Racial progression in our generation | Michael Smith | TEDxFSCJ

let me start with the obvious here that giving a talk on why I stopped using the n-word is an if so facto admission that I have used the n-word and if you think it's uncomfortable to hear what you're about to hear try to be me and to say what I'm about to say and I appreciate your graciousness today the fact that I have said it I'll share a little bit about that but why I stopped or maybe I should say why I am purposing to stop saying it is much more important my journey to this day begins at 17 years old when I dropped out of high school and left my all-white world in Orlando Florida just outside of Orlando and relocated here to a little Church in College Park Georgia I was not raised in church never went to church and that's another TED talk by itself but I ended up going here leaving my senior year enrolling in ministry school and spent two years in this church in College Park in ministry school and kind of went on a transformational journey that I'm still on to this day this is a quarter of a century ago and during this time I also got a new nickname and I my name is Michael Smith but my new nickname became white Mike and I think through my photo it'll say all of a thousand words this is white Mike here with his roommate during ministry school and this is white Mike there on the Left walking into ministry school and that's white Mike being installed into ministry with my pastor and spiritual father I think you're seeing a trend here and this is a white Mike as a youth pastor teaching youth in this church in Atlanta and again you see a trend and I might want to come from people walk into a room and say have you seen Mike and they would say Mike who Smith apparently too difficult to grasp so white Mike became became as they say they censure of this how they know you so this how they knew now this continued to my adult life when I would travel out of town at other pastors functions preaching different ministries I would ever preachers that I was with wherever I was I was I was the white guy and I left an all-white world in Orlando and literally spent about 12 13 years in a world where it was less than 1% I mean and that's even with the margin of error the church when I started there was about a thousand people when I left it's about twenty thousand people and you know if there was a hundred or 200 white people that would be that would be generous even in my social you know this is a Christmas party with some family and friends you can barely see white Mike in there he's in there and this is even my wedding party and as I say who's the who's the intruder that's why it Mike's dad so you know short of short of my some other family members and and the dear friend that you can't see who's actually taking the picture there's no no white people around so this is this is me and when I when I've been on this journey and this church is still my church family as matter of fact I'll be leaving here to go there and spend a week in a conference I met a lot of beautiful people and I learned a lot of stuff I also learnt some ugly stuff about me and about the world in which we live and it's some of that ugliness that I I want to shine some light on today when I got there to Atlanta outside of Atlanta I learned about the inward and of course I knew the inward you know I was 17 so I you know I knew it but I learned their two versions of the n-word the one I was familiar with ends with an ER and igg ER and I got up there and learned one that ends not with an ER but with an A it's ni GGA and and I was shocked at this because I again leave my all-white world and I stumble into this place where GA is used a lot I mean a lot and and it was kind of took me back you know at first because I wasn't sure if people were trying to be funny or if or if or you know are people aware that I'm there and and and you know and it was thrown around a lot sometimes it was positive I know if it was preceded by the word my it was positive and sometimes it was you know you know some kind of aggresses you know said if it was my GA it was good or if I'd preach it you know a sermon or something that was good they'd say you know my GA but then if somebody's wondering where I was at and it was GA where are you it's it was a different thing so so not only was I here I was called it and this this this through me you know and again I showed you my roommate earlier he got me my first job first month in Atlanta again I'm 17 he's a manager at McDonald's opposed McDonald's I'm there's a there's a white store manager and then me I mean I'm in I'm a maintenance technician you know I clean up the vomit on the playground that kind of a deal and they introduced me to the staff and they say this is Mike and I meet this six foot six guy I mean you can understand all white world and I'm in this all black world and this guy that introduced me he's on the grill is for them some things they sis or my my keys are new maintance guy and the guy reaches over the counter and and calls me the n-word he's like GA how you doing and I and I remember freezing thinking look man if you want to fight I don't know any trouble I don't know I don't know what this is so that's 30 days in and so this would go on and so when I came on staff with the ministry they'd be in the staff meeting and they'd say look all you GA s be on time next week white Mike that you to white GA s to you be on time and so I'm kind of in this you know and it would be friends and family we'd be going out shopping and one of the ladies I had pictured earlier she would say you know what she would say and she would say to me and my best friend who was at my wedding she would say look ugh don't go out there and spend all the money you guys come home and you're spending no more than this and she would look at me and put her finger my face and she's yeah UGA - I'm talking to you - so this is kind of a major growth of transformation so hearing in and being called it eventually led to this idea of saying it and saying it became a great portion of entertainment for the people I was around because I was always encouraged to say it and you know we'd be in a fellowship or it's some sort of lunch or some sort of event or convention or whatever and and in down time somebody would inevitably bring up you know let's get the white guy to say the n-word and I didn't know a lot but I'm not a fool you know so I knew not to not to do this so and and it would it would become into they say it like Mike's AGA AGA come on say and then people don't for money I'll give you $10 if you say it I'll give you $10 I'll do and then people with pull money you know we'll all give you $10 if you said and I wouldn't I mean I just would not say it which would you know create more laughter the more you know nervous I got and and you know and we were one time we were eating its first time I tried chitlins which is no TED talk but how we reading it was in Thomasville Georgia and and and the come on white Mike say come on white Mike say it and one of my dear friends he's a pastor now originally Zell he was in some of the photos but he said he's over the corner he was eating and and and they were all you know nudging me and injury and and he says this reso says this he says oh he says it he won't say it around us but he says it which the whole place burst into laughter and then I was I mean I went from red to red you know Ted red you know I'm Ted red now he and her and they told me stay on the rug I was like red rug red rug anyway so so so I you know the state and and and but there laughter about he says it he won't say it around us took the focus off me and I escaped again this went on for about a decade and one day they had an anniversary service church anniversary service and they asked me they I had done this comedy and drama and stuff when I was in school and and my spiritual my pastors my spiritual parish said oh we want to tell Mike to do something at that the banquet just get up and do something funny which you know I don't I don't know so okay so you know I did it and I put together this little comedy thing I was one of the last people up for the night at ten minutes in the comedy was a mature she was you know it's nothing but but it was done with love and I was really there was 3,000 people there and it was a black-tie event rented out this huge conference center in the mayor's there and you know City Council people are there and celebrities are there and it's just a huge and and so they choose to give white mic the mic the night and so my last part of my bit was my journey with the inward and and I made all of their dreams come true every person that it offered me money every person that had nudged me on I closed out my act with my discovery of the N word since I'd been in Georgia for about ten years and a comedic Lee speaking although the writing was terrible the love that folks had for white Mike it killed people were in tears people were standing up clapping pointing yelling and it was just like you know a grand experiment you know to try this in a roomful of 3,000 people again with ten white people out of 3,000 and and so I got to the end and I and I acknowledge I said I know some of you are here and you don't like what I'm saying and it's making you nervous and it really bothers you and and and you're kind of put off by what I'm saying and I just want to tell you two things that I've learned before I quit and that is this and I I ended with my ended with this line dropped the mic and walked off the stage so now the place is nuts I mean I'm backstage putting the you know taking that stuff off it and and it's it's white Mike G a please oh my gosh Jed yeah but I'm standing in the parking lot people are stopping their cars to come over and hug me I can't believe it G are you crazy I mean it was all this kind of you know and that this has gone on that was 90 late 90s so via 15 17 years people still stop me today and say GA please now the interesting thing about this my talk now is bothering people here making people uncomfortable and had you caught me fifteen years ago this would have been my same answer to you because I didn't care because I knew who I was and I knew the credibility in the relationship equity that I had but when I talk about stopping saying the N word this is the first N word that I stopped saying and the reason I stopped saying this was not about did I have a quote unquote pass or could it be used in certain groups or did I have the credibility with the people that loved me and the families that had taken me in but I started noticing how it empowered other white people around me and I was amazed to see that people rode my coattail and would walk into settings and use the word under the auspices of comedy but it always had a tinge of negativity it was always anchored in some sort of stereotype and I remember when people would say it would be like the record scratching you know and and and and everybody would stop and it would arrest and I realized that they were basing their actions embolden and it kind of came out with this with it was kind of like said as a joke but you could hear some ugliness behind it and and it was kind of like people that hadn't bought in or hadn't hadn't invested were trying to maybe cover some ugliness through a you know kind of vicariously through me and it really grieved me I remember watching Dave Chappelle number of years later who talked about that fred was Michael is my god Sunset Strip richard pryor he realized that what he did it comedy to try to point out something negative to try to highlight something that need to be dealt with really empowered people to use it an untoward manner so I I stopped using n-word but now the n-word is really what's at issue here and this word ni g GE are totally different when I moved to Jacksonville and relocated I started to notice two systemic issues that we're going on in Jacksonville and I really as a pastor said I'm really want to deal with this and and teach on it and up came the idea of the N word now to appreciate my relationship with the ER word you have to go way back and you have to go to my childhood and I would have you know I come from a whole group of people who the family that that that you statements like look I'm not trying to be racist or nothing I'm just saying and you know whatever is following the words I'm just saying you know you understand so is a lot of stuff in there and so this is kind of where I came from as a matter of fact one of my one of the patriarchs my family that's about 12 years old pulled me aside one day there was a black gentleman a working outside I'm doing some yard work and he pulled me aside and say hey boy come here I said yeah he said you see that guy out there I said yeah he said I don't care what he drives what he wears where he lives or how much money he has he'll never be as good as you he said cuz you're white and he'll always be an ER he said you remember that forever and this shocked me because III knew to reject that overt prejudice overt racism I I just it it just affected me deeply so much so that when I saw my mother later I said hey you're not gonna believe what so-and-so told me and I told and my mom I can't tell you what all was said it involved a lot of you drunk redneck sob don't say that to my kid there was a lot of drama is like a mini Springer episode and and then and and and I remember just saying that's not who we are and I'm never being told that's not who we are but as I prep for this series on systemic racism and dealing with the n-word I had this form of supernatural recall and though I would have sworn that I wasn't prejudiced and there I was sworn that I you know had nothing to do with that I recall 15 years later the statement oh he says it but he doesn't say it around us and I thought about the n-word and nobody ever taught it to me nobody ever said it to me say this learn this but in my environment so much of my a conversation was dominated by this word from my childhood that I had never realized all my years in Atlanta I mean in word was ever we carried sticks in our cars that were in sticks we when when people would patch something together a sloppy way it was in rigged or or when when you tried to show off when somebody showed up at a family reunion nice stuff we called him in rich and and though I had rejected the overt racism that's not really where it's dangerous it's in the corners of our souls that is dangerous and I had absorbed it environmentally and didn't even know it was there and I mean I can go on and on Nursery Rhymes and things that I would recite to myself riding down the street on my bike I had no idea all that was in now please I'm not suggesting that all white people say this word I'm not suggesting that all white people come from this environment but I am suggesting that it's possible to be an associate pastor to 20,000 person black church and never realize that this stuff still lay somewhere inside you I'm suggesting that it's possible to have blind spots so deep that you can be functioning racially and sharing at work and everywhere else and not even realize the depths of the corners of the ugliness of your own soul the issue with the n-word is about public and private and what I mean by public and private is the n-word has lost traction publicly when my when my parents were little you could say it publicly and nobody would think anything about it but now we have it privately and we try to build a huge wall between public and private and we hope that whatever said privately doesn't hop over the wall and how many times do we see somebody caught on tape or a celebrity or something and what they're saying is Wow public and private is a matter of present company certain things you can't say publicly because present company won't allow it so we try to say things privately but when private becomes public then we have to apologize and I didn't mean and I was only trying to say I'm trying to be racial or another and we try to fix but but really public and private is not the issue that's not the battle for it with the n-word the real battle is inwardly public and private are a matter of present company in word is a matter of core beliefs inwardly is how we interpret events inwardly is how we assign guilt or innocence inwardly is how we create a vacuum for negative expectations just based on skin just based on racial definitions and norms and it's inwardly so he said I've removed the n-word publicly I know I can't get away I got to be careful privately but that's not really where the battle is it's the n-word issue that's the battle Hitler spoke and in Third Reich see our philosophy is a blue tuned bowden blood and soil that there's something about loyalty to German blood and loyalty to German soil that was valued and I will tell you this as a white American a first generation born after civil rights there's something in my blood and something in my soil that may not articulate the the ni g g ER but the construct that it represents still echoes inside me it echoes in ugly parts of me my work i'm a recipient of a Martin Luther King Trailblazer award for a seeking racial justice and and dedicated to equality and it doesn't matter what you label on the outside I know the echoes from my blood and from my soil and this causes me difficulty to interpret events you see it's hard for me to have a first response when I see a 12 or 14 year old girl in a bikini face down in the grass elbow on her neck knee and her back by a law enforcement officer it's hard for me to see that young girl because what cries out to me is the veinous the veinous of my forefathers the veinous of my land cries out and says well there's got to be an explanation here I know you see the video but what happened ahead of time or I know you saw this young man shot and I know you see his graduation picture but what was he really doing where is this vacuum of negative expectation come from it prize out from the blood that's been passed down to me it cries out from the soil so I don't snap to innocence I don't snap to seeing humanity I snap to some sort of negative expectation and construct not because I haven't removed it from my mouth but because I still need to scrape the insides on how I interpret day-in day-out things to him to remove that veinous I got to move from Venus to weenus because the vainest lets me know well in 50/50 events where he might be lying and she might be lying I let my veinous of my blood and soil interpret those events public and private is not the issue in word when I say have I stopped saying the n-word I haven't said it ger in 25 years I've not said GA in 13 or 14 years but I will tell you this inwardly I'm trying to get rid of the screen of where I came from Italy I'm trying to get rid of of that negativity I'm looking for new blood and new soil when I'm really wondering is what I'm gonna lean down and whisper into the ears of my own children what I need to say is not do you see them I need to lean down to my daughter and say you see her she's you you see her that's you why because maybe I can pass something different down to my blood maybe I can make better effort to change my soil so that the screams and the cries that were passed down to me maybe it may not be as loud my children have never heard me say it never heard me endorse that they'll certainly hear it but they'll never have an affirmation of the veinous from me I've stopped saying it outwardly I definitely don't say it privately and I made it my life goal to read it's normalcy from my inward because I don't want to walk in an anus it's weenus that we need for a brave new world thank you all

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 25,434

Rating: 4.8941565 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Humanities, Discrimination, Personal growth, Race

Id: Y9lEvaXodNc

Length: 19min 0sec (1140 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 23 2015