>>Yeah. Live from New York. It's the Cube covering in Forum 20 >>16. Brought to you by in four. Now here's your host, Dave Volante. Yeah. Welcome back to New York City, everybody. This is the Cube, the Cube. We go out to the events, and every now and then we just have these great special segment's. And this is one of them. The only 22 is here. She's a social activist, the daughter of the famous Desmond Tutu. Lara. Logan is here. Laura's, of course, 60 Minutes correspondent and Karina Holcomb. When you hear her story, you won't believe it's super athlete. Ladies, welcome to the Cube. It's really a pleasure having you on, so we hear it in for Charles Phillips. Somehow in the in 14 gather some always gather interesting people, and then we'll start with you. You guys were just up on stage telling your stories about how you overcome amazing diversity. All happen to be women. But it's not just a story about women. We're gonna talk about the human condition and what's happening in the world and how to effect change. So tell us a little bit about your background and you know some of the challenges that you had to overcome. >>Well, I mean, I think that my background is as a black South African who grew up during a part of that system that basically said that black South Africans were not black South Africans, that we were not members off our own country. And coming out of that experience and the struggle against apartheid eight has been has been foundational for me in terms of looking at how terrible our world can be and how amazing our world could be in the people who take the time and the commitment to change the terrible into good. >>And you grew up in the heart of that time period. I remember your father was very much out spoken against, for example, the Reagan policies of constructive engagement and constructive engagement they call. He said, No, you know, bring on the pain because we'll suffer with with a purpose. That kind of dogma, if you will, is actually good dogma. In a way, is it? >>I mean, I think that there is a point where you have to decide that there is something you are willing to stand up for, and I think that the core for sanctions against apartheid South Africa. We're basically saying black South Africans are already suffering, and right now we're suffering in a system that offers us nothing. At least we know that economic pressure brought on the South African government is pressure that is working towards our liberation. And so I think that that that that example shows is basically that people don't People are not short sighted in general. Um, you know, I think that way often play to people's short sightedness in saying that is the enemy. This is what you need to be afraid off. If only we had our country back, you know, but that the reality is that most people are not short sighted and people say What? What What do we need to do to make this world better? Maybe not for me, but maybe for my Children coming after me >>and Larry your experiences. Obviously you know a lot about this this era from a different perspective, but also in your own world have overcome incredible adversity. Tell us a little bit about you know, I mean, everybody knows who you are and, you know, sees you on 60 minutes but maybe they don't know much about your background. >>I think you know one thing that people probably don't really know and understand who I am. Is that for me to sit with Naomi into meat Now? Today it's such a big thing. It's such an emotional thing because I knew her parents and in South Africa working as a journalist. I knew her father particularly well. But I met her mother in her home in the Soweto township, where, I think was your family home growing up. And, uh, people like Desmond Tutu for me have never been recognised enough for how great they were and what they gave to all of us. Many people thought the revolution in South Africa was only about liberating and freeing black people. But it wasn't because all of all of the people of South Africa who whose hearts were in that struggle, we're liberated and free Mandela and 22 and all of those people, the activists, right down to the student activists down to I mean, I knew South Africans, black South African kids who spent their lives traveling from school to school to deliver the message of Comrade Mandela in those schools, and they lived on the run and they were hunted by the security police and they gave up everything, and that message was always the same. It never varied from Mandela to to to go all the way down through the ranks of a NC because it was one that resonated with all of us because it was about freedom and justice and human rights. And my soul honestly was forged in the fire of that struggle and everything I've done since I left South Africa. Everything I've been able to do in my life, everything I've been able to overcome surviving, being gang raped in Tahrir Square in Egypt. All of that was born from the example that was set by people like know me and her parents and every black South African at that time, right, because they all suspended everything of their own in favor of the greater good. There was no talk about child abuse, you know, or domestic violence or things like that. Nothing of that nature ever made it into the national conversation because black South Africans particularly put everything aside in that for that fight for that struggle. And so the greatest lessons of my life were born there, and that place gave birth to me and gave me the ability to put myself in someone else's shoes. And I've used those lessons everywhere I've gone. And I've always been well received in Afghanistan or Iraq or all of these places, because I've never gone in with a closed heart because because black people in South Africa opened my heart and opened my mind and taught me how to think and see things from other perspectives and help me understand that my way wasn't the only way or the way I knew that was familiar might not be the best way. Sometimes it might be. I never apologize for who I am. I always stand up for what I believe in. I was raised in the country of people who stood up for what they believed in and and paid and gave everything for that literally gave everything. >>So those early days of the seed of your inspiration and a lot of it was rooted in Nonviolence, of course, a zone underpinning. There was a lot of violence, of course, at the time. >>Violence for us, you know, I grew up thinking that the police and the army were only instruments of evil. I never understood them any other way, and I had to unlearn that lesson in many respects because, for example, the American military that's often demonized. But I can tell you, I've lost count of the situations that I've seen, where the level of professionalism and humanity that has been shown by the American military has has. It is so counter to the Hollywood narrative that's out there, that every everyone joins the military because they like to kill people and don't care about human rights and don't care about doing any good. I've never found that to be true, and I really have to unlearn those lessons off. Seeing the South African military is the architect of evil. Um, and grow up, I guess, and understand the many different shades of that. >>Karina. Let's bring you into the conversation Story may not be a well known, but it's a whole that's amazing. So >>or more amazing. Super super >>athlete, more amazing super athlete went through with just an amazing experience near death experience. Tell us about your background, how you're still here. >>Yeah, I just feel so humble, you know, sitting next to these two women being me. Yeah, well, I don't know where to start. I mean, I started. I came from my mother when I was four years old. She had a major accident car accident that I was part of. And, um, we had a front front collection and she was put in a coma for four months. And when she woke up from that coma, she had to relearn how to walk. She had to relearn how to talk. She had to start all over from scratch. And she had lost all members. She had no idea who even who I waas so for me, like she survived her accident. But as a mother, she was taken away from me and for me, like I became a ever restless kid. And I think that restlessness somehow had to, you know, I had to get it out somehow. And I got this urge into into finding the things that I could master. And eventually I got into base jumping. I got into big mountain skiing and this was a way for me to channel my everyday life are coping with my everyday life because going to the mountains, Um, jumping off of a cliff, being in a situation where I felt like I could control life and death. Um, it made me feel like all of my everyday problems. They felt mundane and small, and they were nothing in comparison because I had this strength and I could master this situation. So for >>me, it >>was it was my way of dealing, you know, And, um, I lived in a dream world. You know, I I traveled the world as a professional base jumper and, ah, free skier. I was filming with one of some of the biggest companies in the world. Documentaries, action movies sponsored from top to toe. It was a dream. And then I had a major accident in 2006. I, um, hit the ground with more than 65 MPH. I crushed everything that I had from my hips and down 25 open fractures, and I was sentenced to life in a wheelchair. My doctor, he told me that I would never walk again. And you know, when you've spent your entire life, um, as an athlete, it's your job. You know, it's all your friends are doing the same like you do. But most importantly, it's your identity. And all of that is taken away from you. Just like that, you're left with nothing, and you need to start from scratch. You need to start to rebuild yourself. You need to define your values. You need to figure out who am I when I no longer have my two legs? Um, What's gonna happen with my friends there? They're going to be there for me. They're going to still be around. Am I ever going to be able to have a family of my own? You know, you you get all these questions, and there are no answers. Ah, so definitely I went through, um, some of the toughest years of my life being stuck, you know, in a rehab room, hospital room and trying to rebuild my own life. And it took me, um, took me three years to learn how to walk. It took me, uh, four years to make it back to the mountains, to my passion, to skiing, and to like to come back where I belong. And, uh, I've been continuing to work with that kind of rebuild my life and find out who I want to be. >>And then, of course, inspire others. So in the years after your accident, it's obviously very personal. You're inside your own head, wondering if you'll never be able to walk again. We have a family. But then, however you use that then as a springboard to help other people, >>well, you know my >>story. I mean, falling down from the sky is obviously not something that you do every day. But I do believe that my stories universal because we all go through adversities in life. We'll have our own personal challenges, you know? And I realized by telling my story by being honest and naked, you know, to all these strangers and by revealing my weakness, then that would be I would be able to help and inspire other people to believe in themselves, to try to find their own passion. Find out what makes them happy and, you know, maybe even teach them, like what I will or not teach them. But tell them what help for me and what actually made me continue on my journey. And, you know, I'm thinking that if I have my story and the fact that I am, you know, telling it and using my experience now into inspiring other. If I can, you know, help one person to go through his or hers adversities. If I could make one person changed his or her life for the better, it's worth while you know when my story has has been a good thing. >>So the discourse in the United States anyway, today is such a polarizing conversation. But for example, you have, on the one hand, black lives matter movement. On the other hand, people trying to question the need for that movement and it becomes a really not even a rational conversation. It becomes sort of a heated debate that's quite irrational. Why is that? Why can't we have a rational conversation about such a critical critical issues? And should we? >>Well, I mean, yes, I think that we need to, and I think that the conversation is actually not black lives matter as much as it's a conversation about race and racism in this country, and I think that the conversation about black lives matter. If it does one thing it is to highlight the fact that we haven't as the U. S. As the country ever really had a conversation about race and racism and US history and the role that race and racism has played in U. S. History. Economically, politically, socially, all of those things. And so we go through these cycles almost where we kind of stopped the conversation. And then something happens and we say, Well, we don't need the conversation. Actually, everything is fine And then something happens, and then we kind of start the conversation. But I mean, I think that it's very clear to me that it is a fundamental, quick conversation that we need as a country now. Yeah, as much as we ever have in the past. I think that, you know, there was with the election of President Obama, there was a conversation about a post racial us, which it was never, never true. But, I mean, what what it did bring up, I think, is that it brought out the residual racism in places that way thought it had seized to exist, or at least that it had been very deeply enough that it wasn't going to bother anybody. >>I don't know if you're were taught in grade school high school about Africa. I was, and we learned a lot about Europe. You heard anything about? Of course. You were educated. >>We grew up in Africa. >>Much about effort. Did not continent either? No, no, no. No >>African history to go to South Africa to learn >>we had to educate ourselves. >>Okay, >>wait. Do way. Learn about Yes. Okay, we do an end for me. I mean, we just had a brief conversation about it because watching the news, I mean, coming from Norway, coming from Europe. But we obviously live in a completely different world, and we have a totally different relationship to the police. We have a different relationship to black people to yell, I don't know to call to me. We're all people. And of course, we have racism in Norway as everywhere else in the world. But it's so it's not understandable that we can actually treat people like that. And for me, I mean human life. It's like a kid. It's a kid, it's still a kid. And I don't understand how we can see and not see the kids that we all see. I mean, >>but are we making progress? There is. We're just not making progress fast enough Or are we just going sideways? >>Well, you know, for me, as a white South African growing up in a country that was the prior of the world, I actually grew up thinking that racism was a South African thing. I didn't know any better. And I thought when I left the borders of South Africa that I would be leaving racism behind. And instead what I found was that it was everywhere. And then it has helped me understand many conflicts when I was in Kosovo and I would listen to the Serbian people talk about the Albanians, you could have substituted black and white in that conversation, and it was so it was easy for me to identify what that conflict was really about. At its heart was that the Serbs don't view the Albanians as human beings. They see them as as less and is worthless. And, you know you can have the same conversation in Australia. And when I came to the United States, I was shocked to find that people when I went to places like Atlanta, people would say, Well, that's, you know, the black side of Atlanta and that's the white side. And I was like, Why they say that? Say that to me again and on and that was really an education for me, and I found that our lives in South Africa were much more integrated in many, many respects than in the United States. Just because you had 40 million or so black people in five million also white people, and so a degree in level of integration that's unheard of in many parts off America was normal in South Africa, even under apartheid, That didn't that didn't explain or excuse the racist side of the ideology that existed at the time. But so for me, and I'm always very careful because, you know, I'm not American and I didn't grow up here. But my Children are born here and my husband is American in my life is invested in the values that make America the South African Constitution that was written in part by Naomi's father and certainly was formed by his actions and the commitment that he made throughout his life is based on the United States Constitution. And one thing I like to tell people here is you may have learned about the constitution growing up in high school. But I lived that I was on the streets of South Africa when you would have 50,000, 100,000, 150,000 people come to protest for Nelson Mandela and would walk holding hands, singing that the national anthem, which was banned at the time and literally have the riot police and watch people fall as the bullets, you know? Okay, the rubber bullets hit them and rubber bullets can kill. And I would go into the homes of people whose Children had died protesting and, you know, had been executed in the back of the head and their bodies cost aside by the South African police. And so for me, freedom of speech is not something theoretical. It's not something academic. It's not a great idea that the forefathers came up with its something that lives and breathes in my blood and in my DNA and in my my dreams and then everything that makes me human. And so it's I hate it when people say, Oh, you're an adrenaline junkie. You like to go to war. I don't like to go to war. I like to go to places where those values are being tested. And I believe what Mandela always taught and two to lived that you have. The people are the founders off the democracy. And I think the sheriff in Dallas just said a similar thing in his press conference recently. Democracy is nothing without the people that we hold our leaders accountable. And if we don't hold our leaders accountable and we don't hold out, press accountable, then we don't have democracy. You have some fake version of it. And I think sometimes people have forgotten that that freedom isn't free and that means many different things. But it means getting off your but, you know, and getting out there and standing up for what you believe in in one form a way or another. So you know I'm not so I don't think it's my place to say whether we met. Have we made who is we? Have we made progress? Have we not? I can tell you what you know what One of the senior black people in law enforcement and the FBI said to me on my way. When I saw him on their way here, his version of it compared to. You know, one of the guys in New York on the street last night was talking to me about last night and their views was so different. And and I and I looked at CNN last I didn't. They had three black congressmen, all you know, from those district all talking about that. But you do have free black congressmen representing those district's, and that counts for something. But it doesn't mean that everything is fixed. One of my closest friends in the United States shows where she was going to live specifically because she had to black babies and she didn't want her son's growing up in a certain part of New York, where she said, I wasn't gonna have a moment piece knowing that they were out on those streets. So she took them to a Jewish name, a white Jewish neighborhood you know of Scarsdale, because she felt they'd be safer there. So So there's there's one thing I learned in my job is that the closer you get to an issue, the more complex it becomes. My mother used to say, The older I get, the less I know you're more you learned unless you know. >>Okay, so I'm fortunate we're out of time. I could go forever with you. Three amazing women. But last question, maybe each of you could address. >>I'd like to know one thing, though, because I always like to start with the little things. And I would like to learn from YouTube if I were to do one thing you know, to make the situation better. To try to eliminate the fear of the black people of of apartheid, of racism. What would I do if I wanted to start just little by little, to make it better? How could I do >>talking as a black as a black person? I always I always say that for me. The first step that I would like people to make is to acknowledge that racism exists because I think that's so very often that what we're up against, people saying, Well, you're just imagining all of this and the practical ways I mean, so one practical way for me, which I have asked of people, is that when you see when you're in a shop, for instance, and you see security following a black woman, which is my experience, I'm shopping and all of a sudden security is for some reason. I look particularly suspicious that when you see that and you see me turn and ask the security guard, why is that? You're following me in particular And then they say something like, Oh, I wasn't following you in particular, why you're getting all the say no as a white person to stand and say I saw that, too. And I am going to make I'm gonna make make it clear that this is not some crazy, angry black woman playing out here in the department store, the grocery store. This is a reality of people's lives. And again, as you say, it's one small step, and it makes a difference in one person's life in that particular instance. But it also is a step off, say, acknowledging that racism is something that exists in our communities. >>That's really true. Tangible frustration. Isn't that great insight from people of color that you talk to get pulled over? You can hear their sense of frustration, and they say you, as a white person, don't understand what it's like. You have to say I certainly don't Unfortunately I say we have to leave it there. Thank you so much. >>Thank you >>for coming on the Cube. Great to meet you all, >>and just so we don't get into trouble. The other side of that is I have a friend who's husband is a policeman, who every time he walks out the door every night, she doesn't know if he's coming home judgment. She lives in that kind of fear. You know, >>anybody puts on a uniform >>which is not justifying >>or something, but that's not the other side of the story. That's my point is that there are black policemen. But it's like eight time. We talk about racism. It's as though we're saying we're attacking the police, which has never been what black lives. >>We talk about things without that. But I also >>believe that it has a lot to do with information, lack of information, like you're saying that you're not even talked in school and we do naturally have fear of the unknown, and I fear everything that I don't know anything about. And so if I don't know about South Africa, if I don't learn from from school, I will naturally have fear because I don't understand you. I don't I don't see your different from over me. >>So that's where for me? It began at home where I was raised in a home where we were taught not to fear anything. Yeah, and we were told to be open to people and we would talk to listen. And we were told to know what we stood for and not be afraid to stand up for that. And that's the universal thing that you talk about. That's the thing that you can take anywhere. And so, for one small thing I can do is make sure my Children don't see color their whole lives. They've seen they've had. We've had people sleeping in our house, from Africa, from Afghanistan from everywhere. They learn all about little bits about different religions. They have African costumes and closets. They have, you know, traditional Pashtun dress and, you know, they they learn about everything. And I'm honest with them with the things I don't like about it. You know, I don't want my child, my daughter, to grow up wearing a burka, not allowed to have a driver's license or anything. You know, I am honest about the fact that I don't like that. I don't think political correctness means you have to say that everything about everyone else is wonderful to me. It's about it's about those things that bind all of us that are universally good and university just And you have to have the courage to stand up for that and also have the courage to say, You know what? I don't I don't actually believe in that side of it. I don't actually think that that's right And that's the next step off the conversation. It's not enough to just all hold hands and sing, come by and say, Oh, everybody's great, We accept everybody and it's a wonderful I did a panel with old with representative of the Dalai Lama and the chief rabbi of the United States and one of the senior archbishops in the country and all these different religions. Every religion was represented, and about halfway through I said, Okay, enough, enough of this conversation. Let's talk about what you don't like about each other's religions because that's what separates us. It's not what we like about each other and accept about each other and doesn't frighten us about each other. That that creates the problems. It's what we don't and everyone you know. That conversation broke down very quickly at that point, and it went from being a love fest. Two very clear. Now, you started to see that each person thought their religion was superior understanding >>as well. >>And that's what leads to understanding that. You have to understand that in order to be able to change the conversation at >>all. Wonderful. Thank you all >>for coming. Thank you. Thank you, Thank you. >>Keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back. Wow. What a great segment. >>Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!