Barathunde Rafiq Thurston is an Emmy-nominated writer, author, activist, comedian, former White House adviser, and a “semi-famous” product of the modern age. I’m a huge fan.
Thurston has countless superpowers but here’s my favorite: He can help you consider uncomfortable truths, all while making sure you’re laughing for all the right reasons. It’s the kind of communication mastery that unites people and inspires them to do better.
His power was on full display during his spectacular TED Talk, which posted yesterday.
In it, he puts the terrifying phenomenon of white people calling the police on black people for just living their lives, into a broader historical context of white supremacy and capitalism. (Which doesn’t sound very funny, I know, but trust me.)
He begins by diagramming the headlines of the news stories reporting the incidents. They run on a simple formula:
A subject takes an action against a target engaged in some activity. “White Woman Calls Police On Black Real Estate Investor Inspecting His Own Property.” “California Safeway Calls Cops On Black Woman Donating Food To The Homeless.” “Golf Club Twice Calls Cops On Black Women For Playing Too Slow.” In all these cases, the subject is usually white, the target is usually black, and the activities are anything, from sitting in a Starbucks to using the wrong type of barbecue to napping to walking “agitated” on the way to work, which I just call “walking to work.” And, my personal favorite, not stopping his dog from humping her dog, which is clearly a case for dog police, not people police. All of these activities add up to living. Our existence is being interpreted as crime.
A subject takes an action against a target engaged in some activity. “White Woman Calls Police On Black Real Estate Investor Inspecting His Own Property.” “California Safeway Calls Cops On Black Woman Donating Food To The Homeless.” “Golf Club Twice Calls Cops On Black Women For Playing Too Slow.” In all these cases, the subject is usually white, the target is usually black, and the activities are anything, from sitting in a Starbucks to using the wrong type of barbecue to napping to walking “agitated” on the way to work, which I just call “walking to work.” And, my personal favorite, not stopping his dog from humping her dog, which is clearly a case for dog police, not people police. All of these activities add up to living. Our existence is being interpreted as crime.
He then asks us, as part of a game, to flip the headlines and turn the absurdity of white supremacy on its head. “Let’s face it, ‘A Black Woman Calls Police On A White Man Using Neighborhood Pool,’ isn’t absurd enough,” he says. Let’s level up! What if his crime was trying to touch her hair without asking? Or just talking over people in a meeting?
And the game is on. “But it comes with a warning: simply reversing the flow of injustice is not justice. That is vengeance, that is not our mission, that’s a different game,” he says.
It’s signature Barathunde. Click through for his poignant advice for changing the game we’re all unconsciously playing. We’ve got the power, after all.
“I walk around in fear, because I know that someone seeing me as a threat can become a threat to my life, and I am tired,” he says. “I am tired of carrying this invisible burden of other people’s fears, and many of us are, and we shouldn’t have to, because we can change this, because we can change the action, which changes the story, which changes the system that allows those stories to happen.”