- I'm gonna ask everyone listening,
removed two claims from your vocabulary.
Reverse racism, remove it, there's no such thing.
And I'm not racist.
I'm gonna actually ask for white people
to just remove that claim.
- Hey There Human, with me Rainn Wilson.
Hey everybody, it's me Rainn Wilson.
Welcome back to Hey There Human.
So nice to see you guys,
I'm really excited about today's show.
Robin DiAngelo is on the show,
she's the author of "White Fragility"
which has been a number one bestseller
for like two years now.
This has been a crucial and seminal book,
discussing basically why white people
have such a hard time talking about race.
Why they get so prickly and defensive,
and say they, me to, us to, us we whites,
prickly and defensive and have issues
really digging in and having those tough,
difficult uncomfortable conversations about race.
It's hard, I love living in denial.
I love living in my little elite Hollywood privileged tower
of not really looking at race
and not having to deal with it and uncomfortable emotions.
I don't even like it like if someone gets testy
at a Starbucks that their drink order is wrong.
I'm like ooooh, mom and dad are fighting.
Oooh, divorce trauma, I don't wanna look
at difficult and dangerous emotions.
And so I pull away.
Let alone stuff that bears the wounds and the trauma
of over 400 years of oppression in various ways.
I wanna say that one of the things
that has really bummed me out
in all of the kind of online debate going on,
it's basically red states versus blue states
and this great rift,
this division between the urban and the rural
and the Trump supporter and the non-Trump supporter
and the All Lives Matter versus Black Lives Matter,
this giant rift that has been created.
But the thing that bums me out about it is,
and again, I'm not here to get into that specifically,
but what bums me out about it,
is just the lack of compassion.
Like people are dying in really grotesque ways,
they have been for decades, for centuries really,
and the least we can do,
no matter what your political affiliation is,
just like slow down and have some deep deep compassion
in your heart for George Floyd, his family,
Brianna Taylor, her family,
countless African American families that have undergone
this kind of trauma in the hands of police
and other institutions
and not just big traumas like murder,
but like all the little traumas,
and to take some time and learn humbly
about that situation,
and to just feel for people.
Now listen, I know a lot of you are thinking,
hey, we need to do a hell of a lot more than just feel,
but you what, you can start with feeling, you know.
Any action starts with a motivation
that comes from a feeling.
So, I'm talking about not just like aaaaaw, like empathy,
like aaaw, people are suffering, aaaw.
It's more like, I have a deep, heart-based soul-based
compassion if I put myself in their shoes
as what they could be going through,
and let that spur us to action.
So, let me bring on Robin DiAngelo.
Hi, how are you Robin?
- Hi.
- Thank you so much for last minute coming on our show,
and I know you're the most sought after guest
kind of going right now, for a lot of very good reasons,
and I'm really honored that you're on Hey There Humans.
So thank you for stopping by.
- Thank you for inviting me Rainn.
- So, I will admit,
I'm only about halfway through your book,
but, I'm just loving it.
And for me and maybe this is part of my white fragility,
is it's hard to take in
so I'm kind of doing it in bite sized pieces
and like, pondering it a lot.
Is that part of my white fragility
or is that kind of, is that standard human?
- No, I'm so glad you're doing that.
You know, if there's an emotional aspect to it
that's very very deep
and you were talking about a compassionate,
on some level I think white people have to ask ourselves,
why are our hearts not breaking?
What did it take to break our hearts?
What did it take for us to see?
And so I think it's really healthy to like,
let yourself feel it.
Because if you don't,
if you just keep reading and pushing through that,
that just kind of protects the vulnerability
and the humility that we really have to reach for.
And white fragility is not sensitivity
or vulnerability or humility,
and even some defensiveness is a normal response
to being called in on something.
It's defensiveness that we don't work through.
It's defensiveness that ends up functioning to excuse us
from further engagement.
I'm sure you've seen this before.
Well, then forget it.
I'm not gonna say anything if I can't say anything right.
That kind of defensiveness functions to protect
you from any further growth or awareness, right?
It's a kind of refusal to be stretched or expanded.
So yeah, take your time.
- Good, thank you.
And thanks also for permission to kind of make mistakes,
because that's part of how I've felt in this last month.
I just know I'm gonna make mistakes.
I'm gonna just say the wrong thing,
I'm gonna blunder in certain ways,
I'm kind of a blunder as a person.
As a privileged white male, I have blind spots.
There's a lot more than I have the blind spots,
but I got some big blind spots
about how people might interact with me or feel about me.
So let's talk about that, you know,
people making mistakes in conversations about race.
- You're asking me all the right questions.
If you think I am articulate and clear
about how racism functions,
about white people's role in racism,
it is from thousands and thousands of mistakes
across 20 decades.
I could not learn if I was not making mistakes.
The key of course,
there's a difference between careful and thoughtful.
We don't wanna be so careful that we're not authentic.
I will never forget an interaction
with a friend of mine who's black,
and one day over lunch she said to me,
"Robin, you're always talking over me
and that's your racism."
And I was like, no it's not,
that's not my racism I talk over everybody.
So if I talk over everybody it can't be racism.
And she had to work to get me to see
but when you do that to me, the impact is different,
in the same way that when you as a man talk over a woman,
the impact is different because the history is different.
So, carefulness just has us looking tight
and insincere and not very warm,
but thoughtfulness is always considering
what is my position in relationship to this person.
We bring our history with us into that encounter.
Yes I'm Robin, an individual,
I'm also a white individual.
And I have to also hold that the history
that I bring across race is one of harm.
The other piece about making mistakes is repair.
I've had countless black friends say to me,
we're not gonna give up on you
when your socialization surfaces,
when the assumptions that have been kind of conditioned
into you come out.
We're not gonna give up and abandon you.
If we did that we'd really be isolated,
and we need you in the struggle.
What we're looking for in those moments
when it does surface as it inevitably will,
is where can we go with you?
Can we talk about it?
Are you willing to learn from that mistake?
Are you willing to repair and acknowledge
the harm that was done from the mistake,
whether you intended it or not?
Can you let go of your intentions?
Can you stop going on about how you didn't mean to do it,
and look at the fact that it still impacted me
in a way that hurts me.
And that comes from a very different premise.
The premise that fuels defensiveness
is only bad people could be racist,
only people who mean to do it could do it,
and therefore, if you're telling me that I'm doing it,
you have to have misunderstood me.
Because it's just not possible for me to have done that.
When you realize it's really more like,
it's not possible for me not to have these blind spots,
it's liberating.
Because then you just stop defending
and deflecting and denying,
you start seeking to want to understand
and change your blind spots.
- Two things, I've really wanna talk to you
and I know you need to go at certain point.
One is, I love how you,
I don't think it's just you, but in the book,
you talk about redefining the word racism,
obviously we know the difference
between prejudice and racism.
Some people are starting to learn that,
that prejudice is something that can be felt by anyone,
and under any circumstance,
and racism is prejudice taken to such a degree
that it has infiltrated systems
and institutions to oppress and hold people back.
But the idea of reframing and redefining what racist means.
Because people think in their heads,
a lot of people racist means
I call a person of color a derogatory name
and I spit at them and I feel hatred in my heart
or contempt in my heart,
that's what being a racist is,
and that maybe that was a racist in the 1890s.
But, now, we have to look at a more kind of subtle,
variegated, multifaceted viewpoint
of what being a racist is.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
- I really appreciate that you articulated
the difference between prejudice and racism,
but I'm gonna reinforce that because it's foundational.
Everyone has racial bias, right?
Van Jones gonna have racial bias against me
because I'm white and he doesn't even know me.
But racism is what happens when you back my group's bias
with legal authority institutional control.
It's transformed so that it becomes the default.
It becomes automatic, I get to go about my day,
and it is upheld, just by virtue in some ways
of me doing nothing about it.
I'm gonna ask everyone listening,
remove two claims from your vocabulary.
Reverse racism, remove it, there's no such thing.
And 'I'm not racist'.
I'm gonna actually ask for white people
to just remove that claim.
When I hear a white person say this,
I think to myself, ooh this person has no understanding,
no critical thinking, no current education on this topic.
- So that's great.
So, if I'm removing the phrase from my life,
'I'm not racist', because me Rainn Wilson,
I try my utmost to feel love for people of every culture,
background, reaching out to people in different skin colors,
supporting various causes, etcetera.
So I'm like, Mr. Progressive, Hollywood elite douche bag.
But, how do I reframe that?
If I'm taking away the phrase 'I'm not racist',
what do I replace that with?
- Thank you for asking that.
So first of all, because I'm sure there's people
who are still reeling from the fact that I even said that.
Virtually any act that you can identify
as a white person that was racist, Amy Cooper in the park,
the people who do those acts are gonna say I'm not racist.
So it just becomes--
- She said I'm not racist,
and she called the cops on a guy birdwatching.
- Our president says he's the least racist person
you'll ever meet.
It's meaningless, and it's not at all convincing
to black people when we say that.
And so it's more that if we get back
to changing the premise
that there's no way you could have been exempt
from the forces of racism.
They shape the way you see the world,
the way you think about yourself,
what you expect as you move through the world,
what you take for granted,
who you're in relationship with,
who you're not in relationship with.
So I suppose I would need to think about
what I would replace it with,
but I can tell you the question
that most white people ask now is,
if they're racist, right?
Am I racist?
And the answer that most white people will give
is no, I'm not racist.
So then what further action is required from us,
if our answer is no, I'm not racist?
Nothing, which of course, in racist society is racism, okay?
When you change your question to,
how have I been shaped by racism
and how is it coming out in my life, in my work,
it puts you on a completely different path, a lifelong path.
And that's that liberating kind of question, how?
And then you start looking into how it has shaped your life.
And you know my book has lots of,
I have a book called "What Does It Mean To Be White"
There's lots of reflection questions
that can help you unpack that.
We've got to start talking to each other,
as insiders we do understand this in a way
that black people can't understand
or don't have that insight or peace,
and white people we will never understand racism
if we are not listening to black people
and other peoples of color.
So go and support their work.
- And I will say like I said at the top of this thing,
like, I get uncomfortable if someone's yelling
at a Starbucks barista cause they got the order wrong.
Like, I don't like contention and conflict
and so I hate having these discussions.
I hate it.
I would rather...
- It went pretty well, didn't it?
- I thought this was a great talk but,
someone just, real quick,
someone said that you have to have the discomfort
to go through to transformation, right?
- If we will grant the premise that this society is racist.
That the bedrock of this society is racist,
in all kinds of ways it reproduces racial inequality
24 seven, which it does,
you and I as white people move through a racist society
every single day in racial comfort.
I'm comfortable in a racist society.
Wow, that's another deep thing to look at.
So we are not gonna get where we need to go
from a place of white comfort.
But safety and comfort are two different things.
So, yeah, we gotta get uncomfortable for sure.
- Thank you so much Robin for your time.
Everyone please check out her book "White Fragility"
everyone else in the world has, get on the bandwagon.
It was such a pleasure talking to you,
I really appreciate your time.
- Thank you so much.
- Okay, bye bye.
- Bye.
- Wow, what a great conversation,
fascinating perspectives, please check out her book.
You know, one idea is to,
if you're buying "White Fragility",
google Black Owned Bookstores.
This is one way we can put our economic dollars to work,
to support black owned, people of color owned bookstores
and restaurants and buy our stuff from there
instead of Amazon.
Spreading much love to you,
thank you for being human beings.
I love you all, and I will talk to you soon.
Bye bye.
♪ Hey human ♪