24: "They didn't get the memo"
The hardest working man in media shares insights on Living While Black
The Office Hours Interview: Baratunde Thurston
Baratunde Thurston is is an Emmy-nominated writer, activist, and comedian who has worked for The Onion, produced for The Daily Show, advised the Obama White House, and cleaned bathrooms to pay for his Harvard education. He hosts the iHeartMedia podcast Spit, wrote the New York Times bestseller How To Be Black, He’s been featured in Fast Company, on HBO, Comedy Central, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, the sound waves of NPR and the Our National Conversation About Conversations About Race podcast which he co-founded. He has hosted shows and stories on NatGeo, Discovery's Science Channel, Yahoo, AOL, YouTube, and Pivot TV. In 2016 he hosted a special three-part PBS series of TED Talks and earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for the Spotify/Mic series, Clarify. As you can see, he loves sitting still.
Your TED talk is making the rounds and rightfully so. I feel like a major point you’re getting at the heart of is the fact that racism is a learned behavior and until that behavior changes, the conversations we’re having about race aren’t going to produce results. In your own words, it's time to "level up." It’s my opinion that a majority of white people know exactly what the situation is when it comes to systemic issues of race in America but don’t care because it doesn’t apply to them. Do you ever get frustrated having to point this stuff out to white people? If so, how do you push through?
OH MY GOD YES! America is relentless in its commitment to our dehumanization. I grew up understanding this because my mama didn't raise no fool, but in this last decade of life (30-41), it's really started to sink in just how difficult and dire the situation is and has been for literally hundreds of years. Your question reminds me of Upton Sinclair who said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." This is basically white America, whose very identity and self-conception depends on refusing to understand and acknowledge the system that delivered such unearned advantages upon them. If white people really faced the history of this nation, the violence, the genocide, the theft, oh man it would at least temporarily wreck them. And so I think as a survival mechanism, many just don't look, and those who do look don't look deeply and those who look deeply don't admit that this system is corrupt. Ahhhh! See you got me all riled up all over again.
So yes I get frustrated, because we are not the first generation to take on this re-education of white America. Every generation since 1619 has born this burden, and at some point you realize, "Hey maybe they just don't want to know." Or a generation learns, and then the next one acts like they didn't get the memo. I could say the same thing about misogyny and men. How long have women been telling us, "Yo, we are equal human beings?" and men be like, "Yeah yeah sure, but also, we're gonna make these laws that just apply to you and not pay you and treat you like objects because that's what we've been taught."
I push through because I've also realized that freedom isn't just something you get to keep. You gotta keep on pushing. It's an eternal dance with the forces of oppression, and I owe it to those who came before and those who will come after to do my part to move freedom forward. I also push because I have seen progress in my lifetime and over time. I've seen people and systems change for the better. I know change is possible, and I can't just sit still and let injustice win. I wish I could just sit back and watch Netflix, but then I turn on Netflix and Ava Duvernay reminds me our work is not done, so I go back to work.
A few years ago, you wrote about unplugging fully from the internet for 25 days. I’ve been locked out of Facebook for the past 6 days — I forgot my password and honestly haven’t cared to create a new one yet — and I legit feel better. Should we just give all this shit up and go back to phone calls?
Yes. We clearly cannot handle the scale of connectivity thrust upon us by ad-supported business models. I honestly think we'd be better off if we unplugged Facebook and Twitter for a while, at least through the 2020 election, like a timeout for those platforms. Bring back the phone tree!
Pivoting to positivity, you sit on a few boards including BUILD and the Brooklyn Public Library. What’s the coolest part of the work you do with these organizations?
I am so glad you asked me about this. No one ever asks about this!
Both these organizations serve people who have been left behind by the system, and both reveal what happens when you invest in all people: good things! BUILD gets high school students usually left behind and proves that they can go to college, build businesses, succeed even more than those born with more resources. The future will depend on everyone being able to contribute their talents to the massive problems facing the world.
Meanwhile the Brooklyn Public Library, and all public libraries, is one of the last truly democratic institutions in our society. Libraries are temples to knowledge and civic participation, and librarians are the high priests and priestesses. At BPL we teach business classes, offer studios for people to record music and podcasts, give children the transformative gift of literacy. There's no more magical place than a library. It's a ground-level gateway to community and the best version of what we can be when we hold space for each other.
Before we wrap up, I want your opinion on something: There’s the sect of Americans that you and I belong to that needs a name. It’s a broader observation, but there’s this little wedge of Gen-X/early Millennial minorities who I feel all have a very honest look at how America actually functions due to early exposure to white people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. That perspective came from desegregation tactics like bussing as well as parents prioritizing education to the point they went broke trying to get us into elite schools. Honestly, I think we’re all messed up in the head from it, but we all seem to have wider views on society in America and that might correlate to why so many of us ended up succeeding. Am I crazy?
You are crazy, but for completely unrelated reasons. Yes, some of us were given access and ability to see a big part of The Matrix. No one has the full picture, but I agree we see more than most because, at least in my case, I understand how the system sees me and you versus others. I understand that being good isn't enough, you also have to be lucky. And I've been in enough well-resourced institutions to know that luck is not evenly distributed, and that is by design. This perception is a frustrating one because it also leads me to conclude that there's no simple fix.
Share one random fact you think Office Hours readers might not know
New electric vehicle registrations in the U.S. doubled from 2017 to 2018.
Where can readers find your work?
The best way is to support the work I'm doing is via my Patreon. I'm putting my deepest work there first and giving all kinds of behind the scenes access. I'm also "baratunde" everywhere on the internet including baratunde.com
YOUR HOMEWORK THIS WEEK:
In honor of his MCA Chicago exhibition opening this weekend, the oral history of Virgil Abloh.
Judnikki interviewing Ava Duvernay and the cast of Netflix’s When They See Us
I didn’t know who Alex Auder was last week. Now I want to read a profile about her every day. You will too.
Bonsu Thompson on soccer culture in Atlanta
Caramanaica on Hootie & The Blowfish. No, seriously.
TUNES:
I legit never thought I’d say this next one but…
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Office Hours is written by Ernest Wilkins. Follow him everywhere @ErnestWilkins