Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man summary

Back when Google Photos launched in 2015, it caused a serious controversy. Google boasted that it could automatically identify the people and things in photos. But some Black people found that it kept identifying them as “gorillas.”

Unbelievably, nobody had thought to train the algorithm to recognize Black faces. And that had happened because of implicit bias – that is, people’s tendency to discriminate against others without meaning to or even really thinking about it.

If you think it’s been illegal to discriminate against Black people since the 1960s, it’s time to think again. The laws may have changed, but the end result is much the same. Today, white families are, on average, a full ten times wealthier than Black families. Let that sink in. Ten. Times. This financial advantage isn’t the result of benign good fortune. Rather, it’s yet another result of white privilege.

Remember, white privilege is the array of societal advantages enjoyed by white people in certain societies. These advantages can be as basic and personal as not worrying about how you’ll be perceived by law enforcement. But they play out on a massive, society-wide scale, too. And that’s what we mean when we talk about systemic racism.

Crystal Mason’s mother insisted that she vote in the 2016 election. But when Crystal, a Black mother of three, arrived at her Fort Worth, Texas, polling place, she found she wasn’t registered. No matter: she voted with a provisional ballot, which would be approved later – as long as she passed some checks.

There was a problem, though. Crystal had previously been incarcerated, so she wasn’t eligible to vote in Texas. She hadn’t realized that that was the law, but that didn’t matter. Three months later, she was charged with voter fraud. A year after that, she was sentenced to five years in prison.

According to criminologist John Dilulio’s 1995 description, the superpredator is a pretty terrifying sort of person. “They kill or maim on impulse, without any intelligible motive,” Dilulio wrote. Crimes, from murder and rape to drug dealing and assault, simply come – as Dilulio put it – “naturally” to them.

Dilulio didn’t specify that superpredators were Black. But he did say that the problem was greatest in urban Black neighborhoods. His use of the word “naturally” also hinted that certain people were natural-born criminals.

The author grew up in a household where both of his parents were around – they had moved to Texas together from Nigeria. So, in that sense, he’s like a majority of white people, who grow up in two-parent households.

The proportion of Black people who grow up in two-parent households, however, is much lower. And, not coincidentally, Black families also have far higher school dropout rates and incidences of teenage pregnancy than their peers. They’re also more likely to become involved with the criminal justice system.

When the author thinks about protest, he sometimes recalls an incident from his childhood. When he was 12, he was getting ready for school one day when he heard crying. Going into the living room, he saw his mother in a fit of sorrow. She was so upset that she was literally throwing herself against the wall. She’d just learned that her sister had died.

Everyone experiences grief in different ways – the author’s mother felt anger, and that was her way of letting it out. When people take to the streets in protest against the murder of George Floyd, for instance, something similar is happening. Of course, violence is still wrong, but it’s an expression of that same sense of anger.

Back when the author was a middle linebacker in the NFL, it was his job to organize the huddle – the moment in a football game when the players learn their roles.

The huddle is an important moment, no doubt – but nobody comes to a football game to see it. What really matters is what happens next. That’s the stage you’re at now in engaging with the effort to end racism.