Race and Whiteness in the Era of Trumpism

welcome to all of you who are here with us this morning and welcome to all the ways those that are joining us via livestream welcome to All Saints Church if you are new to All Saints or if you're visiting with us this morning and would like to keep a prize of our future events and other things of interest to you here there are green contact sheets near both doors so please take a moment to give us your contact information that way we can get you on our eblasts there's also a welcome table on the lawn where you can pick up a red welcome bag which includes a welcome card to take with you to fill out and then return to us or you can fill it out there on the spot we're really really glad you're here and we hope that you get to know us more each week we put our faith into action and this week we are working in conjunction with bread for the world we are joining thousands of other churches around the country in writing letters to Congress asking them to make funding decisions that put our 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All Saints Church so we continue to spread justice and healing in the community nation and our now it is my great honor and pleasure to introduce to you Tim Wise our speaker for this morning and we are so delighted to have him Tim is among the nation's most prominent anti-racism activist educators and writers he has spent 25 years speaking to audiences in all 50 states on over 1,000 college and high school campuses at hundreds of professional and academic conferences and to community groups across the nation just like ours he has also lectured internationally and has trained corporates governments law enforcement and medical industry professionals on methods for dismantling racism in their institutions Wise's anti-racism work traces back to his days as a college activist in the 1980s fighting for divestment from and economic sanctions against apartheid in South Africa after his graduation who threw himself into social justice efforts full-time he became a community organizer in New Orleans public housing a policy analyst for children's advocacy groups focused on combating poverty and economic inequality he served as an adjunct professor and was also an advisor to the Fisk University Race Relations Institute in Nashville Tennessee he is the author of seven books including his highly acclaimed memoir white like me reflections on race from a privileged son as well as dear white America letter to a new minority and his latest under the influence shaming the poor praising the rich and sacrificing the future of America these books are available over here if you're interested in purchasing one and a new update on Tim which really interests me he's also on a five persons including President Barack Obama interviewed for the video exhibition on race relations in America featured at the newly opened National Museum of the African American history and culture in Washington DC Congrats Hugh donor so join me in welcoming Tim life I didn't know whether to put that piece in the bio to be perfectly honest because well because it could be perceived as like oh there's another white guy gentrifying black space again you know showing up in the African American History Museum where he doesn't really belong so I was sort of like no and then they said but the director wanted me to be in it so I was like I'm going to do it and then if I get pushed back I'll point them at the director and they can take it up take it up with Lonnie bunch anyway thank you so much for being here it is good to be back it's been almost exactly one year I think maybe a year and maybe two or three months since I was here before I don't know if you know some stuff changed in the country God is a weird 15 months I you know when I was here before I was like you know I remember Donald Trump had said something and I was like but I'm not going to dwell much on this because I don't really have to and guess I should have dwelled on it a little more so here's the thing I think you know about me if you've heard me speak before if you've read my stuff I am not known for my optimism you know like I'm not an overly pessimistic person either but I'm not known for my optimism I'm not cynical but I'm not known for my optimism so what I'm about to say may seem strange I try because I got teenagers 15 and 13 year old girls and I'm trying before they leave my home to instill in them some hope and some optimistic outlook so I'm trying to tease a silver lining from the incredibly dangerous storm clouds that I think we can probably most of us see and understand and feel in this country and I don't even know if I've convinced myself of this silver lining yet but I'm going to try it out on you and we're gonna and you may not buy it either because I don't know if I can sell it right but but but here's the thing like for the last eight years those of us who do this work myself very much included we have had to go around this country and convince people that racism was still a thing like for eight years that was sort of the subtext of our job that was our job description like no really it's still a thing and we didn't have to convince people of color of this white folks sometimes need a little coaxing you know it takes us world sort of slow on that stuff so we've had to be working really hard to convince white folks that these kind of discussions are you know this kind of stuff was even necessary so here's the silver lining in the current situation yeah I don't have to do that work anymore I mean there's something to be said I don't did I sell it or is it just it was sort of cynical but like funny cynical right I don't really have to pull teeth anymore because I think we sort of get it now increasingly or at least some do not all right it's sort of like and I know sports analogies are way overused but I'm from the south so you're going to have to indulge me for a minute it's sort of like back in the day and if you've always lived on the west coast you may not know this but those of us who live in the central of the eastern time zone on Sundays when CBS was the only network that showed NFL football right they had the in the south it was the noon game in the end the three game and the three o'clock game would always bleed over into what 60 minutes right it would bleed it now if you're on the west coast you got to see it in real time because they were starting the games that you know eight o'clock or 5:00 in the morning or whatever they were starting them out here but for us the three o'clock game would always get over around 6:15 all right and then the announcer would break in like the little voice over and they would say now back to your regularly scheduled programming that's sort of what the election of Donald Trump is y'all and I need you to understand it is back to your regularly scheduled programming all this other stuff for eight years that was like vlg ugly said this better than I did he said it's sort of like going to a Broadway show and that's the intermission right and then the intermission is over and it's like back to the show right and the reason it's important for me to say this is I think in the last several months people have been paralyzed by this fear understandable but a fear that is rooted at least in part in the idea that this is a really new deviation right that this is some new uniquely dangerous moment in American history right and one of the things that I do want to say that perhaps I don't know if it's optimistic or just trying to put things in perspective right is that one thing this is not is new right and the reason that's important to understand is if you think the monster in the room is one you've never seen before right you don't have any idea how to respond to it you don't know how to cite it it knocks you off that one's precisely because you're trying so hard to just decipher what it is but I want to suggest to you that the monster that stalks the country which by the way is not a man it's a movement it's a it's a it's an ideology it's not Trump it's Trump ISM that there's nothing really new about it and take heart in that because if the monster isn't new then our resistance doesn't have to be all that different we just got to keep doing what folks had been doing the very people who are chronicled in that museum that I'm honored to be a part of in that video because they know how to fight monsters and they've always fought monsters and I'm fairly confident that if Bull Connor could not lay black and brown folks low if Jim Clark in Selma could not lay black and brown folks low if Lester Maddox in Georgia could not lay black and brown folks low that Donald John Trump ain't going to be the one you also just know that so let's understand trumpism and first let's dispense with some of the nonsense right because there are still a lot of people who would have us believe that everything I just said however much it might be pretty rhetorically but it isn't really fair because after all it's not right of me to suggest that trumpism is first and foremost the white nationalist project that it's not so I hadn't said that yet but I just did but that's not fair Tim because you know these are folks who are first and foremost motivated by their economic anxiety here's how we know that that isn't true right first we know it's not true because if trumpism were rooted mostly in economic anxiety black and brown folks would have been lined up around the block to vote for him right because when it comes to economic anxiety people of color are the ones who always both quantitatively and qualitatively have a disproportionate share of it african-american folks even who have a college degree almost twice as likely as White's with a degree to be unemployed regardless of major by the way Latino and Latina folks with a college degree 50% more likely than whites with a degree to be out of work regardless of major Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders with a degree 23% more likely than whites with a degree to be out of work our indigenous brothers and sisters two-thirds more likely to be unemployed even when they have a degree relative to white folks so if economic anxiety were the principal driver this would have been a multicultural multiracial movement unprecedented in the history of America and I think it is safe to say that that is not what we saw that isn't to say economic anxiety isn't in the picture though right see this is the mistake we make in this country I think sometimes when we talk about class and race as separate phenomena that we ignore that yes it was about economic anxiety but only in relation to a backdrop of white supremacy and privilege and what I mean by that is that white identity for hundreds of years going back to the colonial period has been about the connection symbolically of whiteness to a form of asked superiority even when one's class position was wanting and lacking right in other words it was the way to tell even the poorest white person that you're better than even the best off person who isn't designated is white it with what W EBD boys would later call the psychological wage of whiteness and that is the coin of the realm in this culture and has been for a very long time especially if you're suffering because if you're rich this is redundant right this skin this is redundant for Donald Trump this is redundant right for Bill Gates this is redundant for anyone who has a whole lot of money right for those 38 people in this country who have the same net worth as the bottom half because those are the numbers by the way this is redundant but for the poor white Appalachian coal miner or assembly line worker in Pennsylvania this is often all they got and they will cash that check because this culture has told them that it has value so that's our dilemma it isn't that they don't suffer economic anxiety it's that they suffer it and by god they weren't supposed to have to right there's this thing called expectation ilysm which I don't know if it's a thing but it's a word I maybe I made it up I don't know I like it and one of the privileges and perks I suppose of being a white male is I can just make up words and get away with it so I'm going to use that when it serves a positive function right expectation ilysm right says to white folks you are supposed to have the best of everything but even if you don't you'll at least always have this so it isn't really shocking when a candidate for office would play on that so I'm saying it's not new it's not new at all it's been around for a very long time so it is about economic anxiety but only against a backdrop of racial supremacy trumpism is predicated on a few things in particular that we've seen before the first is of course nostalgia it is first and foremost a nostalgic movement right why the Hat says make America great again right doesn't say let's make America great for the first time because we really haven't ever gotten it right before not only because that won't fit on the hat but because the people who crafted the slogan wanted to appeal much like the Tea Party did before them to a nostalgic past and I know a little something about nostalgia because like I said I'm from the south and we do that with grits like that is what we do right I mean we had that song you've heard the song right wish I were in the land of cotton old times there are not forgotten look away look away and look away Dixieland and if y'all think the south of also the Civil War you haven't been paying attention just telling you the truth see sometimes victories take a really long time to manifest and materialize and folks go to sleep but that's what we do we do nostalgia and the whole nation under trumpism is gripped by that the notion that once upon a time we were great now they'll never tell you when you ask them win right because I do that because I'm pushy that way and obnoxious and I'll say well when you know when was it great and they always are like well you know because they know any answer they give makes him sound like a jerk right they can't give a good answer that's good I can't say the 50s because they're going to be like oh yeah wait you know they can't say the 1911 like teens or something because children are working in mines and factories they know that sounds terrible but you know in a way that's what they're thinking right we want to go back to this age of supposed innocence when everything was wonderful and so nostalgia makes up a big piece of it and that's nothing new the second thing trumpism is predicated on is a backlash to real or at least perceived gains but often real gains made by people of color if you want to understand what's going on in this country it's one thing to come and listen to me and I'm glad you're here and I'm totally going to sell your books in a minute so that's that's my subliminal I'm a slick salesman like that I just put it out there for you but uh read mine for sure but please read Carol Anderson's book Carol Anderson a brilliant scholar at Emory University who wrote this book white rage that came out about a year ago maybe 15 months ago it's a brilliant book because what she talks about and she does it in like only like 148 or 172 pages or something very quick very brief to the point talking about how every single iteration of progress specifically for black folks but I think you can make the same and now for peoples of color generally every demonym whiteness as power every advance was met not just with the term backlash which is almost a soft sell right but real rage whether that was the rage that met the end of enslavement right the Reconstruction era met with intense hatred and the resurrection of really slave like to slavery light conditions for african-american folk throughout the South a vicious resurgence of white supremacy culminating of course in Jim Crow laws when that when the great migration takes place and you have black folks moving north to escape conditions in the south they are met with a right significant rage in the Midwest and the Northeast and the industrial corridors of this country overt racial pogroms we call them race riots but that doesn't do it justice right racial pogroms orgies of violence that meet these migrants looking for work right again some themes repeat themselves over and over in our history as we see right now with the way that we treat migrant labor as well white rage that met the Brown versus Board of Education decision a kind of rage that led entire school districts to simply shut down their public schools in the south create white flight so-called Christian academies where the white folks could go and end black schools or black schooling after fifth grade or seventh grade or eighth grade it was a form of real rage we saw it culminate not only in the south in places like Boston all right and there were desegregation crises out here as you well know and so right west coast east south all around the country that kind of rage which met progress and of course then that culminates even beyond the desegregation backlash with the response to affirmative action the response the Fair Housing Act all kinds of backlash that we saw throughout the 80s and then of course with the advances signified or symbolized by the presidency of Barack Obama you get birtherism you get the Tea Party you get this I want my country back mentality putting aside how concrete the gains for black and brown folks really were in the years of the Obama administration and we can debate that I personally think there's a lot of core was left on the table so to speak I don't put that on him I put that on us and all of us together had to do more didn't do enough but the point is certainly was symbolic of advance it was symbolic of progress and it was met with the same kind of rage and so what we're seeing with trumpism is what we saw in the 60s in the early 70s it's what we saw in the 1920s in the 1930s it's what we saw in the 1890s the 1870s the 1880s even some of the same rhetoric right the rhetoric of white victimhood right the idea that we're the ones now it's what all the surveys say white folks are locked in this not only nostalgia for the past but this real fear that we're the ones being victimized not only the polls tell us that YouTube tells us right because you can get on YouTube and you can see videos of some of these folks right this one guy you saw him in the Starbucks this white man melted down in a Starbucks yelled at a black barista called her everything but a child of God used every possible racial slur pointed out I voted for Trump like that was at all relevant to his latte purchase right but he apparently got bad service and wanted to let everybody know that by god I'm a trump voter and you're a and he uses the n-word and it's all on video and his point was that he feels oppressed because he got bad service at the Starbucks y'all if if you think that bad service at the Starbucks like they put soy milk in and you asked for 2% like if you think that that is oppression you have just proven white privilege with a vengeance better than me or my books or Carol Anderson or her books or any person of color ever possibly good because if you think that's oppression you don't know what oppression is so thank you for the assist you know in the pedagogical approach of what I'm trying to do and there was the white woman in the Michael's in Chicago right bought too much stuff to fit into the plastic bags that they give you in so the black woman who was the clerk said hey we got these you know really cycling bags they'll just be $1 your stuff will fit in there better and she goes ballistic starts using racial slurs at her again talks about being a trump voter like it's relevant to her crafting or whatever she was doing with the stuff from Michael's once again thinking she's oppressed because they asked her to buy a one dollar bag goal a one dollar bag was oppression see this is what Robyn D'Angelo talks about his white fragility right this idea that we're just sort of like and it's funny because these are the people that call progressive snowflakes right these are the people that those of us who fight racism will your snowflakes because you can't handle what like you get triggered too easily you think everything is racism so we're the snowflakes this coming from people who sort of lost their mind when they redid Annie with the black character right these are you know you redid Annie with the black actress and Jamie Foxx it was like you can't redo Annie it's a classic she's an orphan and she has red hair you know and then they made roux black in the Hunger Games and we're like oh no no no you can't do that so you know sort of interesting when you call someone a snowflake and you melt that easily but that's sort of where white rage is it's gotten to this absurdity but it's always been there it was Justice Joseph Bradley of the Supreme Court in 1883 who first coined the concept of sort of reverse discrimination against white people when he along with his colleagues throughout many of the Reconstruction era civil rights laws by saying that it was time for the Negro to stop being the special favorite of the law and join the rest of us as mere citizens right this is sort of ironic considering that up until a few years before only whites could be citizens and were considered as such but now all that special treatment you know the Freedmen's Bureau which lasted about a minute and the Freedman's Bank which lasted about another minute was too much favoritism so again this stuff has been around and I want us to remember that because folks fought that then and we don't have to be disheartened now it's really not a unique moment it just goes to show that you know as I think we might all know Donald Trump didn't really think of something new this isn't this isn't this isn't some new stuff right it's a lot easier to fight the monster when you've seen him before that's all I'm saying the third thing that trumpism is predicated on is this long-standing divide and conquer thing now I think I probably talked about this last time I was here and I was actually I looked at the video this morning guys out I don't want to repeat myself but then Albert my buddy you know he says to me you know Tim when the Stones played they still do satisfaction so so I was like okay all right well I'm not Mick Jagger and y'all like paying me like the stones but but but if I did repeat this if I am being repetitive here it's because it's an important it's an important tune and an important note to to hit right you know the history of the country is the history of rich white men telling not rich white people that their enemies are black and brown I mean that's America sort of in a nutshell when it comes to racing class right if you had to put I don't know it may be too many syllables for a haiku but you know it's like basically if you had to come up with a very short phrase that you could I don't know maybe too long for a bumper sticker also but it's the history of America is the history of rich white men telling not rich white people that their enemies are black and brown it begins in the colonial period right when whiteness wasn't even a thing yet there was no white race we didn't love each other we spent most of our time in Europe killing each other the English hated the Irish Irish aided them back northern Italians didn't consider southern Italians to even be Italians all right the Germans hated everyone the feeling was quite often mutual right I mean the history of Europe was sort of the history of killing one another and looking for the witch alternately that was the other thing we did a lot we didn't consider ourselves one big happy family but all of a sudden in the middle of the 1700s there becomes a need for this thing called the white race well what changed what changed was rich folks looked around started counting and realized they were heavily outnumbered when you take African and slave folks European indentured servants just one level above and when you look at other peasants in the European group who maybe weren't indentured you put them together they outnumber the elite right yet a handful of folks that owned all the stuff and everybody else working for them see some things really don't change 400 years on we're back to that right and so they looked around and realized they had to figure out a way to get some of those poor Europeans on their team they create the notion of whiteness the white race give out little perks here and there you can enter into contracts testifying court you can vote at least if you're male we're going to put you on the slave patrol to keep those people in line right it's not real power you know you're on the slave Patrol you don't own the land right you know and this is important in an era of police misconduct in our country to understand this is the bright line of the first iteration of law enforcement with slave patrol right and black and brown folks know that see knowing your history is really important because I gather that a lot of white Americans don't know that history that stretches from slave patrols to the present and if you don't understand that and you don't understand the way in which black life has been discounted so regularly than a phrase like let alone a movement like black lives matter won't make sense to you right and then you'll say things like well but what about my life would you be but all lives matter don't I get with them but what about me I know all lives matter precious I know I know I got I got two white children I know you don't have to tell me that their lives my the problem is every police officer in America knows already and every teacher in America knows and every employer knows and every bank loan officer knows that their lives matter and that their credit record probably won't see that's the difference right but if you don't know the history including the slave patrol history all the way up to the present lots of misconduct in the Los Angeles area if you don't know enough about it just watch I think it was episode 2 of the five-part Oh Jay documentary on ESPN you'll know all you need to know about the history of the LAPD and it'll put everything in perspective for you if you didn't already know I know you know could have just asked some black folks and they would have told you could have just had some latina folks and they would have told you but a lot of times we just don't know this stuff because we haven't been taught not your fault right I wasn't taught it I took AP History that's the history for smart people and they still didn't teach me about that so you can't know what you weren't taught you can't teach what you don't know so anyway the divide and conquer starts in the 1700s and all the sudden the cross-racial rebellions that had begun to foment again not too familiar the Civil War air is the same thing you got rich white folks telling poor white folks that they got to go out and fight because the rich don't fight the rich are going to fight to keep their own property interest in other human beings their own get poor people to do that rich people if y'all aren't clear on this don't fight wars they get poor people to do the dirty work for them they get doctors to write notes saying they have heel spurs and can't go to vietnam that's what rich people do and if y'all don't know who I'm talking about you can just google that that's what the internet is for y'all so they get these poor folks to go fight but why would you do that if you are poor man I'm telling you that the reason the war needs to happen is to maintain my property interest in slaves because you do know we were real transparent about that 150 years ago we're embarrassed now so we lie oh it's not about that who knows about some sorghum gravy recipe or something it was states rights and and it was just we just wanted small government you know whatever I mean you know Jefferson Davis threatened to shoot women in Richmond who were protesting his government that's how much they believed in small government and the people but you know that's something we say now 150 years ago this southern elite were very clear that it was about white supremacy Alexander Stephens said that was the cornerstone of the Confederate government so we talked about it but how do you get poor folks who don't even own a human being right to go out and fight will you do it by telling them if you don't fight and they get their freedom they're going to take your job but they already had the job that's the point because if I got to charge you a dollar a day to work on your farm and you can get that guy over there to do it for free or that woman over there to do it for free because you own them guess who got the gig free got the gig people like free right and so ultimately the working-class quote-unquote white person their labor was under big right by the enslavement system they'd have been better off sticking it out with black folks to overthrow that but the psychological wage of whiteness said forget all that cash this check labor union movement same thing labor union leaders right you aren't even the elite they're just the elite within the labor struggle saying things like well you know we can't integrate the union it will reduce the professionalism of our craft no it will double your union and then when y'all go out on strike the boss can't hire the black folks the Latina expose in the asian-american folks to replace you and that's what they're going to do if you don't bring them in they're going to replace you with the very people you thought you were better than and then you'll get mad at who them not the boss divide and conquer so are we really surprised if this continues to work right are we really surprised when a politician says we got to build this wall right here because that's why y'all don't have jobs we just build a wall all the jobs will come back for real you think that's how capitalism works you think capitalists of America are sitting around going man I hope they don't figure out this thing about the wall because if they just figure out to build a wall we're going to have to give everybody a raise that's not how capitalism works capital will always jump borders in search of the highest rate of return goods will always cross borders in search of the highest price if you allow capital to cross and goods to cross but you don't that labor cross in search of the highest wage you inherently tilt the game against working people north and south of that border so once again working-class folks in this country white black and otherwise would be better off to have a larger and more militant working class right but you build that wall and you took off the prospects of that all together this isn't a lot of folks don't have work I did get you know I get emails like that young man writes to me and says I can't find a job because blacks and Mexicans are taking them all really all all the jobs they're taking all of the jobs where exactly are they taking them right people of color twice as likely to be unemployed it's like if they are taking them they're taking them like a block and then they're like yet done with that now every time I hear that I have this image in my head of some dairy farmer in Iowa wakes up 4:30 in the morning time to milk the cows time to milk the cows walks out to the barn to milk the cow looks around and goes well I'll be damned these cows have already been milked who did that right and then some black guy pops up around the side of the barn it's me Andre from Detroit I did that I took your job and then the farmers like no I mean it's absurd right but we have I mean the more you think about it more absurd it is that's why it's sort of funny but it's just this idea right that these people took my stuff and of course there are no Mexican folk that we're responsible for documented or not that were responsible for the meltdown on Wall Street but divide-and-conquer says we don't look at them divide and conquer says we look at the people at the very bottom of that system right or we say things like well you know Mexico's not sending their best like England sent their best right like I think it's relatively axiomatic that the best never leave right like like by definition the ones who are winning don't get on the boat right it's only the losers who get on the why would you get on the boat if you were winning why would you you wouldn't you would stay right where you are right it's only the and there's nothing wrong by the way with being the loser who either gets on the boat or crosses that border the difference is when you forget how you got here right see black folks know how they got here and indigenous people know there how they got here and we're here first and let's see next people know because they are indigenous let us not forget though we try to encourage them to forget they know that they were here long before most of the rest of us were it's only some of us from Europe that have this mythology what we came for freedom and they're coming for stuff yo we came for stuff we came for land we even even Liberty is some stuff that you didn't have in the other place but if you divide yourself from other people right then it's impossible to see yourself in them and to see them in you here's why this is not just an academic point and then I'm going to be done and take some questions and this is something I know I talked about last time and Edie actually talked about it in the service before I spoke because it had just come out in the news but it's really especially relevant now so you remember if you were here last time we talked about that research that had found this interesting and to some inexplicable spike in death rates among working-class white folks middle-age non-college educated white folks disproportionately from suicide opioid addiction or cirrhosis of the liver brought on by heavy drinking and it was the only subgroup between 1999 and 2013 that saw a spike in mortality right black mortality continued to drop latina ex mortality continued to drop but this one group right saw this spike 200 to 300,000 excess deaths relative to what should have happened had the other trends continued before 99 and so you start to wonder why why would this be the group well they call these things in the paper if you follow eight deaths of despair right that these are folks especially the opioid crisis which is sort of odd that we call it that right because there was an opioid crisis in the 70s that was disproportionately black brown and urban and we didn't call it that we call people junkies we did not counsel rehabilitation we threw them in prison we did the same thing in the 80s with the crack epidemic we didn't counsel rehab counseling or education or any form of forbearance we just locked people away now that it's salt-of-the-earth white folks in small town by God must help these people well absolutely I mean there's no no doubt to that we're just about 40 years too late to having that empathy and compassion but anyway right the interesting thing about this spiral in these depths of despair once again these aren't necessarily the people in the most pain right and I'm not trying to minimize their pain but again objectively every economic and social well-being indicator says that black and brown folks are overwhelmingly worse off but these are folks who because of that expectation ilysm that I referenced before got to grow up in a society saying that won't happen to me see if you tell folks and all you got to do is work hard and everything will work out see if you're a person of color you know it's never been that simple right black and brown folks know that that's a myth on a good day right people of color know they've worked hard all their lives often have nothing to show for it the only group in America that's really had the luxury of believing that myth and not all of us have but the only one that could've to any real extent have been white folks even working-class white folks because if I'm a working-class white guy historically is this not true I've always had the luxury of at least horizontal mobility which is what is that that's my granddaddy worked in the mine my daddy worked in the mine I work in the mine my son is going to work in the mine right as long as you're as long as you have a strong back and can lift stuff as the old saying goes you'll always have work once again no person of color ever took that for granted but a lot of white folks particularly white working-class men did and then when all the sudden the economy shifts under their feet right and the jobs are no longer there because of economic trends that they have no control over when all of a sudden the guy that operates the coal mine figures out it's cheaper to just blow the top off the mountain with dynamite right that doesn't take as many workers you don't have to get as many miners down there when you can just blow the top off the mountain and get the coal out that way it's not the not environmentalist it's not hippies that make the coal industry go away right it's rich white dudes who themselves never worked in a mind but owned one right and yet if I'm not prepared right if I'm not ready for setback because generally I haven't faced it or maybe I have but I always had the hope right the belief that my kids they'll be better off than than I was just like I was better off than my folks just like my folks were better off than my grandsons that trajectory held for a lot of history for the vast majority of white folks it still holds I would say for most but for this group right for whom it doesn't it's like oh no no you told me that I was going to have a seven or better on the scale of life if I just played by the rules and I'm only at a five and a half and I'm 45 years old staring down retirement here in about 20 years what am I going to do right I guess what I'm trying to say is white folks should have been listening to people of color all along because if we had we would have known that the system was rigged see we would have known that the system was a scam that it was a fraud that it was a hoax and maybe then we could have joined in solidarity with people of color to change that system rather than falling for the divide and conquer because the divide and conquer now it's not just that it takes people away from recognizing their class interest which obviously is no great shakes to them they don't really think about that right it's not just that it's that identifying with whiteness and the expectation ilysm that comes with it is literally killing folks because they don't have the coping skills to deal with setback it's something James Baldwin wrote about and I did quote him last time quote but I will do it again because this is one this is this is satisfaction not what I said this is this is the Mick Jagger moment whenever I quote James Baldwin this is what Baldwin said he was writing about black folks and the ability of people of color to overcome obstacles and the inability sometimes of the dominant group to do it he said the following he said I don't mean to romanticize suffering but that person who can never suffer can never grow up that man who has to snatch his manhood out of the fires of human cruelty that raged to destroy it every day learn something about himself in the process that no school and no church on earth can teach and that is a sense of his own authority and that is unshakable because in order to save his life he has to constantly figure out the meaning behind the words right when a person is constantly having to survive the worst that life can bring they cease to be afraid of the worst that life can bring see folks of coloring scared in this country right now are they concerned yes are they disturbed yes but are they afraid absolutely they are not because they have seen this movie before right and they know that that movie doesn't end until we say that it ends and if you haven't had a chance to go to that Museum in DC please do it it will restore you right you will see the images you will see NAT Turner's Bible you will see Emmett Till's original casket you will see the images of all those who came before this administration and tried tried tried to destroy the spark of liberty and freedom and justice that is always burned in black and brown folks breasts and souls and minds and have failed to do so and like I said if you come out of there and you still worried about this moment and this man and this presidency you need to go back through again and pay a little bit closer attention because at the end of the day we are the ones who will make America great not again but for the very first time thank you all so much for so as is my way I talk to you long but I do want to take a couple questions real quickly and then talk to you out back for a second as well yes yes yes whoever's got the mic we will get it to you but you got to move quick because we're running out it's on they're on you just got to speak and it'll work I'm with you yes my name is David what levers of power what mechanisms do you see as most effective in luring the lines and eliminating the line stepping or allowing people that are in a less privileged position to gain more power is it greater access to education and higher education is it well I think it's certainly important the problem with greater access to education and higher ed is that you know you can have a very well-funded apartheid educational system you can have a very well-funded apartheid healthcare system I think a lot of times what we do is we look at systems that we want to make better and we think well we could just have a program to deal with this or some money to deal with in money matters don't get me wrong but I think the problem in our schools is not just that we don't have the resources to make things more equitable it's that we don't have the pedagogical approach the curriculum or the necessary mentality to make things equitable as I tell teachers all the time this school system was set up to be unequal it's not an accident it's like you know if you think it's if you think it's just a matter of more money or this that the other you're missing the point it's like if you're at the if you're in a sausage factory and you're standing at the end of the conveyor belt and it keeps giving you sausage and you're wondering why you didn't get chicken nuggets you clearly didn't read the sign it's a sausage factory so it's going to keep giving you sausage until you reach all the machine and I think the problem is that we act sometimes even the most progressive of us like the system is failing how do we make the system work now the system's working y'all that's the problem the system is doing exactly what it was intended to do so the levers that we've got to to manipulate are the ones that literally change our mindset about what the purpose of schooling is is the purpose of school and just to help you get a job in a in an economy that's going to keep you vulnerable probably for the vast majority of your life is the purpose of Education to fundamentally transform the social structures and create greater equity for all and I think that's a mentality that we've got to have it as important if not more so than the money next question please yes yes Frank rich wrote an article in New York magazine recently I don't know if you saw it but his premise was to progressives don't worry about feeling empathy for the Trump voter just get mad and get to work right and a lot of the points are the same as you're making about these people that are really not able to act in their own interest do you have anything to add well here's the thing I you know I he makes a lot of really good points in the piece I still think empathy is valuable but it has to be reciprocal right in other words I am more than willing to empathize with another who's in pain because that pain of the class system is very real but I'm not going to empathize with you if you are not willing to empathize with those who you have demeaned and continue to demean if we're going to say well when we're out of work it's it's it's a crisis but when they're out of work it's because they're lazy that's not reciprocation right so a we need it to be reciprocal and be even if I empathize with you I'm not going to indulge your ridiculous diagnosis of your pain it's like look if I wake up and go oh I've got a pain in my side I'd need to google that I'm sure it must be cancer don't indulge my ridiculousness pull the plug shut down the computer tell me to go to a real doctor rather than coming up with my own diagnosis of the problem have empathy because maybe I'm really hurting but the odds of it being something serious rather than a pulled muscle are pretty thin and so I believe in empathy because the pain is real but I think it has to be reciprocal and and and we have to insist that people are willing to at least consider the possibility that the reason they are in pain is because they have not acted in solidarity with people of color to see if we'd acted in solidarity with people of color the whole concept of the public good wouldn't have been eradicated in this country but it has the reason we're angry at government intervention in the economy to help people is because for 45 years we've racialized government intervention in the economy to help people and so we've convinced folks the only folks we do that for those people over there and now you millions of white folks that need it and can't get it because we have demonized the very things that they need and if they're not willing to at least consider that I mean my thing is look I I'm gonna you know by god I'm going to love them enough to make sure that even the most ridiculous Trump supporter gets health care and and and food and shelter because I believe those are human rights so I'm just going to have to force you to like it I guess but but but will I work with people yeah I work with folks if they're willing to reciprocate and if they're willing to acknowledge that they have been played for fools because we all get played for fools sometimes it's no shame in that you just got to own it next question real quick okay hope you're whoever wants it right here um thank you very much I've never heard that this is my check yeah the question I have is you and mentioned early on in your talk about the silver lining that you tell your daughters or that you've been could you repeat that please because hahaha well I'm so happy you know right the one that I that I mentioned obviously is that sometimes the when things become more obvious right although that's a horrible thing we're seeing an uptick in overt racism we're seeing an uptick in overt hostility we're seeing ice raids we're seeing the Justice Department saying they're prepared to essentially turn police loose with very little accountability and do more stop and frisk and profiling on the one hand that's all horrific right the only silver lining and that is that at least now we for some we won't have to do the 101 the part that says no really there's still a race problem in fact there was a survey that came out yesterday that found a much larger percentage than had been true a few years ago of people saying that you know race relations are at a crisis point now they don't necessarily mean by that what I mean by that but the fact that people are talking about it they're paying attention to it the tension is palpable gives us if we are prepared to take advantage of that horrific thing gives us a tool that we didn't have in the Obama years in the Obama years the tool was we were having to fight sort of colorblind formalism right the idea that the less we talk about it the less we think about it the better because everything sort of resolving itself now we don't have the luxury of that and I think there are P who maybe fell into colorblind formalism in the last eight years who now have been woken up right if you saw for those of you who saw the SNL sketch right after the election this is a good place to close it's a brilliant sketch if you haven't seen it you should look it up so and it sort of encapsulates what I'm saying right there's there's for white folks in there Brooklyn apartment which is appropriate for a million different reasons but anyway for white folks and they got there one black friend at the time who's there who's Dave Chappelle who's come back for the show right and so he's sitting there and they're all they're all like we just know that Hillary Clinton is going to win it's going to be a historic night you know and and Chappelle's character goes yeah it's going to be a long night all right and and they go yeah they're waiting they're all excited and and all of a sudden the returns start to come in and they're not what they expect at least they're not what they expect Dave Chappelle apparently not shocked at all because people of color sort of knew this was quite possible and they're all sitting around one of them says well you know Vermont is still out and Chappelle says oh snap Vermont with their four electoral college votes you know and and then when it ends there all crusts fall and they're like oh my god you know this is the most racist thing that's ever happened in America and at this point Chris Rock has come and joined the party and and and he goes really the most racist thing that ever happened in America he goes in Chappelle says yeah you know my my great granddaddy used to tell me something about this but what did he know he was a slave right the whole point the whole point of this bit right is to say that now y'all see right now some of y'all see what we see and I got to tell you anything that allows even if it's not most even if it's just a bigger chunk of white America to see what people of color have always seen is a good thing so far as I'm concerned because it's the inability it's the myopia of whiteness that has generally been one of our biggest Achilles heels so I think that is if there is silver lining that's it but it won't mean anything unless we go out and take advantage of that moment thank you all so much thank you Tim [Applause]

Channel: All Saints Church Pasadena

Views: 349,882

Rating: 4.5235953 out of 5

Keywords: Progressive Christianity, Peace and justice, community, spirituality, peacemaking, sacred resistance, racism, white allies

Id: 6myUwP3wPfs

Length: 49min 26sec (2966 seconds)

Published: Wed May 10 2017