Back in America

If you're tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try talking with one of them in real life.

Welcome to Back in America, the podcast. This is the third and final part of my conversation with Chris Tyler. In the previous episodes, we learned how he worked as a carpenter for 15 years, how he went on to live in a Zen monastery for a year before deciding to go back to university for graduate social studies. Here, we talk about white man's privileges and reparation to the African-American. To me, this is obviously fascinating and yet seems super privileged. We're here sitting in this nice house in Philly discussing society and masculinity while people are dying of anger and can't find ways to have hands meet. What do you have to say to that? That's excellent. That's what I think about a lot when I take the train through North Philadelphia and I think about young men who are underemployed.

How can we think about it without objectifying them and without blaming them and without saying that anyone is lazy? These words have been used a lot in the race dialogue in America, in people saying that inner city blight is caused by young men doing X, Y, and Z, doing different things. Instead, I think it's on us to find a way to engage them in something that they feel good about participating in and that we feel good having happen if it's in us. If there was an agency that was going out and doing it, that would be like we. In the bigger picture, I guess, how do we engage as a whole society to help everyone feel useful and included? I think a lot of the toxicity in masculinity that shows up in intergenerational trauma is that awareness of being a discarded class of people. I think I would be hard pressed to find someone who couldn't make a decent case that that's what we've done to young black men in America is discarded them. Started in some point in the past, possibly 1618 when America first began.

Definitely it appeared in various forms throughout in slavery, Reconstruction in the South, which I discovered in reading a couple of years ago was terrible and a nightmare and just a different form of oppression. It led to Jim Crow. Post Jim Crow, it led to the war on drugs and the mass incarceration and just over and over and over again. Black people and definitely young black men have been marginalized, criminalized. And what we're saying with all that is that they're not valuable, that the world isn't suffering a loss if these people don't have a healthy means to express themselves, if they don't have means to participate in our society to gain the rewards of participation, which in capitalism is income and opportunity to buy a house like this. History has said over and over again, you are not valuable or less valuable than everyone else. And that's just how it is. And we need to change that dialogue.

And I think one way one thing that's really important is to first say it out loud like I just did, like, you know, and how other people are saying it. I'm not attached to my words being, you know, absolutely correct. But I think it's important to name it because it's a painful truth. Yeah, that's in the background of, you know, it's in our society, you know, like any city in America that you go through, you see it, you know, and you hear it. And then people go and like study it and people with PhDs in sociology do like ethnographic studies and write about it. And we're all like talking about it. And it's still there and still hasn't really been owned fully on my side as a child, as a white male of privilege. You know, I have like everything on paper.

Like, you can't see me right now if you're listening to this, but I'm tall. I'm white. I'm college educated. You know, et cetera. I'm physically fit. I'm able bodied. I have different tasks. I speak a couple of languages. Like I check the boxes like great. Like I'm I'm the top of the privilege ladder. I didn't really begin to own that until in my 30s.

And now I see it as something to take energy from and turn it towards giving it away. Like, how can I use that energy to be an ally to those who don't have that? Which is a tough, you know, a whole question by itself for a whole separate podcast maybe. But but but but it touches on on this show, you know, and well, let me let me dive in into something slightly different now. Great. We so we understand where you come from. We understand how now you are helping other trying to work on on on those, you know, negative aspect of masculinity, solving the problem of domestic abuse by at the roots, right. Working with men. And yet.

Some people will tell you that there are way more urgent matters to take care of today as the world might be collapsing. The climate is putting enormous pressure on on us to work on our survival. Do you see any link in what you've been doing with this other struggle that's facing us?

Yes. For me, when I look at climate change, it's definitely an issue of all of us failing to really admit that we're all on the same team to fully cooperate. We'll do well. And I would say it's essential to own the things in the past that keep kept us from cooperating. And, you know, the history of slavery in any form here in America and elsewhere. But but my stake is here in America is very real and very true. And I need to own that and be part of apologizing and be part of rectifying and be part of actual discussions about reparations and not freak out at the mention of the word, but instead say, like, OK, like. If if we have a discussion that's real and genuine and that seems useful, well, to move towards that, like, period, like I personally think it might be useful. And so I'm excited about discussions. You know, I think a lot of old white guys who you see on TV are like, you know, kind of rejected as like so crazy. How could you even bring it up for a discussion?

And I'm like. And they don't have any particular reasons besides things like how would it work? I'm like, that's not a reason. That's a question. You know, if you put some minds to it, we'll figure out how to work, how to make it work. And so, you know, that discussion, you know, wealth inequality now, regardless of the past, you know, so reparations are one aspect of that for sure, because inherited wealth has skewed. The different levels of society now until, you know, folks who look like me have a much better chance and an actuality do inherit more wealth and power and things like that than black folks than recent immigrants, whoever. So we need to address that in a meaningful way. And for me, again, like meaningful way is good policy, but it's also a discussion of, of a poll. Here's the thing that comes up for me in my mind often, and it may be weird. I don't actually talk about that much, but like, I think sometimes like, like, I just need to apologize for like what my ancestors did.

And I think that's okay. And I think it's like a weird kind of vulnerability, like, and I'm not doing it to like let myself off the hook in the present. I actually want to do the opposite. I would put myself on the hook by apologizing because then it opens up the possibility for someone else to be like, hey, doesn't that mean that your privilege now is at least partially and someone say completely unearned? Yes, exactly. It puts me on the hook. If I don't put myself on the hook, I can't begin from an authentic place. I'll begin from again going all the way back in the conversation. It'll go back to that defensive space where like, okay, I'll talk about this, but only after I'm sure that I've got mine and I need to be and want to be and I'm working towards being less sure that I can't talk about these things. Without, you know, getting my security first, like, it's okay. I can be a little vulnerable. I can be a little insecure and still have these conversations. I can push that line. And how I do it personally is to and I think this is not like crazy or impossible and feels real for me is to actually take the somatic the embodied experience of privilege and use it to practice being okay when I'm having difficult conversations. To me, it's always weird when like really privileged folks like me, white guys of affluence freak out in conversations that might imply that their privileges aren't earned. That might imply that they have some structural racism in their minds that they need to look at. That implies all those things. Just the implication like people freak out.

And I'm like, wow, like that's interesting because you have this privilege and so you can have the conversation and then if you want to go home and still have, you know, a big house and have it be secured with an alarm system and police who respond and everyone on your side because you're part of the oppressor class. You can still have all that. So you don't actually have to risk anything by having the conversation, which to me looks like, oh, like then you could at least begin a little bit. But so many of us seem to be like, I can't even have that conversation. It's too risky. And I'm like, oh, because I like to take the embodied sense of privilege that I've had my whole life. You know, people telling me I'm going to succeed. I'm going to do well. I'm great. I'm smart. I'm whatever. And that got embedded in me as a type of confidence. You know, you might be able to hear it right now as I talk. I can take that confidence and bring it in a self soothing way into a conversation where people are going to accuse me in some degree or at least my ancestors or the system that I participate in of being unfair and unbiased. And I can use those tools to be OK having that conversation. I can have someone of color be like, you know, I'm really angry and upset that there's this societal inequities and I don't have access to this and it seems like you do. And I can say, yeah, let's talk about that and not, oh, man, like, I don't know if I agree. I think you're exaggerating. I don't think you see things right. Like, why do you have to be difficult? All those things that we use to push back. I don't have to push back. I can let reality and all its complexity and messiness collapse in on me and I'll be OK because I've always been OK. So I'm not I don't need to draw. I don't need to sustain the system that gave me this energy to be OK.

I can now just happen instead to the deeper root of the energy, that feeling of being OK and safe and say, oh, now let's have difficult conversations. And so what I want to do is offer that, which I think takes some skill. I think mindfulness really helps offer it to other people of privilege who who want to do things, who want to have these conversations, but are afraid because every time they see an example of someone who gets like attacked, you know, they're like, oh, man, I'm going to be OK. I can deal with that. Yeah, I want to speak up. But you saw what happened to that guy. And that's true. Something bad happened to him. And people are going to get thrown under the bus along the way. You know, I joke with some of my friends like I'll throw myself under the bus. You know, I joke with some of my friends like I'll throw myself under the bus. Like it's it's, you know, just do it. Just get yourself out in the open. You know, the the rubber will meet the road on this in a very real way if, you know, anytime anytime I see a situation, you know, like everything I've just said sounds nice. And every day, I'm sure there's little things going on around me and I see some of them and I try to open my eyes to others where that privilege is still in action. And there'll be some bigger ways, jobs that I get that someone else doesn't. And there's a subtle reason for that about race or someone's name on the application. And there's those studies and things and those are all real and true. So the rubber meets the road is when I'm navigating the world, can I then make myself physically in a tangible way an ally for other people and maintain basic safety and security for myself, which I have plenty of.

So it's time to let go of a lot of it and make my journey about undoing my privilege in the future. You know, I can't make up for the past, but I can apologize for it and I can admit it and I can be an ally to people who have suffered from that inequality. And I can say in a real way, let's go forward together. How do we do that? Okay. And that's even now as I say that it's a little scarier than just the words, which I said a couple of minutes ago, which are easy, you know, to like white guys sitting here, like we can say all we want. And then it comes time for the job application and there's two people, me and someone else, you know, and you want to get it. Yeah. And I find out maybe afterwards that I had a little bit of an edge just from being a white guy. What do you, they now boom rubber has met the road. What do you do? Do you like, like really let go of something that is actually riskier for you in order to help someone else? Sure.

Doesn't mean that he or she is going to get the job. Yeah. And, and it's okay to get in the weeds on these things and, and talk about them and keep opening ourselves to the vulnerability because vulnerability takes practice. And this is, this is a deep vulnerability. There's vulnerability. Like you had an argument with your partner and like you were an asshole and you didn't admit it. And then like she calls you out on it and you're like, okay, you're right. I told her it was that's vulnerability. That's nice. You know, might be resolved in that moment. Like, and you go forward and you try not to repeat the behavior. This is like existential. It calls into question your bank account. It calls into question your college degree.

It calls into question everything about your life. It could call into question everything. And so to open to that, you know, like I am by no means fully there, but just like looking down that road, I'm like, okay, boom. Like I want, I want to do this with allies. I want to do this with you. I want to do this with people who have been on the other end, who have a real lack of privilege. And as long as we're like basically like nonviolent and at least like a little bit civil, that's all we need. And I don't want to make that some kind of like caveat because often people do that too. They're like, well, I'm only going to talk about this if everyone's like civil and polite. And so you reject all the angry people.

That's risky because there's a lot of legitimate anger out there about the effects that we're seeing now of 400 years of discrimination against black people. You know, and so to reject angry people from the conversation is really risky. Yeah. And so with men and masculinity going all the way back, how can we get these young men who have come from, you know, young black men in Philadelphia, who have been historically oppressed and marginalized, how do we like get them in the conversation? Do they even want to be in our conversations? They want to be sitting around with like white guys talking about this stuff or do they want just like something else? You know, they want, I know as much as I know anything that we all want to feel respected and we want to feel like we belong. We want to feel safe and we want to feel fairness.

You know, I think that's why wealth inequality in America is such a toxic background is because, you know, they didn't do one million times more work in their life. You know, that's not the case, but they have a million times more money. Like that's an existential like grit that's just like annoying as hell in the background all the time. And you know that a person who's like a young black man is unemployed in North Philadelphia didn't do, you know, one thousandth of the work in life that I did. Like he's doing what he's got to do to get by. So we got to like level that so much more. I'm like a fan of like radical, you know, equality where like the heart surgeon and the janitor actually do get paid the same because I think that would be a great experiment to move towards like, whoa, how do we really feel about being on the same page? But we got to like have that conversation.

We got to go there. And so we need to reach these young men and bring them in or or help them make the circles that they want to belong to in a healthy way. You know, in each area has particular versions of that. It's very like postmodern to like, you know, guys here in Philadelphia will want one thing. Guys in Baltimore will want something else. Guys in Paris want something else altogether. And sometimes we say, oh, my God, it's too complex. Can't be done.

Like, no, it's complex. And that means we have to be complex. We have to be more sophisticated. We have to be more patient. We have to do more work ourselves because it's going to be more nuanced than signing, you know, the Voting Rights Act, which was great. It was like a sweeping thing. And some white guys were like, yep, solve that problem. You know, like that was great.

But the problems are more complex and more, you know, the solutions will have to be more sophisticated, nuanced and local and and all that. Thank you, Chris. Yeah, that was a long one. Two more questions quickly, quickly, if you can. Sure. First one, where will this country be in five years from now? My hope is that we have a Democratic candidate emerge in 2020 who can say things kind of like what I'm saying now and what a lot of other people are saying, which is. Apologizing for all the things, you know, as much as we can in the past that's gone wrong. How can we have everyone have a seat at the table and they got to like pound the pavement and go to this all separate thing again, but go, you know, if you got like a privileged white guy somewhere in America, but who feels wronged.

This is like a whole other story, but I'm curious about this as well. Like guys who have the privilege on paper but but are still feeling wronged. A lot of liberal folks dismiss those people are like, oh my God, can you believe that guy like he has everything and you still like walking around being like like he's entitled to everything. When I look at him on paper, I think, oh my God, that's weird, but you have to meet him in his feeling because his feeling of being wronged his feeling of being scared his feeling of, you know, this country is going down the tubes. You got to meet him there at least a little bit and be like, oh, tell me more like like where does that come from because he's going to vote based on that feeling he's going to if he's an extremist he's going to do bad political stuff online and possibly out in the tangible world based on that feeling. And so to ignore that feeling is risky. So we need to meet those people to the disaffected, you know, middle class that everyone loves to go talk about in the middle of the country and stuff like that. They're everywhere, but we like to talk about the middle of the country.

Someone needs to reach out to them and say like, hey, you know, and if they don't want to be reached out to you, that's a different story. We may have an unresolvable divide in America. It's totally possible. America is not inevitable, as I like to say, like this is not God's country. This is a country. Countries rise, countries fall. Life happens afterwards. So do you think this country could fall?

Could be. Yeah, for sure. Or like break up into like chunks where like some chunks want like autonomy over like, you know, very particular things that I don't think will make their life better. But sure, like you can ban abortion if you want to and see if everyone's quality of life goes up. That's sort of you're right. But and my other question was, yes, what it is to be an American. It is to believe in the ideas of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence. I don't get all misty eyed about that stuff. Some people seem to, you know, and people who are like because it was founded in those ideas means that we are the greatest country.

I'm like, that doesn't connect at all. Like the ideas were good, just like they were good in ancient Greece. The execution of them always needs to be improved. And so how can we take the ideas of, you know, equality and actually make people equal more so? How can we do that? And how can we keep leaning into that? Like, how can we make our lives much more about addressing social injustice, about standing for like stability and honest inquiry? So to be an American is to believe in ideas.

To take the ideas and always put them into action without nostalgia. There's so much nostalgia. Nostalgia is like it's fine for like a Hallmark card, but it doesn't it's not action, you know. And when I look around, I'm like, okay, we need action that's rooted in love, idealism, patience, a couple other things. But those, I mean, that's it. You know, your ideas are great. And if you have bad ideas, the actions are you're going to have a hard time getting good consequences. Like you might by accident, but for the most part they're going to be bad.

But if you have good ideas, that doesn't necessarily mean that the results are good, you know. And so right now we're just so much like talking about ideas. You know, it's like it's like one way to kill discussion about reparations is to talk to death and people who are scared of it. I think that's the disingenuity of America is like, oh, America is great because we can debate things. And I'm like, okay. And let's not hide behind debate. No, I don't know how that unfolds. I know how it unfolds in my life.

And so I know that's real because you can debate something in your mind for a long time. And eventually you do it and you're like, oh, my God, I'm so glad I did it. I can't believe I wasted 10 years debating in my mind. We need to discover that on a big scale, a big picture. Thank you so much, Grace. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. Thanks. I hope you all had a fantastic holiday season and I wish you a great new year.

This is a message for my French listener. Just to let you know that I will soon do an interview 100% in French. So stay tuned for a podcast in French in the coming weeks. See you soon. Bye bye.

Thank you.