The Conversation Remix

WOMAN: ♪ Mama, Mama, can't you see?

♪ CROWD: ♪ Mama, Mama, can't you see?

♪ PETE NELSON: If you really want to be engaged in issues of racism and anti-racism, sometimes it's gonna be really uncomfortable.

WOMAN: Would you describe yourself as anti-racist?

- (inhales, exhales deeply) TINA MCDUFFIE: How do you talk about race?

MONIFA BANDELE: Sometimes I find myself just crying at night not knowing what to say or how to prepare them.

- Police!

Search warrant!

Open the door!

MCDUFFIE: In the years since the names Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and George Floyd joined the national consciousness on race... WOMAN: White silence is violence!

MCDUFFIE: ...how has your conversation changed?

I would have, at one point in my life, argued that I didn't have privilege.

I'd begun to realize... (laughing): ...how ignorant that was.

BOY (on video): Here comes Malik!

MALIK: I'm honestly surrounding myself with Black people.

It goes a long way to know that someone is feeling the exact same way that you're feeling.

MCDUFFIE: Three short films, three conversations.

NICOLE THOMPSON-ADAMS: I wish I'd shored her up sooner.

We did everything to shore my son up as early as possible.

I didn't recognize that she was getting lost.

MCDUFFIE: "For Our Girls," a love letter to Black daughters.

"Good White People," a dare to ask yourself the hard questions.

And "Learning to Breathe," a testament to growth and change.

MYLES: When I was younger, I kind of had that, that thought in my head that, "Oh, this is not my fight, this is not my battle," but it is.

♪ Black people are inherently activist.

You know, our existence is radical.

JOANN: I really want to hear more.

I want to hear both sides.

And I'm, I still am learning.

But I'm understanding that racism is a tool.

MCDUFFIE: "The Conversation Remix" on Local U.S.A. ♪ (waves crashing) ♪ THOMPSON-ADAMS: It's almost like grief.

You know, it's that tsunami thing that comes rushing over you and then pulls back out like it wasn't there at all.

And trying to deal with one's daughter, and her race, and her experience... (sighs): I, I found challenging.

♪ ♪ I think I paid a lot more attention to my son and his sense of self than I did to her earlier.

I didn't recognize that she was getting lost.

Because she was articulate and smart, I left a lot out.

I wish I'd shored her up sooner.

We did everything to shore my son up as early as possible.

Make sure he got to the basketball so he could play with all the brown boys, make sure he did this, make sure he did that.

You know, put him in rites of passage.

We didn't do that for her.

We, we thought she was fine.

You know, in the media, they tell you your boy is endangered.

You feel like you're on safari and your son is a young lion, and there's a poacher that is going to shoot and kill him.

Even though you might've experienced something, you don't take the same precaution with the daughter.

(children shouting, dog barking) (children shouting expletives) GIRL: We were riding down this block, and it, and these white people started saying, "Get out of here, (bleep)."

You know, "Get out of my neighborhood.

Don't come to this neighborhood."

Then they start punching, hitting on her.

BANDELE: Throughout our existence, in school, in the media, you know, we're constantly getting hit with these images of being hyper-sexualized, and savage, uncivilized.

MAN: Do you forgive them?

- No.

BANDELE: It's a way of beating us down in very much the same way we may get beat down in the street by the police or by, or by a racist mob.

♪ - Police!

Search warrant!

Open the door!

BANDELE: There's this whole confluence of violence that comes at us that goes unnoticed by the media, and goes unnoticed by other people, because it's not the way they typically see a violent attack.

MAN: Where you from, Mama?

(people talking indistinctly) ♪ I find it difficult to figure out what's acceptable in the eyes of society for me to wear or how, how my body is viewed, if I can walk down the street without being catcalled all the time.

Because I just, I just want to go home.

I don't see why we have to have a full conversation about my body, and it's being, like, picked at by every guy on the corner of the street.

I remember, as a seven-year, or eight-year-old, my then-stepmother, she was, like, "You have to stay in the kitchen and watch me cook "and clean and do all this.

"But your brothers, because they're men, don't have to do that," and I was, like, "Oh, that's awful-- what are you talking about?

I don't want to do this."

And she was, like, "It's because you're a woman.

"And especially because you're a Black woman, "the only way anyone will love you is if you can at least cook or clean."

It's just so deep, this pain, that we can't just settle.

It's not that I want stasis, but sometimes around these issues, like, I actually do, because it's a lot to always be deconstructing and working with.

♪ WOMAN: ♪ J-K-L-M-N-O-P Winner!

(laughing) (girl shouts playfully) BANDELE: I grew up where it did take a village to raise a child.

There was nothing I could go out my door and do that my mother would not find out about.

♪ I am a proud helicopter mom.

My husband jokingly calls me Black Hawk Down, right?

Because I want to know everything that's happening, what's been said, how they're processing what a teacher has said to them, because these things eat away at them in ways that they don't know as children.

♪ (crowd talking in background) This constant conundrum that we're in as mothers, as we go through life and we face these things and sometimes we let it roll off our backs, sometimes we challenge it.

We figure out these nuanced ways of moving.

But now here are our children, our girls-- you know, they're babies.

Sometimes I find myself just crying at night not knowing what to say or how to prepare them.

We want to build them up strong, but we also want to protect them at the same time.

(crowd cheering) When it's your daughter, you know, you, um...

There's a certain amount of pride in her growth and when she starts to mature and blossom.

You know, "Look at her, look at that, ooh..." Like a man when he sees his son.

(in low voice): "Look at his muscles."

When you see your daughter and she's decided to do her hair... And to think that no one appreciated it.

I'm so ugly.

(woman gasps) - (wailing) WOMAN: Baby girl!

WOMAN: So, many, many years, we were told that only white people were beautiful.

WOMAN: You're not going to cry!

You are a beautiful little girl and you are pretty!

You are the prettiest girl in your class.

It's like a new awareness among Black people that their own natural appearance is, physical appearance is beautiful.

♪ THOMPSON-ADAMS: When you're little, or even as a teenager, you need to be admired.

She went to an all-white school and kept telling me, "Oh, so-and-so is so beautiful, so-and-so is so beautiful."

And I had to constantly say to her, "Oh, but you're very beautiful," you know.

"You're very beautiful."

And she would hide it from me that she felt insecure, because, maybe because I was so hyper-secure, trying to show her how secure I was as a Black woman.

I'm really worried that she, no one sees her.

If I was, like, this smart young Black girl, where did I fit in this classroom?

Then I would come home and my mom would be, like, "Who do you think you are?"

There's a groundedness that happens when you are seen, when you're heard, when you're loved.

There are very few things that we need to really exist, you know, and have happiness.

And one of them is to be seen and to be heard and acknowledged.

GROUP: ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪ Happy birthday, dear Sammy ♪ Happy birthday... SAYEEDA MORENO: When I get upset, I think... (gasps): "Am I going to be like my mom?"

That's, like, this overarching echo.

ZEMI MORENO-BILLINGSLEY: Yeah, but you can take from what she did that was bad and, like, do better than that, I feel like.

- Yeah.

MORENO-BILLINGSLEY (laughing): We're all a little crazy.

(both laugh) Like... MORENO: We all have stuff, I know.

(talking indistinctly) BANDELE: I hear myself saying the same things that my mother said.

I see myself doing the same things that my mother did.

I wonder, will my children and my grandchildren also have to conduct their parenting the same way?

And will their parenting still have to be drastically different than their white counterparts?

You have to allow them to explore their genius and build on what we've done, because whatever is coming next, we're not going to be the architects of that.

It's going to be our girls.

♪ WOMAN: ♪ Mama, Mama, can't you see CROWD: ♪ Mama, Mama, can't you see ♪ WOMAN: ♪ What the state has done to me?

♪ CROWD: ♪ What the state has done to me?

♪ WOMAN: ♪ They keep trying to shoot us down ♪ CROWD: ♪ They keep trying to shoot us down ♪ WOMAN: ♪ So now we're... BARACK OBAMA: We have seen tragedies like this too many times.

(mouse clicks) PROTESTERS: I can't breathe.

I can't breathe.

I can't breathe.

(mouse clicks) (mouse clicks) PROTESTERS: ...peace.

No justice, no peace.

No justice, no peace.

(mouse clicks) No justice, no peace.

Black lives matter!

Black lives matter!

Black lives matter!

REPORTER: Listen closely, you can hear the conversations going on in homes across America.

♪ ♪ HOWARD: Halloween is gonna really suck.

I mean, you know, you can't... WOMAN: Okay, so... (talking in background) I'd had the thought years ago, and it just came back to me, talking to Adam this morning.

Imagine staging a haunted house in the town of Adirondack.

(group exclaims) You could do a fundraiser... PETE: A family like ours sitting around the dinner table talking about racism, let's say, um, it doesn't go that far, you know?

That's not the kind of conversation you sustain around a table.

The Adirondacks are more than 90% white.

Diversity, inclusion, equity issues weren't even on people's radar for the most part.

- ...stuff you never forget.

AMY: When I met Pete, I think it was hard for my parents.

He started a whole lot of conversations, and too often, it's not convenient for us to have that conversation, so we don't.

Turning orange-- let's scare the populace.

- Not yet.

AMY: My dad was a Navy guy, so by the time I was two, we were ensconced in the southeast corner of Wisconsin, where I kind of grew up in the folk choir of the church.

It was a lot of just food and comfort and love, and it was great, but diversity was way down, and Wisconsin has issues.

HOWARD: Boot camp, we had more, more Blacks, and the white guys, they would find the things that were different, they would make jokes about it.

I didn't have the, the courage or, or whatever to really do anything, say anything about it, and it's embarrassing to me.

Sometimes I think about that, and I think I was such a jerk, but that's what I grew up with, that's what I knew, and that's the hard part, you know?

To have that legacy of embarrassment and timidity that, that I, I would like to think I don't possess as much of anymore.

(chuckles) I was born and pretty much raised in Madison, Wisconsin.

My parents never sat me down and talked to me about race until it was brought up.

I was playing football in fifth grade, and a guy called me a racial slur, you know, and I didn't even think of myself as anything, because, you know, I'm, I don't really look more Filipino than I do white, you know?

So it's just mixed bag.

But, you know, he called, he called me an Indian, you know?

And another word before that, which was mean.

But honestly, most things that happen with, with racism, with discrimination, are not spoken, they're acted out, and they are discreetly carried out.

PETE: Six years ago, I wrote a series of essays in a local publication.

I saw it as a critical issue to the future of the Adirondacks, and that got a conversation going.

While the conversation is good, we ought to do a little more.

So we've started the Adirondack Diversity Initiative to try to find other ways that we could help the park become more inclusive, more equitable, and, ultimately, more diverse.

WOMAN: Would you describe yourself as anti-racist?

- (breathes deeply) I don't know about a definition.

I mean, I'm against it.

I'm, I would fight against racism.

Um... (breathes deeply) I'm just not as active an example of that as I aim to be.

I'm purposefully going out and reading what I can about race and history, and getting books out of the library about what it is to be a Black person in, in America, because I've just been able to go around living my life and I haven't had to think about it.

And I would have at one point in my life argued that I didn't have privilege.

I came from a lower-middle-class family.

And it's only over the years that I've begun to realize... (laughing): ...how ignorant that was.

That even, even in my, what I thought were, were hard times, I never doubted that I could make my life be whatever it was that I want it to be.

PROTESTERS (chanting): Black lives matter!

Black lives matter!

Black lives matter!

PETE: After George Floyd and the sweeping protests in the nation, Keene held its own.

PROTESTERS: I can't breathe!

I can't breathe!

PETE: That was one protest, and then two weeks later, there was another one, and then sometime after that, another one.

I mean, who's ever seen that?

PROTESTERS: George Floyd!

MAN: Say it louder!

PROTESTERS: George Floyd!

- I've considered going to a protest.

Have not done that yet.

Peaceful protest has always been a way that many things got done, and is it enough?

(inhales deeply) Probably not.

(exhales) I'm really angry about it, and I'm, like, right now, "What am I gonna do?

Dad, what should we do?"

Um, but then life intervened, and you gotta earn the money.

You gotta... da, da, da, da.

We have friends, you know, who are just sure that every African American person is on welfare rolls and taking, stealing all their taxes, and their, you know... (chuckling) And, and their, and their money from them.

Sometimes I have a problem, because I want...

I really want to hear more, I want to hear both sides.

I don't come to a position readily; I'm always wanting to be open and hearing and understanding.

PROTESTERS: Black lives matter!

PETE: If you really wanna be engaged in issues of racism and anti-racism, sometimes it's gonna be really uncomfortable, and that discomfort is essential.

It's hard stuff, but it tells you things.

It tells you that you shouldn't be so sure of yourself.

And when you can have differences of opinions and thoughts, I think the family is stronger and it grows, and then that ripples out.

We're not gonna solve institutional racism in the Adirondacks or anywhere else, but we can move things the right direction, and by the way, now's the time.

♪ (people shouting) ♪ (flames crackling) (people shouting) ♪ Well, racism means, um... (clears throat) MILES: ...a race feels that they're superior to another race.

JUMOKE: It makes you feel like your life is worth less, it really does.

I don't know, I just wish there was, like, a solution already.

♪ MILES (in video): A large part of a race feels like they're superior to another race.

Not only do they believe that, but they act on it.

RAKESH (present day): ♪ Probably making new (bleep) ♪ Never get the credit ♪ Sliding into... (from earlier video): My name is Rakesh, and I should be judged about what kind of person I am.

♪ ...really got me... "Rakesh" means the sun and the moon.

(present day): ♪ They don't want you, they just wanna try to... ♪ MADDOX (earlier video): I think the policemen are the safest people.

I guess I had a naive perspective of racism back then.

JUMOKE: Oh, you know, cops are your friends, you're supposed to... You know, they're here to protect you, but all I'm seeing is the opposite.

I was just looking at my expression, um... (in video): So how can I not be afraid when I feel like I'm being hunted?

Obviously, I was very angry.

I also kind of see this subtext of longing.

You know, this real desire for things to not be this way.

- Don't mind me.

The fear, the frustration, the fatigue, all brewing and boiling together, constantly bubbling at the top, always threatening to burst, but don't erupt.

Stay cool.

MYLES: As I got older, I saw that there's, like, so many different types of racism, so I think that was one of the things I would probably tell myself to look out for.

♪ JUMOKE (in earlier video): Imagine that.

Your words worth less, your life worth less.

Can you imagine the kind of rage that that would inspire?

RAKESH (in earlier video): ♪ And I think to myself JUMOKE: And you were here when truth was killed.

♪ What a wonderful world When I was in fifth grade, I didn't know half of the stuff that we were talking about.

DON: I felt so much of these feelings when I was a kid, like...

In sixth, seventh grade, we're reading these history textbooks.

We open the page to this painting.

And this is the symbol of Manifest Destiny.

But those of us that are brown, that are Indigenous, that are Black, we are literally chased out of the frames of these pictures and then forced to, like, invest in that emotionally, or believe in that?

All of it, when I think about it, when I sit with it, it's, like, crazy.

♪ MYLES: There's a narrative that, that we're dangerous.

I mean, every day, people are getting killed, so it's, like, it's hard to be hopeful, to be honest with you.

♪ DON: Many moments did I encounter my Blackness, and have to decide whether it was something to be proud of or something to be scared of.

You know, just something to have to reckon with.

♪ MILES: An interesting conversation I was having with my white friend was just the acknowledgement in the difference of our race and the impact that plays in our relationship and our lives individually.

Five years ago, I was still chasing whiteness.

I realize that that's futile now.

White supremacy has taught me that, like, the world is destined to a certain group of people.

I've worked to undo all of that.

And I have a language to address this stuff that I don't believe in.

♪ MILES: I've always been taught to think critically, to always question authority, question orthodoxy.

And I am still learning and trying to figure it out 100%, but I'm understanding that racism is a tool.

♪ JUMOKE (in earlier video): Call it as you see it, but don't make your voice too loud, we don't want scare the white folk.

Even though when we scream and shout and voice our pain, many of them seem to think it's a joke, and then they want to tell us about hope.

Or community.

JUMOKE (present day): It's important to name your emotions, but the naming has to be followed with a decision, as well, right?

I'm angry.

What do I do about that?

♪ BOY: Here comes Malik!

Malik!

♪ I'm honestly surrounding myself with Black people.

It goes a long way to know that someone is feeling the exact same way that you're feeling.

It makes you kind of want to advocate for yourself.

It makes you understand that you have value in a way.

DON: I'm fortified in my history and my ancestry.

And I have only but one way to go from here.

♪ JUMOKE: Being in this constant state of discovery and exploration, it's really restorative for me, especially when we're living in a time of so much trauma, so much violence.

This feeling of self-determination, it kind of guides my life.

How do I want to be in the world?

How do I want to feel?

What do I want to do?

♪ I think all Black people are inherently activist.

You know, our existence is radical.

MYLES: When I was younger, I didn't really see that, and I kind of had that, that thought in my head that, "Oh, this is not my fight, this is not my battle," but it is.

(sneakers squeaking, people cheering) DON: For so long, I'd been vying for, like, a seat at the table.

JUMOKE: But as I've gotten older, I've realized I don't have to live in that structure.

I don't have to look at myself by how whiteness looks at me.

DON: There's all this stuff we can do on our own.

And with each other.

♪ MALIK: I came from Black people.

I got my identity from Black people.

And it would be disgraceful not to step up for people being oppressed.

I am included in that.

♪ JUMOKE: We're constantly finding new ways to access levels of freedom.

It's not so much about how we excel, despite all odds in this society, but how we find room to breathe, how we find room to dance, how we find room to love.

♪ ♪