How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Discussing Race

Jay Smooth is amazing. I've written about him once before here. In this TED Talk below he explains why we need to continue to talk about race. He explains that talking about race and thinking about race can be difficult because people think of things in terms of being racist or not racist and therefore good or not good - and that makes considering your own views and working on them very difficult. As he says "The belief that you must be perfect in order to be good is an obstacle to being as good as you can be."

I really recommend watching this talk, it explains, in a hopeful sense, the need to continue the discussion amongst ourselves in order to change the overall larger structure of racism that remains in our culture.

One point I found interesting was :
" The race constructs that we live in in America were shaped specifically by a desire to avoid making sense. They were shaped for centuries by a need to rationalize and justify indefensible acts. So when we grapple with race issues we are grappling with something that was designed for centuries to make us circumvent our best best instincts. "

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Discussing Race