Let's get to the root of racial injustice | Megan Ming Francis | TEDxRainier

Summary

In this powerful talk, the speaker recounts a personal experience of racial profiling involving her brother, highlighting the pervasive issue of racial violence against black individuals in the United States. She critiques the common misconception that education alone can solve racial injustices and argues for a broader understanding of civil rights that includes freedom from racist violence. Drawing on historical examples, particularly the NAACP's early campaigns, she calls for collective action to confront and dismantle systemic racism.

Takeaways

• 📚 The speaker, a first-year teacher, felt proud after a successful lecture but was quickly confronted with the harsh reality of racial profiling when her brother Kenny called.
• 👮‍♂️ Kenny, a student at Temple University, was unjustly stopped, handcuffed, and interrogated by police in North Philly under the false suspicion of carrying drugs.
• 🚔 The police's aggressive behavior towards Kenny was indicative of a systemic issue where black individuals are perceived as criminals based on their race.
• 📉 The speaker suggests that focusing solely on education as a solution to racial injustice is misguided, as it fails to address the root causes of racial violence.
• 🌳 The problem is likened to an infected apple tree, indicating that the issue of racial violence is widespread and deeply ingrained, not just a few 'bad apples'.
• 🔍 The speaker shares her own experiences of racial profiling, including an incident with a TSA agent who accused her of carrying a weapon, highlighting the everyday nature of such encounters.
• 📈 Statistics are cited to show that black individuals are three times more likely to be shot and killed by police than whites, emphasizing the scale of the issue.
• 👀 The speaker argues that society at large, not just the police, contributes to the perception of black individuals as threats, through actions and silence.
• 📖 Historical context is provided, showing how the NAACP initially focused on combating racial violence, not just education, to effect change.
• 🔊 The importance of activism and collective action is emphasized as a means to challenge the status quo and address racial injustice.
• 🌟 The speaker concludes by commending the activism of her students and the Black Lives Matter movement, suggesting that their actions have the potential to create meaningful change.

Q & A

What was the speaker's initial reaction after teaching a successful lecture?

The speaker was feeling good about themselves and was confident after delivering a slamming lecture to a group of undergraduates.

Why was the speaker's brother, Kenny, upset when he called her?

Kenny was upset because he and three others were unjustly stopped, handcuffed, and aggressively questioned by the police about having drugs, despite being innocent.

How did the police officers react when Kenny told them he was a student at Temple University?

The police officers initially did not believe Kenny and continued to be aggressive. It was only after they found his college ID that they realized he was indeed a student without drugs and let him go.

What was the speaker's initial suggestion to Kenny after hearing about his encounter with the police?

The speaker suggested that Kenny should focus on his school work to take his mind off the incident, implying that education could be a way to avoid such encounters.

Why did Kenny reject the speaker's suggestion to focus on school work?

Kenny rejected the suggestion because he felt that focusing on school work would not protect him from racial profiling and police violence, as he experienced.

What does the speaker believe is the root cause of racial violence against black people in the United States?

The speaker believes that the root cause is a long history of racial terror that has treated blackness as a proxy for criminality, leading to a presumption of dangerousness tied to race.

How does the speaker describe the current approach to solving racial injustices in the United States?

The speaker describes the current approach as misdiagnosing the problem and relying too heavily on education as a cure-all solution, which she believes is not effective in addressing the root causes of racial violence.

What historical example does the speaker use to illustrate a successful campaign against racial violence?

The speaker uses the example of the NAACP's early 20th-century campaign against lynching and mob violence, which included mass demonstrations, lobbying for anti-lynching legislation, and litigation, leading to a significant decrease in such violence.

What does the speaker suggest as an alternative to education as the primary solution to racial injustices?

The speaker suggests placing freedom from racist violence at the center of civil rights discussions, expanding the understanding of civil rights to include the battle against racist violence.

How does the speaker view the role of activism in addressing racial injustices today?

The speaker views activism, as exemplified by the Black Lives Matter movement and her students' participation in walkouts, as a powerful and potentially effective way to challenge the status quo and confront racial injustices.

Outlines

00:00

📚 The Impact of Police Brutality on Personal Life

The speaker, a first-year teacher, recounts a day when they received multiple missed calls from their brother Kenny, a student at Temple University. Kenny, who lives in North Philly, a predominantly black and low-income area, had been unjustly harassed by the police. Despite being a student without drugs, he was violently apprehended and interrogated by officers. The incident left the speaker feeling helpless and alarmed, highlighting the pervasive issue of racial profiling and police brutality in America. The speaker's attempt to console Kenny by suggesting he focus on school is met with frustration, as Kenny points out that education won't protect him from racial injustice.

05:02

🔍 Beyond the Symptom: Addressing the Root Cause of Racial Violence

The speaker argues that the current crisis surrounding race in the United States is due to a lack of focus on the root causes of racial violence. They challenge the common belief that the problem lies with a few racist individuals and the idea that education is the solution. Instead, they propose that the issue is deeply ingrained in the societal perception of black people as inherently dangerous. This perception influences police officers' decisions to use deadly force against unarmed black individuals. The speaker emphasizes the need to address the historical context and societal attitudes that contribute to racial violence, rather than merely focusing on individual incidents or educational reforms.

10:02

🛂 Personal Experiences of Racial Profiling and the Need for Change

The speaker shares personal experiences of racial profiling, including an incident at an airport where they were falsely accused of carrying a weapon. Despite their attempts to reason with the TSA agent, they were met with hostility and suspicion. The speaker's status as a professor of law and civil liberties was only acknowledged after they used their credentials to assert their rights. This experience underscores the broader issue of racial bias in institutions beyond just the police. The speaker calls for a societal shift in perception, where black individuals are not automatically seen as threats, and for collective action to challenge and change the status quo.

15:04

🌟 Historical Precedents and the Power of Activism

The speaker discusses the early efforts of the NAACP in combating racial violence before its focus on desegregation. They highlight the NAACP's successful campaign against lynching and mob violence, which included mass demonstrations, lobbying, litigation, and presidential petitions. This historical context is used to argue that a collective, assertive approach can lead to change. The speaker connects this history to the present, emphasizing the importance of activism in the face of racial injustice. They conclude by acknowledging the role of the Black Lives Matter movement and the activism of their own students, suggesting that such actions have the potential to challenge and change the current racial climate.

Keywords

💡Racial Profiling

Racial profiling is the discriminatory practice by law enforcement of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. In the script, the concept is exemplified by the story of Kenny, who was stopped, searched, and interrogated by police officers without cause, other than being a black man in North Philly.

💡Police Brutality

Police brutality refers to the use of excessive or deadly force by police officers in their interactions with the public. The script discusses this issue through the high-profile killings of unarmed black individuals by police, emphasizing the systemic nature of the problem rather than attributing it to individual 'bad apples'.

💡Systemic Racism

Systemic racism is the ingrained racial discrimination that exists within an institution or society. The script illustrates this by showing how racial violence and the presumption of dangerousness are deeply rooted in American society, affecting not just police actions but also everyday interactions.

💡Racial Violence

Racial violence encompasses acts of aggression or harm directed towards individuals based on their race or ethnicity. The script discusses racial violence as a historical and ongoing issue in the United States, particularly against black people, and how it's often overlooked or misunderstood.

💡Unarmed Blacks

The term 'unarmed blacks' is used in the script to highlight the disproportionate number of black individuals who are killed by police despite not posing a physical threat. It underscores the racial bias in the use of deadly force by law enforcement.

💡Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter is a movement advocating for non-violent civil disobedience in protest against incidents of police brutality and all forms of violence and racism against black people. The script mentions this movement as a contemporary force for change, emphasizing the activism of those involved.

💡Racial Injustice

Racial injustice refers to the unfair treatment of people based on their race, which can be seen in disparities in various areas such as law enforcement, education, and employment. The script addresses racial injustice as a complex issue that requires a broader societal response beyond just education.

💡Civil Rights

Civil rights are the rights of individuals to receive equal treatment and to be free from unequal treatment or discrimination under the law. The script connects civil rights to the broader struggle against racial violence, suggesting that freedom from racist violence should be central to the concept of civil rights.

💡NAACP

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. The script references the NAACP's early focus on combating racial violence, highlighting its historical role in advocating for civil rights and social justice.

💡Lynching

Lynching refers to the extrajudicial killing by a group, often with the tacit approval of the community. The script mentions the NAACP's efforts to combat lynching, emphasizing the historical context of racial terror and the organization's role in reducing such acts.

💡Racial Climate

Racial climate refers to the overall attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors within a society regarding race and ethnicity. The script discusses the current racial climate in the United States as one that is influenced by a long history of racial terror and the ongoing struggle against racial injustice.

Highlights

The lecturer's first-year teaching success is overshadowed by her brother's experience with police brutality.

Kenny, a Temple University student, was falsely accused of drug possession and violently detained by police in North Philly.

The false assumption of drug possession led to excessive force by the police officers.

Kenny's status as a college student and lack of drugs influenced the officers to release him.

The lecturer's initial suggestion to focus on schoolwork is met with frustration by Kenny, highlighting the inadequacy of such advice in the face of racial profiling.

Statistics reveal that blacks are three times more likely to be shot and killed by police than whites.

The speaker argues that the root causes of racial violence are not well understood, which hinders effective solutions.

The analogy of a dog's aggressive behavior is used to illustrate the importance of addressing root causes rather than symptoms.

The speaker challenges the belief that racial violence is only caused by a few racist individuals.

The presumption of dangerousness is deeply ingrained and affects police decisions to use force against unarmed black individuals.

The speaker shares personal experiences of racial profiling, including an incident at an airport involving a TSA agent.

The importance of recognizing and addressing the societal belief that black people are inherently more dangerous is emphasized.

The speaker advocates for a broader understanding of civil rights that includes freedom from racist violence.

The historical efforts of the NAACP in combating racial violence are highlighted as a model for current activism.

The speaker calls for collective action against racial injustice and the need to confront our own complicity.

The role of activism and the Black Lives Matter movement in raising awareness and demanding change is acknowledged.

The lecturer concludes by expressing hope in the potential of activism to bring about change, contrasting with her earlier belief in the power of education alone.

Transcripts

Transcriber: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Amanda Chu

I had just finished teaching Introduction to American Politics

to a group of eager undergraduates.

This was my first year teaching,

but I had pulled off a slamming lecture, and I was feeling good about myself.

As I left the classroom, I looked down at my phone

and saw that I had five missed calls from my brother Kenny.

At the time, Kenny was a student at Temple University

and living in North Philly.

For those who don't know North Philly,

it's an area that is predominantly black and low-income,

with a very visible police presence.

When I returned his phone call, Kenny is loud and swearing into the phone.

I can tell that something very bad happened,

but I'm not sure what.

When I'm finally able to get him to calm down,

he tells me how he was sitting on the stoop of his building

talking to a friend

when four police officers ran up on him

and threw him and three others on the ground,

handcuffed them and then pushed them up against a wall,

all the while asking them,

"What drugs do you have? What drugs do you have?"

Kenny had no drugs.

He told the officers this many times,

but each statement of no drugs only seemed to provoke more force

and make the officers more upset.

As Kenny sat, cuffed, and slumped against a brick wall,

he quietly told the officers that he was a student at Temple University

and without reason, they could not hold him.

The officers finally retrieved his college ID,

which was in his wallet that had slipped out

when he was slammed to the pavement,

realized that he was indeed in college, without drugs,

and then let him go.

After Kenny told me this story, he was still loud and upset.

I was shaking,

barely able to hold the phone to my ear,

all of the joy from my great day of teaching - gone ...

and replaced with a deep sense of helplessness and alarm.

I wanted to remove the hurt and frustration that Kenny felt,

that I could hear so clearly through the phone,

but I neither had the will nor the ability to lie to him

about the mightiness of American racism.

And we both silently knew that this would not be the last time

that he would be stopped and frisked by the police for drugs.

In an attempt to try to calm him down

and to shift attention onto something that he perhaps did have control over,

I had this genius idea

and suggested that he focused his attention on school work

to kind of take his mind off of things.

He yells into the phone at me, "What is that going to do?

Why should I focus on my school work

when the police are allowed to do things like this?"

And then he says to me,

"I'm not a student in your class, Megan. Your books are not going to save me."

I silently nodded on the other end of the phone,

In a lifetime of often heated exchanges with him,

I've probably never been more wrong,

and he has never been more right.

Kenny is not alone.

This violent interaction between black men and women, and police officers

plays out in cities and towns across the United States,

often with much more devastating results.

According to the most recent statistics,

blacks are three times more likely to be shot and killed by police than whites.

The question on everyone's mind

and the question that I get asked the most

is, "How do we solve this problem?"

And I confess I cringe at this question,

not because it's not a good question,

but because I think we're asking the wrong question.

I'm not convinced we even understand

how we got to this point in the fist place.

Better understanding of the root causes of the current place where we are

will help provide us with the tools that we need to move us forward.

However, I confess

that even I sometimes am more eager to solve a problem

than I am to understand it.

So a few years ago, I adopted a corgi from a shelter

and named him President Bartlet, off of The West Wing.

(Laughter)

Now, he's super adorable!

But he was abused,

and he's very aggressive whenever he sees another dog.

My fix in my first year was to walk him at crazy hours of the day,

but this worked only marginally well,

and I was stressed and tired.

The following year, I decided to hire a trainer

to try to figure the underlying issues behind his reactive behavior.

On the first day of our meeting, the trainer looks at me and says,

"Fixes that do not address the root causes of an issue are not really fixes at all."

I realized that in my haste to fix President Bartlet,

I actually had made him worse.

The present crisis surrounding race in the United States, I think,

suffers from a lack of attention to the root causes;

Better attention to the root causes,

I am convinced,

will help us to figure out how to move past where we right now

in terms of the current racial climate in the United States.

So why does the killing of unarmed blacks to continue to happen?

I think it continues to happen

because we have the wrong diagnosis and the wrong cure.

And what I mean by this is we tend to think

the problem of racial violence is isolated to a few stubborn racists

that haven't yet drunk kind of this progressive Kool-Aid.

And we tend to think the cure to racial injustices in the United States

should always revolve around education.

In the rest of my talk today, I'm going to challenge both of these ideas

and suggest a new way to understand the problem,

as well as the solution.

First, part of the reason the killing of unarmed blacks

continues to happen at an alarming rate

is because we haven't properly addressed

our long history of racial terror in this country,

which has treated blackness as a proxy for criminality,

as a substitute for criminality.

Instead, when confronted with kind of these jarring racial injustices,

what we like to do is to point to the bad racist apples.

We like to individualize the problem and situate it away from us.

This is why we're able to make sense of, let's say, a Dylann Roof,

the shooter in Charlston, South Carolina,

who shot up the black church and had a white-power manifesto.

But the problem with contemporary racial violence

is not that we have a few kind of racist bad apples.

The problem is that the whole tree, the whole apple tree, is infected.

The problem is that the presumption of dangerousness is tightly bound to race

for so many in this country.

For police officers to justify the use of deadly force,

they have to reasonably believe that their lives are in danger.

In all the high-profile killings of blacks over the past year,

officers attest to feeling under threat.

But what does this mean in the context of unarmed citizens?

It means that black skin triggers a heightened sense of threat,

a life-threatening sense of threat,

that then influences the officers' decision to use deadly force.

According to the most recent statistics,

33% of blacks that have been killed by police were unarmed.

But it's not just police that pop up this myth of black danger.

This myth gets reinforced and takes on a truth-like quality

through everyday interaction,

when a black man passes and a woman clutches her purse

or when a group of black friends walk by a car

and hear the jarring sound of someone who has just pushed their automatic locks

because they are afraid.

And I have friends on both sides of this:

black men with great jobs,

who just want to be viewed as a person and not as a threat

after a long day of work;

and I have really great white and Asian woman friends,

who clutch their purse and walk quickly

if they see a black man on a dimly-lit street,

and then feel ashamed in the need to over-explain their actions to me.

And I've also been on the receiving end

of having who I was

reduced to someone else's false perception of how much of a danger I posed.

Last year, I was coming back from a trip, and I was singled out by the TSA agent.

I thought that I had left a water bottle, like I often do, in my bag.

But he ushered me to a separate area,

and then two more TSA agents surrounded me,

and I knew in my gut that something bad was about to go down.

The lead TSA agent proceeds to ask - no, accuse - me

of bringing a weapon into the airport.

When I insisted that I did not bring a weapon into the airport,

he produces a piece of costume jewelry,

a double ring that I had picked up for $4 on vacation.

It was like his "gotcha" moment, and it was my superconfused moment.

(Laughter)

He then accuses me of bringing brass knuckles, a deadly weapon,

into a United States airport.

I was almost at a loss of words, which is rare for someone like me,

but I politely pointed out to him

that the ring was plastic, it wasn't brass,

and these weren't knuckles,

it was just a ring that went over two fingers instead of one finger.

But have you ever talked to someone and felt like you didn't exist,

like when they spoke to you, they spoke right through you?

Well, that's how I felt.

He got more angry at my explanations, looked me in my face, and said,

"You people always lie.

I know that this is a weapon,

and I'm not going to let someone dangerous like you board a plane today."

Well, I started to shake, right?

Because we've all seen this movie about the brown girl

who walks into the airport with a deadly weapon,

and it never really ends well for her.

It doesn't. It never does.

So, I had to do what I hate doing,

and I used my credentials to get me out of a bad situation.

I told him that I was a professor

of Constitutional Law and American Politics.

(Laughter)

Right?

(Applause)

Yeah, so -

(Applause)

I cited US criminal code, landmark Supreme Court decisions,

and rules from the Homeland Security Rulebook,

because I also teach Civil Liberties.

And then he started to get very nervous.

(Laughter)

He asked what school I worked at.

I told him, he Googled my name, and the blood drained from his face.

Right?

As he realized I wasn't making this up,

I knew my rights and I was a college professor.

And then, when he looked back at me, he finally saw me,

not as a dangerous threat, but as a person.

After a few more minutes, he let me go, to catch my much delayed flight,

I found a seat in the airport terminal,

still trembling with rage at the way that I had been treated.

I was only seated for a few minutes when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

A woman airport worker said that she saw my whole ordeal,

and that he does this all the time to black passengers,

and I was lucky to have been released from his custody so quickly.

But it shouldn't take a university website profile

to be viewed as non-threatening, right?

(Applause)

Part of the reason I shared this story and some of the other ones

is that I think, in talking about the current racial crisis,

we tend to focus all of our attention on police

and overlook our own complicity in creating an environment

in which black lives are not treated as equal.

To be clear in thinking about solutions to the racial violence,

I'm in favor of body cameras,

I'm in favor of a non-militarized police force,

I'm in favor of stricter laws that make officers more accountable

when they stop and frisk people on the street.

But i'm not convinced

that we would need something like body cameras

if we didn't live in a society

that treat blacks as dangerous and suspicious first,

and as citizens second.

It's not just a few bad racist apples in a police department or at an airport;

it's all of us, who in big ways through our actions

and in small ways by our silences,

support this lie - because that's what it is, it's a lie -

that somehow black folk are more dangerous than the rest of us.

So not only do I believe that we've misdiagnosed the problem,

I also think we have the wrong cure to it.

We keep offering up education

as a solution to all racial injustices in the United States.

It's kind of what I call sometimes in my classes

as the "Robitussin of civil rights."

Like, when I was little, my mom loved Robitussin.

She would give me it.

I got a cold, Robitussin; flu, Robitussin

Like, allergies? Robitussin.

Like, where's the Penadryl?

(Laughter)

But just like Robitussin is not a cure-all for all types of sicknesses,

education is not a cure-all for all of America's racial sins.

And yet, education is still how most Americans understand

the responsibility to fixing contemporary racial injustices.

Our measure of how far we have come in the area of race relations

is most often calculated in how integrated our schools are,

how many inovative education experiments are currently going on,

and how many federal dollars are committed towards education.

But the contemporary problem surrounding the killing of unarmed blacks

is not a problem

that boils down to providing greater educational opportunities to blacks.

This is a misdiagnosis.

A book is not going to stop the bullet barreling through a gun at Rekia Boyd

in Chicago,

and longer classroom times are not going to save Freddie Gray

from being illegally stopped and manhandled by police in Baltimore.

This is what I know for sure:

that in order to combat continuing racial injustices today,

we must expand our vision and our responsibility

to what civil rights actually means.

We must include the battle against racist violence

in our understanding of civil rights.

Instead of education,

what if we placed freedom from racist violence

at the crux of what it means to be free and equal in the United States?

Doing so does not mean that we necessarily dislodge education,

but it means that if racism and white supremacy are a rock fortress,

we assemble greater arsenal weapons to break the damn thing down.

(Applause)

I know this is not an easy task, but I know that it can be done.

So in my real life,

I'm a political scientist and a historian,

and I've spent the last 10 years focused on a surprising finding:

that before the civil rights group the NAACP

focused on its historic campaign against segregated education,

the NAACP spent the first two decades of the 20th century

focused on fighting escalating levels of racial violence that blacks endured

as a result of the actions from police, politicians, and private white citizens

in the south and in the north.

In order to wage this big campaign against racial violence,

the NAACP organized mass demonstrations in the streets.

They lobbied Congress to pass an anti-lynching bill.

They litigated and won a landmark decision in front of the Supreme Court.

And they petitioned three different presidents

to make a statement against lynching.

It was this massive, extraordinary, in-your-face campaign

that forced America to confront lynching and mob violence

against African Americans.

It asked America

how strong was its commitment to protecting black lives.

As a result of this work in early 20th century,

the rates of lynching and mob violence dramatically decreased.

I tell this story about the NAACP's historic kind of campaign

against racial violence

because I believe our past history can light a way out of the present darkness.

If we listen to what this history tells us,

then we must struggle through this current moment.

We must confront the ways that our actions and our institutions

lead to a differential treatment of blacks, even if done unintentionally.

Today, people across the United States are taking to streets

and are demanding to be seen,

not as dangerous

but as people whose lives have value and deserve protection.

Some of these groups are associated directly, and some indirectly,

with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Without the efforts of these groups,

so many of these killings of unarmed blacks

would have been swapped under the rug,

and we would have lost attention long ago.

But so many of these activists have denied the comforts of silence,

and they are being active around this issue.

Their message and my message to you today

is that we must pay closer attention to the way that black people are treated.

The story of police brutality and killings of unarmed blacks

is not a story about black people.

It's a story about all of us,

about racial progress and the stubborn durability of American racism.

It's about if we will stop making the mistakes of our past

and confront our own complicity in this great American lie

that somehow black people are more dangerous than others.

And finally, it's about if we have the courage

to take a collective stand against racial injustice today.

This year, nearly half of my students

in my race and politics upper division course

participated in a walkout in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Halfway through my lecture,

I could hear the swelling crowd

of students, teachers and community members

in the Quad at the University of Washington.

I smiled to myself as I had a flashback to the conversation that I had with Kenny,

now five years ago.

He was right, of course.

My books and my silence will not save these students,

but their activism,

their courage in challenging the status quo, and this movement

just might.

Thanks.

(Applause)