Though I wouldn’t have ever gone to the depths that Kenneth went.
Those young white men didn’t have to understand or respect him, but there is a value for those who decide to, which is something Joel gave his thoughts on.
JOEL: For me, I think I’ve benefited from having a diverse circle or grouping of friends and people that I learn from. It enhances my global experience. And it enhances my local experience. There’s so much to be benefited from being more inclusive. You’ll grow more. You’ll just be a better human being. You’ll be a better parent. You’ll be a better partner.
If I’m being honest with you, white people don’t have to change; they will be fine without doing so. But white people should change, because just being fine shouldn’t be good enough.
Which is something I discussed with journalist Jemele Hill.
JEMELE: Learning about other people allows us to have more empathy for the other person, and therefore more growth, in that as you become more empathetic, I think, you become more fully human and fully whole because you start to understand how the world works. And I thought that was the mission, why we got all put here together: to understand how this world works. Being homogenous doesn’t teach you that. If we all went through different experiences all the time, and we were all getting exactly alike, how would we ever grow? We wouldn’t.
Most people don’t look at the world the way Jemele and Joel do. So I asked her why she feels so many people would rather not see color than learn about others.
JEMELE: I think part of the reason why people say that they don’t see color, or they don’t want to see race, or they never even want to be challenged outside of that viewpoint, is because not only does it require you to do some extra thinking—some critical thinking, to have empathy that you didn’t want to have, maybe toward not just the people that you know but maybe in some cases the people that you don’t know—it also makes a demand of you, and people aren’t good with that. Maybe especially demand where at some point you have to kind of look at yourself a little bit and understand how the way you have viewed things may have contributed to the poor way in which we treat race in this country.
I agree with Jemele—fear and not wanting to take accountability are large reasons people don’t want to grow in terms of race.
Jemele gave me a final thought on why young white people should take the opportunity to learn about other races and grow in ways many of their predecessors haven’t.
JEMELE: I guess I would say to young people especially, they have an opportunity for growth that they should always welcome. They should want to learn these things. And once they learn how everybody’s experiences are interconnected—and I guess it’s kind of the differences that I don’t think they see the beauty in. Again, we are definitely all different, and that’s fine, and that’s okay, but those differences are actually quite interconnected, and maybe if they understood that part of it, they wouldn’t always think of learning about race or talking about race as something that was automatically supposed to be divisive. Quite the opposite; it’s actually supposed to bring us all together, despite the crowd constantly bellowing that the real racists are the people who talk about race.
There is a world that we can create that is stronger and more enjoyable if we all learn from one another and develop understanding that doesn’t allow us to simply survive but to thrive.
A world where maybe I learned Tweedledee’s and Tweedledum’s actual names, because it’s obvious we were into similar music, since we were all at the same concert.
A world where two young white men know they shouldn’t touch a Black woman’s hair or call a Black man the n-word.
A world where that night is something we all remember for the right reasons. Maybe in that world, we all became friends that night.
That’s not this world, but if we understand what we can’t do to one another and how to treat each other better, it can be. If you’re still reading, I’m sure that’s because you think so, too.
There’s a YouTube video I watched for the first time in early high school that changed my perception of almost everything I knew. The video was of a college lecture about racism and white privilege in America.
This was back when YouTube started, so I’d find all sorts of random things to watch. I’d love to share a link to that video, but it seems to have disappeared from YouTube in the intervening years, though videos about similar experiments exist. And, yes, I’m that old that I remember when YouTube started.
In the video, a professor gathered his class and put a garbage can in the middle of the room. He then asked each student to take a piece of paper and crumple it into a ball. After that, he asked the students to take the ball and throw it into the trash from any distance they would like. Students did as instructed and shot from various places in the room.
Obviously, many people shot from far random places and shouted, “Kobe!” Because that’s what ballers do.
Next, he asked the students to crumple another piece of paper, but this time he told them he would randomly choose someone who makes the shot to have a day off from class the following week. Each of the students shot from much closer this time; some even dunked the paper in.
Then he told the class that whoever made the next shot would get an A added to their semester grades. He also told them that they would have three opportunities to make a shot.
They thought he was joking (so did I), until he promised them he wasn’t and they could tell the dean if no one got the promised bonus grade.
Each student crumpled up three pieces of paper and got as close as they possibly could to ensure they wouldn’t miss.
But before anyone could take a shot, the professor started to point at students and ask what their race was. All of the students who identified as white were placed in random spots around the lecture hall, some so far from the trash can that it was almost impossible for them to make the shot.
But each student who didn’t identify as white was allowed to stay where they were.
He then decided that only some of the white students he moved would have an opportunity to take more than one shot. He walked around the room and randomly took one crumpled paper ball from some students and two from others.
As he did this, the white students started to complain. In response to their complaints, he forced some of them to cover their eyes for their shot.
He then randomly chose students of color who were close to someone near the garbage can and told them that if the person next to them made it, they didn’t have to shoot and they would also receive the A. But in the unlikely event that the person missed, he would still allow them both to take their full number of shots.
When he told the students to shoot, only two of the white students made it, while every student of color made the shot.
The white students were in an uproar. Some were cursing, others were saying they weren’t coming back to the class, and one student said he was going to complain about the class to the school administration.
The professor told the students he’d already spoken to the administration, and they had no problem with the lesson.
He then asked everyone to sit down and to congratulate the students who would receive the A. He asked the white students how they felt, and many responded with words like “unfair,” “angry,” and “cheated.”