and my name
voluma and today I’m here to talk to you
about a perspective of race from an
outsider and by outside I mean someone
who didn’t know he was black until he
came to the United States today I will
share with you stories and experiences
of race and dealing with it and how my
mindset and race changed drastically
over a short period of time i am from
Uganda which is a small country in
Eastern Africa Uganda is ninety-eight
percent black and only about two percent
other ethnicities growing up in Uganda
race was something i hardly ever thought
about if at all i guess for lack of a
better word race was not quite as
venomous as it is in the United States
conversations and race didn’t get
people’s blood boiling quite in the same
way that they do here so I guess that’s
the biggest reason why I never could
quite understand from watching the TV
why race was such a problem in the US
when I came to the US I found myself
having to deal with certain things and
to give you a perspective of how I used
to think about race this is my friend
Kiki Kiki and I lived in the same floor
my freshman year and I remember the
first week of school our resident
assistant had us get together and
introduce ourselves and get to know each
other and while Kiki was talking about
herself at one point she said that she
was black and I was sitting there and
unfortunately I said allow out loud
you’re not black your brown see I didn’t
mean any ill intent in saying that but
that’s just how I thought about race
that it was just the color of people’s
skin that there wasn’t anything else
attached to it i also found myself
identifying more with white people when
I came to TCU it’s not because I like
black people any less than I liked white
people
it’s because of a simple fact that at
ECU there are more white people than
black people at one point someone called
me an Oreo which is slammed for someone
who has black skin but is really a white
person on the inside as time went on I
immersed myself more and more into
American culture and race was something
I started having to deal with on a
consistent basis for example one day at
the school cafeteria it was game day so
it was packed and I was lucky enough to
find a booth right next to this lady and
her kids and as soon as i got my plate
put my foot down on the table it seemed
like the instant that i sat down she
moved her handbag which was in between
her booth and my own and clutched it
closely almost as if she was protecting
herself from the threat of a notorious
thief unfortunately I have never stolen
a thing in my life so I couldn’t quite
understand why she would think that I
would I also used to like running late
at night the cool off steam from school
but I gave that up because one time I
run into a friend of mine who was coming
from the library with her buddies and I
stopped to say hi and continued in my
way a few days after that she comes to
me and tells me that one of her friends
was a little bit spooked out by me and
said that I looked kind of sketchy I
didn’t even know I was pretty scared
because I didn’t want to spook anyone
now door have the cops called in me for
no good reason I also couldn’t i also
got frustrated with the fact that many
of my friends couldn’t get past the fact
that i was black many of my white
friends would always introduce me as
this is my wife this is my black friend
philip or this is my african friend
philip it seemed like there was never a
time when I was just Philip and so many
of our conversations it would always
come up the fact that I was black or
that I was African
and what frustrated me even more was
that there were people who would be
defensive towards me before they met me
but when they met me and they hardly
speak and they heard my accent it was
almost like their eyes would light up as
though they were saying well you’re
black but you’re a different kind of
black so we can be cool and that brought
me into quite the dilemma because I
didn’t know if I was white or if I was
black and I didn’t know why it should
matter I didn’t understand why it was
always coming up that I was black I was
growing more and more frustrated with my
white friends and yet at the same time I
didn’t have enough black friends to help
me understand what I was going through
so I started asking myself more and more
questions about race and like any good
milenio I turned to my good old buddy
google and asked what is race and google
said races each of the measure divisions
of humankind having distinct physical
characteristics or race is a group of
people sharing the same culture history
language much like an ethnic group but
these were the same ideas I had about
race before so I couldn’t understand if
race was just about ethnicity then why
was it such a big deal so I delve deeper
into the matter and I found that in fact
race is just a social construct see I
had grown up thinking that race was
something natural that occurred in
nature but in fact it was man-made that
this isn’t something that God made so to
say it was something that we created to
give power over each other and I also
learned that the way race the whole
concept of racism forced is through
racism and racism is the pred
this discrimination or antagonism of a
particular race over another in order to
gain superiority over that race see now
it started to make sense to me that in
fact it wasn’t just about skin color it
was about power and this went back
hundreds of years ago from colonialism
and slavery so it was much more
complicated than I had ever imagined and
so I asked myself well why is it still a
problem I thought to myself well the
civil rights act was passed and that was
over 50 years ago so essentially the
Civil Rights Act took away that power
the races had over other races didn’t it
so it should be an even playing field
but of course that wasn’t true not with
the wide economic gap between races or
the lack of information we have about
the day-to-day lives of other races or
the fact that sometimes we just choose
to simply ignore the evidence and the
facts sometimes we will see what goes on
in TV the police brutality and simply
convince ourselves that that’s not
really a big deal but there’s something
else I think that hasn’t been given much
attention the fact that we haven’t
realized that the concept of racism has
evolved over the last few years see
racism isn’t the same as it was 50 years
ago I believed it has changed at least
for the most part into something a
little less severe something I like to
call racial tension and racial tension
does not encompass things as Extreme as
the things that would happen with a KKK
but it is still a problem because it
creates these nagging little things
the just keep building and building for
a white person it might be someone
thinking that the only reason you have a
job or a nice car is because of white
privilege for a black person it might be
someone saying that the only reason you
can go to college is if you’re an
athlete and those things when you hear
them again and again just frustrate you
and it just creates this tension and
this divide between us and of course
racial tension feeds off of stereotypes
we don’t have the whole story that’s why
we jump to conclusions based on the
little that we have so what causes
racial tension I think that is a lot
simpler to answer then what causes
racism I think the biggest cause of
racial tension is language the words we
use often the words we see being used in
social media or on TV or on Facebook or
things like that I believe that there’s
a power in words a power that sometimes
you don’t really accept and really think
about and as far as racial tension is
concerned these words we use often
reflect our thoughts on certain things
but most importantly they affect the way
other people think for example if you
taught your son to think about a
particular race in a certain way of
course he’s going to grow up thinking
that way they say that racism can cannot
be born it must be taught and that is
the thing we are constantly conditioning
ourselves to think about race in a
certain way take for example the
following words animal beast savage
cold-blooded assassin an apologetic
monster the first time you hear these
words you might think well those must
have been used to describe some maniac
of cereal
killer that’s probably locked up behind
bars for life but in fact these words
were used to describe someone you all
might know LeBron James it’s funny that
we can use such harsh words every day in
the news and on facebook to describe
someone like LeBron and no one blinks an
eye and I do believe that LeBron is a
pretty good guy considering all the good
work he’s done in his community and all
his social activism and yet no one
hesitates or very few people hesitate to
call him by such such strong words yes I
do understand the LeBron is six foot
eight 250 pounds but that does not make
him a monster it does make him a really
good basketball player but that is about
it see we need to be able to divide
between the two physical aspects don’t
make monsters actions if you kill
someone that makes you a killer throwing
down a high dunk does not make you a
killer or a monster but because we have
said it is okay to think in this way or
to say certain things then we start to
think in this way so why do I bring up
LeBron well LeBron is just one in a
group of people athletes athletes are
some of the most popular black people in
the United States so if we constantly on
TV here the athletes or black athletes
being described by words like monster
assassin then why is it a surprise that
the next time we see a black guy running
on the street we’re going to be taken
aback of course we are because we’ve
conditioned ourselves to expect certain
things from black people just because of
the words be often here and the words we
often use but it also goes past that
there’s words like sketchy what does
that even mean I didn’t even understand
it I don’t know what it means to
be sketchy all words like jungle fever
and this is a word that think is used
when a white girl has a history with
black guys maybe she has a lot of black
friends or she has dated a couple of
black view of black guys and then people
say oh she has jungle fever but I don’t
understand the relation between jungle
and a white girl and black guys lions
are in jungles leopards are in jungles
not people or words like inner-city
youth see I think this word is just a
substitute for thug and gangsta I often
hear it being used on TV in the news to
describe young black people or up to no
good so to say because no one wants to
use the word thug and gangsta so how do
we get past this how do we remove racial
tension I think that’s easy because if
the biggest reason for racial tension is
language then we need to think before we
speak because there is a power in words
but also we need to actually speak we
have to speak we have to have these
uncomfortable conversations if we are to
learn from each other and find a way
forward and finally someone might ask
why even bother correcting racial
tension see I like to think of racial
tension like a rubber band all these
tiny things we hear you know someone
saying oh you’re only wealthy because
you’re white or you can only go to
college because you’re a black athlete
all these tiny little things just feed
into that and just keep increasing the
tension in the rubber band and
eventually it’s going to snap and then
we’re going to be right where we started
with a full-blown racism thank you all
and have a good evening [Applause]