David Mura Transcript

 SPEAKERS

David Mura, Omkari Williams

Omkari Williams  00:20

Hello and welcome to Stepping Into Truth, the podcast where we have conversations on social justice and how we all get free. I'm your host Omkari Williams, and I'm very happy that you're here with me today. My guest today, David Mura has written numerous books. His most recent book is the acclaimed The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives. A third generation Japanese American, Mura has written two memoirs, Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei, which was listed in the New York Times notable books of the year, and, Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality, and Identity. In addition to teaching at various universities, Mura has served as director of training for the innocent classroom, a program designed by writer and educator Alexs Pate, to train K - 12 teachers to improve their relationships with students of color. And it is my great pleasure to welcome David to the podcast. Hi, David, how are you?

David Mura  01:26

Good, good. Thank you for having me on your show,

Omkari Williams  01:28

Oh, I'm really pleased that you're here. Your book is beautiful and important. And I just feel like people need to start exploring the concepts that you are discussing. Let's start there. You start your book off by saying that whiteness teaches us how to think about race. And I don't think that most of us realize that this is something that we are actually taught. So can we start with the fact that we're taught to think about race in specific ways that are so under the surface, we don't even notice them most of the time.

David Mura  02:10

In my book, I talk about the origins of the categories of whiteness, and Blackness. And we don't really think about those origins. But when we think about them, some of the things become very obvious. For instance, in the School of Afropessimism, when the categories were originated, whiteness was a symbol of being human. And therefore, you could be a citizen of a nation. Blackness was signified non human. So Black people could not become part of a nation. Therefore, if you were white, violence could not be done upon you unless you had broken the law or war was declared. Whereas violence could be done to the Black body at any time. And it didn't need any sort of legal justification. White people were entitled to the rights to care for and raise their children. Black people were not allowed that right. So we can see how these categories still structure contemporary discussions about race. I mean, obviously, the idea that we're going to restrict to gerrymandering the Black to have a less effect upon who is elected. That's part of that idea that Blackness cannot be a citizen or is a secondary citizen. Obviously, in any of the police encounters witnessed over years and years and years. violence can be done to the Black body without any justification is obvious to anybody who has eyes, right. And who's not trying to gaslight us.

David Mura  03:52

But I think a deeper manifestation of whiteness is an ideology. It's a set of beliefs, ideas, rules and practices. And these beliefs, ideas, rules and practices aren't genetically inherited to white people. But they were developed in order to establish white supremacy and maintain white supremacy. And so one of the beliefs or rules about this is that white knowledge is always valid, objective true and official. White knowledge is always valid, objective, true and official and Black knowledge is always invalid, subjective, false or suspicious, and unofficial, unless whiteness decrease its official. Now, when we think about that, that rule is everywhere. It's there, obviously, in accounts of what happens between Black citizens and the police.

Omkari Williams  04:51

Yes.

David Mura  04:52

But it's also there when a Black patient is in a waiting room, telling somebody, a medical technician or the doctor about their level of pain. It's there in school when somebody is saying this happened and who you believe the white student or the Black student. This is always going on and we see manifestations of this and it has become so natural that there's part of us that may object to it. But part of us don't realize how deeply this rule is ingrained. For instance, you take Governor DeSantis, there's all this stuff about anti-woke, which is just nonsense and gaslighting. And there was a woman a few weeks ago who had written an anti-woke book. And when she was asked us to define wokeness, she couldn't define it. And then that video went viral. Now, DeSantis is a little smarter. They define wokeness as the belief that there is systemic injustice in the United States. So according to the DeSantis administration, you can't even discuss the question about whether there is systemic injustice and therefore, systemic racial injustice in the United States. And who establishes that rule? It is white people establish that rule. It's not people of color who would establish that role. And when he takes the African American AP studies course and declares that it lacks educational value, what he is saying is, he's not an African American scholar, he's not an African American writer. But he's saying, I, as a white person can evaluate this, even though I don't have a PhD in African American Studies. Even though I don't have an MFA as an African American creative writer, I can still deem this uneducational.

Omkari Williams  06:45

Yeah.

David Mura  06:46

And then the other thing, is he what he's saying is, these Black scholars and writers are not qualified to construct an AP History course, and Cultural Studies course. Now, if you go back to slavery, what did the slave owners do when the Africans came? They said, you can't teach your language, you can't teach your history, you can't teach your culture. So DeSantis is in the tradition of the slave owner, forbidding Black people from educating themselves about themselves. But we don't see that link.

Omkari Williams  07:21

I think that that is a really important point. And it's a point you make consistently through the book, is that one of the hardest parts of reckoning with and moving out of a white supremacy mindset is that in order to do this, it's going to require white Americans to construct a new story about themselves both past and present. And when you reference DeSantis, and his trying to ban AP African American history courses, the thing that struck me there was how much fear there must be underlying that decision, not only hubris, but fear of having the actual truth of our history of this country taught. And I wonder how you think we start to engage with that aspect of this really thorny problem?

David Mura  08:24

Well, this problem takes place on many different levels in trying to address it. Let me just start with the sort of obvious thing. For instance, now you have groups like Moms for Liberty wanting to ban books like this story of Ruby Bridges.

Omkari Williams  08:39

Yes.

David Mura  08:40

So Ruby Bridges was a six year old black girl who desegregated a New Orleans school in 1960. And she had to pass through a crowd of jeering, insulting, spitting white people with signs to get to the school. Now Moms were Liberty says, well, this is going to make our children feel bad. This is going to make them feel bad about being white. This is going to teach that they're racist. My children are half Japanese American, half white American, European American, and they read the book, and they were inspired by Ruby Bridges. They were inspired by her courage, her fight for social justice. So what these Moms for Liberty are they're saying is our children can't possibly identify with Ruby Bridges and her struggle. Or they are afraid that their children will identify with Ruby Bridges, identify with her struggle, because below a certain age, kids don't have racism. They have to be taught racism, right?

Omkari Williams  09:42

Yes.

David Mura  09:43

And if you get them young enough, and you teach them the stories, they understand there's another way of looking at the world, which is not racist, even though the adults around me are teaching me to be racist, right?

Omkari Williams  09:56

Yes.

David Mura  09:57

But the other thing is, that if you think about the Moms for Liberty who are like, oh our white children are so fragile. But if they were concerned about the fragility of children, they would be concerned that every single African American parent, must tell their child of police brutality, police murders in order to protect their children when they encounter the police. But of course, they're not concerned with the fragility of Black children, or the fact that Black children have to be exposed to these narratives in order to survive in this society. Now, how do you change these people? It's a very difficult thing. And what I will say is, I always begin my talks by saying, I don't believe you change people through guilt and shame. Now, sometimes in discussions of race, more generally, guilt and shame do come up. But I don't think they're useful. And I think we change people through love and knowledge.

And asking people to be humble, because no one knows enough about race. No matter if you're a person of color, you don't necessarily know enough about native and Indigenous Americans that I wouldn't somehow make a mistake or say something stupid. And then you do that. And then you have to just be humble and say, Okay, I made a mistake or a pocket my ignorance was exposed, and I need to work through to remedy that. Yes. And so it's a spiritual task.

And what is so hard, I think, at this moment, is that you have this rise of white Christian nationalism. And it would be easier if the emphasis was on Christian, but it's not, the emphasis is on white nationalism. And so the Good Samaritan is the white man who choked Jordan Neely on a New York subway. Which is entirely the opposite of the parable of the Good Samaritan, who helps a man who's been beaten and left by the side of the road, not kills him, and brings the man to his house and feeds him. So, so twisted, even the meaning of Christianity, that it's bent itself, contorted itself, all sorts of ways to accommodate whiteness. Like Russell Moore, who edits an evangelical newsletter has said that he's had pastors come up to him, and tell him when they preached the Sermon on the Mount, you know, blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit, blessed are the meek, right? members of his congregation come up to him and say, Where did you get those liberal talking points?

Omkari Williams  12:42

No, are you kidding me?

David Mura  12:45

Part of it, I think, you know, we have to go back to these values that America purports to believe. Right? And, you know, I'm not a practicing Christian, but, you know, remind people as Christians what the values are. What the parable of the Good Samaritan actually says,

Omkari Williams  13:04

I'm so stunned by that, that there is literally pushback against one of the central tenets of Christianity, which is to be kind to those in need, to extend oneself to those in need. We've, as a society have gotten a long way off track. I will say, I do actually think there is one use for shame. I agree with you that I don't think shame or guilt are good tools for changing people. I think shame is a good internal tool. When we experience shame for something we did it can move us to be better. We can say, you know, I'm ashamed of myself for that, that comment really doesn't reflect who I aspire to be. I'm going to do better.

But beyond that, I think that we've gotten so focused on external conversation, rather than sort of an internal inquiry into these things that it's very easy for us to get into our silos and just be stuck. And feel like, well, I consider myself liberal, I consider myself woke so I don't have work to do. Or on the other end of the spectrum, woke is terrible and it's trying to destroy our country so I'm just going to pay no attention to it. And instead of meeting, I'm not going to say in the middle because I don't really think that that's the place we should be meeting. But it's on the way there and finding the places where we can have conversations about these really challenging subjects without it devolving into a screaming match or just people not being willing to engage at all because that feels like where we are and that place feels very scary to me.

David Mura  15:02

I completely agree with you with what the example that you said about your thinking like, you know, I feel ashamed of what I've done. But what I am talking about is the way that shame can work where people think you're saying, I'm a bad person.

Omkari Williams  15:20

Yeah, that's not helpful.

David Mura  15:22

In the choices between, I'm a bad person or I'm not gonna listen to you. Almost everybody will choose, I'm not gonna listen to you.

Omkari Williams  15:31

Yeah. Yeah.

David Mura  15:32

And so I want to remove it from the personal. I'm gonna leave it up to you to think about your own individual conscience. Because I don't know you. I don't know who you are. But what I do know is there is systemic racism in America. There are systemic injustices. And the explanations that there are only a few bad apples is entirely nonsense and gaslighting. I mean, you don't get the health disparities, you don't get the economic disparities, the educational disparities, the disparities in our justice system, without something that's systemic.

Omkari Williams  16:15

Let, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think another word for systemic, really could be intentional here, right? It's not just that it's in the system, it is intentionally in our system, these injustices, they are built into the system. And it was done with intention. It was done sneakily. But it was done intentionally.

 David Mura  16:40

Yes, absolutely. And the historian of the reconstruction, David Blight has said, hypocrisy is a tool of racism. And when I talk about these rules, for instance, of ideas and beliefs, which compose whiteness, another one is our definition of racism. So the definition of racism is always you have to discriminate or insult or take a violent action towards a person of a different race. But it's not only that, you have to vow that you are doing this for racist reasons. And so you can act in a racist or biased manner but as long as you come up with another reason for your actions, yes, right. it can never be called racism. Now, this is a definition, I think that most people of color would not assent to, because it makes racism impossible to prove, right? Because even the KKK will not say, like, David Duke will say, I'm not a racist, you know. yes.

David Mura  17:12

And so whatever people do, you know, they can restrict people's voting rights, a policeman can kill an unarmed Black person and still say, Well, the reason why he did it was not racist. Now, what we know is there is an explicit unconscious, racial bias, where people actively believe racist, but most of the time, people will not say that that's what they believe in public. They may say it in private, to their friends who agree with them. So that's explicit or conscious racial bias.

But we also know there is an implicit or unconscious racial bias, where someone may actively think, you know, I want to treat everybody equal. But in practice, they don't. You know, there's a famous test, Harvard's test where you can test yourself for this. And there's things like, you're shown pictures of a child with an object in their hand. And people with implicit racial bias will see that object is the gun in the Black child's hand more likely than a white child's hand. Or it's not that people won't be able to associate positive attributes to a Black face to the white face. But it takes just a fraction longer for them to do so. And I first read this, about this in Malcolm Gladwell. And he said, I showed implicit bias, and my mother is Black. And we've seen this, you know, Black cops and Black teachers. So, there's this whole implicit bias, and how does implicit bias happen? We don't really understand how it's created by stereotypes by unconscious rules, like white knowledge is always superior to Black knowledge. And the thing that always gets me about this about whiteness, is that every single point in our history, the majority of white people were wrong about racial issues, and the majority of Black people were right. And yet, white Americans never turned a Black American said, we got it wrong every single time in our history, whether it was slavery, whether it's we reconstruction, Jim Crow, the civil rights laws, maybe we should listen to you.

 Omkari Williams  20:06

I think that across the board, the minority knows more about the majority than vice versa, because it's a matter of survival.

David Mura  20:16

Yeah.

Omkari Williams  20:17

Women know more about men, Black people know more about white people, and you can just go down the list. We have to, we wouldn't be able to get through our daily lives, if we weren't able to navigate all of the particular rules that are set up in those structures. And I think it's a really important thing for people to recognize is how much more the minority understands about the majority than vice versa. Because then you can start to inquire about why that is the case. And start to inquire about what the majority might want to do to remedy this fact. And until then, we just keep going and down the path we're going. And the problem is there's very little incentive for the majority, to change their behavior. And now, as the dynamics are starting to shift as the population demographic is shifting, and white people are starting to feel a particular pressure, because they're not going to be in the majority in what 20 years from now, less than 20 years from now. This tension that we're seeing, and the actions of people like Ron DeSantis, are becoming more overt, and more frequent as they try to hang on to these vestiges of power with all they've got.

David Mura  21:51

Yes, one of the theses is that every moment in American history, where there has been ostensible legal progress towards racial equality, there has been a concerted effort by the white population, by persons of the white population, to create a backlash. To regress society back to before these legal remedies to discrimination and hate were enacted. So you see this in reconstruction and the construction of Jim Crow. You see this after the passage of the Civil Rights laws, where people created private school systems and religious schools. And today, many of the cities in the south are just as racially segregated, or more so than they were in 1956.

And so right now, what you have, in certain ways, is the echoes of reconstruction. Because what the white population realized, in the South after the Civil War, is that if Black people can vote and were allowed to vote, they're gonna elect representatives, for themselves, who represent the views of equality, the views of freedom and democracy. And that is antithetical because the belief somehow that the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th ,14th ,and 15th amendments were passed, suddenly all the people in the South went, Oh, yeah, Black people are equal, let's make them citizens. I don't believe in slavery anymore. That's just nonsense. It didn't change the hearts and minds of white Southerners.

And they were suddenly terrified, right? Because Black people could vote. And so it's like, how do we take away the citizenship? They made a very concentrated effort, which took place, not only on the legal front, right? So you had the enactment of say Black Codes, right? When the laws were Black people, if they were not literally, actually working for a white person they could be arrested, and not just by police, by anyone. Well, that explains the existence of Karen's.

Omkari Williams  24:04

Yes, it does.

David Mura  24:05

White Karens, right, who feel authorized to call the police on Black people, but it also took place on things like states rights. And what they did is they tried to shrink the public sphere legally, and expand the private sphere. So anything that happened in the private sphere, if it was hatred, was discrimination wasn't covered by the legal remedies enacted by the amendments. And of course after the Black Codes as Douglas Blackmon has shown in his book, Slavery by Another Name, here you add 100,000 Black people who are under slave labor. Right. So the south reinstituted so the white people freaking out now, like we believe in democracy as long as we're the majority. If we're not in the majority, we don't believe in democracy anymore. Right, that's what happened in the South after reconstruction. And so when people say the past is all the way in the past, no, it's not. It's echoed constantly in the present.

Omkari Williams  25:12

And I think that one of the things that's important to understand about that is that those echoes aren't just amongst people who are racist, whether they know it or not. It's also amongst people who seem to be on the surface of it, quite liberal and very profoundly in support of equality and justice. And when I was reading your book, you use the an example in there of the movie, Amistad, Steven Spielberg's film. And you talk about how that movie starts. And then you bring in an interpretation of that opening scene as written by a Black man, rather than the white writers who wrote the film Amistad. And that struck me so powerfully, because it's literally about how we tell stories and the profound implications of the differing points of view on how stories are seen and received by audiences. Can you speak briefly about that whole thing,

David Mura  26:23

So I am really good friends with Alexs Pate, who's a novelist and an educator, and he has created this wonderful classroom program, educational program, which I want to mention, people should look it up. It's called The Innocent Classroom, which is designed to train K-12 teachers to improve their relationships with students of color. And I've worked as director of training in that program, and it's a terrific program. But Alexs is a novelist and so he was hired by DreamWorks to create the novelization of the film script Amistad. Now in the film, you see the opening scenes, the Africans, and they're in chains. But as they're speaking, there's no subtitles. So you can't understand what they're saying. Right?

Omkari Williams  27:11

 Because they're speaking in their own languages.

David Mura  27:13

Yeah, super easily could have had subtitles under. So they're indecipherable, right? And then their first act is an act of violence, and they kill the Spanish sailors and take over this this ship. So you don't know if these are prisoners, they could have committed a crime. And their first act of violence is an act of violence against white people. You don't see the violence that made them slaves, right? You don't see the violence that put them in chains in the ship, all you see is the violence that they enact.

Now, my friend, Alexs had to create the novelization of the film script, he had to use everything from the film. But he looked at that opening sentence says, I can't start my novel here. And of course, if you remember the film, the film is the Africans, instead of sailing them back to Africa, they sail to the United States, where they have to have a trial to decide whether they are free men or slaves. And the young white lawyer played by Matthew McConaughey, tries to enlist the John Quincy Adams, the seventh president, to help them with arguing the case.

So the movie is seen mostly through the viewpoint of the young Matthew McConaughey character and John Quincy Adams. So Alexs looked at that and goes, No, I can't do that either. So he starts a novel in Africa. And Cinque is sleeping next to his wife and child. So he has a family. He has a village, he has a culture, and he's not indecipherable. Because, contrary to the movie, Alexs decided to tell the story through the consciousness of Cinque, his thoughts and feelings. He's not indecipherable. And he walks out. And he's sort of uneasy. And a little later, a lion comes and checks the village, and he kills the lion. So his first act of violence is an act saving his family. So obviously, a different set of actions. He's understandable. It's told from his point of view. But even more than that, remember, in The Souls of Black Folks, DuBois said, What does it mean to be a problem? Well, in Africa, Cinque's Blackness is not a problem. It's not a question. It's not a question of whiteness versus Blackness, there is no whiteness. And he doesn't have to go to white people to say, Am I free? Or am I a slave? So he starts it outside the ontology, the categories of whiteness and Blackness. And so it's an a completely different, not only a legal realm, but racial category realm. And I don't believe Spielberg is a conscious racist. He's adopted to Black kids. He's the Jewish liberal. A director, I think he meant well with his film. But he couldn't think himself out of whiteness. Right? You know, Alexs created an African American novel out of a white film script.

Omkari Williams  30:13

Yes. And as you say, in your book, Blackness doesn't exist. It has no inherent meaning outside of the context of whiteness. If you take whiteness away, then Blackness doesn't mean anything. And it's really important, I think, for people to understand that because, you know, when I read a book, and the author describes a character and mentions their race, they're never white, ever. They are either Black or Asian, or Indigenous or something not white. Because whiteness is the default.

 David Mura  30:59

Yes. So if I read a passage that says Bill and Bridget were arguing in the kitchen, they lived on the Upper West Side of New York, their apartment looked down on the river, and then it goes up, we're gonna assume, that Bill and Bridget are white, right. But if I'm writing, commentary, we're arguing in the kitchen, the Las Vegas, you can see out the patio window, the fifth green of the 11th hole in their subdivision. Right. I somehow have to tell the reader that not only are my parents Japanese American, right, but they're second generation Japanese American, that as children, they were imprisoned by the United States government, and taken from their homes and kept behind barbed wire fences, under rifle towers, guards, because you're not going to understand who my parents are, unless you understand it.

So the white author's going, whiteness is a universal default. Everything else is the exception. But not only that, Bill, and Bridget being white is not important to the way they think about themselves. It's not important to their life experiences, to which any reader of color would go, nonsense. You know, I'm a Japanese American, I read Bill and Bridget, they're white, they're a white couple, I don't see them as universal, you know. And I don't think that their being white is unimportant to the way they conceive about themselves, or their life experiences, just as by being Japanese American, and a third generation Japanese American shapes, how I think about myself, how people interact with me what my life experiences have been. Yes. And so the idea that Bill and Bridget are raceless somehow, is implied in the technique of never having to identify your characters and understanding that if you don't draw your characters racially, everybody will assume they're white. It's a position to a conservative racial position. Even though almost all American literary authors, white American literature authors consider themselves progressive liberals.

Omkari Williams  33:05

Yes. I think that this is a really important point. And I wish we had more time, but I want to talk with you about the work that you are actually doing that you just mentioned with the innocent classroom. And I actually think that this is sort of a good segue into it. Because if we can teach children to see things differently, and to see the the breadth of different people's experiences, that's really important. And if we can have educators who represent different experiences and can talk to the scope of experiences, that's really important. So would you talk a bit about The Innocent Classroom and what that is?

David Mura  33:55

We asked the teachers, what does American society tell you about children of color? And then sometimes we have to prod them to be honest, but then we get things like angry, gang members, unwed mothers, dropouts, violent, sassy, illegal, terrorist, ugly, and we keep going until we get a list of 40 to 50 things and it's just horrifying. So that even things that might seem good, like athletic in this list don't really seem so good. And we say if you know this list, the children know this and some of you are looking through the children through the lens of this list.

But we say these are children. All these stereotypes are like guilts, which unearned guilt that can infect their minds in the way that they think about themselves because some children begin to look at it. And they go, this is how American society sees me, I don't have any other choices. Some kids almost look at that list as fate, I don't have any choice. And we say, these are children, they should be regarded as an innocent, you have to create this classroom where none of these stereotypes affect them, where they are seen as individuals first. And we say, in order to do this, just a simple tool, we say you have to find the good.

And the good we define not as good/bad, but the way Aristotle defined it as that for which all things are done. So we'll give the teachers a list of things like smart, respected, leader, belonging, normal, safe, stable, and we say you find the thing that that child really craves, needs, is motivated by and if you begin reinforcing that, the child will, because many children think you look at them through this list, they're not going to trust you. Because you have you have to earn that trust. And teachers don't really think that they have to do that. But that's the the effect of racism in this society. But to do this, you have to know the child individually. So if the child has moved eight times in two years, their good might be stability. But in order to understand that you have to know enough about the child or the child is, has their head on the desk, Monday morning. And you don't know that their mother works two jobs. And so they're the ones who cook for their siblings, dinner, put them to bed did the cleaning. And of course, they're tired on Monday morning. And it's not that they're not interested in school.

David Mura  36:45

It's very interesting, don't recommend that teachers do this but one fifth grade teacher in the school I was working with and the school was about 95%, Black asked the students, his fifth grade class, what does American society think of children of color? And he got the same list as the teachers. And then these are fifth graders. They discussed the list for 45 minutes on guided by the teacher. And then one of the kids said, Well, what's the antidote to this list? And another kid said, Isn't it education? And another kid said, Yeah, but if we're screwing around, aren't we screwing around the antidote?

David Mura  37:24

Cool, So these kids, they understand my book, the story is whiteness tells itself begins with the police murder of Philando Castile which took place four years before George Floyd was murdered. And that murder took place maybe three miles from my house, and George Floyd was murdered four miles from my house. So all of this is very close to me. And after George Floyd was murdered, I have an essay on it at the end of my book, and a teacher from the north side, which is mainly Black in Minneapolis, a white teacher said she had asked her seventh grade class to write an essay on, My America. And she said 100% of them wrote about police harassment.

Omkari Williams  38:12

Wow.

David Mura  38:13

These are seventh graders. They're bright. They're curious. They're energetic, they're intelligent. And this is their America. And so when people say, well don't teach critical race theory, I mean, America is teaching these kids critical race theory, because they have to live with the effects of racism. And when you gaslight them and tell them that racism doesn't exist, it doesn't help Black students, and it doesn't help white students.

Omkari Williams  38:42

No, it helps no one. I wish we had more time, but we don't. So I'm going to ask if you would give the listeners three simple things that they can do, to start to move themselves in the direction of engaging with the concepts we've been talking about more directly.

David Mura  39:05

So none of us knows enough. We all have pockets of ignorance, and we have to keep learning. So it is simply just books, lectures, activities, arts activities, to learn about people, both within your community and outside your community. And secondly, if your social life or your work life is racially or ethnically homogenous, you need to start diversifying and making conscious moves to diversify. And if you're a white person and you have no Black friends or friends of color, then you have to ask, why is that? How can I change my life so that's so. And of course, you think of things like the most segregated hour in America is church hour on Sunday morning, maybe go to a different church. Then once you understand the way racism works, you have to begin to work against it, and actively work and often time times you'll know you're working against it when people get angry.

And so, part of this entails a change in identity. And Helen Kubler Ross in, On Death and Dying, said the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, grief and acceptance. So with racism, it's there's no racism. It's Ron DeSantis, there is no systemic injustice in America. Then it's anger. Why are you bringing this up? We had a perfectly fine school, state, institution, business until you started bringing up these charges of racism. It's your fault that we're having these problems. Then it's bargaining, okay. There may be racism, but it's just a few bad apples. Chris Rock said, would you want to fly in an airline that had a few bad apples for pilots? Would you want to be operated on in a surgery department that had a few bad apples for surgeons? Of course. No, it is systemic. And so you have to accept. And then it's grief, then sometimes it's sadness for what people of color have gone through. Sometimes it's sadness, and shame about being white.

 David Mura  41:07

But I don't think you should spend a lot of time going, am I a bad person or not? That's not the question. The question is, do you accept the existence of a systemic racism in America. And once you accept that existence, you stop resisting or spending all this energy resisting. But in order to do that, you have to change how you think about yourself. And Baldwin said, the question of identity is a question inducing the most profound panic. A panic is a terror, is primary, is the nightmare of the mortal thoughts. So in other words, to change your identity is as scary to people as contemplating, I'm gonna die, I'm mortal. But he says, and there's a long, eloquent passage, which I won't quote here, but it's essentially we have to be humble. And it's only the humility, right, that allows us to go, maybe we were wrong. Maybe the way we thought about ourselves is incorrect. Maybe we didn't know everything, and maybe our identity, the way we've thought about isn't who we are. And you actually see this in say, white supremacist or white nationalists, who've undergone a transformation, right? They understand like this identity, it was totally wrong, it harmed me. It made my soul sick. And I didn't want that sickness anymore. I didn't want that hate anymore. And they're relieved. But you have to go through this terror, how will I know who I am. If I abandon the way I've been thinking, if I abandon my identity, and so it's, it really is a spiritual leap. And this is why I want to talk about a lesson at this level at a political level. But on a personal spiritual level.

Omkari Williams  42:59

I think that's really important. Because ultimately, political change comes out of a change in our own belief systems, our changing our acceptance of what we find to be the way things should be. You know, when we say, You know what, I've changed my mind, this is no longer acceptable to me. And I'm going to petition to have laws instituted that uphold true equality, not these things that sort of slide over and make you think, oh, that's better. But the underlying reality is very different. So I appreciate your saying that, because I do believe that the first place we start is close in. And we start with healing our own understanding, and then moving forward from there. Well, this has been really wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and just the generosity of spirit in your book, because these are hard things to come to terms with. But you create an environment that makes it possible for us to enter into this and feel like yes, okay, mistakes have been made, mistakes are still being made. We all have work to do. And it's possible, and I really appreciate that.

David Mura  44:24

Well, thank you. And thank you for having me. And thank you for doing this program, which I know is spreading the word and light to people.

Omkari Williams  44:32

Oh, thank you so much for saying that. That means a lot to me. Again, thank you, David. And we will, I hope, cross paths at some point again in the future.

David Mura  44:43

Okay, great.

Omkari Williams  44:45

Story is how we humans make sense of the world. The stories we tell ourselves determine the actions we take how we move through the world and how we engage with others. examining those stories requires that we pay attention in ways we often don't think about that we ask ourselves hard questions and don't rush towards easy answers. David's beautiful book gives us a way into meaningful exploration of the stories that we tell, and ways to begin to write stories that create the space to become the people and the country we say we want to be. Thank you so much for listening. As I say, every time change begins with story, so keep sharing yours. I'll be back with another episode of Stepping Into Truth very soon.