The WYSO Race Project invites two everyday people from the Miami Valley to talk about their life experiences through the prism of skin color. These conversations can be difficult and explore controversial views. But they also can build understanding and healing. Today we'll hear a conversation with Andy Valeri and Max Terrior.
Andy Valeri: I'm Andy Valeri. I'm from here in the Dayton-area. I am white. My heritage is European, and I live in a very racially polarized society.
Max Terrior: I am Max Terrior and I'm an African—period. I am a transpersonal therapist and I'm somebody's father.
Andy: You mentioned African, period.
Max: Yeah.
Andy: Normally people will say things like African-American.
Max: I say I'm an African period, you know, because black doesn't identify directly with any land culture history. So, I think it's absolutely imperative I connect myself with land history and culture. So I say African period. Andy, do you, as a guy who's identified as white, think that racism exists?
Andy: Racism exists, but it's an artificial construct, right? So it doesn't really exist. It is a tool of class privilege in class war. And it was created fundamentally to do that, to allow the few to manipulate the many. And that's where when you talk about like, do white people understand that they've paid the price themselves for it?
Max: And it has been extremely effective. One of the things that we've been confused about, quote unquote, Black people, particularly as we relate to quote unquote poor white people, is why do they continue to support rich white people who clearly do damage to them, not to realize that they're fighting down and fighting against people who are already on the bottom with them?
Andy: Right. And that's, you know, the history of the Confederacy was that, you know, a lot of poor white guys fighting for a bunch of rich white guys. I'll describe it in a way that it's an artificial construct created as a weapon for class, power and privilege to control. Right. It is a real thing, but it's in service to nothing. It's like a poisonous bioweapon that's just eating our society away. I don't know what kind of, like, experiences you might have, Max. One-on-one in the world when you see, like, say, a powerful Black politician or like, know to say a black pilot. On the airplane on a flight that you're boarding. What do you feel?
Max: (Yells) Yea, yea, yea! Ayo! My man! Come on, pops, give me a hug—give me a hug. That's it. That's how I feel. And I feel like that because of partially because of this joke being called race that demystifies that we cannot do things that this system has kind of influenced people, a lot of people into thinking. We have to peel back the onion of our own biases. They are poor white people, just quote unquote, white people now who have the same levels of social anxiety that we have. They got the same levels of inequality that we have. They got just as many drug issues as we have. Being white in the tradition of being white. Is the clientele for that is smaller and smaller? Smaller. Now, Andy, before we get out of here, though, I'm curious to know where do you think these racial issues are going in the next 25 years?
Andy: So, I think the youth of today, young kids, younger kids, this new generation is not buying into this kind of old story the way, you know, us older people got either sold it or bought into it or used it. So it's a race against time: Can the youth assert these new values, which I think are very healthy ones in enough time to help make the changes necessary in the political and economic structures of this society if we do that? The racial thing, it will take care of itself in a way.
Max: Listen, Andy man—look, this is a really delicate topic and I am grateful for you to be the one to sit across from me, man. And we chop it up because it's not easy. It's a lot to unpack. So your courage, your graciousness.
Andy: I'm grateful. Oh, thank you. Thanks, Andy. Now the honors mind. Max, this is a beautiful thing. Thank you for being the great human being that you are.