[Music]
[Applause]
I’ve spent my whole career writing about
racism because I hate it and I wanted a
participate in dismantling it it took me
17 years to realize that the only racist
I could heal was of course myself I was
raised in the 1970s in Rhodesia
from its inception a pariah state
Rhodesia was one of only two white
settler run countries in Africa the
other being of course South Africa which
is why we lived there because my parents
loved the continent but only the bits
run by and for white people the
Rhodesian government had arranged it
that her six million black citizens well
let were were forced into crowded rural
tribal trust lands or into squalid urban
townships moreover it was arranged that
through lack of education and
opportunity the black citizens did the
work that the white citizens wouldn’t
and inescapable cycles of poverty meant
that they would do that work for slave
wages meantime at most two hundred and
sixty thousand white people had nearly
all the arable land they had the mineral
rights the best schools the hospitals
the national parks and the wildlife were
protected almost exclusively for our
enjoyment but white settlers also
arranged it that they made the laws they
had nearly all the votes and they
controlled the dominant narrative
meant that we were able to assure
ourselves that our white supremacy was
lawful it was merited it was even
democratic white supremacist hold that
the only acceptable person is white
racist straight homophobic gender
conforming misogynist and also usually
Christians although I would say God
wielding rather than Christ following
white privilege is a little more subtle
you don’t ask you don’t tell you don’t
find out you do nothing to interrupt or
question the violent system that gives
you unimpeded access to goods and
services so we word evens gained the
world but in order to do so we had to
cut off every sacred part of ourselves
including an authentic relationship with
God and since you can only have the God
you can have as with soul mutilating
meantime the black people all around us
were protesting and singing and writing
and arguing for our freedom but we
imprisoned them and we censor them we
refused their offer of liberation and
should disturbing lyrics well the
amazing music all of them were too could
see Oh Thomas Malmo ever reach our tiny
white ears we just cranked up the abbyr
and had another drink not surprisingly a
civil war broke out the black majority
would no longer tolerate the white
minority living on stolen land and
benefiting from stolen labor meantime
my parents who were big supporters of
Iain Smith Rhodesia’s prime minister who
had campaigned on a promise of a whiter
brighter tomorrow stayed on to fight for
the continuation of white rule my father
was conscripted as were all men between
the ages white men between the ages of
18 and 60 my mother didn’t need to be
told she volunteered but they didn’t
have to go anywhere to find the war
because it turns out that we were on the
violent frontline of that white
supremacist battle we were locked loaded
and eating a steady diet of fear which
of course as anyone knows once digested
turns into hate which is the problem one
of them with white supremacy as lovers
as the Bible has it patient and kind and
does not dishonor others then hate is
corrosive and paranoid and narcissistic
and so of course they hain’t fermented
by our founding fathers and passed on
from generation to generation father to
son father to son father to son and
ending eventually through the collusion
and silence of our white mothers turned
in on itself and ate the children I was
six years old when I was taught to strip
and clean and reassemble my father’s FN
rifle which he took with him on patrol
in the war I was six years old when I
was taught to shoot my mother’s
submachine gun I was taught to put the
barrel between through a hole in the
veranda wall and the whole force of my
body behind it so I wouldn’t get kicked
unconscious when I pulled the trigger
the target they put in front of me was
the cutout of a black man running at me
with an ak-47
it was a trade of sorts as a child I
died that day and in her place
was a very angry very frightened small
person who had been taught to regard all
black people with pre-emptive suspicion
and were necessary and with very little
propagation
a pre-emptive bullet we white Rhodesians
were like unpaid prison guards and a
vast open-air prison each man woman and
child of us responsible for keeping six
million black people literally and if
that didn’t work
metaphorically imprisoned but there are
prison guards and prison guards we
violent white supremacists on the front
were easy in a way the government just
had to feed us a steady diet of fear and
let the atrocities take care of
themselves but the people with white
privilege they were more difficult for
the government they turned to be
educated elite and so their weapon
although more deadly and more accurate
it had to be a weapon of their choosing
and it was its other special component
was that the user didn’t even have to be
conscious when it was deployed and that
weapon is of course silenced by some
special code first civility and then
national security
it was very impolite and then very
illegal to question Rhodesia’s system of
racial capitalism the system crumbled
anyway and Rhodesia’s system of racial
capitalist kleptocracy morphed into the
elitist capitalism kept ah cracy of
Robert Mugabe hurt people hurt Valentin
people governed violently they do not
call it cycles of violence for nothing I
was 11 when the war ended Rhodesia
became Zimbabwe official segregation
ended I went to school with black kids
for the first time I saw that they
weren’t monsters I saw to that our brave
Rhodesian men and boys in uniform
sometimes hadn’t always been the best I
saw and realized the lies that had been
told to me and I was saddened liberation
right I thought so in fact by high
school if anyone had called me a racist
I would have burst into angry white
tears so my black friends did I think
what our black friends do they ignored
my unprocessed hidden racism perhaps
because they knew what I didn’t that the
only person who could liberate me was of
course myself I in my early twenties met
a white US citizen I married him and
after a couple of years we left southern
Africa and moved to the States
I think one of the things my black
friends knew – was that there was going
to be a lot of work to be done after all
I had grown up in the one of the most
objectively racist countries on earth
and yet when it was all done no one
thought to go back in and undo the
racism we all just pretend it wasn’t us
we weren’t the ones and so I came to the
States knowing that I had come from
among the most racist people on earth
but I believed the dominant narrative
yeah when I got care which was that
although this country had had a troubled
racial history it was done now the
American wars were over and the treaties
were signed sealed and honored the civil
rights movement had been such a success
that all we had to do was sit back relax
and met the Equality take care of itself
meantime I wrote because that’s what I
wanted to do I wrote 10 wildly
unsuccessful novels none of them
published even when I added bad lesbian
sex and to spice them up and eventually
maybe on account of the bad lesbian sex
my agent fired me and so I wrote the
truth I wrote the truth because I
thought wow I’ll never get published I
wrote the truth because by then I was an
immigrant and I wanted to take one last
look back before I went forward and I
wrote the truth because I didn’t think
that my six-year-old daughter Sarah and
my three-year-old son would ever know
racists like we were and I wrote the
truth because I wanted my children to
know that although my family was very
disparaging about black Africans that
had not been my experience I had not
been in spite of incredible provocation
murdered or mutilated or in any way hurt
by the millions of black people I had
lived among in fact if anything on the
whole I’d be nurtured nourished guided
and if I now know how to love it’s
because I learned love there much to my
surprise the book was published
my mother was furious she said I made
her sound like a racist alcoholic
so did the reviewers here and I agreed
but I didn’t think I was a racist I
thought through all my life and my
writing and now I had come to the land
of the free and the brave
I had processed my racism but that was
before I understood how addictive racism
is how ingrained it’s taken me several
cycles of grief full cycles of grief to
walk from that dark to this light anger
there was a lot of that denial I was in
a lot of denial bargaining as a writer I
did a lot of bargaining around my racism
I thought well maybe I can hold on to my
white privilege if I declare myself a
voice for the voiceless forgetting of
course Aaron Dottie’s Roy is Roy’s
reminder that there is no such thing as
the voiceless just the preferably
unheard arriving at last at that
wonderful grace of acceptance from which
the work can begin
fast-forward to last summer my now 24
year old daughter the one I wrote the
book for cuz I didn’t think she’d ever
meet an actual white supremacist is now
protesting in the Jackson Hole town
square right here in solidarity with
black lives matter and every week white
tourists would threaten her with
violence and occasionally with death and
when the local paper reported that
somebody went online in the comment
section and published my daughter’s
residential address somebody else went
back in and offered to buy a beer for
the first person who beat her to death
we are shocked but our black brothers
and sisters have been warning us for
centuries that our racism
is that violent I have to ask the
question if a tree falls in the forest
and no one with white privilege has it
did it fall we have to change the
quality of our listening
my grandfather my grandparents were
racist their grandparents were racist my
parents were racist my sister and I were
raised to be racist
I have racist relations young and old on
three continents it is not automatic
that we walk from the dark to the light
and it’s not automatic that we stay in
the light once there somebody has to
lead the way somebody has to hold the
door open
I’m proud my daughter exposed and
challenged racism and Jackson Hole
Wyoming but it’s not her job alone it’s
our job white supremacy and white
privilege were made by white people
they’re going to have to be dismantled
by white people it won’t be easy we’re
going to have to disarm our weaponized
fragility we’re going to have to gain
some endurance to hear and process
difficult truths and we’re probably
going to have to ask for humility for
the journey on our knees and most of all
we’re going to have to promise that we
are the generation that ends this in
1876 COK leader of the group our people
mixed blood tribe of South Africa having
had before yet another battle with the
Afrikaners entreated God this way he
said Oh Lord in spite of a great many
prayers to you
we are constant
losing our battles which is why I must
talk to you this battle tomorrow will be
a serious affair there will be no room
in it for children therefore I must ask
you don’t send your son to help us come
yourself thank you
[Applause]
[Applause]
I’ve spent my whole career writing about
racism because I hate it and I wanted a
participate in dismantling it it took me
17 years to realize that the only racist
I could heal was of course myself I was
raised in the 1970s in Rhodesia
from its inception a pariah state
Rhodesia was one of only two white
settler run countries in Africa the
other being of course South Africa which
is why we lived there because my parents
loved the continent but only the bits
run by and for white people the
Rhodesian government had arranged it
that her six million black citizens well
let were were forced into crowded rural
tribal trust lands or into squalid urban
townships moreover it was arranged that
through lack of education and
opportunity the black citizens did the
work that the white citizens wouldn’t
and inescapable cycles of poverty meant
that they would do that work for slave
wages meantime at most two hundred and
sixty thousand white people had nearly
all the arable land they had the mineral
rights the best schools the hospitals
the national parks and the wildlife were
protected almost exclusively for our
enjoyment but white settlers also
arranged it that they made the laws they
had nearly all the votes and they
controlled the dominant narrative
meant that we were able to assure
ourselves that our white supremacy was
lawful it was merited it was even
democratic white supremacist hold that
the only acceptable person is white
racist straight homophobic gender
conforming misogynist and also usually
Christians although I would say God
wielding rather than Christ following
white privilege is a little more subtle
you don’t ask you don’t tell you don’t
find out you do nothing to interrupt or
question the violent system that gives
you unimpeded access to goods and
services so we word evens gained the
world but in order to do so we had to
cut off every sacred part of ourselves
including an authentic relationship with
God and since you can only have the God
you can have as with soul mutilating
meantime the black people all around us
were protesting and singing and writing
and arguing for our freedom but we
imprisoned them and we censor them we
refused their offer of liberation and
should disturbing lyrics well the
amazing music all of them were too could
see Oh Thomas Malmo ever reach our tiny
white ears we just cranked up the abbyr
and had another drink not surprisingly a
civil war broke out the black majority
would no longer tolerate the white
minority living on stolen land and
benefiting from stolen labor meantime
my parents who were big supporters of
Iain Smith Rhodesia’s prime minister who
had campaigned on a promise of a whiter
brighter tomorrow stayed on to fight for
the continuation of white rule my father
was conscripted as were all men between
the ages white men between the ages of
18 and 60 my mother didn’t need to be
told she volunteered but they didn’t
have to go anywhere to find the war
because it turns out that we were on the
violent frontline of that white
supremacist battle we were locked loaded
and eating a steady diet of fear which
of course as anyone knows once digested
turns into hate which is the problem one
of them with white supremacy as lovers
as the Bible has it patient and kind and
does not dishonor others then hate is
corrosive and paranoid and narcissistic
and so of course they hain’t fermented
by our founding fathers and passed on
from generation to generation father to
son father to son father to son and
ending eventually through the collusion
and silence of our white mothers turned
in on itself and ate the children I was
six years old when I was taught to strip
and clean and reassemble my father’s FN
rifle which he took with him on patrol
in the war I was six years old when I
was taught to shoot my mother’s
submachine gun I was taught to put the
barrel between through a hole in the
veranda wall and the whole force of my
body behind it so I wouldn’t get kicked
unconscious when I pulled the trigger
the target they put in front of me was
the cutout of a black man running at me
with an ak-47
it was a trade of sorts as a child I
died that day and in her place
was a very angry very frightened small
person who had been taught to regard all
black people with pre-emptive suspicion
and were necessary and with very little
propagation
a pre-emptive bullet we white Rhodesians
were like unpaid prison guards and a
vast open-air prison each man woman and
child of us responsible for keeping six
million black people literally and if
that didn’t work
metaphorically imprisoned but there are
prison guards and prison guards we
violent white supremacists on the front
were easy in a way the government just
had to feed us a steady diet of fear and
let the atrocities take care of
themselves but the people with white
privilege they were more difficult for
the government they turned to be
educated elite and so their weapon
although more deadly and more accurate
it had to be a weapon of their choosing
and it was its other special component
was that the user didn’t even have to be
conscious when it was deployed and that
weapon is of course silenced by some
special code first civility and then
national security
it was very impolite and then very
illegal to question Rhodesia’s system of
racial capitalism the system crumbled
anyway and Rhodesia’s system of racial
capitalist kleptocracy morphed into the
elitist capitalism kept ah cracy of
Robert Mugabe hurt people hurt Valentin
people governed violently they do not
call it cycles of violence for nothing I
was 11 when the war ended Rhodesia
became Zimbabwe official segregation
ended I went to school with black kids
for the first time I saw that they
weren’t monsters I saw to that our brave
Rhodesian men and boys in uniform
sometimes hadn’t always been the best I
saw and realized the lies that had been
told to me and I was saddened liberation
right I thought so in fact by high
school if anyone had called me a racist
I would have burst into angry white
tears so my black friends did I think
what our black friends do they ignored
my unprocessed hidden racism perhaps
because they knew what I didn’t that the
only person who could liberate me was of
course myself I in my early twenties met
a white US citizen I married him and
after a couple of years we left southern
Africa and moved to the States
I think one of the things my black
friends knew – was that there was going
to be a lot of work to be done after all
I had grown up in the one of the most
objectively racist countries on earth
and yet when it was all done no one
thought to go back in and undo the
racism we all just pretend it wasn’t us
we weren’t the ones and so I came to the
States knowing that I had come from
among the most racist people on earth
but I believed the dominant narrative
yeah when I got care which was that
although this country had had a troubled
racial history it was done now the
American wars were over and the treaties
were signed sealed and honored the civil
rights movement had been such a success
that all we had to do was sit back relax
and met the Equality take care of itself
meantime I wrote because that’s what I
wanted to do I wrote 10 wildly
unsuccessful novels none of them
published even when I added bad lesbian
sex and to spice them up and eventually
maybe on account of the bad lesbian sex
my agent fired me and so I wrote the
truth I wrote the truth because I
thought wow I’ll never get published I
wrote the truth because by then I was an
immigrant and I wanted to take one last
look back before I went forward and I
wrote the truth because I didn’t think
that my six-year-old daughter Sarah and
my three-year-old son would ever know
racists like we were and I wrote the
truth because I wanted my children to
know that although my family was very
disparaging about black Africans that
had not been my experience I had not
been in spite of incredible provocation
murdered or mutilated or in any way hurt
by the millions of black people I had
lived among in fact if anything on the
whole I’d be nurtured nourished guided
and if I now know how to love it’s
because I learned love there much to my
surprise the book was published
my mother was furious she said I made
her sound like a racist alcoholic
so did the reviewers here and I agreed
but I didn’t think I was a racist I
thought through all my life and my
writing and now I had come to the land
of the free and the brave
I had processed my racism but that was
before I understood how addictive racism
is how ingrained it’s taken me several
cycles of grief full cycles of grief to
walk from that dark to this light anger
there was a lot of that denial I was in
a lot of denial bargaining as a writer I
did a lot of bargaining around my racism
I thought well maybe I can hold on to my
white privilege if I declare myself a
voice for the voiceless forgetting of
course Aaron Dottie’s Roy is Roy’s
reminder that there is no such thing as
the voiceless just the preferably
unheard arriving at last at that
wonderful grace of acceptance from which
the work can begin
fast-forward to last summer my now 24
year old daughter the one I wrote the
book for cuz I didn’t think she’d ever
meet an actual white supremacist is now
protesting in the Jackson Hole town
square right here in solidarity with
black lives matter and every week white
tourists would threaten her with
violence and occasionally with death and
when the local paper reported that
somebody went online in the comment
section and published my daughter’s
residential address somebody else went
back in and offered to buy a beer for
the first person who beat her to death
we are shocked but our black brothers
and sisters have been warning us for
centuries that our racism
is that violent I have to ask the
question if a tree falls in the forest
and no one with white privilege has it
did it fall we have to change the
quality of our listening
my grandfather my grandparents were
racist their grandparents were racist my
parents were racist my sister and I were
raised to be racist
I have racist relations young and old on
three continents it is not automatic
that we walk from the dark to the light
and it’s not automatic that we stay in
the light once there somebody has to
lead the way somebody has to hold the
door open
I’m proud my daughter exposed and
challenged racism and Jackson Hole
Wyoming but it’s not her job alone it’s
our job white supremacy and white
privilege were made by white people
they’re going to have to be dismantled
by white people it won’t be easy we’re
going to have to disarm our weaponized
fragility we’re going to have to gain
some endurance to hear and process
difficult truths and we’re probably
going to have to ask for humility for
the journey on our knees and most of all
we’re going to have to promise that we
are the generation that ends this in
1876 COK leader of the group our people
mixed blood tribe of South Africa having
had before yet another battle with the
Afrikaners entreated God this way he
said Oh Lord in spite of a great many
prayers to you
we are constant
losing our battles which is why I must
talk to you this battle tomorrow will be
a serious affair there will be no room
in it for children therefore I must ask
you don’t send your son to help us come
yourself thank you
[Applause]
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