how that works we know despite my good intentions what limitations there are try my best to overcome my male supremacy my implicit bias against another gender of many of trying to negotiate the politics of of my own masculine vision and patriarchal prerogative and misogyny or even femiphobia just the fear of women and trying to acknowledge the degree to which i am complicit in the very structure of oppression that i call into account and benefit from it even as i lambast it into what degree am i willing to unseat that authority and unhinge the doors upon which that privilege that i enjoy swings that's that's tough black and brown people and other people of color who have been victims of vicious terror and tyrannical racism in our institution like church using the same biblical justification that was used against us for race and beating down on gay and lesbian and transgendered and bisexual people and queer focus is is tough because we're going to turn around and do the same thing that was done to us the oppressed become the oppressor so so trust me i understand white brothers and sisters how tough it is but it's got to be done we've got to call ourselves to account we got to say to even good died in the wool white liberals that sometimes enlighten liberal engagement may protect brothers and sisters from grappling with the true dimensions of transformation for instance you know it was easier for wealthier whites who lived in the suburbs to talk about the necessity of busing for white working-class people because they kids not there they kids wasn't that weren't gonna get bust you talking about oh let let those kids yes that's a good principle while your kid's in private school hardly integrated so now the people who had to deal with the front line the real bigotry that was revealed and trust me the bigotry was real but but if you're richer and whiter in suburban america your bigotry doesn't have to manifest itself because it doesn't get put on full display or get challenged right so so now we look a sconce a scan set at the people there and and call them bigots oh yes those working-class bigots and they're horrible while we take consolation we would never believe that you haven't been challenged at the level at which you could obviously be be tempted into similar displays of of nastiness and so water finds its own level and and the ability to enumer the ability to keep yourself protected shielded from your own knowledge of your own inclination uh to be tested or challenged is something we have to acknowledge so i think that even liberal white brothers and sisters have to ask the question about innocence and protection and safety and not speaking up or not being inclined to speak up which is why we need white brothers and sisters to do so like when you go to thanksgiving meals and you're a check writing supporter of black lives matter but granny is talking about not and you're going jiminy cricket what are we going to do hallelujah let me watch the detroit lions lose again and the seahawks perhaps prevail and you gotta challenge granny not before the turkey is cut not before the stuffing is consumed or the macaroni and cheese and the sweet potato pie oh i'm sorry the pumpkin pie [Applause] sweet potato pie in the hood so but then softly and gently and compassionately you got to confront that granny you know all people are not like that and you're making these statements and a lot of people who behave it that way that are can folk of ours right i mean for instance i don't want to hear no white brothers and sisters tell me for the next four years about affirmative action i mean an affirmative action ain't what people make it out to be it's a noble concept but the way that a lot of white people twist it to be what you're looking at at 1600 pennsylvania avenue right now arguably potentially the greatest most incomprehensibly incompetent presidency ever right ever like on the one hand a president just left is being interviewed by mishiko kakotani at the new york times and he's talking about the books that have shaped him i mean first of all where do you get the time to read bro like for real you reading too dropping bombs and reorganizing the geography of destiny and health care and you up here reading science fiction and and and weighing in on the nuanced interpretation of life by scribes you're bringing juno diaz and and and and dave edgar's five writers who have influenced you to the white house from that to a dude who tweets jesus lord have mercy on our souls right this is the first toddler presidency but the poop in that diaper is from what he was fed frankenstein is the name of the doctor not the monster whiteness even in liberal versions created certain of the agonistic and antagonistic and monstrous manifestations of whiteness out of control on steroids pieced together like frankenstein's monster was from discarded portions of our psyche and our collective unconscious and whiteness help structure that so donald trump is the the the monster but the real creator of it all of those times when we ignored the necessity of dealing with our polite racism or our looking the other way while we know people in the street were being hammered killed by police people unjustly and we went home to our nice houses and never raised our voices and in that sense we have been complicit into that many more of us of course than are willing to admit it including white brothers and sisters and including white liberal brothers and sisters so charity is important in fact at the end of my book i talk about forms of reparation that white brothers and sisters may make you don't have to wait for the government to institute reparations because they ain't but if you want to reach out and help kids who are black with scholarships or buy computers or buy books that stuff is important but it's not a substitute for justice because justice is giving people their due and making certain that regardless of the fact that they don't look like us that they deserve the same protection we have so that when a police car rolls up on a 12 year old child i cannot tell you the pain and the hurt to see [Music] a 12 year old boy shot down two seconds after that cop car arrives and if you can feel comfortable enough to remain silent in the face of that genocidal impulse if you can find justification well he looked older than and he wha none of which are applied when it comes or usually not to white brothers and sisters i was before a famous local washington dc eatery not long ago 4 30 in the morning and having engaged in a bit of ethnographic study of the baccanal and dissolution of youthful existence by inhabiting their partying spaces only for research and then in front of ben's chili bowl a young white boy was accosting the police and i said oh my god they're gonna kill him and then i said no they won't a young white kid and the following words were heard now son you're clearly inebriated you need to go home that's all we want is the presumption of humanity that preserves that that preserves the integrity of the police and protects the citizenry without undue investment in unconscious stereotype or profiling that makes us believe that this person is there to harm us merely by breathing even when we obey what the police tell us to do we are often harmed so even liberal charity cannot undercut inaction in the face of manifest malevolence and even if our children our white children are not subject to this to the same degree then we feel that it's not really my problem it really is it's our problem so i was on television debating rudy giuliani and i was not as calm as i am now context determines content delivery and so we're talking about police brutality and he says what we should be talking about this is right before the delivery of the verdict or whether of whether or not there would be uh charges brought in the case of michael brown and giuliani said that's a small percentage 93 of black people who were killed are killed by black people now now that's true what he didn't say is that 84 of white people who are killed are killed by white people there ain't no white on white crime parlots there's no discourse or rhetoric that demonizes and stigmatizes white people there is no conception that miley cyrus is leading people to hell in a hand basket as young white folk because of twerking twerk miley miley twerk all right there is no heaping of allegory or fiction upon the heads of most white brothers and sisters as a result of that and more white people commit violent crime than anybody else in america and so but let's let's take it a step further by that logic that only a small percentage of black people who die are killed at the hands of the police and the masses of black people die at the hands of other black people how many folk have died since 9 11 of terror maybe a hundred so why are we so obsessed with color schemes and airports and national resources and killing people in foreign lands when only a hundred people have died it's not muhammad it's billy bob that is killed far more white people now i can feel your blood pressure rising even in the analogy even in the example how dare you dishonor the incredible sacrament of life that was surrendered in 9 11 and the the gesture of the subversion of american democracy by outside forces but i'm saying if it's true for us in terms of the numbers it's got to be true for y'all us this culture in terms of terror by the numbers of people if that's the only consideration but of course it isn't and so i'm saying that that white innocence and liberal beautiful liberal investment in interrogating your own privilege has got to be deepened and asking questions about innocence and the degree to which we you as white people have not been encouraged to think about your whiteness forced to come to grips with it and ask the question what you will do in the face of the knowledge you possess to try to challenge an unjust system so do you tweet out or facebook or whatever social media platform you have when you see young people of color being disproportionately warehoused in prison for stuff that your kids got away with that you got away with that you know i mean i had i ain't gonna name names of famous broadcasters you would know told me that he was going with that's that's the old-school term going with i mean this is millennials you people don't go with anybody i guess yes we're having sex and dating but we're not together that's another town hall right there i go the hell um he was going with this girl dating her repetitively and committed to a relationship of uh not infinite but provisional proportions and perhaps with the time limit and so he's there and he says he's at a republican convention and he had and it wasn't seattle so it wasn't legal some weed in his bag a fair amount of it to be blunt thank you very kindly for that i'll sign your book extra nicely and he said they caught it it pulled him aside then reprimand then excoriated him they gave his weed back and let him in can we get that i mean so you stigmatize crack and criminalize those thugs nihilistic fatally criminal black and brown people and yet with meth and heroin you medicalize it and and and i'm not mad you should can we get that so i'm asking white liberal brothers and sisters not simply to be charitable though still be charitable right somebody asked me the koch brothers gave 25 million to the united negro college fund right is that justice no but don't get a dough back thank you coke what up i'm going to use that money to raise another generation of black people who can undermine your legitimacy thanks thank you huh see as much as i love her that famous saying of audre lorde of the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house only the master's tools can dismantle the master's house in the hands of practitioners who know what they're doing take that tool and dismantle demythologize take the eloquence of the language take the polysyllabic construction take the noun and the adjective and the gerund and the dangling participle and craft them into words that explode the mythologies and reveal the inherent inaccuracy of what is being done yes the master's tools must be used to dismantle the master's house and so for me i think that that we want to ask more of white brothers and sisters because you got more i'm sorry i'm an old baptist preacher to whom much is given much is required so if you're balling as opposed to balling on a budget it do be a difference because the folk who got it you'll never know it and the folk who think they got it try to show it oh man bill gates don't dress like no dapper dan but he paid right that's uh zero copula of african-american vernacular crossing out that we get right to the matter not he is paid he paid so to whom much is given much is required and we ask you to dig deeper don't get mad and nasty and angry and resentful get reflective and introspective and ask yourself what more you might be able to do because let's be honest this society is built upon the unacknowledged labor of so many people especially people of color land and body red black and brown and we have to acknowledge that debt and then figure out a way to not only pay it but also to compensate those who may have been direct victims but even more broadly in a broader a broader philosophical argument to understand that we we owe our existence to forces beyond us and we must forever acknowledge our debt to them but also find out a way to justify our existence in this present moment that's all of us but including our white brothers and sisters who may be liberal as well he gave me a workout on that one doc you worked me out on that one following you all around to make sure catch you back at this spot right so i want to go back to november 2008 right and you you gave a wonderful ceremony or rather uh assembly to our students who stayed long after the dismissal bell now if you ever been out of high school when the bell rings that's their time right there's nothing you can do to get in the way of the exodus at the bell except put him at the microphone because that they uh were riveted so as marcus pointed out at the beginning of this evening when there's turbulence on the plane we're all in it that's right so we do have a new president i am not yet able to say president in the name i'm working on this tough it's tough it's tough i'm not there yet but we do have a new president if you were in front of my student body again today what would you tell them you know um in the book in fact do you have a copy that's read she doesn't read more not on the road and if you don't buy the book you'll be missing something for real right let me let me read you what uh what a great preacher mystic name howard thurman wrote he said at the time when the slaves in america were without any excuse for hope and they could see nothing before them but the long interminable cotton rose and the fierce sun and the lash of the overseer what did they do they declared that god was not through they said we cannot be prisoners of this event we must not scale down the horizon of our hopes and our dreams and our yearnings to the level of the event of our lives so they lived through their tragic moment until at last they came out on the other side saluting the fulfillment of their hopes and their faith and this is what i say beloved if the enslaved could nurture on the vine of their desperate deficiency of democracy the spiritual and moral fruit that fed our civilization then surely we can name and resist demagoguery we can protest i was there in los angeles 750 000 strong on saturday [Applause] with the women's i don't want to centralize gender but women are better than men i wish i could be more complicated about it but there it is we can protest and somehow defeat the forces that threaten the soul of our nation to not try to give up on the possibility that we can make a difference can make the difference is to give up on our past on our complicated difficult but victorious past donald trump is not our final or ultimate problem the problem is instead allowing hopelessness to steal our joyful triumph before we work hard enough to achieve it now thank you so i would tell the youngins look i know it's tough because you've been spoiled by a man who speaks in complete sentences by a man who actually thinks before he talks right maybe too hesitant but that gummit is thoughtful and creative and and brilliant and even if you disagreed with him and i did and you did and some of us did more often than others but there was never the doubt that there was a heartfelt wrestling with the dilemma at hand and bringing the most judicious wisdom available on a particular problem to wither it under the force and intensity of high intelligence um so uh y'all been spoiled and that ain't the case so now what we must do i would tell young people study a lesson as my daddy used to tell me even more so now this is not the time to give up this is the time to go in to dig deeper into our history know what the constitution is because these people really just don't they just be making up i'm i'm just saying so study the foundational documents of this country the the secular scripture that constitutes our nation's civic religion of democracy study that even more and understand number two the game is chess not checkers you can't stop what donald trump is doing now but there's a midterm election coming up in two years and so you got to have a george clinton plus bill clinton approach right and george clinton said free your mind and your ass will follow all right and he also said we're going to turn this mother i mean come on so so we got to turn this mother out in two years we got to take a lesson from the tea party don't be mad they they got what they wanted now it's going to burn us all up but take a lesson in terms of lying in weight and understanding strategic down ballot voting making senators and congress people vulnerable as a result of the pressure and understanding that we have the power to deny donald trump the the house or the senate so that he can't just have all three the presidency and the house and senate and do the kind of crazy stuff that he wants to do because even fellow republicans are looking at him going my god look at the interview or listen to it look at the transcript at the cia the other day this is madness this my brothers and sisters is the projection of this infantile aggression that is so much more dangerous because his his hands metaphorically are are are on the button and and and except he ain't gonna blow them up he gonna show up with them because imagine a person of color or a woman being in bed with putin the way this man is who he would have been read out right you got a problem with snowden and your president is beseeching russia to hack hillary clinton but the greatest hacking wasn't from putin it was from those 900 machines that were disabled or closed down as a result of voter id laws so like white innocence with white liberals we as americans would rather focus on putin then focus on what we did in this country to deny legitimate citizens the right to vote it was far worse and so i would tell those young folk what my pastor told me we have already come through what we have come to we haven't been here before if if if thurman said we have been through the long rawhide whip of the overseer we have been through lynching where where the invidious denunciation of life and the humiliation of even the the pretense to humanity existed where white brothers and sisters lynched and strung people of color high from trees and swung them into their ultimate reward at the end of a rope and then snap pictures of it postcards at picnics to reveal the pathology of the white imagination a kind of twitter posting a kind of social dis dyslexia getting it morally backwards and so and so yes we must say to them we have endured that we can endure a donald trump we can withstand it but we've got to call upon those resources of the past and we got to get beyond some of our own bigotry from within no matter who we are howard thurman said a bigot is a person who makes an idol of his or her commitments so you fetishize your particular understanding as if that's the only way we in the boat together now we got to work together and why i said women are better than men i said that because besides it being true what i said that for is because there were tremendous differences in this march you know pro-lifers people with choice women of color who are you know been working saying where you all been y'all just getting on board black lives matter and like that been going on and y'all ain't done nothing but then there are white women who finally got them you know message or you know because 54 of the women who voted were what voting for trump what up with that got to hold them to account come on now come on white women's get on board here because trump ain't going to help you he's trying to grab and he can't help you deliver it trying to tell you what to do with it some old white men in the senate trying to tell women what to do with their bodies you don't even know what a body is dude because you're half a cadaver standing up speaking [Applause] but not nearly as stiff so okay okay that was literally a low blow but we have to say but better late than never come on board let's get together because all of us got narrowness and blindness and all of us you know got stuff we can't see and me even saying blindness as opposed to different forms of sights or other abled people who are being excluded from the conversation even as i'm trying to include others we all do it so we have to be not only conscious of it but we have to move beyond those narrow parameters and find ways to forge links and connections so that we can defeat what this thing is is deeper than a presidency a deeply incompetent incomprehensible you know unintelligence proud to be unmolested by enlightenment i don't know and i'm glad i don't so what we have to do to tell young people is stay in school study because otherwise this is your brain on politics and then ultimately we must say to them the fight is never over as long as we exist in order to fight and we can resist and we can together join forces to make new allies in ways that we hadn't before back against the wall head looking up swinging against the odds because there will come a time when the tide will turn and the pendulum will swing and we have to be in place to effectively receive it and push it in order to do that we got to play chess and chess is two years from now in terms of those midterm elections and then fomo years and excuse me all of these leftists who were going around the country telling people ain't no difference between donald trump and hillary clinton how in the do you feel right now do you think hillary clinton would have put a racist like steve bannon in the west wing do you think hillary clinton would have nominated jeff sessions to be to be what attorney general do you think hillary clinton would have gotten betty divos to be secretary of education do you think she would have wiped away that website the day of his inauguration hillary clinton was flawed but great a powerful embodiment and should be right now the first female president of the united states of america and so let's not make that damn mistake again we ain't electing a messiah we're electing a president and we need to strategically be thinking right now about how we position ourselves but not reduce the complexity of politics to electoral politics grassroots organizing on the local level what happened on saturday what no organized political moment it was the grassroots around the world around the world saying we will not be trumped that's what i would tell the young folk plus listen to some good music and take advantage of medical marijuana or move to washington when you're old enough so we're winding down because we want to give the people an opportunity to engage with you um so i just wanted to take this moment to thank you right first and foremost um as any good teacher and any good preacher does you saw me as a human being first my humanity and my heart first and foremost and engaged me you know done that for the better part of a decade and then i wanted to thank you proxy and this will come out a bit awkwardly um in the title of your book tears we cannot stop as you know i've been at franklin for a very long time and i have some very dear colleagues at franklin um specific women of color patricia newton kathy sheridan um in in the crowd who have got got your book right away right and um ate it up and try as i might and try as we might at franklin to get at all of this stuff we've been steadily you know with all that i could bring to bear to to get at this stuff in a in a single book you get there in a way that i can't um and they wept you saw them you validated them um you liberated them and you honored them in a way that that i've fallen short and so many of us have fallen short so thank you for this gift and for the possibility of liberation it gives all of us black white and everybody else thank you thank you it's time for q a all right just a reminder that there are mics on either side of the stage to use for questions i also have the unenviable task of saying we only have about 20 minutes for questions so please keep your questions brief and in the form of a question and so we can get everybody in and also have time for book signing thanks josh i think judge mccullough is here and councilman and good people deborah baker kevin baker my peoples it's good to see all of y'all it's great okay we're right here all right thank you so much for being here um i just i'm having a moment so i'm trying not to get emotional just being here with you um in regards to black lives matter i am a czech writing member however very frustrated in the seemingly lack of strategy that the movement has and i'm fearful that it will fall off the wayside like occupy did because of this fierceness towards protesting as the number one facet in their strategy to drive resistance and if i can just give you a little bit of background i i almost cried with and i wa no it's really going to quit tamir rice was killed that officer was in independence missouri and relieved of his duties because the police chief relieved him of his duties because he was unable to handle gun situations right moved to cincinnati or cleveland and killed tamar rice we our father was killed by an auburn police officer after he had already killed a black man in arizona he came here killed my father in 1989. he went to texas where he became a police officer there the free thought project wrote a whole article on him last year because he was finally relieved of duty in texas after 20 plus years only because of the hundreds of police officers that finally said do not send him on backup calls with me right now he's living retired on the pay of the citizens of texas because he was allowed to retire yes what can we do black lives matters to build a strategy that says forget the statistics let's bring in the human aspect of it my grief is compounded because of the tamar rice situation right right and how do they fix that because they're young they're on fire yes ma'am no no it's uh and you you gave us something very powerful and and thank you all for listening because this bless your heart first of all my deepest and most profound condolences because i know that still hurts i feel you bless your heart had the baby like these young people do in 1989 when my father was killed unarmed by a man they just let resign instead of telling him you go on a registry you will never be a police officer in the united states again that's all we want that's what black lives matters you can't hop to hop to hop to police force taymor would be alive if that registry was here that's real that's that's just as real as it gets um and uh your visceral and and palpable pain and we pray for you we send good thoughts and healing to you but something's got to be done two things first of all i think you're absolutely right and i think many people in black lives matter understood that they released an incredible document though an incredible document and if you go to boston review and look up robin d g kelly who did a brilliant analysis of that document black lives matter actually has a number of thinkers and activists and strategists who are doing just what you're speaking about you know parlaying the moment into a movement and thinking critically and self-critically about what it means to be black and to join forces with others uh to generate a serious document so i think that's absolutely right and in terms of the regis i mean you've spoken so eloquently ain't nothing for us to say but amen because a guy who kills somebody black or person of color then goes somewhere else and gets another job because of that privilege this is this is this is white privilege writ large but this is white privilege armed this this is white privilege armed and the ability to go elsewhere and and this is a pattern that has been repeated time and again and so one of the things we can do is first expose it then because we can't talk about it if we don't talk about it and we can't expose it if we don't talk about it and we can't get at it if we don't begin to hammer this point home so i think the the one of the things we can do is to put it on the agenda and to elect prosecutors who will be responsible in holding police people accountable look at what happened there with mcginney right in um well i think in in cleveland and then in alvarez in ohio in chicago people voted them out of office laquan mcdonald and what happened with tamir rice they put them out of office and this is what i mean by chestnut checkers so those are the kind of things we have to strategically do but at the end of the day god bless you and i feel i feel i can't even imagine what that feels like but god bless you and we've got to end the kind of pain that you endure thank you so much go side to side uh good evening mr tyson what do you say to the contention that the number one challenge facing our country on the planet is to close the widening gap between workers who are sowing record corporate profits and those greedy grenade shade fat cat overpaid ceos that are reaping them take the walton family of walmart infamy they're worth 149 billion dollars as much as the poorest forty percent of merits combined while they pay their poor checkers nine dollars and fifty cents an hour right and number two paul ryan and the rest of his ilk don't believe in a social safety net the person you're on today with michael medved has called for abolishing the food stamp program abolishing pell grants abolishing low-income heating assistance program they don't believe they really believe in a trickle-down survival of the fittest and finally which do you like better for gop grand obstructionist party are guardians of privilege i'll let that stand amen amen i mean there it is bro in the second edition i might have to rip that off all right yes sir um i suspect that i'm one of many somewhat privileged white people who are ready wanting to get engaged in ways that we haven't before this is going to sound a little silly and pathetic because there are lots of things that we've done in life that we've succeeded at but um we don't really know how to get connected locally to different people right to different groups and that's what we need right so um my uh request is help us do that um but my question is what are a couple of things that you would say to get started and and i think it's actual relationships i mean we need to get in a room with people who are doing this stuff so we can join right not go to websites and yeah phone calls no amen to that that's a great point thank you yeah yeah and thank you it's not a stupid question at all it's a very practical question and we're trying to figure out how do we get connected uh although what's interesting enough you know you can find groups that are organized anti-racist white anti-racist on the internet because if you can get radicalized in the wrong direction you can get inculcated in the good one as well but but but i believe in that face-to-face uh kind of engagement and there are many you know there are many local white people doing the right kind of thing here who could answer far better than i can in terms of specific organizations but one of the things that i talk about in the book in the benediction section i'm glad you asked that are some of the things that okay all right funny you should ask that um if you buy that book for 24.99 um but i talk about i'm giving away so you know if you don't buy it you're gonna get it here tonight i'm gonna just get half then you get the other half um but one of the things i talk about i've already talked about individual reparations accounts where again i mean some white people got mad at me what the hell you're telling me every white person should give his money or herbert no that's not what i'm saying i'm saying if you're inclined figure out new and creative ways to engage in helping and assisting but i talk about education is so important because so much of the dialogue in america is horrible because people don't read and they don't they don't know history so they keep talking about stuff you know i get all these mad letters from these white folk who are calling me and and writing me emails i get 10 a day and stuff and i you know i'm just i got a standard reply could you at least call me professor i i just i know you ain't gonna stop calling me but can you call me dr i worked hard at princeton for this man i and and one of the things they're mad at is they and they tell me my people died in the civil war for you so that's rep you owe me reparations bruh bruh do you do your little study do a little history yeah they tried to rewrite it and they tried to say that it was about states rights and stuff which one is it if it's about states rights and it's about the right of america that what states rights to what to own slaves right so then if we could do some studying we could at least have a baseline and that's why i'm scared for this new administration they have made ignorance sexy and alternated facts and alternatively i mean lord have mercy they're like dairy die with a machete oh that's good that's good i just that's you know a couple people i get it but i'm gonna have to use that later at uh at an english convention so what's interesting is that if we can get white brothers and sisters to educate themselves other white people like tim wise mab segres peggy mcintosh theodore allen dave roediker they've written about this right and i mentioned them in the book so educate yourself and then participate go to a black lives matter if you could join with this beautiful woman here you a beautiful young man with this beautiful young woman her father dead right and and and and in that grief forge a connection figure out a way for white brothers and sisters to amplify that story one of the things that was interesting to me about the sessions hearing in congress is that most of the people being taken out hollering against his racism were white folk i got to tell you i was at home going yes yes that's that's good stuff right there right not only because they might be able to afford the bail but what's interesting is that brother go to jail like hey i'm gonna be here for a minute right and not to be funny sandra bland would be alive today if she could pay 500.00 in bail so i tell you what i need a white posse to pay the bail of black people not the ones doing krakens i ain't talking about that that way i told my petty larson no i'm talking i'm talking about black people who are in jail for no good reason and who need to be relieved because sandra bland however she died would not have died there had she been able to afford it so so participate by going to rallies of black lives matter or other organizations participating in native uh meetings where people are talking about the right of indigenous people here in america and what that might mean for education in other words educating yourselves is one thing and then participating in organizations and we should what we should do is people who are here who are on the on the ground i mean i know the naacp i know you know washington state has had this interesting [Music] i'm just saying i'm just hey hey you know what some of y'all want to be black so bad that you know i understand because even though we might have not have aggregate money we got style we could and there's some other things so but having said that there are ways in which the naacp the urban league the national action network grassroots organizations could use some white allies and some white members and then finally there are groups of white brothers and sisters i'm going to go to a couple of them with with the book and everything who are actually organized to think strategically about how they can best deploy their resources so you can get hooked up on the internet but face to face is better and there are ways in which if somebody's here tonight what's your name my friend keith if somebody can come to keith and come to him and share with him because he asked a serious question and let's give him a serious answer about groups that develop and maybe a group can come out tonight there you go bro thank you thank you brother it's a great question thank you for asking okay i have to be uh shorter i'm putting a a a restriction on myself i'm gonna be under 20 minutes for this no i'm going to be under two minutes y'all ask me some simpler questions i'm going to have some simple answers okay yes well i i had a brilliant question you sort of knocked the profundity out so it's gone but what i wanted to say is that i'm glad you are here and that you're here in seattle because you think of seattle as this liberal wonderful place it can be very hard to be black here and so i i i simply want people to think about what it means to drive on jefferson davis highway we've got it highway 99 that's what it's called and to realize these differences that you've you've brought out and to use them prescriptively so that i don't have to worry about leaving the swimming pool at five o'clock in the morning and having the police officer tell me to drive down an alley and refuse to go and not know whether i'm going to be safer having refused or staying on the street where somebody might see me he was actually shocked to find out that i was a woman i had on a hoodie it was cold i got out of the pool and so i i want i want people to to think about what's here in seattle you know what's at amazon and microsoft right and all of those places that needs to be addressed we've got 200 000 people coming for amazon they don't look like me right so i you can find if you can find a question in there since my question went somewhere i mean it ain't a question i'ma let it stand that's a beautiful that's a beautiful statement i don't need to all i need to do is say amen and i was at apple the other day speaking trying to get my iphone fixed for free too i was like i'm also i'm the one who laughed first at your blunt joke so i get my book signed thank you for laughing hold on i'm gonna take a picture y'all hold on [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you very kindly yes sir brother dr dyson i i just want to thank you as a fellow academic to be able to hear you i'm a professor at the law school here at the university of washington i teach racing the law beautiful what's your name sir my name is edwin lindo and my question is why is it so taboo to critique and question our economic system because you you suggested that whiteness created this country and i i would amend it a bit and say that it was actually blackness that created this it was darkness that created this country and that white came out of critiquing demoralizing dehumanizing poor and people of color in this country starting with the native americans it then evolved to making darkness poor and then it evolved to making whiteness a property right to the point where james baldwin so eloquently said in his debate with bill buckley at the harvard at harvard sorry in england where he he said i walked into a western union waiting in line and blacks had to wait in line and so every white person got served and i finally made it and she gave me that look that look of i may also be poor but at least i'm not black that is a pop that is a property right that it's been converted it's been changed from denying humanity to blackness to now whiteness being a right so profound that you gain from it exponentially but that comes out of an economic system that created darkness to be bad so it can continue slavery capitalism continued slavery for its own right to exist why don't we have the right to question and critique it to a point that it may make people uncomfortable because they're benefiting from it including myself no no it's a great point you know i was on a panel with another great law professor derek bell the late great derek bell [Applause] and he told the story he said the communists came to to harlem to recruit the negro and they were talking about the revolution and economic inequality and social injustice and how that might be eradicated by the presence of this particular document and these particular ideas and he said a black man raised his hand and said can i can i ask you a question he said after the revolution comes are you still going to be white so i don't deny what you're saying but there's another way in which you're absolutely right think about orlando patterson's book about freedom that freedom wouldn't even exist in the western empire western civilization without a corollary contradiction of darkness blackness and the slave body as the expression of the denunciation of that freedom and therefore that freedom became even more powerfully articulated so you're absolutely i would say you're absolutely right in terms of property rights even though i think that blackness does call whiteness into in into existence and to account even as whiteness cause blackness into being as well so that so that there's a way in which there's a reciprocity and mutuality of invention though not in terms of equally weighted consequence of those inventions and that i would never subsume race under class because the subsumption of race underclass mitigates against the reality that there are some particular animuses that are driven regardless of economic status or reorganization of the logic of capital for instance when many white brothers and sisters say look why should you as a rich law professor or right you say you're at least a law professor right they tell me you're as a rich georgetown professor why should my kids get anything less than you in fact should get more because they suffer now under the economic argument that's absolutely true on a pure economic consideration the maldistribution of wealth is predicated upon a pure calculus that determines the relative impact of that economic denial so that becomes the predicate for redistribution that's great but what that got to do with the race that occurred jackie robinson's kids didn't get an exemption from white water fountains or from jim crow joe lewis's son and daughter could not be exposed to what the average white person experiences so i'ma take your same example but flip it on the race side du bois said as you know in black reconstruction and others the psychic wages of whiteness the compensatory racial order is predicated upon at least i ain't a so i say it's especially about race when the dominant overlord captains of industry who are white exploit working-class white people by giving them what bonus yes we're going to deny you economic opportunity but at least you ain't a no you will not be able to come to our schools but at least you're not a that is not going to be resolved by economic parity that will be resolved by acknowledging the centrality of racial difference and the animus of blackness or brown or red or yellow and the degree to which we got to fight that simultaneously that's why i said and let me be more explicit since you asked that question or made that comment bernie sanders is the left-wing version of donald trump not in terms of ideology not in terms of understanding but you got two elderly white men who are unfamiliar with and disconcerted by race now there's a big difference i'd rather have bernie sanders there hoivey my man let's get down with bernie i will ride to the wheels fall off but there was the same liberal intolerance of racial difference when black lives matter pushed him because he felt he had already achieved what they talked about because he said it's about class no sir it's also about race and god knows about gender as well and when we put those together i think it operates so you and i i think would be on the same page in that but we'll talk later because you're smarter about that stuff all right thank you sir awesome just want to make sure uh this microphone worked by the way whose lives matter all right i just want to make sure room was down enough all right um anyway brother thank you so much for uh coming also thank you for these zingers are these copyright these are amazing yeah man give me some acknowledgement up in here i i gotta i gotta feed my kids all right fair enough fair enough i'm unlike apple i want you to do that okay anyway um so um i this year was personally was a lot for me um just you know all transparency actually worked uh for the party uh for a little bit here in washington uh during the election and there are a lot of good memories a lot of bad memories the party oh democratic party okay yeah okay i was going to say comrade well comrade i i wanted to get you on trump's cabinet but anyway i digress um you know i mean there's there's a lot that could be said i'm you know i'm still processing those things today you know try to as you said figure out like how do we go in right how do we uh push forward however uh one there there's this one hanging problematic that i see in all this right that you know as as much as white supremacy had a role in trump's win as much as maybe towards yen like we should have definitely read the writing on the wall and you know like speaking of someone knows the far left a little bit there was you know a lot of indifference to the fact that trump's a psychopath and it has like very quasi fast fashion fascist tendencies right and they have to open the social side of the book to realize that however you know going forward how can we hold those who are at the wheel accountable for like for not quite frankly for you know failing and getting him well i don't want to say getting him but failing and ending up with him elected because you know like on a local level you know there were seats that were dropped here in washington you know on um state level there were you know situations where could have been better right and for me you know as an activist and for me as a resident here and someone who wants to resist the next four years not just survive but resist the next four years i want to know you know in your opinion how do we basically how can a young brother like me go go and say dr dyson i i don't think that's right you don't think what uh i don't think that's right you don't think oh no no i theoretically like if you were you know if you were someone in power to go to you right and say i don't think that's right like how do we hold those empower on our side accountable well how do we hold them accountable yeah thank you sir i appreciate that no problem thank you all right thank you godfather you understand everything look how they massacred my boy uh that's the coldest movie ever marlon brando the greatest american actor ever sorry there it is what's that american gangster is good but dog but it ain't the godfather i'm sorry i believe in america america has made my fortune come on um so look how we hold people accountable is we do a bunch of things we vote and we try to keep them out now here's the irony about that though all of us who are arrogant americans you venezuelans you cubans you don't get one man one vote one woman one vote then we discover what the hell is the call what what i've been the electoral college you mean hillary clinton won by nearly three million votes but she's not president that's right three right maybe it's up to three and it was 2.8 the last time i checked but maybe it's above three so the point is this is that while we're being arrogant and snobby we can't even have the popular vote be the determinant of who wins the presidency so stop jumping on all these other banana republics republics when we got you know may not be banana but we got pineapple or some fruit working right here right sliced it and diced it and left it aside okay um so for me i think that but we continue to vote and we continue to perform a system and we challenge if people are so inclined what the electoral college might mean and how we operate but we vote also because we want to register our opinion about the democracy in which we live and we want to move the needle to the degree that we can right so voting is critical but social action is critical too getting in these streets doing what what we did the other day across this nation and indeed across this uh world where people say enough is enough we are not going to take it we're going to raise our voices we may not have the immediate direct power but martin luther king jr didn't either but what happened voting rights uh bill uh voting rights act and then in the aftermath of his death as an homage to him what the fair housing act so legislation can be impacted by a kind of concentrated protest but not simply protests for um you know catharsis but protests aimed at and geared toward uh specific forces that we want to address so that knowing what happens with decisions on the supreme court and who will be appointed we have to figure out how to defend planned parenthood we've got to defend this against politicians who are inclined to undermine it and then thirdly i think what we got to do and it's a longer process but it's so important you see dr wily sitting up here we got to support public education i mean bam at the end of the day we have to acknowledge the need to educate the masses and to give them schools worthy of our democracy that reflect our desire to see every citizen enlightened and that's beyond what you learn in the classroom right because a lot of us start looking up and googling and electoral college then you understand how it was related to slavery not just an economic although that's extremely important an economic and a racial and an ethnic and gendered conception of identity that has to be taken into account so those are three things i would say automatically that people should do to hold folk accountable even if you don't have direct access to the person in power you can at least pull the levers of dimple the chads of those particular process in a certain way yes ma'am good evening good evening um you started out talking about grief and trauma and i wondered uh i actually have two questions okay um i wondered what do you believe are the solutions to address and heal that in the black community um wow yeah that's a great point um i'm trying to answer part of that in this book first of all we got to say it this young woman stood up in the microphone and amplified her trauma a young man hugged her who asked the question the answer sometime is in the expression the answer sometimes only comes when we're willing to share because trauma calls out the trauma may not be the same you lost your father to a heinous act somebody else lost their brother or sister to self-imposed tragedy and trauma others through disease some can be seen as quote natural others are imposed by the state how we figure out to bridge the gulf between the two maybe those who have been subject to one can be more empathetic to the other i do know that there is no resolution without expression and i do know that that trauma has to be not only expressed but shared the burden must be shared by those who inadvertently either caused or benefited from it you know the anthropologist risotto uh renato rosado has a concept of uh imperialist nostalgia and that's when a dominant culture tears up another society commits genocide against the people and then sits down next to them to weep over its destruction but but it was you right so now my jailer my murderer my genocidal executioner becomes the one who wants to empathize with me so that imperialist nostalgia becomes a way of distancing oneself from the recognition of one's own complicity in the horror of that suffering so only when we begin to talk and express and articulate can we begin at least to to acknowledge the trauma let it breathe let others hear it that's why hip-hop is so important at its best that's why poetry is important that's why novels and fiction are important that's why hopefully my book can make a small contribution to that i don't mean commercially although every one of you should damn well by it hopefully i hope it's worth it but but even if you don't steal it but what's interesting steal this book um download it for free so what's interesting is that is that unless we uh allow people and and maybe they feel like voyeurs maybe others feel that the pain is too private and yet the trauma exposed to the world is against our will is what so much of our existence has been about slavery but but part of the the trauma to black people in particular and native peoples as well has been the fact that the bulk of it didn't occur originally in the 20th century say the way brothers and sisters who were victimized by the holocaust where there were photographs and film and we got django now i'm a fan of django i know it ain't popular but this is a dude who for most of the movie was killing these waifo and then looking for his woman i'm saying as as as a revenge fantasy you know now you can't extricate that from quentin tarantino whose complicated and problematic use of uh can't be separated from the from the nature of his art but i'm saying that because we don't have the the evidence and then here's the irony when we do get the evidence people doubt it well we didn't see the beginning of rodney king getting his ass beat that time because he might have been a hulking figure right isn't this what they said about michael brown he bulked up it came at me he demonic this is not a stephen king fantasy thank you for the words and support stephen's king but this is the racial monstrosity evoked in the collective unconscious of america about who we are and so that that that experience has to be articulated has to become has to become palpable so that we can feel it and then feeling it and making people understand what it is the the the very films we have these episodes of castile and and sterling losing their lives and people justifying it now they become film critics the mison sin says that at the beginning we don't know if the cops say what we know is that it repeatedly happens to one group of people in particular in peculiar fashion and now in south carolina a man running from the police shot eight times in his back and only one juror could hang it by saying i will not hold this man accountable now that's where we need white brothers and sisters to speak up about the trauma because some brave white people will write me and go if that were if that were me if that were my people we couldn't take it we couldn't deal with it right that's not what i'm interested in so much as the fact that you know how hurtful and painful that is you cannot stand by and merely witness that trauma you've got to respond and the grief and pain that are exposed need to be addressed in redemptive fashion so hopefully that's what happens to the expression of that trauma and that grief all right thank you so much yes sir thank you i'm so happy that you're here dr dyson it's very elevating he says something so powerful earlier that it stuck with me you said that charity is not a substitute for justice it's extremely powerful to me my name is andre taylor i'm the founder of a non-profit movement called not this time my brother was killed last year by seattle police department which brought me back home from los angeles to seattle washington what we've done at not this time for that brother that was looking for a place to go we built a coalition of native tribes latino organizations black churches and white allies and we've been fighting for police accountability and the change what amnesty international says washington law is the most restrictive law in the nation the worst so we've been fighting to get that law change and we seem to be having some progression um what you said earlier striking to me because that charity is not a substitute for justice and i have a lot of white progressive friends and we have these great conversations all the time and what i really try to explain to them is that and i want to get your take on this is that when they are fighting for social justice and they're marching around the country often say to them that you're not doing that for black people you're doing that for yourself i think that it's important that my white progressive friends and people that are involved in struggle to understand that because there's a limitation for what you'll do for somebody else but when you know and you've taken some accountability that this is for me this is for us then there's no limitation of what you do why is it for you because we need to know that you are not your ancestors of 400 years ago that you're not your ancestors of jim crow and this is almost a redemptive process but they have to have an understanding of this process and i believe that if they come to that place of understanding then i believe that real change and real power will come because i believe with that understanding there will be a unrelenting force to then help people of color in that capacity would say you of that no it's uh it's powerful i i just want to let that stand amen um i'll just briefly add that um that you're so right in terms of the nature of the investment because if you're doing it for somebody else i don't care who you are you know mama may have papa may have but god bless the child that's got his own as billy holliday saying but those who don't have their own voice advocate you know suffer doubly because they endure the trauma and they don't have an outlet to articulate it to express it and then finding somebody with whom that registers to fight and to struggle that is indeed an important role and we know every white brother and sister won't be able to do that but what's interesting when you think about for instance since i work and today is her 71st birthday susan taylor who used to be the editor-in-chief of essence magazine and is now head of cares mentoring um and her gala is coming up soon um she um talks about mentoring and the first people to to respond to the call to mentor young black people or young white women that's number one then number two maybe black women number three white men or those reverse and then black men last so what's interesting is that now you could say well black people got to be more interested in their kids and they do um but it also bespeaks the kind of privilege that some people have to spend time to be able to engage in a very redemptive act but you got to acknowledge it you got to acknowledge that that we need those white brothers and sisters on the front lines right and so we're not shooting at you we're not trying to damn you in terms of charity versus justice we're saying what you're doing is a stop gap measure that is critical to the redemption of those people that you address but we also have to while you are fix painting the building we got to keep it from falling apart the structure is critical right and we got to ask the question you know are we doing it for its own sake james baldwin since we brought him up several times tonight said do you want to integrate into a burning house if your goal is integration you'll do it at any cost even a burning house no the goal is redemption and integration becomes a means toward that but if the house is burning we got to put the fire out before we integrate into that hence the challenge of people of color to the american democratic house so what you're saying is so important though and and i must say however that i was at uh hamilton the other day you know the the broadway play white man came up to me during the intermission and for like 45 seconds this is a big white man i'm a big guy he was much bigger he bear hugged me i dare not say a word this man hugged me for 45 seconds i don't sound alone but think about it i ain't married to him that ain't my dude i love you but i'm just saying we weren't kissing exchanging saliva nothing this dude hugged me for 45 seconds and then he looked at me let me go he said i hope you felt the love i said what i did was feel the fear but then after that yes i did feel the love he says i want you to know what you're doing is so important and so courageous and i know you must receive such hate but i want you to know there are many of us white people out here who love you and support you right my man right that's real too right and how do we accentuate that how do we embrace that how do we speak to that how do we encourage that yes we cannot reduce that to mere inter-personal interactions that avoid the social structural realities that need to be changed but it's both and it's the ultimate and the intimate it's the individual and the institutional and by the way the person i thought got that best was not bernie sanders but hillary clinton when i listened to hillary clinton's speech on race that she gave at the uh at the was schaumburg man or the speech she gave after the dylan roof situation for the mayors in new orleans and several others i mean i studied them i didn't just do it because because i had problems with hillary clinton and her racial dynamics and her all that and then i began to listen and study and think and i did have exposure because i wrote a piece for new york new uh new republic magazine so i talked to her hung out with her and so on and it was far more convincing to meet because she was willing to talk about white privilege see to me the economic inequality part was far easier to talk about bernie than it was the social transformation predicated upon race because that's still the ugly reality we do not want to confront we would much rather have it be class because then that would include all these white brothers and sisters who are legitimately suffering but part of their suffering is perpetuated by the inability to let go of the heinous trauma of racial privilege and to join us martin luther king jr was in jail in birmingham and his jailers came to him and said dr king you're wrong you are invested in changing but this is right segregation is right and your demonstrations are wrong you know dr king now my brother i want to hear what you're saying but i must confess that it is an abhorrent aberration from the truth now right that's why dr king wasn't going to debate malcolm because malcolm be done 10 things before then but he said the following how much you make all right going back to our law professor's point he said how much do you make and they told him he said well hell y'all need to be out here marching with us he said you just as poe as the negro so my point is that white people have been sold a bill of goods on the level of class have this racial compensation that they're not a whereas if we could join together and move beyond the precincts of privilege that are falsely conferred then we could see the unification of the masses of people of color and white brothers and sisters so yeah it's very important and what you said is extremely important and the investment personally is so important and many white brothers and sisters are doing it i wanted to continue to encourage them to keep on doing it even as they add that arsenal it's like kobe bryant every year he came back he had something different to offer right the y'all ain't got no basketball okay i don't want to guess that's sore oh i'm sorry i'm sorry russell westbrook you know you ain't seeing that up close but y'all gonna get one seattle supersonic spencer haywood was the bomb but but every year every year you come back you're great but you add another piece oh i got a jump shot now oh i gotta fade away now oh i got more defense now so white brothers and sisters who are liberals keep adding to your arsenal you're empathetic deconstruct innocence deconstruct privilege begin to think structure even as you commit yourselves to the great work that you're already doing but thank you so much for that oh wow how are you holding up i'm good i'm good i'm good we got to let let the people talk i know so okay so that means i should shut up no no no these questions and yeah and then we're done okay cool yes ma'am all right yeah oh you're gonna ask oh you got another one oh you gotta hurry up people gonna get mad at you now here i know so see the white liberals are going look there's a limit all right hurry up hurry up you're gonna get me in trouble real quick so i mean one of the things that we're talking about is solutions right and especially as you spoke about dr king one of the things that happened during the civil rights movement was that we used what was in our community right we use the churches we use the schools we use the organizations right so we the people that are here represent what's here to help we are the solution okay so what are you saying you asked me what's the solution you're saying you've made a point i agree with you we are the solution and unless we're willing to apply it it won't get done i agree with you on that one right there thank you so much love i appreciate you all right book buying people are leaving that's bad news for my publisher man so we got to hurry up my man she'll give him love right here me and this guy right here going to be doing a book together soon but go on my brother yes sir hey zombie yes sir it's on you uh thank you very much for being here thank you dr wily it's nice to see you it's been a while um this is jossey ross i was telling you about bad brother right here it's a bad man right here [Applause] 2016 was a banner year for uh native presence in the media uh whether you're talking about the cleveland indians and the baseball you know the world series or or alternatively the dakota access pipeline but i i just wanted to commend that you were consistently you've consistently been on the right side of history and been an advocate for native communities and native causes for long before it was cool from washington redskins i mean you're on the wrong side of certain things detroit lions we saw that game right seahawks he's gonna make fun of the sonics but from the washington redskins yeah so dakota access pipeline violence against women ag native provisions i want to commend you for always being there one of the things i've been doing a little bit of reading and native and black students have the highest proliferation of uh expulsions and suspensions from public schools by far it's not even close right now from what i've read that's the short closest shorthand that i've seen to entering the school to prison pipeline speaking of pipelines yeah it is and so i want to just really quickly keep it brief but i want to answer the brother keith's question really quickly and also all you white folks who are leaving my wife sisters and brothers everybody water's life that's right many with tony but i just wanted they asked how to get involved right right here in real time in seattle there's a proposed 210 million dollar [Music] new jail facility a youth jail facility right up here on 12th and that will have the effect it will there's no variables about it have the effect of incarcerating native and black youth at disproportionate rates that's right and so to my brother keith and everybody else who wants to know how to get involved that's something right now that's pending before the county and we're trying to find ways to kind of there's people that have been organizing for years regarding this topic and so i i obviously want to get your take on it um i i don't i think it's hard to to argue with data right the data shows once again i've been reading that georgia races georgia races texas they've been taking youth out of and their recidivism rates have dropped precipitously that's the word i learned from you and not only that their their costs they've saved literally millions and millions and millions of dollars right so why is it that here in progressive king county progressive seattle where we want to be on the right side and we want to walk down the women's march and you know have be allies and this and that we would go forth with something that's as number one fiscally irresponsible right but number two as empirically ineffectual and number three is racist as hell as something like that i just wanted to get your take doctor amen you see what i'm saying my man my man amen doc we're going to highlight afterward that's that that says righteous and that's a particular specific manifestation of a of an act that can be undertaken writing talking thinking joining together and pressing the political establishment not to invest but definitely to divest in that and then that point the empirical proof about the relationship between the expulsion and the exposure to the criminal justice system to become part of that prison industrial complex and as he said empirically ineffectual and financially questionable that's the kind of argument that we need to talk about why it doesn't make sense to continue a practice and why conscience and justice must join together thank you for that brother amen to that all right we got to hurry up before people start leaving all right are y'all leaving oh my god okay let's uh you say hurry up and sign the book okay they're saying hurry up and sign the book all right let's uh let's all right i tell you what let's do jeopardy speed round all right let's do jeopardy speed round ask the questions all together i'm gonna write them down and then i'm gonna answer them real quick that way we only take five minutes so you go first sir you got a pen you got a pen i just wanna thank you for your elocution and your words of wisdom um we know that uh racism is deeply rooted in history it's a toxic tapestry that's woven into our constitution and the question is that how do we address this multi-faceted mosaic of privilege and whiteness where we know it's relative and perceived where white men have privilege over white women but white women have privilege over women of color and how do we how do we approach this multi-faceted issue because we obviously can't use a claude monet broad broad stroke solution so okay great point great point that's great yes okay yes sir i was just asking about um given capitalism exploitation and racism means of justifying set exploitation what are some ways that we can navigate some of that white fragility and make more people see that the racism is hurting them just in the same way as it's hurting the people that great point yes sir thank you great great point yes ma'am i agree that racism is a made-up construct in order to be racist so can i call myself something besides a white person okay amen amen all right yes please check out www.green.org it's not about smoking and talking it's about young people working people of color low-income families coming together one of their future strategies is a movement school create a movement school to develop our members political analysis and organizing skills to that and thank you very much we have to cut it off and we get book signing so thank you thank you okay let me no okay no no very good so let me very quickly yes multi multi-faceted mosaic that's so powerful privilege of whiteness white men more privilege to white women white women more privileged than people who are women of color we have to acknowledge that and when we do that we pay attention to how our own oppression also generates privilege i tried to say that earlier with black people and i think it's important uh capitalism and racism white fragility hurts white people too amen amen amen amen it undermines the authority and integrity of the spirit and soul and then finally other calling yourself something other than white amen so let's generate that so that everybody can be able to deconstruct what that whiteness might mean and then rename it in a renaming ceremony that will make this nation a better place thank you all so very much all right thank dr jennifer wiley for what she did here tonight all right where we uh we're right here okay

Channel: Town Hall Seattle

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Keywords: Michael Eric Dyson what truth sounds like, Michael Eric Dyson tears we can not stop, Michael Eric Dyson jordan peterson, Michael Eric Dyson debate, Michael Eric Dyson owned, Michael Eric Dyson undisputed, Michael Eric Dyson seattle, Michael Eric Dyson seattle 2018, Michael Eric Dyson, what truth sounds like, tears we can not stop, police shooting, debate, undisputed, police, death, Michael, Eric, Dyson, Seattle, Town Hall, Town Hall Seattle

Id: DFjZtzJz1Ug

Length: 129min 55sec (7795 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 23 2017