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
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]