Trevor Noah | 字幕 Bakari Sellers - The Trauma of Being Black in America

Bakari Sellers, welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.

Well, thank you for having me. It's an awesome opportunity.

I like how your beard has come in.

It's a very majestic, professorial...

You've got, like, a, like, the full corona beard going on.

This is Denzel-ish.

That's what I like to call it.

Um let's jump straight into talking about your book,

which, unfortunately, feels more timely than ever.

You've written a story that is a memoir of your life,

but in many ways it feels like it's also the story

of America as well.

My Vanishing Country.

Tell me what the title of the book means,

and if you really feel that way about America.

Well, sure, I mean, my life has been bookended by tragedy.

I say that with a heavy heart.

Um, from the Orangeburg Massacre

and my father being shot in 1968

to the Charleston Massacre.

Um, and throughout the book, we talk about different, um...

different traumas and different heartaches

and different systems of oppression

that people of color have to live through,

that I have lived through.

And so now, with C——, and it ripping the Band-Aid

off the health care disparities we have,

I'm able to parallel that with growing up in a community

where we don't have clean water, where we don't have a hospital,

where we live in a food desert,

and then you layer that with, uh, the sad case

of Ahmaud Arbery, um, and you just talk about the...

the perpetual trauma that people of color,

particularly black men, have to live through.

And so My Vanishing Country, it means a few things,

that we give the word "country" some meaning,

being a boy from the dirt roads of the South,

but, even more importantly, those... those truths that we...

that we hold to be something that all Americans can realize

seem to be fleeting, especially for poor people,

immigrants, and people of color in this country.

Yeah. You would think that people would just go: Yes,

this is America's history and these are some of the effects,

the systemic problems that still affect black people today.

And yet, it seems like people disagree on it more than ever.

If somebody is saying to you, in good faith, really,

"Hey, Bakari, I don't understand why black people seem to think

things are bad in America when they've gotten so much better,"

how do you respond to that person,

if indeed, genuinely, they don't see it

and they're trying to see it?

Well, this is a... First of all, this is probably

the most difficult conversation that this country has to have.

It's a conversation of race.

And take, for example, the Ahmaud Arbery case.

Um, this is not a Trump era phenomenon.

This is not something that just started to happen

with the racism that emanates from the White House.

Instead, I think about Medgar Evers,

I think about Emmett Till,

I think about Jimmie Lee Jackson,

I think about the four little girls in the...

in the Birmingham church.

Um, and so, when you think about the totality

of these circumstances, you realize, um,

that we've made a lot of progress,

but we still haven't... we still haven't reached

that "mountaintop," we have not made it there.

One of the funny things that people like to bring up is:

"Oh, my God, we had Barack Obama elected president.

You guys have made it."

And that's not the case.

When you talk about these layers,

I'm not concerned about somebody calling me "nigger." I'm not.

I'm more concerned about the systemic, um, levels

of oppression that people of color live in today.

A broken health care system.

A broken environmental justice system.

A broken criminal justice system.

A broken educational, uh, justice system,--

because in this country you're punished

because of the zip code you're born into.

And all of these pressures, um...

just-just... they just rest on you,

and they build your anxiety, and now we have corona,

and now we have these never-ending traumas.

It seems like you're just trying to breathe sometimes.

What do you think it says about America

that so many people used the video of Ahmaud Arbery, um,

in that empty house, the house that was being constructed,

as a justification for his death?

Or his killing, rather, I should say.

Ahmaud Arbery did something that people do all the time.

Hell, me and my wife do it.

He-he walked into an empty home.

He-he was looking around an empty home.

That's not a crime that... that requires the death penalty.

But even more importantly, those-those two men

who were on that good old-fashioned,

um, south Georgia father-son lynching,

they looked at him as less than human.

And that's-that's the hard part for me

in raising twins.

Um, in raising a 14-year-old daughter,

and I have 16-month-old twins.

Um, teaching them that they can be a doctor,

that they can be a lawyer,

that they can be the host of The Daily Show

but also telling them one day

that, you know, they-they have to be cautious

about the way they interact

because there's a segment of this... of this public

that doesn't believe that they're human

-and doesn't want to give them dignity. -Right.

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And that's something that I-I was intrigued to read

and-and understand from your point of view.

Because I wondered, how do you talk to your kids

and say to them, "You can be anything you want to be.

"You do have these opportunities.

"But at the same time,

"there are certain things that are gonna hold you back,

and there are gonna be certain things to be afraid of"?

Like, which-which part do you take as a parent?

Do you... You know, do you say to your kids,

"Hey, if you see the police,

"just try and be as calm as possible.

Try not to engage. Try not to..."

Like, which talk do you have with them?

'Cause some people go like, "You know your rights.

You fight for your rights."

Others say like, "Hey, man, now's not the time.

Now's not the time to fight about your rights."

Which-which attitude have you taken as a parent?

I mean, I-I come from... And one of the...

one of the things that I talk about in the book

is I'm a child of the civil rights movement.

My father was a member of SNCC.

Um, he was shot February 8, 1968, by law enforcement,

protesting in the Orangeburg Massacre.

And, so, my father always taught us growing up,

I think having to do with his interactions

with law enforcement, that you should always...

Uh, you know, you never... you never stop in a dark area.

You always drive to the next exit.

You always go to a well-lit area.

We'll-we'll fight those battles in court.

Um, for me, with these... with these twins now,

my job is to hopefully, uh, make sure

they have a better America than the one that I inherited.

It's the same dream my-my father had.

The trouble that I have,

and the reason that I wrote My Vanishing Country--

I talk about it in one of the lat-latter chapters--

is, you know, five years ago, almost five years ago,

I was standing in front of a church, Mother Emanuel.

Clementa Pinckney was a friend of mine.

He actually let Dylann Roof into his church.

They had a full hour Bible study,

and then Dylann Roof killed nine people

because of the color of their skin.

I was standing in front of that church

about a week later with my father,

and tears were rolling down my face

as I was explaining to the country

that we were having many of the same shared experiences.

He was 30. I... Excuse me. I was 30, and he was 70.

-Mm-hmm

-And, so, for my twins,

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what I have to do, what we have to do,

what everybody watching has to do is continue to work

to make sure that they inherit a better country

than the one that I did, and right now, that's tough.

Those conversations are tough, because as their eyes sparkle,

you do know that racism is real.

Systems of injustice are real.

Not getting the benefit of their humanity is real.

And I just don't want them to be on the front of a T-shirt

or us to have to wear another hoodie to march for them

or us to have to, you know, get Arizona iced tea and Skittles

or us to have to jog two miles for them.

You know, I'm living for all of those people

whose lives were cut short

so one day, my children can be free.

How-how do you feel about the discussion

in and around sharing these videos online?

'Cause there's... there's clearly a rift.

-Yeah. -Some people think these videos should never be shared

because all they do is further the-the...

you know, the-the, almost, joy of lynching

that white supremacists may engage in

in seeing the videos.

It furthers that narrative.

Others would say, "No, without the videos,

then, oftentimes, there is no justice."

And it-it feels like the-- an argument

where nobody's wrong but-but an argument

that people are having nonetheless.

Do you have any thoughts?

Yeah, no, I think we have to show those videos.

I mean, there-there are a couple of things.

First, let's just deal with the Arbery case,

because if we did not see that video--

See, they saw the video.

It took 73 days for the arrest not because of their video.

It's but-but because we saw the video.

The American public saw the video.

And so I think that that's necessary.

Um, I remember the Walter Scott case,

the young man in Charleston, South Carolina,

who was shot in the back.

But for that young man who was at the barbershop

filming that incident, there would have been no arrest.

And so we have to make sure we do that.

But it-it-- again, that parallel with the civil rights movement--

there's one glaring image that people remember.

It's the picture of Emmett Till,

who allegedly whistled at a white woman.

And I challenge, for those individuals who haven't--

who haven't seen that picture, to go google it.

His-his face is beaten,

and he literally has no bones left in his body.

And that picture, that image, before images could go viral,

it stimulated a whole generation.

And so I think those images are necessary,

not necessarily for justice

but just so that we can have transparency

and-- to be completely honest--

to make white folk uncomfortable.

Because we have to be uncomfortable

to have this discussion.

And unless white people literally see these injustices,

sometimes there is a connection that they don't really happen

-and they do.

-Hmm.

Bakari, thank you so much for your time.

Uh, congratulations on an amazing book.

And, hopefully, we'll have you back on the show again soon.

Thank you so much, my dude. Have a good one.

Thank you.