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[Victor] ... I feel some disappointment,
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but uh it's very small, it's very small.
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And I can appreciate that it's difficult,
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cause y'know, I don't always stick up for me or other people of colour also.
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And in fact sometimes I'm the perpetrator.
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It feels very strange to me to have white men bearing witness to this conversation.
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And that feels real vulnerable to me.
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First of all, to share the sort of tender parts or the hurts of racism or internalized racism,
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and the way we play it out amongst ourselves as people of colour
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I feel like I want a higher level of trust between me and you, or me and you before I do that.
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And um, I'm really fearful that you'll listen, and nod your heads
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and say "uh huh, they're just as racist as we are"
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I want to hear your best reassurance that you'll not mis-use this information.
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You think maybe I would take this information and use it to incite racism?
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Not so, that's an unfounded fear, Victor.
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[Victor] With all due respect, I want to affirm that my fear is not unfounded,
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it's based on personal and collective history...
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[David C] ... experience with others...
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[Victor] And while it may or may not bear out in my relationship or our relationships with you,
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it is, it's foundation is sound as the raising and setting of the sun.
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And it feels really invalidating to hear you continually evaluating my experience
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or the experience of other men of colour in terms of whether it's founded or not.
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The foundation might not be visible to you, but that doesn't mean...
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[David C] The only relationship that you and I have, is what we have in these encounters.
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We didn't know each other before then,
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and I do not like you grouping me with all those with whom you have had experience.
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That's disturbing because perhaps I'm a little different being from up here.
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Removed from the cities where you live.
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I really, I, I, I feel for you people.
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[Victor] That answered my question.
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[David C] I do, and I don't know how to really portray that,
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except to say that I feel the hurt that you're experiencing.
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And I understand the distrust you have of white men,
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and it's interesting to me to see that distrust also exists between people of all colours.
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[Victor] It's not the same, though.
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Because what we do to each other pushes us down and lifts you up.
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And what you do to us, or what white folks do to us, pushes us down and pushes you up.
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Not the same.
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And my fear is that if we talked about it, that you would say it's the same.
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[Lee Mun Wah] I'd like to do something we haven't done today,
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Roberto, would you trade places with Gordon?
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[Roberto] Yes.
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[Gordon] What, um, a person of colour, a Latino does with a Black man, or any of that,
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doesn't seem any bit the same to me,
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and I don't even term it racism.
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[David C] What is the difference?
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[Gordon] A lot. They have little or no power.
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I'm not big on politics and understanding that whole thing,
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but it's, it's, to me it's a system
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that we, we consciously and unconsciously use to keep people of colour down.
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[David C] I understand the problem that people of colour have with the white race.
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And when we're talking here about a man of one colour offending or giving difficulties to
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a man of another colour,
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I look at that as I am a colour, they are a colour, each one is a colour,
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it's the same, man to man.
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Why is it differerent when it's one colour to another, than white to a colour?
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[Gordon] Because they've got the power...
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[David C] But we're on top...
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[Gordon] I've got the privilege...
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[David C] Yeah I hear you tell me all the time for many hours now that white is on top,
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and I believe you, and I believe that you have that feeling.
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I have never had that concept that white is on top, that I am on top.
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[Loren] Look at the CEOs of the companies that run this world...
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[David C] I agree with that...
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[Loren] They're all white men...
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[David C] I know that...
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[Loren] So, do you think they're gonna think about me or Hugh...
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[David C] Or me?
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[Loren] No, wait a minute, me or Hugh or David (L) when they make a decision?
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[David C] No, they're cut throat, they think nothing of people really...
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[Loren] But their decisions will most hurt people who look like us, not people who look like you.
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When we fight each other, when we don't take up for each other,
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that hurts us a lot more than it hurts you,
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and I never realized that until I sat here, and just sat back and listened
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to what Victor was saying, and then your response to it.
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But now it scares the shit out of me to even continue this conversation in this vein
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because y'know, I'm gonna multiply you by let's be nice and say the 20 million to 50 million
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who will see this film and think "why should we change? These rats can't get along with each other"
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I'm gettin' seriously depressed in here.
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Y'know, I was thinking we were making progress,
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and I don't even, I just don't feel like we're making much progress anymore.
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[Victor] How does that feel?
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It feels like shit.
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I'm ready to go outside and run my head through a wall.
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[Victor] What do you need from us? From me, or from the other men here?
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Just to know that we're all still unified, that we're all still working toward the same thing.
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Roberto, you were gonna say somethin'.
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I was just gonna ask Dave if he seems to be unaware of the statistics and the news stories,
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that come through the general media
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would tell you that a Black man and a white man laid off from a corporation,
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the white man's gonna be re-hired before the Black man...
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[David C] I'm aware of reports like that, yes.
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[Roberto] You are. What happens when you hear them?
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Do you dismiss them, or do you think they're incorrect, or...
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[David C] If I were in a position to hire, I'd hire the best man available. That's what I would do,
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and it wouldn't matter to me what colour he is.
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Among the whites, of my peers at any rate, my colleagues, my acquaintences,
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we are becoming more and more alarmed at the tendency or the trends
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to seek out and hire ethnic groups over the white, and that is disturbing to us in some ways.
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[Roberto] It should be.
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[David C] And it is.
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I have 5 daughters and they apply to different schools,
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the minority races are many times given added points
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that give them a boost above the total points of the white race.
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So you know, it's not just that it's all against you, there is much against us also.
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[Hugh] I am disturbed that anybody is not getting into college,
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including white women, including white men.
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I'm disturbed that white men are out of jobs.
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However, what I get back most is
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pointing the finger at the people of colour and the women for taking the jobs
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and not at the corporate heads that are sending the factories to Mexico, to Indonesia, etc etc.
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to make more money.
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[Lee Mun Wah] I want to just kind of play Devil's Advocate here and that is:
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what if I had said to you
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"well, that's just a few folks, and that's not been my experience,
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I think your kids should just try a little harder,
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I think your girls should just y'know get those 3 or 4 more points,
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I mean, I say everybody gets a chance in America to get education".
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How would you feel if I said that to you, given some of the disturbance you are feeling?
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[David C] That would be minimizing my feelings...
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[Lee Mun Wah] Does it make you feel like it's real, any more?
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[David C] You hear me, but you don't want to put much importance on it, yeah.
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[Lee Mun Wah] And what you might end up doing is trying to defend that it actually does exist, huh.
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[David C] It might do that, you bet.
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[Lee Mun Wah] You bet, yeah, just like the men in this room have been doing with you today.
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[David C] Sure.
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[Lee Mun Wah] One story after another trying to tell you it's real.
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You might even call in some of your friends to prove that it happened,
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maybe even show some documents.
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That's what I'm talking about.
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I have allowed myself to feel in my soul in my heart what other men are experiencing,
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and that has caused me to take down the walls and barriers that my mind has placed before me
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regarding men of colour.
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And I have found that they are good men, and that I can love them.
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This will probably be difficult for me, but,
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so you understand, I was raised by a father who was very much opinionated and racist, I would say.
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Well, my father would always tell jokes about the coloured people,
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that would put them down, or would demostrate to me that they were a inferior group of people.
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The way he would refer to them, calling them "niggers",
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um, implanted in me that they were an undesirable people.
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And he demanded much of his children,
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to the point where if we didn't obey, we were physically abused
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by his boot or by a big mean strap.
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I learned to anticipate what he wanted so that I could do it without ever incurring his abuse.
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And in doing so, I learned to protect myself from outside harm,
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or, or, any emotions that would cause me anguish or disturb me,
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and I carried all of this into a pattern of working to avoid dealing with reality,
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I guess I would say.
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And all my life that's where I've been.
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I work hard, I work long hours,
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and I keep myself content in my work,
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and I'm away fromt he pain and the strife of the real world.
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And I know when you tell me your experiences,
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I ted to minimize them so that I don't have to deal with them.
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But it's not that I don't want to, and it's not that I don't feel your anguish and pain
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as people of colour.
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And I'm, I'm deeply hurt that you would consider my race as the oppressor,
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because certainly I have never thought myself that way.
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And that disturbs me to know that you consider me and my colour that way.
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Please accept whatever I can do or say to you to relay to you the feeling
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that some of us white men really are not aware that we are such a problem to you.
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And when we say to you "well just can't you be like us?",
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we don't really understand the differences between you and us.
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[Hugh] I'm really sorry that what has happened to you as a child being abused happened to you.
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That that should never, that you didn't deserve that.
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You didn't deserve any of that.
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And I appreciate you sharing with me how you survived that,
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and how that survival is with you today.
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And how hearing us, and hearing my story,
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how your survival, how that affects how you hear me, and what you hearand what you do with it.
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That's really, um, important for me to know how you've survived.
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And as a white man, to know how you dealt with things,
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to know how you deal with things when they come your way,
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that's what Victor was asking, I think, in asking "what does it mean to be white?".
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"What is it like to be white?"
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And I appreciate you for exploring that,
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and for getting in touch with what it means to be white.
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And I appreciate your survival. I'm glad you made it.
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[David L] I just want to say that I appreciate very much your candor and your openness
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to hear us and to try to understand yourself a little more deeply.
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I just also hope that you will keep in mind that there is no quick fix.
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You don't change and become a non-racist overnight.
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You I think have just barely tapped into what racism is all about.
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Just kinda touched the surface of it.
