He says that though the Jim Crow laws have been removed, the lives of African Americans from that time through the present have resulted in many communities facing systemic issues, especially lack of economic opportunities. This summer there has been a revamped amount of racial tension in the United States, largely resulting from the killing of unarmed black men by police officers.
“I think the simplest way to put it is it hurts. I had to come to the realization that it really hurts because you can see yourself there. In my case and that of a lot of other people who look like me, you’ve actually dealt firsthand with a lot of these things through the course of your life and deal with them pretty often.”
He says that if the country is moving forward, people who are not African American will need to educate themselves on issues facing African Americans. “We all have built-in biases and in order to break that you have to replace that with truth. The only way you can replace that with truth is going through the process of learning, which is what a lot of people are not willing to do.”
