Discussion on Racism and Privilege

America is the most deeply racist society in the world, perhaps

with the exception of Israel.

The two most deeply racist countries in the world are Israel and the United States.

And I went to Lebanon in particular so that I could see,

to go to a Muslim country where I also knew were under the oppression

of Israel's violation of their rights.

And of course, one of the

consequences of that is when I go back to the United States, the immigration now,

I get stopped occasionally for asking, you know, who am I meeting with?

Did you meet Hezbollah and all these kind of things?

But it's not a decision that I regret.

And I, as a child, could not reconcile how in Youngstown, Ohio,

there was food being wasted and I come

on a boat ride and their children die.

And I decided from that day of my life that I would despise

inequality and I would never allow anybody to tell

me that meritocracy or hard work had a goddamn thing to do with success in life.

It was clear to me as

a child that this absurdity of the middle class argument that hard work and

smarts are what makes better people is a vicious lie

and is so unfair to every child who's born into this world.

My parents had a big choice of what to do.

They, of course,

were highly offended by the idea of singing, you know, praise to the British.

So my father and mother would stand up and start booing and spitting.

Now, if you're a young kid and you're watching your parents doing these things,

you're sort of a little embarrassed because why aren't my parents well behaved?

But then my parents said, listen,

look at all these black people in the audience.

What are these white people sitting up on this stage? Why are you saying this?

So we had, as children, had to make a choice.

Are we influenced by our parents? Do we do this?

Now, fortunately, my father was a good politician and

so he would go around and organize people and get all the things to do it.

So pretty soon we were not the only ones.

So I was very proud as a young person to have, you know, this consequence.

Then I decided to go to the United States and join the revolutionary black movement.

It was very important for me to have long hair because Rastafarians in

Jamaica had long hair and militants in the United States had long hair.

And my hair was already going bald and it was wispy and it was looking

weird and straggly, but I had to have long hair.

In Jamaica, you had to have very English, you know. I refused to have my hair cut.

My privilege from

Ferguson to Brazil where I got to meet farmers who were seizing land for the poor,

to South Africa where ThoughtWorks is helping the militant trade union NUMSA

create software that will organize their members.

We sang for eight hours because they killed three of their leaders,

to coming to India and meeting, you know,

such a wonderful fighting resistance.

I know that I only do that because you guys are billable at clients

that you saw yesterday.

I am acutely aware of my privilege.

Only promise I

make to you is I try to do my very best with

that privilege to represent you everywhere I go as a set of people

who are determined to prove that this next generation of young people

will not make the choices that my generation made or Sudhir's generation made and

turn their back on society because of privilege, careers, and consumerism.