 Welcome back to the Heart of the Matter. This is a new series here at Davis Media Access, dealing with tough topics and asking heartfelt questions, listening to local experts, and hopefully getting some answers that we've all been wanting to hear. There's a lot of questions around racism. Many people, especially here in Davis, feel that we're above that, that we live in a town, in a society, in a culture that really has very little of that. And I think if we truly examine it, that is not the case. At any rate, I'm glad that you've joined us for episode two. We're going to go through a little bit of history from kind of World War II forward. We're going to talk about the process of destruction of a society. There are several steps that have been outlined by scientists much smarter than I am about how this systematically takes place and has taken place not just in our country, but in other countries where they've dealt with oppressing one group of people to benefit the other group of people. So today, I'm glad to have Sandy Holman here with me. We are going to talk about changing the trajectory of the racist systemic system that we currently have and making it inclusive and equitable for all. Sandy, I know you want to talk to us about these steps that, and I'm actually just now remembering, and this is live TV, so we get to roll with the blonde and the punches. I would first like to play an introductory video. It is a trailer to a new documentary that my guest is working on. And we'll have out next year in 2017 called The Cost of Darkness. This trailer, I believe, will see four individuals interviewed and they talk about the cost of darkness. Please take a look. So there's a moral reason which is that everybody deserves to have their dignity acknowledged and defended. There's also a really practical reason that this country is, if you look at the demographics, becoming browner and blacker. And at the same time, that part of the population that's growing is the part of the population that's most struggling economically as a teacher. It's be even beyond educational because it's systems that are existing. They're even outside of your education system like your economic system. Right now there's a high correlation between race and a shorter lifespan, less opportunity, less college graduation. We can change that. And we want to change it not by making the rest of society worse off and making the entire society better off. The problems with the United States Supreme Court's way that it deals with problems of structural racism is that, like so many white Americans, the Supreme Court seems to think that the problems of race and racism are pretty much behind us. Not completely solved, but they seem to think that we have overcome most of what we have to overcome having abolished slavery and having enacted civil rights legislation. And it's now time to move on and deal with other issues. Equity. Again, in communities of color, we talk about racial equity. But I think in the mainstream, it's a scary topic. People don't want to challenge the status quo. There's a whole lot of people, white people, who think the system is just fine the way it is, and that, in fact, we have solved the problem by providing equal opportunity, but they're not really seeing that opportunity is still not equal. So watch for the cost of darkness. It will be, I'm sure, unveiled here, Davis, and it will be on a worldwide tour in 2017. But definitely watch for the documentary, The Cost of Darkness, from the Culture Co-op in United in Unity. Sandy, let's pick up where we were talking before in episode one. I know some viewers may have just joined us here in episode two, but let's pick up where we were talking. We had gone through some history. We had talked about some social constructs and some systems that have been many systems in this country that have been set up to privilege a certain group, white male landowners. I mean, really, our founding fathers that many people want to wax poetic about were not really interested in me voting ever, you voting. A lot of them. Who still control the world's wealth today. Correct. It directly relates back to that. Today they still control the world's wealth. Correct. So let's jump off from there, and I know you have some points that you want to go through. So let's talk about those steps. So first, to kind of continue where we left off, we talked about the fact that there are traits to oppressive systems. And we, by and large, have an oppressive system toward people of color, black and brown people in particular and people who are poor. And that those things were designed into our system, into our policies, our laws, our practices, our key institutions, which is why we're seeing all these gaps still today. So that's important to know it. And we kind of touched on the fact that in order to change those things, first we have to learn the history, then we have to see the problem, to really have a chance on acting on the problem, and then we have to take action. So I just wanted to reiterate that, because we're at a place right now where when you look at what causes a society to self destruct, we're boiling, we're simmering with it. We're simmering with it. And so as a hopeful person, and I always have hope, we can change the trajectory of where we are going with everyone getting on board, taking individual accountability, systemic accountability, and not playing into the political rhetoric that's going on with people like Donald Trump. And I'm going to mention his name. To me, the more concerning thing than Donald Trump is the millions of people who are following him and supporting him. There is sort of a dysfunction that goes with that, and I can't go into detail with that, but when we have mainstream what appears to be a demagogue and someone with fascist tendencies to be light about it, and then to make it seem like it's okay to support something like that, I would argue we're starting to lose the soul and pulse of ourselves already. Not that we haven't had these challenges for a long time, but they are reaching an acute stage. So there is a documentary called The House I Live In. It was based on the war on drugs, which is a documentary in itself, and I encourage everyone to watch The House I Live In. And he applied, a gentleman by the name of Lawrence Miller, kind of gave a step-by-step process of how societies can self-destruct and kind of go into those genocidal places that have happened historically and that are even happening today in certain places around the world. And I just think it's good and important as we think about historical constructs and policies and how things work to check ourselves. We really need to be checking ourselves as individuals and as in a society. So one of the first stages that he talks about, and he's again applying it to the war on drugs, but this can be easily applied to society in general, in my opinion, is he talks about identification. And this is where we start to identify group of people as the bad people, the evil people, the cause for all our problems. Now we've been doing this forever with African-Americans, Latinos, the poor, but it's reaching a new level. We do it with immigrants. We're doing it today, you know. We talk about them in ways that are so disgusting that should never be allowed on TV in my opinion and it's become normalized. So when we start to identify people as the enemy, as the reason, you know, when Trump says let's make America great again, that's code for let's go back to oppressive white supremacy, ideology, which has never really left, but let's bring it back to a higher level and let's target those people, identify the ones who are the real problems of our country. It's a dangerous place to be. We see them as evil or bad and then that moves into what they call ostracism. And we teach people and we make it okay for them to start to hate these people. Even those of us who say we're well-meaning, like you said earlier in your intro, if we really dig beneath what's going on for us, we may say we want equality and fair housing and good education, but when they start to move into our neighborhood, you'll see people voting against things that would help people, voting against things that might make a community more diverse, voting against things that might give people more access to education. So what we feel, and I like to believe that most of us have a benevolent heart, I come from that school of ideology. I believe in the power of love. I think most people, not all, because I'm not naive either, really wanna do the right thing. But when you look at what we're really doing, a lot of us are not. So we may say we want to not ostracize people and we wanna welcome them and all that, but we make it harder for them to survive. So when this ostracism, we learn to hate them and to justify what we're doing because we don't wanna feel bad about ourselves. For example, well, okay, a black guy got shot. Well, let's see what he did. Oops, he stowed a candy bar from the store so that he deserved to be killed, right? Right, the victimization of the criminalization of the victim. Because as a good person, I would be out there marching with them, going to those vigils, try to do systemic change using my talents and gifts to be a part of a mosaic that is really working towards systemic change unless I can justify why he got killed. Just to give you an example. The next stage is confiscation. Sorry, and this is where people literally start to lose their rights and their civil liberties. So we have all kinds of laws and practices since the beginning of time, which has essentially taken away the rights of massive groups of people, blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, I mean, people with disabilities and so forth. We have all kinds of constructs that are still around, all kinds of ways of being. But we get to the point where we start to make it easier to do those things and we justify it. So you hear comments like, we're gonna build a wall. We're gonna make it harder for people to come into the country. We're gonna require when you vote that you have to show five pieces of identification, like that monster law in North Carolina that a judge struck down because it was so egregiously, racially based and focused on African Americans and voter suppression. And he called it out in a rare comment. He called it out. We come up with things to take people's rights, to make it easier to take those rights, to confiscate all their civil liberties. And then a lot of us are complicit in doing that because we don't find out what's going on. And then it can move into this stage of concentration. We start to concentrate undesirables in certain areas. I think of mass incarceration. People of color are not doing more of the crime, but they are being arrested for it more. They are being penalized for it more. They're more likely to suffer the consequence. They're more likely not to be judged by a jury or their peers or to have judges who don't look like them. And we already concentrate them in urbanized areas, which people of color have done tremendous, beautiful things in making the best of that situation. But let's be real. All those social determinants of a good education, housing, not living next to toxicity, getting good food, having political representation and all that are not there. And that's why we are not seeing things change by and large as far as the success of those people. I would argue any white group of people who have put in similar situations. And in the past, that was the case. Certain groups of whites were put in what we would call ghettos today, and they had just as much problem thriving, although their whiteness still gave them white privilege. So we're putting people in situations concentrating them. And the worst of that, of course, a concentration camp, you know? And it's worse. Which we've done. Which we've done. We've done it with the Japanese. We've done it, I would say, and symbolically with other groups of people. We're doing it around the world as we speak and it often ends up in genocidal behaviors. And it's something that we need to be really careful about as we think about these historical constructs. The last one is annihilation. And essentially that's when you get to that place where you're talking about purposely targeting people, killing people, having policies and practices that means that a large swath of people are gonna be affected in a negative way. It's the worst place to be, and we don't wanna be there. So when you think about these five steps and you think about how historically we've been doing oppression and systemic subjugation of groups of people for a long time and we keep telling them to be patient, get that chip off your shoulder and stop playing the race card. And I would like to know, where do I get a deck of cards that gives me benefits as an African-American woman? Cause I have never seen them in a store and there are no benefits to being that except that I love myself and I come from a legacy of empowerment and fighting for the rights of all people. Those kinds of things need to stop and we need to face up to the fact of what's going on. So I challenge everyone, but especially the status quo and I say this often to people, I may be prejudiced against you Andrea because I'm white or black and I don't like you as a white woman. And I may call you names and throw a rocket your car and all that but I do not have the power. Racism is different. Racism is having institutional power to impart your prejudice on a lot of people. So for example, our leaders, our politicians, people who control our finances, people who control all the institutions, if they are prejudiced and then they take their power with it, they could pass policies and they are, they can do practices and they are, they can do a target communities and profile and they are which injure, harm and even kill large groups of people because of those practices. So racism takes power. People of color by and large do not have the power in this country. Women do not have the power in this country. People who have disabilities by and large do not control the power in this country. Now oppressive systems are set up to allow a few good examples to get through. Look at Oprah. Look at General Powell. Look at this person. Well, they're set up to allow a few people to be successful so that the status quo can say, you're not working hard enough. See, we have a Clarence Thomas. I'm sorry, he's not one of my, his behaviors are not one of my favorite or not my favorite. Even though he looks like an African-American, he is not voting in the best interests of people and certainly the African-American community, but they will point to people who have a lot of money, a lot of status and say, if they can do it, you can do it too. But we have to look at that bell curve. And in the bell curve of things, most people of color are being strangled and I'm saying this symbolically against their ability to survive and thrive because things are so inequitable. Right. So let's, and I couldn't agree with you more and I think it goes through several different types of issues from mortgage lending. Yeah, you wanna talk about crime, that 30, whatever trillion, I say trillion, not billion, I can't remember the exact figure because of subprime loans and those things, that was one of the biggest crimes in our country. And as we talk about who's doing the crime and they talk about black-owned, black crime. Well, most white people kill white people because we're segregated again. You tend to kill or do things to people or criminalize your behavior toward people who are close to you. So, but we normalize everything against whiteness and we don't talk about the white and white crime. That in fact, most of the encounters that have been derogatory and horrible where police were injured or hurt have been from white men, okay? We just focus because of how we wanna do our dynamics and we just focus on the victims of oppression and say there they go again, look at them becoming violent. And we've had violence perpetrated by whites against whites for a long time too. So we just have to keep these things in mind. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, not at all. So I think this brings us up to kind of where we left off in episode one with World War II and what was going on for the African-American soldiers that came back from World War II. These men, primarily men, although women did serve in auxiliary positions, but these men were true patriots. In a country where they couldn't eat at a restaurant, they could go to the back door by the dumpster and wait for their order. And that's if you had the money and the wherewithal to go and demand those type of services. Many, many people didn't. Many people avoided that. I mean, I think avoiding being treated badly is just a natural human instinct. But the people who did, the people who challenged that, here they had a whole separate system of education, of commerce, of everything was completely separated leading into World War II in most states in the nation. There were a few that did better than most. There were some that were still stuck in reconstruction as post-World War II. But we go off to World War II, I mean, post-constructionist of Civil War. We go off to World War II and the true patriots in this country, African-Americans who have been treated poorly for generations, Japanese-Americans whose families were getting taken off to internment camps, several of them here in California were enlisting. The 18-year-old boys were enlisting. One of our former city councilmen, Jerry Canneco, enlisted from an internment camp to go serve his country. And so talk to us about they've gone, they've served some of them in segregated units. Segregation did come to the military actually really before it came to anyone else because it became apparent that we need more bodies and we can't just ask for white bodies anymore. So let's just, we gotta fortify here. So they came back as victors. Yeah, people need to know that African-Americans, people of color, so many groups of people have fought in every war since the beginning of war fighting, not that I'm a war advocate for obvious reasons. So we have, it's always ironic to me that the ones we treat the worst are often the first to step up and risk their lives for protecting something that we don't even really have and it's ideals yet. American ideals are wonderful and beautiful, but we're far from it, let's be honest. And so, you know, World War II, when people came back after risking their lives to fight in that war and basically there was a boom in housing, there was a great migration coming from the south to the north. There were a lot of factors that were happening that made housing and jobs critical as we go forward in what we were going to be doing and succeeding in our lives. And so the government went out of its way to create policies and things to actually try to meet the need of housing. And housing is important because for most Americans, housing is how we build our wealth, just so you know. So the wealth of most white Americans until all this crazy subprime lending stuff happened, most of their accumulative wealth that helped them send their kids to college and so forth was because at some point they had a house. They were able to get a house, get loans for that house, if they didn't have the money, get help for that house, get quality housing, and then to have that house be placed in healthy communities where those social determinants of being successful were existent, great schools, great medical care, great food, reasonable safety, and all these kinds of things that we know are critical for a person to survive. Other side of the lane, African Americans were denied any kind of loans, help, access to housing in these wonderful neighborhoods, and so forth. So we continued that historical practice of keeping them in squalor and poverty by and large. And it has had devastating effects when you look at the wealth that blacks have today compared to the wealth that whites. And you can look at the other groups too, Latinos and other groups, women, you can compare it against white men by and large, and it would be a downhill slope. The graph is incredible. And I recommend everyone read the book, The Color of Wealth, it's out of print, but I recommend you get a copy, it's excellent, it goes into this in much detail. So housing, by denying African American housing and then subsidizing to make sure that they couldn't get in certain neighborhoods, whites moving out to what we call suburbs, we created governmental, and I put in quotes, ghettos. And this is not to take away from people who are like, they're proud of their hood, they're proud of what they may even call their ghetto. But these were ghettos of squalor that denied opportunities and wealth and the ability to pick your family up. And so it is natural that you would kind of create an incubus of sorts where certain behaviors are more likely to happen, because people are desperate to support their loved ones. If they don't have the money, and you see your baby starving, you might go still a loaf of bread, okay? And I don't care what color you are. So when we created these segregated neighborhoods which are still massively prevalent today, and after World War II, again, put it in our government policy that you and covenants all over the country that certain people couldn't move in, that was another example of that historical entrenching of keeping and creating a gap that you see today. So it's very disheartening, because you're talking about people, again, giving their lives, and in many cases, not even understanding all these forces that are impacting them, so they start to have a level of internalized oppression where they start to believe the hype. So here's the argument. It tends to switch every 10, 20, 30 years, depending on your outtake. Oh, it's the system's fault. Oh, no, it's those lazy individuals' fault. They're on drugs, they're gang members, they don't. Of course, we don't call... Have too many kids. Yeah, we don't call the KKK a gang when they are just as thuggish and gang-like are the skinheads. We even elevate the hate groups by the way we call them, right? But they're gangs too, if you look at the definition of the word. So we, as a country, create these situations where people get to the point where they do start to think it's me, maybe, and then they try to distance themselves from other who look like them. We call that an internalized oppression. They don't like themselves. They don't like who they are. They don't wanna be associated with people who look like them. I might say Clarence Thomas has a healthy dose of internalized oppression and not to be unfair to him, but that's a dynamic that actually happens. And so they will inflict pain on themselves and others who look like them, but we must never forget that this is under a system, a systemic oppression that when it's operating at its best, they don't have to do certain things anymore. The people they are oppressing will start to do it to themselves, but it's still directly connected to that system, that caustic genocidal unhealthy system of isms and racism in particulars we're talking about today. So it's concerning to me because this is still going on, but one exciting thing, and we'll talk about this more in solutions, when we get to that, that there's organizations who are starting to call it what it is, trying to educate people about what it is and saying, if you really wanna be a good person, if you really wanna be a part of a dynamic country where everyone is considered, and we need to be doing that, because by 2040, 2044, most of the people of color will dominate this country and most of the elderly will be white and you need us to be thriving so you can get our social security to help you. Right now we don't have enough money. If that's your only reason for doing something, if money is your motivation, you should start thinking about that, but more than that, as I talked about these five stages, we are moving toward a place that is, we've been there in my opinion, but it's always been scary for those of us who do this work, but we're moving toward a place that is of nightmare proportions as far as what I'm seeing here on the front right now and especially being driven by our political process. Well, that's a real tough way to end this second episode, but it's real and that's what we're gonna do here in the heart of the matter and we hope you'll join us for the next episode. Thank you.