Black Lives Matter: Why white America's inaction must end in 2020 | Big Think

Black Lives Matter: Why white America's inaction must end in 2020 |
Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo
Learn skills from the world's top minds at Big Think Edge: https://bigth.ink/Edge
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Black communities have been telling the nation, for more than a century, that they have been targeted, beaten, falsely accused and killed by the police and other institutions meant to protect them.

They have not been believed until recently, when the rise in camera phones and social media finally enabled them show and disseminate proof.

Even after the video of George Floyd's death on May 25, 2020, there remains defensiveness and denial among white Americans and institutions—a defensiveness that prevents change to the root of the problem: systemic racism. In this video, eight powerful voices share perspectives on blackness in America, and why white inaction and white politeness must end.

To learn more about what you can do to end the racist status quo, educate yourself and take action. Here is Robin DiAngelo's list of resources: https://robindiangelo.com/resources/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT:

Clint Smith: In Thomas Jefferson's memoir Notes on the State of Virginia he wrote that the slave is incapable of love. The slave is incapable of possessing and sustaining complex emotion and that black people are inferior to whites in both the endowments of body and mind. And so, for me, that's interesting because the man who's largely considered the intellectual founding father of this country, responsible in Iarge part for the conception of the Declaration of Independence and the constitution, didn't think I was fully human.

And so there's an entire history from the very inception of this country of black people being dehumanized by the state and people who represent the state. And so that's why I think it's important to have this socio-historical context and understanding so that when we see police killing black men and women in the streets, we recognize that this isn't sort of something happening out of nowhere. That this is actually consistent with the narrative that has been given about and to black people throughout this country's history.

Robin DiAngelo: The mainstream definition of a racist is an individual—always an individual, not a system—who consciously does not like people based on race—must be conscious—and intentionally seeks to be mean to them—must be intentional. And that definition, I believe, is the root of virtually all white defensiveness on this topic. It makes it virtually impossible to talk to the average white person about the inevitable absorption of a racist world view that we get from living in a society in which racism is the foundation. So I live in a society that from the time I open my eyes, in myriad ways, both implicit and explicit has conveyed to me that I am inherently superior because I'm white. The research shows that all children by age three to four understand it's better to be white. All children. Me. I got that message. You got that message. Everyone gets it. You can't miss it and it's not isolated. It's not singular. It's not dependent on any one person. It's relentlessly circulating.

James Arthur Baldwin: In the case of an American negro born in that glittering republic, and in the moment you were born, since you don't know any better, every stick and stone and every face is white. And since you have not yet seen a mirror you suppose that you are too. It comes as a great shock, around the age of five or six or seven, to discover the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to discover that Gary Cooper killing off the Indians when you were rooting for Gary Cooper—that the Indians were you.

Clint Smith: I remember receiving the news when Tamir Rice was killed, a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland who was shot in the park playing with a toy gun. Police killed him within two seconds of pulling up in the car. And it immediately brought me back to a moment in my own childhood when I was playing with water guns and my father came and told me I couldn't do that—that it was unacceptable. I didn't really understand. I was frustrated. I was embarrassed that my father would do that in front of my friends. That he was the strict dad. I called him after Tamir Rice had been killed and I had a conversation and I told him I understand now.

James Blake: I saw someone running towards me and as he got to me I was smiling thinking this was some sort of a friendly...

To read the full transcript, please go to https://bigthink.com/videos/black-lives-matter