I can’t remember what it was that triggered my thinking yesterday. It was probably a simple matter of merely reading the news, which is full of hateful words and acts. Any rate, I found myself engaged in this crazy daydream… I was dreaming about an America where of all this hate and hateful rhetoric and violent action went away. What if we had an America where people simply got along? What if we simply didn’t care if you were Black or White or Brown… or male or female or transgender…or had almond shaped eyes… or you were disabled… or short…or tall…or had a hare lip… or you talked funny? What if we lived in an America like? Wouldn’t that be better? Who the hell would not rather live in that country than in this country? Wouldn’t everybody? Because this sure as hell is no fun. We watch or read the daily news with dread. Wouldn’t even the haters feel better if they didn’t hate? You’ve heard the expression that hating somebody is like drinking poison and hoping that they die.

So I really was wondering why if it’s a given that we don’t want to hate... we don’t want to feel it, embrace it, or experience it, why does the country feel just so freaking hateful? And maybe I shouldn’t even say feel hateful, but actually is hateful? We actually practice hate.

So on the heels of all that, today one of our board members whom we affectionately call “The Big Beautiful Bill” because he’s big and his name is Bill, sent me two YouTube video links. One of hate, and the other trying to dissect the hate. I mean really deeply embedded, taken-for-granted, shoulder-shrugging hate. But even with all that, it’s still kind of the everyday variety. Almost the institutional variety since it’s being purveyed by a major news outlet. I think Bill was upset. But mostly I just shrugged my shoulders and wondered where does all that hate come from?

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But I think I know. A few days ago I was watching an interview of Bryan Stevenson of EJI - The Equal Justice Initiative - being interviewed by Katy Couric. Bryan was talking about something that we in The Civil Conversations Project talk about a lot. It is actually part of our mission… America’s false narrative about race. Slavery - something that as a country we don’t really talk about much given how foundational it is to who we are as a country and how we evolved - was unbelievably cruel. Way more cruel in way more ways than any of us were ever taught in school. Bryan was making the point that for slave owners and their overseers to be able to think of themselves as a good person even as they were literally prying a toddler from his mother’s arms to sell it to another plantation owner in another part of the country; or chaining a human to the floor of a warehouse^[1], sometimes for days, until they were finally auctioned off; or torturing or ending the life of a slave for committing the crime of learning to read - that they had to make up a narrative. A narrative that justified the way Black humans were treated because, well…because it was their fault. They kinda brought it on themselves by being stupid. Ignorant. Ugly. Unwashed. Criminal. Drug addicted. Irresponsible. Dangerously oversexed. Predatory. Lazy. Needy…and Black. They’re simply property. Useful property, for sure, but not the kind you grow fond of. Kinda like a toilet brush. And the narrative had to be false.

That narrative started way back when and grew. And grew. And with our schools having done such a poor job of addressing America’s thing with race, here we are, generations down the road, with that false narrative so deeply embedded in our psyche that we don’t really question it.

So when we watch videos, such as the ones that the Big Beautiful Bill sent me, many Americans are not enraged. They’re just watching what a lifetime of conditioning has conditioned them to believe. “Yep, that’s just the way those people are.”

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It’s just really hard to dispel a stereotype and a narrative that has been there for generations before any of us were even born.

We at CCP believe that folks are more open to change when they have experienced a significant emotional experience. Que up “Fair and Balanced Fox News” and watch a slice of the American experience that often goes unquestioned. Accepted as simply the way it is.

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The whole purpose of The Civil Conversations Project is to make you smarter…more educated in the complex intricacies of America’s Thing With Race. As you watch the first video, ask yourself this, “Would I, after a lifetime of conditioning, have questioned or even noticed that all the SNAP recipients - if they had been actual real people and not AI robots - questioned why all of them are Black? Or would I have not noticed something that has always been presented as normal?” If the answer is “No”, “I’m not sure”, or “Probably not”, know that you are not alone. Welcome to America and our powerful false narrative.

Let us know how you did.

^[1] I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as slave warehouses until I visited Montgomery which is full of former warehouses. The Equal Justice Initiative is actually officed in one.