“I need all of us to really open up and …

“I need all of us to really open up and talk to each other, even when it’s difficult,” Cuban said during his brief speech at the beginning of the event. “Even when it’s not something we’re comfortable with, particularly those of you who look like me, the white people. Because it’s hard to discuss race when you’re white. “The reality is, to be brutally honest, when people talk about white privilege, we get defensive. We all have this mechanism that I call manufactured equivalency to try to protect ourselves. We’ll say, ‘I have a lot of black friends.’ We’ll say, ‘I grew up in a mixed community, so I’m not like that. I can’t possibly be someone who takes advantage of white privilege,’ and manufacture this equivalency.