Transcript: We have a way of speaking in this country that ill-defines people. Like, we'll say men do this, men are in charge of that, men this, men that. But men of color are not in charge of anything in this country. Never have been. So to include them in the category of privileged by virtue of their gender is to not understand history. That doesn't mean that men of color do not internalize the value system of white male dominated culture, but you cannot say that white men and men of color walk the same streets in this nation. Men of color are hunted in the United States, always have been. At the beginning, if you were indigenous, you were hunted. If you were a runaway African who was enslaved, you were hunted. In the aftermath of the Civil War, states began to pass Black Codes. And you were hunted in the aftermath of World War I when you came back having died for your country as a man of color. You were hunted, and some were hung in their uniforms. 

So the way in which this society kept their racial order was often through the recruitment of working class white men. For generations, those of us who emerged from a working class culture as white men were taught to not only fear men of color–whether it was in the westward movement of white people on what we call “Indian country,” or whether it was tracking down a runaway African–we were taught to fear, but we were also taught to defend. 

You see that today in the interaction between the police departments of the nation and Black men in particular, and Latino men who are Black. It'll always be the same MO: an individual or a group of white police will shoot. It just happened in New Orleans, it happens every day in this nation somewhere. The perpetrator is almost always white, the victim is almost always Black. The police chief and the City will always say it was a unique set of circumstances, the community will always come up with ways to say it wasn't the set of circumstances–he was going for his wallet, he belonged there, he was a police officer himself. If you have been acculturated as a white working class person–I'm not talking about your mother and daddy, I'm talking about a society, generation after generation–then your first reaction is, I fear you. I might not admit it, but I have been trained to see certain people as a threat.

See, if you're going to teach for a test in this country, ask white people to understand racism. Ask us questions about it. You know, it's amazing… I work with young people and I ask them all sorts of obscure questions. Now, 24 out of 25, if you took the test as an individual, might fail. But somebody knew the answer. So by the time I got to eight or nine questions, they were doing well. People know. It's just we don't necessarily ask them what they know. Now, you ask white people, what do you know about the lives of others? Many of us can't say, and we get defensive when asked because it's not the norm.