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I believe representation matters because it's really
difficult to form a healthy self-image unless you can see
yourself reflected in popular culture.
I grew up in an era where it was rare to see Black people
on TV and in magazines.
The places where I saw Black people represented
were on the news, especially during the Vietnam War era,
where the majority of our soldiers being
sent into the theater of war were young Black men,
and, you know, on TV in less than elevated positions
in society.
Representation matters.
You know, Alex Haley used to say--
and I know people have said it before him and many after him--
history is written by the winners.
He who controls the narrative controls reality.
Right?
So the notion that there are voices
that are a part of the conversation that are absent
is exactly why representation matters.
This experiment that we are currently engaged in
was designed, I believe, to include all of us,
that we would not get the full value of being human
unless and until we were able to value everyone's contribution.
And we haven't gotten there yet.
There have been flashes.
And so representation has to be at the forefront
of our experience of storytelling and communicating
because we aren't meant to leave anybody out
of the conversation.
When I was growing up, it was almost unheard of
to see people dealing with physical challenges
as a part of a narrative storytelling
in popular culture.
You just didn't see, necessarily,
people in wheelchairs.
I think Raymond Burr as "Ironside"
was the first time in my lifetime
that I can remember a person in a wheelchair,
not that the wheelchair defined the character.
But what I was experiencing was a person
who lived their life from a wheelchair
and how it was possible to live a completely fulfilling
existence from a chair.
Those kinds of examples in our storytelling
normalize the vast breadth of human experience
that can tend to be put aside, that
can tend to be marginalized by the virtue of the infrequency
with which we encounter them.
Being someone who represented the sightless and the visually
challenged on "Star Trek"--
it gave so many people-- you have no idea how many times
a week I hear from someone that they felt seen and represented,
that Geordi was important for them because he spoke for them.
He was a proxy for them.
They could see themselves in him.
Absent representations of ourselves,
it is hard as a human being to develop a healthy self-image.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
By not limiting our individual voices,
we are contributing to the great tapestry that
is storytelling on this planet at this particular time
in our history.
By not allowing our voices to be silenced
by ensuring that we speak up and speak out,
we are staking a claim to a piece of the conversation.
Right?
The idea that no one can silence my voice
that I don't give permission to in the silencing.
I have to cooperate with your ability
to silence me today in order for my voice to be unheard.
Now, that's important to me because, personally, I
feel like I have value.
And I feel like I have something to say.
What's more, I feel like you have value
and that you have something to say.
And she has value and she has something to say.
I believe we all are a piece of this puzzle.
And the only way we're going to put the puzzle together
in total is by welcoming all the disparate voices to the table.
There is more commonality in humanity
than there is difference.
We have the same hopes.
We have the same dreams.
We want safety, security for our families.
We thrive on clean air, clean water, and enough nourishing
food to eat.
That doesn't change based on where you were born
or what color your skin is or the gender
you were assigned at birth.
We have this amazing opportunity as human beings to choose--
to choose our own path, to choose our direction,
to choose our experience.
And that's God-given.
You can't take that away from a person and claim to be human.
We all have a contribution to make.
And it's incumbent upon us as a society to make room
for all of those voices.
And further, if you don't find that there's room,
if you don't feel like there's room for your voice,
then dammit, get your elbows going
and forge a place for yourself.
Get active.
Get loud.
Get in there.
And express yourself anyway.
Because the act of self-expression
is an affirmation that I am here,
that I am alive, that I am vital, and that I matter.
Using one's voice is a radical act of humanity.
Because the first thing that one does in trying to dominate
and trying to enslave is to take away
a person's voice, their agency, and speaking for themselves.
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For me, it's important to expose ourselves
to stories that don't emanate from our experience
so that we can learn and grow.
I recently had a conversation with a friend.
And I've known this person for a long, long time.
And I love this person.
Our families have shared experiences together.
There is a history that we have.
However, I have been very disturbed
with some of the things that this person had
been posting on social media.
And I sort of--
I held it in.
And in this new effort of mine to really walk what I talk,
right, I decided that it was important for me to safely
and as successfully as I was able to engage
in a conversation.
And so I wrote in the comments, we need to talk.
And this person wrote back very quickly, any time.
And so I took some deep breaths.
And I dialed the number, remembering, of course,
that I wanted to communicate.
I wanted to be effective.
I didn't necessarily need to be right.
But what I wanted to know was, what
was it about the idea of Black Lives Matter that seemed
to disturb this person so much?
And I was able to, in a very open and nonjudgmental way,
explain to her that when I said Black Lives Matter,
it comes from a place of never having
mattered before in this culture, in this country.
And that the idea that when I say Black Lives Matter--
your response is all lives matter or blue lives
matter is yet another way to ignore my humanity.
What I was able to take away from the conversation
was her point of view.
And her point of view was that even though there
is such a thing as systemic racism in America,
she didn't have the experience that I
have had of what it means, practically speaking,
to be othered in this society.
It's not an experience she was familiar with.
So she had no real frame of reference.
Intellectually, she could understand.
But on an emotional level?
On an emotional level, she didn't have the ability
to get to where I was coming from until I was
able to break it down for her.
Conversely, I truly understand that her life of privilege,
as I interpret it, was not her fault.
And she said something really interesting to me.
She said that I feel like I'm being blamed for something
as a white person.
And my response to her was, I'm not trying
to blame you for anything.
I simply want you to understand where I'm coming from.
Right?
And it's the simple act of being civil to one another
that really makes the difference.
Right?
I know that these necessary conversations are hard.
I know it's going to take a lot of patience and courage
and listening to one another.
And that really requires an ability to put aside one's ego.
Again, do I want to be right?
Or do I want to be effective?
I have decided in my life that I want to stand for what's true.
I want to engage in ideas, feelings,
actions that are true.
And that's the North Star that I use when storytelling.
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Stories like "Roots" can help further the conversation
about justice and equality in this country
by the very nature of the truth that they bring to the table.
Right?
Again, I don't believe that America
has done a very good job of telling ourselves
the true nature of our story.
We lie to ourselves an awful lot.
The story of Black people in America--
we didn't come here because we wanted to.
We didn't immigrate willfully.
We were brought here in chains.
And then we became an inconvenience
to white normative culture.
And they didn't know what to do with us.
And so they continued to oppress us
because it made them feel better about their lot in life.
It made them feel better about their existence
to have someone that they could rely upon that
was beneath their stature.
That's on you.
That's not on me.
Yeah, we're all human.
We're all fallible.
We're all capable of inflicting tremendous pain on one another.
And it is never appropriate to ignore it
when we do engage in that kind of behavior
because we learn nothing from it if we don't acknowledge
the truth.
We have not acknowledged the truth
in America of the systemic, the generational damage that
was done.
Why?
Because it reminds us that we haven't always
been at our best.
It reminds us that there has been an imbalance
and unfairness that has been enacted in our lives that
is inappropriate.
It is, in fact, shameful.
It's shame-inducing.
But America has not indulged itself in the shame necessary.
We haven't acknowledged it.
We'd rather ignore it in the hopes that it'll go away.
But it won't.
I think that the job of a storyteller
is that of a truth-teller.
You got to bring the truth.
You have to be willing to stand in your truth and express it.
Because if you don't, it just gives people
permission to forget, to ignore, to obfuscate,
to change the narrative.
I think, in part, I feel like a part
of my journey in this lifetime is
to remind us of the truth of the Black experience in America.
Part of my journey is to remind us
of the power and potential of our imaginations
as they are expressed in science fiction and thoughts,
contemplations on the future.
I feel like part of my destiny is
to be here and stand for literacy, for knowledge,
for learning, especially where children
are concerned because they are the most vulnerable among us.
And they are what this is all about--
those who take over when our time is done.
So that now, at this point in my life, this point in my journey,
I feel like I have valuable stories to share.
[LAUGHING]
And when I do this, when I do my job,
I really feel the rightness of who I am and why I'm here.
And there's no better feeling than that--
not for me, anyway--
to feel the rightness of who I am and what I'm doing.
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