Latest / Head Shrink Inc. / Special guest: Tony Mcmath

Transcript

Special guest: Tony Mcmath · Head Shrink Inc.

• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hey y'all, I uh have a guy on today.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna let me tell you how I met this guy.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I'm a I'm a church going fellow, and uh one Sunday, and and Tony, you're gonna have to correct me how I because I I may remember this wrong.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: But uh one Sunday I was just at my uh church and probably in 2010, 2011, yeah, and uh in walk these two African American guys, and and I go to a predominantly white church in uh the Pacific Northwest.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I saw these guys like, oh cool.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're gonna be like hip because we got these uh two black guys coming in here.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and since then I it's been uh a great experience.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: I know I mean we've had you I think I've had you over, and one of the things I uh have always thought was kind of funny is that um in white churches, in most white churches, my experience is like people are very solemn.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the preacher says something and maybe you'll hear one person go like oh amen, amen.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like and even when the even when the preacher asks for an amen, you may be a couple of people.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I have always I always thought it was funny because uh when our preacher would preach, inevitably you and this other guy would be vocal, right?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah and if you're in the back of the church, you could always see people's heads turn like oh who said what's going on here?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: People are being noisy in church.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: You can't have that.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Anyways, um that that's that was my first experience of Tony.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: So Tony uh is a friend of mine that happens to be African American, and uh I have enjoyed uh I haven't seen you recently.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um but when you were coming to church, um I enjoyed talking to you, and I think what I don't know if you remember, but uh I think it was 2011 when I was gonna maybe go do a TV show.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: You came and gave uh good wisdom to my wife and I about it and helped us kind of work through it.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to I wanted to touch base with you because times are kind of crazy right now.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know how much social media you do, but I have never been told by more people that don't know me what I need to be doing right now.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and what I should be thinking, what I should be saying and what I shouldn't be saying, and and so I wanted to have you on and kind of get your perspective on everything that's going on with George Floyd and the rioters and the protesters and all of the above.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: So so I don't have any super specific questions.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I I wanted to say uh you get to be the spokesman for the African American community.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: I I appreciate that, David.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_03: And uh uh first of all, I think it's uh honor and a privilege to uh be on your podcast show to talk with you and your listeners.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's important uh in this time uh that conversations like this are had so that we get more understanding, we get more uh insight into what the real issues are, because when you look at the media, you go by social media, you it's easier to get uh the wrong understanding, the wrong interpretation of what's going on.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh I you can see it in social media.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: There are a lot of people who think it's about uh police brutality.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of people who think it's about um cops killing African Americans, and certainly those things did happen, and they do happen, but um if you're all you have to do is be African Americans to know that those are parts, those are symptoms of a deeper issue.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: Those are outward signs of some other things that uh have not been um transformed, if you will, in our culture or society.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: So go ahead go ahead.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: What would you say those things are then?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the dip deeper things.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, for uh one, for example, is um that African Americans kind of live under a different l level of oppression and prejudice or racism that's very hard to kind of um qualify quantify or qualify when we try and explain it to people who don't go through those kind of things.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: And until it becomes brutal, no one really pays it attention.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_03: For example, uh African Americans driving down the street, getting pulled over by a policeman or walking through a neighborhood, even if no police is involved, is easier to thought to be up to some criminal activity or doing something wrong by more than just the police, which is a symptom of the fact that the picture that people have of African-American people is still sort of a violent, a picture of violence, a picture of some uh underclass civil uh citizen that is out for trouble.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: And there are a lot of African Americans who are, you know, not violent, not troublemakers, not whatever, but that might that might be one of the perceptions people have of African Americans that we fight against.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_03: One of the others is the the difficulties created by um racial inequalities that are systemic in our society that go on uh every day in front of our eyes, but it don't get noticed.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: An example would be, David, I've worked at a company um which is a Fortune 50 company, and I'm in a meeting as a manager in this company, I'm sitting in a meeting, and uh I I have a business card in my hand, and I get excited about something I heard said, so I slap the business card down on the table, which a business card doesn't make a whole lot of noise.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but when I slap the business card down on the table, uh the lady beside me jumps and put her hands over her chest and says, Woo, ooh, that was violent.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: And uh now I'm in a room full of Caucasian people.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm the only African American in there in a think tank meeting, and and that was thought of as violence.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: And even my my uh leaders, when I uh passionately expressed something, saw me as an angry black man.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: Oh because the stereotypical thoughts towards African Americans are wrong, and they're played out every day in our society.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they're just not addressed until it becomes violent.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: So uh and then I think to further compound the problem, um, you have and I hate to blame everything on mainstream media, but uh the mainstream media is a pretty powerful thing in our society because then you hear about you hear about the looting, and what do you see on TV?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: You see young African American men coming out of buildings, and and then it just seems like that furthers this idea like, oh, look, uh they don't really care about these issues, they just care about uh breaking into stores and and so on and so forth.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: And David, if you looked at the mainstream media, even in these cases, um isn't it funny how an opinion could be a form when you see the African American uh people going in and out the place that's being looted, but no opinion is formed about the Caucasians that's also going in and out the place that's being looted.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I have to say, I have an opinion about it I mean they have a they have an opinion about they shouldn't be doing that, or that's mean, but they don't they don't uh pass that opinion on to the general population of that race.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: So when an African-American man goes into a store, loses a store, they say see there, that's what they really want.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: But when a white guy goes in and loses a store, they don't say see there, that's how they really are.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_03: They go, that's a bad young man.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: But when an African-American does it, it applies to the whole culture.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that um implicit bias, I think is what it's called.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yes, an implicit bias, yes.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, yeah.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so that bias works everywhere I go.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: So if I go to a store, um it's likely that the owner of the store or someone works at the store is gonna see me as a suspicious character versus a white man who could be dressed similarly to me.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's it's interesting.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So so my initial like when I see these posts on social media, um my initial reaction is to I get annoyed.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: I get uh and when I'm talking about posts, I'm like posts of like you as a white person should be doing this.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and I mean maybe I should, but I don't think shaming people into action uh generally creates long-lasting change.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think it creates a kind of short-lived change.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's been interesting because I've I I've purposely been trying to listen to other voices.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh there is a uh there are African American voices that speak out directly against racism, uh say that this is more of a and it tends to be more political, right?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: This kind of problem was created by Democrats.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um why are black people still voting for Democrats?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Et cetera, et cetera.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's it's confusing because on one side, well, these people are making sense, but then on the other side, there is this systemic ra you know, people say there's no systemic racism.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: But I I just has been I've just been recently studying about uh in the 1930s when the redlining happened how money was African American communities couldn't get money to buy their own homes and to to have people invest in businesses and and yeah, to some to some degree, I don't know how much that happens today because I think there's been lawsuits that have you you can sue if you can prove that, but I think it's like generational, it's had an effect.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: Well, because uh well, uh so in a lot of towns, a lot of places, when there was money, like in my hometown where I grew up, when there was money, that money was only allotted if you were building a house in a certain place.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: So an African American can't choose wherever over town they want to live.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_03: They they have to live where they're permitted.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: Now, systemically, I understand a lot of people who are not African American don't see that.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_03: How could they see that?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_03: Because they're not trying to buy a house in my neighborhood, and if they were, they wouldn't be prevented.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: So they would not see it.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: But I could try to move in certain neighborhoods and cause an uproar just because I'm black trying to move into that neighborhood, and in some cases, the lenders or realtors won't even show me or sell me the house in the neighborhood.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: And right in our own backyard in Lacey, there's an African-American policeman who lives in a pretty nice neighborhood, but he's out for a jog one day in his own neighborhood, and he gets pulled over for trespassing in a neighborhood, quote unquote, he's not supposed to be in.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: So is there a neighborhood he's not supposed to be in?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I is there, or there I mean, I I don't think there is.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: There shouldn't be.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well, now here's the pro here's part of the problem, David.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: You know there shouldn't be, and quite a few other Caucasian Americans also know there shouldn't be, and a lot of them believe there's not.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: But they wouldn't know if it was true.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh if an African American told you before this actually happened that it is going on, it would be hard for a Caucasian to say, Well, I believe you, I'm gonna get behind you, I'm gonna fight against this.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how do you fight against that, right?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like how like How do you fight against it?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you say you tell me this information, and I think uh because cell phones are everywhere, we we see it more, right?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like the the the man who was just recently bird watching, yeah, and and told that woman to leash her dog, and then she she said, I'm gonna call the cops on you.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_04: Right, right.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: But that's like that's happened, we wouldn't know about that unless we saw it with our own eyes.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: And as an African American, uh, when it does happen to me, who can I tell?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: If an incident like that happens to me, there's no there's no recourse for uh fixing it, for remedying it.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_03: An example would be um I had a friend of mine who worked with me who went through a racist situation.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it was pretty blatant the statement that was made, and the things that the person who made this statement actually posted on an uh internal communication system within that workplace.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_03: So everyone who saw the statement reacted to it as if this was wrong for you to do that.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: And when the African American who it was aimed at said to the the leadership that this was a prejudice uh or remark and should not be tolerated, the African American got questioned, are you sure this is prejudice?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: Are you sure that that's what's happening?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: Now the problem is not the guy who actually made the remark alone.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's the fact that the leadership, which was all Caucasians, one, refused to challenge themselves to believe it actually could be happening.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: And two, they're gonna put the burden of proof uh for something that you can't prove on the guy who's making the complaint, rather than going forward to investigate and see if it's true yourself by calling the other person on the carpet for it.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: So what we do sometimes as a society, uh in in the Caucasian side of this, even at Church, David, it happens that because it's not something that happens to you every day, it's not something you have to live with, it's not something you experience, so you would be unaware.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: There would be no way to be aware of it unless you actually endured the experience or shared the experience or heard about the experience with someone else.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, for the years, African Americans don't have any uh board or committee they can complain to until it becomes violent.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then, as you can see in the historical records with all the people who have endured such things and lost their lives, even then sometimes it's not even taken seriously.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: So, what do you do if you have no complaint board?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_03: And when you do complain about it, it's not taken seriously.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: They think maybe something's wrong with you.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_03: This is the 21st century.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: Surely no one thinks like that anymore.
• 16:56
  unknown: Right.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I'm thinking about it as like, why would why would I not believe that?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I I it is, yeah, why this can't really be happening.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: People can't really really be thinking this way.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things on social media I've seen is people saying, um, oh, police are putting out bricks.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's a well-known police tactic.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: So then people will pick up bricks and looting and damage to property.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think to me, I think, is that true?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, right.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Do police actually do police departments actually do that?
• 17:32
  unknown: Right.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Do they?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and do you know that they do that?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I don't have any first hand experience of that, but I know people who do.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: I also know there are cases where uh you can't say the police are rightfully trained to do or deal with what they deal with, and if they even if they are trained, but imagine that they are trained, but they too believe black people are violent.
• 17:59
  unknown: Okay.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: So you gotta handle them with a vicious force.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: So if they approach the situation and it involves a black person, they're prepared for a heightened level of engagement that may not even be necessary.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: But they're not gonna handle it and see if it's necessary, they're just gonna deal with it and and whatever happens, happens.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_03: And you can see that in the case that we are kind of uh protesting around now.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_03: This was not about whether or not he's actually violent, this is about the picture or the assumption of violence.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: This is just the way you handle black people.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: The interesting thing also is, and I know maybe it's not politically correct, but people just automatically assume, oh, well, he's a racist cop because uh of this.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't view I don't I have no idea if he's a racist cop.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: I just know what he did was wrong.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And with your idea of this, like, well, we have to treat African Americans differently because they're more violent.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he was George Floyd was uh had handcuffs on and he was on the ground and he wasn't resili like there's this use of force continuum, that's a whole nother um conversation to but I yeah, I mean I think everyone agrees what hap well I I don't want to speak for the nation, but I think ninety-nine point nine nine percent of people agree what they saw in that video is wrong.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um but they the question would be if they hadn't saw that and it had just been told, would they react the same way?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh probably not, because in their mind it's like what we're talking about, right?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: In their mind it'd be like, oh well uh that probably didn't happen.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, well George George did have drugs in his system, so he probably caused some of that.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they they would seek to justify it or avoid it or ignore it.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: Now, what happens, I think one of the one of the systemic problems I think we have to recognize is not only is it built in our political and social system, but you and I are raised in that system.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, uh I've had a few Caucasian Christians who've asked me, uh, hey Tony, uh, you know, I really want to understand, I want to know what to do because I myself am not prejudiced.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: But I feel kind of caught in the middle because this is uh blacks against whites, seemingly.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: But what do we do when we are when we don't feel that way?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: How do we handle ourselves and how do we make it different?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I said to them, you have to understand racism is as is uh the the deliberate power of an exercise of authority over some people because of their race.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: But prejudice is not necessarily deliberate.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: Prejudice is and can be and most often does exist as a bias.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: Can you ever check our bias?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: I want to interrupt you for a second because that's one of the things that I've seen.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Today, in fact, uh someone posted this thing and said, uh, this will show this means you're racist if you say any of these things, right?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's a typical I'm colorblind, I don't see race.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: And another one on there, one thing on there was um I'm not racist.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: It says if you say that, that's a racist statement.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so but I've heard also other African American leaders say it's okay to say that.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I I like your distinction between uh racism and prejudice.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: So could you be more uh could you talk about that?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so racism.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Is an exercise of authority or power over a person or group of persons because of their race or ethnicity or skin color.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: So when you're racist, you're looking actively, consciously, deliberately to exercise authority to eradicate, to oppress, to enslave, or to disenfranchise a group of people because of their color of their skin.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: That's a conscious, deliberate thing.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, as a person who is in the psychological study field that you don't have to consciously, you don't live by your conscious, you live by your subconscious.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: Your regular routine, subconscious programming is the programming you most often carry out throughout your day, your regular habits.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: So you don't have to be racist to be prejudiced.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_03: Prejudice is a bias toward or against something.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's formed by some preconceived ideas and notions that I already have about a person or thing or place.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: So if I are if I think all black people are this way or that way, and I act according to that program thought, I could behave prejudice without even thinking consciously that I am.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that would be that'd be like uh black people can dance or white white men can't jump.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Things like that.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: Those are those are prejudice statements, and they could be used as racial slurs, they could be used as instruments of racism, but but to believe them and just act b as if that belief is real may could also come out as a prejudice.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't have to be racist.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's a racist statement to say all black people dance, because that's a classification, a deliberate classification, but it doesn't have to be motivated out of a racist heart.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's motivated out of a pre uh prejudice in uh ignorance that doesn't know any better.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you brought up the heart, which I think as as believers, I think that that's a big piece of this, isn't it?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like it has to do with what our heart is.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: So talk about that.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like what your thoughts are on okay.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: So I uh when I when I was no longer at Emmanuel, uh, which is the church where you and I met, uh Lynn and I started to attend over at uh Lacey um City Life Church in Lacey.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well, one of the well-meaning good friends of mine, uh, after a while of joining there, he came up and asked me uh in all sincerity, Tony, I don't want to make a mistake, so what do I call you?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_03: Now his reference as a Caucasian man was trying to figure out how to qualify me or or categorize me without offending me.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: Should I call you black?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_03: Should I call you African American?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: Should I call you colored?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm in a Christian church.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm saying to him, so I look over and I point to another man there who's Caucasian.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: I said, What do you call him?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: He said, That's brother so-and-so.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Then why do you have to call me black, African American, or colored?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_03: Why can't you just call me brother?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_03: You see, one of the most important things in the heart of a Christian is to understand that when you are Christian, you should, that means that you have allowed God to break down the barrier that separates us as one distinct group over another.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's the whole teachings of Christ at the level of the heart.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: That can only happen when Christ has penetrated the heart, and every person understands their own depravity based upon their relationship or their experience with God.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: But when a person thinks that they have owned something, they have a right to something, they have uh deserved something, then it's easier for them to see other people as privileged, especially privileged, because you're in with us now, or you're on our same level right now.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: And unfortunately, Christians sometimes think like that.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: They live like that, they believe like that.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: So Jesus said to them, if you will remember in the Bible, there was the division between the Jews and the Gentiles.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: And there was a racial discussion between Peter and some of the apostles about unsaved or Gentiles who are becoming saved.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: And Peter was trying to say to them, if you're going to be a Christian, you have to do what Jews do.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: You have to get circumcised.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: And God Himself had to say and change Peter's heart.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: That's not the requirement for salvation of being a part of the family of God.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: And what has to happen in our community is blacks and whites alike have to understand that it's the heart that has to change before the actions and the behaviors of that heart that are expressed outwardly also can change.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: So if you still see me as different, you cannot help but see me as either equal, greater, or less than.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: But if you see me different, you're not going to see me as equal.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: You're going to see me as different, equal or less than, greater than or less than.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where Christians have to come to a place where we allow God to change our heart.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_03: As a Caucasian American and as an African American, I don't know what happens in the heart of another person until I share with them, until I take time with them.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: And no, I can't get to know the whole Caucasian race through sitting and talking to David.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_03: But I can surely bring down some of my stereotypical thinking by starting with David and getting to know David as first a Christian brother.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: And the Bible says Jesus Christ has destroyed all the things that set us apart and distinguishes us in racial groups.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: But David and Tony have to allow that to be the way it is because that's what God has done and declared.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: And the only way to do that is for Christ to have changed both of our hearts.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I just came to church.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like it's a chance to do it.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: You did, sir.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Sunday.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: You did.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: Anytime you talk to me, you're gonna come to church.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: So uh so where so what we talked earlier, so you're currently in Alabama.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Arkansas.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: Arkansas, Arkansas.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh what's your city like there?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Or town, or what's the population size size of it?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the population is about 2,600.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it's a struggling town in the south.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: It used to be about 7,000 people, now it's about 2,600.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's racially mixed, it's 50-50.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh there give or take.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: But uh the African-American side of the population is disenfranchised and disempowered and economically struggling.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: And that doesn't mean that there are no Caucasians struggling, but that means the power and the decisions and the money are not in the African-American hands, and nor are they farmed down to African Americans.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: They are in the hands of Caucasians for whatever reason.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I see someone uh so just for my audience, we're Skyping and we're looking at each looking at each other, and I see somebody kind of going back and forth behind you.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Is that a kid if you're my sister?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Your sister.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um do uh do you guys have these kind of conversations?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Or are you guys all uh annoyed, upset, frustrated?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh there's probably a range of emotions that you guys have, I would imagine.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_03: Uh there are a range of emotions, but I I really want to echo that what you see happening on TV is normally what's happening in the big city.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: What's happening in the small town won't make TV very often.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: Small town won't be displayed on TV, and what's happening in the small town is very very well overlooked most of the time.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: My small town has been racially divided forever.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: And this stuff happens in the South all the time, but it never makes news in a small town.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Is this and is this the town you grew up in?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like as a kid and stuff?
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, absolutely, yes.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: So uh when my small town did a very small one-day protest march, it was very unorganized and probably the spur of the moment on the last over the last couple days, they're like behind uh in reacting to it.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_03: They're reacting to it because they want to show their support that they believe in the change that ought to happen as well.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: They're not reacting to it in violence.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_03: They're not reacting to it uh by tearing up stuff and killing people.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: That's not what they're doing.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: That's what's happening in big cities that are overcrowded and overrun with a lot of other issues.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's not what's happening in some of these small towns where the control and the power balance of power are totally out of our favor.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: These people here are trying to say, hey, listen, we need help too.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: But it's going to get drowned out by the violence in big cities like Chicago and New York and Seattle.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: And those big cities are drowning and out.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know what those people are going through because I'm not there with those people.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_03: They have the but they have a unique set of circumstances that uh that underlies their cause that are different than what people are dealing with in small towns.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: And but the but the under the overall message of the racial division, the systematic evil, the oppression that happens systematically is the same.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's just played out in different environments differently.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well how how the how does it get played out in your small town, do you think?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: Well, in in this town here, let's say uh there is a public high school that's about to close down because they don't have funding to fix a termite problem.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_03: So all the Caucasian parents took their kids to a whole different town and set up a new school where they could put their kids in a nice school and left all the poor Caucasians and African Americans in the broke down school that's gonna be shut down, so there's no high school and no elementary school and no middle school in the town.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think that people are running to fix that?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: No, they're just saying, hey, listen, well, we're gonna have to figure out a way to bust you guys, your kids somewhere 25, 15 miles away.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because the money for fixing the school is being spent where the Caucasians are to build a school, they don't have to deal with us.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: Is that in the same is everyone in the same county?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's just different school districts.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: Same city, same county.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: We have we have school districts that are kind of uh designed by counties uh in these smaller rural places.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so we have a school in my hometown, Brinkler, Arkansas.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: There's a school about 16 miles away in another town, and then about 15 miles away, they built a pro a public school that the Caucasian kids go to.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: And the people who have money who are Caucasian take their kids out there.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's this is uh So there's this part of me that is thinking, come on, that can't be that can't really be happening.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_04: That's what I'm saying.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_04: And that's what happens.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: Or like uh Yeah, it's kind it's kind of unbelievable, right?
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's that's what would happen in the the sixties, right?
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right when people were being bussed to schools and and things like that.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's what I'm telling you.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh what you see on TV is only the urban part of it.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: The news, the resources, the concern very rarely filters down to where it's most prevalent at in the South.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: So what's um I appreciate you coming on.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: So what's a a solution?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I know that that's uh a hard question because it's so uh broad, right?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: But like in your in your opinion, in your experience, what are some things that uh would promote racial unity?
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, uh David, I think it's a it is a broad question.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but I think it's I think it starts with some honest conversations with uh some people who are willing to fight for the influence uh to influence change.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: I had a schoolmate of mine, someone I went to school with who was um Caucasian as well, and looking back on the incident, she put a writing on Facebook, and part of the writing said, I'm not prejudiced, but when I think back upon it, she said, I remember walking out of class when I was in the fourth grade with my hands, my arms around the shoulders of a one of the little black kids, and when my mom saw that, she made me get in the car and told me, Don't do that again.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: And when she asked her mom, why not?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_03: Her mom told her, Well, it's not that I'm prejudiced, but the neighbors will talk.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I think what has to happen is those who are not prejudiced have to get some courage and not be afraid of the neighbors who might talk and not put up with it at the level of the co-workers who talk.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_03: You have we have to have some Caucasian Americans who are tired of it but are willing to get in the fight uh to help us to do it.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_03: I do think there was a uh young lady who posted on uh social media, I forget which one it was on, uh, she said very well the victims of a situation can't help themselves.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_03: They have to have someone with authority and the power come in and help them to change things.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: African Americans have been fighting for it for the longest and getting literally nowhere.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: There has been times when there were a few Caucasians who stood up and said, We're gonna join you, and there are some doing that now.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: But we don't need the joining in a protest.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_03: We need the joining in changing the way things are done, changing the policies, changing the way uh the expectation of normalcy when it comes to the way things are done.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_03: And that might mean standing up sometimes in the moment and say, We're not having it is not acceptable.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's not waiting till someone dies to say we're not having it.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's at your job when you see someone do something or say something that could be prejudiced or racially motivated, you stand up and let them know that it's not okay with you.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_03: You're not worried about being the bad, having bad uh press from your neighbors or a bad relationship with your family because you are speak up against racial injustice or prejudice.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_03: You're willing to stand up as a Caucasian believer who says it's not acceptable.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I think when you see that, that would be a great start of it.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: Not for us to continue to say, well, I can't believe this is happening.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: Believe it, it's happening.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_03: You just saw it.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_03: It ended in a death.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and again, I want to point out you you have a you bring up there's a distinction between racism and prejudice.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: And w would it be fair to say that most Americans are not racist, but many are prejudiced.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_03: I would say I wouldn't use the word most because I don't have that accountability, but I would say the majority of the ones I have met are not racists.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_03: I have met a lot of them who are not racist that are prejudiced and don't know it.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm friends with a lot of them.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: I could be I could be one too, and and I'm just not fully aware of it, right?
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think that it's to me it seems super important to separate out those two because when when a when an African American says, oh, you're a racist, uh it just it boxes people into this place where uh they get nervous, right?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: They get like I don't want anyone to think I'm racist.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: But uh Yeah, but I think the idea of people are prejudiced and and they don't know it, I think that's much more re uh a reasonable place to be.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_03: Or or sometimes it's even they they have a sense that maybe it is prejudice or not right, but they're afraid to stand up and do something about it.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: Because I've seen that too.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh David, let me ask, when you get ready to move your family or you get ready to go camping, what are some things you use to make the decision on where you're gonna go?
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um probably Where I'm gonna go.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um A lot of it depends on the mood of my teenagers, but um Okay.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I guess the ease of going there, like how easy it is to get there, how that works with my schedule.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um so now how do you think that's different from me if I want to take my family camping?
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I have to think about will they kill me if I go there?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: Are they gonna accept me if I go there?
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_03: Am I gonna be safe going there?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: Are they prejudiced there?
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: That's uh the normal day for African Americans.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: So d w do you um so I know I I saw a young man walk by.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's a a nephew.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: Your son.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: Does he think that?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like does he think, oh, if I go into I don't know, what's a big city in Arkansas?
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: Little Rock.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: If I go into Little Rock I have to be worried.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_03: About which side of town he goes on or which place he goes into?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: He says yes.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, he's listening in.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: So so watch this data.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um when I got out of the military in 1987 from Fort Lewis, Washington, I moved to Auburn, Washington.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_03: In Auburn, Washington, I at that time I had to be careful what places I went into.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: Now that time, uh I went into a bar to play some darts.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: And my brother, my oldest brother, who likes to play pool, was there too.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: And we he goes in to play pool.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_03: First of all, we walk in and it's full of Caucasians.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: They all stop and look.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_03: We we couldn't proceed to the uh pool table to play, but some guy has enough nerve to come over as a representative for the bar and say, hey, look around.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_03: Are you sure you're in the right place?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_03: Now I have to consider, even by his standards, whether or not I'm in the right place.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: You won't let that happen to I mean, dogs can go anywhere.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: As a Caucasian, you never have to think about that.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_03: You have to think about whether or not you want to go there.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_03: I have to think about whether or not they're acceptable.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: My children have to wonder, and I have to we have to tell them when they're growing up there are certain places they can't go.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_03: Why does that exist?
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because people suck.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely right.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was uh I I don't think I I don't think I'll ever fully be able to realize that unless I go overseas somewhere.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's no go zones in like Muslim communities in in France or whatever.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: But I was talking to uh uh a woman that goes to a manual that you know, Pia.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um and and just recently because I I was trying to check in to see how things were go how she was doing it.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: And i i it didn't really hit me until I was talking with her that this is always something that kind of plays in the back of her mind.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um absolutely about going out in public and does it play out in Your mind when you're in a predominantly African American community, or um is it just in predominantly white communities?
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: So so here's the thing.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_03: In a predominantly African American community, I I do have to decide where am I safe to go.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: But it's not because I'm black.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_03: I do the same thing when I'm in a predominantly African-American place uh community as you do when you're moving your family about the country.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: You just want to go where it's safe and somewhere that has something you want.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I make those kind of decisions in any community.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: But if I walk into a if I if I'm driving from from Washington to Arkansas or driving from town to town in Arkansas or even in Washington, when I pull into a town that I'm unfamiliar with, I have to ask myself and consciously look for signs of whether or not black people are accepted here.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_03: You don't do that if you're traveling down the road as a Caucasian.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: You don't ever stop and say, unless you're uh, you know, in a place where you know that you don't find Caucasian people.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_03: You don't travel and say, hey, listen, I wonder if we could be if we'll be safe to stop here because I'm Caucasian.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_03: I have to do that in grocery stores, in in shops along the way, in towns, in parks, in recreation sites.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_03: I have to do that just about everywhere we go.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't have a good response for that.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I think that that that's part of the problem.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_03: Well, so um I think one of the things that can be done, again, is Caucasians who want to see a change in it.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, hey, just get out with some African Americans, go see what they experience.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you you may know I worked for the cable company for a while, and uh I was training a young Caucasian lady how to do door-to-door sales.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_03: I mean Graham Washington.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: I that got a laugh at you right away, right?
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_03: Graham Washington.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: Just because Graham, I don't know how many African people of color are.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_03: Right! Right.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_03: See there?
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_03: You you even thought about that when I said Graham.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: So I go to Graham and I'm I'm with this Caucasian young lady teaching her how to do door-to-door sales.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_03: We knock on the door, and a young man comes out, or middle-aged man, and he stands and looks and picks his teeth a couple times and looks at us, and eventually he says, no, no, no, not dealing with him.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_03: Now he's he's upset because he don't want a black guy at his door.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_03: And she's embarrassed because he doesn't want to talk to her because she's with a black guy.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_03: And neither one of them know exactly what to do right now.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_03: Because he's showing his beans in front of a young white lady, and she's afraid to stand up for me too, but she sees these are things I have to deal with every day when I go out into the public.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_03: This is something that she just now gets a chance to experience, but I deal with it all the time.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_03: So she says to me, Tony, how do you deal with this?
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_03: Do you is this your first time going through this?
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: I said, No, this happens all the time.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_03: I just learned to look at it, laugh, and move on.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_03: And what I do is I try to avoid those people who are like that.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_03: Well, if those are people who are like that are sitting in my city council in my government, and the people who are like that are on my police force, and the people who are like that are hiring and firing people of color, and the people who are like that are making policies, and the people who are like that are judges and lawyers.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_03: I have to face those people all the time.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_03: And you may not never notice when they're like that, but they'll be subtle and obvious to me.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_03: And if I can't express it to you enough for you to take interest and try to see it, it's undercover now.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: So it'll stay hidden and it'll keep working, and it'll be poison seeping throughout.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_03: The Bible says a little leaven, leaven's a whole lot.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_03: So if you accept it a little, you accept a lot of it, you accept all of it.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just time for uh those Caucasians who don't believe like that to change and make sure they start with themselves.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_03: And David, the saddest thing for me, the most disturbing thing for me, is that it exists in the church.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: And what I've been finding is the the moment you bring up something about it, pe it it causes this.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't do that.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: What are you talking about?
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't do that.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so then it then they can't have these kind of actual good conversations about about things.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why I thought it was important my high school friend mentioned something a mom said to her, because that gave her a chance to check, even though she didn't think that way, she was around that, she was raised that way, so that would have affected how she handles things.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_03: It didn't mean she believed it, it means it's the way she learned it.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I think for a lot of Americans, black and white, that are believers, the Bible calls us to put down what we have learned and our allegiance to culture and to tradition and pick up Christ.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_03: David, we cannot agree, me or you, any two people cannot agree unless we first agree upon the standard by which we measure it.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_03: So if we don't have the same standard of measurement, we're never going to come to an agreement.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_03: We have to first agree that we accept the standard of measure by which we measure that by.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_03: And if Caucasians continue to measure prejudice by the way they feel or the way they think, that's a wrong standard.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think I I would address a way they feel more.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_03: Right, because Well, but but they will say, I don't think that way either.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because you you share a story, like when you even when you share that story about Graham, Washington.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's the again, that the there's that part of me like, what?
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's like outrageously rude.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: That that's like offensive.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: People are still like that.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, there are there are hundreds of stories.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, most of them didn't end in death.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_03: So if if no one dies from it, who do I tell?
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_03: And who's gonna believe me?
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_03: And who's gonna get outraged enough to say it's time to bring a stop to this and change it?
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: Most people are gonna do this reaction, they're gonna go, I can't believe that.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_03: That the world is still like that, and then they're going about their business.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_03: So the reason I say think is because I don't think I'm prejudiced.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_03: I don't.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_03: But I do know that I still have prejudiced thoughts and prejudiced ways and prejudiced habits.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you how how would one address those?
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the first place, uh, which is also a lesson from the Bible, is start asking questions.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_03: So when I come to someone I don't know, no matter what their color is, I'm curious enough to want to know about them as a person.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: But the only reason I can do that is because I personally don't see myself any better than them.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, I don't know how a person can know in their own heart if they see themselves just as a human being, on the level of just being a human, not advantaged, not privileged, not special in any kind of way, other than the fact that they are saved if they're Christian.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_03: And when we take positions and stances or we hold importance to some other distinguishing credit uh characteristic other than just being uh being saved by God, that whatever you hold to as a distinguishing mark, a pride for you for who you say you are, is going to be a place for division.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_03: So we have to let go of the things that we identify ourselves with as things that make us who we are or proud to be who we are.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_03: I am an African American, but I don't boast that that's my claim to fame.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a man, but I don't boast that over being a woman or a child.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a human being, I'm saved by grace through Jesus Christ, and that makes me equal with every other human being who is also sinful and needs saving.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_03: I have to start there, and then when I meet a person, I can get curious about them.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_03: They're just on a different level of experiences and journey, and a different journey, perhaps, than me, both headed in the same direction.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_03: Another analogy I use for myself is as a human being, you're part of the human race.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_03: And because you're part of the human race, you have to look at things from the bigger picture.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_03: In the bigger picture, we're all different.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_03: We're all, even though some of us have some characteristics that are the same, where we are not different, we are differing.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_03: We handle things differently.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_03: So I have to respect the differences, but the mistake the world makes and the church makes in trying to deal with diversity is they magnify differences rather than magnifying sameness.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_03: If me and you look at how we're the same, we can find a better common ground to start up on.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_03: And we can be a little bit vulnerable, we can tell where we got off a little bit on our thinking, on our beliefs.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_03: Common simple one for me, when I left Arkansas, I'd never seen a foreigner.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_03: I thought the whole world was black people and white people.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_03: And one day I met a white person who was speaking a foreign language, and I found out they were Russian.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: I had no idea Russians look like white people.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_03: It was it was amazing to me.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_03: So what I did from that point on is I start talking to people because I'm curious enough to know who they are rather than looking at them by the color of their skin and assuming that because they all look that way, that's who they are.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_03: And each individual has to be handled that way.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_03: But I can't do that until I see myself just as a human who also in needs of God's grace.
• 55:45
  unknown: Right.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I I uh I want to let you go, uh respect your time.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_01: What a conversation maybe we can have in the future is the people that are in power in all these places uh keep getting voted in.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_01: The same ideologies keep getting voted in, and yet uh people say they want change, right?
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: So uh an interesting conversation I think an interesting conversation is what does this look like politically, right?
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: To me, I think well we we need to vote differently.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because all these all these places that are having all these problems happen to be uh Democrats in power.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_04: Right, right, right, yeah.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: And and Democrats, you know, they're the ones that say they care the most, but nothing's changed.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I that could we could talk about that for a whole nother a whole other hour.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'll be ready on that one.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: Tony, I I appreciate you coming on.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um Thanks for giving your uh valuable insight to everything that's kind of going on now.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_03: You're welcome, David.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you too for allowing me to say okay.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate it.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, take care.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um I will be in touch again and we can talk more for sure.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, thank you.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: All right, thanks, Tony.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: Good conversation, friends.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um feel free to comment or share as appropriate.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um you can find me at docdavid.net, you can email me as well.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh have a great weekend.