- I feel vulnerable being a
citizen of the United States
who might be a target for eradication.
- There are a few perceptions
of black people in America,
and it's very narrow.
- As a white woman, I can
turn on the television and
I can see my physical self represented.
I can see many, many women like me.
- If you see a black movie,
it's always dysfunctional families, drugs.
- I don't understand why black models
have to bring their own
makeup and their own tools,
like, why are you not trained
to do everybody's hair?
It's your entire job.
- My difficulty is watching
old white men write for
any marginalized individual
'cause they just have
no fucking idea what
they're talking about.
- My first cognizant
experience with racism
was in the second grade.
- My cousin's daughter
lives in Philly now,
and she came home from
school one day last week
and told her mommy, "Mommy,
the white kids in my class
called me a monkey.
I'm not a monkey, I'm a person."
- My best friend was
this little white girl
who had an enormous collection of Barbies.
Her mother found out to whom I belonged.
I was then told I couldn't
go to her house anymore.
- Both of my parents are
light skinned and black.
Both of my parents are
products of, what I call
The Great Horror Story and The
Great Love Story of America.
In order to survive,
often families would marry
other light-skinned blacks to stay alive.
- I went to Wesleyan University.
I didn't have a lot of white friends,
and Wesleyan is primarily a white school.
We saw plantation images.
Seeing all these black photos
of slavery in a white frat,
it freaked me out.
We would be walking down the street
and somebody would be like, "Niggers!"
- Even if they weren't explicitly racist,
I was conscious of all the stereotypes
that people have of black folk
and I constantly felt like
I had to fight against it.
- "You need to work 20,
30 times, maybe 40 times
as hard as anybody in the school,
because you weren't supposed to be here.
You were a quota."
- I can only work to discredit
my race or my identity.
No matter what I do, it'll
never be a credit to that.
- Yesterday I was in a
store with this jacket on,
and then, when I left the store,
a police officer ran
after me and was like,
"There was a person
running around the store
with a long jacket on.
If you have anything in your bag,
you really need to take
that out right now."
And I was like, "What?
You so wrong about me, dude."
- I remember walking
into Macy's and asking,
"Can I look at that perfume?"
And the woman looking at me said to me,
"You know, it's 150
dollars for the bottle."
Wrongly or rightly, she assumed
that I couldn't afford it.
- I used to take a yoga
class at 9:30 in the morning
and everybody in the yoga class was white.
When I first joined the class,
people would look at me,
wondering, "Well what
does your husband do?
How is it possible that
you can take a yoga class
at 9:30 in the morning on a weekday?"
If I were white, that
question wouldn't be asked.
- The police have bothered
me. It's a vulnerability
because you can't really fight back.
- [SLU] Why can't you fight back?
- Because they're cops, you
hit them and you're dead.
Especially if you're a black woman.
- I'm fucking lucky.
I'm healthy and I'm white.
I have an extraordinary amount
of privilege in my life.
I'm white.
I'm educated.
I'm healthy.
- "I don't see color."
That's wrong.
You should see color.
We are not the same.
We have very different experiences.
- I have a lot of luxury
to do what I want to do.
I don't have the obstacles that
a lot of other people have.
- It's insidious, because you're
inherently in this design,
and then made to feel responsible for it,
and somehow if you worked
harder, you could get out.
Somehow, you're some kind of failure.
This idea of pulling up your bootstraps,
and you're asking people
who never get boots
to pull up their bootstraps.
- You know, you can paint and fly your
liberal equal flag but shit is not equal
and the only way that
it can even get there
is if we have a conversation
about it not being equal.
- Until people are taught
to not criticize somebody
because they're living under the overpass.
They're not living under
the overpass by desire.
It has more to do with design.
- People who sit where
I get to sit in society,
it should be the thing
that we do everyday,
to put ourselves out there to help
the people who don't enjoy that.
- You have to be concerned
about all the bodies,
people who don't look like you,
people who don't sound like you,
even people who do not
believe what you do.
You can't just be concerned about
bodies that look like yours.
Call me stupid, call me idealistic,
but I'm gunning for utopia.
- I honestly was kind of arrogant.
I felt like, "Oh, I grew
up around people of color,
like, I got it, I understand."
There is just always more to unpack,
like you never really get it.
- My husband is white
and his family is from the rural midwest.
I love my husband's family and
I think they're kind people
and good people, but they are
also a product of their world
and their world is one that denies
my humanity and my existence.
I cannot speak that without hurting them,
but if I wrap it up so it
doesn't hurt them as much,
then the work is not done,
and they're going to be able
to continue to hurt me.
- My advice to white people is like
the same way with all this stuff.
Let is be complicated and let
yourself be uncomfortable.
- [SLU] The only good way
that I can look at this
is that it's exposed all of the lies.
- That's not an objective statement.
That's a positioning statement.
Like, "The lies, they're exposed."
Like we've been fucking knowing ,
you know what I mean, like,
my people knew in the 1700s
when white men took us into their beds
then called us nigger and
sold away our children.
Like we have known this deeply.
It has been proven to us again, and again,
and again, and again, and
we have tried to shout it
and you have chosen not to hear.
- You're going to have
some moments of like,
"Holy shit, I feel
terrible," and you need to
not run away and give up.
"That was my five minutes
of social justice,
and then I said something wrong,
and now, I don't want to do it anymore."
It's like, people of
color have every right
to be angry, and to call you out,
and to make you feel bad
about something that you said.
- "What are you mixed
with?" or "What are you?"
I hear my father coming out of my mouth.
"Women in my family have
always been beautiful
and your men have always been rapists."
Because why should I have to give you
a history lesson about something that
you and yours have systematically erased.
You committed a sin.
I didn't do shit.
Me and mine didn't do shit.
- Inevitably, black people are carrying
this cloak of shame that
we have got to get rid of.
We have been cartooned, lampooned,
dehumanized when we are the mother,
and the fact that we have been so easily
stripped of our essence and our power
is one of the largest
crimes that I can think of.
- So many people would want me
to be something other than black.
"Oh, but you could be Brazilian,
or you could be from this
island off the coast."
Why can't I be from Philly?
There's never been a time in my life
when I haven't been grateful to be black.
- We are all actually black,
so I think the reason
why we are all attracted,
as black people, as white people to black
is because it really is the mother color.
It really is the real
rhythm, the blood, you know,
it comes from we are all one.
- We not only survived, we
gave this country culture.
We gave you spirituals,
then we gave you jazz,
then we gave you blues,
then we gave you hip-hop,
then we gave you art, and rock, and style,
and food, and a soul.
Why wouldn't I want to be that?
- When they first brought us here,
we were not brought as humans.
We were defined as non-humans.
We were brought for a purpose.
Our citizenship is conditional.
Our right to be here is conditional.
Our humanity is conditional to the country
which is now also ours, which
has always been also ours,
and from that point forward,
we have consistently
maintained our sense of self.
That's a radical act,
that's a resistant act.
- This white skin,
this is not something I chose,
it just is what happened,
and I'm trying to do the best I can do
for other people with this skin.
- The next step for us is to create.
We can create off of reality,
or we can create off of imagination,
but I wouldn't want to create
off of reality no more.
We live in America, it's racist as fuck.
So it's just like, either we are going to
talk about the racism,
or we are going to create
something beyond the shit.
