 Live from New York, it's theCUBE, covering Inforum 2016, brought to you by Inforum. Now, here's your host, Dave Vellante. Welcome back to New York City, everybody. This is theCUBE, theCUBE, we go out to the events and every now and then we just have these great special segments and this is one of them. Naomi Tutu is here, she's a social activist, the daughter of the famous Desmond Tutu. Laura Logan is here, Laura is, of course, 60 minutes correspondent and Karina Holicum, when you hear her story, you won't believe it, super athlete. Ladies, welcome to theCUBE, it's really a pleasure having you on. Thank you. So we're here at Inforum, Charles Phillips somehow and the Inforum team, you know, gather some, always gather interesting people and Naomi, I'll start with you. You guys were just up on stage, telling your stories about how you overcome amazing, you know, diversity. Y'all happen to be women, but it's not just a story about women, we're going to talk about the human condition and what's happening in the world and how to affect change. So, Naomi, tell us a little bit about, you know, your background and some of the challenges that you had to overcome. Well, I mean, I think that clearly my background is as a Black South African who grew up during apartheid with that system that basically said that Black South Africans were not Black South Africans, that we were not members of our own country. And coming out of that experience and the struggle against apartheid has been foundational for me in terms of looking at how terrible our world can be and how amazing our world can be and the people who take the time and the commitment to change the terrible into good. And you grew up in the heart of that time period. I remember your father was very much outspoken against, for example, the Reagan policies of... Constructive engagement. Constructive engagement, they call it. He said, no, you know, bring on the pain because we'll at least suffer with a purpose. That kind of dogma, if you will, is actually good dogma in a way, isn't it? Well, I mean, I think that there is a point where you have to decide that there is something you are willing to stand up for. And I think that the call for sanctions against apartheid South Africa, we're basically saying Black South Africans are already suffering. And right now we are suffering in a system that offers us nothing. At least we know that economic pressure brought on the South African government is pressure that is working towards our liberation. And so I think that that example shows is basically that people are not short-sighted in general. I think that we often play to people's short-sightedness in saying that is the enemy. This is what you need to be afraid of if only we had our country back. But the reality is that most people are not short-sighted and people say, what do we need to do to make this world better? Maybe not for me, but maybe for my children coming after me. And Larry, your experiences, obviously, you know a lot about this era from a different perspective, but also in your own world have overcome incredible adversity. Tell us a little bit about, I mean, everybody knows who you are and sees you on 60 minutes, but maybe they don't know much about your background. I think one thing that people probably don't really know and understand who I am is that for me to sit with Naomi and to meet Naomi today is such a big thing. It's such an emotional thing because I knew her parents in South Africa working as a journalist. I knew her father particularly well, but I met her mother in her home in the Soweto Township where I think was your family home growing up. And people like Desmond Tutu, for me, have never been recognized enough for how great they were and what they gave to all of us. Many people thought the revolution in South Africa was only about liberating and freeing black people, but it wasn't because all of the people of South Africa whose hearts were in that struggle were liberated and free, Mandela and Tutu and all of those people, the activists right down to the student activists I mean I knew South Africans, black South African kids who spent their lives traveling from school to school to deliver the message of comrade Mandela in those schools and they lived on the run and they were hunted by the security police and they gave up everything and that message was always the same. It never varied from Mandela to Tutu to all the way down through the ranks of the ANC because it was one that resonated with all of us because it was about freedom and justice and human rights and my soul honestly was forged in the fire of that struggle and everything I've done since I left South Africa, everything I've been able to do in my life, everything I've been able to overcome, surviving, being gang raped in Taria Square in Egypt, all of that was born from the example that was set by people like Naomi and her parents and every black South African at that time because they all suspended everything of their own in favor of the greater good. There was no talk about child abuse or domestic violence or things like that, nothing of that nature ever made it into the national conversation because black South Africans particularly put everything aside for that fight, for that struggle and so the greatest lessons of my life were born there and that place gave birth to me and gave me the ability to put myself in someone else's shoes and I've used those lessons everywhere I've gone and I've always been well received in Afghanistan or Iraq or all of these places because I've never gone in with a closed heart because black people in South Africa opened my heart and opened my mind and taught me how to think and see things from other perspectives and helped me understand that my way wasn't the only way or the way I knew that was familiar might not be the best way, sometimes it might be but I never apologize for who I am. I always stand up for what I believe in. I was raised in a country of people who stood up for what they believed in and paid and gave everything for that. Literally gave everything. So those early days were the seed of your inspiration and a lot of it was rooted in non-violence of course as an underpinning, there was a lot of violence of course at the time. Well the violence for us, you know I grew up thinking that the police and the army were only instruments of evil, I never understood them any other way and I had to unlearn that lesson in many respects because for example the American military that's often demonized but I can tell you I've lost count of the situations that I've been in where the level of professionalism and humanity that has been shown by the American military is so counter to the Hollywood narrative that's out there that everyone joins the military because they like to kill people and don't care about human rights and don't care about doing any good. I've never found that to be true and I really had to unlearn those lessons of seeing the South African military as the architect of evil and grow up I guess and understand the many different shades of that. All right Karina let's bring you into the conversation. Your story may not be as well known but it's no less amazing. So. Or more amazing. Super athlete, more amazing, right? Super athlete went through just an amazing experience near death experience. Tell us about your background and how you're still here. Yeah, well I just feel so humble sitting next to these two women. Imagine being me. Yeah, I don't know where to start. I mean I came from my mother when I was four years old she had a major accident, car accident that I was part of and we had a front to front collision and she was put in a coma for four months and when she woke up from that coma she had to relearn how to walk. She had to relearn how to talk. She had to start all over from scratch and she had lost all members. She had no idea who even who I was. So for me like she survived her accident but as a mother she was taken away from me and for me like I became a very restless kid and I think that restlessness somehow had to, you know I had to get it out somehow and I got this urge into finding the things that I could master. And eventually I got into base jumping, I got into big mountain skiing and this was a way for me to channel my everyday life or coping with my everyday life because going to the mountains, jumping off of a cliff, being in a situation where I felt like I could control life and death. It made me feel like all of my everyday problems they felt mundane and small and they were nothing in comparison because I had this strength and I could master this situation. So for me it was my way of dealing, you know. And I lived in a dream world, you know. I traveled the world as a professional base jumper and a free skier. I was filming with some of the biggest companies in the world, documentaries, action movies, sponsored from top to toe. It was a dream. And then I had a major accident in 2006. I hit the ground with more than 65 miles per hour. I crushed everything that I had from my hips and down, 25 open fractures. And I was sentenced to a life in a wheelchair. My doctor, he told me that I would never walk again. And, you know, when you've spent your entire life as an athlete, it's your job, you know. It's, all your friends are doing the same like you do, but most importantly, it's your identity and all of that is taken away from you just like that. You're left with nothing and you need to start from scratch. You need to start to rebuild yourself. You need to redefine your values. You need to figure out who am I when I no longer have my two legs. What's going to happen with my friends? Are they going to be there for me? Are they going to still be around? Am I ever going to be able to have a family of my own? You know, you get all these questions and there are no answers. So definitely I went through some of the toughest years of my life being stuck, you know, in a rehab room, hospital room and trying to rebuild my own life. And it took me three years to learn how to walk. And it took me four years to make it back to the mountains, to my passion, to skiing and to like, to come back where I belong. And I've been continuing to work with that and to kind of rebuild my life and find out who I want to be. And then of course inspire others. So in the years after your accident, it's obviously very personal, you're inside your own head wondering if you'll ever be able to walk again, will you be able to have a family? But then how have you used that then as a springboard to help other people? Well, you know, my story, I mean, falling down from the skies, obviously not something that you do every day. But I do believe that my story is universal because we all go through adversities in life. We all have our own personal challenges, you know? And I realized by telling my story, by being honest and naked, you know, to all these strangers and by revealing my weakness, then that would be, I would be able to help and inspire other people to believe in themselves, to try to find their own passion, find out what makes them happy. And you know, maybe even teach them like what I would or not teach them but tell them what helped for me and what actually made me continue on my journey. And you know, I'm thinking that if my story and the fact that I'm telling it and using my experience now into inspiring others, if I can help one person to go through his or her adversities, if I can make one person change his or her life for the better, it's worthwhile, you know? And my story has been a good thing. So the discourse in the United States anyway today is such a polarizing, you know, conversation. But for example, you have, on the one hand, Black Lives Matter movement, on the other hand, people trying to question the need for that movement. And it becomes a, really not even a rational conversation. It becomes sort of a heated debate that's quite irrational. Why is that? Why can't we have a rational conversation about such critical issues? And should we? Well, I mean, yes, I think that we need to. And I think that the conversation is actually not Black Lives Matter as much as it's a conversation about race and racism in this country. And I think that the conversation about Black Lives Matter, if it does one thing, it is to highlight the fact that we haven't as a US, as the country ever really had a conversation about race and racism and US history and the role that race and racism has played in US history economically, politically, socially, all of those things. And so we go through these cycles almost where we kind of start the conversation and then something happens and we say, well, we don't need the conversation actually. Everything is fine. And then something happens and we kind of start the conversation. But I mean, I think that it's very clear to me that it is a fundamental conversation that we need as a country now as much as we ever have in the past. I think that there was, with the election of President Obama, there was a conversation about a post-racial US, which was never true. But I mean, what it did bring up, I think, is that it brought out the residual racism in places that we thought it had seized to exist, or at least that it had been buried deeply enough that it wasn't going to bother anybody. Well, I don't know if you all were taught in grade school or high school about Africa, I was, and we learned a lot about Europe. Never learned anything about it. Of course, you weren't educated. We grew up in Africa. Young children. We didn't learn much about Africa on the continent either, no, no, no. So African history is, I don't, you know, I had to go to South Africa to learn about it. We had to educate ourselves. We had to educate ourselves. In Europe, we do, and we learn about, yes, we do. And for me, I mean, we just had a brief conversation about it because watching the news, I mean, coming from Norway, coming from Europe, we obviously live in a completely different world and we have a totally different relationship to the police. We have a different relationship to black people, to, I don't know, to all, to me, we're all people. And of course, we have racism in Norway as everywhere else in the world, but it's so, I, it's not understandable that we can actually treat people like that. And for me, I mean, a human life. It's like a kid, it's a kid, it's still a kid. And I don't understand how we can see and not see the kid that we all see, I mean. But Laura, aren't we making progress? Or are we just not making progress fast enough or are we just going sideways? Well, you know, for me as a white South African growing up in a country that was the pariah of the world, I actually grew up thinking that racism was a South African thing. I didn't know any better. And I thought when I left the borders of South Africa that I would be leaving racism behind. And instead, what I found was that it was everywhere. And it has helped me understand many conflicts. When I was in Kosovo, and I would listen to the Serbian people talk about the Albanians, you could have substituted black and white in that conversation. And it was so, it was easy for me to identify what that conflict was really about at its heart was that the Serbs don't view the Albanians as human beings. They see them as less and as worthless. And you know, you can have the same conversation in Australia. And when I came to the United States, I was shocked to find that people, when I went to places like Atlanta, people would say, well, that's, you know, the black side of Atlanta, and that's the white side. And I was like, what? Wait, say that to me again. And that was really an education for me. And I found that our lives in South Africa were much more integrated in many, many respects than in the United States, just because you had 40 million or so black people and five million or so white people. And so a degree in level of integration that's unheard of in many parts of America was normal in South Africa, even under apartheid. And that didn't explain or excuse the racist side of the ideology that existed at the time. But so for me, and I'm always very careful because you know, I'm not American and I didn't grow up here, but my children are born here and my husband is American and my life is invested in the values that make America the South African constitution that was written in part by Naomi's father and certainly was formed by his actions and the commitment that he made throughout his life is based on the United States constitution. And one thing I like to tell people here is you may have learned about the constitution growing up in high school, but I lived that. I was on the streets of South Africa when you would have 50,000, 100,000, 150,000 people come to protest for Nelson Mandela and would walk holding hands, singing the A&C's national anthem which was banned at the time and literally have the riot police and watch people fall as the bullets hit them and rubber bullets can kill. And I would go into the homes of people whose children had died protesting and had been executed in the back of their head and their bodies cast aside by the South African police. And so for me, freedom of speech is not something theoretical. It's not something academic. It's not a great idea that the forefathers came up with. It's something that lives and breathes in my blood and in my DNA and in my dreams and in everything that makes me human. And so I hate it when people say, oh, you're an adrenaline junkie. You like to go to war. I don't like to go to war. I like to go to places where those values are being tested. And I believe what Mandela always taught and Tutu lived that the people are the founders of the democracy. And I think the sheriff in Dallas just said a similar thing in his press conference recently. Democracy is nothing without the people. That we hold our leaders accountable. And if we don't hold our leaders accountable and if we don't hold our press accountable, then we don't have democracy. You have some fake version of it. And I think sometimes people have forgotten that. That freedom isn't free. And that means many different things. But it means getting off your butt and getting out there and standing up for what you believe in in one form or way or another. So I'm not so... I don't think it's my place to say whether we've made... Have we made... Who is we? Have we made progress? Have we not? I can tell you one of the senior black people in law enforcement and the FBI said to me on my way when I saw him on my way here, his version of it, compared to one of the black guys in New York on the street last night was talking to me about last night. And their views were so different. And I looked at CNN last night and they had three black congressmen from those districts all talking about that. But you do have three black congressmen representing those districts. And that counts for something. But it doesn't mean that everything is fixed. One of my closest friends in the United States chose where she was going to live specifically because she had two black babies and she didn't want her sons growing up in a certain part of New York where she said I wasn't going to have a moment's peace knowing that they were out on those streets. So she took them to a Jewish neighborhood. Why Jewish neighborhood? You know, of Scarstale because she felt that they'd be safer there. So there's one thing I learned in my job is that the closer you get to an issue, the more complex it becomes. My mother used to say the older I get, the less I know. The more you learn, right? The more you learn, the less you know. Okay, so unfortunately we're out of time. I could go forever with you three amazing women. But last question, maybe each of you could address. I'd like to know one thing though because I always like to start with the little things. And I would like to learn from you two. If I were to do one thing, you know, to make the situation better, to try to eliminate the fear of the black people, of apartheid, of racism. What would I do if I wanted to start, just little by little to make it better? How could I do that? Well, talking as a black person, I always say that for me the first step that I would like people to make is to acknowledge that racism exists. Because I think that so very often that we're up against people saying, well, you're just imagining all of this. And the practical ways, I mean, so one practical way for me which I've asked of people is that when you see, when you're in a shop, for instance, and you see security following a black woman, which is my experience, I'm shopping, and all of a sudden security is, for some reason, I look particularly suspicious. That when you see that and you see me turn and ask the security guard, why is it you're following me in particular? And then they say something like, oh, I wasn't following you in particular. Why are you, you see, you're getting all the, say, no. As a white person to stand and say, I saw that too. And I am going to make, I'm going to make it clear that this is not some crazy, angry black woman playing out here in the department store, the grocery store. This is a reality of people's lives. And again, as you say, it's one small step and it makes a difference in one person's life in that particular instance. But it also is a step of, say, acknowledging that racism is something that exists in our communities. It's a real tangible frustration, isn't it? That is a great insight. From people of color that you talk to get pulled over, you can hear their sense of frustration and they say, you as a white person don't understand what it's like. You have to say, I certainly don't. But unfortunately, I say, we have to leave it there. Thank you so much, Naomi. Thank you, Mara, and Karina for coming on the Cube. Great to meet you all. And just so we don't get into trouble, the other side of that is I have a friend whose husband is a policeman who every time he walks out the door every night, she doesn't know if he's coming home. I'm glad you mentioned that. And she lives in that kind of fear, you know? Anybody who puts on a uniform. Which is not justifying. And I'm also saying, but that's not the other side of the story, that's my point is that they're a black policeman, but it's like, each time we talk about racism, it's as though we're saying, we're attacking the police, which has never been what black- You should be able to talk about these things without that. But I also believe that it has a lot to do with information, lack of information. Like you're saying that you're not even taught in school. And we do naturally have fear of the unknown. And I fear everything that I don't know anything about. And so if I don't know about South Africa, if I don't learn from school, I will naturally have fear because I don't understand you. I don't see you, you're different from me. So that's where for me, it began at home, where I was raised in a home where we were taught not to fear anything. And we were taught to be open to people and we were taught to listen and we were taught to know what we stood for and not be afraid to stand up for that. And that's the universal thing that you talk about, right? That's the thing that you can take anywhere. And so for one small thing I can do is make sure my children don't see color. Their whole lives they've had, we've had people sleeping in our house from Africa, from Afghanistan, from everywhere. They learn all about little bits about different religions. They have African costumes in their closets. They have traditional Pashtun dress. And they learn about everything. And I'm honest with them with the things I don't like about it. I don't want my daughter to grow up wearing a burqa, not allowed to have a driver's license or anything. You know, I'm honest about the fact that I don't like that. I don't think political correctness means you have to say that everything about everyone else is wonderful. To me, it's about those things that bind all of us that are universally good and universally just. And you have to have the courage to stand up for that and also have the courage to say, you know what, I don't actually believe in that side of it. I don't actually think that that's right. And that's the next step of the conversation. It's not enough to just all hold hands and sing kumbaya and say, oh, everybody's great and we accept everybody and it's all wonderful. I did a panel with a representative of the Dalai Lama and the Chief Rabbi of the United States and one of the senior archbishops in the country and all these different religions. Every religion was represented. And about halfway through, I said, okay, enough. Enough of this conversation. Let's talk about what you don't like about each other's religions. Because that's what separates us. It's not that we like about each other and accept about each other and doesn't frighten us about each other. That creates the problems. It's what we don't. And that conversation broke down very quickly at that point and it went from being a love fest to very clearly. Now you started to see that each person thought their religion was superior in some way. But it leads to understanding as well. And that's what it leads to, understanding. That you have to understand that in order to be able to change the conversation at all. Wonderful. All right, thank you all for coming on theCUBE. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back. Wow, what a great segment.