1 00:00:00,634 --> 00:00:02,870 [Victor] ... I feel some disappointment, 2 00:00:02,870 --> 00:00:07,841 but uh it's very small, it's very small. 3 00:00:07,841 --> 00:00:11,311 And I can appreciate that it's difficult, 4 00:00:11,311 --> 00:00:16,117 cause y'know, I don't always stick up for me or other people of colour also. 5 00:00:16,117 --> 00:00:19,736 And in fact sometimes I'm the perpetrator. 6 00:00:23,429 --> 00:00:28,729 It feels very strange to me to have white men bearing witness to this conversation. 7 00:00:28,729 --> 00:00:31,131 And that feels real vulnerable to me. 8 00:00:31,131 --> 00:00:37,971 First of all, to share the sort of tender parts or the hurts of racism or internalized racism, 9 00:00:37,971 --> 00:00:42,142 and the way we play it out amongst ourselves as people of colour 10 00:00:42,142 --> 00:00:51,339 I feel like I want a higher level of trust between me and you, or me and you before I do that. 11 00:00:51,339 --> 00:00:59,126 And um, I'm really fearful that you'll listen, and nod your heads 12 00:00:59,126 --> 00:01:03,330 and say "uh huh, they're just as racist as we are" 13 00:01:03,330 --> 00:01:09,870 I want to hear your best reassurance that you'll not mis-use this information. 14 00:01:09,870 --> 00:01:13,974 You think maybe I would take this information and use it to incite racism? 15 00:01:13,974 --> 00:01:17,115 Not so, that's an unfounded fear, Victor. 16 00:01:18,460 --> 00:01:25,186 [Victor] With all due respect, I want to affirm that my fear is not unfounded, 17 00:01:25,186 --> 00:01:28,222 it's based on personal and collective history... 18 00:01:28,222 --> 00:01:29,824 [David C] ... experience with others... 19 00:01:29,824 --> 00:01:38,098 [Victor] And while it may or may not bear out in my relationship or our relationships with you, 20 00:01:38,098 --> 00:01:46,707 it is, it's foundation is sound as the raising and setting of the sun. 21 00:01:46,707 --> 00:01:51,445 And it feels really invalidating to hear you continually evaluating my experience 22 00:01:51,445 --> 00:01:55,916 or the experience of other men of colour in terms of whether it's founded or not. 23 00:01:55,916 --> 00:01:59,386 The foundation might not be visible to you, but that doesn't mean... 24 00:01:59,386 --> 00:02:04,658 [David C] The only relationship that you and I have, is what we have in these encounters. 25 00:02:04,658 --> 00:02:06,860 We didn't know each other before then, 26 00:02:06,860 --> 00:02:14,401 and I do not like you grouping me with all those with whom you have had experience. 27 00:02:14,401 --> 00:02:20,508 That's disturbing because perhaps I'm a little different being from up here. 28 00:02:20,508 --> 00:02:24,430 Removed from the cities where you live. 29 00:02:26,780 --> 00:02:29,159 I really, I, I, I feel for you people. 30 00:02:29,374 --> 00:02:30,918 [Victor] That answered my question. 31 00:02:30,918 --> 00:02:34,955 [David C] I do, and I don't know how to really portray that, 32 00:02:34,955 --> 00:02:38,625 except to say that I feel the hurt that you're experiencing. 33 00:02:38,625 --> 00:02:43,630 And I understand the distrust you have of white men, 34 00:02:43,630 --> 00:02:49,449 and it's interesting to me to see that distrust also exists between people of all colours. 35 00:02:50,643 --> 00:02:53,407 [Victor] It's not the same, though. 36 00:02:53,407 --> 00:03:01,715 Because what we do to each other pushes us down and lifts you up. 37 00:03:01,715 --> 00:03:11,297 And what you do to us, or what white folks do to us, pushes us down and pushes you up. 38 00:03:12,204 --> 00:03:14,961 Not the same. 39 00:03:14,961 --> 00:03:19,725 And my fear is that if we talked about it, that you would say it's the same. 40 00:03:22,903 --> 00:03:25,406 [Lee Mun Wah] I'd like to do something we haven't done today, 41 00:03:25,406 --> 00:03:27,470 Roberto, would you trade places with Gordon? 42 00:03:27,470 --> 00:03:29,176 [Roberto] Yes. 43 00:03:35,449 --> 00:03:45,253 [Gordon] What, um, a person of colour, a Latino does with a Black man, or any of that, 44 00:03:45,253 --> 00:03:48,995 doesn't seem any bit the same to me, 45 00:03:48,995 --> 00:03:50,964 and I don't even term it racism. 46 00:03:50,964 --> 00:03:52,632 [David C] What is the difference? 47 00:03:52,632 --> 00:03:55,970 [Gordon] A lot. They have little or no power. 48 00:03:55,970 --> 00:03:59,707 I'm not big on politics and understanding that whole thing, 49 00:03:59,707 --> 00:04:03,377 but it's, it's, to me it's a system 50 00:04:03,377 --> 00:04:10,045 that we, we consciously and unconsciously use to keep people of colour down. 51 00:04:10,383 --> 00:04:17,858 [David C] I understand the problem that people of colour have with the white race. 52 00:04:17,858 --> 00:04:28,273 And when we're talking here about a man of one colour offending or giving difficulties to 53 00:04:28,273 --> 00:04:30,104 a man of another colour, 54 00:04:30,104 --> 00:04:35,376 I look at that as I am a colour, they are a colour, each one is a colour, 55 00:04:35,376 --> 00:04:37,845 it's the same, man to man. 56 00:04:37,845 --> 00:04:42,387 Why is it differerent when it's one colour to another, than white to a colour? 57 00:04:43,307 --> 00:04:44,851 [Gordon] Because they've got the power... 58 00:04:44,851 --> 00:04:46,086 [David C] But we're on top... 59 00:04:46,086 --> 00:04:47,354 [Gordon] I've got the privilege... 60 00:04:47,354 --> 00:04:52,559 [David C] Yeah I hear you tell me all the time for many hours now that white is on top, 61 00:04:52,559 --> 00:04:56,964 and I believe you, and I believe that you have that feeling. 62 00:04:56,964 --> 00:05:00,958 I have never had that concept that white is on top, that I am on top. 63 00:05:01,727 --> 00:05:05,285 [Loren] Look at the CEOs of the companies that run this world... 64 00:05:05,439 --> 00:05:07,141 [David C] I agree with that... 65 00:05:07,141 --> 00:05:08,275 [Loren] They're all white men... 66 00:05:08,275 --> 00:05:09,310 [David C] I know that... 67 00:05:09,310 --> 00:05:12,813 [Loren] So, do you think they're gonna think about me or Hugh... 68 00:05:12,813 --> 00:05:14,181 [David C] Or me? 69 00:05:14,181 --> 00:05:18,218 [Loren] No, wait a minute, me or Hugh or David (L) when they make a decision? 70 00:05:18,664 --> 00:05:23,290 [David C] No, they're cut throat, they think nothing of people really... 71 00:05:23,290 --> 00:05:29,563 [Loren] But their decisions will most hurt people who look like us, not people who look like you. 72 00:05:29,563 --> 00:05:33,834 When we fight each other, when we don't take up for each other, 73 00:05:33,834 --> 00:05:37,304 that hurts us a lot more than it hurts you, 74 00:05:37,304 --> 00:05:41,975 and I never realized that until I sat here, and just sat back and listened 75 00:05:42,452 --> 00:05:46,246 to what Victor was saying, and then your response to it. 76 00:05:46,246 --> 00:05:52,152 But now it scares the shit out of me to even continue this conversation in this vein 77 00:05:52,152 --> 00:05:58,359 because y'know, I'm gonna multiply you by let's be nice and say the 20 million to 50 million 78 00:05:58,359 --> 00:06:05,664 who will see this film and think "why should we change? These rats can't get along with each other" 79 00:06:07,701 --> 00:06:12,005 I'm gettin' seriously depressed in here. 80 00:06:12,005 --> 00:06:13,473 Y'know, I was thinking we were making progress, 81 00:06:13,473 --> 00:06:16,484 and I don't even, I just don't feel like we're making much progress anymore. 82 00:06:18,812 --> 00:06:20,247 [Victor] How does that feel? 83 00:06:20,432 --> 00:06:22,449 It feels like shit. 84 00:06:22,449 --> 00:06:24,871 I'm ready to go outside and run my head through a wall. 85 00:06:24,871 --> 00:06:29,469 [Victor] What do you need from us? From me, or from the other men here? 86 00:06:30,491 --> 00:06:34,766 Just to know that we're all still unified, that we're all still working toward the same thing. 87 00:06:56,216 --> 00:07:00,236 Roberto, you were gonna say somethin'. 88 00:07:01,989 --> 00:07:07,895 I was just gonna ask Dave if he seems to be unaware of the statistics and the news stories, 89 00:07:07,895 --> 00:07:10,964 that come through the general media 90 00:07:10,964 --> 00:07:15,669 would tell you that a Black man and a white man laid off from a corporation, 91 00:07:15,669 --> 00:07:18,939 the white man's gonna be re-hired before the Black man... 92 00:07:18,939 --> 00:07:21,341 [David C] I'm aware of reports like that, yes. 93 00:07:21,341 --> 00:07:23,944 [Roberto] You are. What happens when you hear them? 94 00:07:23,944 --> 00:07:26,880 Do you dismiss them, or do you think they're incorrect, or... 95 00:07:26,880 --> 00:07:32,853 [David C] If I were in a position to hire, I'd hire the best man available. That's what I would do, 96 00:07:32,853 --> 00:07:34,888 and it wouldn't matter to me what colour he is. 97 00:07:34,888 --> 00:07:41,195 Among the whites, of my peers at any rate, my colleagues, my acquaintences, 98 00:07:41,195 --> 99:59:59,999 we are becoming more and more alarmed at the tendency or the trends 99 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to seek out and hire ethnic groups over the white, and that is disturbing to us in some ways. 100 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [Roberto] It should be. 101 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [David C] And it is. 102 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I have 5 daughters and they apply to different schools, 103 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the minority races are many times given added points 104 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that give them a boost above the total points of the white race. 105 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So you know, it's not just that it's all against you, there is much against us also. 106 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [Hugh] I am disturbed that anybody is not getting into college, 107 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 including white women, including white men. 108 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I'm disturbed that white men are out of jobs. 109 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 However, what I get back most is 110 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 pointing the finger at the people of colour and the women for taking the jobs 111 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and not at the corporate heads that are sending the factories to Mexico, to Indonesia, etc etc. 112 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to make more money. 113 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [Lee Mun Wah] I want to just kind of play Devil's Advocate here and that is: 114 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 what if I had said to you 115 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 "well, that's just a few folks, and that's not been my experience, 116 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I think your kids should just try a little harder, 117 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I think your girls should just y'know get those 3 or 4 more points, 118 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I mean, I say everybody gets a chance in America to get education". 119 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 How would you feel if I said that to you, given some of the disturbance you are feeling? 120 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [David C] That would be minimizing my feelings... 121 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [Lee Mun Wah] Does it make you feel like it's real, any more? 122 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [David C] You hear me, but you don't want to put much importance on it, yeah. 123 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [Lee Mun Wah] And what you might end up doing is trying to defend that it actually does exist, huh. 124 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [David C] It might do that, you bet. 125 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [Lee Mun Wah] You bet, yeah, just like the men in this room have been doing with you today. 126 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [David C] Sure. 127 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [Lee Mun Wah] One story after another trying to tell you it's real. 128 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You might even call in some of your friends to prove that it happened, 129 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 maybe even show some documents. 130 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's what I'm talking about. 131 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I have allowed myself to feel in my soul in my heart what other men are experiencing, 132 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and that has caused me to take down the walls and barriers that my mind has placed before me 133 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 regarding men of colour. 134 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I have found that they are good men, and that I can love them. 135 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This will probably be difficult for me, but, 136 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 so you understand, I was raised by a father who was very much opinionated and racist, I would say. 137 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Well, my father would always tell jokes about the coloured people, 138 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that would put them down, or would demostrate to me that they were a inferior group of people. 139 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The way he would refer to them, calling them "niggers", 140 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 um, implanted in me that they were an undesirable people. 141 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And he demanded much of his children, 142 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to the point where if we didn't obey, we were physically abused 143 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 by his boot or by a big mean strap. 144 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I learned to anticipate what he wanted so that I could do it without ever incurring his abuse. 145 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And in doing so, I learned to protect myself from outside harm, 146 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 or, or, any emotions that would cause me anguish or disturb me, 147 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and I carried all of this into a pattern of working to avoid dealing with reality, 148 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I guess I would say. 149 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And all my life that's where I've been. 150 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I work hard, I work long hours, 151 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and I keep myself content in my work, 152 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and I'm away fromt he pain and the strife of the real world. 153 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I know when you tell me your experiences, 154 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I ted to minimize them so that I don't have to deal with them. 155 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But it's not that I don't want to, and it's not that I don't feel your anguish and pain 156 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 as people of colour. 157 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I'm, I'm deeply hurt that you would consider my race as the oppressor, 158 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 because certainly I have never thought myself that way. 159 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And that disturbs me to know that you consider me and my colour that way. 160 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Please accept whatever I can do or say to you to relay to you the feeling 161 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that some of us white men really are not aware that we are such a problem to you. 162 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And when we say to you "well just can't you be like us?", 163 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 we don't really understand the differences between you and us. 164 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [Hugh] I'm really sorry that what has happened to you as a child being abused happened to you. 165 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That that should never, that you didn't deserve that. 166 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You didn't deserve any of that. 167 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I appreciate you sharing with me how you survived that, 168 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and how that survival is with you today. 169 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And how hearing us, and hearing my story, 170 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 how your survival, how that affects how you hear me, and what you hearand what you do with it. 171 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's really, um, important for me to know how you've survived. 172 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And as a white man, to know how you dealt with things, 173 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to know how you deal with things when they come your way, 174 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that's what Victor was asking, I think, in asking "what does it mean to be white?". 175 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 "What is it like to be white?" 176 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I appreciate you for exploring that, 177 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and for getting in touch with what it means to be white. 178 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I appreciate your survival. I'm glad you made it. 179 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [David L] I just want to say that I appreciate very much your candor and your openness 180 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to hear us and to try to understand yourself a little more deeply. 181 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I just also hope that you will keep in mind that there is no quick fix. 182 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You don't change and become a non-racist overnight. 183 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You I think have just barely tapped into what racism is all about. 184 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Just kinda touched the surface of it.