Transcript: I have often been grateful to my friend Donna Davis. Years and years ago, just soon after I had discovered racism–and I was very much like Columbus, I was going to shove it down everybody's throat–I was helping to organize a training in New Orleans. It was going to be for some churches that were black and white churches coming together to do this Undoing Racism Workshop. And one day, an African-American colleague of mine said to me, “Margery, are you sure you want to do this?” and I said, “Absolutely! This is the work. We must get together, we must do this.” And she said to me, she said, “You know Margery, when it comes to race we have a conspiracy of courtesy. We're very polite, we are very careful, but we don't have an honest relationship. And the People's Institute's work is trying to help us develop honest relationships, and I'm not sure we're ready for that.” I've worked on that ever since–this conspiracy of courtesy–which is the way we usually have relationships across racial lines.

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