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- Welcome to everyone tonight.

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Thank you very much for joining us

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for our 2016 annual anti-racism lecture.

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My name is Marianne Yoshioka

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and I'm the dean of this
school for social work.

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I am so pleased tonight to introduce

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and present the lecture that will

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be delivered by Dr. John L. Jackson, Jr.

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Dr. Jackson is the dean of this school

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for social policy and practice

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and the Richard Perry University Professor

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at the University of Pennsylvania.

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His talk tonight is entitled Love, Race,

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and the Invisibility of Us
in a World of Us and Them.

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And he's going to
discuss the role of love,

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empathy, and mutual
recognition across racial lines

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in the context of social work
and social justice activism.

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The faculty and I had invited Dean Jackson

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to deliver this year's lecture

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after we read a very
thought-provoking chapter

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that he had written in a
book that came out in 2014.

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The book is Impolite Conversations,

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and the chapter is Obama
Makes Whites Whiter.

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In the world of academia,
I have to tell you,

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Dean Jackson is kind of a rockstar.

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Not only is he an endowed
University Professor

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and the Dean of the School of
Social Policy and Practice,

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but he is also a professor of anthropology

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in Penn's Department of Anthropology.

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He's also a professor of communications

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in the Annenberg School of Communications

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and he is also a professor
of Africana studies

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and their Department of Africana Studies.

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He's the author of five books

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and he has another one under contract.

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Titles include things
such as Racial Paranoia:

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The Unintended Consequences
of Political Correctness,

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Real Black: Adventures
in Racial Sincerity,

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Thin Description:
Ethnography and the African

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Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem,

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Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class

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in Contemporary Black America,

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and the one book I just
mentioned, Impolite Conversations.

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He's the author of numerous
reviewed publications

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and book reviews and chapters addressing

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the cultural production and
experience of race and class

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and topics such as the place of Israel in

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the African context, the positive
role that urban religions

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may play in improving outcomes
for under-served communities,

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and urban ethnographic methods.

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And if all that were not enough,

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Dean Jackson is also a filmmaker.

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He has produced a feature length film,

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fiction film, documentaries, film shorts,

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that have been screened at
festivals internationally.

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His most recent film, that was

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co-directed by Deborah A. Thomas,

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is entitled Bad Friday:
Rastafari After Coral Gardens,

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which examines the history
of violence in Jamaica

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through the eyes of it's
iconic Rastafarian community.

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Please help me in welcoming
Dean John Jackson.

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(audience clapping)

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- Thank you, that was exciting.

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I want to thank your dean so much

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for that beautiful introduction

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and for inviting me to come at all.

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I want to tell you that
if it gets really bad,

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I can project.

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- [Voiceover] Oh no, we're good.

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Okay, okay. We should be alright.

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The social psychology experiment
is now officially over.

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(audience laughing)

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So good evening.

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I wanted to tell you a couple of things

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really quickly to start.

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The first is that it's been
an incredibly long day,

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I'm sure, for everyone, so I'm
impressed you're even here.

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It shows you're committed,
so I want to thank you

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for taking the time to come out.

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I also want to let you
know that ultimately,

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the reason why I got into the academy,

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the reason why I'm here at all,

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was because I have always
been completely obsessed

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with thinking about how and why

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we hold categories like race
the way we do in society.

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So for me, this is the sweet spot

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of what I've been praying to kind of do.

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And so what I wanted to spend the next

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35 minutes, we'll see how it goes,

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talking through with you all

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is exactly how I'm
imagining the links between

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a discussion of race and
what I'm trying to develop

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hopefully for the next
book, which is an attempt

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to institutionalize a commitment

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to teaching people how to love better.

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And there's a punchline.

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The punchline, I'll give it away early.

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But there's a punchline that I
think social work at its best

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is about training folks to see

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folks who are otherwise made invisible.

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To see them fully, to see them totally,

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and to see them through a lens, through a

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framework of love and commitment.

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And I think that's a relatively
rare thing these days.

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So that's ultimately where we're going.

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But it starts, as far as I'm concerned,

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with the discussion about how and why

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I think race is such an interesting topic

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to think with and about.

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I think it is fascinating,
I still find it engaging.

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And I warn you that one of the things

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I'll probably be doing tonight is...

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Microphone 2, is it too disturbing?

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Should we try something else?

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I'll take the other mic.

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This mic a little better?

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- [Audience] Yeah!

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(audience clapping)

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- Now I feel like a stand-up comedian.

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(audience laughing)

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I'm not going to go on with this story

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but the one story I have about

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when I was a high school student,

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I think my parents would tell you

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I was a relatively easy
kid and I listened to them,

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but for some reason, when I
was maybe in the 10th grade,

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I got into my head that
for the rest of my life

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I wanted to be a professional
stand-up comedian.

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(audience laughing)

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And I don't know where this came from.

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Maybe watching too many
Saturday Night Live episodes

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on the weekend, but what it meant was

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I would sneak out of the
house at night, and we lived,

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so I don't know how many
folks know New York City,

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but we lived in Brooklyn.

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- [Voiceover] Whoo!

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Whoo, Brooklyn's in the
house, Brooklyn's everywhere.

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You can't go anywhere on the planet

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and people don't claim
they're from Brooklyn.

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But we lived in sort
of deep into Brooklyn.

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We lived so far from civilization

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that we got a free transfer to the train

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if we made it to the train.

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We just got on the train for free.

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Every week I would sneak out
of the house late at night,

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I'm making this too
long, I'll make it quick.

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(audience laughing)

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But you know, you have
me look like a stand-up.

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This is taking me back to high school.

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(audience laughing)

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So I would sneak out of the house,

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and my parents were
sleeping, get on the bus,

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another bus, come to the
train, come to Manhattan,

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and do these comedy clubs,
and I would record it.

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I mean I'll tell you, one thing I will you

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is I'm incredibly
hard-headed and stubborn.

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I think in good ways.

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And the reason why I know
that moment was so important

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for me is cause anyone
who knows me now will

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be able to tell you,
I am not funny at all.

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I've never been funny,
like not a shred of humor.

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But I wanted to do this,
and I will tell you though.

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So ultimately, you know, I got
found out and got in trouble.

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But it did eventuated me
because I was very good

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about recording my bit,
study and practice,

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sent I off to a radio station
in New York, FM station,

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and I got my own radio talk
show in the 11th grade.

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Alright, so that was the final two years.

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But part of what I want
to tell you today is

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I think there's something
about how we understand

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our commitment to race
that really is about

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thinking through all of those kinds of

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micro-decisions we make.

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I tell people, a lot of the reasons why

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I might seem successful, I
often don't feel successful,

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but I think I look successful
at least on paper to people

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is because early in my life, when I

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was still in high school and
thinking ridiculous thoughts

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about being a stand-up comedian,

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it turned out that I just got a break.

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You know, some crazy
producer at a radio station

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decided to give me a talk show.

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For two years, I was a real
rockstar in high school.

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You know what I mean?

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I interviewed Spike Lee and Tina Marie.

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I always tell people it
was downhill from there.

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(audience laughing)

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Like that was really the
best two years of my life

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and my final two years of high school.

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But I realized what it
reinforced in me was this idea of

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I can dream it, it can happen,

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And a lot of folks
don't have that feeling.

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And there's something about
the way we structure society

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often to dampen out that
spirit of possibility.

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And race I think, I would
argue, is one of those

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categories we use to
snuff out possibility,

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to make it harder, not easier,

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for people to dream their
worlds into existence.

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Now, when I was trained,
so my mom was a case worker

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in New York and so I
grew up in that space,

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but I'm trained as an anthropologist.

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I think for me, and I started
when your dean started,

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so that's two years ago,
and when we started in July,

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did you start in July?

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We didn't know we we're
going to have Michael Brown.

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We didn't know we we're
going to have Eric Garner.

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Black Lives Matter wasn't a
hashtag yet that we all knew.

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And so one of the things
I know from my first year

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as Dean of Penn's Social Justice School,

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is our students were an
inspiration through it all.

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Across campus, they were
clearly the organizing leaders.

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And where I think some of my fellow deans,

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the 12 of us altogether,
were a little anxious

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about what some of this
campus agitation would mean

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for what would develop in their schools,

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I was always incredibly encouraged

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by how much our students,
our social work students,

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were committed to trying to use this space

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to create something
constructive for the campus

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and for the larger Philadelphia community.

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And the first thing I realized

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was that what they didn't
want from the administration

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was faculty and deans and presidents

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prepackaging things for
them and giving it to them.

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What they wanted was to be in conversation

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with us about what's possible.

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To have the dialogue
start from the ground up.

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And that was something that was key

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cause it meant our job was
to work through all of that

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together over the course of that year.

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We did a lot of work.

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There's tons more to do, but we did a lot.

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And one of the central
components is trying to get our

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students to think more critically
about what race even is.

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What I love about the
discipline of anthropology,

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I feel like first of all,
there are a lot of interesting,

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even uncanny connections

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between social work and anthropology.

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The investment in the field,
right, field placement.

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We operation our fields differently,

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but we're doing our work in the field.

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There's also this wonderful
combination, I think,

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in both fields of both
humility and hubris, right.

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And some of the humilities
predicate on the same investment,

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so one thing I tell people
is what I'm trained to do

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as an anthropologist actually
serves me well as a dean, too,

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is to really listen to
people, to recognize that

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any human being is a more
than adequate ambassador

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for his or her or their cultural universe

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if you listen carefully enough.

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00:12:02.064 --> 00:12:03.836
Doesn't matter what
station or statue in life,

252
00:12:03.836 --> 00:12:07.785
they can tell you where
they come from, how they've

253
00:12:07.785 --> 00:12:11.240
come to be if you give them
a chance to articulate.

254
00:12:11.240 --> 00:12:13.539
And there's something about
just being willing to listen,

255
00:12:13.539 --> 00:12:18.321
my grandmother would have
called it suffering fools,

256
00:12:18.321 --> 00:12:20.537
you realize a fool can tell
you all you need to know

257
00:12:20.537 --> 00:12:23.039
about the world they existence
in, that quote-on-quote fool.

258
00:12:23.039 --> 00:12:27.533
So there's something I think
very humble about saying,

259
00:12:27.533 --> 00:12:30.687
I'm just going to sit and
learn from you, period,

260
00:12:30.687 --> 00:12:32.182
because I know I can.

261
00:12:32.182 --> 00:12:33.832
If my antenna are up high enough,

262
00:12:33.832 --> 00:12:36.964
if I'm really focused enough,
but at the very same time,

263
00:12:36.964 --> 00:12:40.547
the methodological
approach is also I think

264
00:12:42.042 --> 00:12:44.435
predicated on this really, I would argue,

265
00:12:44.435 --> 00:12:48.435
bold idea that it's not
enough to simply imagine

266
00:12:49.608 --> 00:12:53.827
we can intellectualize
ourselves out of our problems.

267
00:12:53.827 --> 00:12:57.171
There's a way in which at its best,

268
00:12:57.171 --> 00:12:59.151
I think both anthropology and social work,

269
00:12:59.151 --> 00:13:02.475
think so wildly holistically
about what they're project is.

270
00:13:02.475 --> 00:13:06.928
I often tell students the
way you know that's real

271
00:13:06.928 --> 00:13:10.917
is when you realize for the
first time in the field,

272
00:13:10.917 --> 00:13:13.705
whether that's in the field
while you're still a student

273
00:13:13.705 --> 00:13:15.438
or once you've graduated and have

274
00:13:15.438 --> 00:13:17.630
gone on with your professional career,

275
00:13:17.630 --> 00:13:21.028
that one of the first things to leave you

276
00:13:21.028 --> 00:13:23.325
in the moment, in the heat of the moment,

277
00:13:23.325 --> 00:13:26.516
when you're trying to
negotiate a complicated,

278
00:13:26.516 --> 00:13:28.166
difficult, maybe even
cathected experience,

279
00:13:28.166 --> 00:13:29.997
is whatever the theoretical
framework or scaffolding words

280
00:13:29.997 --> 00:13:32.997
you learned from textbook somewhere.

281
00:13:33.880 --> 00:13:37.031
In an instant, who and what you are,

282
00:13:37.031 --> 00:13:40.608
what you really think and feel
about the world, comes out.

283
00:13:40.608 --> 00:13:42.951
Maybe after the fact, when
you maybe beat yourself up

284
00:13:42.951 --> 00:13:44.867
for not doing what you imagined

285
00:13:44.867 --> 00:13:46.995
the higher virtue of angels of yourselves

286
00:13:46.995 --> 00:13:48.136
would have been able to pull off,

287
00:13:48.136 --> 00:13:50.985
you'll pull that theory back out.

288
00:13:50.985 --> 00:13:53.120
But ultimately what you're
trying to figure out is

289
00:13:53.120 --> 00:13:56.216
how do I find ways to take
these ideas that I know

290
00:13:56.216 --> 00:13:58.704
are important, that seem
powerful and compelling,

291
00:13:58.704 --> 00:14:02.596
and be able to draw on
them in a moment's notice.

292
00:14:02.596 --> 00:14:06.142
To have them so completely
internalized that

293
00:14:06.142 --> 00:14:10.228
I can use them almost
unthinkingly cause I trust them,

294
00:14:10.228 --> 00:14:14.050
cause I've found a way to
embrace them that's fundamental,

295
00:14:14.050 --> 00:14:18.357
that's careful, that's purposeful,
and that recognizes that

296
00:14:18.357 --> 00:14:21.018
it can trust the stuff that
we're doing and training

297
00:14:21.018 --> 00:14:25.061
ourselves to do in places
like Smith College.

298
00:14:25.061 --> 00:14:27.479
When I was studying race
as a graduate student,

299
00:14:27.479 --> 00:14:31.712
I feel like I was given
two, diametrically opposed,

300
00:14:31.712 --> 00:14:33.935
maybe even impossible to reconcile,

301
00:14:33.935 --> 00:14:36.384
understandings of what that meant.

302
00:14:36.384 --> 00:14:38.334
So one version of what we were getting

303
00:14:38.334 --> 00:14:42.110
is I think a term that isn't
even just academic anymore.

304
00:14:42.110 --> 00:14:44.940
Now it's gone public and popular.

305
00:14:44.940 --> 00:14:49.713
It's the idea that race
isn't biologically real.

306
00:14:49.713 --> 00:14:51.963
It's a social construction.

307
00:14:53.324 --> 00:14:56.016
It's a cultural concoction.

308
00:14:56.016 --> 00:15:00.041
We created racial categories,
imbued them with false

309
00:15:00.041 --> 00:15:03.739
biological specificity, and
then fooled ourselves into

310
00:15:03.739 --> 00:15:06.656
believing the bad biology was real.

311
00:15:08.333 --> 00:15:12.106
That race is in genes, in blood, in bones,

312
00:15:12.106 --> 00:15:15.499
as opposed to just a social contract.

313
00:15:15.499 --> 00:15:19.666
So part of the point was to
teach us to be able to disabuse

314
00:15:20.811 --> 00:15:25.194
people of their misperceptions
about what race actually is.

315
00:15:25.194 --> 00:15:26.820
The point being what?

316
00:15:26.820 --> 00:15:30.139
The point simply being if
you can convince people

317
00:15:30.139 --> 00:15:33.705
that race isn't real the way
they thought it was real,

318
00:15:33.705 --> 00:15:35.765
you might be able to inoculate them

319
00:15:35.765 --> 00:15:38.523
from some of its most
pernicious machinations.

320
00:15:38.523 --> 00:15:40.184
That was the idea.

321
00:15:40.184 --> 00:15:42.841
That you buy it, that
you think it's biology,

322
00:15:42.841 --> 00:15:45.200
it's natural, maybe even supernatural,

323
00:15:45.200 --> 00:15:47.054
these categories are
prepackaged, they can't move.

324
00:15:47.054 --> 00:15:50.554
You show people that it's moved over time.

325
00:15:51.432 --> 00:15:52.993
You show people it's different

326
00:15:52.993 --> 00:15:53.826
in different parts of the world.

327
00:15:53.826 --> 00:15:56.950
You recognize the simple
tests you can do to people

328
00:15:56.950 --> 00:16:01.593
to get them to understand how
porous the categories are,

329
00:16:01.593 --> 00:16:05.796
how little they can withstand
serious interrogation.

330
00:16:05.796 --> 00:16:09.963
The idea is people start
to divest their emotions,

331
00:16:12.370 --> 00:16:15.298
their commitments, their
politics in these categories.

332
00:16:15.298 --> 00:16:19.026
So one point would say
show them it's not biology,

333
00:16:19.026 --> 00:16:21.943
it's culture, it's social contract.

334
00:16:23.947 --> 00:16:26.612
But at the very same time,

335
00:16:26.612 --> 00:16:29.073
we were being told a different thing.

336
00:16:29.073 --> 00:16:31.417
That different thing
was that in a nutshell,

337
00:16:31.417 --> 00:16:33.012
there's something about culture

338
00:16:33.012 --> 00:16:34.639
and the productive force of culture,

339
00:16:34.639 --> 00:16:38.987
the power of the cultural,
that's sewage in ears,

340
00:16:38.987 --> 00:16:42.942
that doesn't have to be
reducible in any way to biology,

341
00:16:42.942 --> 00:16:45.570
to have impact on people's lives.

342
00:16:45.570 --> 00:16:50.050
That culture does what culture
does because it's culture,

343
00:16:50.050 --> 00:16:52.336
not because it's passing
itself off as biology,

344
00:16:52.336 --> 00:16:53.928
but because culture itself has

345
00:16:53.928 --> 00:16:57.974
an organizing principle
that's very powerful.

346
00:16:57.974 --> 00:17:00.319
One of the things, I won't
spend time doing it now,

347
00:17:00.319 --> 00:17:02.577
but one of the things I
would want you to think about

348
00:17:02.577 --> 00:17:04.368
if you haven't thought about this before

349
00:17:04.368 --> 00:17:07.659
is not what do we mean by
culture but what is culture,

350
00:17:07.659 --> 00:17:09.604
which I would argue is almost
kind of the easy question.

351
00:17:09.604 --> 00:17:13.771
The way to really flip it is
to ask you what isn't culture.

352
00:17:16.393 --> 00:17:18.564
The way to really frame that to tell you

353
00:17:18.564 --> 00:17:21.046
cause it gives you what
all the implications are

354
00:17:21.046 --> 00:17:22.631
with it, embedded in the question,

355
00:17:22.631 --> 00:17:25.752
is what is not merely culture.

356
00:17:25.752 --> 00:17:27.573
Right, we used to have these big debates,

357
00:17:27.573 --> 00:17:28.543
we're still having them,

358
00:17:28.543 --> 00:17:29.771
they don't use the terminology anymore,

359
00:17:29.771 --> 00:17:31.625
but we used to have these
big debates in the academy

360
00:17:31.625 --> 00:17:33.637
about nature versus nurture.

361
00:17:33.637 --> 00:17:34.811
What was the idea?

362
00:17:34.811 --> 00:17:37.840
The idea was if you could
prove something was natural,

363
00:17:37.840 --> 00:17:40.905
then that's the end of the discussion.

364
00:17:40.905 --> 00:17:42.889
Nothing else to do.

365
00:17:42.889 --> 00:17:46.626
Unless you want to be
unnatural, right, that's it.

366
00:17:46.626 --> 00:17:50.017
So the holy grail was trying
to find some way to determine

367
00:17:50.017 --> 00:17:53.650
that an act, a trait, a characteristic

368
00:17:53.650 --> 00:17:57.585
was somehow hardwired, so the
nature side of that divide

369
00:17:57.585 --> 00:17:59.697
was really supposed to be the trump card.

370
00:17:59.697 --> 00:18:01.935
If it was nurture, the argument went,

371
00:18:01.935 --> 00:18:04.666
well then we can nurture ourselves
into something different.

372
00:18:04.666 --> 00:18:07.655
That must be easy, that must be fungible.

373
00:18:07.655 --> 00:18:09.371
So there was always this discussion about

374
00:18:09.371 --> 00:18:11.382
is it nature, is it nurture.

375
00:18:11.382 --> 00:18:14.433
Nurture was always merely nurture.

376
00:18:14.433 --> 00:18:15.458
I would argue that one of the things

377
00:18:15.458 --> 00:18:17.140
that defines the 21st century,

378
00:18:17.140 --> 00:18:18.401
although I won't spend
a lot of time on this,

379
00:18:18.401 --> 00:18:20.561
we can talk about this if
you want in the Q and A,

380
00:18:20.561 --> 00:18:24.422
is that actually, we've reversed,
in some fundamental ways,

381
00:18:24.422 --> 00:18:28.506
understanding of what
that bifurcation means.

382
00:18:28.506 --> 00:18:30.558
That there's a capacity
we imagine we have,

383
00:18:30.558 --> 00:18:32.917
even if we think it's just hubris,

384
00:18:32.917 --> 00:18:37.084
to be able to engineer the
biological, the natural,

385
00:18:38.297 --> 00:18:41.697
we can grow what we want in fauna,

386
00:18:41.697 --> 00:18:43.444
we can do what we want with animals,

387
00:18:43.444 --> 00:18:45.393
we can create them from
scratch if we want to.

388
00:18:45.393 --> 00:18:48.355
There's a command and power
we imagine ourselves having

389
00:18:48.355 --> 00:18:50.647
over the natural, the predictabilities

390
00:18:50.647 --> 00:18:53.983
of what we create in the natural world

391
00:18:53.983 --> 00:18:55.819
that still is very different
from what we still think of

392
00:18:55.819 --> 00:19:00.346
as fundamentally unpredictable
about cultural change.

393
00:19:00.346 --> 00:19:01.746
It's something about the way we imagine

394
00:19:01.746 --> 00:19:05.057
we've mastered the tools
of the natural sciences

395
00:19:05.057 --> 00:19:06.782
that we still haven't quite found a way

396
00:19:06.782 --> 00:19:08.955
to imagine we can be as confident

397
00:19:08.955 --> 00:19:11.894
in mastering other cultural
and nurture sciences.

398
00:19:11.894 --> 00:19:13.067
But that was the debate.

399
00:19:13.067 --> 00:19:16.006
The debate was if we can say it's nature,

400
00:19:16.006 --> 00:19:17.721
then we say it can't be changed.

401
00:19:17.721 --> 00:19:18.843
Nurture, then maybe we can have

402
00:19:18.843 --> 00:19:21.001
a conversation about how
we do it differently.

403
00:19:21.001 --> 00:19:24.897
But I would argue, you can't
quite think about this idea

404
00:19:24.897 --> 00:19:29.064
of race not being biological
as the only way to understand

405
00:19:29.939 --> 00:19:34.106
its power, its purchase on
us today in the 21st century.

406
00:19:35.276 --> 00:19:38.529
And I'll maybe give you five
major themes that I would argue

407
00:19:38.529 --> 00:19:41.673
should be handlebars to hold onto

408
00:19:41.673 --> 00:19:43.446
if you want to think critically about

409
00:19:43.446 --> 00:19:45.535
how we engage race in
the contemporary moment.

410
00:19:45.535 --> 00:19:48.623
The first one is this myth, this fallacy,

411
00:19:48.623 --> 00:19:52.217
that race as social
construction is enough.

412
00:19:52.217 --> 00:19:53.896
That if we get people to give up

413
00:19:53.896 --> 00:19:55.802
on the idea that race is biology,

414
00:19:55.802 --> 00:19:59.553
then they won't engage in
the kind of racist activity.

415
00:19:59.553 --> 00:20:02.249
Biology is always
under-graded in the past.

416
00:20:02.249 --> 00:20:04.425
The character, the figure who I think

417
00:20:04.425 --> 00:20:05.493
is a wonderful example of this,

418
00:20:05.493 --> 00:20:06.763
I don't know if any folks
have heard of him here,

419
00:20:06.763 --> 00:20:09.258
and there's tons of versions
of these kinds of people,

420
00:20:09.258 --> 00:20:11.190
this is the one that I
constantly go back to

421
00:20:11.190 --> 00:20:13.407
because I happened to be
in Boston, Massachusetts

422
00:20:13.407 --> 00:20:15.663
in 1999 when this made headlines,

423
00:20:15.663 --> 00:20:17.993
there was this guy named Leo Felton.

424
00:20:17.993 --> 00:20:20.791
Anybody heard of Leo Felton?

425
00:20:20.791 --> 00:20:23.183
And so Leo Felton was famous in 1999

426
00:20:23.183 --> 00:20:25.816
because he's got busted in a Dunkin Donuts

427
00:20:25.816 --> 00:20:28.066
for passing off fake bills.

428
00:20:30.273 --> 00:20:32.262
They did a little more investigating,

429
00:20:32.262 --> 00:20:34.600
they found out this was
part of this very elaborate

430
00:20:34.600 --> 00:20:38.767
money laundering scheme
that was actually intended

431
00:20:39.729 --> 00:20:43.919
to finance a Neo-Nazi Skinhead
group's attempt to blow up

432
00:20:43.919 --> 00:20:48.086
Jewish monuments all around
Boston, Massachusetts.

433
00:20:50.248 --> 00:20:51.531
I heard about it then, but
that's actually not even

434
00:20:51.531 --> 00:20:53.781
why it became a huge story.

435
00:20:55.433 --> 00:20:57.105
It was a huge story because
the journalist began

436
00:20:57.105 --> 00:20:59.203
to do a little bit more investigating,

437
00:20:59.203 --> 00:21:01.730
and they realized Leo Felton was actually

438
00:21:01.730 --> 00:21:05.281
a part of this Neo-Nazi Skinhead group

439
00:21:05.281 --> 00:21:07.448
who was passing for white.

440
00:21:09.014 --> 00:21:11.425
He was a quote-on-quote
love child to the 1960s,

441
00:21:11.425 --> 00:21:15.008
ended up becoming a
part of this community,

442
00:21:15.856 --> 00:21:18.745
had to pretend he was from Southern Italy

443
00:21:18.745 --> 00:21:22.610
to explain the sort of
relative darkness of his hue.

444
00:21:22.610 --> 00:21:24.337
And when the journalist
found out about this,

445
00:21:24.337 --> 00:21:27.764
he said, is this guy writing
some kind of expose on him.

446
00:21:27.764 --> 00:21:29.095
He's trying to, you know, explain to us

447
00:21:29.095 --> 00:21:30.688
how and why the logic, no.

448
00:21:30.688 --> 00:21:33.586
He was there as a part of
this Neo-Nazi organization

449
00:21:33.586 --> 00:21:37.753
because he was committed to
the supremacy of whiteness.

450
00:21:38.958 --> 00:21:41.212
Not only that, what was most fascinating,

451
00:21:41.212 --> 00:21:45.015
is he had clearly understood
all of the arguments about

452
00:21:45.015 --> 00:21:47.765
race not being biologically real.

453
00:21:48.776 --> 00:21:50.158
And one of the ways he framed it,

454
00:21:50.158 --> 00:21:53.518
he framed his need to
pass for Southern Italian,

455
00:21:53.518 --> 00:21:57.741
was he said his compatriots
in the Neo-Nazi organization

456
00:21:57.741 --> 00:22:01.074
were still racial materialists, he said.

457
00:22:01.957 --> 00:22:03.979
They still thought race was in your blood

458
00:22:03.979 --> 00:22:06.339
and bone, it's something about it.

459
00:22:06.339 --> 00:22:08.734
He says, they don't realize that race

460
00:22:08.734 --> 00:22:12.995
isn't a biological reality,
it's something else.

461
00:22:12.995 --> 00:22:15.681
He talked in terms of spirit,
he can throw out anthropology,

462
00:22:15.681 --> 00:22:18.129
philosophy, quote folks at length,

463
00:22:18.129 --> 00:22:21.105
but part of what I find so
powerful about Leo Felton

464
00:22:21.105 --> 00:22:24.193
as an example, and this is
someone who got the memo

465
00:22:24.193 --> 00:22:26.583
about race not being biologically real,

466
00:22:26.583 --> 00:22:29.441
who could wax on about its
lack of biological moorings

467
00:22:29.441 --> 00:22:33.428
and could still use it to
organize some incredibly dangerous

468
00:22:33.428 --> 00:22:37.064
and ugly things under racist auspices.

469
00:22:37.064 --> 00:22:39.220
So there's something about, I would argue,

470
00:22:39.220 --> 00:22:41.270
the logic of what he's able to do there

471
00:22:41.270 --> 00:22:43.479
that should remind us of the limitations

472
00:22:43.479 --> 00:22:46.055
of simply thinking it's enough

473
00:22:46.055 --> 00:22:50.322
to disprove race is
biological scaffolding.

474
00:22:50.322 --> 00:22:52.328
So we have to think about what's beyond

475
00:22:52.328 --> 00:22:56.815
just that argument, what's
left, what else can we do.

476
00:22:56.815 --> 00:23:00.719
I think the other mistake
often we make with race

477
00:23:00.719 --> 00:23:04.241
is we want to imagine that there's a way

478
00:23:04.241 --> 00:23:07.462
of talking about race,
we always want to have

479
00:23:07.462 --> 00:23:10.310
national conversations,
national dialogues on race.

480
00:23:10.310 --> 00:23:12.728
But one of the things
actually no one wants to do

481
00:23:12.728 --> 00:23:17.614
in these dialogues is actually
listen to anyone else.

482
00:23:17.614 --> 00:23:20.614
We're good at performing discussion,

483
00:23:21.507 --> 00:23:25.594
which is really just a debate
cloaked as a discussion.

484
00:23:25.594 --> 00:23:29.761
So I'll wait either long enough
for you to tire yourself out

485
00:23:30.624 --> 00:23:33.727
or I'll wait until I find
some small area argument

486
00:23:33.727 --> 00:23:38.012
I can pounce on, but I'm
not really listening.

487
00:23:38.012 --> 00:23:40.762
What I know is real is that often

488
00:23:42.045 --> 00:23:44.079
when we look at our social networks,

489
00:23:44.079 --> 00:23:45.919
when we look at our social capital,

490
00:23:45.919 --> 00:23:48.536
even without trying we can reproduce

491
00:23:48.536 --> 00:23:52.119
some really pernicious
forms of segregation

492
00:23:53.198 --> 00:23:55.774
just among our friends and
family without even trying.

493
00:23:55.774 --> 00:23:57.125
They used to always say, you know,

494
00:23:57.125 --> 00:23:59.327
the sort of religious hour in America

495
00:23:59.327 --> 00:24:01.957
was the most segregated hour in the week.

496
00:24:01.957 --> 00:24:04.744
That the people who you go to
church with or synagogue with,

497
00:24:04.744 --> 00:24:07.681
not as diverse as you would want.

498
00:24:07.681 --> 00:24:10.766
I would argue there's
something really fundamental

499
00:24:10.766 --> 00:24:12.540
about pretending you can have a

500
00:24:12.540 --> 00:24:15.540
serious conversation with strangers.

501
00:24:17.102 --> 00:24:20.215
That's a set up, I would
argue. That's a set up.

502
00:24:20.215 --> 00:24:22.862
In some ways, that's the reason why

503
00:24:22.862 --> 00:24:26.697
we can be so adamant about
rooting for our sports teams.

504
00:24:26.697 --> 00:24:30.182
Cause part of what it
does, it allows us to have

505
00:24:30.182 --> 00:24:34.079
angst and anger and excitement
about something trivial,

506
00:24:34.079 --> 00:24:35.646
but something we're committed to,

507
00:24:35.646 --> 00:24:39.368
but it's something relatively innocuous.

508
00:24:39.368 --> 00:24:41.906
You can do that with somebody
you don't know at all.

509
00:24:41.906 --> 00:24:46.073
But it becomes really difficult
to have a tough conversation

510
00:24:47.459 --> 00:24:51.213
about prickly issues with
someone you don't care about,

511
00:24:51.213 --> 00:24:52.467
someone you don't know at all,

512
00:24:52.467 --> 00:24:54.400
which is why we don't do it.

513
00:24:54.400 --> 00:24:57.477
Which is why sometimes we spend years

514
00:24:57.477 --> 00:24:59.521
being coworkers with folk.

515
00:24:59.521 --> 00:25:01.049
We've never had them home for dinner,

516
00:25:01.049 --> 00:25:02.993
we've never had a serious conversation

517
00:25:02.993 --> 00:25:04.073
about this stuff we care about,

518
00:25:04.073 --> 00:25:06.061
and in some ways, I
would argue rightfully so

519
00:25:06.061 --> 00:25:10.068
because we know that especially
if we don't have a serious,

520
00:25:10.068 --> 00:25:13.251
substantive, strong tie
with that individual,

521
00:25:13.251 --> 00:25:15.764
the moment you say
something they don't like,

522
00:25:15.764 --> 00:25:17.181
what can they do?

523
00:25:18.296 --> 00:25:22.805
They write you off,
right. That's easy to do.

524
00:25:22.805 --> 00:25:25.335
And so one of the things I
think we have to think about

525
00:25:25.335 --> 00:25:28.069
is the conversations we want to have about

526
00:25:28.069 --> 00:25:30.481
these hot button issues,
and I'm talking about race,

527
00:25:30.481 --> 00:25:32.356
but we can talk about any of the seemingly

528
00:25:32.356 --> 00:25:34.224
controversial issues we have around

529
00:25:34.224 --> 00:25:37.613
cultural politics in
the contemporary moment.

530
00:25:37.613 --> 00:25:40.155
It's impossible to do it
if you're thinking deep

531
00:25:40.155 --> 00:25:45.015
conversation is the end and not
the means to some other end.

532
00:25:45.015 --> 00:25:47.283
So you have to think
about what's the real end.

533
00:25:47.283 --> 00:25:51.450
If it's just conversation for
conversation's sake, okay.

534
00:25:52.387 --> 00:25:55.547
But ultimately, usually,
we're communicating

535
00:25:55.547 --> 00:25:58.963
to get something done in the world.

536
00:25:58.963 --> 00:26:02.603
And so what are we trying to
get done with the discussion?

537
00:26:02.603 --> 00:26:04.670
If what we're trying to get done

538
00:26:04.670 --> 00:26:08.527
is to try to build a multiracial poly,

539
00:26:08.527 --> 00:26:10.494
trying to find a way to create a community

540
00:26:10.494 --> 00:26:13.839
that is as inclusive as possible.

541
00:26:13.839 --> 00:26:16.096
If it's about trying to
connect up with someone else

542
00:26:16.096 --> 00:26:18.039
so I know them, so they know me,

543
00:26:18.039 --> 00:26:21.372
so we're forging an actual relationship,

544
00:26:22.518 --> 00:26:25.274
that's a very different kind of project.

545
00:26:25.274 --> 00:26:27.850
It's not a one off conversation at all.

546
00:26:27.850 --> 00:26:31.676
It's a series of discussions,
sometimes freighted ones.

547
00:26:31.676 --> 00:26:35.422
One are the ways one of our
social work students framed it

548
00:26:35.422 --> 00:26:37.577
which I think is so powerful is to say

549
00:26:37.577 --> 00:26:42.436
you have to feel like you can
create spaces with someone

550
00:26:42.436 --> 00:26:46.335
and more than one someone
that are safe enough for you

551
00:26:46.335 --> 00:26:49.835
to be profoundly uncomfortable, difficult.

552
00:26:53.408 --> 00:26:55.577
We want to imagine we can have these

553
00:26:55.577 --> 00:26:57.566
gentile conversations about race,

554
00:26:57.566 --> 00:27:00.642
kinda almost of a tea and
crumpets kind of stuff.

555
00:27:00.642 --> 00:27:02.705
You know, I mean that's what we want

556
00:27:02.705 --> 00:27:04.559
because we're terrified
of affect, of emotion.

557
00:27:04.559 --> 00:27:07.892
Especially in the academy, but all over.

558
00:27:11.087 --> 00:27:12.163
But if you're going to talk seriously

559
00:27:12.163 --> 00:27:14.988
about any of this stuff
that you care about,

560
00:27:14.988 --> 00:27:17.408
and I always tell people, culture, art,

561
00:27:17.408 --> 00:27:22.119
that's the stuff that people
die over and they kill for.

562
00:27:22.119 --> 00:27:25.605
It's the stuff of culture, period.

563
00:27:25.605 --> 00:27:26.837
And just because it's culture doesn't mean

564
00:27:26.837 --> 00:27:29.791
that we are soft or innocuous.

565
00:27:29.791 --> 00:27:31.299
It's what we're committed to.

566
00:27:31.299 --> 00:27:33.643
And so one of the things I would argue

567
00:27:33.643 --> 00:27:36.584
is if you're going to be serious,

568
00:27:36.584 --> 00:27:39.260
there's going to be gnashing of teeth.

569
00:27:39.260 --> 00:27:41.507
It's going to be hard.

570
00:27:41.507 --> 00:27:42.796
It's going to mean after awhile,

571
00:27:42.796 --> 00:27:44.604
you're probably going to
need to stop and calm down

572
00:27:44.604 --> 00:27:46.701
so you have to trust that the person

573
00:27:46.701 --> 00:27:50.705
who you're having this discussion
with, this conversation,

574
00:27:50.705 --> 00:27:53.386
is committed to the relationship,

575
00:27:53.386 --> 00:27:55.691
committed to the community.

576
00:27:55.691 --> 00:27:57.359
If they're not, there's so many places

577
00:27:57.359 --> 00:27:59.286
where it's going to break down.

578
00:27:59.286 --> 00:28:00.895
Where actually, you can take a situation

579
00:28:00.895 --> 00:28:04.623
that's already fraught
and just make it worse.

580
00:28:04.623 --> 00:28:07.526
Have people go off into
their camps and corners.

581
00:28:07.526 --> 00:28:08.752
That's the key.

582
00:28:08.752 --> 00:28:10.760
What are you talking about race to do?

583
00:28:10.760 --> 00:28:13.310
What kind of community
are you trying to build?

584
00:28:13.310 --> 00:28:15.672
And if you have to be honest
with yourself about it.

585
00:28:15.672 --> 00:28:17.505
What is your end game?

586
00:28:19.085 --> 00:28:23.193
I think one of the things
that we're very good at doing

587
00:28:23.193 --> 00:28:25.860
is we're very good at using race

588
00:28:27.542 --> 00:28:29.875
to separate us's from thems.

589
00:28:33.007 --> 00:28:36.319
We do other things along the same line

590
00:28:36.319 --> 00:28:39.578
to divide up the we from the they,

591
00:28:39.578 --> 00:28:42.908
but race becomes one of the
trump cards in this discussion.

592
00:28:42.908 --> 00:28:43.741
Why?

593
00:28:43.741 --> 00:28:46.369
Because supposedly, it's immutable,

594
00:28:46.369 --> 00:28:49.653
it's unchangeable, it's genetic,
you can't tamper with it,

595
00:28:49.653 --> 00:28:53.461
and so it allows us to imagine
the categorical difference

596
00:28:53.461 --> 00:28:56.689
between us and them, again,
isn't merely culture,

597
00:28:56.689 --> 00:28:59.880
it's something else, it's
something more formative,

598
00:28:59.880 --> 00:29:02.433
it's something impossible to change.

599
00:29:02.433 --> 00:29:05.498
It's in their essence,
it's in the others' spirit.

600
00:29:05.498 --> 00:29:09.063
It's that hard and fast and absolutist tar

601
00:29:09.063 --> 00:29:11.897
that grounds our investments in

602
00:29:11.897 --> 00:29:14.026
racial reasoning and racial discourse.

603
00:29:14.026 --> 00:29:16.380
And so we use it to say
it's not us and them

604
00:29:16.380 --> 00:29:19.782
and some sort of porous,
easy-to-circumvent way,

605
00:29:19.782 --> 00:29:23.003
it's us versus them for all time,

606
00:29:23.003 --> 00:29:25.959
and our commitment to being against them

607
00:29:25.959 --> 00:29:29.876
actually, I would argue,
can be very generously

608
00:29:31.118 --> 00:29:34.768
simply a function of our love for us,

609
00:29:34.768 --> 00:29:37.116
the version of what we think us is.

610
00:29:37.116 --> 00:29:39.154
That's how we justify it.

611
00:29:39.154 --> 00:29:42.098
All the horrible things we
do to the them and the they

612
00:29:42.098 --> 00:29:44.877
because we love the us so much.

613
00:29:44.877 --> 00:29:48.475
W. E. B. Dubois over a
hundred years ago now

614
00:29:48.475 --> 00:29:50.947
was famous for saying,
asking a simple question

615
00:29:50.947 --> 00:29:52.956
rhetorically but still powerful.

616
00:29:52.956 --> 00:29:55.272
His question simply put was

617
00:29:55.272 --> 00:29:58.235
how does it feel to be a problem?

618
00:29:58.235 --> 00:30:01.088
How does it feel to be a problem?

619
00:30:01.088 --> 00:30:04.149
And in the academy, we
spend a lot of time,

620
00:30:04.149 --> 00:30:06.239
especially in the social sciences,

621
00:30:06.239 --> 00:30:09.669
thinking about the latter
half of that question.

622
00:30:09.669 --> 00:30:11.173
What do we mean by problem?

623
00:30:11.173 --> 00:30:12.555
How do we operationalize it?

624
00:30:12.555 --> 00:30:13.983
How do we measure it?

625
00:30:13.983 --> 00:30:15.122
What are the metrics?

626
00:30:15.122 --> 00:30:17.306
Right, that's what we think
about: the problem side.

627
00:30:17.306 --> 00:30:19.611
And Dubois did a lot on that.

628
00:30:19.611 --> 00:30:21.125
But I think just as powerfully,
just as evocatively,

629
00:30:21.125 --> 00:30:22.625
is the first part.

630
00:30:23.968 --> 00:30:27.368
How does it feel to be a problem?

631
00:30:27.368 --> 00:30:30.073
How does that feel both for the person

632
00:30:30.073 --> 00:30:34.493
imagining themselves to
see a problem in the other

633
00:30:34.493 --> 00:30:36.243
and for the individual, individuals

634
00:30:36.243 --> 00:30:38.586
so stigmatized as the problem themselves.

635
00:30:38.586 --> 00:30:41.162
How does that actually feel?

636
00:30:41.162 --> 00:30:42.658
There's so much about, I think,

637
00:30:42.658 --> 00:30:45.298
what's incredibly inadequate

638
00:30:45.298 --> 00:30:49.418
about the academy's
response to these issues

639
00:30:49.418 --> 00:30:51.770
that is simply, I think,
a function to the fact

640
00:30:51.770 --> 00:30:54.216
that we drank the Kool-Aid,

641
00:30:54.216 --> 00:30:55.546
a certain version of the Kool-Aid

642
00:30:55.546 --> 00:30:57.905
about what defines our species being.

643
00:30:57.905 --> 00:31:02.194
And it's this idea that we
think therefore we are, right.

644
00:31:02.194 --> 00:31:04.345
The very reason right,
that's what separates us

645
00:31:04.345 --> 00:31:06.329
from all the other species on this planet.

646
00:31:06.329 --> 00:31:09.426
Of course, that's not an
anthropological position.

647
00:31:09.426 --> 00:31:11.287
That's not what separates
us, we would argue,

648
00:31:11.287 --> 00:31:12.783
we have other things we would use.

649
00:31:12.783 --> 00:31:16.738
But we have this fantasy
that part of what we,

650
00:31:16.738 --> 00:31:18.520
the engine that makes us so distinctive

651
00:31:18.520 --> 00:31:21.734
and that we can explain
all of our activities

652
00:31:21.734 --> 00:31:24.663
as a function is this
fact that we can cogitate,

653
00:31:24.663 --> 00:31:26.252
that we think so deeply.

654
00:31:26.252 --> 00:31:29.696
Where as one of the
things race teaches you,

655
00:31:29.696 --> 00:31:32.397
again coming on a discussion of culture,

656
00:31:32.397 --> 00:31:36.987
is that all of the stuff
that we do in practice

657
00:31:36.987 --> 00:31:41.154
is almost exclusively done at
a certain level unthinkingly.

658
00:31:45.365 --> 00:31:46.198
By robot.

659
00:31:47.927 --> 00:31:51.593
Part of why I argue culture's
so incredibly fascinating

660
00:31:51.593 --> 00:31:53.922
to study and race is just
sort of one subject of that

661
00:31:53.922 --> 00:31:58.009
is because we can do culture
without even trying to do it.

662
00:31:58.009 --> 00:32:00.442
We used to call it second
nature in the academy.

663
00:32:00.442 --> 00:32:02.809
I felt like the air you breathe,

664
00:32:02.809 --> 00:32:05.556
and suddenly it's the very frame,

665
00:32:05.556 --> 00:32:07.123
it's the lens, it's the eyeballs

666
00:32:07.123 --> 00:32:08.852
you use to see the world.

667
00:32:08.852 --> 00:32:11.137
So part of your problem
then as someone trying

668
00:32:11.137 --> 00:32:14.203
to do a study of something like race

669
00:32:14.203 --> 00:32:16.043
is trying to figure out
how do you understand

670
00:32:16.043 --> 00:32:19.782
the beast when you're inside
the belly of the beast.

671
00:32:19.782 --> 00:32:21.606
What kind of study is that?

672
00:32:21.606 --> 00:32:24.437
How do you get critical
distance in that context?

673
00:32:24.437 --> 00:32:25.687
Is it possible?

674
00:32:28.298 --> 00:32:29.984
One of the things I've always

675
00:32:29.984 --> 00:32:32.100
thought was incredibly powerful.

676
00:32:32.100 --> 00:32:35.521
So when I started two years ago as dean,

677
00:32:35.521 --> 00:32:37.073
the first thing I did was just to go out

678
00:32:37.073 --> 00:32:38.880
to a lot of our field placement sites

679
00:32:38.880 --> 00:32:41.021
to speak to our field
placement supervisors.

680
00:32:41.021 --> 00:32:44.740
And you know, we're all over Philadelphia.

681
00:32:44.740 --> 00:32:47.253
And I remember there
was this one principal

682
00:32:47.253 --> 00:32:49.394
who was actually a graduate of Penn

683
00:32:49.394 --> 00:32:52.561
at a high school in North Philadelphia

684
00:32:54.749 --> 00:32:58.916
who framed his approach to
teaching these young people

685
00:33:00.236 --> 00:33:03.871
in a way that I felt like
I wished I could hear more

686
00:33:03.871 --> 00:33:07.500
because it was so incredibly moving.

687
00:33:07.500 --> 00:33:10.201
And so what he did basically
when I went to visit him,

688
00:33:10.201 --> 00:33:11.712
was he sat me down in his office,

689
00:33:11.712 --> 00:33:14.220
we were there for maybe
30 minutes, that's all.

690
00:33:14.220 --> 00:33:15.689
And he explained to me how it was

691
00:33:15.689 --> 00:33:20.260
that he came to realize that
before he taught a single one,

692
00:33:20.260 --> 00:33:23.074
and these are poor black
and brown young people

693
00:33:23.074 --> 00:33:25.146
in North Philadelphia, he said

694
00:33:25.146 --> 00:33:27.520
before I can get them to learn math,

695
00:33:27.520 --> 00:33:30.260
to read a sentence or a
paragraph of anything,

696
00:33:30.260 --> 00:33:34.164
I have to convince these young people,

697
00:33:34.164 --> 00:33:38.117
I have to really convince
them that I love them.

698
00:33:38.117 --> 00:33:40.182
He said if I don't that,
I don't have a fighting,

699
00:33:40.182 --> 00:33:41.948
I can't do anything else.

700
00:33:41.948 --> 00:33:43.829
We might as well just
close this place down.

701
00:33:43.829 --> 00:33:47.939
He said not only that but I
won't hire a single person

702
00:33:47.939 --> 00:33:50.861
in this building, not to mop the floors,

703
00:33:50.861 --> 00:33:54.285
not to serve the food, yet
alone teach any of the subjects

704
00:33:54.285 --> 00:33:57.380
unless they prove to me
they love these kids.

705
00:33:57.380 --> 00:33:59.213
Period, unequivocally.

706
00:34:00.244 --> 00:34:02.304
Now, I had never really heard a principal,

707
00:34:02.304 --> 00:34:05.081
and it was clear he was
serious, by the way.

708
00:34:05.081 --> 00:34:06.531
He was serious.

709
00:34:06.531 --> 00:34:08.402
So I thought, wow this is incredible.

710
00:34:08.402 --> 00:34:09.966
I mean even when I think about it now

711
00:34:09.966 --> 00:34:12.240
and place myself back in that space,

712
00:34:12.240 --> 00:34:14.448
the hairs on the back of my neck stand up

713
00:34:14.448 --> 00:34:17.772
because it was so definitive
for him what his job was.

714
00:34:17.772 --> 00:34:20.579
And I have to tell you,
just the year before,

715
00:34:20.579 --> 00:34:21.990
so I teach a lot of film classes,

716
00:34:21.990 --> 00:34:24.035
and somethings sometimes
very experimental classes.

717
00:34:24.035 --> 00:34:26.286
And one of the classes that
I had taught the year before

718
00:34:26.286 --> 00:34:30.096
was a class that had Penn
students, both undergrad and grad,

719
00:34:30.096 --> 00:34:32.645
collaborating with a different Westfield,

720
00:34:32.645 --> 00:34:35.196
Westfield different different high school

721
00:34:35.196 --> 00:34:39.363
on a documentary film about
criminal justice and police.

722
00:34:42.254 --> 00:34:44.432
We did another one on public
education in Philadelphia,

723
00:34:44.432 --> 00:34:46.388
both incredibly controversial topics

724
00:34:46.388 --> 00:34:48.095
and difficult to pull off.

725
00:34:48.095 --> 00:34:49.626
But I remember when we did that class,

726
00:34:49.626 --> 00:34:51.675
the year before I met this principal,

727
00:34:51.675 --> 00:34:54.622
after our first session
at the high school,

728
00:34:54.622 --> 00:34:56.125
when we got back to Penn the next week,

729
00:34:56.125 --> 00:34:59.504
it was almost like we had
to have an intervention

730
00:34:59.504 --> 00:35:03.029
with the Penn undergraduate
and graduate students

731
00:35:03.029 --> 00:35:05.037
because they were traumatized
by what they heard,

732
00:35:05.037 --> 00:35:07.386
by what they felt and saw in the

733
00:35:07.386 --> 00:35:09.751
West Philadelphia high school classroom.

734
00:35:09.751 --> 00:35:11.551
And at the time, I wouldn't have used love

735
00:35:11.551 --> 00:35:15.965
as the analytic to frame, but
what they saw, I would argue,

736
00:35:15.965 --> 00:35:18.982
was young people who
had accurately diagnosed

737
00:35:18.982 --> 00:35:21.357
that the folks who should care about them,

738
00:35:21.357 --> 00:35:23.029
in and across the city,

739
00:35:23.029 --> 00:35:27.208
didn't care about them
and didn't love them.

740
00:35:27.208 --> 00:35:29.266
And there was so many reasons why it meant

741
00:35:29.266 --> 00:35:32.255
they didn't trust a group of Penn folks

742
00:35:32.255 --> 00:35:34.558
parachuting in for a day,

743
00:35:34.558 --> 00:35:35.883
telling them they're going to spend

744
00:35:35.883 --> 00:35:37.469
the semester working with them on issues

745
00:35:37.469 --> 00:35:39.544
of criminal justice and police.

746
00:35:39.544 --> 00:35:41.029
Cause there are so many reasons why

747
00:35:41.029 --> 00:35:45.081
they had good, ample evidence of affect

748
00:35:45.081 --> 00:35:47.394
that most people didn't care about,

749
00:35:47.394 --> 00:35:49.109
didn't actually love them.

750
00:35:49.109 --> 00:35:53.089
And so to hear this
principal just the year after

751
00:35:53.089 --> 00:35:56.403
talking in incredibly eloquent ways about

752
00:35:56.403 --> 00:35:58.856
how he tries to institutionalize

753
00:35:58.856 --> 00:36:01.441
his investment in the
love of these young people

754
00:36:01.441 --> 00:36:03.999
was really powerful for
me but even less powerful

755
00:36:03.999 --> 00:36:06.145
than what happened after that,

756
00:36:06.145 --> 00:36:08.116
which is he said, you're going.

757
00:36:08.116 --> 00:36:10.507
I want you to go on a tour of the school

758
00:36:10.507 --> 00:36:13.344
with the young people themselves.

759
00:36:13.344 --> 00:36:15.972
And they spent, I don't
know how long it was,

760
00:36:15.972 --> 00:36:17.948
maybe an hour, hour and a half,

761
00:36:17.948 --> 00:36:20.430
taking me around their
school, and it was the most

762
00:36:20.430 --> 00:36:24.250
moving hour and a half
I've had so far as dean.

763
00:36:24.250 --> 00:36:25.083
Why?

764
00:36:25.991 --> 00:36:28.450
Because it was clear those young people,

765
00:36:28.450 --> 00:36:31.200
poor young folks in Philadelphia,

766
00:36:32.351 --> 00:36:35.618
at least in the context of that classroom,

767
00:36:35.618 --> 00:36:38.264
felt those folks loved
and cared about them.

768
00:36:38.264 --> 00:36:40.503
And it did make all the difference.

769
00:36:40.503 --> 00:36:42.787
Now, often I feel like you say terms

770
00:36:42.787 --> 00:36:45.428
like love and rightfully so,

771
00:36:45.428 --> 00:36:48.907
it feels like something very
trivial and superficial.

772
00:36:48.907 --> 00:36:51.098
What is this love thing?

773
00:36:51.098 --> 00:36:53.953
And one of the reasons why
it feels that way I think

774
00:36:53.953 --> 00:36:57.784
is because we set up this
false dichotomy between

775
00:36:57.784 --> 00:37:00.308
structural analyses or
structure on one end

776
00:37:00.308 --> 00:37:03.192
and agents of possibility on the other.

777
00:37:03.192 --> 00:37:06.616
So either we are talking, we
think about structures that

778
00:37:06.616 --> 00:37:09.199
produce and reproduce all kinds

779
00:37:10.247 --> 00:37:12.435
of exploitations and marginalizations,

780
00:37:12.435 --> 00:37:14.563
including racial as one of those.

781
00:37:14.563 --> 00:37:17.396
Or we're talking about individuals

782
00:37:18.560 --> 00:37:20.890
who are responsible for their own

783
00:37:20.890 --> 00:37:23.944
well-being, their own marginalization.

784
00:37:23.944 --> 00:37:26.014
So we think that part of what
we're trying to figure out is

785
00:37:26.014 --> 00:37:29.465
are we on the agency side of things

786
00:37:29.465 --> 00:37:31.495
where folks are responsible
for what they do

787
00:37:31.495 --> 00:37:34.182
or in the structure side
of things, how we set up,

788
00:37:34.182 --> 00:37:37.784
where in some ways, society
quote-on-quote is responsible.

789
00:37:37.784 --> 00:37:40.367
So that's a false
dichotomy, I would argue.

790
00:37:40.367 --> 00:37:42.321
Part of what we're trying to think about

791
00:37:42.321 --> 00:37:43.835
is exactly how do we understand,

792
00:37:43.835 --> 00:37:46.394
and in the certain sliver
of the social sciences,

793
00:37:46.394 --> 00:37:48.089
folks would call this practice theory,

794
00:37:48.089 --> 00:37:49.273
but they would be using practice

795
00:37:49.273 --> 00:37:50.415
in a very different kind of way.

796
00:37:50.415 --> 00:37:52.039
But part of what we're
trying to figure out is

797
00:37:52.039 --> 00:37:55.523
how do you put these two
pieces together humanely?

798
00:37:55.523 --> 00:37:57.676
How do you think about the structural,

799
00:37:57.676 --> 00:38:00.451
Macral structural forces,
that do predetermine

800
00:38:00.451 --> 00:38:03.038
certain possibilities for all of us?

801
00:38:03.038 --> 00:38:06.483
No one's outside the
structuration of society.

802
00:38:06.483 --> 00:38:10.253
So how do you understand
its workings, its history?

803
00:38:10.253 --> 00:38:12.383
What do you understand
about the history allows you

804
00:38:12.383 --> 00:38:15.293
to make decisions about policy,
to potentially change it,

805
00:38:15.293 --> 00:38:17.562
open it up, make it more inclusive.

806
00:38:17.562 --> 00:38:19.548
But that doesn't mean you're imagining

807
00:38:19.548 --> 00:38:22.623
individuals aren't making
choices at forks in the road.

808
00:38:22.623 --> 00:38:25.513
They're making choices every single day.

809
00:38:25.513 --> 00:38:27.344
And part of what you want to imagine is

810
00:38:27.344 --> 00:38:30.700
there are ways you can
structure society such that

811
00:38:30.700 --> 00:38:34.867
they're making choices that
are actual, bonafide choices.

812
00:38:37.989 --> 00:38:39.498
Patricia Williams, one of these critical

813
00:38:39.498 --> 00:38:41.982
race study scholars out of law,

814
00:38:41.982 --> 00:38:43.631
is very good about getting people

815
00:38:43.631 --> 00:38:45.499
to think through all the ways in which

816
00:38:45.499 --> 00:38:48.069
we want to pretend we have choices

817
00:38:48.069 --> 00:38:50.498
for people that aren't actually choices.

818
00:38:50.498 --> 00:38:51.566
It's the difference between a rock

819
00:38:51.566 --> 00:38:53.279
and a hard place scenario.

820
00:38:53.279 --> 00:38:55.139
We want to call, we want to use the trope,

821
00:38:55.139 --> 00:38:57.278
the framework of choice.

822
00:38:57.278 --> 00:38:58.814
Often it's not choice.

823
00:38:58.814 --> 00:39:00.895
Maybe it's the lesser of
three or four or five evils.

824
00:39:00.895 --> 00:39:04.899
Maybe it's choosing trapdoor number one

825
00:39:04.899 --> 00:39:06.687
or trapdoor number two, but the idea is

826
00:39:06.687 --> 00:39:09.941
to think about all the ways
in which we structure society

827
00:39:09.941 --> 00:39:14.386
such that agents have a harder
or easier time navigating.

828
00:39:14.386 --> 00:39:16.563
Cause we do that.

829
00:39:16.563 --> 00:39:18.818
We do that with policy, we do that

830
00:39:18.818 --> 00:39:20.179
with our economic structure,

831
00:39:20.179 --> 00:39:24.899
we do them all the ways in
which we build a body politic.

832
00:39:24.899 --> 00:39:26.961
And so thinking about
that relationship in a way

833
00:39:26.961 --> 00:39:28.962
that doesn't simply say either you imagine

834
00:39:28.962 --> 00:39:31.485
people have agency and take responsibility

835
00:39:31.485 --> 00:39:33.707
or imagine there's some
responsibility that society

836
00:39:33.707 --> 00:39:37.297
structurally has in producing
or reproducing difference.

837
00:39:37.297 --> 00:39:39.580
The young people in that high school

838
00:39:39.580 --> 00:39:41.529
and in the discussion about love

839
00:39:41.529 --> 00:39:43.092
and the institutionalization
of love, I learned,

840
00:39:43.092 --> 00:39:47.359
is about trying to see
those two things together

841
00:39:47.359 --> 00:39:49.861
in a way that says I'm not
scapegoating the other,

842
00:39:49.861 --> 00:39:52.724
I'm not trying to allow myself
to sleep better at night

843
00:39:52.724 --> 00:39:55.604
by using an analytic that
lets me off the hook.

844
00:39:55.604 --> 00:39:58.099
I can imagine I'm not part of the problem,

845
00:39:58.099 --> 00:40:01.216
that pretends away versions
of solutions that can work.

846
00:40:01.216 --> 00:40:03.850
And so ultimately, I want to imagine

847
00:40:03.850 --> 00:40:05.800
that one of the ways we do that,

848
00:40:05.800 --> 00:40:07.957
just one, they're many, but
one of the ways we do that

849
00:40:07.957 --> 00:40:12.266
is to reconnect a serious
investment in intellectuality.

850
00:40:12.266 --> 00:40:14.776
In thinking deeply about stuff.

851
00:40:14.776 --> 00:40:17.572
Being willing to take the
aspects of our cultural world

852
00:40:17.572 --> 00:40:20.367
that we take for granted
and interrogate them.

853
00:40:20.367 --> 00:40:23.177
Peel them apart a little bit.

854
00:40:23.177 --> 00:40:26.156
Think more deeply about
our investments in them.

855
00:40:26.156 --> 00:40:27.831
That's a really big deal I would argue.

856
00:40:27.831 --> 00:40:29.995
Goes a long way to be self-reflexive.

857
00:40:29.995 --> 00:40:32.134
Be respective our own investments

858
00:40:32.134 --> 00:40:33.415
and our own preoccupations,

859
00:40:33.415 --> 00:40:35.573
our own ideological commitments.

860
00:40:35.573 --> 00:40:37.707
But then at the very same time,

861
00:40:37.707 --> 00:40:39.889
as we're doing that, we
have to I would argue

862
00:40:39.889 --> 00:40:41.287
recognize that the only way we're going

863
00:40:41.287 --> 00:40:43.724
to navigate these spaces, if
we deal with one another's

864
00:40:43.724 --> 00:40:47.963
affective, emotional
investments in this stuff.

865
00:40:47.963 --> 00:40:49.957
So race is a social construction

866
00:40:49.957 --> 00:40:52.180
doesn't actually help to explain fully

867
00:40:52.180 --> 00:40:54.013
what race does for us.

868
00:40:55.004 --> 00:40:57.625
Why do we need it so badly?

869
00:40:57.625 --> 00:40:58.998
What work does it do for, and we can

870
00:40:58.998 --> 00:41:00.407
delineate all the work it does.

871
00:41:00.407 --> 00:41:02.870
It does a lot of work.

872
00:41:02.870 --> 00:41:04.309
I just gave you one earlier, the us/them.

873
00:41:04.309 --> 00:41:06.827
There are tons of ways we can frame that.

874
00:41:06.827 --> 00:41:08.753
For what does race do for you?

875
00:41:08.753 --> 00:41:11.273
What does it allow you to do?

876
00:41:11.273 --> 00:41:14.174
What does it do for a
community, for a collective?

877
00:41:14.174 --> 00:41:16.918
That can then label other
folks as undeserving,

878
00:41:16.918 --> 00:41:19.637
or underclass, or pathological?

879
00:41:19.637 --> 00:41:22.158
What is the work it does and how and why

880
00:41:22.158 --> 00:41:25.532
do we need it to do that work for us?

881
00:41:25.532 --> 00:41:27.832
Almost existentially speak.

882
00:41:27.832 --> 00:41:29.945
Why do we need that?

883
00:41:29.945 --> 00:41:31.585
I feel like also trying to reconnect

884
00:41:31.585 --> 00:41:34.134
the intellectual side of things

885
00:41:34.134 --> 00:41:37.019
with our experiential
and affect later ones

886
00:41:37.019 --> 00:41:39.318
actually means it's not enough
simply to say I feel it.

887
00:41:39.318 --> 00:41:43.485
You have to try to figure out
where the feelings come from.

888
00:41:45.292 --> 00:41:47.116
That's hard.

889
00:41:47.116 --> 00:41:48.712
I always tell people, you know,

890
00:41:48.712 --> 00:41:50.818
it's difficult enough
for us as human beings

891
00:41:50.818 --> 00:41:53.085
to communicate to one another.

892
00:41:53.085 --> 00:41:55.737
I don't know if you all
are science fiction fans,

893
00:41:55.737 --> 00:41:57.452
I'm a big science fiction person,

894
00:41:57.452 --> 00:42:00.492
the tons of ways the science fiction genre

895
00:42:00.492 --> 00:42:03.204
tries to operationalize the centrality

896
00:42:03.204 --> 00:42:06.198
of our ability to communicate badly.

897
00:42:06.198 --> 00:42:09.550
Because communicating
badly ultimately, I mean,

898
00:42:09.550 --> 00:42:13.047
comes at a high cost and
there's tons of confusion,

899
00:42:13.047 --> 00:42:17.292
but it's actually part
of what makes us human

900
00:42:17.292 --> 00:42:19.762
is that we can hide
things from one another.

901
00:42:19.762 --> 00:42:22.518
We're not transparent to one another.

902
00:42:22.518 --> 00:42:25.426
We're actually not even self-transparent

903
00:42:25.426 --> 00:42:27.612
which is why psychoanalysts
and psychologists,

904
00:42:27.612 --> 00:42:29.760
we can make a living because we don't

905
00:42:29.760 --> 00:42:32.041
often know what we think.

906
00:42:32.041 --> 00:42:34.311
We don't know what we're
saying to ourselves

907
00:42:34.311 --> 00:42:37.425
let alone saying to someone else, right.

908
00:42:37.425 --> 00:42:39.901
And so there's this model, so
in least the starship version,

909
00:42:39.901 --> 00:42:42.506
is the Borg, I don't know
if you know the Borg.

910
00:42:42.506 --> 00:42:44.091
And so the thing about the Borg of course

911
00:42:44.091 --> 00:42:46.654
is they don't have to communicate.

912
00:42:46.654 --> 00:42:50.425
In a sense, they share the same mind.

913
00:42:50.425 --> 00:42:53.129
And there's something
about that kind of pure,

914
00:42:53.129 --> 00:42:55.917
unadulterated, unmediated communication

915
00:42:55.917 --> 00:42:59.406
that we kind of think we wish we had.

916
00:42:59.406 --> 00:43:01.127
There's something about
that, it would mean

917
00:43:01.127 --> 00:43:03.772
a lot less confusion, right.

918
00:43:03.772 --> 00:43:05.478
I don't have to explain myself again,

919
00:43:05.478 --> 00:43:08.270
there's no chance of miscommunication,

920
00:43:08.270 --> 00:43:11.668
or the inadequacies of the
signs we use to communicate,

921
00:43:11.668 --> 00:43:13.344
that just fades away.

922
00:43:13.344 --> 00:43:16.005
What I think and feel, you
know it boom immediately.

923
00:43:16.005 --> 00:43:17.718
We go on about our business.

924
00:43:17.718 --> 00:43:19.342
But one of the wonderful things about

925
00:43:19.342 --> 00:43:21.643
how the Borg is used in Star Trek

926
00:43:21.643 --> 00:43:23.391
is it tries to competize
the fact that having

927
00:43:23.391 --> 00:43:28.279
that kind of power to communicate
without any difficulty

928
00:43:28.279 --> 00:43:31.337
actually doesn't make us human anymore.

929
00:43:31.337 --> 00:43:34.363
I don't know what we
are, but we're not us.

930
00:43:34.363 --> 00:43:35.562
And there's something about being able

931
00:43:35.562 --> 00:43:36.921
to hold onto secrets, as
much as that terrifies us,

932
00:43:36.921 --> 00:43:38.748
as much as it means we can
do some horrible things,

933
00:43:38.748 --> 00:43:42.915
but also I think is some way
central to our very humanity.

934
00:43:45.540 --> 00:43:47.519
And so because we don't know what

935
00:43:47.519 --> 00:43:48.895
one another thinks all the time,

936
00:43:48.895 --> 00:43:52.691
we use categories like gender, ethnicity,

937
00:43:52.691 --> 00:43:55.274
race, sexuality as short hands.

938
00:43:56.987 --> 00:43:58.663
We think before you get in the room,

939
00:43:58.663 --> 00:44:01.579
if we have those
categories, we'll know a ton

940
00:44:01.579 --> 00:44:03.164
of what we need to know about you.

941
00:44:03.164 --> 00:44:07.331
Maybe not 100%, but 85% right,
then we'll fill in the rest.

942
00:44:09.352 --> 00:44:12.998
We think we know you
before you open your mouth

943
00:44:12.998 --> 00:44:15.361
if we have those categories.

944
00:44:15.361 --> 00:44:18.574
And so ultimately, we
think it's our attempt

945
00:44:18.574 --> 00:44:20.700
to try to find a way to
negotiate the fact that

946
00:44:20.700 --> 00:44:25.287
we can't just open your
brain up and look inside you.

947
00:44:25.287 --> 00:44:27.602
That we're not that transparent.

948
00:44:27.602 --> 00:44:29.230
So race is an attempt to create

949
00:44:29.230 --> 00:44:31.889
this kind of full transparency.

950
00:44:31.889 --> 00:44:35.735
All these categories are. And
often, they feel very helpful.

951
00:44:35.735 --> 00:44:37.626
Often they feel that they work,

952
00:44:37.626 --> 00:44:39.448
that they work, that they're effective.

953
00:44:39.448 --> 00:44:41.987
But of course, they come at a price.

954
00:44:41.987 --> 00:44:44.736
Part of the price is they convince us

955
00:44:44.736 --> 00:44:48.295
of their ontological reality
when in fact they're not.

956
00:44:48.295 --> 00:44:50.559
They're heuristics that are imperfect,

957
00:44:50.559 --> 00:44:54.638
that actually often do
more harm than good,

958
00:44:54.638 --> 00:44:57.547
and that even though,
so I read a lot about

959
00:44:57.547 --> 00:44:59.749
racial sincerity which for
me is an attempt to say

960
00:44:59.749 --> 00:45:02.743
that it's not enough in the academy

961
00:45:02.743 --> 00:45:05.778
to only think that categories like race

962
00:45:05.778 --> 00:45:07.695
are like prison houses.

963
00:45:08.562 --> 00:45:10.182
Often one of the ways in which we try

964
00:45:10.182 --> 00:45:12.782
to challenge and critique
deployments of race

965
00:45:12.782 --> 00:45:16.064
is say that race is
always a straight jacket.

966
00:45:16.064 --> 00:45:18.580
It's always about authenticity tests,

967
00:45:18.580 --> 00:45:22.859
and either you can pass the
authenticity test or you can't.

968
00:45:22.859 --> 00:45:26.619
It's a clear test, there
are right and wrong answers.

969
00:45:26.619 --> 00:45:30.292
If you don't know the right
answer, you fail the test.

970
00:45:30.292 --> 00:45:32.450
You're not an authentic
member of this community.

971
00:45:32.450 --> 00:45:34.308
And we have this litmus tests
for all these categories,

972
00:45:34.308 --> 00:45:35.976
we know this, right?

973
00:45:35.976 --> 00:45:37.900
And so one of the things
I try to remind people is

974
00:45:37.900 --> 00:45:41.138
on the ground everyday, vernacularly,

975
00:45:41.138 --> 00:45:43.175
academics don't any way, shape, or form

976
00:45:43.175 --> 00:45:44.892
go in the pocket on this.

977
00:45:44.892 --> 00:45:47.085
And the second book Real Black,
it's about how it happens.

978
00:45:47.085 --> 00:45:52.060
Every day, people are confounding
these authenticity tests,

979
00:45:52.060 --> 00:45:54.283
disproving they're a liability,

980
00:45:54.283 --> 00:45:56.361
showing they don't buy the hype around

981
00:45:56.361 --> 00:45:58.815
what they imagine authenticity tests prove

982
00:45:58.815 --> 00:45:59.979
who and what we are.

983
00:45:59.979 --> 00:46:01.158
They're doing it every single day

984
00:46:01.158 --> 00:46:03.524
on every street corner
in America and beyond.

985
00:46:03.524 --> 00:46:05.541
We don't talk about it enough.

986
00:46:05.541 --> 00:46:08.638
We don't see it and recognize
it and appreciate it enough.

987
00:46:08.638 --> 00:46:10.586
But the authenticity tests themselves

988
00:46:10.586 --> 00:46:12.847
don't always carry today.

989
00:46:12.847 --> 00:46:14.612
And so what I try to say in that book

990
00:46:14.612 --> 00:46:16.986
is this is cognate ideal.

991
00:46:16.986 --> 00:46:18.426
We should really called it
cognate ideal or sincerity,

992
00:46:18.426 --> 00:46:21.901
which is another way we try
to get at what we need by

993
00:46:21.901 --> 00:46:26.068
what we mean by real, what it
means to be real and genuine.

994
00:46:27.210 --> 00:46:30.478
So for me, part of what
it allows us to recognize

995
00:46:30.478 --> 00:46:33.146
the sincerity version, is
that no matter how many

996
00:46:33.146 --> 00:46:35.912
authentic test you ask somebody to take,

997
00:46:35.912 --> 00:46:38.666
it's almost like the more
test you ask them to take,

998
00:46:38.666 --> 00:46:40.585
the more you realize the
tests aren't giving you

999
00:46:40.585 --> 00:46:43.257
the results you think you need.

1000
00:46:43.257 --> 00:46:46.260
The more suspicions you have
that someway they're cheating

1001
00:46:46.260 --> 00:46:48.593
the test, that they can beat the test.

1002
00:46:48.593 --> 00:46:50.601
That it's not actually
giving you any kind of

1003
00:46:50.601 --> 00:46:52.764
purchase to who and what they are.

1004
00:46:52.764 --> 00:46:55.764
So what it remind me of is
what other different models

1005
00:46:55.764 --> 00:46:59.347
and methods they can
use to see one another

1006
00:47:00.227 --> 00:47:03.094
when we're go good as a
society of not seeing.

1007
00:47:03.094 --> 00:47:06.569
Or at seeing one another
in very impoverished ways.

1008
00:47:06.569 --> 00:47:09.565
In ways that dehumanize, that trivialize,

1009
00:47:09.565 --> 00:47:13.168
that don't think of us as full people.

1010
00:47:13.168 --> 00:47:15.169
I like the idea that
one of the things that,

1011
00:47:15.169 --> 00:47:17.142
and I'll start to close up,
that affect allows us to do

1012
00:47:17.142 --> 00:47:20.704
again when thought about and
felt in a more substansive

1013
00:47:20.704 --> 00:47:22.666
in a more substantive way
allows us to do things

1014
00:47:22.666 --> 00:47:25.249
we're not typically able to do.

1015
00:47:27.371 --> 00:47:28.783
Ralph Ellison wrote, and I'll end

1016
00:47:28.783 --> 00:47:31.693
on this note, Invisible Man.

1017
00:47:31.693 --> 00:47:33.357
And I always feel like it's one of these

1018
00:47:33.357 --> 00:47:35.967
and I may be give you, I'm
not an actor by any stretch,

1019
00:47:35.967 --> 00:47:37.991
but one of the things
I want to try to embody

1020
00:47:37.991 --> 00:47:40.176
and perform and demonstrate
for you is this investment

1021
00:47:40.176 --> 00:47:44.093
in hearing and seeing
differently, effectively.

1022
00:47:45.052 --> 00:47:46.543
And it's one of the techs
in the US that really

1023
00:47:46.543 --> 00:47:51.109
tries to articulates what it
feels like to be invisible.

1024
00:47:51.109 --> 00:47:52.359
To not be seen.

1025
00:47:54.067 --> 00:47:59.037
And what he says is he says,
"I am an invisible man.

1026
00:47:59.037 --> 00:48:03.204
"No I'm not a spook, like
those that haunted Edgar Allan

1027
00:48:04.050 --> 00:48:07.965
"Poe nor am I one of your
Hollywood movie ectoplasms.

1028
00:48:07.965 --> 00:48:10.397
"I am a man of substance.

1029
00:48:10.397 --> 00:48:13.564
"Of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids.

1030
00:48:15.645 --> 00:48:19.312
"And I might even be
said to possess a mind.

1031
00:48:20.782 --> 00:48:24.949
"I'm invisible simply because
people refuse to see me.

1032
00:48:26.651 --> 00:48:28.600
"Oh they approach me,
they do, but they see this

1033
00:48:28.600 --> 00:48:31.259
"surroundings or themselves or worse,

1034
00:48:31.259 --> 00:48:34.176
"figments of their own imagination.

1035
00:48:37.085 --> 00:48:39.357
"They see everything,

1036
00:48:39.357 --> 00:48:41.024
"anything except me.

1037
00:48:46.237 --> 00:48:47.391
" Now I'm not complaining."

1038
00:48:47.391 --> 00:48:48.520
He writes, "Nor am I protesting.

1039
00:48:48.520 --> 00:48:52.020
"Sometimes it's advantageous to be unseen.

1040
00:48:53.740 --> 00:48:57.295
"But other times it gets
quite taxing on the nerves.

1041
00:48:57.295 --> 00:48:58.957
"You go around getting bumped against

1042
00:48:58.957 --> 00:49:00.534
"by people with poor vision and

1043
00:49:00.534 --> 00:49:04.188
"you begin to doubt whether
you exist in the real world.

1044
00:49:04.188 --> 00:49:05.768
"Whether you're a part of all the sound

1045
00:49:05.768 --> 00:49:08.494
"and the anguish and you
lash out with your fist

1046
00:49:08.494 --> 00:49:12.661
"and you curse and you swear
to make people recognize you.

1047
00:49:15.658 --> 00:49:18.658
"But alas, you're seldom successful.

1048
00:49:22.051 --> 00:49:25.634
"That my friends is
the real soul sickness.

1049
00:49:26.846 --> 00:49:30.513
"The tear in your side,
the drag by the neck

1050
00:49:31.413 --> 00:49:33.022
"through the mob angry crowd.

1051
00:49:33.022 --> 00:49:35.565
"The grand inquisition,
the embrace of the maid,

1052
00:49:35.565 --> 00:49:37.822
"and the rip in your belly with
your guts just spilling out.

1053
00:49:37.822 --> 00:49:39.369
"The trip to the chamber with the gas

1054
00:49:39.369 --> 00:49:43.536
"or hygienically clean but it's
worse because you can't die.

1055
00:49:44.556 --> 00:49:46.639
"You have to go on living

1056
00:49:48.303 --> 00:49:49.136
"stupidly,

1057
00:49:52.503 --> 00:49:54.913
"but live you must.

1058
00:49:54.913 --> 00:49:58.073
"And you can either make
passionate love to that sickness

1059
00:49:58.073 --> 00:50:01.223
"or burn it out and go on to
the next conflicting phase.

1060
00:50:01.223 --> 00:50:03.490
"But what is that next conflicting phase?

1061
00:50:03.490 --> 00:50:05.915
"How often I've gone
about to search it out.

1062
00:50:05.915 --> 00:50:08.319
"Just like everyone else, I
started out with my own share

1063
00:50:08.319 --> 00:50:11.853
of optimism, I believe in
progress and I believe in action.

1064
00:50:11.853 --> 00:50:16.205
"But after being for your
society and then against it,

1065
00:50:16.205 --> 00:50:19.455
"I assign myself no rank, or any limit.

1066
00:50:21.268 --> 00:50:24.660
"My world is one of
infinite possibilities."

1067
00:50:24.660 --> 00:50:26.630
What a phrase, infinite possibilities.

1068
00:50:26.630 --> 00:50:28.529
It's a good phrase and
a good view of life.

1069
00:50:28.529 --> 00:50:31.630
A good person shouldn't have any other.

1070
00:50:31.630 --> 00:50:33.387
You step outside the narrow confines

1071
00:50:33.387 --> 00:50:35.637
of what others call reality

1072
00:50:37.472 --> 00:50:41.055
and you can step into
chaos or imagination.

1073
00:50:44.247 --> 00:50:47.330
That too I have learned in my sealot.

1074
00:50:48.432 --> 00:50:50.015
And I didn't learn that by deadening

1075
00:50:50.015 --> 00:50:52.713
my own senses of perception.

1076
00:50:52.713 --> 00:50:55.213
I am invisible, I'm invisible.

1077
00:50:56.591 --> 00:50:58.091
But I'm not blind.

1078
00:51:00.161 --> 00:51:03.329
Social work I would argue at it's best

1079
00:51:03.329 --> 00:51:08.002
is about seeing folks who
otherwise cannot be seen.

1080
00:51:08.002 --> 00:51:12.169
It's about visualizing,
making clear and real folks

1081
00:51:13.230 --> 00:51:17.610
who have been so marginalized
as to be transparent

1082
00:51:17.610 --> 00:51:21.171
and at the very same
time, I would claim that

1083
00:51:21.171 --> 00:51:23.823
fundamentally one of the
things we can do a very good

1084
00:51:23.823 --> 00:51:27.962
job at, is trying to explain
to other folks how they can

1085
00:51:27.962 --> 00:51:32.525
and should, why it's in
their interest to see better.

1086
00:51:32.525 --> 00:51:35.521
To see people who they otherwise dismiss

1087
00:51:35.521 --> 00:51:38.188
as not being relevant or around.

1088
00:51:40.232 --> 00:51:42.628
If there is a way, I always think we

1089
00:51:42.628 --> 00:51:44.082
bring in also the people who already

1090
00:51:44.082 --> 00:51:47.845
have this propensity to
see people generously.

1091
00:51:47.845 --> 00:51:50.953
They're already primed for
it, that's why they're here.

1092
00:51:50.953 --> 00:51:52.664
So one of the things is, can we take folks

1093
00:51:52.664 --> 00:51:55.226
who are already geared to
think about how to love

1094
00:51:55.226 --> 00:51:58.144
effectively and make
them love even better.

1095
00:51:58.144 --> 00:52:01.894
In a way that draws a
much wider circle of us

1096
00:52:03.535 --> 00:52:05.934
that includes many more.

1097
00:52:05.934 --> 00:52:08.060
That recognized the lie to begin

1098
00:52:08.060 --> 00:52:10.757
with of any battle of any kind.

1099
00:52:10.757 --> 00:52:13.305
I think social work
does that, does it well,

1100
00:52:13.305 --> 00:52:14.793
tries to figure out a way to exploit that.

1101
00:52:14.793 --> 00:52:16.434
Does it by actually teaching students,

1102
00:52:16.434 --> 00:52:20.640
not just from a textbook but in the world.

1103
00:52:20.640 --> 00:52:23.190
And that's something that
shouldn't be trivialized.

1104
00:52:23.190 --> 00:52:26.007
That we have to do a much
better job of broadcasting.

1105
00:52:26.007 --> 00:52:28.057
That ultimately if you do
it well, there's a fighting

1106
00:52:28.057 --> 00:52:31.932
chance of dealing with the
history or legacy of racism

1107
00:52:31.932 --> 00:52:34.269
and other things in society.

1108
00:52:34.269 --> 00:52:35.275
So thank you very much.

1109
00:52:35.275 --> 00:52:38.275
(audience clapping)

1110
00:52:49.223 --> 00:52:51.865
Now once a couple of people stand up

1111
00:52:51.865 --> 00:52:52.698
now everyone's gonna stand up.

1112
00:52:52.698 --> 00:52:54.692
(audience clapping)

1113
00:52:54.692 --> 00:52:56.114
So thank, I appreciate it.

1114
00:52:56.114 --> 00:52:59.070
(audience clapping)

1115
00:52:59.070 --> 00:53:02.379
How long are we here for ma'am?

1116
00:53:02.379 --> 00:53:04.620
We have some time for Q & A?

1117
00:53:04.620 --> 00:53:05.663
Thanks you all, I appreciate that.

1118
00:53:05.663 --> 00:53:07.898
You all are very generous.

1119
00:53:07.898 --> 00:53:09.635
I know it's late and you
just wanted to stand up

1120
00:53:09.635 --> 00:53:11.340
and stretch your legs a little bit.

1121
00:53:11.340 --> 00:53:12.307
(audience laughing)

1122
00:53:12.307 --> 00:53:14.674
I still appreciate it 100%, trust me.

1123
00:53:14.674 --> 00:53:16.787
I was a little longer than I thought,

1124
00:53:16.787 --> 00:53:19.104
but we have a little bit
of time for questions,

1125
00:53:19.104 --> 00:53:21.611
comments, push back, whatever you want.

1126
00:53:21.611 --> 00:53:23.461
So I'll open it up, I'll even

1127
00:53:23.461 --> 00:53:25.263
walk around with the microphone.

1128
00:53:25.263 --> 00:53:28.078
So we can have the full Oprah effect.

1129
00:53:28.078 --> 00:53:30.811
(audience laughing)

1130
00:53:30.811 --> 00:53:32.663
Unless there's another mic, what?

1131
00:53:32.663 --> 00:53:33.496
Okay.

1132
00:53:35.230 --> 00:53:38.971
But these have to be actual
questions, not soliloquies.

1133
00:53:38.971 --> 00:53:41.527
I only get away with that.

1134
00:53:41.527 --> 00:53:45.276
- [Lady In Red] Hi, I'm
a first year and I guess

1135
00:53:45.276 --> 00:53:47.440
my question has to do with sort of what

1136
00:53:47.440 --> 00:53:50.189
you're talking about
with affect and blake.

1137
00:53:50.189 --> 00:53:53.850
I think maybe the ways that
we mistakenly perceive race

1138
00:53:53.850 --> 00:53:57.026
is this like only the social construction

1139
00:53:57.026 --> 00:54:00.161
because I think that that
sometimes gets frustrating

1140
00:54:00.161 --> 00:54:02.754
for me when I have conversations
with people who understand

1141
00:54:02.754 --> 00:54:04.575
race is a social construction
but don't understand

1142
00:54:04.575 --> 00:54:08.072
that racism has very
tangible material effects.

1143
00:54:08.072 --> 00:54:09.963
I'm wondering how can I possibly integrate

1144
00:54:09.963 --> 00:54:13.330
the possibility of racism with
the intangibility of race.

1145
00:54:13.330 --> 00:54:17.247
- I should also, that
was a wonderful question.

1146
00:54:21.135 --> 00:54:23.067
And it's wonderful because
I can't even answer it.

1147
00:54:23.067 --> 00:54:25.765
I couldn't even begin to address,

1148
00:54:25.765 --> 00:54:27.426
so what I would say is even just the fact

1149
00:54:27.426 --> 00:54:31.593
that you're trying to get people
to think about those things

1150
00:54:33.758 --> 00:54:36.982
both being real at the
same time is a start.

1151
00:54:36.982 --> 00:54:39.690
So one of the things I try
to model in my classroom,

1152
00:54:39.690 --> 00:54:41.361
I think it kind of has worked for me.

1153
00:54:41.361 --> 00:54:44.032
Though it's not always easy to pull off

1154
00:54:44.032 --> 00:54:45.871
and sometimes it can be
difficult but I think

1155
00:54:45.871 --> 00:54:48.910
it makes for really comfortable and safe

1156
00:54:48.910 --> 00:54:51.268
discussion across
ideological difference too.

1157
00:54:51.268 --> 00:54:53.092
One of the things of
course, often it's easy

1158
00:54:53.092 --> 00:54:55.424
to talk to the choir right, that's simple.

1159
00:54:55.424 --> 00:54:58.234
It's when you're speaking
of folks that come from

1160
00:54:58.234 --> 00:55:00.089
a very different ideological position,

1161
00:55:00.089 --> 00:55:01.938
who don't want to hear it, right.

1162
00:55:01.938 --> 00:55:03.761
Who don't, no matter
what you say they have a

1163
00:55:03.761 --> 00:55:06.079
ready response for it to
dismiss it and poo-poo it.

1164
00:55:06.079 --> 00:55:07.940
And so one of the things I try to do,

1165
00:55:07.940 --> 00:55:10.981
we have a class, a mandatory class for all

1166
00:55:10.981 --> 00:55:13.041
environmental studies
students on American racism.

1167
00:55:13.041 --> 00:55:14.942
I've had it for a long time.

1168
00:55:14.942 --> 00:55:16.860
And in teaching it, one of
the things that I try to do,

1169
00:55:16.860 --> 00:55:20.751
I try to make sure I can be as compelling

1170
00:55:20.751 --> 00:55:23.281
and as effective on both
sides of any argument.

1171
00:55:23.281 --> 00:55:24.114
Why?

1172
00:55:25.417 --> 00:55:27.681
One, I want to show that I'm listening.

1173
00:55:27.681 --> 00:55:31.014
I think they presuppose
often what they think

1174
00:55:31.014 --> 00:55:33.844
I must really think,
but I want to be better

1175
00:55:33.844 --> 00:55:36.625
than the best arguer they
can bring in that room

1176
00:55:36.625 --> 00:55:37.897
to actually the other side's opinion.

1177
00:55:37.897 --> 00:55:38.730
Why?

1178
00:55:40.330 --> 00:55:42.091
Cause then part of what
it allows you to do,

1179
00:55:42.091 --> 00:55:44.183
is it allows you to
demonstrate that you actually

1180
00:55:44.183 --> 00:55:46.801
aren't setting up a
caricature or the other.

1181
00:55:46.801 --> 00:55:48.592
You're listening carefully
to why they got there,

1182
00:55:48.592 --> 00:55:50.753
hoe they got there, what's
motivating their position.

1183
00:55:50.753 --> 00:55:52.643
Like we often want to believe that there's

1184
00:55:52.643 --> 00:55:54.322
the right side of the
argument and then their

1185
00:55:54.322 --> 00:55:56.289
folks that are just disingenuous,
they're just ignorant.

1186
00:55:56.289 --> 00:55:58.018
Part of what we have to
recognize, there are people who

1187
00:55:58.018 --> 00:56:01.601
bring what they imagine
to be, strong, hard

1188
00:56:03.213 --> 00:56:06.333
evidence to bear on
their side of any debate.

1189
00:56:06.333 --> 00:56:08.421
So what I want to be able to demonstrate,

1190
00:56:08.421 --> 00:56:11.008
is I can do both sides.

1191
00:56:11.008 --> 00:56:12.537
Now I have a position, it doesn't

1192
00:56:12.537 --> 00:56:14.302
mean I don't have a position.

1193
00:56:14.302 --> 00:56:16.436
But it means I can demonstrate
that it's not enough

1194
00:56:16.436 --> 00:56:19.021
to simply caricaturize the other one.

1195
00:56:19.021 --> 00:56:22.029
I do my job well if I can
say the position I know is

1196
00:56:22.029 --> 00:56:24.322
impopular in the room in a
way that gets students going

1197
00:56:24.322 --> 00:56:25.739
okay that's true.

1198
00:56:26.620 --> 00:56:29.486
It doesn't mean they're going to change

1199
00:56:29.486 --> 00:56:31.680
but it means it's your job to recognize

1200
00:56:31.680 --> 00:56:34.329
that to get this right means it can't just

1201
00:56:34.329 --> 00:56:36.912
imagine a way you're into lies.

1202
00:56:37.776 --> 00:56:38.798
You can't just think well they can't

1203
00:56:38.798 --> 00:56:41.759
be as sophisticated as I am.

1204
00:56:41.759 --> 00:56:43.701
They're just coming form
a very different place,

1205
00:56:43.701 --> 00:56:45.901
motivated by very different incentives.

1206
00:56:45.901 --> 00:56:48.348
Invested maybe in a different
sense of what the endgame is.

1207
00:56:48.348 --> 00:56:50.191
But often they can't even articulate that.

1208
00:56:50.191 --> 00:56:51.768
We can't articulate that,

1209
00:56:51.768 --> 00:56:53.140
unless we're forced to do it.

1210
00:56:53.140 --> 00:56:54.470
One of the things I would say,

1211
00:56:54.470 --> 00:56:55.855
and this is a long winded way to say

1212
00:56:55.855 --> 00:56:58.338
one of your jobs is to
get the other person

1213
00:56:58.338 --> 00:57:02.079
you're talking to, to cross
any kind of idealogical

1214
00:57:02.079 --> 00:57:06.736
political divide to be
their own deconstructor.

1215
00:57:06.736 --> 00:57:09.997
If you give people enough time to talk,

1216
00:57:09.997 --> 00:57:12.236
ask the right question, and some ways

1217
00:57:12.236 --> 00:57:14.763
I always tell people
there's something about

1218
00:57:14.763 --> 00:57:16.775
the ethnigraphic approach that can

1219
00:57:16.775 --> 00:57:19.266
be profoundly manipulative.

1220
00:57:19.266 --> 00:57:22.990
All you do is ask them
a couple of questions.

1221
00:57:22.990 --> 00:57:25.505
Then you follow it up
with another question.

1222
00:57:25.505 --> 00:57:28.892
And what you realize is
of course, all of culture.

1223
00:57:28.892 --> 00:57:31.312
What's amazing is you recognize
all this stuff you believe,

1224
00:57:31.312 --> 00:57:35.354
once you really get people,
force people to unpack it,

1225
00:57:35.354 --> 00:57:38.682
there's very little
logic behind most of it.

1226
00:57:38.682 --> 00:57:40.638
We do it cause we've
always done it that way.

1227
00:57:40.638 --> 00:57:42.687
We did it because our
parents did it that way.

1228
00:57:42.687 --> 00:57:45.305
We do it cause it feels right.

1229
00:57:45.305 --> 00:57:48.307
The more we can actually
begin to put some analytics

1230
00:57:48.307 --> 00:57:50.652
behind that, means one we can feel like

1231
00:57:50.652 --> 00:57:53.431
those decisions we want to
continue to invest in we can.

1232
00:57:53.431 --> 00:57:56.383
And the ones we want to imagine
differently we also can.

1233
00:57:56.383 --> 00:57:57.977
But it means you have to give people

1234
00:57:57.977 --> 00:57:59.508
time to do it themselves.

1235
00:57:59.508 --> 00:58:01.569
And not to try to force it on them.

1236
00:58:01.569 --> 00:58:03.890
Again, I think you can force
it on them and then they

1237
00:58:03.890 --> 00:58:05.995
won't talk to you for 25
years and then finally 25

1238
00:58:05.995 --> 00:58:08.557
years later they get it and they go back.

1239
00:58:08.557 --> 00:58:10.096
That could work, but then you don't have

1240
00:58:10.096 --> 00:58:11.613
that relationship for 25 years.

1241
00:58:11.613 --> 00:58:14.143
So it kind of depends on
what you want to do with it.

1242
00:58:14.143 --> 00:58:16.273
Ultimately I do think what
has been effective for me,

1243
00:58:16.273 --> 00:58:19.673
is being able to let folks
know I hear their position

1244
00:58:19.673 --> 00:58:21.082
to be able to give it
to them even better than

1245
00:58:21.082 --> 00:58:23.404
they gave it to me to let
them know I'm listening.

1246
00:58:23.404 --> 00:58:25.337
But then to ask the follow up question,

1247
00:58:25.337 --> 00:58:27.270
to get them to think about where the edges

1248
00:58:27.270 --> 00:58:29.632
of the analysis are frayed.

1249
00:58:29.632 --> 00:58:31.624
Then they'll just keep thinking about it.

1250
00:58:31.624 --> 00:58:34.203
You know I mean we torment ourselves

1251
00:58:34.203 --> 00:58:36.837
about stuff like that and we always will.

1252
00:58:36.837 --> 00:58:38.683
And then Gunnar Myrdal Wrote that famous

1253
00:58:38.683 --> 00:58:41.160
book about the American Dilemma.

1254
00:58:41.160 --> 00:58:43.487
How can we be so committed
to racism on the ground.

1255
00:58:43.487 --> 00:58:45.135
Have all these ideals.

1256
00:58:45.135 --> 00:58:46.855
There's no way we can
reconcile these two things.

1257
00:58:46.855 --> 00:58:48.174
We're going to have to
find a way to resolve it.

1258
00:58:48.174 --> 00:58:52.156
There's something about
that, that's overly romantic.

1259
00:58:52.156 --> 00:58:56.242
There's also something about
it that's fundamentally true.

1260
00:58:56.242 --> 00:58:58.974
We don't like to sit with contradiction,

1261
00:58:58.974 --> 00:59:02.555
so either we pretend it
away or bracket it out,

1262
00:59:02.555 --> 00:59:03.388
we find a way to resolve it even

1263
00:59:03.388 --> 00:59:05.016
if it's not real and effective but we can

1264
00:59:05.016 --> 00:59:07.923
sleep at night cause it works.

1265
00:59:07.923 --> 00:59:10.034
I think the more you can
trouble some of the easy ways

1266
00:59:10.034 --> 00:59:13.757
we pretend resolution in
effect, the more you get people

1267
00:59:13.757 --> 00:59:15.286
to do the work themselves.

1268
00:59:15.286 --> 00:59:17.436
To really begin to think about their

1269
00:59:17.436 --> 00:59:18.886
own connections and investigations.

1270
00:59:18.886 --> 00:59:23.724
Now some of it, the chapter
of Why It Makes White Whiter,

1271
00:59:23.724 --> 00:59:26.138
is really about saying
we live in a world now

1272
00:59:26.138 --> 00:59:29.233
where whiteness is no
longer an unmarked category.

1273
00:59:29.233 --> 00:59:31.924
We used to get trained that
part of the way whiteness

1274
00:59:31.924 --> 00:59:35.018
functions in the US was
whiteness wasn't marked.

1275
00:59:35.018 --> 00:59:37.132
Whiteness was just normative,
that was just universal.

1276
00:59:37.132 --> 00:59:39.089
And if you're not white,
then you have particularities

1277
00:59:39.089 --> 00:59:41.307
and you're a marked category.

1278
00:59:41.307 --> 00:59:43.645
One of the things we're recognizing with

1279
00:59:43.645 --> 00:59:45.313
the browning of the electorate,
the election of Obama.

1280
00:59:45.313 --> 00:59:48.477
All this stuff is that
now there's a whiteness

1281
00:59:48.477 --> 00:59:51.903
that is increasingly having
it's own particularity

1282
00:59:51.903 --> 00:59:53.972
It isn't reducible to the KKK.

1283
00:59:53.972 --> 00:59:56.954
Isn't redicible to white supremacy.

1284
00:59:56.954 --> 00:59:59.855
There can be whiteness
without white supremacy.

1285
00:59:59.855 --> 01:00:02.458
Now maybe we want to get to a place where

1286
01:00:02.458 --> 01:00:04.154
we're post racial, this
fantasy of post raciality.

1287
01:00:04.154 --> 01:00:07.061
It depends on what you mean by
that, whether it's possible.

1288
01:00:07.061 --> 01:00:11.212
But ultimately where we have
to start, is a whiteness

1289
01:00:11.212 --> 01:00:13.157
that is white in the same way we construct

1290
01:00:13.157 --> 01:00:16.079
blackness to be black and
brownness to be brown.

1291
01:00:16.079 --> 01:00:18.681
It doesn't have any pride
or place or privilege

1292
01:00:18.681 --> 01:00:20.644
in an edgeamnic since over the others.

1293
01:00:20.644 --> 01:00:22.627
And I think that's a start.

1294
01:00:22.627 --> 01:00:24.811
Now it's going to come
with a lot of you know,

1295
01:00:24.811 --> 01:00:28.629
a lot of anxiety because
that's a big shift

1296
01:00:28.629 --> 01:00:31.632
in the way America holds
it's racial categories.

1297
01:00:31.632 --> 01:00:34.174
But I think ultimately
we can get through it,

1298
01:00:34.174 --> 01:00:37.392
we'll be the better for the
fact that we found a way.

1299
01:00:37.392 --> 01:00:40.076
In some ways I would argue,
to almost domesticate

1300
01:00:40.076 --> 01:00:43.516
our historical investments in life.

1301
01:00:43.516 --> 01:00:46.411
Ta-Nehisi Coates, got
a lot of play last year

1302
01:00:46.411 --> 01:00:48.938
by trying to frame his discussion

1303
01:00:48.938 --> 01:00:51.281
In Between The World And Me

1304
01:00:51.281 --> 01:00:52.383
as thinking about how and why white people

1305
01:00:52.383 --> 01:00:54.426
come to think about themselves as white.

1306
01:00:54.426 --> 01:00:56.798
That phrasing he has right.

1307
01:00:56.798 --> 01:00:59.293
I think there's a way in
which part of what Obama

1308
01:00:59.293 --> 01:01:02.196
allows us to do, is
allows us to think about

1309
01:01:02.196 --> 01:01:05.037
our racial categories such that
whiteness now is a category.

1310
01:01:05.037 --> 01:01:08.174
Not the lack of categorization.

1311
01:01:08.174 --> 01:01:10.862
That's an incredible powerful step.

1312
01:01:10.862 --> 01:01:13.309
And I think it's the
beginning of hopefully

1313
01:01:13.309 --> 01:01:17.476
a different kind of conversation
across racial lines.

1314
01:01:22.783 --> 01:01:25.612
- [Lady In White Shirt] So what
would you say isn't culture,

1315
01:01:25.612 --> 01:01:28.612
cause I found that very interesting.

1316
01:01:29.792 --> 01:01:32.352
- Okay so I would answer
the anthropologic answer is,

1317
01:01:32.352 --> 01:01:33.352
very little.

1318
01:01:34.998 --> 01:01:39.766
So if culture is anything
that you didn't have to learn,

1319
01:01:39.766 --> 01:01:42.411
if you had to learn it, it's culture.

1320
01:01:42.411 --> 01:01:44.926
So what is it that you
do that you didn't have

1321
01:01:44.926 --> 01:01:47.070
to in some way learn how to do.

1322
01:01:47.070 --> 01:01:49.664
Often still to say things like breathing.

1323
01:01:49.664 --> 01:01:52.031
Which is important, but
we don't thing about

1324
01:01:52.031 --> 01:01:52.864
it all the time, but it is important.

1325
01:01:52.864 --> 01:01:57.191
It would say going to the bathroom, right.

1326
01:01:57.191 --> 01:02:00.223
It's important, I would think.

1327
01:02:00.223 --> 01:02:03.054
Sometimes we would say being bipedal

1328
01:02:03.054 --> 01:02:04.653
by being able to walk on two legs.

1329
01:02:04.653 --> 01:02:07.758
There are things that we
imagine are more hardwired.

1330
01:02:07.758 --> 01:02:10.823
They seem to me to be
very base and fundamental.

1331
01:02:10.823 --> 01:02:12.875
They don't explain our decisions

1332
01:02:12.875 --> 01:02:14.835
in the political and social world.

1333
01:02:14.835 --> 01:02:16.754
Our decisions in that
world are reducible to

1334
01:02:16.754 --> 01:02:18.926
do we breathe or not.

1335
01:02:18.926 --> 01:02:21.024
So I think that's the difference.

1336
01:02:21.024 --> 01:02:22.790
If someone had to teach it to
you, if you had to learn it

1337
01:02:22.790 --> 01:02:26.365
in school or in society,
that's the stuff of culture.

1338
01:02:26.365 --> 01:02:27.556
Someone taught you to do that.

1339
01:02:27.556 --> 01:02:29.544
And most of the stuff we do, even down

1340
01:02:29.544 --> 01:02:31.551
to brushing your teeth, even innocuous.

1341
01:02:31.551 --> 01:02:33.269
Some stuff is innocuous.

1342
01:02:33.269 --> 01:02:34.579
You learn it, it doesn't seem to

1343
01:02:34.579 --> 01:02:37.210
have serious political ramifications.

1344
01:02:37.210 --> 01:02:40.765
But you learn to do it,
you learn it so well

1345
01:02:40.765 --> 01:02:42.448
you do it without even thinking about it.

1346
01:02:42.448 --> 01:02:44.821
So I tell people strong
culture is the stuff

1347
01:02:44.821 --> 01:02:46.591
that you don't even interrogate.

1348
01:02:46.591 --> 01:02:49.941
I mean that's like the air you breathe.

1349
01:02:49.941 --> 01:02:51.414
You just do it.

1350
01:02:51.414 --> 01:02:54.046
You don't think about it, you
can think about other things.

1351
01:02:54.046 --> 01:02:56.585
That's strong culture.

1352
01:02:56.585 --> 01:03:00.694
It is so internalized, it
is the ground you walk on

1353
01:03:00.694 --> 01:03:03.956
so you can actually do other
things to walk someplace.

1354
01:03:03.956 --> 01:03:07.350
Ultimately the weaker forms of culture,

1355
01:03:07.350 --> 01:03:09.990
weaker, are the ones that
actually have a second

1356
01:03:09.990 --> 01:03:13.411
of luxury to try to think about.

1357
01:03:13.411 --> 01:03:15.740
You have the time and
space to interrogate.

1358
01:03:15.740 --> 01:03:18.591
And so I think most of the
stuff that we care about,

1359
01:03:18.591 --> 01:03:22.258
that we really are
battling over, all of it,

1360
01:03:23.255 --> 01:03:25.696
is the stuff of culture.

1361
01:03:25.696 --> 01:03:28.029
Now, we make distinctions in
high culture and low culture,

1362
01:03:28.029 --> 01:03:29.158
anthropologists don't maybe.

1363
01:03:29.158 --> 01:03:30.775
Again high culture and low culture

1364
01:03:30.775 --> 01:03:33.537
all examples of culturally universes.

1365
01:03:33.537 --> 01:03:36.872
Even the distinction itself
is a cultural distinction.

1366
01:03:36.872 --> 01:03:38.797
No reason why opera would be any

1367
01:03:38.797 --> 01:03:42.734
more high culture than hip-hop, no reason.

1368
01:03:42.734 --> 01:03:44.802
Except we decided that's the case.

1369
01:03:44.802 --> 01:03:46.520
We could decide something else right.

1370
01:03:46.520 --> 01:03:48.285
It's a version that almost feels like,

1371
01:03:48.285 --> 01:03:51.076
and it's not quite arbitrary.

1372
01:03:51.076 --> 01:03:53.146
So there's a way in
which we use the language

1373
01:03:53.146 --> 01:03:56.051
of arbitrariness that it
is and is not arbitrary.

1374
01:03:56.051 --> 01:03:59.210
It's about the kind of sedimented history

1375
01:03:59.210 --> 01:04:00.687
of investments and commitments and certain

1376
01:04:00.687 --> 01:04:02.488
kinds of understanding of the world that

1377
01:04:02.488 --> 01:04:06.339
accrue into these solid
forms of distinction

1378
01:04:06.339 --> 01:04:09.743
between and among cultural
and social options.

1379
01:04:09.743 --> 01:04:11.965
That's different from
simply saying well we

1380
01:04:11.965 --> 01:04:14.107
flipped a coin and that's what we decided.

1381
01:04:14.107 --> 01:04:16.938
We actually flipped a billion coins in all

1382
01:04:16.938 --> 01:04:20.182
kind of ways and after the
12 billionth coin flipped,

1383
01:04:20.182 --> 01:04:22.074
we end up at a place and we're here.

1384
01:04:22.074 --> 01:04:24.098
We like how did we get here.

1385
01:04:24.098 --> 01:04:26.042
The way that I also think about culture,

1386
01:04:26.042 --> 01:04:27.167
especially race is it's almost

1387
01:04:27.167 --> 01:04:29.750
like the story of Frankenstein,

1388
01:04:30.798 --> 01:04:33.552
where Frankenstein is this terrible beast

1389
01:04:33.552 --> 01:04:37.482
that has a creator, that has a master.

1390
01:04:37.482 --> 01:04:40.748
And actually Frankenstein
has the master's name.

1391
01:04:40.748 --> 01:04:43.999
That's Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein.

1392
01:04:43.999 --> 01:04:46.153
But part of what's so
powerful about Frankenstein is

1393
01:04:46.153 --> 01:04:50.320
it's created and it seems
so incredibly big and strong

1394
01:04:52.716 --> 01:04:56.672
and terrifying that it torments it maker.

1395
01:04:56.672 --> 01:04:59.984
There's a way in which the logic of race

1396
01:04:59.984 --> 01:05:01.771
is similar to that logic.

1397
01:05:01.771 --> 01:05:03.883
We almost forget we create
it cause it seems so

1398
01:05:03.883 --> 01:05:05.896
much bigger than us, that's also culture.

1399
01:05:05.896 --> 01:05:07.443
So we think we have no control over it,

1400
01:05:07.443 --> 01:05:09.924
like how can I change
it, this predates me.

1401
01:05:09.924 --> 01:05:13.294
And it can be so massive and intense,

1402
01:05:13.294 --> 01:05:17.192
we don't recognize we are
the agents that produced it.

1403
01:05:17.192 --> 01:05:21.359
And so we begin to imagine we
have no power to change it.

1404
01:05:22.801 --> 01:05:25.055
And there's a Frankenstinian logic to

1405
01:05:25.055 --> 01:05:26.798
some of the ways in
which culture functions.

1406
01:05:26.798 --> 01:05:29.475
But anything that someone
had to tell you to do

1407
01:05:29.475 --> 01:05:32.565
that you share with other people,
that you're gonna pass on,

1408
01:05:32.565 --> 01:05:35.401
to the folks behind you, it's culture.

1409
01:05:35.401 --> 01:05:37.188
Some of it's concrete, like the buildings

1410
01:05:37.188 --> 01:05:38.867
that will be here after we're long gone.

1411
01:05:38.867 --> 01:05:40.628
That's cultural stuff.

1412
01:05:40.628 --> 01:05:42.962
The ideas in the books, all that stuff,

1413
01:05:42.962 --> 01:05:45.463
the stuff I'm telling
you, all this is about

1414
01:05:45.463 --> 01:05:49.342
how people are thinking in a
particular cultural moment.

1415
01:05:49.342 --> 01:05:51.191
And it's always in flux, it's changing.

1416
01:05:51.191 --> 01:05:53.519
Sometimes the changes are
fast, but other moments

1417
01:05:53.519 --> 01:05:56.434
it's like wow there doesn't
seem to be any change at all.

1418
01:05:56.434 --> 01:05:58.434
Even if there really is.

1419
01:06:04.779 --> 01:06:06.456
- [Lady In White Shirt] I have a question,

1420
01:06:06.456 --> 01:06:08.692
regarding the topic of conversation.

1421
01:06:08.692 --> 01:06:12.738
The race and love and
thinking about the dualism

1422
01:06:12.738 --> 01:06:14.774
that's created and the paradox or like,

1423
01:06:14.774 --> 01:06:17.607
um sorry the dualism created right

1424
01:06:19.919 --> 01:06:23.419
and in the discussions on race and racism.

1425
01:06:24.759 --> 01:06:28.405
I guess I'm thinking about
it through the process

1426
01:06:28.405 --> 01:06:31.843
in which race is marked on bodies and how

1427
01:06:31.843 --> 01:06:34.609
subjectives are formed
through the idea of race.

1428
01:06:34.609 --> 01:06:39.494
And I guess how, I guess
it's a difficult question

1429
01:06:39.494 --> 01:06:41.477
to think about the way that you proceed

1430
01:06:41.477 --> 01:06:43.848
with this ethic that is love or kindness

1431
01:06:43.848 --> 01:06:47.448
with people that you don't know
and have these conversations

1432
01:06:47.448 --> 01:06:49.385
that are seemingly difficult but also seem

1433
01:06:49.385 --> 01:06:51.419
very laborious in a lot of way.

1434
01:06:51.419 --> 01:06:54.316
Pat Barker has this poem,
For The White Person

1435
01:06:54.316 --> 01:06:57.080
Who Wants To Be My Friend,
at the end she concludes,

1436
01:06:57.080 --> 01:07:01.080
this whole poem is
paradoxical in a lot of ways.

1437
01:07:02.825 --> 01:07:05.335
But at the end, she concludes
if you want to be my friend

1438
01:07:05.335 --> 01:07:07.404
kind of don't make a labor about it.

1439
01:07:07.404 --> 01:07:10.852
I guess it's difficult
in thinking about day

1440
01:07:10.852 --> 01:07:14.209
to day mundane interactions
that create microaggressions

1441
01:07:14.209 --> 01:07:19.081
and how is it then as a person
with marginal identities

1442
01:07:19.081 --> 01:07:21.504
in these interactions that
are microaggressional,

1443
01:07:21.504 --> 01:07:24.357
how do you continue with
that idea in an ethic

1444
01:07:24.357 --> 01:07:26.167
that is kindness and is love?

1445
01:07:26.167 --> 01:07:28.729
I think it's a very
difficult humane question,

1446
01:07:28.729 --> 01:07:30.709
especially when you read Invisible Man,

1447
01:07:30.709 --> 01:07:33.403
that's the whole idea of what racism is,

1448
01:07:33.403 --> 01:07:37.700
a dehumanizing project for
those marked by non-whiteness.

1449
01:07:37.700 --> 01:07:41.026
So then how is it, do
you continue with this,

1450
01:07:41.026 --> 01:07:43.625
whether you're a teacher right,
your pedigree is to kindness

1451
01:07:43.625 --> 01:07:45.208
and accountability.

1452
01:07:46.652 --> 01:07:49.222
How do we create spaces that
is accountable but don't feel

1453
01:07:49.222 --> 01:07:52.150
like this weirdness that
is call and call out?

1454
01:07:52.150 --> 01:07:53.663
I feel like there's a
lot of weird problematics

1455
01:07:53.663 --> 01:07:55.746
that's call and call out.

1456
01:07:57.656 --> 01:08:01.004
I think there are moments when
accountability must be held

1457
01:08:01.004 --> 01:08:05.577
and discussions are
gone, weary, and actually

1458
01:08:05.577 --> 01:08:07.244
create violence too.

1459
01:08:08.337 --> 01:08:11.794
Yeah, cause then it
leads to pessimism too,

1460
01:08:11.794 --> 01:08:15.711
thinking about, yeah, I
believe in this love is

1461
01:08:17.411 --> 01:08:20.017
liberator practice but
how do you then continue

1462
01:08:20.017 --> 01:08:22.352
especially as a person marked by marginal

1463
01:08:22.352 --> 01:08:26.519
identities that is outside of
the white normative paradigm?

1464
01:08:28.161 --> 01:08:29.911
- Thank you for that.

1465
01:08:31.532 --> 01:08:34.916
I always feel insufficient
to say I don't know.

1466
01:08:34.916 --> 01:08:36.619
Ultimately that is the truth.

1467
01:08:36.619 --> 01:08:40.369
If I knew, I'd be leader
of the world, right.

1468
01:08:41.267 --> 01:08:42.769
I mean I don't know.

1469
01:08:42.769 --> 01:08:46.017
I can tell you two things
that I always come back to

1470
01:08:46.017 --> 01:08:48.731
when I think in some ways
around the orbit of the

1471
01:08:48.731 --> 01:08:51.967
really deep and intense
question you just asked.

1472
01:08:51.967 --> 01:08:55.889
The first one is, for
me it's always important

1473
01:08:55.889 --> 01:08:59.134
and this is going to maybe
feel like a cop out even

1474
01:08:59.134 --> 01:09:01.671
a political or pre-political
focus but I feel like

1475
01:09:01.671 --> 01:09:05.135
it's very important for
me, any space I'm occupying

1476
01:09:05.135 --> 01:09:09.098
to try to be the most
generous person in that room.

1477
01:09:09.098 --> 01:09:11.667
To be generous, and
part of what that means

1478
01:09:11.667 --> 01:09:15.323
is recognizing that people
don't earn generosity.

1479
01:09:15.323 --> 01:09:17.462
They're generous because you're generous

1480
01:09:17.462 --> 01:09:21.018
and that you're modeling
a way of interacting

1481
01:09:21.018 --> 01:09:23.781
that hopefully can be contagious
too, you know what I mean?

1482
01:09:23.781 --> 01:09:26.218
And so part of what that
means for me is recognizing

1483
01:09:26.218 --> 01:09:31.165
that actually I want to be
disciplined enough to do

1484
01:09:31.165 --> 01:09:33.938
is to say, I'm not gonna cut my generosity

1485
01:09:33.938 --> 01:09:37.564
short because someone isn't
where I think they should be

1486
01:09:37.564 --> 01:09:40.121
given the way we think about
the kind of society we want.

1487
01:09:40.121 --> 01:09:42.251
I actually want to demonstrate
to them that generosity works

1488
01:09:42.251 --> 01:09:45.035
above and against their lack of

1489
01:09:45.035 --> 01:09:47.828
commitment to community
across differences.

1490
01:09:47.828 --> 01:09:49.759
That's one version of
it, and I do feel like

1491
01:09:49.759 --> 01:09:52.099
even out of other parts of the academy,

1492
01:09:52.099 --> 01:09:54.008
I have a colleague at Penn at Wharton

1493
01:09:54.008 --> 01:09:55.069
coming from a business model,

1494
01:09:55.069 --> 01:09:57.709
who has this very big
book called Give And Take.

1495
01:09:57.709 --> 01:09:59.915
There's a version of the
argument that says even if

1496
01:09:59.915 --> 01:10:01.819
you're instrumentalist
about it, even if ultimate

1497
01:10:01.819 --> 01:10:05.953
all you want to do is get
stuff to come back to you,

1498
01:10:05.953 --> 01:10:07.929
you just want more and more stuff.

1499
01:10:07.929 --> 01:10:11.365
He says actually the way you
do that, is by being generous.

1500
01:10:11.365 --> 01:10:13.125
It's by giving, giving, giving.

1501
01:10:13.125 --> 01:10:15.619
That ironically enough that's how you get.

1502
01:10:15.619 --> 01:10:18.157
So even if your ultimate end
game is a very selfish one,

1503
01:10:18.157 --> 01:10:19.612
he says the most effective way

1504
01:10:19.612 --> 01:10:21.394
to be selfish is to be generous.

1505
01:10:21.394 --> 01:10:24.066
That to me is a profound
way to think about things.

1506
01:10:24.066 --> 01:10:27.119
Even if you're a selfish
person, around this stuff.

1507
01:10:27.119 --> 01:10:29.378
You're thinking how do
I get to this person

1508
01:10:29.378 --> 01:10:31.616
who's intransigent, who won't change,

1509
01:10:31.616 --> 01:10:35.912
the way you do that I would
argue, is by your generosity

1510
01:10:35.912 --> 01:10:38.659
trumps whatever kind
of commitment they have

1511
01:10:38.659 --> 01:10:40.539
being selfish and uncaring.

1512
01:10:40.539 --> 01:10:43.447
I would argue it's one way to do it.

1513
01:10:43.447 --> 01:10:46.802
The other thing might seem maybe

1514
01:10:46.802 --> 01:10:47.709
paradoxical or
counter-intuitive is for me,

1515
01:10:47.709 --> 01:10:51.566
at least for me, this
doesn't hold for anyone else

1516
01:10:51.566 --> 01:10:53.484
in the room and I always tell my students

1517
01:10:53.484 --> 01:10:54.773
you don't have to agree with me and maybe

1518
01:10:54.773 --> 01:10:56.950
I won't agree with me in 15 minutes.

1519
01:10:56.950 --> 01:11:00.912
But ultimately for me, what racism means,

1520
01:11:00.912 --> 01:11:04.349
what recognizing racism and race is to me

1521
01:11:04.349 --> 01:11:07.668
is to ultimately recognize
that when I encounter,

1522
01:11:07.668 --> 01:11:10.671
whether it's micro or
macroaggressions, it's actually not

1523
01:11:10.671 --> 01:11:12.681
about me at all.

1524
01:11:12.681 --> 01:11:14.865
This is about folks who don't see me.

1525
01:11:14.865 --> 01:11:17.895
I don't exist as an individual
and what does that do?

1526
01:11:17.895 --> 01:11:20.172
It allows me to recognize
at a certain level,

1527
01:11:20.172 --> 01:11:23.474
even if the issues are
profound they're real

1528
01:11:23.474 --> 01:11:25.211
repercussions for people's lives.

1529
01:11:25.211 --> 01:11:27.307
It doesn't mean I take
them personally as some

1530
01:11:27.307 --> 01:11:28.855
sort of individualized,
because my definition

1531
01:11:28.855 --> 01:11:30.894
they don't see me as an individual.

1532
01:11:30.894 --> 01:11:32.344
They don't see me at all.

1533
01:11:32.344 --> 01:11:34.829
And all that allows me
to do is not internalize

1534
01:11:34.829 --> 01:11:38.020
it in a way that's
gonna feel debilitating.

1535
01:11:38.020 --> 01:11:40.697
And it's gonna make me
carry this burden of feeling

1536
01:11:40.697 --> 01:11:43.207
not just that someone is
aggressive towards me,

1537
01:11:43.207 --> 01:11:45.877
but somehow it's got inside
of me because I think

1538
01:11:45.877 --> 01:11:48.743
they're talking about me
when they're actually not.

1539
01:11:48.743 --> 01:11:50.425
They don't even see you.

1540
01:11:50.425 --> 01:11:52.514
Again I think there's some
power in not being seen

1541
01:11:52.514 --> 01:11:54.855
if you know how to use
that invisibility well.

1542
01:11:54.855 --> 01:11:57.149
So for me, it's about this
combination of generosity

1543
01:11:57.149 --> 01:12:00.533
that says it's almost
like I love the version

1544
01:12:00.533 --> 01:12:03.232
of what they did with the
Hulk in superhero movies.

1545
01:12:03.232 --> 01:12:05.774
What they did with the
Hulk in the movie version,

1546
01:12:05.774 --> 01:12:07.792
is the more you beat up on the Hulk,

1547
01:12:07.792 --> 01:12:09.542
the more the Hulk got punished,

1548
01:12:09.542 --> 01:12:12.673
the bigger and stronger he got.

1549
01:12:12.673 --> 01:12:14.616
You can't beat that Hulk.

1550
01:12:14.616 --> 01:12:18.620
If the more you pummel the
Hulk, the stronger he gets,

1551
01:12:18.620 --> 01:12:20.769
it's like you don't
want to beat up the Hulk

1552
01:12:20.769 --> 01:12:22.692
because you don't want the Hulk.

1553
01:12:22.692 --> 01:12:24.473
I think there's something about that logic

1554
01:12:24.473 --> 01:12:26.992
that also for me is something
I just want to aspire to

1555
01:12:26.992 --> 01:12:28.576
around this generosity.

1556
01:12:28.576 --> 01:12:30.755
Like the more I'm seeing
a lack of generosity,

1557
01:12:30.755 --> 01:12:33.782
the more I got to raise my
game to counterbalance it.

1558
01:12:33.782 --> 01:12:36.043
At the very same time, I
also have to be honest,

1559
01:12:36.043 --> 01:12:37.490
sometimes it's hard to remind yourself

1560
01:12:37.490 --> 01:12:39.169
that it's not about you.

1561
01:12:39.169 --> 01:12:41.634
This is someone who actually
doesn't see you at all.

1562
01:12:41.634 --> 01:12:43.820
And that that doesn't
let them off the hook,

1563
01:12:43.820 --> 01:12:45.730
it doesn't mean there's
something about what

1564
01:12:45.730 --> 01:12:47.436
they're doing that isn't horrible,

1565
01:12:47.436 --> 01:12:49.142
it means it's not horrible in the way

1566
01:12:49.142 --> 01:12:51.052
that sometimes we try to personalize

1567
01:12:51.052 --> 01:12:52.674
the horror as being about us.

1568
01:12:52.674 --> 01:12:54.264
It means they don't see
you, so how do you get them?

1569
01:12:54.264 --> 01:12:57.347
So your job then is how do
you get them to see you?

1570
01:12:57.347 --> 01:13:00.371
Not the phantom they
create, not the projection

1571
01:13:00.371 --> 01:13:03.128
they've offered up, but
you as an individual human

1572
01:13:03.128 --> 01:13:06.403
being that is represented of a community

1573
01:13:06.403 --> 01:13:07.912
or various communities,
but not the community

1574
01:13:07.912 --> 01:13:10.440
they imagine they need
you to be represented of

1575
01:13:10.440 --> 01:13:12.776
to have the kind of
assumptions they have about

1576
01:13:12.776 --> 01:13:14.027
how the world should be organized.

1577
01:13:14.027 --> 01:13:15.306
I know it's not a great answer.

1578
01:13:15.306 --> 01:13:18.238
- [Voiceover] Last one you got.

1579
01:13:18.238 --> 01:13:22.405
- Thank you for that question
and thank you for your answer.

1580
01:13:23.427 --> 01:13:25.596
I have a question about, I'm curious about

1581
01:13:25.596 --> 01:13:27.514
this idea of generosity.

1582
01:13:27.514 --> 01:13:29.592
I'm also like how are you defining this

1583
01:13:29.592 --> 01:13:31.575
and what would that look
like on a daily basis

1584
01:13:31.575 --> 01:13:34.739
in authentic relationships, number one.

1585
01:13:34.739 --> 01:13:37.256
Number two, have you always
been generous with yourself

1586
01:13:37.256 --> 01:13:40.673
or is your generosity, is your generosity

1587
01:13:42.155 --> 01:13:45.866
sort of a product of
your escalating privilege

1588
01:13:45.866 --> 01:13:49.428
and the intersections of your
very privileged identities.

1589
01:13:49.428 --> 01:13:50.607
And number three,

1590
01:13:50.607 --> 01:13:53.607
(audience laughing)

1591
01:13:55.332 --> 01:13:57.876
I'm concerned about
this conversation about

1592
01:13:57.876 --> 01:14:01.138
like the Hulk and beat up, quoting

1593
01:14:01.138 --> 01:14:03.645
Ta-Nehisi Coates Between The World And Me,

1594
01:14:03.645 --> 01:14:07.062
he uses the body as the sight of analysis

1595
01:14:08.764 --> 01:14:12.659
which was all rooted in black feminism,

1596
01:14:12.659 --> 01:14:15.296
so I'm really curious
about this whole thing,

1597
01:14:15.296 --> 01:14:16.658
about getting beat up more.

1598
01:14:16.658 --> 01:14:20.328
And third, so much of what
you said resonated with me,

1599
01:14:20.328 --> 01:14:23.685
and I would like for you to share.

1600
01:14:23.685 --> 01:14:25.645
It sounds so familiar
like the strength to let

1601
01:14:25.645 --> 01:14:27.766
Martin Luther King, Bell Hooks, you know

1602
01:14:27.766 --> 01:14:29.420
teaching transgress, All About Love,

1603
01:14:29.420 --> 01:14:33.035
and for me Pedagogy Of The Opressed,

1604
01:14:33.035 --> 01:14:35.534
and I want to know what
literature did you use

1605
01:14:35.534 --> 01:14:37.792
to come to where you are right now

1606
01:14:37.792 --> 01:14:40.079
and create a book list
for folks in the room

1607
01:14:40.079 --> 01:14:42.013
that need to go do they're own work.

1608
01:14:42.013 --> 01:14:44.134
(audience laughing)

1609
01:14:44.134 --> 01:14:45.402
(audience clapping)

1610
01:14:45.402 --> 01:14:47.652
- I appreciate all of that.

1611
01:14:49.618 --> 01:14:51.201
So I can definitely tell
you if you email me,

1612
01:14:51.201 --> 01:14:53.101
some people always say email them

1613
01:14:53.101 --> 01:14:55.862
and I do get a ton of emails.

1614
01:14:55.862 --> 01:14:58.031
If you email me I can
definitely send you a list,

1615
01:14:58.031 --> 01:14:59.614
so be careful what you ask for.

1616
01:14:59.614 --> 01:15:01.734
I mean a lot of it is stuff
that you offered up too.

1617
01:15:01.734 --> 01:15:04.032
I do feel like ultimately,

1618
01:15:04.032 --> 01:15:08.199
I'm not sure, it was after
the fact that I think I

1619
01:15:09.623 --> 01:15:13.391
thought about myself as
some how being invested

1620
01:15:13.391 --> 01:15:16.140
in the idea of generosity.

1621
01:15:16.140 --> 01:15:19.577
I'm not sure when I realized
that or when I actually

1622
01:15:19.577 --> 01:15:23.373
recognized it as something
that actually was powerful

1623
01:15:23.373 --> 01:15:26.445
and protected me in some kind of way.

1624
01:15:26.445 --> 01:15:27.535
Ultimately I do feel like,

1625
01:15:27.535 --> 01:15:30.017
I like this idea of saying
we all have to think

1626
01:15:30.017 --> 01:15:32.689
about the metaphors that we deploy.

1627
01:15:32.689 --> 01:15:34.161
So whether they're
militaristic or there's all

1628
01:15:34.161 --> 01:15:37.006
these ways that we can
use language in these

1629
01:15:37.006 --> 01:15:40.432
imperfect ways and not
recognize what it leaves out,

1630
01:15:40.432 --> 01:15:42.243
what it marginalizes, how it harms.

1631
01:15:42.243 --> 01:15:44.389
That's again, cause we're not Borgs,

1632
01:15:44.389 --> 01:15:46.042
we can't control all of that.

1633
01:15:46.042 --> 01:15:48.797
Ultimately I would say maybe two things.

1634
01:15:48.797 --> 01:15:51.714
One is I do believe that ultimately

1635
01:15:54.080 --> 01:15:58.320
there's something about my own investments

1636
01:15:58.320 --> 01:16:01.223
in generosity that simply
are a function of how

1637
01:16:01.223 --> 01:16:04.557
I grew up and the kind of
household I grew up in.

1638
01:16:04.557 --> 01:16:08.474
I mean i grew up with
parents, a biological dad

1639
01:16:09.446 --> 01:16:13.406
from the south, step
father from the Caribbean,

1640
01:16:13.406 --> 01:16:15.587
mother from the Caribbean,
very Caribbean part of Brooklyn

1641
01:16:15.587 --> 01:16:18.332
and New York, but one
of these places, usually

1642
01:16:18.332 --> 01:16:21.393
people understand the relationship between

1643
01:16:21.393 --> 01:16:23.723
Caribbean-Americans and West Indies

1644
01:16:23.723 --> 01:16:25.056
and African-Americans is very contentious.

1645
01:16:25.056 --> 01:16:27.683
And all this discourse around
the abject African-American

1646
01:16:27.683 --> 01:16:29.736
and I didn't hear any of that,

1647
01:16:29.736 --> 01:16:31.381
maybe because I was African-American.

1648
01:16:31.381 --> 01:16:33.235
I was African-American,
I was born in, that's it.

1649
01:16:33.235 --> 01:16:34.214
That's all I felt.

1650
01:16:34.214 --> 01:16:35.710
My wife always tells me
I try to pretend I'm not

1651
01:16:35.710 --> 01:16:37.118
Caribbean in any kind of way.

1652
01:16:37.118 --> 01:16:41.285
Ultimately what I think it
means is for better or worse,

1653
01:16:42.670 --> 01:16:47.266
I'm someone who always felt
for a whole bunch of reasons.

1654
01:16:47.266 --> 01:16:50.191
I understood the value of what my

1655
01:16:50.191 --> 01:16:53.363
mother was doing as a case worker.

1656
01:16:53.363 --> 01:16:55.547
So she worked with elderly New Yorkers,

1657
01:16:55.547 --> 01:16:57.136
usually when they're stuff was already

1658
01:16:57.136 --> 01:16:58.752
out on the street or
about to be on the street.

1659
01:16:58.752 --> 01:17:00.131
Either trying to keep them housed,

1660
01:17:00.131 --> 01:17:01.153
get them back in a home,
find another home for them

1661
01:17:01.153 --> 01:17:03.506
if they're already
kicked out and I remember

1662
01:17:03.506 --> 01:17:07.225
just being terrified every
day she went to work.

1663
01:17:07.225 --> 01:17:08.610
Cause I knew where she was going.

1664
01:17:08.610 --> 01:17:09.810
I knew how dangerous it was.

1665
01:17:09.810 --> 01:17:11.549
If you seen my mom, she seems very quiet.

1666
01:17:11.549 --> 01:17:14.638
Ultimately I think part
of what you're asking

1667
01:17:14.638 --> 01:17:18.071
is a question about to
what extent we're able

1668
01:17:18.071 --> 01:17:20.487
to own and recognize our privilege

1669
01:17:20.487 --> 01:17:22.635
in all the ways they manifest themselves.

1670
01:17:22.635 --> 01:17:25.678
And to figure out how to use
those points of privilege

1671
01:17:25.678 --> 01:17:28.156
as a way to open up the door
to bring other people in,

1672
01:17:28.156 --> 01:17:31.459
as a way to reproduce their exclusions.

1673
01:17:31.459 --> 01:17:34.225
I feel like one of the ways
I think about generosity,

1674
01:17:34.225 --> 01:17:36.505
the example I would use.

1675
01:17:36.505 --> 01:17:39.761
Again I feel like our students
inspire me every single day,

1676
01:17:39.761 --> 01:17:42.310
but there was one moment this year

1677
01:17:42.310 --> 01:17:44.893
that had me my most frustrated.

1678
01:17:45.806 --> 01:17:47.867
And I think it's an example
of kind of what I mean.

1679
01:17:47.867 --> 01:17:49.140
Not all of it but it,

1680
01:17:49.140 --> 01:17:53.188
and I've never talked about this publicly

1681
01:17:53.188 --> 01:17:54.885
and I won't say too much.

1682
01:17:54.885 --> 01:17:58.578
But it was students
who got wind of another

1683
01:17:58.578 --> 01:18:00.918
group of our students in the same school,

1684
01:18:00.918 --> 01:18:02.952
who were trying to
organize an event around

1685
01:18:02.952 --> 01:18:06.785
the vulnerability of
trans killed, trans black

1686
01:18:09.293 --> 01:18:11.210
people in Philadelphia.

1687
01:18:12.671 --> 01:18:14.711
And they had spent the whole
semester working on this

1688
01:18:14.711 --> 01:18:18.907
and talking to the
families of relatives who

1689
01:18:18.907 --> 01:18:22.740
survived, are surviving
the dead young people,

1690
01:18:24.261 --> 01:18:27.154
often very young people,
but not all the time.

1691
01:18:27.154 --> 01:18:29.322
They tried to do a
reading list, where they

1692
01:18:29.322 --> 01:18:31.094
thought about all the things they needed

1693
01:18:31.094 --> 01:18:33.233
to learn and understand to place this in

1694
01:18:33.233 --> 01:18:35.074
this larger social context,
I mean all this work

1695
01:18:35.074 --> 01:18:36.781
all this semester.

1696
01:18:36.781 --> 01:18:38.369
They were going to do a public event

1697
01:18:38.369 --> 01:18:39.753
where they had a conversation about it.

1698
01:18:39.753 --> 01:18:41.540
Again almost throw away the conversation

1699
01:18:41.540 --> 01:18:43.272
at the end of the year.

1700
01:18:43.272 --> 01:18:45.432
And one of the things
that really brought me

1701
01:18:45.432 --> 01:18:46.788
to my lowest point all year, and I'm still

1702
01:18:46.788 --> 01:18:48.435
trying to think about how to process it

1703
01:18:48.435 --> 01:18:50.168
and make sure we learn from it.

1704
01:18:50.168 --> 01:18:51.746
Is when another group of students,

1705
01:18:51.746 --> 01:18:54.126
got wind of what they
were doing, and before

1706
01:18:54.126 --> 01:18:58.239
again what they got was
some invite to this session.

1707
01:18:58.239 --> 01:19:00.120
We were going to talk this stuff through.

1708
01:19:00.120 --> 01:19:02.170
And before they did research to figure

1709
01:19:02.170 --> 01:19:04.209
out where this come
from, before they spoke

1710
01:19:04.209 --> 01:19:06.453
to any of the students,
they went on social media

1711
01:19:06.453 --> 01:19:08.774
and just went berserk.

1712
01:19:08.774 --> 01:19:10.543
They just went berserk
about who is included,

1713
01:19:10.543 --> 01:19:13.676
who is not included, in a register,

1714
01:19:13.676 --> 01:19:16.054
in a language that to
me seemed it was clearly

1715
01:19:16.054 --> 01:19:20.379
genuinely trying to think
in a very progressive

1716
01:19:20.379 --> 01:19:23.888
and inclusive way about
the trans community.

1717
01:19:23.888 --> 01:19:28.666
But in a language it registered
such hostility and anger.

1718
01:19:28.666 --> 01:19:30.184
And I didn't understand
how you could do that.

1719
01:19:30.184 --> 01:19:32.829
I was like it's one thing
to say it's something about

1720
01:19:32.829 --> 01:19:35.927
our affect that presupposes our politics.

1721
01:19:35.927 --> 01:19:37.505
There isn't.

1722
01:19:37.505 --> 01:19:42.102
So it's not about if I'm
heated, if I'm angry,

1723
01:19:42.102 --> 01:19:46.186
if I'm really vocal
and unwilling to budge,

1724
01:19:46.186 --> 01:19:48.886
is it something about
what I must be saying

1725
01:19:48.886 --> 01:19:51.910
that by definition must be
reactionary and harmful.

1726
01:19:51.910 --> 01:19:54.018
I think the politics behind
what they were doing,

1727
01:19:54.018 --> 01:19:56.769
probably was really good.

1728
01:19:56.769 --> 01:19:58.213
What I didn't appreciate was the fact

1729
01:19:58.213 --> 01:20:00.776
that they were so
committed to almost a kind

1730
01:20:00.776 --> 01:20:04.799
of language of betrayal and accusation,

1731
01:20:04.799 --> 01:20:07.103
that they weren't willing
to do the next step,

1732
01:20:07.103 --> 01:20:08.887
which was to have a
discussion about how and why

1733
01:20:08.887 --> 01:20:10.737
we can talk together about
what might be lacking.

1734
01:20:10.737 --> 01:20:12.855
Now we can make sure we can feel it in.

1735
01:20:12.855 --> 01:20:15.096
And that to me is a text book

1736
01:20:15.096 --> 01:20:17.331
example of what generosity isn't.

1737
01:20:17.331 --> 01:20:21.165
It says in some ways, I'm not willing to

1738
01:20:21.165 --> 01:20:23.519
actually go the extra step and really

1739
01:20:23.519 --> 01:20:26.484
understand before I attack.

1740
01:20:26.484 --> 01:20:28.630
And I understand why they
want to attack because

1741
01:20:28.630 --> 01:20:30.013
they think we often feel
like we're very vulnerable.

1742
01:20:30.013 --> 01:20:33.430
And often we're under attack so I get it.

1743
01:20:34.417 --> 01:20:36.845
You're often defending
yourself, defending your,

1744
01:20:36.845 --> 01:20:38.604
and defending your dear life.

1745
01:20:38.604 --> 01:20:41.051
And I understand that, but
I still feel like there

1746
01:20:41.051 --> 01:20:44.369
are ways in which we can
so, with a hairs trigger

1747
01:20:44.369 --> 01:20:45.952
kind of philosophy.

1748
01:20:47.700 --> 01:20:50.699
We get to this place
where we're not actually

1749
01:20:50.699 --> 01:20:53.121
thinking about our
connection to other people.

1750
01:20:53.121 --> 01:20:55.042
We're redefining fetishizing
a certain kind of

1751
01:20:55.042 --> 01:20:59.613
again often very caricature
dose of ideological

1752
01:20:59.613 --> 01:21:01.724
commitment at the expense of what should

1753
01:21:01.724 --> 01:21:03.863
be the end game of actually creating

1754
01:21:03.863 --> 01:21:07.501
a beloved community of some
kind with real people in it.

1755
01:21:07.501 --> 01:21:09.913
Well you brought him
up, that's why I ended

1756
01:21:09.913 --> 01:21:10.992
with Martin Luther King.

1757
01:21:10.992 --> 01:21:12.981
So I do feel like to
me that was one example

1758
01:21:12.981 --> 01:21:14.571
of actually students, I
would argue is the right

1759
01:21:14.571 --> 01:21:16.549
politic, as hard as it was to think more

1760
01:21:16.549 --> 01:21:20.171
critically about what you're
doing and how you're doing it.

1761
01:21:20.171 --> 01:21:25.132
But in a mode I thought
that was exactly disastrous.

1762
01:21:25.132 --> 01:21:28.554
And I would argue not a
social working mode at all.

1763
01:21:28.554 --> 01:21:30.806
and I was really surprised by that.

1764
01:21:30.806 --> 01:21:33.587
I do feel like part of
what, we're in this.

1765
01:21:33.587 --> 01:21:35.701
I wrote this book, Impolite Conversation,

1766
01:21:35.701 --> 01:21:38.023
before we knew we'd have
the presidential election

1767
01:21:38.023 --> 01:21:40.943
we would have, we were going to have.

1768
01:21:40.943 --> 01:21:44.821
And so it was almost like
be careful what you ask for.

1769
01:21:44.821 --> 01:21:46.933
I get that too, so it's
not like it's something

1770
01:21:46.933 --> 01:21:50.748
about impoliteness
that's some smoking gun,

1771
01:21:50.748 --> 01:21:51.723
you know what I mean.

1772
01:21:51.723 --> 01:21:52.979
There aren't smoking guns,
I mean that's part of what

1773
01:21:52.979 --> 01:21:54.816
the problem is, we want
easy simple answers.

1774
01:21:54.816 --> 01:21:57.566
Tell us what the magic bullet is.

1775
01:21:58.682 --> 01:22:01.265
We'll do it and then
we'll be done with it.

1776
01:22:01.265 --> 01:22:04.476
And what we don't realize or I think

1777
01:22:04.476 --> 01:22:06.544
appreciate to the extent that we have to,

1778
01:22:06.544 --> 01:22:07.427
to have a chance of doing this right.

1779
01:22:07.427 --> 01:22:09.231
Is that it isn't about
any sort of magic formula

1780
01:22:09.231 --> 01:22:14.132
that we've invoked that
totally changes our world.

1781
01:22:14.132 --> 01:22:18.843
It's about ongoing constant
struggle, struggle in quotes.

1782
01:22:18.843 --> 01:22:21.646
Struggle that can be
affect laden but in ways

1783
01:22:21.646 --> 01:22:24.647
that are positive and constructive.

1784
01:22:24.647 --> 01:22:26.920
But to try to pretend to
ourselves that anytime

1785
01:22:26.920 --> 01:22:29.187
someone comes at you with a simple answer,

1786
01:22:29.187 --> 01:22:30.770
no that it's a lie.

1787
01:22:31.673 --> 01:22:33.598
It's a lie, by definition a lie.

1788
01:22:33.598 --> 01:22:35.556
Cause it were that simple,
we're a pretty smart

1789
01:22:35.556 --> 01:22:37.920
species, we would have figured
that out a long time ago.

1790
01:22:37.920 --> 01:22:39.903
It's incredibly difficult.

1791
01:22:39.903 --> 01:22:41.968
And nothing is one off, right?

1792
01:22:41.968 --> 01:22:44.184
So it's like what is
the commitment you make

1793
01:22:44.184 --> 01:22:46.142
long term, the thinking
through the process of change.

1794
01:22:46.142 --> 01:22:49.559
And knowing that for every small success,

1795
01:22:50.897 --> 01:22:53.205
you can have a ton of setbacks.

1796
01:22:53.205 --> 01:22:55.175
That's okay too, you
can learn the right way

1797
01:22:55.175 --> 01:22:57.533
to learn from those mistakes.

1798
01:22:57.533 --> 01:23:00.692
So ultimately again, I'll
just end on one simple note.

1799
01:23:00.692 --> 01:23:04.396
I do believe that part of
what we have in the academy

1800
01:23:04.396 --> 01:23:07.125
right now is this space
where students are really

1801
01:23:07.125 --> 01:23:11.949
trying to figure out what
makes spaces like this one,

1802
01:23:11.949 --> 01:23:13.832
much more inclusive.

1803
01:23:13.832 --> 01:23:16.470
We try, we often have
rhetoric of inclusion

1804
01:23:16.470 --> 01:23:19.309
and diversity, but it's hard
to institutionalize that.

1805
01:23:19.309 --> 01:23:21.444
And let me tell you, if
it's hard in the academy,

1806
01:23:21.444 --> 01:23:23.604
which is a prime space for it,

1807
01:23:23.604 --> 01:23:25.347
think about other institutions.

1808
01:23:25.347 --> 01:23:27.905
How hard is it in other places?

1809
01:23:27.905 --> 01:23:29.892
And so out job is to, I would think

1810
01:23:29.892 --> 01:23:32.300
always try to find a way.

1811
01:23:32.300 --> 01:23:34.283
We don't have to agree with one another,

1812
01:23:34.283 --> 01:23:36.199
we don't have to agree
with every argument.

1813
01:23:36.199 --> 01:23:38.386
You don't have to agree
with any of my arguments,

1814
01:23:38.386 --> 01:23:41.895
but know that you're
responsibility is to think

1815
01:23:41.895 --> 01:23:43.963
about why and how you
hold the position you hold

1816
01:23:43.963 --> 01:23:47.030
and to constantly push yourself.

1817
01:23:47.030 --> 01:23:49.271
Push yourself to think
more deeply about it

1818
01:23:49.271 --> 01:23:51.940
and to feel more deeply about it.

1819
01:23:51.940 --> 01:23:53.393
To do them together.

1820
01:23:53.393 --> 01:23:55.673
And then to come back to
what you take for granted.

1821
01:23:55.673 --> 01:23:56.942
To the stuff you believe.

1822
01:23:56.942 --> 01:23:58.635
I mean even this idea of thinking,

1823
01:23:58.635 --> 01:24:01.211
I mean this was one of the
critiques of the culture as well.

1824
01:24:01.211 --> 01:24:04.511
Who invisibilized even in
seemingly very positive

1825
01:24:04.511 --> 01:24:08.363
and impactful kind of
articulations and problems areas.

1826
01:24:08.363 --> 01:24:10.778
It's not like you're going
to find someway to magic

1827
01:24:10.778 --> 01:24:13.257
and make sure everyone's at the table.

1828
01:24:13.257 --> 01:24:15.406
But you have to be open
to the fact that someone

1829
01:24:15.406 --> 01:24:17.449
didn't get invited, you
understand how and why

1830
01:24:17.449 --> 01:24:19.110
you fell into that trap.

1831
01:24:19.110 --> 01:24:21.877
And you try to quickly
find enough space for them

1832
01:24:21.877 --> 01:24:24.217
to be there and to
occupy that space as well

1833
01:24:24.217 --> 01:24:27.582
as effectively, as humanely,
and as fully as you do.

1834
01:24:27.582 --> 01:24:29.362
I think we can do that.

1835
01:24:29.362 --> 01:24:32.779
And we do that by saying, it's not about,

1836
01:24:33.628 --> 01:24:34.834
we want to think, see I can talk and talk.

1837
01:24:34.834 --> 01:24:36.168
So the last thing I'll
say is we want to imagine

1838
01:24:36.168 --> 01:24:38.727
that some people, they where black hats

1839
01:24:38.727 --> 01:24:40.381
and they're bad all the time.

1840
01:24:40.381 --> 01:24:41.674
They're just bad people.

1841
01:24:41.674 --> 01:24:43.093
And some people where white hats.

1842
01:24:43.093 --> 01:24:44.673
Well you can switch them
around if you're so integrated.

1843
01:24:44.673 --> 01:24:47.771
The bad guys can wear the
white hats, the good guys.

1844
01:24:47.771 --> 01:24:49.396
But the point is, we
imagine that the differences

1845
01:24:49.396 --> 01:24:51.896
are hard and fast and eternal.

1846
01:24:53.691 --> 01:24:55.249
That's how we reframe our debates.

1847
01:24:55.249 --> 01:24:57.118
They're bad people here
who are always bad people

1848
01:24:57.118 --> 01:24:58.840
for all time, good people
on this side right,

1849
01:24:58.840 --> 01:25:00.872
with halos over their heads.

1850
01:25:00.872 --> 01:25:02.760
And ultimately we have to recognize is,

1851
01:25:02.760 --> 01:25:05.881
and we know this but how do
we negotiate it every day?

1852
01:25:05.881 --> 01:25:07.869
That's a myth, that's a
fantasy we tell ourselves.

1853
01:25:07.869 --> 01:25:10.210
That part of what we understand,

1854
01:25:10.210 --> 01:25:11.576
we're living in a world
where people operate

1855
01:25:11.576 --> 01:25:14.826
on both sides of those lines every day.

1856
01:25:16.138 --> 01:25:19.656
Some of the kindest people
you'd have met in the old South,

1857
01:25:19.656 --> 01:25:23.671
were the most virulent,
segregationist in the world.

1858
01:25:23.671 --> 01:25:25.986
Even in the contemporary moment.

1859
01:25:25.986 --> 01:25:28.171
I would argue a moment
where race doesn't even,

1860
01:25:28.171 --> 01:25:30.940
like we want to imagine we
can use all the categories

1861
01:25:30.940 --> 01:25:33.489
and conceptual framework
from the pre-civil rights era

1862
01:25:33.489 --> 01:25:35.406
to talk about the emerging moment.

1863
01:25:35.406 --> 01:25:36.753
We can not.

1864
01:25:36.753 --> 01:25:38.077
we can not.

1865
01:25:38.077 --> 01:25:41.107
They can't even begin to
capture what's new about how we

1866
01:25:41.107 --> 01:25:43.855
handle and negotiate race
in the present moment.

1867
01:25:43.855 --> 01:25:45.958
Tons of examples of that.

1868
01:25:45.958 --> 01:25:48.387
If you look, I mean I
can give you a couple

1869
01:25:48.387 --> 01:25:51.136
but I'm a stop because I'm going over.

1870
01:25:51.136 --> 01:25:53.543
The one that I use in
my book Racial Paranoia,

1871
01:25:53.543 --> 01:25:55.777
Dave Chappell and how
and why Dave Chappell

1872
01:25:55.777 --> 01:25:57.733
walked away from 50 million dollars.

1873
01:25:57.733 --> 01:26:00.443
To me that's an example of a
version of dealing with race

1874
01:26:00.443 --> 01:26:02.942
that is not like anything
we've seen in the media

1875
01:26:02.942 --> 01:26:04.894
industry before that day.

1876
01:26:04.894 --> 01:26:07.579
Nothing about it is similar to
what we've seen before then.

1877
01:26:07.579 --> 01:26:09.765
Then all of these
discussions about how college

1878
01:26:09.765 --> 01:26:11.797
students differently use black-face

1879
01:26:11.797 --> 01:26:13.119
when they party and all that stuff.

1880
01:26:13.119 --> 01:26:15.644
I do know part of what
we're good at doing,

1881
01:26:15.644 --> 01:26:19.811
is we're good at taking the
versions of what we did before

1882
01:26:19.811 --> 01:26:23.106
and imagining that when we
see them in the present,

1883
01:26:23.106 --> 01:26:25.291
all of the meanings,
all of the values they

1884
01:26:25.291 --> 01:26:28.097
had with them before are
immediately operating

1885
01:26:28.097 --> 01:26:30.249
in the exact same way now.

1886
01:26:30.249 --> 01:26:33.439
What we have to recognize is
that isn't always the case.

1887
01:26:33.439 --> 01:26:35.160
So we have to think a
little bit differently.

1888
01:26:35.160 --> 01:26:37.098
We have to turn the
screw one more rotation.

1889
01:26:37.098 --> 01:26:39.319
It doesn't mean we get rid of history,

1890
01:26:39.319 --> 01:26:40.728
it doesn't mean history doesn't matter.

1891
01:26:40.728 --> 01:26:44.462
It's history by itself won't
get us to the finished line.

1892
01:26:44.462 --> 01:26:47.626
We're going to have to
create new categories

1893
01:26:47.626 --> 01:26:49.853
that are up to the task of doing justice

1894
01:26:49.853 --> 01:26:51.703
to the present moment.

1895
01:26:51.703 --> 01:26:54.365
And we never had to create them before

1896
01:26:54.365 --> 01:26:56.458
and it's a tall order but
I would argue as a species

1897
01:26:56.458 --> 01:26:59.673
we've been doing that again and
again for a long, long time.

1898
01:26:59.673 --> 01:27:01.625
So I want to feel like
we're up to the task

1899
01:27:01.625 --> 01:27:02.865
of doing it again.

1900
01:27:02.865 --> 01:27:03.931
So thanks you all.

1901
01:27:03.931 --> 01:27:04.764
Sorry to keep you so late.

1902
01:27:04.764 --> 01:27:06.476
(audience clapping)

1903
01:27:06.476 --> 01:27:07.887
- Thank you very much.

1904
01:27:07.887 --> 01:27:09.573
This was wonderful.

1905
01:27:09.573 --> 01:27:10.702
On behalf of all of us, thank
you very much for coming.

1906
01:27:10.702 --> 01:27:12.215
Good night everyone.

1907
01:27:12.215 --> 01:27:15.215
(audience clapping)