00:00This is a judgment-free zone, right? Can I just be a horrible person for a second?
00:04So I'm trying to be all woke and open-minded and understanding,
00:08but every time I see a Blue Lives Matter flag or a Make America Great Again sticker,
00:15let's just say I don't think good thoughts. And I might even give the middle finger,
00:19but that's not the point. The point is that I always thought that hate and bigotry was something
00:25that conservatives did. But for every conservative sticker I saw, I would find a liberal one that
00:31pokes right back. It's like we're in some ping-pong game of provoking the other side.
00:36And this isn't just a liberal or conservative thing or a political thing,
00:39it just seems like we've lost the ability to have respectful conversations with each other.
00:57Is it really that hard to have open conversations? Are we really that different from each other?
01:03Or is the media just exacerbating those differences? I don't know what TV shows you're watching,
01:08but I don't really see that many examples of that.
01:15But the one exception is Queer Eye.
01:21The original show was fighting for tolerance. Our fight is for acceptance.
01:27The perception right now, especially between black people and cops, it's tension.
01:32Everybody wants to talk, but nobody wants to listen.
01:34So I reached out to Tan France to get his advice on how to connect with people who might disagree
01:39with you.
01:40On the show, have you ever been met with comments or criticisms or any sort of racism or homophobia?
01:48Yeah. I was asked if I was a terrorist because they didn't realize that I was Middle Eastern.
01:52They assumed I was South American of some sort. My accent throws people off.
01:56And so, yeah, they didn't know where I was from. So when I made it clear that I was Middle
01:59Eastern,
02:00two of our heroes had asked, are you a terrorist? And it was a very honest question for them.
02:05And they weren't trying to be funny. And our show is about bridging these divides.
02:09And we are meeting with a lot of Republicans. And this isn't meant to be a liberals versus
02:13Republicans show at all. But it gives us an opportunity for a very open conversation.
02:18And we're not just talking to that person. We're talking to everybody else at home who's watching,
02:22thinking we feel this way about gay people, Middle Eastern people, black people.
02:26There are subjects like the Black Lives Matter, a subject that we need to tackle.
02:29Maybe we can talk about Islamophobia in the next season.
02:32What? So those kind of questions are real for people.
02:34The moment where Karamo gets pulled over.
02:37We're getting pulled over.
02:39He's like, what's going on here?
02:41We make over straight guys.
02:43Make over straight guys.
02:44Yeah. Okay.
02:45You guys clearly are...
02:47Nervous.
02:48Nervous. What's going through your mind?
02:50What's going through my mind is they've either seen me or Karamo,
02:54because I'm in the back, visible. Karamo's in the front, visible.
02:57And they're going to ask us to get out of this car. And once you get out of the car,
03:00there's trouble.
03:01And somebody comments too, like, I don't want to get shot.
03:04Yeah. Jonathan says, no, don't go out of the car. Don't go out of the car.
03:10And the police officer is saying, can you stop? Like, he has to get out of the car.
03:15And Jonathan's like, I just don't want him to get shot. Rightly so.
03:18When you step out of the car, that spells trouble.
03:21Right.
03:21And so we all started to get really tense when he asked Karamo to get out of the car.
03:25It was an incredibly real situation for us. Yes, the camera crew knew what was happening.
03:31We didn't. So for as far as we were concerned, trouble was afoot.
03:35Right.
03:35So it was just building and building. And so the relief of realizing that he was actually
03:39part of the show.
03:42Is his name Corey? Because I'm his nominator.
03:44Nervous!
03:45You can't do that to me!
03:47You can't do nothing to brown people.
03:49It was such a relief.
03:50Yeah.
03:51And so afterwards we were fuming saying, this can never happen again.
03:55This wasn't okay. You don't know what it feels like to be a person of color and get pulled over.
03:59Because we didn't want to phone the next day. We're like, we're done.
04:02Yeah.
04:02Like, that's it.
04:03Thankfully it turned out great in the end, but because it's a conversation that needs to be had.
04:06What is it like walking into somebody's house or life or situation where they might not see eye to eye
04:12with you?
04:13Like, find a way to connect with them on a human level.
04:15It's not just rehearsed or practiced. There's certain things that I do that hopefully does disarm a person.
04:20I look them in the eye. I'll give them a pat on the shoulder to make sure they know that
04:24I'm there for them.
04:25That I want to support them through this.
04:27So it gives them an opportunity to talk about whatever they want to talk about.
04:29It humanizes me. It humanizes them.
04:31Right.
04:32And then we can have a real conversation.
04:34Yeah, totally. And it's almost like hate begets hate.
04:36So it's like if they're throwing slurs at you and you come back with like, you're a bigot.
04:41Yeah, what does that achieve?
04:43Tan gave me great advice.
04:44Look people in the eye. Touch them on the shoulder.
04:47Make a real effort to connect with people who we might disagree with.
04:51I think overcoming our differences with open and honest conversations
04:54is the only way we're going to make progress as a culture and a country.
04:58Before I talked to Tan, I would have thought that that sounds like a really cheesy campaign slogan.
05:04But now I really believe it.
05:07That's just my opinion. What do you think?
