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