Faces of Race with Magatte Wade
Starring entrepreneur and author Magatte Wade, Faces of Race seeks to integrate the insights of anti-racism and color-blindness into a synthesis view.
CREDITS
Brought to you by: Synthesis Media
Director: Stephanie Lepp
Script: Stephanie Lepp and Magatte Wade
Starring: Magatte Wade
Music
Drunken Thrush, by Cody Martin
Like Lavender, by Matt Wigton
Kokobongo, by Alessandro Gugel
Special thanks: Gilbert Morris, Greg Thomas, Jeff Salzman, and Greg Johnstone
POINTS OF SYNTHESIS
Racism has unleashed untold brutality on black Americans, and black Americans have exhibited untold resilience in the face of it. Which makes black Americans some of the most patriotic Americans — because despite America not living up to its ideals in its mistreatment of them, they believed in those ideals and fought to make them a reality.
The roots of racial injustice lie both with the system and the individual. Which means we must build systems that empower individuals to depend less on those systems.
The question isn’t just “does affirmative action work?,” but “how do we use race-based equity policies in a way that allows us to not need them anymore?”
Race is a lie that was invented to perpetrate race-ism. We don't need to pretend race exists in order to dismantle racism. On the contrary, in order to free ourselves from racism, we must dismantle race.
SCRIPT
ANTI-RACISM: Imagine if your ancestors were rounded up, chained, shipped to another country, and enslaved.
COLOR-BLINDNESS: Look, I don’t deny the cruelty of slavery in America. But perhaps what you deny is the progress that black Americans made despite that cruelty.
ANTI-RACISM:Yeah, we made progress for America! We fought wars for this country, and when we came home, we were lynched in our uniforms. We built America with our bare hands!
COLOR-BLINDNESS: Slavery didn’t build America. Slavery stifled America. Because it took people who could have been innovating, and treated them like animals.
But what we did build were Black Wall Streets in cities all over the country.
ANTI-RACISM:Our Black Wall Streets…they were burned to the ground! With support from the state.
COLOR-BLINDNESS: We’ve elected almost two hundred black Americans to Congress. And (over a decade ago) we elected our first black president.
If black wealth in America were concentrated, we’d be almost the size of Canada.
ANTI-RACISM: Black workers earn 82 cents for every white worker’s dollar.
COLOR-BLINDNESS: Oh yeah? Well, you want to play victim and perpetrator forever? Black fathers aren’t absent because of slavery. And white Americans aren’t responsible for the sins of their ancestors.
It’s time to stop blaming the system, and take responsibility for our lives.
ANTI-RACISM: The absenteeism of black fathers is not unrelated to the systemic emasculation of black men.
Tell me: how did the United States of America – where “all men are created equal” – manage to enslave an entire population of men (and women)?
Well, white Americans had to make black Americans not human. They made us three-fifths human. (It was actually the north that did that – for votes.) But the point is: Americans believed we were not human.
That belief infected our entire system: from our hearts, to our schools, to our halls of power. That’s what it means for racism to be systemic.
And in order to extract racism from our system, we must see race.
COLOR-BLINDNESS: We must see race?? Isn’t the point to overcome race? Martin Luther King dreamt of a nation where children are judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
There are racial gaps, I get it. But blacks from all over want to come to America. Could it be that America is the best place in the world to be black?
SYNTHESIS: Ladies.
Look, racism has unleashed untold brutality on black Americans, and black Americans have exhibited untold resilience in the face of it.
Which makes black Americans some of the most patriotic Americans. Because despite America not living up to its ideals in its mistreatment of us, we believed in those ideals and fought to make them a reality.
It’s also the case that the roots of racial injustice lie both with the system and the individual. Which means we must build systems that empower individuals to take responsibility for our lives.
The question isn’t just ‘does affirmative action achieve a clearly defined goal?’ but ‘how do we use race-based equity policies in a way that allows us to not need them anymore?’
But you know what might be the biggest reparation of all?
Seeing race for what it is: a lie.
Here’s what’s up: race is a lie that was invented to perpetrate race-ism. It’s like the lie of witches that was invented to perpetrate witch-burnings. Even Martin Luther King’s dream of color-blindness accepts that race exists, but says we should ignore it.
Race doesn’t exist. And we don't need to pretend it exists in order to dismantle racism. On the contrary: in order to free ourselves from racism, we must dismantle race.
And the beautiful tapestry of human pigmentation? Yeah, we’ll just call that skin color.
So let’s see each other as the multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, much-deeper-than-skin-color human beings we are. And let’s fulfill the spirit e pluribus unum – out of many, one.
Faces of X is a series devoted to perceiving reality more fully. Watch the full series and make your own.
CUTTING ROOM FLOOR
Nuggets that didn’t make it into the script:
Jazz is a brilliant metaphor for racial justice — everyone doesn’t play ‘equally,’ but everyone is sufficiently skilled to enable individual improvisation and collective virtue
It’s hard to claim that blacks are better off in America than in Africa, because geopolitically America undermines Africa. This is also a tough claim because the ends don't justify the means — slavery might have made African Americans resilient (and better off in America), but that doesn’t justify slavery
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The synthesis says we must build systems that empower individuals to take responsibility for our lives. This is precisely what many of the first freed slaves did — by building almost 100 economic zones immediately after emancipation
The synthesis asks: how do we use race-based equity policies in a way that allows us to not need them anymore? This begs the question of metrics: how will we know we don’t need race-based equity policies anymore? What are the metrics of success? Otherwise, the fight never ends
The bigger-picture question is: how do we build a bridge for people who have been historically marginalized to fully realize the American dream?
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In the words of Audre Lorde, “the master's tool will never dismantle the master's house”
There are an infinity of ways to identify ourselves — by our ethnicity, faith, nationality, profession, hobbies, or whether we’re a dog person or a cat person. In this regard, skin color is relatively meaningless
African Americans say they don’t have the luxury to not see race. They’re right — and we can still raise our children with the ideal of a color-blind society. We can acknowledge racial injustice while we strive to treat people based on the content of their character
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What caused the recent re-emergence of white nationalism? Some say it’s not unrelated to the intensified focus on race under the banner of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
Blacks were enslaved for 2/3 of the history of the United States! We’ve barely scratched the surfaces of what we’re capable of when we fulfill our national motto: e pluribus unum — out of many, one
It is said that the root cause of our interrelated crises is: our inability to see reality as a whole. It’s our inability to see that we are part of one human family. That we, and the entirety of the universe, are…stardust. Race is an anathema to wholeness
REFERENCES
ARTICLES
Deracialization Now, by Greg Thomas (2023)
Goodbye to Race? With Glenn Loury and Greg Thomas (2023):
The Trouble With Race and Its Many Shades of Deceit, by Subrena E. Smith (2023)
Race Ideology-in-Practice, by Tabia Lee, EdD (2023)
Being Without Race, by Amir Zaki (2023)
Race Delusion: Lies That Divide Us, by Robert J. Benz (2016)
PODCASTS
The Seven Deadly Sins of DEI, by Keith Martin-Smith (2024)
Debating Deracialization, with Glenn Loury, John McWhorter & Greg Thomas (2023)
A History of Racial Conflict with Daniel Schmachtenberger and Gilbert Morris (2022)
Racism through the stages, with Jeff Salzman (2021)
Evolving Race and Culture, with Jeff Salzman, Greg Thomas, and Phil Anderson (2020)
Beyond Race and Victimhood, with Jeff Salzman and Greg Thomas (2017)
BOOKS
The End of Race Politics, by Coleman Hughes (2024)
Black Liberation Through the Marketplace, by Rachel S. Ferguson and Marcus m. Witcher (2022)
Theory of Racelessness, by Sheena Mason (2022)
Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
This is brilliant. Just listened to your interview on The Unspeakable. Thank you for this awesome work.