Dylan Marron is known for keeping it all the way real in his short films with Seriously.TV. Professor Michelle Alexander, who’s book The New Jim Crow drew collective attention to mass incarceration in the United States, is also well-known for being brutally honest about the ways that implicit and institutional racism operate to dis-privilege Black and Brown people, especially the poor, in this country. The two of them got together to discuss these issues recently and the results are necessary viewing for those who have remaining questions on the topic.

Alexander and Marron had a provocative and powerful conversation about the ways that colorblindness makes people blind to racial inequality and prevents us from creating a more beautiful, equitable world. Then the conversation moved to the current election season where Alexander shared that the current election has been the “most depressing” in her adult life.

“None of this is ever going to change if we stay in a place of despair or hopelessness, ” Alexander explained. “The only way – absolute only way – we’ll be able to end mass incarceration and look back on it with shame, like the way we look back at Jim Crow or slavery with shame and say, ‘how as a nation could we have done such a thing?’ The only way that will ever happen is if we move out of denial and despair and be willing to work and organize and speak with courage and hope and real determination. That’s it. You get clear about that. That’s the only way out of this.”

Watch the video below: