several years ago I went to see comedian
kamau Bell perform and as a part of his
act did something like a racial roll
call to get the crowd warmed up so I
started out I said any black people in
the house tonight
it was claps and cheers and he said if
you’re black in here tonight and you’re
proud I want you to put your fist in the
air yell black power and all the black
people in attendance with unison and
with pride they put their fists in the
air and they yell black power and then
he says like you know they’re like
beetles in the house and there was claps
and cheers and he said if you’re Latino
I’m here tonight and you’re proud put
your fist in the air now Latino five
same thing all the Latinos and unison
were private with the fists in the air
in the of Latino power and then come out
said any white people in the house
tonight
and there was a few claps and he said if
you’re white in here tonight and you’re
proud I want you to put your fist in the
air yeah white power and there was
silence now after a few seconds there
was laughter but I’ll never forget that
silence because that choice that come
out created in a matter of seconds white
people have been making for the last 60
years to either be identified with
racist white people who scream white
power or to be good white people and
distance ourselves through silence but
that’s a false moral choice people are
too messy and racism is too complex and
the stakes are too high for such
simplistic thinking after the laughter
died down kamau got serious for a second
he said something I’ll never forget he
said white people you’ve gotta find
better ways to speak about being white
in the world or other white people are
gonna speak up for you and they may not
be the people you want representing you
in the world so I want to speak to you
today about two things the kinds of
white people that might be representing
you in the world and then
operation to find your voice so that you
can begin speaking back to them I’ve
said big parts of my life letting other
people do my thinking for me but when I
started rebelling against that silence
by thinking for myself I tapped into
something powerful I was familiar with
you see I’ve always been or had a
rebellious spirit growing up I wasn’t
good at sports or academics or the arts
but for as long as I can remember I was
voted class fun so I was great at
challenging Authority and asking
questions when I wasn’t supposed to and
I loved disrupting silent spaces with
humor and since I wasn’t paying
attention to the lesson of the class I
had lots of time to pay attention to the
people in it and I’ve been people
watching me ever since and it’s in that
same spirit but I want to encourage you
today to be good troublemakers in your
thinking or what I’m calling bad white
people now I know some of you might
already be looking for the exits in the
room with all this talk about white
people
as if I’ve learned anything over the
years there’s one thing white people
hate to be called more than a racist and
it’s white people yeah I’ve arrived into
this recently I was tweeting about how
white people needed to get better
understanding racism what a white person
tweeted me you’re wanted to talk and
then she went all caps so I knew I was
in trouble
what boy
you see I have broken the white code of
silence on naming white people is also a
racial group I was being a bad white
person so let me be clear yes I am a
white boy in fact I’m what sociologists
call a really white boy I was born in an
all-white dairy farming town in upstate
New York and I grew up in mostly white
suburb schools and churches up the road
in Union County I’ve had a mullet I wear
flip-flops in the winter I play frisbee
golf and yes I let dogs kiss me on the
but when I talk about whiteness today I
don’t just mean having white skin I mean
what James Baldwin meant when he said
that our identities are like clothes
that we wear to cover the nakedness of
the cell you see we don’t just have
races we wear them to make sense of
ourselves in the world and like clothing
we sometimes grow accustomed to the
fabric and we forget that we’re wearing
them so if you’re non-white here today
we need you to because more often than
not you can see how we’re wearing our
whiteness better than we can so I wanna
encourage all of us today to where our
whiteness robes loosely so that we might
see them and feel them for what they are
and ourselves for what we might become
because as Baldwin says it’s trust in
one’s nakedness is all that gives one of
the power to change one’s rows now since
we’re being class clowns in our thinking
I want to use a typical classroom as a
metaphor for looking at the robes of
whiteness and I don’t encourage all of
you to sit in the back of the room and
be willing to look with new eyes be
willing to challenge those voices
speaking for you and be looking for your
own voice along the way now the first
characters you’re familiar with white
bullies now bullies wear their whiteness
to try to cover their badness in the
world to try to make themselves feel
better than others they practice a more
violent version of what comedians call
punching down just being the easy way
out by attacking those below them
avoiding the hard work of fighting
themselves or punching up at the
violence that produced them you see
racism is ultimately a sickness of the
soul so white bullies from the KKK two
internet trolls they wear whiteness like
a mask hiding from themselves in order
to hurt others but not only do bullies
attack easy targets but they are
triggered by those who threatened to
expose their smallness in the world like
many of you have been inspired by the
protests we’ve seen around the world in
recent years and when I’ve spoken up
about the love the curd
on the basis of the protesters from our
city facing off with an army of police
and soldiers armed with tear gas and
guns and takes I had forgotten about the
bully rule of punching down but white
people from my past quickly reminded me
confused and angry that I would also be
outraged at injustice and inspired by
the protesters you see I was being a bad
white person and as a class clown would
always bothered me about bullies was
that instead of dealing with their pain
through friendship they took it out on
the rest of us and it’s the same with
white police today their anger is real
it just isn’t true and they’re mailing
that anger into the wrong address
there’s a multi-billion dollar outrage
industry on YouTube talk radio and
political platforms waiting to cash in
the checks of white anger and this isn’t
new
in fact what anger has been a big
business in America since our founding
it’s what historians called the wages of
whiteness
well working-class whites traded in
their pain and anger for the temporary
relief of feeling bigger than their
black and brown neighbors but it’s bad
business fear named are two of our most
primal emotions so we should guard them
vigilantly the fact that people are
profiting up you’re paying without a
peep about love or solidarity that
should raise some flags in fact if you
want something to be angry about there’s
a star
[Applause]
bullies have often worn their whiteness
loudest in the world they’ve often
received the most attention but it’s
really been white hall monitor’s
standing quietly in the front of the
class taking names who played the larger
role in the history of whiteness so
whereas bullies wear whiteness to feel
good Hall monitors wear whiteness to get
Goods these are goods like people but
here goodness is not about the character
the person but about making good deals
it’s replacing the Golden Rule with the
rule of golden the way you get goods as
a hall monitor is not by being your
brother’s keeper but by keeping your
brother out whiteness here is worn like
a stiff collared shirt President
Eisenhower explained this speaking about
white southern parents during
desegregation he said these are not bad
people all they are concerned about is
that their sweet little girls are not
required to sit in school alongside some
big black box the emphasis there is not
on the hatred of the black students but
on the goods for the sweet little girls
you see when your goodness is confused
with goods your world becomes like a
game of Monopoly and your neighbor just
another piece on the board all space
becomes your space all time your time
all goods your goods the whole other
ethic says we’re going to destroy your
neighborhood to build a highway through
it but not because we hate you but
because we love short commutes oh we’re
going to give you subprime loans for
your half but not because we hate you
because we love high interest rates oh
we’re going to build our own schools
taking the best teachers and resources
not because we hate your children but
because of our sweet little girls and
there’s a common thread connecting hall
monitors of the past thing you can’t
vote yet get an education now eat in my
restaurant to the Hall monitors of today
policing people walking down my streets
barbecuing in my Park kneeling during my
anthem this is not about hatred
it’s about goods as a class clown who
largely soft schools a place to laugh
bullies because at least I could
understand them but I could never
understand the motivation of a kid
turning the place of joy into a place of
law and order and the gag is Hall
monitors police white people – I’ve
heard White Hall monitors called poor
and working-class whites ignorant and
lazy ironically the same slurs bully’s
used for other races now I’ve come from
working-class people who to this day are
some of the smartest hardest working
people I know so I was offended because
again I realized I was a bad white
person this is a new either historically
wealthy whites called groups like the
Irish Italians are scoffed
dirty whites because they were – while
they looked the wrong kinds of jobs they
didn’t have the right kinds of manners
now more often than not dirty whites
have tried to clean themselves up and
behave for history’s Hall monitors
there’s always been a thread of bad
white people who’ve embraced the
dirtiness of their struggle and joined
their neighbors in solidarity we should
hold on to that thread however time as
southerners we have an intimate
relationship with the land the dirt in
fact we want to talk about hard work we
even say things like you gotta roll your
sleeves up and get your hands dirty and
Matt I wish we had that energy for
working against white supremacy in the
world because for people that love
meritocracies we have not been pulling
ourselves up by our bootstraps in racial
justice work now by now you might be
thinking well just like a classroom
bullies and hall monitors in the
minority what about a majority of white
people what about the rest of the class
and I’m sure the majority of the white
people you know our diversity loving
inclusive people who stand against
racism and decades of survey data show
us that racial attitudes of whites have
improved over the years the problem is
racist policies have largely stayed the
same or in many cases gotten worse we
now have a sociologist Pinilla Silva
describes as racism without racist well
how’d we get here during the civil
rights era white people saw ourselves in
a mirror through the violent images we
saw in the paper and on TV we didn’t
like what we saw so we distance
ourselves from the
bad white people and created a culture
we’re not seeing race became a way to be
good in the world and that’s how we got
the colorblind classroom so we’re
homeowners we’re way to get goods the
colorblind classroom wears white is to
be good and we show our goodness as non
racist by blaming like bullies closing
our eyes to race or by shrinking in
shame or silence to show our agreement
with its badness whiteness here is worn
like a uniform but our silent
seriousness is meant that we don’t have
anything serious to say even when we do
want to speak about race in 2006 for
example a hundred middle-class white
parents volunteered to be part of a
study where they would talk to their
children openly about race and what’s
most interesting about that study is not
the findings but the fact that the study
never happened only six out of the
hundred parents were able to have open
conversations with their children about
race the others either dropped out
saying I just couldn’t bring myself to
do it or I didn’t have the words or if I
did I reverted back to colorblind
language like we’re all just a human
race as a class clown what always
bothered me about the silence of the
classroom was that goodness was about
conformity we’re placing thinking for
oneself with the approval of groupthink
and the problem with shame and
colorblind goodness is that they are
like emotional straitjackets tying our
hands and covering our mouths when it
comes to race the problem is we’ve been
bad students of racism not only we not
done our homework but we’ve been working
on the wrong assignment our goodness
instead of listening and learning to the
voices of those experiencing racism and
then joining them and fighting it we’ve
been working on another project
altogether and I would know because I’ve
spent most of my life trying really hard
to be a good white person I love making
people laugh and I pride myself on
having friends from all walks of life
and from all around the world but
eventually I realized
my goodness made me feel good but it
wasn’t doing much for making the world
good and my goodness felt lifeless in
the face of mass incarceration and the
racial wealth gap immigrant rights and
police brutality and it feels like this
now when I see the way that whiteness is
killing white people too so the opioid
epidemic suicide rates and white poverty
you see the goodness of non racism is no
match for the badness of racism we are
living through another mere moment in
history through the shrinking white
population and the rise of social media
white people are looking at our robes of
whiteness once again and our closets are
mostly filled with the masks of bullies
the stiff shirts of hall monitors are
the uniforms of the colorblind classroom
so it’s time we get some new clothes
because we do not choose the skins were
born with but we do choose how it will
wear them I’ve been thinking a lot about
the class clown is a metaphor for how
can be better bad white people and
turning a mirror back on the lies and
stupidity of white supremacy in all its
rows you see it wasn’t until I started
speaking up about injustice in the world
that I became a bad white person people
love clowns that make them laugh they
kill clowns that make them thing but
I’ve also thought about several teachers
along the way during my class clown
years who pulled me aside at the end of
the year they said Travis even though
the disrupted class a lot you also
brought us a lot of joy and that tension
I’m still living with today and when I
want to encourage you to embrace find
ways to bring joy to the world through
your disobedience because I believe
everyone of us has a little spark of
rebellion inside of us that gives us
freedom to speak back to the world and I
know that there is comfort and security
and hiding in the worlds of whiteness
but there’s greater freedom and throwing
off those robes robbing you of a voice
in the world so find your voice be rebellious be bad white people thank
kamau Bell perform and as a part of his
act did something like a racial roll
call to get the crowd warmed up so I
started out I said any black people in
the house tonight
it was claps and cheers and he said if
you’re black in here tonight and you’re
proud I want you to put your fist in the
air yell black power and all the black
people in attendance with unison and
with pride they put their fists in the
air and they yell black power and then
he says like you know they’re like
beetles in the house and there was claps
and cheers and he said if you’re Latino
I’m here tonight and you’re proud put
your fist in the air now Latino five
same thing all the Latinos and unison
were private with the fists in the air
in the of Latino power and then come out
said any white people in the house
tonight
and there was a few claps and he said if
you’re white in here tonight and you’re
proud I want you to put your fist in the
air yeah white power and there was
silence now after a few seconds there
was laughter but I’ll never forget that
silence because that choice that come
out created in a matter of seconds white
people have been making for the last 60
years to either be identified with
racist white people who scream white
power or to be good white people and
distance ourselves through silence but
that’s a false moral choice people are
too messy and racism is too complex and
the stakes are too high for such
simplistic thinking after the laughter
died down kamau got serious for a second
he said something I’ll never forget he
said white people you’ve gotta find
better ways to speak about being white
in the world or other white people are
gonna speak up for you and they may not
be the people you want representing you
in the world so I want to speak to you
today about two things the kinds of
white people that might be representing
you in the world and then
operation to find your voice so that you
can begin speaking back to them I’ve
said big parts of my life letting other
people do my thinking for me but when I
started rebelling against that silence
by thinking for myself I tapped into
something powerful I was familiar with
you see I’ve always been or had a
rebellious spirit growing up I wasn’t
good at sports or academics or the arts
but for as long as I can remember I was
voted class fun so I was great at
challenging Authority and asking
questions when I wasn’t supposed to and
I loved disrupting silent spaces with
humor and since I wasn’t paying
attention to the lesson of the class I
had lots of time to pay attention to the
people in it and I’ve been people
watching me ever since and it’s in that
same spirit but I want to encourage you
today to be good troublemakers in your
thinking or what I’m calling bad white
people now I know some of you might
already be looking for the exits in the
room with all this talk about white
people
as if I’ve learned anything over the
years there’s one thing white people
hate to be called more than a racist and
it’s white people yeah I’ve arrived into
this recently I was tweeting about how
white people needed to get better
understanding racism what a white person
tweeted me you’re wanted to talk and
then she went all caps so I knew I was
in trouble
what boy
you see I have broken the white code of
silence on naming white people is also a
racial group I was being a bad white
person so let me be clear yes I am a
white boy in fact I’m what sociologists
call a really white boy I was born in an
all-white dairy farming town in upstate
New York and I grew up in mostly white
suburb schools and churches up the road
in Union County I’ve had a mullet I wear
flip-flops in the winter I play frisbee
golf and yes I let dogs kiss me on the
but when I talk about whiteness today I
don’t just mean having white skin I mean
what James Baldwin meant when he said
that our identities are like clothes
that we wear to cover the nakedness of
the cell you see we don’t just have
races we wear them to make sense of
ourselves in the world and like clothing
we sometimes grow accustomed to the
fabric and we forget that we’re wearing
them so if you’re non-white here today
we need you to because more often than
not you can see how we’re wearing our
whiteness better than we can so I wanna
encourage all of us today to where our
whiteness robes loosely so that we might
see them and feel them for what they are
and ourselves for what we might become
because as Baldwin says it’s trust in
one’s nakedness is all that gives one of
the power to change one’s rows now since
we’re being class clowns in our thinking
I want to use a typical classroom as a
metaphor for looking at the robes of
whiteness and I don’t encourage all of
you to sit in the back of the room and
be willing to look with new eyes be
willing to challenge those voices
speaking for you and be looking for your
own voice along the way now the first
characters you’re familiar with white
bullies now bullies wear their whiteness
to try to cover their badness in the
world to try to make themselves feel
better than others they practice a more
violent version of what comedians call
punching down just being the easy way
out by attacking those below them
avoiding the hard work of fighting
themselves or punching up at the
violence that produced them you see
racism is ultimately a sickness of the
soul so white bullies from the KKK two
internet trolls they wear whiteness like
a mask hiding from themselves in order
to hurt others but not only do bullies
attack easy targets but they are
triggered by those who threatened to
expose their smallness in the world like
many of you have been inspired by the
protests we’ve seen around the world in
recent years and when I’ve spoken up
about the love the curd
on the basis of the protesters from our
city facing off with an army of police
and soldiers armed with tear gas and
guns and takes I had forgotten about the
bully rule of punching down but white
people from my past quickly reminded me
confused and angry that I would also be
outraged at injustice and inspired by
the protesters you see I was being a bad
white person and as a class clown would
always bothered me about bullies was
that instead of dealing with their pain
through friendship they took it out on
the rest of us and it’s the same with
white police today their anger is real
it just isn’t true and they’re mailing
that anger into the wrong address
there’s a multi-billion dollar outrage
industry on YouTube talk radio and
political platforms waiting to cash in
the checks of white anger and this isn’t
new
in fact what anger has been a big
business in America since our founding
it’s what historians called the wages of
whiteness
well working-class whites traded in
their pain and anger for the temporary
relief of feeling bigger than their
black and brown neighbors but it’s bad
business fear named are two of our most
primal emotions so we should guard them
vigilantly the fact that people are
profiting up you’re paying without a
peep about love or solidarity that
should raise some flags in fact if you
want something to be angry about there’s
a star
[Applause]
bullies have often worn their whiteness
loudest in the world they’ve often
received the most attention but it’s
really been white hall monitor’s
standing quietly in the front of the
class taking names who played the larger
role in the history of whiteness so
whereas bullies wear whiteness to feel
good Hall monitors wear whiteness to get
Goods these are goods like people but
here goodness is not about the character
the person but about making good deals
it’s replacing the Golden Rule with the
rule of golden the way you get goods as
a hall monitor is not by being your
brother’s keeper but by keeping your
brother out whiteness here is worn like
a stiff collared shirt President
Eisenhower explained this speaking about
white southern parents during
desegregation he said these are not bad
people all they are concerned about is
that their sweet little girls are not
required to sit in school alongside some
big black box the emphasis there is not
on the hatred of the black students but
on the goods for the sweet little girls
you see when your goodness is confused
with goods your world becomes like a
game of Monopoly and your neighbor just
another piece on the board all space
becomes your space all time your time
all goods your goods the whole other
ethic says we’re going to destroy your
neighborhood to build a highway through
it but not because we hate you but
because we love short commutes oh we’re
going to give you subprime loans for
your half but not because we hate you
because we love high interest rates oh
we’re going to build our own schools
taking the best teachers and resources
not because we hate your children but
because of our sweet little girls and
there’s a common thread connecting hall
monitors of the past thing you can’t
vote yet get an education now eat in my
restaurant to the Hall monitors of today
policing people walking down my streets
barbecuing in my Park kneeling during my
anthem this is not about hatred
it’s about goods as a class clown who
largely soft schools a place to laugh
bullies because at least I could
understand them but I could never
understand the motivation of a kid
turning the place of joy into a place of
law and order and the gag is Hall
monitors police white people – I’ve
heard White Hall monitors called poor
and working-class whites ignorant and
lazy ironically the same slurs bully’s
used for other races now I’ve come from
working-class people who to this day are
some of the smartest hardest working
people I know so I was offended because
again I realized I was a bad white
person this is a new either historically
wealthy whites called groups like the
Irish Italians are scoffed
dirty whites because they were – while
they looked the wrong kinds of jobs they
didn’t have the right kinds of manners
now more often than not dirty whites
have tried to clean themselves up and
behave for history’s Hall monitors
there’s always been a thread of bad
white people who’ve embraced the
dirtiness of their struggle and joined
their neighbors in solidarity we should
hold on to that thread however time as
southerners we have an intimate
relationship with the land the dirt in
fact we want to talk about hard work we
even say things like you gotta roll your
sleeves up and get your hands dirty and
Matt I wish we had that energy for
working against white supremacy in the
world because for people that love
meritocracies we have not been pulling
ourselves up by our bootstraps in racial
justice work now by now you might be
thinking well just like a classroom
bullies and hall monitors in the
minority what about a majority of white
people what about the rest of the class
and I’m sure the majority of the white
people you know our diversity loving
inclusive people who stand against
racism and decades of survey data show
us that racial attitudes of whites have
improved over the years the problem is
racist policies have largely stayed the
same or in many cases gotten worse we
now have a sociologist Pinilla Silva
describes as racism without racist well
how’d we get here during the civil
rights era white people saw ourselves in
a mirror through the violent images we
saw in the paper and on TV we didn’t
like what we saw so we distance
ourselves from the
bad white people and created a culture
we’re not seeing race became a way to be
good in the world and that’s how we got
the colorblind classroom so we’re
homeowners we’re way to get goods the
colorblind classroom wears white is to
be good and we show our goodness as non
racist by blaming like bullies closing
our eyes to race or by shrinking in
shame or silence to show our agreement
with its badness whiteness here is worn
like a uniform but our silent
seriousness is meant that we don’t have
anything serious to say even when we do
want to speak about race in 2006 for
example a hundred middle-class white
parents volunteered to be part of a
study where they would talk to their
children openly about race and what’s
most interesting about that study is not
the findings but the fact that the study
never happened only six out of the
hundred parents were able to have open
conversations with their children about
race the others either dropped out
saying I just couldn’t bring myself to
do it or I didn’t have the words or if I
did I reverted back to colorblind
language like we’re all just a human
race as a class clown what always
bothered me about the silence of the
classroom was that goodness was about
conformity we’re placing thinking for
oneself with the approval of groupthink
and the problem with shame and
colorblind goodness is that they are
like emotional straitjackets tying our
hands and covering our mouths when it
comes to race the problem is we’ve been
bad students of racism not only we not
done our homework but we’ve been working
on the wrong assignment our goodness
instead of listening and learning to the
voices of those experiencing racism and
then joining them and fighting it we’ve
been working on another project
altogether and I would know because I’ve
spent most of my life trying really hard
to be a good white person I love making
people laugh and I pride myself on
having friends from all walks of life
and from all around the world but
eventually I realized
my goodness made me feel good but it
wasn’t doing much for making the world
good and my goodness felt lifeless in
the face of mass incarceration and the
racial wealth gap immigrant rights and
police brutality and it feels like this
now when I see the way that whiteness is
killing white people too so the opioid
epidemic suicide rates and white poverty
you see the goodness of non racism is no
match for the badness of racism we are
living through another mere moment in
history through the shrinking white
population and the rise of social media
white people are looking at our robes of
whiteness once again and our closets are
mostly filled with the masks of bullies
the stiff shirts of hall monitors are
the uniforms of the colorblind classroom
so it’s time we get some new clothes
because we do not choose the skins were
born with but we do choose how it will
wear them I’ve been thinking a lot about
the class clown is a metaphor for how
can be better bad white people and
turning a mirror back on the lies and
stupidity of white supremacy in all its
rows you see it wasn’t until I started
speaking up about injustice in the world
that I became a bad white person people
love clowns that make them laugh they
kill clowns that make them thing but
I’ve also thought about several teachers
along the way during my class clown
years who pulled me aside at the end of
the year they said Travis even though
the disrupted class a lot you also
brought us a lot of joy and that tension
I’m still living with today and when I
want to encourage you to embrace find
ways to bring joy to the world through
your disobedience because I believe
everyone of us has a little spark of
rebellion inside of us that gives us
freedom to speak back to the world and I
know that there is comfort and security
and hiding in the worlds of whiteness
but there’s greater freedom and throwing
off those robes robbing you of a voice
in the world so find your voice be rebellious be bad white people thank
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