Transcription
Things that I wanted to share with you. According to Pew Research, the net worth of white families in 2013 was one hundred and forty-one thousand. For black families, it was eleven thousand, even less than the nineteen thousand it was in 2007. According to economist Edward Wolf of the University of New York, excluding vehicles and other durables, the median black family worth is just seventeen hundred dollars. Well, forty percent of black families have zero or negative wealth. White family worth, in terms of financial worth, is sixty-nine times more than that of black families.
Given this disparity, how can you argue that racism is not a driving factor in income inequality? Because it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with culture. And when you have a culture that doesn't... anyone? And when you know what? Explain to me. You explain to me why black kids aren't graduating high school. Explain that one to me. Explain to me why black kids are shooting each other in rates significantly higher than whites are shooting each other. Explain me why thirteen percent of the population is responsible for fifty percent of the murder. Explain to me why they, why the number of blacks and black kids in prison, not for innocent reasons, not for walking down the street getting pulled into a prison, is so high. Explain, if it has nothing to do with culture, explain to me why the single motherhood rate in the black community jumped from twenty percent to seventy percent in the same course of time that the Civil Rights Movement has made such tremendous strides. Is America more racist now than it was in 1960? And if it is, please explain to me how that happened.
So what do I think those riots are? I think the depravity. I think they're thugs. And I think if you really want to make a difference, Thurgood Marshall, who grew up just two blocks from there, did such a thing, who was a contemporary of Martin Luther King. Now, I'd like to skip over to Dr. Seacrest. I look at the Baltimore uprisings. It's more than just riots, right? I hate the idea when you say thugs and riots, right? White people write it as well. When y'all win Super Bowls two years in a row, y'all get off the hook. Don't make it seem like it's just Baltimore getting upset.
So my thirty-second answer is, I feel the frustration of what's happening in the community, and I think it's a symptom. The, the uprisings are a symptom of a pressure that's been unaddressed for too long. And I'm offended by the language of uprising applied to people who are breaking into other black people's stores and looting them. This is not, this is a lack of values. And people who, people who are destroying private property, destroying cop cars, in an uprising against what, exactly? Against the black police chief? Against a mostly minority police force? Against the black mayor? Against the black president? Against the black attorney general? Against the entirely, against a City Council that is nine to fifteen, all black, and all fifteen are elected Democrats. What is the uprising against? What is it seeking to achieve? I still don't see what exactly the riots are seeking to achieve.
Bottom line is this is all, it all could be boiled down to just act like a mensch. Act like a human being. Honestly, it's not a useful, it's not useful to riot. It's not useful to break things. It's not useful to throw rocks at people. And the idea that we're supposed to sort of correlate long away... I'm gonna stick to the thirty seconds. Yeah. The idea that we're supposed to correlate your level of outrage with a certain level of justification. In other words, the more outraged you are, the more angry you are, the more justified you must be. It's absolute nonsense.
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Then, since the issue of disparities has come up a number of times, when does disparity not indicate racism? Statistical disparity. You know, for example, overwhelmingly men commit crimes more than women, but we don't say that the Justice Department is sexist. So, is there, is there a line that you draw for yourself? Or is there some, some way that you interpret statistical disparity and you determine that that is not a racial disparity, it's something else?
Well, we can return to it. That's okay to you, Ben? Did you want to? Yes. It's, it's called evidence of racism when there is no evidence of racism. It's probably not racism. When there is actual evidence of racism, it's probably racism. And the fact that everybody jumps from there's inequality in therefore there is inequity does not mean there was... Sorry, Charles. I want to ask you a question. So, your default, your default is that when there is no evidence, racism is the deciding factor? No, no, no. It's not saying it. I'm just saying that, that you're gonna have sexist, you're gonna have racist, you're gonna have all this stuff. I mean, I'm just saying that I agree it exists. But the problem that I'm seeing, and this is the problem with the general conversation, is that there's no solution. And simply saying there's racism out there, how does that solve anything? And when, when you talk about there's institutional racism, what does that mean? Show me a law that is racist in intent, and we will agree. Show me a police officer who commits a racist act, like we saw in South Carolina, right, where a police officer shot a black man running away and it was obviously unjustified, and I will agree. But you need the idea that you can craft a narrative based on no racism because it just must be somewhere out there in the ether. That doesn't solve problems for anybody. It creates more problems for people because now they grow up in a milieu and an environment where they are told that every obstacle they face is from some shadowy, nameless, faceless group who is out to get them simply because of the color of their skin. They'll never succeed in that environment.
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You know, the weirdest thing is that actually, in the black home, as I experienced it, really, there is no discussion of racism. Racism, much is a discussion that you actually come out and you face in, in the public, because it's a real thing that you have to actually expect. I mean, if you, you're silly and you're foolish if you don't, if you don't really think that that's gonna be there and encountered in the real world. I'm sorry, this is just a fact of life. But if I'm at home and having dinner with my father or whatever, we don't go, "Oh my God, this society is so racist as I'm eating my steak." And you know what I mean? Goodness gracious, oh, I can't bear it. My black skin is causing... And we know, we know, we don't talk like that. We don't talk like that. We talk about, "My God, Aunt What's-Her-Name. Oh my God, she's got to take some pills because she's off the register." I mean, these are the conversations we have at home. We don't have these kinds of conversations that we're having right now. At least in my childhood, we didn't have them. And I'm watching the people I knew growing up in the black neighborhood, I didn't hear anybody really talking about race when we're at the dinner table. I mean, it just didn't pop up unless it was in the issue was on television. But mostly it was about family and, and regular life.
But I disagree. I have to tell you, even in my culture, there is an underlying racism. And I know that the panel today, and especially what's going on in America, we're talking about white on black. But you cannot, I cannot wake up in the morning and not think about, you know, interculturalism. Okay? "I'm not Mexican enough." Why? Because I'm articulate, and because I have straight hair, and I can wear high heels. I don't have a tattoo on my neck. Yes, there is a huge problem of racism, no matter if you're light-skinned or dark-skinned. Absolutely. There is intercultural racism. It's absolutely underlying. And why you may not talk about it, your grandmother will have the fairest grandkid, if she's the lightest one with the good hair, that becomes the favorite grandkid in our culture. And that's, you know, unfortunately, even within our own cultures, we tend to look upon, you know, the color of each other's skin and how much education we have. And if my uncle has done time in jail, which, you know, he has, then he becomes more Mexican than I am. What is up with that? I mean, it's sad, but it's true. It's absolutely true. It's like, "I'm spicy picante sauce, so I'm not Mexican enough." You know, it's true. You know, in every culture, whether it's Asian, you know, black, Mexican, there is, why you may not have grown up talking about it over your, you know, tea and toast. I mean, in my family, for not a doctor or a lawyer, you're not Jewish enough. It's true. That part is true.
This entire time, I've been trying to think about your initial question about disparities. Are they automatically tied to race? And at first, I think all of us were stumped because we're trying to think of the instances. I, I do agree that they are separate, but they don't necessarily correlate within itself. There are disparities. In NAACP, we are the experts inside of the nation of bringing in the racial lens for all of the work. No, they're not necessarily going hand in hand, or they do not necessarily tied to each other. So that was, that's how I would answer it. No, they don't have to go together. My job as a civil rights attorney is to be able to make you see race at every given opportunity. But no, it's not present in each and every single disparity.
To your second, the standards. What are the standards? The difference. I mean, you said that you want people to see race in every single issue where it's present. Okay, so for instance, our standard as to where it's present. Absolutely. What's my for that? Take something as simple as a, if we're talking about a disparity, say men and women. My job would be to show what does that look like when you have women from different communities of color? What does it look like when we're talking about a woman who's working or stuck in a minimum-wage job, not as a starter, but for her career? So we bring in the racial dynamic. All right. How about if... I understand that the question that I'm asking is, when do you decide something racist has occurred? Races? Yes. Like when it, when do you have to, when can you decide that an act of racism has occurred? Because if you have just a statistical disparity, has it, has an act of racism automatically occurred? That was David's basic question, I think, right? There's a, there's obviously a, there might be a, there will be a disparate impact on different groups of people. That doesn't necessarily mean, I think what you're saying, it doesn't necessarily mean something racist is going on, even though there's a racial impact. So the question was about where do you draw the line between something that might have a racial impact, but it's not inherently racist? Let me move on.