Dr. Sarah Lewis on The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America

Hi, everyone. I'm Brene Brown, and this is unlocking us. Welcome back to our new eight part series that I'm calling On My Heart and Mind. We kicked off the series with my conversation with Bowery Kor on the power of revolutionary love and being a sage warrior. I am loving seeing the feedback from people that listen to the conversation and read the book. It's just hope and love in book format. So really an invitation to pick up her new book, Valricor Sage Warrior. In the series, I'm also gonna be talking to my favorite cultural critic along with bell hooks, Roxane Gay. We're talking about Black gun ownership. Doctor Mary Claire Haber and I are talking about menopause. My sisters and I will be talking about grief, love, and unexpected joy. As many of you know, my mom died on Christmas morning this past year, and it's been a very hard three or four years through her dementia diagnosis, something we just caught us off guard and then kicked our ass for many, many, many, many months. And so we're gonna share some of what we learned about ourselves, about each other, about grief, and about our mom. Today, I am talking to someone that you may remember from an unlocking us episode, doctor Sarah Lewis. So I talked to Sarah Lewis. I don't even remember how long it would maybe two years about her book, The Rise, which has gone down in history as one of the big, life changers for me, especially some pieces that are actually related to her new book. Her new book is called The When Race Changed a Side in America. I will tell you that, as expected, Doctor. Sarah Lewis is the most disorienting person. She's a historian. She's just a lot of different things that come together in a way that make you question everything you thought you knew. I just love her work. Her new book, The Unseen Truth, When Race Changed Sight in America, took her over ten years to write. It uncovers a pivotal era in the story of race in The United States when Americans were confronted with the fictions shoring up the country's racial regime and how we learned to disregard the truth and accept a very insidious, slow layering of lies. I mean, I was so shocked reading this book. Poor Steve, I was like, oh my god. You're not gonna believe this. He's like, what? What? Tell me. I'm like, no. You need to read the book. Oh, stop saying that then. Like, 10 pages later. Holy shit. Yeah. I mean and he's like, okay. You just you you have to read the book out loud or you have to just, like, stop reading and stop saying that to me. You know, the the part of RISE that really changed my thinking about everything, including how I work, was this piece on aesthetic force. And that's what this book is about. It's …