Everybody is Racist... and its okay

so before we get started

i’d like to say that i am not a

researcher

the information i intend to share with

you today is based solely on

lived experience shared experience and

observation

heavy emphasis on the lived experience

and the shared experience

although it can be said that uh artists

are among the best researchers i can

assure you that i

am not one of them

i’m an artist living and working in

cincinnati and my claim to fame is

painting white people as monkeys

that’s racist right

well not quite but for the purpose of

this conversation

we’re going to use racist prejudice and

bias

interchangeably

the bottom line is everybody’s racist

and it’s okay because as long as you

want to change

you can change so

i’ll tell you about me for the first 20

years of my life

i dealt with a lot of prejudice and bias

and

in the ways that you might think but

also in ways that you might not have

thought of i thought all white people

were rich

and lived in big houses

with white picket fences i thought

all asians were good at math

and all indians were doctors and it was

factual i mean i didn’t learn it in

school

i didn’t learn it from my parents i

didn’t read it in books

but somehow i seemed to know everything

about everyone

i knew things about arabs and jews and

latinos

the irony is i didn’t meet a white

person

and get to know them on a personal level

until i was a freshman in college

but somehow i knew it all

but i get to college and it turns out i

really didn’t know

much my ignorance was reflected

back at me again and again

and it was embarrassing i realized that

i might be

biased and prejudiced

but it wasn’t my fault

it was america’s fault the enculturation

system of the united states

set me up for failure

it was one of those experiences that i

couldn’t share with anyone

i was too embarrassed to even admit it

to myself so i kept it a secret

i buried it down deep in my little black

box

but enough about me let’s talk about we

what did we learn growing up as

americans

well as children we learn about our

abc’s

easy as one two threes

we learn about animals we learn about

shapes and we learn about color

we learn that yellow is the color of

sunshine

and the sky is blue and the trees in the

grass

are green and apples are red

and they all live in harmony

in a happy little rainbow family

universally accepted by all

roy roygbiv

but what did we learn about black

we learned that black is dangerous

mysterious devoid

absent just plain scary

black didn’t get to be a part of the

happy little rainbow family

i guess you could say black was the

black sheep of the family

for no fault of his own when he would go

outside

there always seemed to be a black cloud

over his head and when he would walk

down the street

the other colors would cross to the

other side like he was a black cat

he always thought it was because he had

bad luck

maybe he did he never got invited to the

gatherings

but he always heard about how much fun

they were and how he should have

been there but he

he was blackballed

even if he wanted to sneak in his black

head would have been too noticeable

brown and gray had very similar

experiences but a little brown nosing

and a bottle of grey goose go a long way

a certain point in time in black history

black was sold on a black market

the irony in that is at different point

in time

black couldn’t even step one foot in a

market where there were other colors

he was blacklisted and demonized

people said watch out for that black ice

well here’s the thing black is me

i’m black i’m a black man

what we learn about color as young

people

has a direct social impact on how we

treat

people as adults

almost every now prefaced by the word

black

is negatively connoted so that when we

meet a black person

everything that we learned about black

downloads

and transfers to that person and it’s

implied that that person

is inherently bad

this is the impetus of implicit bias

this is where prejudice and racism begin

so i want to show you a project i’ve

been working on

now i’ll let you decide what you see

but i’ll tell you what my intention was

so at the height of the pandemic

pretty much every gallery space

exhibition space clothes for

artists now i’m an artist who paints

monkeys so

naturally i wanted to do something that

involved monkeys

um and i found it really difficult to

have a creative outlet so i decided

let’s be creative let’s think outside

the box let’s create

a renegade street project that we’ll go

out and we’ll put up

in neighborhoods so i decided that i was

going to do a project

about gentrification i live in a

neighborhood that’s currently being

gentrified

and there are tons of communities that

i’ve seen go through the process

so i created the no monkey business sign

and it was supposed to tag neighborhoods

that were being gentrified

or that have fully transitioned already

and it was supposed to be a warning sign

for the folks who lived in the

neighborhood to you know

watch out go to those community forums

but what happened was there was an

outrage

i started getting text messages

screenshots from reddit and facebook and

instagram

people didn’t want these signs in their

neighborhood

i mean i hired a videographer i went out

dressed like a city worker

and i put these signs up and no one paid

any mind and two days later

my inbox is on fire what i discovered

was

that every black person who saw this

sign

saw themselves

and every person that wasn’t black that

saw this sign

also saw black people

i was flabbergasted

to me it meant that if we see black

people as

less than human then we treat them

as less than human so

what started out as a peaceful protest

against gentrification

became a call to action to reconcile

our racist past it became clear that we

all share racist views

but it’s not our fault it’s america’s

fault

the enculturation system of the united

states set us

all up for failure

but we have to take ownership now that

we know

we have a responsibility to change the

narrative

to reshape definitions and perceptions

by taking power away from words like

black male we create the kind of equity

that we need

in this country so i propose instead of

black male let’s just use

extort

instead of black cloud let’s just use

storm cloud and let’s just all finally

agree

for once and put the bad

there’s no such thing as black ice

when we take power away from words

a special thing happens and i’ll give

you an example

we don’t use the word colored to

describe people in this country anymore

well maybe some of our grandmas but

by and large

we’ve decided to eliminate that word as

a descriptor

for people from our cultural language

because of the weighted carriers because

of the barriers that are erected

in the life of someone who’s assigned

color

what i’m proposing is that we do that

same thing with black

we’ve already started doing the work for

you

by replacing negatives with positives

like black is beautiful

and black girl magic james brown even

did a song about being black

and proud imagine how

different the world would be

if black was part of the happy little

rainbow family

universally accepted by all

roy g biv

for all of our would-be allies

the performative aspects of your

contribution is over

you don’t need to go to a protest and

hold a picket sign to be an ally

you don’t need to be pepper gassed or

maced

or shot with rubber bullets

this is where you start small

incremental changes

around language leading to huge

transformative

cultural shifts

i’m asking you to commit to admitting

that you’re racist

to commit to admitting that you’re

biased

that you’re prejudiced i am

admit it to yourselves

admit it to someone else who does not

look like you

for all of those folks out there that

say i don’t see color

do us all a favor and stop lying to

yourself

we live in a world full of color

universally accepted by all

roy g biv i’m not asking you to be color

blind

i’m asking you to be color brave

it’s only through discussion might we

find a middle ground

that leads to an amicable solution

thank you

[Applause]