Good morning. What a beautiful day and what a wonderful place to be to see it. I
hope you will enjoy this incredible Symposium for Strategic Leadership in
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. My name is Mary Lee Kennedy, and I am the
executive director of the Association of Research Libraries, and it is my pleasure
to welcome you here today. We would like to start off this very important event
by acknowledging and paying our respects to the indigenous communities from
Minnesota. Minnesota is home to eleven federally recognized tribes: seven Ojibwe
and four Dakota. And we're standing and sitting on what was once Dakota land. So
please, we ask for their kind welcome and learn on lands that they once called
home. This Symposium is designed to increase our understanding and capacity
among academic and research library professionals, for creating healthy
organizations with diverse equitable and inclusive climates. We hope that the next
couple of days of programming will help all of us to learn, grow, become
comfortable with discomfort, and allow each of us as leaders to position
ourselves, our institutions, and our communities to do this hard work, to
dedicate ourselves to realizing true equity and inclusion in academic and
research libraries. The program that has been planned for us represents a broad
array of perspectives, strategies, and aspirations for creating systemic change
within our profession and beyond. I would like to thank the co-hosts for our
meeting, Association of College and Research Libraries. Mary Ellen,
are you here? Please thank Mary Ellen Davis and recognizer her. Thank you. Thank you so much. This Symposium, and for those who
were here yesterday, for the pre- conference, would not have been possible
without the generous donations from the institutions that are acknowledged in
this PowerPoint. I would like each one of these institutions to stand, and then we
will hold our applause and thank them at the end. At the Friend level: Cal State
Los Angeles University Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries, the University of Oregon Libraries.
At the Ally level: University of Colorado at Boulder
Libraries, (thank you) University of California Irvine Libraries, Penn State
University Libraries, (thank you) University of Texas at Austin Libraries,
University of Washington Libraries, Yale Lillian Goldman Law Library, (thank you)
York University. Please give a round of
applause for all of these. (clapping)
And one more generous group of people, at the Champion level: University of Alberta Libraries,
Cornell University Library, University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries,
the University of Houston Libraries, Iowa State University Library,
University of Minnesota Libraries, and MIT Libraries, (thank you), MIT Libraries,
OCLC, (thank you) Texas A&M Libraries, Virginia Tech University Libraries.
At the Hero level: American University Library, the University of Iowa Libraries,
the Ohio State University Libraries. I honestly think this is just a testimony
of the amazing support for this type of program. I just thank you all for this
very very generous of you to do this. (clapping) So I know I'm standing between you and Mark and
the keynote so I'll... but I do want to recognize the 11 travel scholarships
that were awarded to encourage conference participation by a wide range
of individuals interested in transforming academic and research
libraries into organizations that truly embody these values of diversity,
inclusion, and equity. So if you would please stand:
Arthur Aguilera from Bay State University (hi Arthur)
- Boise - Boise! Oh how awful, sorry.
Danisha Baker-Whitaker from Bennett College (thank you, hello Danisha),
Mohamed Berray from Florida State University (Muhammad, you here? thank you),
Kevin Brown from the University of New Mexico (hello Kevin), Zayda Delgado,
University of California Riverside (thank you), Monica Figueroa, the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Federico Martínez-Garcia Jr.,
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (there you are, thank you),
Alyse Mintor, Towson University
She must be coming. Alanna Aiko Moore, University of California San Diego,
Ariana Santiago, University of Houston (thank you),
and Shaundra Walker from Georgia College.
Okay, thank you. (clapping)
Lastly but certainly with increasing appreciation for what it takes to do
this, I would like to thank the Planning Group for the week, members of the ACRL
Human Resources and Personnel Administrators Discussion Group. They
started working on this project last summer and have worked tirelessly to
pull this together. Please stand to be recognized: Jeff Banks, University of
Arkansas (thank you), Kathleen DeLong, University of Alberta, Jolie Graybill,
University of Minnesota, Melissa Laning, University of Louisville
(thank you), Laura Lillard, University of Washington (thank you), and Bonnie Smith,
University of Florida (Bonnie, thank you). There were two co-chairs of the Planning
Group: Katheryn Kjaer, University of California Irvine (thank you), and
Francesca Marini, Texas A&M (thank you),
as well as the ARL and ACRL staff who served on this group: Margot Conahan, ACRL
(hi Margot, thank you), Amy Eshgh (thank you, Amy) and Mark Puente. (clapping) So now I'm gonna pass
this over to Mark, get out of the way, and get ready for a fabulous two days. Thank
you very much. Thank you, Mary Lee. I'm Mark Puente, the director of
diversity and leadership programs for the Association of Research Libraries.
We're delighted to have everyone here this morning. You may have noticed in the
program, it's in the program, but I need to bring this to your attention that
photos may be taken as well as video may be taken—will be taken during the course
of the program. If you wish to opt out of having your photo taken, please add a
green dot to your name tag. The green dots are at the registration table.
Let us know, and if you see someone taking your photo, call me and I
will take them down (laughter).
So as we said, most sessions will be recorded. These recordings will be shared
with with all of the attendees after the Symposium on our shared Google Drive
space. In the email communication that went out to all of you, we have some
copies, probably very few, left in hard copy at the registration table, but you
will find also there the Code of Conduct that the Symposium Planning Group
created for this event. We hope that everyone here will take some time to
review that Code of Conduct, and we'll think about centering our minds and our
behaviors in such a way that creates a comfortable and inclusive and—I hope
generative learning environment for everyone attending this event. In the
event that any one encounters behavior that is exclusionary, inappropriate, or
threatening, please know that our program staff are here to help in whatever way
appropriate. Please familiarize yourself with that Code of Conduct so
that you'll know who to contact in the unlikely event that you experience or
witness behavior that is contrary to this Code. Thank you for your
attention to that. In case of emergency, attendees can dial zero from any of the
phones, and there's... they're scattered throughout in the meeting rooms, and
you'll be connected to the Marquette Hotel operator. I hope everyone here this
morning will be attending the reception this evening that's in the same space
where the breakfast seating area was. And so that begins at 5:30 following our
program in the Stars room. Also lastly, there are a number of flip chart sheets
that are posted to the windows. I'm sorry that they're blocking the view. But that
is some... we're trying to get... it's a little unconventional, a little bit
organized around the unconference sessions that are occurring at the end
of the day tomorrow. This is not committing you to doing anything, to
attending, we're just trying to get a read on who might be interested in what
topics. So there were seven topics that were identified through that online sort
of voting process. Sometime before five o'clock today, please take a look at
those topics and sign your name twice, once for round one and once for round
two, because there will be two discussion rounds. Again, we're
just trying to get a little bit organized, if that's even possible, around
that but kind of format, so we can see where we will be meeting and
having those conversations. So I think that is all. Does everyone have a seat?
Are we are logistically... everyone has a seat who wants a seat? Does anyone have a
seat by you that's free? So we have we have plenty of seats. Ok? Terrific, great.
So again, welcome, and at this time I'm just gonna turn the podium over to a
member of our stellar Planning Group. Thanks again to all of you, but Kathleen
DeLong from the University of Alberta. (clapping)
Good morning, everyone. Hello, yes, we learned that yesterday. (laughter)
My name is Kathleen DeLong, and I'm from the University of Alberta. It's my very
very great pleasure to introduce the keynote for this Symposium.
DeRay McKesson is a civil rights activist focused primarily on issues of
innovation, equity, and justice. Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland,
DeRay graduated from Bowdoin College and holds an honorary doctorate from the New
School. He's advocated for issues related to children, youth, and families since he
was a teen, working to connect individuals with knowledge and tools and
provide citizens and policymakers with common-sense policies to ensure equity.
Spurred by the death of Mike Brown and subsequent protests in Ferguson, Missouri
and beyond, DeRay has become a key player in the work to confront the systems and
structures that have led to mass incarceration and police killings of
black and other minority populations. He is also the host of the critically
acclaimed Pod Save the People, a weekly podcast creating space for conversation
about the most important issues of the week. This is season two of Pod Save the
People. Yay! I'm a huge fan. The podcast is also
about making sure people have the information they need to be thoughtful
activists and organizers. So I would now like to introduce DeRay McKesson to you. (clapping)
And as DeRay comes in, I would just like to say that, as he usually begins his
podcast, "let's go." - Yes, good morning, everybody. (clapping)
It's good to be back in Minnesota. I actually lived two blocks away from here when the protests started, so
it's like a homecoming of sorts, so that, it's sort of cool. I never ever saw the view from this height, though. This feels very different.
I used to teach sixth grade math, which was incredible. Sixth grade was the best
grade. If any of you have ever taught, you know sixth grade is it. Seventh grade is
puberty and deodorant, and it is bad. Sixth grade is like... there's still
like a lot of magic in sixth grade. Have you never been around a group of
kids that don't know they need deodorant and like they all need deodorant? That is...that's seventh
grade. But a lot, a lot of magic in sixth grade. And I taught math.
I taught 60, 90, and 120 minute classes, which is a long time to teach an
eleven-year-old anything, let alone math. And this one day, my students are like,
"Mr. McKesson, can I... can we go to gym early?" And I'm like, "Absolutely." I had them
first, second, third, fifth, and seventh period. They were tired of me, I was tired of
them. The gym teacher was one of my best friends, so I'm like, "You guys can go." So
they go, and like ten minutes later, they're back. I'm like, "Hey."
They're like, "We're back." I'm like, "Why are y'all back, like what happened?" And what I
realized that they were more in love with the idea of gym than the work of
gym. And I say that because, in this moment, I think that people are more in
love with the idea of resistance than the work of resistance. We've been trying to
think about how do we talk about the work in a way that makes sense, in a
way that actually pushes us to have an impact. I might think about how the world
changes. I'm always reminded, especially when I come back to Minnesota, which is
where I was when the protests began, that if you saw us in the street marching and
the beginning of the protest, it wasn't because we thought marching was a
particularly cool thing to do or the most effective strategy. It was illegal
to stand still. In August, September, and October 2014, if we
stood still for more than five seconds, we were arrested. And I never forget that.
It keeps me grounded in the work, because that was a history that we were told was
like so far gone, that like we saw in movies, and then we lived it. And
I always am reminded of that. But when you think about what the work looks like...
Before I talk about that, I will say that the ideas are important too, that we
know that the difference between diversity and inclusion matters, right?
That those are not just words, that diversity is often about bodies,
inclusion is about culture. You can recruit twenty more black students and have a
racist campus. You can recruit twenty more trans employees and still have a
transphobic culture. That like people have done the body work sort of well in
the past decade, that like, we're like recruiting all these new people,
trying to figure that out. The culture piece, the inclusion piece, is the harder
place to be. And there are lot of companies that have affinity groups, and
affinity groups are incredible. The black affinity group, gay affinity group,
affinity groups for life. I like affinity groups. But if the only place that gay
people feel like they can be queer and be safe is an affinity group, that means
that you have a broken culture. The only place that black people feel like they
can come in and talk about the fact that a third of all the people killed in this
country by strangers is killed by a police officer, if the only place where
they can talk about that trauma is in the black affinity group, like you have a
broken culture. Affinity groups are a role in a place, but the culture is
something bigger than that. The second is the idea about equality and equity.
Equality is the notion that everybody gets the same thing. Equity is the
idea that we get what we need and deserve. The work of justice is almost
always the work of equity. So when we think about school systems, like the
school system in Minneapolis, one of the biggest achievement gaps in urban
America is here in the Twin Cities, a city where there isn't... there's money, right?
I came from Baltimore, where, like questionable money. Is there
money? I don't know. Here it's like the fifth highest concentration of Fortune
500 companies, Minnesota is one of the only governments... it has a surplus, you know?
I didn't even know the government could have a surplus until I came here. But you
think about the problems are still so entrenched in the school system here. And
when we think about justice, it's never about equality... we're never saying that
like we want people have the same thing. We know that it costs more to educate
kids in poverty, to educate kids who are resettling, to educate kids with
disabilities. The cost is different, and we should pay the cost. That we should
make sure that we show up for people in the way they need to be showed up for,
which isn't always the way that other people need to be showed up for, and that
is the work of equity. So those ideas matter. But I think about the four sort
of big buckets about the work—the first is this focus on systems and structures.
I'll have you help me at the beginning. I'm gonna ask you on three
to turn to the person next to you and tell them something that you can buy for
$200. So again, on three, you're gonna turn to the person next to you spend ten
seconds and tell them something that you can buy for $200. One, two, three.
Okay, bring it back in five, four, three, two, bring it back, one.
Bring it back. Okay now on three what you're going to do is, to another
person you're by, you're going to tell them something that you can buy for $300.
Okay, so one, two, three.
Okay, bring it back in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
You know, this is a meta moment, but what's funny about the countdown, when
you teach young people or even adults is that you can never lose the countdown. If
you ever lose the countdown, you lose forever. So when I did five, four, three, two, one,
y'all were a little...loose. So I had to go to ten, because you can't lose the countdown.
You always have to... The moment you lose it, they know it's not real.
So I had you do that because in Virginia, theft over $200 is a felony. In Florida,
theft over $300 is a felony. In both of those states, when you become a
felon, you permanently lose the right to vote. Now it's interesting, because when
people think about felons, most people think about like mass murderers, people
blow up buildings. It's like, you have named things, like anything made by Apple, I
heard somebody say like a TV, a purse. People are losing the right to vote over
like stealing a pair tennis shoes, right? It's not, this is not some like
incredible... everybody is like a mass murderer in the world, you all shared
things that were $200, that were $300 dollars that have permanently
disenfranchised people in this country. We think about 6 million ex-felons in
the country can't vote, 2 million of which, about 2 million, 1.6
live in the state of Florida. One in four black people in Florida
can't vote, about 40% of black men in Florida can't vote. Those are choices. And it's a lot
of people who are stuck in situations because of the things that you talked to
your table partner about. And so much of this work is like peeling back the layers
so we can help people see what's underneath it. That there's like a layer
of storytelling that has actually hurt many people in this country, because, like
you, again, if I asked you, "What's a felon?" People only say the most heinous
things. And it's like, I'm not convinced that the
person who stole like a bike at 18 should permanently lose the right to vote.
I'm not convinced that like the person that stole a TV... that that is
the same thing as like blowing up a building. I don't think those things
are the same. The next thing I'll ask you to do on three, and I'm gonna pray
everybody gets this right, no shame if you don't, is... I'm gonna ask you how
many people are on a jury. Don't cheat. On three, you're just gonna
say it out loud. How many people are on a jury? One, two, three.
Got a lot of answers, it's twelve. Most juries are twelve people. There's some places across the country, they're six for some things.
with 12 is... 12 like the magic number. There are two states in the country,
Louisiana and Oregon, that it only takes 10 of 12 people to convict you of a
felony. So Louisiana incarcerates more people
per capita than anywhere else in the world, which is sort of wild. It's the
only place in the country where you can serve a life sentence without the
possibility of parole on a 10-2 vote. It's directly tied to integration in
Louisiana, so when black people started sitting on juries, we can look at the
legislature, like the records, and they literally pulled up the proportion of
black people in the state. It translated to sort of two on a jury, and they made it
so that like if those people sat on juries, then they wouldn't be able to
lower the conviction rate. Wild. Still in practice till today. They're trying to
change the law. The district attorneys are against it. And their sort of magical
argument being against it—cuz I was like really curious , I'm like what's the...
like what's the reason—and they're like it's really hard to get 12 people to
agree on anything in today's climate. Is that the best? Is that like the best, the best thing you got? I say that too
because it's like a structural thing. We talk often about systems and structures
because those are the things that impact people's lives in ways that we don't
often see and feel and touch, but those are like the most impactful things. If
there's like a push towards programs and services—and programs and services are
important—we should deal with the fact that people have been traumatized, and we
need to respond to that. That is real, that is work that people should do. I
opened up an after-school center, I worked at one of the largest in the
country. I get it, I believe in it, I was a
teacher. All... programs are important. But a couple things to remember about programs.
A lot of programs exist because the system and structure didn't figure it
out in the first place. So the only reason that we need a million
after-school programs about reading is because we didn't figure out how to like
help kids read during the school day. The only reason we need a million math
programs after school is not... they're not like enrichment programs. A lot of them
are like replacing the lack of education that happened during the school day. The
second thing is that a lot of programs are actually predicated on the idea that
poor people and people of color can't make good decisions for
themselves, so we'll make it for them. And what we want to do is change the system
at scale so people are set up to make the best decisions for themselves, so
that we can say like, "We believe that you have the capacity do this, and like we
know that some of the disadvantage you experience is actually not your fault,
it's a fault of a system greater than you." We think about the
three biggest mental health facilities in this country are not hospitals,
they're prisons and jails. Like I said, a third of all the people killed by
strangers in the countries is killed by a police officer. And when you think about
the racial wealth gap, it's projected that by 2053, the median wealth for
black people will be zero, the lowest recorded wealth since we started
recording at all, in the '20s, which is sort of wild. And I say that because four
years ago, I would have said that I think this is a broken system with bad people
making bad decisions. And now what I understand is that this is not a system
of constants, this is not a system of chance, that this is a system of choices.
And so much of our work is about mapping the choices that have been made,
understanding the impact of those choices, and in helping people see that
we can actually make different choices. So people say to me, the system... when we
say the system's broken, and then people will say, "Oh no, it's working exactly like
it was designed," the take away that we have from that is that it was designed.
That like because people made it, people can make something different. So we spend
a lot of time trying to peel back the layers so we can help people see like
this was created, and because it was created, we can do something different. So
the first bucket of the work is a, is a bucket about systems and structures. It's
about saying we're the biggest levers. How do we take apart the house not piece
by piece. We do think about this as a house built by Legos essentially,
and the goal isn't to sort of like randomly just pick apart the pieces, it's
about finding the biggest levers where like a whole thing falls, right? A
whole side of the house falls down. Because you now understand the biggest
leverage. We think that that has to be a core part of the work, this focus on
systems and structures. We often sort of organize around the loudest trauma, so
like the bigger, the louder the trauma, the bigger the organizing. People
dying is very loud trauma. So people organize around it. There's a lot of
quiet trauma that's ruining people's lives every day that we just don't talk about.
So you think about, there are six states where, if you get convicted of a drug felony, you
lose the right to food stamps. Like, that doesn't really make sense to me, but that
is real and impacting people. The largest jail in the country, the Cook County Jail
in Chicago, they don't consider... Chicago actually doesn't consider public housing
a house in many circumstances, so if you get released from jail like before your
court hearing, on your own recognizance, and you live in public housing, they still
code you homeless, so you... they won't release you because you technically don't
have a house. It's like those sort of things are like
sort of small, but they are like big in their impact. In my last visit to the
Cook County Jail, as we were walking sort of through intake, I looked and I saw
that like some of the staff was like writing one of the wrists of detainees.
And I was like what do you write... like what could you possibly... like I don't
even know what you can write on people that made sense. Right, like, what are you
writing on a sharpie with them? And that is how they, in 2018, that is how they
ordered them to go before the bail judge, like you got like a 1, you got like a 2,
on your wrist, and that's how you move them. It's like, so I'm talking to the warden
being like, "Hey, I think that sort of dehumanizing and inhumane." He's like,
"DeRay, I didn't even know." I'm like... But it's like these are the things
that are like quiet, you know? I'm not the only person who's ever seen that happen.
There's like a whole staff and apparatus that does it every day that sort of
seemingly let it happen. And like we focus on these sort of systemic things
because we think that those are the biggest levers. The second bucket is
around the importance of imagination. So I went to Bowdoin, which is in Maine. And
Maine is a special place, if any of you have ever been. But, during our pre-orientation trip, we went whitewater
rafting. So raise your hand if you have ever been whitewater rafting. A lot of people. Keep
your hand up if you fell off the raft, I'm happy to see all of you today. I
thought I was gonna die. I was like, you know, lived a good life and it's over. And I'll never
forget it because the thing about... if you've not white water rafted, the current
is actually just so strong that it doesn't really matter if you're a great
swimmer or not. If you get stuck in the current, you're sort of stuck. So I
fall off the raft and I'm like AUGH. Shout out to Brian Wedge, the guy who saved my life.
I feel like I owe him something every time I talk about it. And the thing that
I remember the most about falling off the raft is that, as I was trying not to die,
the only thing I could think about was my next breath. I wasn't thinking about
my father, my sister, joy, justice, college, it was literally like... and I'm
trying to breathe. And I think about that because that's one of the things that
trauma does to us, is that when we experience trauma we get trapped in the
present. And there are people who like their everyday is experiencing trauma, like
some sort of like confrontation or proximity to trauma. And when you are
that proximate to trauma, you're like trapped into the present, it's like a
survival thing. You see what's in front of you and you like focus on it because
that's the thing that's gonna get you to the next breath. And like that is what...
it's like a cycle. You're like trapped in the present, you're trapped in the trauma.
And the hard thing about being trapped in the present is that you can't really
imagine that you're trapped in the present. That like you lose all
ability to think about a future, to think about like what could be different,
because you're just trying to get back on the raft. You're just trying
to like level back up. And the thing is that we'll never get free if we can't
imagine, that it's hard to fight for things that you can't see, it's hard to
fight for things that you like don't think are possible. And for so many of us,
we've spent a lifetime looking at the constraints in front of us because we
needed to see the constraints so that we can like move on and get to the next day.
But part of our work has to be to log the constraints, to name them, and then
imagine a world without them. So we think about the police... so we would say that
this isn't... you know people think the protesters are sort of against the
police, and we're like not necessarily against the police, but I do think that we can live
in a world with... But this is not our response to conflict, that we believe
that there will always be rules, there will always be people who break rules, and
there will always need to be a set of consequences. So that we... that is sort of
like a part of the deal with what it means to live in community.
The question becomes like who makes the consequences and who enforces them, and
who makes the rules and what does that look like? And I'm not convinced that the
people who go like find kids who skip school need to be the same people who go
find people who blow up buildings. That seems like we can sort of
build something different. I think about, when you see kids on the corner like
just randomly in groups and like what would it look like, instead of calling
the police, people called like the after-school providers. Like, "Hey, can
somebody come sign these kids up for an after-school program." It's like a
completely different way of thinking about being a community but a completely
possible way about thinking about being a community. And we think about the
case for abolition is that, what we would say is that the police... what's interesting
about the police is that they employ a wholly negative power.
The police take, detain, arrest, they kill. They have a taking power,
that is like the power that they employ in communities. And it's the only part of
society where our response to conflict is only taking. So you think about when
kids misbehave, we don't like lock them in closets, we don't just like take
things from them. We have a positive response to the conflict that they
employ because we know that we're teaching them and we're giving them
skills so they can make different choices. We are actually saying
that like the response to conflict in communities has to be something that is
not rooted in a taking power, that it has to be about something different.
We need to push each other to imagine that. So you see things, like Stephon
Clark got killed in Sacramento, which is probably the the story that most people
know recently. Stephon got killed, and what's interesting is that
some of the response to it, it's like the Sacramento Kings and some other sort of
wealthy people in Sacramento created an opportunity fund, like a fund around
opportunity. And a reporter called me I was like, "DeRay, what do you think about
the fund?" And I'm trying to be positive because I generally think that like
money in communities is good. But I'm saying to them, like remember the lack of
opportunity isn't what killed Stephon Clark, right? It wasn't like, if he had
been in three more after-school programs, and had like been in a job force
readiness program, he would have... that isn't what killed him. It was like,
the police saying he was armed in the middle of the night killed Stephon. And when we
think about that instance, what's interesting is that you know we did the
first public database of police union contracts in the country.
In Sacramento, there's a clause that says the police officer disciplinary
records get destroyed after one year. They're written reprimands get destroyed
after two years. California is one of three states in the country that makes
all police misconduct records secret unless in a court proceeding. They're
so secret that other police departments can't tell other ones like who got fired
and for what. That is illegal in the state of California. I was in Portland,
Oregon recently, and I met with the police chief. And you know I like look
like I'm like a kid, and you know I'm sitting in the room,
and she sort of looked at me like, "I gotta be with this kid." And she's like
very very nice but sort of looking through me. And I say to her, "Hey
we should talk about your police union contract because you guys have this
clause. It's so weird." And she's like, "What's the clause?" I'm like, "It literally
says that police officers in Portland have to be disciplined in the least
embarrassing way possible to the department and the officer. And she sort
of looked at me like, "He probably just paraphrased that really dramatically." And
I'm like, "I think that's what it says." So she's like, "Let me get my contract." Then she reads it and she's
like, "Okay..." because that is literally what it says. And it's like, we say that
because it's like a pulling apart of the system. People would like
to like to paint us as like the crazy people who are against the police. It's like,
I don't know how you defend that, I don't know about your jobs
as librarians, but I can tell you as somebody who used to be the chief human
capital of school system, that we surely weren't deleting teachers disciplinary
records after one year. Parents and communities would have lost
their mind. You think about any of your K-12 experience, it's like your
disciplinary record followed you all the way from K to 12, and then you all know
there's people who did something wild as 12th graders, and their colleges
knew about it. Do you know what I mean/ But what does it mean that we create an
institution that has so much power and so little accountability. And that is a part of the work
that we think has to be on the horizon. And a part of that is about imagining a
different way of being in community, a different way of holding each other
accountable, and a difference set of standards. And a lot of us who see the
constraints and we believe that the constraints are the way the world has
been, there's some of our best writers who sort of paint a world that says that
God created like earth, the man, and white supremacy. And we will never concede that
that is sort of just a condition of the world. We want to say that like that is
sort of where we are today, but we can build something different, we can make a
different America, and we can make a different world. Now the third is about
this conversation about power. About what it looks like, what it feels like, how we
undo it how, we redo it. There are two ways that we can think about power. One
is this idea of power over. And power over is like the power that we know the
most. Power over is this idea that power is like a finite pizza pie with
an odd number of pizza slices, and some people always have
more and some people have less. And that game is about making sure that you get
as much so you're not being harmed. Power with is this conception of power that
says a power is infinite, expansive, and it is most potent when it is shared. That
is the power that we know very little of. And like what we're trying to do is we...
we're trying to like name the mentality of power over it, disrupt it, so that we
can like build a different way of being a community that isn't a game of winners
and losers, it isn't this zero sum sort of world, and doesn't create this cycle
that says the only reason that you're not being bullied anymore is because you
become the bully. We're trying to actually change the cycle so like
bullying in and of itself actually goes away and we build a different type of
being in community. When the interesting thing is about the way we think about
whiteness is that we don't often understand the way that whiteness is
about power, so when Baldwin says whiteness is a metaphor for power, what
he's really saying is whiteness is a metaphor for power over. This idea of
like domination, that we can actually build a different conception of power
that is understanding of power with. I tweeted not too long ago, "Watch whiteness
work." I tweet it often because whiteness is always sort of working its own way.
Most people think about whiteness as like lynching and enslavement,
and like that makes sense. But that is not the totality of the way white
supremacy and whiteness sort of works in our society. And I tweeted it, and this
this guy in Hollywood emailed me, and he was like, "Dre, I'm sort of disappointed in
you because you said whiteness and you didn't say white supremacy or racism."
And I was like, "Well cuz I met whiteness." He was like this long email and I was about
to eat lunch, and I was like I just don't have time to send you back a long email. So I
wrote back to him like, "Send me your phone number, let's talk about it." Sends me the
number, I call him, I don't know this guy. So we're on the phone and I'm trying to
explain to him that like the fact that nude is the color of your skin and not
mine is power. That is a choice, that is power. The fact that band-aids
look like your skin and not mine, that is power. And he's sort of like, "I don't get it."
I'm like, "Okay." So we sort of do that for a little bit, and then I say to him—he works in Hollywood—
and I say to him like, "Remember the fact that all the characters we read in text
are white until named other. Like that is power. And he was like, "I never
thought about it." He's like, "I read scripts all day and I just assume the
characters are white until..." It's like, yeah that's what power looks like, right?
The fact that like white is normative and what it means to be human and that
is baked into society. That is a function of power. And part of our work
is to help people see that power is always sort of moving in the world, that
it's always manifesting. One of the things that we do in classrooms, and we sit in the
back of classrooms observing teachers is that we can literally just chart the
negative to positive things that teachers say to students, and we can look
at the way power works in the classroom, we can look at the way that discipline is
gonna work, that way behavior works literally just by charting and saying to
teachers, "You say three negative things for every one positive thing you say and
like the balance is off in the class." In the workplace, we look and we can chart
who speaks first. So looking at like how straight white men often just like talk
all the time, like just because. And like just mapping that for people so it's
not like an emotional thing anymore on our behalf, we can just say like, "Hey, you
know that you only allow... like women always talk fourth in meetings you run."
Right? It's like a way to just help people understand that power is sort of
always moving in spaces. A lot of people that don't understand power until
it is like literally killing people, but what all of us who are in minority
communities know is that power is always sort of moving, and
you're always aware of like when you have it and when you don't, and what that
feels like and what it doesn't feel like. And part of our work is to like disrupt
the way that power normally functions. I think about my role as a teacher—I
taught sixth graders, sixth grade is amazing. I'll never forget I didn't have...
there were two sort of big rules in my class. One was that there are no real
rules, and the second is that you can always choose your seat and you don't have
to raise your hand to sort of move about the classroom. That was a big
thing. And at the beginning, it was a nightmare. But by the end, well what's
great about it is I was trying to help them understand the power over their own
body, that it's like a big deal that the only time you can move in a classroom is
when I tell you you can. That seems to me like too much power, like I don't...
you at some point need to learn how to manage your body and I don't think I'm
teaching you well how to do that if like every moment you need to
move, you need my permission. That's sort of wild. So I'm like, we'll figure this out. And it
was sort of interesting to see young people like learn how to use that power
in a way that made sense. And like they did it, and it was like definitely a
thing that we had to like learn and teach each other how to do, but like we
sort of made it work, and that was really incredible. The other thing I'll say is I
remember I was here a minute in Minneapolis. I was a senior director of
human capital, so I managed all of the hiring for all staff including our
teachers. And when I first got here, we were getting all these discrimination
complaints that I think were probably right, and it sounds like we're gonna
interview every teacher who applies. Anybody who applies to be a teacher,
everybody gets an interview. Nobody will be saying they were denied an
interview because of anything, cuz everybody gets one. And we started to ask
a set of questions, and the third question we designed then was, "Do you
think that students from high need communities can achieve the same grade
level standards as students from wealthier communities."
And that was the question. We trained people to ask it and deliver it with like no
inflection, no facial things, like sort of a basic question, right? We did a lot of
training on the like how you deliver it and then how you receive
people's responses. I'll never forget, there's this 25 year white woman who I
interviewed and she goes, "Dre, well, kids from color communities just can't help it."
I'm like, literally like like is it... am I getting punked?
And it was incredible to ask people the question because we thought it was sort of
a basic question, like do you think that kids from like poor communities can
achieve the same grade level standards as students from wealthy communities. It was
interesting, it was about 30% of the people interviewed just said no, some
version of no. They were either like the parents care more, or like you know
they just have more access, or like there are just some deficiencies en
communities, and it was one of those things that helped us see that like part
of what we have to do is actually tease out people's mindsets and beliefs in
this work, more than we often do. That sometimes we just assume that
because people sort of have certain identities or because people like lead
with their heart, especially in education, Lord knows, the things that we allow
people to get away with because they're like "good people."
And then what we realized is that like the mindsets and beliefs stuff is
actually really important and an indication of like how power will be
distributed in classrooms and in schools. And we had to do our work to like tease
that out on the front end. And it was hard, because we weren't hiring people
who like didn't believe that all kids can learn, because we thought that was
sort of like a basic... like look you don't think that like every kid can
learn, and like this doesn't seem like a good school system for you. But when we put that in place, it was
like really contentious. It was like sort of a wild thing to do. The other thing we
did hear specifically is that, when I first got there, there was no real hiring
process for principals that was real. So we did this thing that was experienced
really radically. We were like, "Everybody who wants to be a principal has to like look
at a teacher teaching and give feedback." We were like, that seems sort of basic.
And it was like 40% of people who did it failed, and then there was a nightmare,
and people were like really upset with us. And we were just like... part of the way
that sort of power is interesting is that some people have to abide by a set
of standards and some people don't. And what's interesting here is that the
people who are around our most vulnerable students were people that
grandfathered in because they were like nice people. And we were like that
doesn't make sense, right? Like if you can't talk about instruction, or like—
which we think is like basic, right, like we think that's sort of like a basic idea—
then like you shouldn't be able to be around our kids. That just seems
like a fair thing. But there are a lot of places in society where people just get
a pass and there are no standards and no rules, and then there are people who have
like a million standards and a million things put on them
every single day. And we want to name those things so we can help people like
tease it out and break it apart and do something different and remind people
that like what it means to empower somebody is like, I can't give you
power, what I can do though is help you find the power that you have. And what
good teachers do is help people find the power they have. When I think about being
in the street, it's like the thing that gives me hope and joy is like I've been
all across the world seeing people find power they didn't think they had before.
That to me is like the radical hope and like the radical difference. The
fourth thing is this question of like who are you in the world. I think that
there are three sort of big buckets of people. That there are the salt shakers,
there are the sugar high chasers, and then there are the bridge builders. Now
the salt shakers—salt shakers, sugar high chasers, and bridge builders. The salt
shakers are people who drive me like most nuts. I think they're my personal pet
peeve. These are the people who sit down on the dining room table, and they put
salt on the food before they've even tasted it. They just like shake it, they're just like it
must be awful. And these are the people in the work who
just like walk into the room being like, "We're doomed." That's just like a hard way to
plan about a future. If you like sit down at the table and you know, like you
haven't tasted it, haven't smelled it, but you just know something
must be bad. And the pessimists are sort of interesting in the moment because
what they do that is actually, I think, the most damaging is that they pre-
contaminate every solution. Because they walk into the room being like, well just
must be doomed from the beginning. But we gotta eat cuz if we don't eat,
like dying is just not cool, right? That's sort of like the way that they...
So they participate in all the meetings in a doomsday sort of spirit because
cannot participate is not okay. But like part of showing up has to be being
critical only so that we can build something else. We believe that we take
apart the house because we know a better one can be built. We don't like take apart
things just so we can destroy. If we think about freedom is not only the
absence of oppression, but the presence of justice and joy, and so much of our
work is focused on the absence of it. It's like taking down the bad systems and,
like that has to be a part of the work, but we can free everybody from jail, we
could like close the racial wealth gap, and that does not automatically mean
that the world is like just an equitable and joyful. We actually have to
build to that world. And like we have to remember that. People ask me like
why does the Right have a much easier time about messaging? It's like what Make
America Great Again isn't necessarily like a complicated idea, it's an idea
that we've sort of lived through before. So it's not hard to recall all the
images of overt white supremacy that we've endured for generations. When we
think about a world of equity, justice, and joy, we're like making it up. We've
never seen it before. You don't know what it's like to come into a workplace or
the world every single day and it's just like equitable. Like we know what the
idea is like. You couldn't explain to people your life with single-payer health
care. Like you can imagine a world where everybody has health care. You don't know
what that like looks or feels like in this context. We're always sort of making
it up on our side, and that is just like a harder part of the work. But it's hard
to make it up when they're people at the table who just are like, "Well, can't do it."
You're like... that's just not helpful. The sugar high chasers are the ones who I think are the most
interesting, cuz I like don't know where it comes from. And I was flying to San
Francisco to do a talk not long ago, and somebody DMed me and was like, "DeRay, I see
you're coming to San Francisco. Are you coming to the protest?" And I was like,
"What's the protest about?" And she was like, "I don't know, but I got my sign." You
are, you're chasing something, like I don't know what you're chasing.
You're not chasing the work, you're not chasing justice, you're not chasing
freedom, like you're chasing the high And we have to be honest and name the
people who are like the high chasers in the work. And I think about even being in
the street. You know, we were in the street for 400 days in the first wave of the protest.
And there are people whose identity was like rooted in battle. So like when the
battle stopped, they no longer understood who they were. Like when we stopped being in
the street every day, and I'm like, I get that. I also know that one of the
conditions about being marginalized, right, is that you live on the margin. And
then on the margin, you're often unheard and unseen, and in moments like this
people get heard and seen in ways they've never been heard and seen before.
So people get addicted to being heard and seen more than they get addicted to
being free, and I get that. But the reason that we name the what people chase is so
we can like help them see it and help them pivot to something else. The third is
this question about about the bridge builders. Now most people think about the
bridge builders is important because they like build a bridge and that's
sort of obvious. But the cool thing about the bridge builders is not that they build
that bridge per se, like that is important, but is if they see an open
space and they believe something can go there. And we need more people who like
see these spaces that don't have anything in them right now or have
things that are broken and deficient, and they think they can put something there
that is better, that not only services them but services a whole community, a
whole population. That has to be a part of like how we think about making the
world a better place. And when we think about the power stuff, it's interesting
because the images that you learn and like the stories and ideas that allow the
most insidious things to happen are things that we learn pretty easily... are
pretty early. You know I even think about, with the police what's interesting is
that you see... you grew up watching like decades of footage of like the police
can sort of do whatever they want as long as they catch the bad guys. So you
think about Bad Boys, if any of you remember Bad Boys,
it's like the number of communities that they just like run through like
literally just drive through crowds, shooting the crowds, knock over people,
and it's sort of just okay, cuz like they found the bad guy. If you saw
Bright, that really awful Netflix movie—did anybody see Bright, the Netflix movie? Millions of people
watched this thing. It was also bad. So Bright is this really bad movie with Will Smith on
Netflix, that millions of people watched, it's like, they are orcs in it, and then
there's like the Will Smith...(oh yeah) See, you're like uh huh, you watched it! It's like literally
first seen in the movie the orc police officer is walking to like a bodega and he
just like pushes people over, you're like this is crazy. If you saw Zootopia—did any of you see?
See remember in Zootopia, there's like a part in Zootopia where like the the
smaller police officer, I don't remember what animal she was (a bunny). A bunny, right, thank you. A bunny. She's
like, a what? (Judy!) Judy, thank you. Judy's like running, trying to get the bad
guy and she literally... they're just like running through neighborhoods, like
people like flying out of the way. And like we have been brought up on this
idea that like, at whatever cost it's sort of okay, right? Whatever cost...
even in things like Zootopia, right? Which is like a children's movie. And so the ideas that you
find that like actually create space for these things are like embedded all
across society, and we have to uproot those. And I think about the bridge
builders are the people who like see those things, they see it and are like
okay got it, gotta build something better. Now I'll leave
what this question that I heard in a sermon. I was moderating a panel between
two people you probably don't know. One is Jerry Lorenzo the designer for Fear
of God, which is a fashion label. The second, you know of him, Pastor Rich. He is
the pastor that married Kim and our beloved Kanye. Kanye, what are we gonna do about him?
But I was listening to this sermon by Pastor Rich in preparation for this
moderating thing, and he asked this question that I thought was so powerful.
He said, "If God answered all your prayers, would it just change you, or would it
change the world?" And I think so many of us, we don't understand that the work of
justice is always about having a prayer and a dream that changes the world. Thank you. (clapping)
I think we're doing questions? I think there're mics. The room is
tight enough, though, that I think you could just stand. But I don't know, I'm
not in charge, I'm just here. (laugher)
- Hi Dre, I'm Julia Swanson. I'm from the University of Colorado Boulder, and I also went to Bowdoin College. - You did?
- Yes. I was I was a senior when you were a freshman, and I totally remember you
running for class president. (laugher and clapping)
- Was it your breakfast when I... you remember that—I think you might have been a first year
when I walked away from the podium. Was that your breakfast? No? You would
remember, it's okay. I was giving this speech and I just had a really tough time with the content. I was a two-term student body president, three-term class president. And I literally, I'm at the
podium and start talking, and I'm just like, "I don't think I can do this." And I literally walk off. Every time I see somebody from that class, it's like "Hey, sorry about that..." (laugher)
- So my question is sort of about all of us here working in higher education and the
concept of bridge builders. So how can we, as people working in higher education,
sort of foster the next generation of bridge builders? - Good question. I think...
when I think about... my advice to students is always like, you need to make sure
that you leave that institution a better reader, writer, and thinker than you were
when you came in. That if the only thing you've done in four years is fight the
institution, you got a bad deal. That just isn't a good deal. And there are a
lot of people I meet who like, they spent for years fighting, so they got like a
dope statue made, they changed some cool policy, and like they get out and
can't read, write, and think. You're like, that was... you got a short end of the
stick. And I think with the best adults do in higher education is that they
help create this space where like young people not only learn information
but skills. You got here because you have a set of skills that
like are real things. You like learn a set of skills, and a lot of
activists and like young people who believe in a better world who either
come out with like a lot of information and no skill, they like can't... they
don't really know how to research, they know really know how to sort of take
apart a primary document, or like put something... Those things are
skills. People—you'd be shocked (maybe you're not shocked 'cause you work in higher education)—I'm
shocked. What did you... you were there for four years and this is all you got?
So I think that the best adults in higher education like push students
beyond the place that they think they can be, with the focus to skills. And
what is interesting about low-income communities and with people of color is
that we often sort of do the like... well love is a skill. I can't
tell you enough... I can't tell you how many after-school
programs I've been to, but like it's really like love is what they're
teaching 90 percent and then there's something else. So it's like
basketball and love, and like... white kids are going to like skiing and
science, right? And black kids are like love and love. And you're like that is...
If love was the answer, there's a lot of love in the black community already.
People... like if love could get people out of poverty, like it'd be over. But
they're sort of this idea that like, "Oh, we need to keep these kids safe..." and like
it's actually like an act of charity and it's not an act that you believe that
they can do something. It's actually a manifestation of low expectations is
how it actually translates. To not push people and hold them to high standards
and just like believe that they can do beautiful things. And you went to Bowdoin,
one of the things that I sort of loved about Bowdoin was that I was in all these
places that just like stretched me, right? I remember I took this
class called "The Bible," and I'd never ever seen somebody talk about the Bible like it
was like a piece of fiction before. She was like, "I cannot believe God did that
on page three!" I am like, "What is this woman... God is about to smite her in the middle of class." But it was such a different to read.
I think about all of those places that I was in where there
were adults who just like pushed me beyond what I thought was possible.
The best adults do that for people, especially who come from communities
where that is just not sort of the normal practice.
- Hello. I just met you! (laughter) - I was wondering... you're doing difficult work, and
it's not going to come to an end for a while. I was just wondering if you would
talk to us about how you deal with self-care, and how you deal with the
emotional labor of activism. Also I was wondering if Clint got his shoes? - I love Clint! I love that you listen to the podcast.
So, it's funny, I... you know, Baldwin has this great quote... I'm writing a book, which is
killing me, and Baldwin—this quote is in there—Baldwin has this great quote. He says,
"The impossible is the least that we can demand." And I love that. Because I'm
reminded that like... I think it can actually change in our lifetime. I
don't think this work has to be like a ten generations work, and if they can
rewrite the tax code on the back of napkins and paper towels, then like we
can actually fix all the other stuff quickly too. That it's never a matter of
like, are there resources? That Trump just gave seven hundred billion dollars to
the military. It would take a hundred twenty five billion to take every single
person to poverty. It's like not a matter of like resources, it's not a matter of
"can we," it's always a matter of will. And the question for us as organizers:
Can we tell the story in a way that like helps more people believe that this is
like possible right now? And like that I think will be the test.
We might be able to tell the story that convinces people that
it's possible one day, which is different from helping people understand that this
is possible like today. And then we can actually force like systems and structures
to do right by people right now... I feel
more confident than I can experience sort of the takedown of all the bad
things in my generation. I think if there's anything I worry about, I worry
about the rebuild. That there's so many people who like all they know is to take
down. So when you ask them like, "What should safety look like in your
community?" They're like, "I don't know." Or like you ask them like, "What does a great
school look like?" They're like, "I don't know." And we spend so much time on like all
the bad things, and I don't think a lot of people have invested enough energy in
the like, "What do you... like what would a safe neighborhood for your child look like?"
If you could just like let your kid go out and like roam the neighborhood
for two hours, like what about that would make you feel
safe and not like you needed to check on them every two seconds? Those are
imagination questions, and I don't think that we have enough spaces set up to
like imagine differently. In terms of self care, I'm pretty basic. I just
need like four walls and a door. Like I just need like simple, quiet, like that helps
me recenter, cuz I am always on the move, and that is sort of enough. In
my, my... you know, my sister—who's great— and my friends, my sister's name is TeRay.
We're not twins, we're just black from Baltimore with rhyming names. She's great, and she and I are really
close, and my father, so they keep me focused. I want a dog one day. This is
completely random. I just said that. My first public announcement! (laughter)
- Well I hope your dreams come true. - Dogs are so cool! - Thank you for your talk. One
thing in particular stuck... stood out to me and that is that you said, "If
the only place someone can talk about truth is within an affinity group, the
culture is broken." Can you expand on that, and have you helped an organization go
beyond that structure and actually talk? - Yes, I think about... there's an interesting.. so like
every time the police kills somebody— mind you, police kill people a lot—there
are all these like black employee groups that'll reach out about it, which makes
sense. Like big companies, like big like tech companies, and... it's just
like... this isn't just your problem. It's not just like the affinity... it's not
just the impacted people's problem. I'm trying to think of another way to say it. The
police kill a lot of people, and what was interesting about it, when we were in the street
in Ferguson, is that people thought that it was a problem in Ferguson, they didn't
think it was a problem in America. They were like, "Woah, those people in St. Louis..."
And then the police started killing people in their neighborhoods, like, "Oh my
God, I didn't realize bad it was." So you think about, like what
we would say is that the problem is actually coming to a neighborhood near
you soon. So like the... that... if you help us get rid
of it in general, like you will make sure that it's not proximate to you. But it's
like in these companies it's like there are the friends of black people, the
family... it's not like black people live like a vacuum, so this is
like a company... like the the way that black people feel in the company, whether
they're safe, are not safe, whether they feel like this is a welcoming
environment or not it's like a part of your bottom line, it's a part of like the way
people interact with each other, this is like a community conversation. I think
about even like the gun violence thing, it's like you know when the shooter shot up
YouTube, it like changed the way YouTube thought about the gun work, right? Because
it's like, yeah, this is like just two hops away from being an issue that
impacts you, too. I think #metoo is a great example of... like it's not just a women's
issue. We should be talking about like sexual assault and gender
equality and feminism in like companies, right? They shouldn't just be at the
women's affinity group is like, wow, sexual assault's like a bad thing. It's
like, that's sort of is like a big thing. And there are a lot of places that
I think people get nervous. I think that the inclination to put into affinity groups
comes from people's nervousness. They're like, well I don't know how to have the
conversation, I don't know how to participate in the conversation, so I'm gonna like
let the people most impacted sort of lead it. And leading is one thing, but
being confined to one place is like another thing. So in a lot of places I've
gone to, it's like just saying that is enough to like help them think.
I was at this big company, and like the senior vice-president for
"insert long title here" was like the executive sponsor for like the black
people affinity group rate. And I met him the day before, he was like
fine. And they... the employees were asking me something about some racial incident,
and I said... he was like standing next to me, and I was saying like, this guy
has like too much power to just come to the meetings, right? That's just not..
he's like the senior vice president of blah blah blah blah blah at this huge
international company. You need to ask him to do something with that power,
cuz like if he's actually gonna be the sponsor in the group, he should be
like sending a message to the whole company about how this is an issue.
He should be doing something more than like showing up at your meeting and
being like, "I believe you." Like that's just not... that's like not actually what
it means to show up. I was talking to another—a university president, actually—
he was like, "DeRay, we had this racial incident come," and he's like, "we have
forms." And it's like, what actually matters is that you tell the community that
you think this is an issue, like not that like you met with the black people.
That is sort of one way to do it. There's another thing for you to just be like,
"I think this is wrong," right? And like that is about a message for
a whole community. And when we think about people's values, it's like your
values should show up whether I'm searching for them or not. And there are a
lot of companies are like... the values only show up when I'm like digging.
Starbucks is a great example. Starbucks' first apology was
like not an apology. Then people got really upset, and then they were like, "Oh my God, we believe in
community training day." You're like well if that is true, that should have
been the thing you led with, right? Like that should have just been true
regardless of the outcry, regardless of people's asking for it. Like values show
up because they're just the right... those are the things you've committed to you
already. And a lot of places were like we are searching for the values, and like
the values can't just live in a group of 10 people like in an affinity group.
The values have to be things that just like show up. And I think about like, you
know I was a chief human capital in Baltimore, and we made some decisions
about personnel that were like hard decisions. But they were like the right
things with our values. So we're like suspending this person, disciplining this
person, people we loved, who did a lot for the community but broke a set of
values. Either the values are our values or they're not. They can't
be like person-dependent.
- Hi. Cynthia Henderson from the University of Southern California, the other USC. And I'm still processing a lot of the things that you said, particularly about statistics about the police and their, you know, history of
conflict and involvement that... I'll be looking that up. But anyway, I had a
question—two questions. How do we help people find their power? And the second
one was: How do we move people from being a saltshaker to a bridge builder?
- Yeah, I think the "how do we find people" is interesting.
Some of it is as simple as like believing it. So I think about with young
people, it's literally like... there are so many classes
at all ages with people where like we just don't validate the stories they
bring to the classroom. We sort of like only validate the stories that are in
the classroom. So if I asked a group of 11 year olds right now, "Have you
experienced racism?" They'd probably look at me and laugh, right, cuz they're just like "I
don't know what you mean." But if I said, "Do you think you've ever been treated differently
because of the color of your skin?" They're like, "yes," right? And that is...
that is my work to help like validate the way they think about the world and
the way they come to the classroom as like a real thing, like that is real the
way you did it, and then using that experience to like highlight a bigger
truth as opposed to me being like, "If you don't if you don't have the language of
racism, then you don't get in." And that's like actually a lot of
communities we're in, like if you don't get it this way then it's not real and
it's like... Some of what we have to do is say like, that your life is real,
right, like that's like a real thing. And like creating space for that is like
huge. And even if people don't communicate that it's huge, it is huge.
The second is like living in a little bit of disbelief. So like one of the ways
systems and structures work is that they are designed to make you think you
can't make an impact. So when I was at... and most of you who work in systems—
all of you, I think, have experience with this—is that when I was the chief
human capital, I was just responsible for hiring all teachers in Baltimore and in
Minneapolis. And last year, I opened in schools last year in Baltimore. We had
one classroom in the school that had 40 kids in kindergarten—a big class,
which is like too big for kindergarten. So we get an email from a parent to the
superintendent. It's like, "Hey Superintendent (inaudible), my kid's in a
class that has all these kids in it, blah blah blah, can you do something about it?" She sends
it to me cuz I'm in charge of all hiring. She's like, "DeRay, can you do something?" Mind
you, 50 people report to me, we have 11,000 staff members, it's a 1.3 billion
dollar organization, I have staff to sort of represent all the schools, all the
principals have my cell phone. This could have gotten to me a
million ways, but it got to me through this random parent, right? So because it's
one parent emailed the superintendent, Sonya the superintendent emails me, I
call her and I'm like, "I need a little bit of money, like I can do something but
like I can't afford it. Can you help me pay for it?" She's like, "Cool, got you." We
split the class the next day, like all because of this one random parent.
But the system is not designed for me to loop back with her and be like, "Hey,
thanks for emailing us." Cuz like selfishly—we can't... I can't deal with
the thousand emails from parents, like I just don't time to do that, right. But she
mattered. And like she'll never know that the only reason... the change, like the trajectory
of her kid's learning experience that year was like her sending us an email.
And there are a lot of people who like just don't believe that that is like a way to make
a... they just don't... you've never seen it. So some of it is like living in
disbelief and like doing the right thing anywhere like pushing and... because it's
like the right thing. Your second question was... give me a reminder. Oh, the
salt shaker to something else. So the salt shakers, I think, are people who are
like, "I've tried, it didn't work. I like invested before, did more." Like I think
that the salt shaking comes from a not bad place necessarily. I think that when
it gets bad is when people are like, "I'm telling the truth and you're
delusional." That's sort of one of the ways it shows up. Another way that it
shows up is this idea that like, "I'm actually the most honest because I'm the
most... that all I do is critique and because I know how to tear things apart
like that makes me honest." And what we would say is that like the critique only
matters because you can build something else. It doesn't...
the goal isn't to tear apart society and like leave it torn apart. The goal
is to like tear it apart so we can build something really cool. And that like... we
need to name that. So like the way that I've done it is like pushing all the
people are like most pessimistic and be like, "Hey! What can we build?" Like just
literally like forcing people into this build conversation. Like okay, I get it, I
get it's broken. How would you fix it? And sort of just like sitting in that and
like helping people start to like exercise that muscle, even if it feels like
ridiculous and crazy. Like that's really important, I think.
- Thank you for your comments. I think they were really helpful. But I come with a heavy heart,
given what happened to the two Native students at Colorado State University,
and given what happened to the students who are pushed off at graduation.
I say that because so often this work is motivated by a crisis. And my question is:
Do you have any thoughts on how we can make this work sustainable?
Because suddenly, there's this flurry of activity on these campuses when there's
a crisis, and we act like we're starting from ground zero,
like nothing has been done. I mean, how do we build on that? And, and maybe you, you
know... so that's just the question that I... and I hope to address it tomorrow as well. Thank you.
- Yeah, I think it's the right question. One of the things that
I'm interested in is like, how do we start to talk about race, and especially the
history of race, in like normal tones, and like less... like the facts are dramatic, so
I don't need to be dramatic, right? And I think about... I was at this
event, and I was wearing this outfit that had facts on it. And one of the
facts was that white high school dropouts have more wealth than all black
college graduates, which is true. And this guy comes up to me and he's like, "DeRay,
is that true?" And I'm like, "Yeah, it's true." And he's like, "I don't believe it." I'm
like, "Okay. I don't even know... like okay." so we sort of get through that piece, and he says to me... so I'm saying...
Anyway, he says to me, "DeRay, well the the reason that white people have so
much wealth is because there're more of us. Like that the government... just like a
log distribution." And I say to him like, "The only reason there are more of you is
cuz you killed half the people and enslaved the other half." It's not like...
it's not like there are naturally more of you. You killed everybody. But what was interesting
about that exchange is that like I delivered it like just like that, was
like, yeah but it's cuz you killed half the people, real basic, right? And it
was one of those things... I could see him squirming because he was ready to dismiss
it as passion, but I was like just real chill about it. And I start there
only because I think that some of the ways that we talk about the worst parts
of the history, we do it in a way that like I don't think conveys just how like
real it was, how crazy it was, and how persistent it was, and how like damaging.
It's just like a normal... that happened. And sort of forcing people to reckon
with the like, the fact of it and not like my delivery. And I think that so
much of the pushback that I've seen people deliver is actually like to the...
so much of the pushback that I've seen people... sort of... push, is like to the
delivery of the fact and not like the content of the fact. And I think about...
so I think that that is like really important on college campuses and everywhere, to
just be like, hey like, when people talk to me about the wealth gap, it's like we
gave white people wealth. We did. We like gave... white people didn't work hard, they
didn't have to be all small business owners, like we just gave them
1% housing loans, we gave them free education. But when we think about
people of color, literally it's like small business... everybody has to be a
small business owner, everybody has to be the most motivated... it's like, lazy black
people should eat. Lazy black people should have water, right? Like those
things are sort of real, but when we talk about it in terms of whiteness, it's like
we just gloss over just how we did it for all of them in a way that is like
really sort of wild when you think about it scale. In terms of these incidents, I
think that I'm hopeful that the public pressure from them has created more
conversation. I don't know if you saw that another person got beat up in a
Waffle House by the police yesterday, which is like crazy. So I don't know
what's going on at Waffle House's but... I'm hopeful that the public conversation
has like led to it, has led to like more examination and exploration. I'm
interested to see if we can organize in a way that like shuts down the economic
power places like that. And the last thing about how do we not recreate the
wheel. I think some of it is people feel like if the wheel works so great before,
that they're like, we wouldn't be here, right? So people feel like we should at
least be open to updating it. And the second is that, and I'll say this as
somebody who is steeped in this work now every day, is that sometimes it's hard to
find out the work that's been done before because people keep it so close
to themselves because they want to be the only conduit for the work. And there are a lot
of people are just over that. They're like, I'm down to organize with
you, but I'm not down to like be forced to do it in this one way, and not be open
to talk about how we can update it or change it. And there are a lot of people
who sort of employ this "if you don't do it with me or like me, then you're not
real," and I think there's a generation of people who are like done with that
I think these are gonna be the last two because we're at time.
- Thanks so much. I'm
curious about how you... what's your strategy for dealing with the backlash? So we had,
you know, Obama for eight years, I was living in the South at the time.
None of my white friends would ever talk about politics. We just didn't.
And then I move, thank God, to New York. And of course all my white friends voted for
Trump, and—thank God I'm not living there— so, you know, my experience is that we
have Trump because it's backlash from eight years of a black president, and so,
you know... How do we like... what do you do about this backlash? These people have
power and they want... like yesterday, we learned about this concept
of their seats. They don't want to lose their seats. So how do
we... what's the strategy for dealing with that?
- So a couple things. One, I do think that... you know, I talk about systems and
structures cuz I really do believe that we're just playing different games.
I think about like the police, we're just playing... the police don't care if we
protest every day. And like, I didn't get that four years ago, cuz they're just
playing a different game. It is so hard to indict any of them because the
structure and system mixed up, that like until we play that game, we just... it
doesn't matter, right? So like, I don't even know if that's a backlash per se,
and I tell you, like the police union contract stuff. It's like, well if all the
disciplinary records are destroyed, and everything's secret anyway, and like and
and and and, then like it doesn't matter if we win the public conversation, it
doesn't matter if it's a world-class prosecutor, like it... we're just like
playing a different game. And I think... on the Right, they're just playing a
different game. So you think about the strategy for taking over the
state legislatures isn't because they— I mean, it is partly because they
want to introduce these state laws—but they were actually trying to build a
critical mass, and Trump sort of screwed this up cuz he's just so wild. But
they're trying to build a critical mass that the states could call a
Constitutional convention, and then they can rewrite parts of Constitution.
Just like a brilliant, and just... just playing like a complete different game. One
of the biggest, one of the biggest funders of resettlement services for
displaced Puerto Ricans from Puerto Rico right now are actually the Koch brothers.
They are funding like the probably most expansive literacy, job placement,
all this stuff for displaced Puerto Ricans, because they know that they're
gonna have all their names, addresses, phone numbers in 2020. It's like
brilliant and insidious organizing. And I think that we're just not play...
I think we're just playing different games. So in terms of the backlash, I think what
happened in 2016, I remember a lot of activists being like, president doesn't
matter. Local is where it matters. Cote for
your city councilman, vote for your mayor, I've never seen the president impact
people's lives. And now it's like your friend's getting deported, and it's a bad thing.
It's like, you sort of screwed that calculation up. But it was, but it was
people like feeding that idea, because it worked... it like worked for a set of
people that it worked for. I think now people get it better, is that like just
from a raw number perspective, if the Left voted, if everybody voted, we'd always win,
just from like a sheer number game. It's why we talk about like the things, like
that $200 is a felony that you permanently lose the right to vote. In Oklahoma,
that over $50 was a felony until 2001. That's crazy, right? $50 is like... all of
you probably are felons who stole something over $50 by mistake, you know?
And it's like, I think that the, I think the backlash is not actually just like
an emotional thing, I think it is the combination of playing a different game,
and I think that what we see with Trump is like they're just playing a different... we
didn't even know the government could move this quick before, because like it's
never moved that quick. He's done things so quickly and at
such like incredible speed with no pushback from like the own party, that has
been sort of incredible to watch happen. I think if anything it's reminded that like when
the other side gets in power, we should just change like... we can like let
everybody free from jail, you know, just like one day, it's like you're into
everything, and I think that'd be like incredible, too. But I think that the
way we do it is like organize... we like tell the right story about a world we want
to live in, we like build the structural power to do it, and we fight at every
level, which is I think what they're just much better at, and then we focus our
money and our resources in a way that actually has it translate into something.
And if anything, I think that that's what I worry about, that we will either look
back at this decade and be like, wow look at all those people who worked really
hard, or we'll look at this decade and be like, wow look at all the change that
happened, and I think that we're sort of like... it's a 50/50 about where we go.
Last question.
(inaudible)
- My name is Elise Mintor. I'm a librarian at a public university, four-year
university in Towson, you know Towson University outside of Baltimore. - I live right around the corner.
- We actually met briefly at Afropunk last year. You probably don't remember me, that's okay (laugher). So I
was going to say that (let me turn this so I can still see you while talking), I heard Renee Meyers, who is a change management
consultant, speak recently. And she says something to the effect that she talks
to a lot of c-level suite leaders who want to do the right thing and want to
effect change but they don't know where to start. And so I was wondering if you
could speak... we've talked a lot about police brutality and systemic racism and
losts or lack of equity, which is all- important, but I wonder if you could make
a little bit of a stronger connection to what that means to us who work in higher
education, at libraries, with students, but also thinking about what it means to
think about that from a organizational perspective, and how that relates to
creating policies and hiring or retention of professionals and things of that nature.
- Yeah, I think it's all... when I think about systems and structures, I
think about them at every level, not just... I use the police just because they're
like an easy example to me. But I think about being the chief human capital of a
school system, and it was never lost to me that like the way I designed that
form today would be the way that we collected data for the next 50 years.
So if any of you remember, you had to do the EOC... the most school systems have to report
data to the EOC in a certain way, and like for instance we don't collect data
on biracial people in a way that makes.. it's like you have to check white and
then something else, like that's just the way the data is collected. So people
would ask us like, what's the breakdown of whatever. It's like, well I can tell
you the number of people who checked like more than two races, is how we
collected in Baltimore. I can't tell you anything else. So like what about the
number of... and Latinos have to check more than two
races, like that's, the box is literally called "more than two races,"
and it's like that actually... that fundamentally changes the way that we
make decisions in the district, cuz we have no data on Latino employees. It
just like doesn't exist. And that's actually like a system-level decision
that is about equity and race and justice that like doesn't look like it's
about equity, race, and justice. So I think about... it was never lost to me that
we did those. I think about even being the chief, or I, like... being the senior director
here, and the way that we interview people, it's like we... it was the first
time we ever asked people mindset questions, and we thought that was like
the right thing to do, and that was like from an equity perspective. And I
think about people who work inside systems and structures, it's like trying
to think about like the levers and the decisions that you're making today that
you know will have a long... like they will be things that live beyond you, and how
can you set them up so that they actually like meaning something, or like
collect data in a way that makes sense, or push policy. Like those things I think
that we take for granted. And as... when I was in Baltimore, working back in the
school system, you know we employ as many people as a city itself.
So when I thought about like how we led teacher PD, or like how we hired people,
who we recruited, and how we recruited them, like all those things are like
sitting down and just asking the tough questions about, like did we do this
right, have we recruited in the right places, why don't we have enough teachers
of color, like why are people quitting? Being in a place that we could ask those
questions and like force answers was actually like really powerful because
like I was just a chief and like the superintendent also agreed with me. There
is also a question, this thing about like where do your values show up, is that like,
we made a lot... I was the only person who could hire and fire people. It was this
thing about like where do our values show up. And what you find in a lot of human
capital stuff is that people's values change depending on who the person is,
and like that just isn't fair, right? That's not... that is the opposite of
what equity looks like. And then like we had to figure out how to calibrate like
that the value's sort of are consistent regardless of what the outcomes were for
people, and that we like led with that as like a real thing. So when I talk about
the police and like systems and police union contracts and stuff, the only
reason that we did the police union contract project is because I used to
manage teachers union contracts.
I knew what contracts were like cuz it was my job to manage the implementation of them.
And I saw that they're all these like random things, that you know, it's like...
the lesson plan has to be turned in 30 minutes... there are all these like random
things that we agreed to you that like I don't know if they made the most sense
for anybody, teachers or students, that made me... that helped me think about like
larger systems and structures. My advice to you would be that like you
know a part of the world really well. And that you be shocked at how like you
knowing that part of the world really well actually sets you up to think about
like everything else really well, too. Like it helps you think about like the
questions, ask the levers to push, like who probably has power that
doesn't look like they have power but actually has a lot of power, like all
those things come from knowing one thing really well that you can sort of
extrapolate that out to. And that we do think about like, the justice work is
everybody's work, that like the police, safety, mass incarceration, education like
is as much your work as it is mine, whether it is like your formal work or
not. Because that you all live in communities and it shouldn't take the
crisis sort of hitting the workplace for you to understand that this is actually
like an issue that is as big as you are. So the question then becomes like, how do
you use like your unique gifts and talents to like set people up to make
different decisions, whether it is helping people like access content that
they didn't know existed. I think about... you know one of my biggest frustrations
with the academic community is that so many people have actually studied so
many of the problems that we never thought about. And like, I called this... we
did the first-ever examination of police union contracts in the
country, a hundred contracts at the hundred biggest cities, we call this
random professor that we had gotten tipped off that he had done work like
this after we did ours, and I'm like, can you send me the contracts that you
have. Mind you, we just did this three years ago, so it's not a lot of time.
And I call him, and he's like, oh DeRay, I'll send you everything I got. He sends me 800
contracts. Oh were you just like sitting on... like what were you gonna do with them?
Like, that is so crazy to me, that you had 800 contracts... like literally the single... he's the
single biggest set outside of ours, and eight times as big as ours, just like
randomly sitting in a spreadsheet. Like he sent it to me in like 10 minutes. And
you're like, whose job is it to make sure this stuff gets around to people can do
something with it, right? And like I think about all the
information that you probably have, proximity to, and know about, and see
that is like life-changing and game-changing and nobody will ever...
Like that is... that is wild to me. And trying to think about how do we bridge
that gap,that like there are people who are focused on these issues that don't
know about that study or don't know about that thing. I did a talk at Johns
Hopkins and there was this nurse who was like, she did a study on like cigarette
use in the homes, and like why people, like smoking around their kids, and she
was like one of the reasons is because people in Baltimore don't feel safe
smoking outside because of the police. Like that was one of her findings. And
she was like, I wrote it in the journal and they literally would not publish it
because they thought that was too controversial. Then she was like, the
protest started and all of a sudden they were like, it's okay to publish. And
it's like, that is a fight that I don't even know where to start,
like I don't have any proximity to waging that battle. I think
about people like you who like, you are around like these communities, are the
people in journals, and da da da, and it's like what does it look like to fight for
like different access and different stories and like sort of connecting
people who do the work with people who study the work. You just have... you
just are in a community that we don't even know how it works, right, and trying
to think about how you use that in a way that actually sets people up to make the
best decisions I think is some of the most powerful stuff you can do.
Cool. Thank you again. (clapping)
DeRay, thank you. Thank you very much. How many of you know Crooked Media and
DeRay's podcast, Pod Save the People? Oh wow, there's quite a few people in this
room. So a shout-out to Pod Save the People. I have to tell you that it is one
of my absolute favorite podcasts, and if you see me with my earbuds, and I'm,
you know, I'm usually listening. I've usually got DeRay's voice in my ear. There are a
number of podcasts of his that I actually go back and listen to every now
and then, and I just have to say that the one that I would encourage you all to
listen to, because it's something I've listened to more than once and it gives
me a lot of hope, is DeRay's interview with or discussion with Brené Brown, and
it was around joy, privilege, and discomfort. And it's something that we
all have to think about in our lives, the joy that we need and the joy that we
deserve. So check out that podcast. And thank you again to DeRay, and DeRay I
hope that in you know when you're thinking about future strategies, bridge
builders, that you think about librarians because we are important to your
struggle and to what you are trying to achieve. Thank you very much, everyone, and
I guess we're gonna have to say goodbye to DeRay. (clapping)
Okay, we now have a break, and our concurrent sessions begin again at 11:15.
We are in the Galaxy Room, and here in the Galaxy Room, we are going to be in
the session "Where Do You Work: Rooting Responsibilities in Land," and the
"Creating a Residence Program: The ACRL Diversity Alliance" is in the Universe
Room, so head there after the break if that's what you're interested in
hearing more about. Thank you very much.
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