MSNBC Live host Katy Tur could have used Thursday’s show to try to see if there was a way that the current protests across the country in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd could bring the country together. Instead, however, she teamed up with Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson to wonder if white Americans are unwittingly racist by being scared of black Americans, simply by looking at them.
Tur began by simply asking Dyson, “I just want you to tell me how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking today.” Dyson bluntly declared, “It’s devastating to be a black person in America, James Baldwin said, is to be in a nearly unending state of rage, to paraphrase him. And the rage grows from the inability of many of our white brothers and sisters to understand where we are.”
Dyson then listed some legitimate outrages, such as what has happened recently in Minnesota and Georgia, but despite the fact that the essentially whole country agrees with him on those cases stated, “it is not hyperbolic, that this country not only does not care but treats us less than human as a matter of fact.”
He argued that real progress on race relations will not come, “Until we value black life, black human beings as human citizen,” which would include people like Drew Brees being aware of the, “kind of anger, the heartbreak, the grief that we feel in the midst of the repeated recycling of black death on television.”
Tur then asked Dyson to put the “extreme case[s]” aside and deal with the ordinary white person.
TUR: Let me ask you this. Let’s leave aside the extreme case, what we saw with George Floyd, and let’s look toward the middle. How do you change, how do you improve the internal biases that so many white people have, that maybe they don’t intend to have, maybe they don’t think they are racist, but there is an internal bias that might be there that causes them to look at a black person and they might be scared or look at a black person and think in some way they might not be like them or they might not be nice to them, something, that internal bias that haunts so many white Americans.
Dyson said “Great question,” and started off innocent enough, saying that even if you’re not an overt racist, you can still have problems, such as the “Karen” in Central Park, but that just shows that, “we’ve got to ask white people to be just as aggressive about reading about race, about social injustice and about inequality as they are about Star Wars and horror movies,” which got a hearty laugh out of Tur’s fellow host Chuck Todd.
He concluded his thought by returning to Tur’s previous point about white Americans being scared of black Americans, “
That’s at least a beginning to root out implicit bias, identify the degree to which we’re deferential to certain ideas. Oh, that person makes me scared, that person makes me nervous. Why? Begin to check yourself. Don’t project it on to that person and then have a universal grappling with this in the broader society.”
Speaking of being “deferential to certain ideas,” the idea of implicit racial basis is junk science. If Tur and Dyson really want a national conversation on this, a good place to start is not by attacking other people’s character based on such a premise.
Here is a transcript for the June 4 show:
MSNBC
MSNBC Live
1:26 PM ET
KATY TUR:I just want you to tell me how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking today.
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: It’s devastating to be a black person in America, James Baldwin said, is to be in a nearly unending state of rage, to paraphrase him. And the rage grows from the inability of many of our white brothers and sisters to understand where we are. To put themselves in our existential shoes and to understand how time and again with the murder of black people, with the hunting down of black people by white vigilantes, with a policemen disregarding the pleas of a black man to breathe, treating him like an animal. Why we feel, and it is not hyperbolic, that this country not only does not care but treats us less than human as a matter of fact. And so when we hear these statements, the F’ing “N” word that was, supposedly, allegedly uttered after the death of Arbery. When we see a policeman look into the recording device of a person filming him and still has no conscience or consciousness suggests that he is doing his job, that he is not fearful that he will be held to account and that, after all, the person that he is subjecting to his knee is not human. This is what we’ve got to deal with. Not a bunch of policy changes, oh, that would be critical. Not just a difference of opinion about differences between police departments and African-American citizens. We have to have a fundamental, what Martin Luther King Jr. called revolution of values. Until we value black life, black human beings as human citizens, we will not be able to move forward. And it’s not by the way just those outright bigots. Look at the kerfuffle invoked yesterday by Drew Brees, an otherwise decent man, who was totally not only tone deaf but profoundly insensitive to his fellow teammates for whom he throws the ball but he failed to pass it in the sense of being understanding about their situation. So that’s the kind of anger, the heartbreak, the grief that we feel in the midst of the repeated recycling of black death on television.
TUR: Let me ask you this. Let’s leave aside the extreme case, what we saw with George Floyd, and let’s look toward the middle. How do you change, how do you improve the internal biases that so many white people have, that maybe they don’t intend to have, maybe they don’t think they are racist, but there is an internal bias that might be there that causes them to look at a black person and they might be scared or look at a black person and think in some way they might not be like them or they might not be nice to them, something, that internal bias that haunts so many white Americans.
DYSON: Great question. But look at the spectrum there. If you look at the ones most nefarious, the police officer, the McMichael father and son team, hunting down like an animal Mr. Arbery. But look toward the middle. It still has consequence. The woman who called the police on or threatened to, Mr. Cooper, in the Ramble section of Central Park. How many people of color or black people had she at her office turned down, been insensitive to? It has consequences whether it’s in the street with a gun or in corporate America, whether it’s in institutions of higher education or in public spaces. Let’s acknowledge that. However, what we’ve got to do, we’ve got to ask white people to be just as aggressive about reading about race, about social injustice and about inequality as they are about Star Wars and horror movies. The thing is that you’ve got to have a curiosity about it. You’ve got to involve yourself in a serious engagement with the issues of racial inequality in this country and you’ve got to understand that you’ve got to be educated and enlightened. And don’t presume you know the history without having studied it. That’s at least a beginning to root out implicit bias, identify the degree to which we’re deferential to certain ideas. Oh, that person makes me scared, that person makes me nervous. Why? Begin to check yourself. Don’t project it on to that person and then have a universal grappling with this in the broader society.
