Office of Educational Equity at University of Phoenix

0:00 Tondra Richardson: Hello everyone and welcome to our educational equity webinar series for the month of August, we will be getting started here in just a moment, we want to give everyone an opportunity to join. Tondra Richardson: Okay we're at two minutes after and we have a lot of content to pack into this hour so we'll go ahead and get started. 0:06 Tondra Richardson: Again, welcome to the educational equity webinars series for the month of August today we'll be talking about creating a supportive network, while understanding the diversity within indigenous communities. 0:19 Tondra Richardson: This webinar is presented our educational equity department here at the University of phoenix. 0:26 Tondra Richardson: or educational equity department created the series, with the hope of fostering a learning environment where we can explore paths to empower individual action toward greater unity and impact change. 0:38 Tondra Richardson: As a higher education institution with more than 56% underrepresented students employed across different industries it's our hope to facilitate thought provoking conversations to prepare and encourage the practice of inclusive leadership in a culturally complex society. 0:56 Tondra Richardson: move to the next slide please. Tondra Richardson: And this just states the University of phoenix commitment to diversity equity and inclusion. 1:06 Tondra Richardson: we're committed to making higher education accessible to the working adult and we built a framework where inclusion practices have been organically embedded. 1:14 Tondra Richardson: enter at the forefront of our efforts, the university promotes this by providing resources to build cultural competency and career preparedness through Community efforts we build partnership and create engagement that will provide resources and networks for students and alumni. 1:33 Tondra Richardson: wanted to go ahead and let you all know that we have already begun planning for next educational equity webinar which is going to take place next month on Thursday September 16. 1:45 Tondra Richardson: The tentative title for this particular webinar is braces and laces navigating social justice, diversity and inclusion in everyday situations. 1:54 Tondra Richardson: We hope that you all will enjoy our webinar today, we also hope that you will join us for our webinar on the 16th we have a qr code here and we'll also be sharing a link in the chat towards the end of the webinar where you can register as well, so please do join us. 2:14 Tondra Richardson: And we want to make sure that we ask everyone to prepare for a respectful conversation. 2:21 Tondra Richardson: We want to make sure that when we're having these webinars and we're discussing this content that we, as stated on this slide try to relinquish the need to be right. 2:33 Tondra Richardson: Today we're going to hear from our panelists and we have our moderator who's going to manage that conversation, and hopefully we'll have time for Q amp a at the end. 2:43 Tondra Richardson: we're not certain that we will, but, provided that we do we want to make sure that not only during that Q amp a but also in the chat we're being inclusive of all voices. 2:53 Tondra Richardson: We do want to make sure we commit to learning not debating in comment in order to share information not to persuade. 3:01 Tondra Richardson: I won't bore you all by reading all of the items here on this slide I think that we're all respectful individuals we're excited about the content that we're going to hear today and we just invite you all, some of you and. 3:15 Tondra Richardson: follow our educational equity webinar series and have joined us before for those who are new to the webinar series welcome We look forward to engaging with all of you. 3:28 Tondra Richardson: So let's go ahead and get into it, as I mentioned at the top of the webinar, we are today going to be talking about creating a supportive network. 3:38 Tondra Richardson: While understanding the diversity within indigenous communities so during today's webinar we're going to discuss introspection and understanding the role you play within your spheres of influence. 3:49 Tondra Richardson: We want to examine a holistic approach versus a linear Westernized approach and we also want to learn how to better serve and support the complex identities within indigenous communities. 4:00 Tondra Richardson: We have a fantastic panel joining us today we have Dr white bear joining us she is actually the director of diversity and cultural engagement at Oregon State University. 4:13 Tondra Richardson: We have Turquoise devereaux who has several roles at Arizona State University, but also works with the indigenous community collaborative. 4:23 Tondra Richardson: Where we should banks is a social worker and also Chief Executive Officer of social roots, we also have University of phoenix burial and Patrick horner corny. 4:33 Tondra Richardson: Who leads our national tribal strategic alliance, as well as Brian Ishmael who is over our military and veteran affairs and government partnerships. 4:45 Tondra Richardson: Brian is actually going to be moderating our panel today so with that I will turn it over to Brian and we look forward to the conversation Brian take it away. 4:57 Brian Ishmael: Thank you, Tom and and thank you, Sir, as well, and the diversity inclusion group here University of phoenix for hosting. 5:04 Brian Ishmael: This webinar series, we have a phenomenal group of panelists, as you can already see i'm going to give them a minute to introduce themselves to you as well. 5:13 Brian Ishmael: Really quickly here in a second, so I just wanted to thank thank the university and our group for for putting this together, and really just let everybody know what an honor it is to be able to moderate. 5:23 Brian Ishmael: This topic today, so thank you for having me if we could do, just a quick introduction with our panelists I think that would be fantastic so raisa if you could start if you could kick us off with with introductions that would be fantastic. 5:40 Roicia Banks : Absolutely so good morning Good afternoon, depending on where you are around the United States. 5:46 Roicia Banks : Thank you so much for university of phoenix for having me, my name is felicia banks, I have a master's in social work, and I am a Community social worker i'm the chief executive officer for social roots roots, which is my consulting business. 6:00 Roicia Banks : i'm half African American and native American and my mother is from the village of Bach of the Arizona she's hopi, and that is my upbringing, that is where I call home, so I was raised in the tribal community and. 6:16 Roicia Banks : Our culture is maternal and so I follow in my mother's footsteps we've heard in each so thank you for allowing me to share space with you guys this afternoon. 6:29 Brian Ishmael: Thank you so much, Dr white bear. Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Parker everyone, my name is lily white very she her pronouns i'm coastal shoe mash and I also have was tech and kimmy ancestry. 6:42 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And the actually the Center director at the native American longhouse in a House at Oregon State University, which is one of our cultural research centers gender diversity in cultural resources or after see. 6:56 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): diversity and cultural engagement, excuse me and i'm calling in and live on the lens of the California people I encourage you all to know whose lands you live and work on. 7:07 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): To look it up on the map, I just put in the chat and i'm really excited to be here i'm originally from Santa Barbara California, which is where my coastal chumash people's homelands are and have called Oregon home for the majority of my life. 7:26 Brian Ishmael: Thank you Turquoise. Turquoise Devereaux: Hello everyone, my name is Turquoise skydiver I am from the solution buckwheat tribes of Montana so originally from Montana Western Montana currently in phoenix Arizona. 7:42 Turquoise Devereaux: I am work for the office American Indian projects in the school of social work at asu, and that is where I received my masters in social work. 7:51 Turquoise Devereaux: And macro level social work from asu I also am the lead consultant for indigenous community collaborative and the. 7:59 Turquoise Devereaux: owner of indigenous guy llc which is my consulting business and I work with really higher and higher education institutions. 8:08 Turquoise Devereaux: Foundations organizations have services workforce on creating culturally safe spaces for indigenous populations and also do programming for indigenous Youth on identity preservation So yes, i'm really happy to be here today, thank you so much. 8:23 Brian Ishmael: Thank you took was Patrick. Patrick Horning: Running up need everybody, my name is Patrick corning i'm the national tribal strategic alliance executive for the University of phoenix. 8:33 Patrick Horning: I basically oversee everything at the university regarding our internal and external communications, as well as our business development. 8:40 Patrick Horning: and business solutions with our different tribes and tribal entities i'm I grew up in Alaska for about 20 years. 8:48 Patrick Horning: it's where my son lives it's kind of where my roots are and and it's just a pleasure to be able to visit with everybody and kind of share some ideas back and forth on on the tribal communities great. 8:59 Brian Ishmael: Thank you, Patrick and and again, my name is Brian Ishmael i'll be the moderator for today. 9:04 Brian Ishmael: I am the Vice President of the office of military and veteran affairs here at the University of phoenix as well as strategic government partnerships. 9:11 Brian Ishmael: This topic is is very close and important to me, in the sense that I was actually a lot of people don't know this about me I was adopted. 9:19 Brian Ishmael: into a native American family my father is is from the creek tribe out of Oklahoma. 9:25 Brian Ishmael: And then I also had the pleasure of serving with several Native Americans in my time in the military. 9:31 Brian Ishmael: And as you all know, the military is such a diverse population and so serving with with those folks was just such an honor and i'm glad to explore this topic, a little bit further, we have so much to cover, so I am going to dive in. 9:47 Brian Ishmael: And i'd like to start with Dr white bear and Dr white bear i'd like you to talk, maybe a little bit about why it's important to understand the diversity of indigenous people and maybe, what are the dangers of creating a sort of single narrative of indigenous people. 10:07 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Yes, happy to touch on this, and please take this as a opportunity to hear a tiny bit in continue to learn more because there's no way to answer this this question in the short amount of time we have. 10:21 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): A lot of people in their minds, have a single image of indigenous people in a lot of times that's rooted in the past, and a lot of times that's using certain elements of what they've seen. 10:34 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): On movies, or maybe their experiences in one specific instance to create an image of all indigenous people when, in reality, if you look at the entire continent of North America there's thousands. 10:46 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): of individuals individual indigenous nations tribal communities cultures that all have their own customs languages their own connections to lands waters in place. 10:58 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And it's important for us to understand that there is literally thousands and in the context of the United States there's. 11:07 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): 574 federally recognized tribes which mean they have a political relationship with the US United States as their own sovereign nations. 11:18 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): and outside of that there's also many unrecognized tribes for variety of reasons, we don't have time to cover but that happened mostly have to do with not having. 11:27 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Treaties ratified or being terminated, please write these terms down with them up later because it's a lot to unpack. 11:34 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And all kinds of other complexities that have to do with us, history and colonization do not have that sovereign status in the eyes of. 11:44 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): The United States as a nation that does not mean that tribes, such as mine, who is in that situation, do not have the rights to lands water sacred sites and ceremonies. 11:56 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): But it does mean we do not have those same relationships and so understanding that it's really complicated is really important, in its. 12:05 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): If we look at it, as there's only one way to approach, working with tribal students in working with indigenous peoples in general, then we're going to probably. 12:15 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): not be doing our best job to support the variety and the huge diversity of indigenous students that we're going to be working with. 12:23 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): I know for myself, I it's really rare that i'm working with a really small pocket of tribal students, I know that's different if you're like in a tribal. 12:31 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): college perhaps are really close to a tribal Community where there's a larger concentration. 12:38 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): But i'm situated in Oregon and so in the willamette Valley, and so I have. 12:45 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): A lot of people that I work with from all over the country, and even like indigenous students from Mexico and Canada as well and Pacific islander students so. 12:53 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): it's really important again that we don't create this single narrative of. 12:58 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): who we are, as indigenous people, because we all have our own histories are on relationships with each other as nations our own relationships with the Federal Government as nations as well in our own cultures in history so yeah. 13:13 Brian Ishmael: Thank you, thank you and so important, so important that we don't. Brian Ishmael: go down that path of creating that single narrative because there is so much to learn and you're going to hear a little bit more about that, today, so thank you. 13:27 Brian Ishmael: For this next topic i'd like to just turn this over to Turquoise and I really want to talk about unlearning and relearning and so Turquoise what, what does the process look like to unlearn and relearn and how does unlearning and relearning contribute to advocating for indigenous populations. 13:49 Turquoise Devereaux: So, Dr webber great points to transition into this question because indigenous communities in the United States are very. 13:58 Turquoise Devereaux: very diverse and very complex, and I think one thing that we we typically learn in a Western education system is these assumptions about our populations that are very generalized and that can be very. 14:11 Turquoise Devereaux: It doesn't that doesn't help when you're when you're wanting to work with indigenous communities so learning the perspective from the movies, that you want to serve especially. 14:18 Turquoise Devereaux: If you want to be an ally part of being an ally and advocating for the population is unlearning and relearning, and that means. 14:25 Turquoise Devereaux: That, even if you think about history in particular right the history that we learned from Westernized perspective doesn't include the narrative or the perspectives of the populations that those systems continue to press. 14:37 Turquoise Devereaux: And so, if you can learn that right when we think about all of the things that happened to indigenous communities and then how those things. 14:44 Turquoise Devereaux: continue to impact our communities, today you don't learn them in our education system it's imperative that we do. 14:50 Turquoise Devereaux: do the job that we have, you know as people as advocates as allies, we do that part and unlearning and relearning and there's. 14:59 Turquoise Devereaux: You know, especially as indigenous scholars are on this panel, we are in these professions and in these spaces for a reason to provide resources to people, so you have that for yourself to do that process of unlearning and relearning and also. 15:14 Turquoise Devereaux: You know, Dr right were brought up a great. Turquoise Devereaux: perspective of really just how complex and how diverse communities are even when we talk about identity indigenous identity. 15:27 Turquoise Devereaux: All of these things that you learn of how even history impacts of population. Turquoise Devereaux: That that impacts, the complexities of identity as well, and how we identify and how you support that identity. 15:37 Turquoise Devereaux: versus having going into spaces and having assumptions that we learn right, even as a social worker, we always say we're culturally competent. 15:45 Turquoise Devereaux: I don't like the word competence, because it's not really possible for everybody to be competent everyone's culture even people who come from cultural backgrounds, we understand that we can't learn. 15:55 Turquoise Devereaux: That right, and so, but putting in the effort to know that you can create culturally safe spaces for people that come from these complex backgrounds and how complex identities. 16:04 Turquoise Devereaux: from learning from their perspective and every single aspect, and not just relying on what you learn in a Western education system. 16:14 Brian Ishmael: Perfect Thank you Thank you so much for that Turquoise so important, and you hit on one thing, which was. 16:20 Brian Ishmael: Historical impacts and so i'd like to turn this next section over to alicia and talk a little bit more about historical trauma and so. 16:31 Brian Ishmael: raisa how has historical trauma impacted the indigenous communities ability to thrive today, and how can tribal communities reimagine or reclaim power from historical trauma. 16:46 Roicia Banks : Yes, Okay, so thank you, this is a very loaded question i'm going to do my best to kind of much context as quickly as possible. 16:54 Roicia Banks : I first want to start off with giving us like the framework, the idea that native American Communities were thriving long before colonialism, long before colonization and all of those things, and so. 17:09 Roicia Banks : We we were we once were and then with colonialism and and all that that had brought. 17:17 Roicia Banks : You know, removing indigenous communities from the lands stripping them of their culture, their language. 17:26 Roicia Banks : Boarding schools, all of these sort of things start create like happening um and and I like to share some personal insight just so that people can kind of connect dots. 17:36 Roicia Banks : Rather than just from an academic perspective so like I said I was raised in the tribal community and what we saw for us was considered normal. 17:48 Roicia Banks : And now going through my master social work program and having to unpack my own stuff and kind of give context to what was happening in my home and my tribal community by what I was learning some social work or what I have to unlearn. 18:01 Roicia Banks : And at that time I was like oh my gosh like this is that was what was happening, and if I never went to go study in my masters in social work I would have never been or had the ability to unpack that. 18:14 Roicia Banks : So what does that look like I always try to give it like a story of how even so my grandmother. 18:23 Roicia Banks : my grandmother my grandparents were very interesting people. 18:29 Roicia Banks : I didn't realize, of course, that because of their boarding school experience. Roicia Banks : Their behaviors and the things that they did, and the things that they didn't do kind of trickle down into my parents my aunt's my uncle's and now my cousins and all of those things, and we see stereotypes and. 18:46 Roicia Banks : alcoholism and all of these are sort of stereotypes that have come about within tribal communities, but nobody really takes the time to understand or unpack why, why is that a stereotype. 18:56 Roicia Banks : Why do we have these things happening and tribal communities, and when we sit with the realization of being stripped away from our culture, identity, language foods. 19:07 Roicia Banks : The ability to grow and raise our own, what do you really have less of a community and when you're given things that are foreign to create something out of nothing. 19:20 Roicia Banks : yeah a lot of times on giving providing education and even when people say Oh, you know Indian five bread and vcs and that's it. 19:28 Roicia Banks : it's not necessarily considered a traditional food it's it's considered, something that was created out of trauma, you know something that the Government provided to us to be able to say here here here your portions here your rations work it out, and now we see that those same kind of. 19:48 Roicia Banks : Things that I mean seeing in both communities of my African American side and my traveling native American side that were plagued with different things like diabetes, hypertension, because that's not our normal diet, education is not necessarily something that. 20:06 Roicia Banks : was really it there's a lot of trust you know. 20:12 Roicia Banks : Given now with the communities with code it happening, and I personally affected me, you know my mother passed away from code with this year. 20:20 Roicia Banks : And the way Kobe just took over the entire tribal communities, is it really impacted our with our ability to thrive when you're underserved already. 20:33 Roicia Banks : And then, a pandemic happening and we are underserved and healthcare and education, and all of these other things it really it really playing our communities and so now. 20:46 Roicia Banks : How it has impacted our ability to thrive it's almost like a reset button, of having to start back in the beginning, I know from my tribe alone. 20:56 Roicia Banks : We we suffered tremendously and Navajo nation is inside of our outside of therapy as well, and education. 21:07 Roicia Banks : There were in a deficit as as as of right now but um how I could say that we can go get back into a healthy atmosphere for your second part question is. 21:20 Roicia Banks : Going back to our roots i'm combining both Western and traditional practices. 21:27 Roicia Banks : I know, for me, having the education and have the academic side and then coming over here and knowing my tradition and knowing my culture and knowing the medicines that. 21:35 Roicia Banks : You know, we were raised, with at least i'm in a space to be able to say Okay, I know I can do this, and I can do this as well, so let me combine both. 21:44 Roicia Banks : What definitely helped me and someone touched on it a little bit earlier was identity. 21:51 Roicia Banks : And so, when we talk about getting back to our roots that means going back to our land identifying with the land, we present with it speaking to your elders going and sitting down being at the foot of your elders asking the questions that are hurting. 22:07 Roicia Banks : When I was around eight or nine years. Roicia Banks : Old I was such a question, but my grandfather, and he continuously told us about the boarding schools about World War Two about all of these things, and it really provides a sense of identity and purposely me. 22:21 Roicia Banks : So that when I did go to school, and I did know have these Western ideologies or frameworks about history, I was the kid saying like oh that's incorrect like my grandpa said, you know or. 22:34 Roicia Banks : i'm actually this happened, and so I never had that confusion about what we're having to unlearn a history, because it was taught in our home, but I know that's not the case for a majority of traditional organs are. 22:48 Roicia Banks : indigenous communities, because oral history and sometimes those things are lost within the historical trauma part so. 22:55 Roicia Banks : I say just getting back into your roots sitting down with your elders having a conversation asking those tough questions. 23:02 Roicia Banks : And and really taking hold of that and i'm grateful that I had the ability to do that at such a young age, but if anybody is interested in. 23:11 Roicia Banks : And their identity as indigenous people, that would be my first step is to go back go back to the land go back to your people go back to your elders and start there. 23:24 Brian Ishmael: Thank you so much, and and Russia, thank you for sharing your personal story, on top of that as well really powerful you hit on. 23:33 Brian Ishmael: Higher you hit on higher education, a little bit of you, or at least you hit on education in general and i'd like to just ask Dr white pair of follow up question on higher education. 23:44 Brian Ishmael: Dr in what ways does higher ED contribute to you know perpetuating some of the historical trauma for indigenous people and what are some of the things that we can do to address that. 23:58 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): yeah all our questions are big i'm sure you're getting the theme of them. 24:03 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): But, so I would say that Russia is bringing up some really important parts about like, especially for indigenous students that have. 24:13 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): grown up with that connection to community, which is of course not all indigenous students but going to higher education institution and then starting to learn. 24:24 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Some of the things in classes on on never forgive my undergrad experience when I started taking ethnic studies, the native studies classes and I was like. 24:33 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): I still get a little bit emotional thinking about it, but like it was at that moment, when I realized. 24:39 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Why my family experienced certain things, because I was learning about the systems in place, and I was learning about the histories that were hidden from us in public education for so long, which are finally barely getting to get talked about. 24:52 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): But I was always getting kicked out of class in elementary school for bringing things up like Columbus was a rapist and murder kind of comments in class but um. 25:02 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): But that didn't stop me and it just continued on and but back to this story about undergrad about having to sit in a classroom in here. 25:13 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Are your peers be like well why didn't they just get over it kind of comments, while you're learning co learning with them. 25:20 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): In your you're like I know that's my uncle that's my mom that's my grandma that's my dad like I can name people associated with the things we're learning about like. 25:32 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): In that relational way in bringing it back to the Community and being like wow did you know that there was this past and there's this thing called like I don't know the major crimes act, for example, like things that are in place that make these really real lived experiences. 25:50 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): possible and so, for me, thinking about higher ED like we still are living with historic trauma and thinking about the role that higher it plays in. 26:00 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): in furthering that has to do with telling students that their stories are not real like it they're just in the books and they're not actually lived in it shows up in other ways to like students not being excused absences are being. 26:17 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): able to take tests, because they have to go home for ceremony because somebody passed away or because it's time to bring the berries back or the roots. 26:26 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): are welcome the salmon or whatever their context of their culture, may be to hold ceremony with the end that's what keeps them going and so to tell a student you can't. 26:36 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Do that or you're going to fill your class makes them choose between who they are. 26:43 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And being part of a system that was built to actively oppress us as indigenous people. 26:48 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And so, being able to support students and find ways as faculty and as people who make policies to be able to support students being able to do that. 27:00 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): or other things that happened, like in physical spaces, like you, can't burn smudge on campus or you can't do tobacco and stuff like that things that are built into policy. 27:11 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): That make it impossible for students to be who they are, and then it also shows up in whose knowledge has been centered as legitimate. 27:19 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And that's part of the reason why it's so important for indigenous folks to be able to bring their research. 27:25 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Their knowledge systems into their research and have that, as part of what's being published in academia, because that's viewed as what's legit right. 27:34 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And so we know that our stories we know our theories in our knowledge systems are legit but, in the eyes of academia that doesn't always happen in higher ED. 27:42 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And so, outside of maybe like tribal colleges specifically so we're talking about like non tribal colleges, and so I think that those kind of things are ways that. 27:53 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): As a structure that higher continues to perpetuate the historic trauma of telling us we can't be who we are and now we have to make a choice of to go this way or to like not be part of. 28:05 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): not be able to access the things that help us explain what we're experiencing and bring that back to our communities, and so there we go yes. 28:13 Brian Ishmael: Thank you, thank you so much, and you hit on a little bit on. 28:19 Brian Ishmael: On some of the systems and so i'd like to talk a little bit about you know a little bit more about this with Western systems and i'd like to turn this over to you Turquoise. 28:29 Brian Ishmael: Can you. Brian Ishmael: Or how do you how do you consistently acknowledge how system, a systemic oppression continues to impact these indigenous populations. 28:43 Turquoise Devereaux: yeah I think a great many great points have been brought up and, as you can see a lot of these things are related right when we're talking about creating safe spaces for indigenous people and. 28:56 Turquoise Devereaux: The fact when you think about Western I systems in general right they they're created by. 29:03 Turquoise Devereaux: The people who colonized indigenous people so us not be included within our education system event within when I think of my social work degree in particular right. 29:14 Turquoise Devereaux: We don't say learn always learn about historical trauma, especially with indigenous populations. 29:20 Turquoise Devereaux: And how it continues to impact us today is is a crucial part of how we serve indigenous communities. 29:27 Turquoise Devereaux: So that's a perfect example in itself, of how Westernized systems continue to perpetuate systemic oppression, because if you think about the systems, they were created. 29:37 Turquoise Devereaux: by the people who who oppress indigenous populations so unless you consistently understand, especially if you're working for these Westernized systems. 29:47 Turquoise Devereaux: If you consistently don't have that self awareness, or that self reflection about how you have the potential to perpetuate that oppression as well, then that's exactly what you're going to do, and so. 29:58 Turquoise Devereaux: All of these concepts that we're bringing up because, even when we think about I know you know most indigenous people, the boarding school or in particular right. 30:08 Turquoise Devereaux: Most indigenous people have stories from their family members, or they know. Turquoise Devereaux: People who who were in boarding schools and so like Dr white bear was bringing up a you know a lot of times we get the the phrases oh that was so long ago right like why get over it, or why do you talk about that now. 30:24 Turquoise Devereaux: But when people understand that you know my father's boarding school so ever and his wording school, experience has an impact on my everyday life decisions. 30:32 Turquoise Devereaux: Right and that trauma that has been carried down from generation to generation of warning, even just born in schools in itself and that's not talking about. 30:40 Turquoise Devereaux: US you know losing our land and losing our families through genocide and cultural genocide losing our languages in our culture in some extent. 30:47 Turquoise Devereaux: or not having access to that as indigenous people right how those things impact that and if we if we're not included if that information isn't included in the systems. 30:57 Turquoise Devereaux: right then that's just perpetuating or teaching people that that those things aren't important to know and those things are crucial to know when you're serving indigenous populations and so. 31:08 Turquoise Devereaux: Understanding right what you don't know and what you need to put in the work to learn. 31:14 Turquoise Devereaux: Within these systems and then, when you're working for the systems, in particular, especially if you're working for in education, especially if you're social worker, especially if you're working in workforce right. 31:25 Turquoise Devereaux: knowing what role you play in that system is crucial because we can't always just rely on what we're taught right it's really important to take that extra step in understanding these concepts outside of the systems that were a part of. 31:45 Brian Ishmael: Thank you so much, and you hit on a couple things there that I think we're going to get a little bit deeper into, and I know even. 31:52 Brian Ishmael: Even in discussing the historical trauma from higher ED standpoint, we touched on a little bit as well, so i'd like to i'd like to talk about that a little bit further in the higher education, space and Patrick I want, I want to turn it over to you for this one. 32:09 Brian Ishmael: And this is, this is a pretty a pretty broad question, but I know you've done a lot of work in this area. 32:14 Brian Ishmael: So, can you address the primary concerns that tribal communities often have with. 32:20 Brian Ishmael: with traditional higher education and then what can higher education institutions do to help tribal college students overcome some of those educational barriers so that they can achieve that academic success that they're they're looking for. 32:34 Patrick Horning: Sure, thank you, Brian um you know one thing that is it just It amazes me every time i'm involved or listen to a panel it that's the structure similar to this and that the four of us come from very, very different backgrounds and very different. 32:54 Patrick Horning: sectors of of the Community dealing with indigenous people and yet you can hear a lot of the similarities of what goes on, you know and and the concerns and the challenges that happen, but it's really important. 33:10 Patrick Horning: To understand that you know the tribal community and my my definition of the tribal community based on what we do at the University of phoenix is our native American Alaska native and native hawaiian communities. 33:23 Patrick Horning: Because they all went through very similar type of historical trauma, you know the boarding school years and so on, and I won't I won't rehash. 33:33 Patrick Horning: What everybody else has said, but in in that aspect, they have a lot of similarities, but they also have a very lot of. 33:41 Patrick Horning: A lot of very distinct differences and it's it's important to understand those differences, not just within the native American Alaska native native hawaiian but the different communities within each different Community. 33:55 Patrick Horning: It can be very different when you're dealing with somebody from say what really she was talking about in hopi and Navajo up in northern Arizona. 34:03 Patrick Horning: And and potentially in Oklahoma or you know the mohawks up in New York and and they can there can be a lot of very, very different aspects, so one thing that we did is is in the in the higher education sector. 34:19 Patrick Horning: When when it's looked at at the tribal communities what most institutions do is they have a a relatively superficial internal process for. 34:33 Patrick Horning: Supporting Native Americans, but what the what the primary focus is is tuition discounts 10% 15% 20% 30% discount, but the question is, is that really the need for the Community. 34:48 Patrick Horning: So one thing that we did his job again and I she is she's my travel liaison we spent about two years traveling the country. 34:54 Patrick Horning: And we talked to a lot of different tribes, a lot of different communities and a lot of different enterprises said, you know what is it that you need. 35:01 Patrick Horning: You know what what is specifically to your Community but also within higher education and what we found is of the top three challenges facing the tribal Community cost was number three. 35:14 Patrick Horning: And, and so what what are they, what are the real needs, rather than sitting and and anticipating what a particular group needs open your mouth and ask. 35:25 Patrick Horning: And and and work with the communities to be able to find solutions to the educational barriers that exist. 35:33 Patrick Horning: that's that's actually my dissertation topic because the disproportionate progression rates of native American college students. 35:39 Patrick Horning: and being able to understand those education barriers what causes those education barriers and then what we can do in order to mitigate those education barriers, because we know that. 35:48 Patrick Horning: aptitude and ability are not what's holding our tribal students back from being academically successful and and a lot of it wraps into what we've heard from from the other three panelists you know with the historical trauma and the cultural differences. 36:04 Patrick Horning: You know it's very common in Alaska I know from from being up there, that that if somebody dies of a tribal leader dies in a community, the Community shuts down. 36:15 Patrick Horning: I mean businesses don't function people don't go to school it's just it can be two weeks of dead air space. 36:24 Patrick Horning: And and and as a school, if you look at that and you say, and it was mentioned earlier, I think, Dr Wagner may have mentioned that that that you know what if you don't attend you're going to be dropped. 36:33 Patrick Horning: You know you're going to fail the class and and not understanding that is is really it's really negatively impactful for the tribal community and the students that attend the institutions. 36:46 Patrick Horning: And we can go on about you know the different ways to overcome the education barriers. Patrick Horning: and helping them have academic success, you know there's there's simple ways to do it there's processes that can be done. 36:57 Patrick Horning: And now that you know not not as a plug to the University of phoenix, but this is a, this is a very specific. 37:03 Patrick Horning: serious topic at the University of phoenix and and we're really trying to come up with with ways to actually address this and. 37:11 Patrick Horning: One of one of our retention strategies that we have done has yielded a benefit that our tribal students actually progress eight to 10 percentage points higher. 37:20 Patrick Horning: than our non tribal students at the University of phoenix through the first semester. Patrick Horning: And it's part of addressing those education barriers, based on cultural differences and and traditions and understanding so. 37:33 Patrick Horning: I guess what I would like to kind of wrap up at least this part of questioning with is don't assume, because you know something that you know everything about everything that happens within the tribal communities. 37:47 Patrick Horning: And you know, Dr white bear really, really kind of started us off with saying you know get to learn the lands get to learn the people get to learn the different cultures. 37:55 Patrick Horning: And, and by doing that and learning what people actually need you actually have an opportunity to successfully help them through an education system that they're not structured, for if they grew up on tribal lands they're not they're not set up academically and and and. 38:16 Patrick Horning: train of thought to just drop into a traditional college university. 38:22 Patrick Horning: situation not that nobody can, but as a general rule, you know there's there's ways that we can be a lot more helpful as higher education institutions and helping that transition, so that they don't have to go through the challenges that that we know many people do. 38:41 Brian Ishmael: Thank you. Patrick Horning: Patrick and. Brian Ishmael: Dr pepper I know you have some a breadth of experience to in higher education, so I just wanted to give you an opportunity. 38:50 Brian Ishmael: To maybe follow up on this is there anything that you would add or in terms of the approaches of supporting indigenous students in higher ED. 38:59 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): yeah thanks Brian in part of just so people understand the context of the work I do that you know houses in the picture behind me here that's one of this cultural centers and so. 39:10 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Their whole role of those are to create space on campuses and they're also retention spaces in programming for different populations of students. 39:20 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And one of the things I think is really important that we keep in mind is to always tonight i'm automatically use a deficit framework when. 39:30 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Addressing and working with tribal and indigenous students, because it that can sometimes perpetuate stereotypes and attentively and so looking at it from more of a systematic like what. 39:43 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): What barriers are already in place help create more proactive steps and supporting students so, for example, like the one I gave earlier. 39:51 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): If you're on a physical campus can't students burn smudge on your campus If not, why. 39:56 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Are, why not, and if they can't then where can, how can you create a space or a way for them to be able to do so that way that barrier is removed. 40:06 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And so things like that that are more systematic thinking ahead insane like tribal and indigenous students thrive, no matter where they're at in their own ways. 40:17 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Now, as long as the infrastructure is there and so that's where I think it's really important to think of it in a more supportive framework on. 40:26 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): But some of the approaches that i've used have been really to look at look at spaces outside of the Center itself as far as providing support for indigenous students in creating a framework of. 40:39 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Having a working understanding on our campus of what we mean by indigenous students and who were supporting. 40:46 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): So on our campus we should, when we talk about indigenous students, we talk about indigenous to the Americas and Pacific islands, because in all reality. 40:54 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): The Pacific islands are heavily colonized by the United States and native hawaiians have. 41:00 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): have their own unique relationship with the government, as in not having the same level of sovereignty is the sovereign nations and also there's plenty of tribes. 41:09 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): On both North and South geopolitical borders that are on both sides of the border, like their nations are on both sides. 41:16 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And so there's a lot of reasons why it's important to think of how we're addressing students, while also honoring always honoring and centering tribal sovereignty in nationhood within the context. 41:29 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Of the country that we call the United States that we live in, right now. Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And so that's part of like the framework pieces of having that in place on a campus and making sure that that you're working with indigenous people on centering what the needs are and how that narrative is created is really important. 41:47 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): We have relationships with the two local tribes when I said, like whose land early on and I mentioned, I. 41:52 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): live and work on California land we try to bring in the two tribes, that the California people were removed in. 41:59 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Our part of now, which is the confederate traps of selection, the confederate tribes of grand RON. 42:05 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): In bringing them on for not just programming, but also like bringing students, as part of our students staff training or unit and plays around 70 students across all the centers. 42:16 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And we take as part of our training to ground them and understanding the place in woodland RON and understanding the importance of that and. 42:24 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): centering indigent at we take them to the tribal communities as part of our training, then we go, we rotate between the two tribes, of whose land we're on and that has been really impactful for all students, not just the indigenous students who of course like yay but. 42:39 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): But for for the students who aren't indigenous are like whoa I didn't know that, like, I thought, like, I had a lot of assumptions that I. 42:48 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): found out our assumptions, now that we've had this experience and it shows how different just those two tribes are as well and they're only like hour and a half, apart from each other, and so it really helps ground the students so Those are some of the things, one of the other ones. 43:04 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): That we've used is like, how do we create more infrastructure that's not grounded like I said in the Center so like. 43:10 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Across campus in we have an education opportunities program where we've been able to insert indigenous support services in there in our university housing dining in our residential holes we've created a living community. 43:26 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): we're helping develop indigenous studies and so there's a lot of different places on campus that we're trying to like spread it out and make it. 43:36 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): understood that, all things indigenous you don't have to come out of the single Center and the picture behind me and that's helping like break stereotypes and it's also helping. 43:45 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): spread the support across campus in create those systematic changes that we need, so I can keep going on and on, because this is like the central piece of what I do professionally but um I know we have more questions. 43:59 Brian Ishmael: I appreciate that excuse me, and I think you know. Brian Ishmael: The center's phenomenal so thank you for sharing about that, I think that can have also a very positive result on this next topic which is also a passion of mine. 44:13 Brian Ishmael: Which is mental health and so i'd like to ask you, in what ways can we reimagine mental health by combining both traditional practices and Western medicine. 44:24 Roicia Banks : yeah Thank you, I think we touched a little bit on it just the other panelists but i'm so. 44:32 Roicia Banks : i'm a social worker and part of what I have been also trying to do in different spaces is allowed for that opportunity to happen, and so, for example, um I used to work with chemo miracle for people and here in phoenix Arizona, and I remember when I first came to to support the Community. 44:54 Roicia Banks : One of the first things I did before you know staff meetings. Roicia Banks : or with me to my multi disciplinary teams was burning sage and I thought that was super small and super impactful. 45:10 Roicia Banks : And, and I had never seen it done before, and the crazy part for me is feeling like it's okay to to welcome these practices in these spaces so i'm again going off of what. 45:27 Roicia Banks : has been said, each tribe is different each tribe has different practices and it's not safe to assume that each tribe burn sage or. 45:35 Roicia Banks : You know what have you I know my tribe, where we do more cedar and SAP then we do sage and we and grass, and so there are different elements that you can tie into into. 45:47 Roicia Banks : into that mental health perspective, but what I have been again trying to stress is really. 45:55 Roicia Banks : Going back to the land and there's something there is something there and I know when I personally start to feel stressed or overwhelmed or you know sad and. 46:07 Roicia Banks : I know that is home calling me, and so I will go back home and kind of recharge sit with my sit with my family and do nothing. 46:18 Roicia Banks : You know, and it really because they're so we're so closed off from Western society that literally it's like a safe haven for me to go back home into just be in the land, be in in silence. 46:33 Roicia Banks : hopi land is so beautiful, because we have we are on flat toes and Kenyans, and so we have so much to look at in so much medicine around us and so. 46:44 Roicia Banks : Depending on the tribe right whatever those medicines look like, how can we intertwine that into Western medicine, how can we invite that into spaces, where it is not. 46:56 Roicia Banks : solely indigenous people, and how can we educate, how can we share those experiences and because I think now i'm sage burning is almost like. 47:09 Roicia Banks : Everybody does it in every time I see or hear somebody doing and i'm just like So what does that mean you like, can you can you share because I want to make sure that you have a knowledge or understanding of what you're doing. 47:21 Roicia Banks : So, and not just doing it just to do it so part of the other thing that with the unlearning and learning and I think this is pretty common across most people of color. 47:34 Roicia Banks : is welcome to the welcoming the realization that mental health is real mental health does require um you know psychiatrists psychologists some we just really have to have medication. 47:48 Roicia Banks : And those are really hard conversations to have especially when we have grandchildren being raised by grandparents and then not necessarily understanding the depth of what mental health is and how we can support our kids or support our youth and even something simple as anxiety. 48:12 Roicia Banks : My mom God rest her, but my mom was I I did not know that I had like claustrophobia tight spaces in part of a lot of things that we do in our ceremony involves being in a very tight space, and I would constantly get sick and trip and pass out and i'm like. 48:30 Roicia Banks : Oh, my gosh like what is wrong with me and my mom would always say like stop acting crazy like you're you're you're you're doing it, you know it wasn't until. 48:39 Roicia Banks : I actually got into mental health and I started to go into to see somebody myself and i'm like. 48:45 Roicia Banks : Oh well, that's why I passed out in the kiva or that's why I can't handle these things, so I had to tell my mom like hey mom like that. 48:54 Roicia Banks : That was actually mental illness like you did not she didn't know that but i'm telling you now that I have a problem. 49:01 Roicia Banks : With being in tight spaces, and this is how you can support me this is what i'm going to do instead i'm not going to go down there i'm going to stay on top i'm going to do something different, and so my mom I think. 49:13 Roicia Banks : Now, with age had started to realize like okay yeah this is real thing because something always happens to her. 49:19 Roicia Banks : So I think even just bridging those little those little tiny pieces and giving it proper education and maybe a solution or hey this is how you can support me or asked how can I support you in this time. 49:31 Roicia Banks : Because we're not going to know the answers to everybody's very detailed tribal no tribal things and so. 49:40 Roicia Banks : And if I can I just wanted to go to what was said earlier about even supporting indigenous children in higher ED one of the things that you just shared It reminded me like one of the times, I was in school and I had. 49:56 Roicia Banks : A family member pass away and in our culture, we have four days to bury them and trying to explain that to a university. 50:07 Roicia Banks : I don't have time to sit here and talk to you, you know and so when we think about how we can be supportive policy policy is one of the main things I had to choose and, at the time I was living in Texas. 50:18 Roicia Banks : And so I had literally less than 24 hours to go from Texas that call to get our family member very and I just chose, you know what I have to stay. 50:28 Roicia Banks : So there are different things that i'm oh my gosh there's so many we can go on and on, but I don't want to monopolize time, I just want to share that perspective, oh. 50:37 Brian Ishmael: And thank you so much, and and, just as we said at the front end of this, I mean they're just that we could we could talk about this topic all day long and, in fact, all week long and maybe even all year long. 50:49 Brian Ishmael: And still continue to learn and grow, and so I think everybody for sharing i'm going to skip around because I do want to I do want to leave folks with. 50:59 Brian Ishmael: A little bit more understanding of one specific topic as we. Brian Ishmael: start to get close to to the end of our call here today and and that's about something that Dr white bear covered didn't cover but but talked about in the beginning and that's an understanding of. 51:14 Brian Ishmael: The responsibility of whose land you're on and acknowledging that and so Dr white bear, how do we, how do we help deepen work supporting indigenous people beyond just the land acknowledgement. 51:30 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And yeah and I know that other folks probably have lots to share, about this too, and I would say to keep it. 51:39 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): To keep it short, it is about more than just having the land acknowledgement. 51:45 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): As words like what are the responsibilities to that what are you doing in practice that is helping support the tribe who you're talking about. 51:55 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): In also there's a part of it to have understanding that that is an indigenous based practice that it's, not just for show it's a. 52:04 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): it's something that many indigenous communities around the world, really, but in the context of where we're at. 52:11 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Do is like honoring each other when we're visiting each other's lands, or if we move somewhere understanding we're always guess as a coastal chumash person who grew up with. 52:22 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): A step dad who's from one of the local tribes, I still understand that i'm a guest on California lands and I have a responsibility. 52:31 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): To understand the history of the help of people how they removed from this area understanding what treaty that was if there was a treaty, and if there wasn't why wasn't there one like my homelands there. 52:44 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): It was part of the California mission system that's its own. Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Its own unique experience for indigenous folk with the California missions, but. 52:54 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): it's having that responsibility to learn the histories of the lander on in the water's that you connect with and call your home now to. 53:02 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): An understanding that this wherever you live like this will always be colloquial and it's always been called peel and it always will be so wherever you may be calling from. 53:12 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Those tribal lands in indigenous lands that you're on will always be those on there's roles and responsibilities that are taught. 53:21 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And passed down generationally from the indigenous communities in those areas and they're, the ones who know best. 53:27 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): What their local protocols are what the responsibilities to land and water management are there's so many pieces of it that go together so. 53:37 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): As we continue to move around and grow as communities and experience different places in our life, I would encourage you to continue to do that deep learning and. 53:48 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): take the time to understand those larger connections and understand that it's not a story of the past it's a story of the President. 53:56 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): And oftentimes the local tribes are actively making contributions to local communities that many people don't know about, and so I think that those are. 54:08 Luhui Whitebear (she/her): Some of the ways that we can help deepen that land acknowledgement practice is putting things into action and understanding their responsibility to other people as well, not just mentioning them. 54:19 Brian Ishmael: Thank you so much for that just as a reminder, and I know, Dr wipers shared a link and in the chat that be, at the beginning. 54:27 Brian Ishmael: That that could help everybody who's on the call today understand that that that component where they're at and what they on their on so they can take that first step of making sure that they acknowledge and. 54:41 Brian Ishmael: You know I think just gaining a deeper understanding is what we all can do to do our part. 54:48 Brian Ishmael: and understanding this this population being able to work with them more effectively and help them achieve success. 54:55 Brian Ishmael: and whatever role we are whether the entire education or public sector or anything else, so I really hope that everybody. 55:03 Brian Ishmael: I know I took so much notes just even being the moderator learning as I, as I moderate, so I appreciate that and I did want to. 55:12 Brian Ishmael: I know we're getting close to time so I wanted to turn it back over to tundra so that she could close us out, but just wanted to end and saying again it was such an honor being able to moderate this panel. 55:24 Brian Ishmael: You all are so so powerful and sharing your personal stories, I really appreciated that side of it, so thank you and I look forward to seeing you out in the Community, you know sometime soon and working together Thank you so much. 55:42 Tondra Richardson: Thank you, Brian and thank you to all of our panelists this was a fantastic hour, just as we imagine this really wasn't enough time to really cover this topic. 55:53 Tondra Richardson: And I will be working with my colleagues, or a Lopez, to examine ways that we can bring more information on our indigenous communities. 56:01 Tondra Richardson: As we all present on diversity equity and inclusion and various topics of social justice, I think that our indigenous communities are not featured and covered enough. 56:12 Tondra Richardson: there's a lot that i've learned during this call and, believe it or not, even in our planning sessions that we had leading up to this call. 56:19 Tondra Richardson: And there were some comments made and statements made that made me want to further my own understanding and do some additional research that is my charge to all of you today. 56:29 Tondra Richardson: This has been a very informative hour, we thank you for your comments. Tondra Richardson: and your accolades in the chat, but I think the best service that you can do to these communities, in addition to complementing our panelists and our. 56:44 Tondra Richardson: Educational equity department is to now move forward and take that next step in informing yourself and doing something. 56:52 Tondra Richardson: These webinars are great we love bringing this content but there's an opportunity to make a change at whatever level feels comfortable for you. 57:00 Tondra Richardson: Even if that starts with just being more informed so again, we thank you, we asked for you to join us again next month. 57:06 Tondra Richardson: For an educational equity webinar on Sep tember 16th we have the qr code here for you to scan and join us it's really easy, so we hope that you will go ahead and register. 57:17 Tondra Richardson: We also have the link shared in the chat there's also the qr code for edgy equity webinar recordings For those of you who joined us for the first time today. 57:26 Tondra Richardson: We have several of these sessions that we facilitated on various topics over the last year, we invite you to take a look at those watch them share them and learn Thank you again, we ask that you all have a great day, and please remember that charge thanks bye bye. 57:44 Patrick Horning: Thanks Tom.

0:00 (Tondra Richardson) Thank you all for joining us today and being here with us for this very important topic. 0:06 Welcome to the University of Phoenix Educational Equity Webinars series. 0:11 This webinar series was created with the hope to foster a learning environment where we can explore paths 0:17 to empower individual action toward greater unity and impact change. As a higher education institute 0:22 with more than 56% underrepresented underrepresented students employed across different industries, 0:29 it's our hope to facilitate thought provoking conversations to prepare and encourage the practice of inclusive 0:36 leadership in a culturally complex society. And as you'll see here, we have the University of Phoenix's 0:42 Commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, and we plan to demonstrate 0:47 that commitment to you today. Move to the next slide. 0:53 So next month we invite you to join us for our next webinar where we'll be talking about how our intentions 1:00 sometimes don't make the impact that we had hoped so more to come on 1:05 that and please join us for that. Before we get into our conversation today and more details, 1:11 we do want to do a little housekeeping. So first let's set the stage for today's session. 1:17 Listed here are guidelines we believe are essential to fostering respectful conversations. 1:22 We value your participation and potentially uncomfortable discussions, as this reinforces our willingness 1:29 to learn and grow. We encourage you to share your experiences and perspective in the chat box. 1:34 Please be respectful and considerate of all human beings represented in this session, we also asked all participants 1:41 to contribute to an atmosphere of mutual respect and sensitivity. We are connected because we are human. 1:48 In addition, we highly encourage you to connect with one another. Share your LinkedIn profile and helpful 1:54 resources related to today's topic. If you have any questions during the presentation, 1:59 please type them into the question box at the bottom of your zoom screen. The questions will be reviewed and 2:05 answered throughout the session. Lastly, a recording of this session will be sent to you via email. 2:12 We can move to the next slide please, so before we get started, we want to honor and raise 2:17 awareness of important equity, diversity and inclusion dates and milestones in the interests of inclusivity, 2:23 we want to ensure that we're doing our best to recognize all such dates. We acknowledge that there might be 2:28 some that we may may have missed and invite you to share those in the chat if there is an observance aligned within the month of October 2:35 that we've not listed here, please include details along with the link or resource or resource 2:40 where we can learn more about its significance. So today we are extremely excited as today's webinar will have a 2:47 special focus in alignment with October being National Disability Employment Awareness Month. 2:53 Our topic for today is going to be "There is no justice without disability." We're looking forward to a 3:00 very engaging conversation. So to share more about University of Phoenix is commitment to disability 3:06 services and accessibility I'd like to introduce our colleague Robert Becker who overseas the Office of Accessibility 3:12 Services. (Robert Becker) Everyone welcome to today's topic about no justice 3:18 without disability. Why is this important to the University 3:23 of Phoenix and in higher education? It's about disability being 3:28 included and reducing gatekeeping. And you may ask why I paused and didn't say some specific examples of 3:35 how or where it needs to be included. It's because we need a creative lens to see how our own systems 3:42 inherit ableism and gatekeeping. Example: How we notice disability is often 3:49 artificially narrowed. Are you the wheelchair image or are you the YouTube closed captioned user? 3:55 You probably would not introduce yourself in that way. However, there is an expectation that you 4:00 fit into a narrow category in order to ask for an accommodation or accessibility or inclusion. 4:07 I'm going to answer and say no. When we help individuals with disabilities, we need to remember that each 4:13 individual does not need to fit into one of those narrow symbols. This lets us be open about gatekeeping, 4:19 and the breadth of disability awareness. For context, University of Phoenix can almost immediately 4:25 help students who need assistance or accommodations in a current course. That is, with one phone call, 4:31 we can set up accommodations. We ask staff and faculty to refer students to accessibility and disability services. 4:37 When a disability is disclosed and this can be in the classroom or talking with an advisor, 4:43 and we contact every student. For accessibility, our curriculum process requires, 4:49 for example, that videos are captioned, the course content is available in text and works with keyboard, 4:54 mouse and is mobile friendly and we follow the web content accessibility guidelines for more 5:00 specific accessibility requirements. In higher education, if a student needs an accommodation, 5:06 the process is that a disability service office needs to make a decision about how to reduce limitations 5:13 and increase access. Let's do less ableism and less gatekeeping. 5:19 And I'll turn it back over to Tondra to Introduce our guest speaker. 5:24 (Tondra Richardson) Thank you, Rob. So amazing, so let's jump right into today's webinar. 5:33 So today we are fortunate to have Rebecca Cokley with us. I'm going to have Rebecca share more 5:39 about what she does and who she is, but I do want to make sure that I make this very personal and say 5:44 we're very excited to have her here. Today I heard her on a podcast that a colleague shared. 5:51 Then I began to follow her work and I'm just very excited. You are in for a treat in 5:56 the way that she speaks. About ableism and oppression and ties together that oppression. 6:02 Ableism inequality, racism. This is going to be an awesome chat, so just a quick introduction about Rebecca. 6:09 She is the first U S disability rights program officer for the Ford Foundation, co-founder and director of the 6:16 Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress and she served in the Obama Administration 6:23 in similar roles as well. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Rebecca. Now, Rebecca. (Rebecca Cokley) Thank you so much Tondra. 6:31 It's wonderful to be here today. Hi everyone, my name is Rebecca Cokley. We can go to the first slide. 6:38 Cool, I am here in New Jersey, which is unceded 6:45 Lenape Territory and my pronouns are She her her'. It's spirit day, 6:50 so right before this call I threw on purple to represent the ally ship that I feel very strongly committed 6:57 to actually Co accomplice ship. I would say that I feel very strongly 7:02 committed to to my LGBTQIA allies. I am a red haired little person. 7:08 Uh, my red hair about a little shorter than it is in that photo there I got it cut about a week and a half ago and it's 7:14 still in that awkward growing out phase. Uhm I have achondroplasia which is the most common form of dwarfism. 7:21 People often think that that's my what they would say is my most disabling condition. But in reality that would be my migraines. 7:31 And, uh, let's see. I'm a three time presidential appointee. I had the pleasure of working for 7:36 President Obama from lights on actually little bit before lights on from the campaign days until 7:41 the end of the administration. Serving in a multitude of roles. I was really involved in the 2020 7:48 election and was instrumental in helping secure 13 different presidential candidates, 7:54 commitment to issuing a disability policy plant which has never happened before. 8:00 Unlike 80% of people with disabilities that grow up in households with nobody like them, I'm the opposite. 8:05 I'm part of the 20%. Both my parents had achondroplasia as well and two of my three kids do. 8:12 I am and AFOL which is something I'm very proud of. I am an adult fan of Lego. 8:18 We are currently staying in a corporate apartment, but once we move into our house, part of the reason we have to move 8:23 into a house is because my husband's, a musician and has too many guitars and I am an AFOL and I have way too many Lego sets. 8:31 Huge diehard fan of the Liverpool Reds and a and a proud mom of three. 8:37 I'm way behind working on my first book so it's more sort of an aspirational thing than a real thing, 8:42 but it will be out there someday and I am so happy to be here with all of you today. If we could move on to the next slide please. 8:50 Oh yes, Martin. There are is really such a thing as too many Legos when you have to have a storage unit for your Legos, 8:56 you have too many Legos. So I really want to talk to you all about 9:01 why disability is such a powerful concept. To me it is one of the most important 9:07 definitions that we have in any statute, and I use the definition from the Americans with Disabilities Act that says it is 9:14 any mental or physical impairment that impacts your activities of daily living, 9:19 a history or a record of such an impairment. So it really does vary person to person. 9:25 I was in a conversation with a colleague of mine who's an activist in Black Lives Matter spaces who had 9:31 pre COVID decided to demonstrate. Her coaccompliceship, and came over to a disability rights 9:38 rally that we were having on the hill in DC and she was sitting there with me, were sitting on the steps outside the 9:45 Capitol and she looked around and was quite literally surrounded by wheelchairs, walkers, scooters, crutches, 9:51 all kinds of different types of mobility devices and she said to me, you know, 9:56 I don't talk about it often, but I have depression and she said and it really puts it in perspective 10:02 when I'm in a place like this. That this is so much more significant to what then to what I deal with. 10:08 And I paused for a moment and I said, OK friend, I want to challenge you on that a little bit because it's really easy to to create 10:15 what we call a hierarchy of disability and to rank those with apparent disabilities. 10:21 As as living a life with a more significant disability than those with mental health, learning disabilities or neurodiversitys 10:28 or chronic health conditions. And I said to her, does it? Does it impact what you eat? 10:34 And she paused. And she said, you know, I've been noshing off the same 2 pound 10:39 bag of gummy bears for the last week. I was like, alright, does it impact what you wear? 10:44 And so let's take this back. This is pre COVID times and she said this is the first day I've actually gotten 10:51 out of my soft pants in about a month. And I was like, alright, does it impact how you engage 10:57 with your loved ones? And she pulled out her phone and she showed me about a dozen missed 11:03 calls from from somebody that I assumed was her mom. And I was like, why are you ignoring your mom and she said, well, 11:09 my therapist retired and I need to find a new one and my mom is worried about me. 11:15 So I'm blowing her off. And then one of the guys that walked by behind us on using a walker was like girl, 11:22 you got problems that you need to figure out. And it was really funny because I said to her 11:27 I said well for you and the work that you do Engaging with your loved ones, getting dressed in the morning, what you eat. 11:35 Those are all activities of daily living. When our elders wrote the ADA, 11:40 they were really deliberate and not wanting it to be a specific checklist because they knew that the minute 11:45 that you put a checklist down there would always be people left behind and so the importance of the definition 11:52 is that it's broad enough to include everything that could be considered a mental or physical impairment that 11:58 impacts someones activities of daily living and they vary for people. I have friends with dwarfism, 12:04 for them, their dwarfism is a really significant impairment in their life. 12:09 It impacts their, it could impact their mental health for some types of dwarfism, do coexist with learning disabilities, 12:16 and so it impacts how they learn. For me, my migraines will keep me in 12:22 bed for a multitude of days, but you can't see that just by looking at me unless you know someone who has migraines because 12:28 there are really interesting ways that we hold our face when we're migrating that I didn't realize till 12:33 I started noticing it in myself and then noticing it in other people. So when we talk about disability, 12:39 we're talking about 61 million people. Prior to COVID. We know that as a result of 12:44 the coronavirus we're talking about at least 10 million newly disabled people in the US alone. 12:50 We're one in four people. So I also want to take a moment and welcome all the people with 12:55 disabilities that have joined us on this webinar and give a special solidarity 13:01 shout out to the people on the webinar who are not in a position where they can safely self identify as 13:06 people with disabilities for whatever reason that maybe I see you and I hold space for you in this moment. 13:13 Disability is also represented in 1/3 of households, so if it's not your house, it's somebody either to the left, 13:19 the right, or across the street from you. It is a broad enough organiz..., 13:24 a broad enough group that includes all the groups that we've talked about. People with physical disabilities, 13:31 sensory disabilities, chronic health conditions. We also get both Britney Spears 13:36 and Paris Hilton, which is pretty exciting if you would have told me that as it late stage Gen-Xer few years ago. 13:42 I don't know. I would have been as excited as I am now, but now we're very proud to claim 13:47 both of them. Kids that kids in Flint, MI who are now 2800 and some odd days 13:55 from having clean drinking water and have acquired learning disabilities. People who have acquired disabilities 14:00 as a result of environmental racism are included as people with disabilities. 14:06 People experiencing postpartum depression count as people with disabilities. 14:11 As I said, chronic illnesses and mental health conditions. If you are a woman and you have been 14:17 told that there is some condition that you have and you have gone to a multitude of doctors, 14:22 the doctor after doctor has told you that it's all made up that it's all in your head. 14:27 Chances are you are part of the disability community and you just haven't found the right chronic health professional yet. 14:33 Sending solidarity to all of you. For years I was told that my migraines were functions 14:40 of stress functions of any other things, but were in fact not disabilities. When they are the last piece that's 14:46 really important to note is the definition of disability specifically includes people who have experienced 14:52 substance misuse and are in recovery. They count as people with disabilities and have civil rights protections under the law. 15:01 So let's go to talking about from reality to justice. 15:06 This is one of my favorite slides ever, and I've seen a whole bunch of different versions of this, and so this is the picture of the three 15:14 folks standing at the fence line. And it starts with reality. And so you have a guy in yellow pants 15:21 and you can't even see his pants or it has you know him in this first picture. It's mostly him, about knees down. 15:27 He's standing on about seven boxes in front of a fence next to him, and so he's way over the fence 15:34 line next to him as somebody in very clearly 1970s short shorts. Look at how short those are. 15:39 Nobody wears anything like that now, or nobody should wear anything like that now and he is on one box. 15:45 You sort of, I guess I would say. Medium height or he's an average as we called him in the little people 15:51 community and he is staring right over the fence on standing on one box. The the third individual is standing 15:58 in a hole. He's not even on the on level ground or the box. He's already at a significant disadvantage. 16:04 What it says is 1 gets more than is needed, while the others get less than is needed. 16:09 The significant disparity is created, the next box is equality, and it's the notion that if everybody 16:16 stands on one box they are in effect, all achieving equality. Everyone benefits from the 16:21 exact same level of supports. And we know that even with that, as you see in the picture, 16:27 you still have the person in the yellow pants being able to see everything perfectly. You have the person in the two short 16:33 shorts just having his fence his head above the fence line so he can still watch the game and the person that frankly reminds me a lot of me 16:39 because I've been in these situations, particularly at clubs or bars. His stuck still staring at the fence 16:45 because he's only on one box and there's still at least probably about a foot and a half of fence above his head. 16:51 The third box says equity and it's everyone getting the support that they needed, and it's the tall dude standing and 16:58 looking over the fence fine with an unobstructed view without any box, the the medium or average guy in the 17:06 short shorts standing on one box and then the really short person standing on two boxes and everyone is able 17:12 to see equally over the fence line. Without it, with an unobstructed view, and the last box is justice, 17:18 and I love justice 'cause they just said, you know what? Why do we even have this fence? Let's get rid of it all. Three people can see the game 17:24 without supports or accommodations because the cause of the inequity was was addressed or eliminated. 17:29 The barrier has been removed. I think that's really important. Often we use the words equality, 17:36 equity, justice really interchangeably, and it really is important to have a sense 17:43 of where they differ and why it matters. So I want to talk a little bit about 17:49 what ableism is on the next slide. And so ableism is a new term for a lot of people. 17:54 I also want to be really deliberate and sharing that a majority of the images that we included in 17:59 this slide deck are from a group. This group right here called "Disabled and Here" who created these images because they 18:06 were tired of all of the available photo art of people with disabilities 18:11 being grounded in medicalized ableism largely being hospital centric, largely demonstrating people 18:17 with disabilities as only being recipients of services. And they were, frankly, 18:23 really like Pale, male and stale, it was a lot of white dudes in wheelchairs, 18:28 which isn't representative of what we actually know in terms of the diversity of the community. And so I I like to give a particular 18:34 shout out to my friends and colleagues from disabled and here for doing a lot of work to ensure that the imagery that we're able to use and 18:41 demonstrating disability is a lot more diverse and a lot more representative. So when we talk about ableism, 18:47 this definition comes from Talia "TL". Lewis, who runs an organization called Heard 18:53 and Heard Works specifically on carceral reform for deaf and disabled people. 18:59 TL worked on this definition in conjunction with Dustin Gibson and some others back in 2020, 19:05 and it defines ableism as a system that places value on peoples bodies and minds based on society 19:12 constructed ideas of normalcy, intelligence. Excellence and productivity. These ideas and this is really important. 19:22 These ideas are deeply rooted in anti blackness and eugenics and 19:27 colonialism and capitalism will go into that a little bit later. But the the roots of ableism and racism 19:34 really do sprout from the same tree. This form of systemic oppression leads to people in society determining who 19:41 is valuable and who is worthy based on a person's appearance and or their 19:47 ability to satisfactorily reproduce. Or reproduce excel and or behave so 19:53 the important part to you do not have to be disabled to experience ableism. Someone can assume that you have a 19:59 disability, whether or not you actually do. If we can go to the next slide, please. 20:06 So, diversity, equity and inclusion work. Uhm, you know, I see different 20:12 framings around DEI now, I see JEDI justice equity, diversity and inclusion. 20:18 I just still see DEI diversity and inclusion, and I think it's really important to 20:24 acknowledge where inclusion comes from. Inclusion specifically comes out of the disability space. 20:30 It was actually not used as a term of art anywhere until it was really first 20:35 radically defined within the individuals. With Disabilities Education Act. Come back in a an early 20:41 reauthorization of the law. Back in the 1980s, and it was fundamentally used to 20:47 describe the placement of students with disabilities in a classroom setting alongside non disabled peers. 20:54 So the reality is, if you're doing DEI work, JEDI work, D and I work, 21:00 you cannot be doing inclusion if it's not explicit around disability and it means understanding the relationship 21:06 between the way that people. Function and how they participate in society and ensuring that everyone 21:12 has the same opportunities to participate in every aspect of life. To the best of their abilities 21:18 and their desires. And I think that that is really important in every aspect of life. 21:23 We were doing some work several years ago with colleges and universities were trying to get a sense of what 21:29 colleges and universities are best for students with disabilities, and several of them told us about how 21:35 accessible their classrooms were, how accessible their 21:41 Their operations office or their administrative buildings were and I 21:46 remember asking how accessible their fraternities and sororities were. And getting this really awkward look and they were like, well, 21:52 why would disabled people want to join sororities and fraternities? And my response is, well, why wouldn't they? 21:58 Isn't that part of of why people would choose to belong on your campus? So I think it's really important that 22:04 we think about it from a holistic standpoint and not from what is What are the bare bones that somebody 22:10 needs to do to be able to access or include themselves in a space and think about that broadly around the 22:16 culture of a workspace, a college, an organization, a social club, and really think about what is the 22:23 access needs in order to get there? I see we have a question, let's see. But our question is what are my 22:30 thoughts on Disability IN? So uhm Disability IN used to be called. 22:35 It's funny 'cause I always see that name and I have to remind myself what it is for a moment. Disability IN was originally a 22:40 project of the Department of Labor's Office of Disability, Employment Policy and Disability. 22:45 In is an organization that has a rating tool called the DEI. 22:52 The Disability Equality index. It's based off of HRC's index around LGBT inclusion that measures disability 22:59 inclusion and organizations. I'm going to be totally honest in this 23:05 space and find myself very conflicted. There are things that I think are really good about the ability to rate 23:11 An organization's inclusion of people with disabilities, and I think you really can't evaluate. 23:17 Obviously what you can't measure. My issue becomes when an 23:24 organization gets a 100% score. On the Disability Equality 23:29 Index from unemployment side. And then treats disabled people horribly 23:36 as customers and where I think about this the most and what keeps me up. One of the things that keeps me up at night, 23:41 particularly enraged is as it relates to the airline industry. Every year we see a multitude of 23:48 airlines receive 100% on the DEI. 23:53 And honestly, I'm a bit of a troll. Sometimes on the Internet I may stay awake when the DEI score when they have 23:59 quality index score comes out just so I can see how many airlines get rated highly. I have a bit of a snarky bone. 24:05 I'm a Sagittarius that way up and watching the airlines continually get 24:12 rated with 100% and then looking at the data from the Department of Transportation, which thankfully is now 24:19 actually being evaluated. And knowing that over 3000, wheelchairs give broken, damaged, lost, or broken a year. 24:26 Now I want you to think about what that means. It's not just a piece of equipment and I 24:31 think a lot of times for non disabled people, they're like, oh, that sucks. It's like losing your luggage. It is not like losing your luggage. 24:39 Losing your luggage might put a damper on your family vacation, but it doesn't mean you can't 24:46 leave your hotel room. The loss, damage theft, or actually reassignment. I know somebody who had a custom wheelchair 24:54 that cost upwards of $100,000 that they needed for their specific condition, and the airlines gave it to somebody 25:01 else and they gave it to a senior citizen who had Alzheimer's who drove it off, 25:06 drove it away from the gate and smashed it into a wall. Uhm, and this person was flying 25:13 into town for a job interview. And they lost the job. They didn't 25:18 They weren't able to get the job. Because they couldn't start right 25:23 away because they had to wait 6 to 8 weeks for the airlines to approve a 25:29 contractor to repair the wheelchair. Uhm, I know people who've lost custody of 25:35 kids because of that issue and it's, uh, it's it's unacceptable to me that the airline industry still 25:41 doesn't take it seriously. And frankly, that disability organizations. 25:46 That are in a position to hold them accountable. Do not do so as far as I'm concerned, and I'm a baseball fan and I was all for 25:53 Barry Bonds getting the red asterisk for cheating during the home run scandal. I think the airlines need to get a DI 25:59 score with a big old red asterisk on it, and that's where that's where I'm at on it. And and my colleagues at 26:05 disability in are well aware of my opinion, but I will continue reminding them of that until I decide 26:11 to actually do the right thing and and bring justice to us on that conversation. So let's talk about what access is and not. 26:21 Access is not, but we gave you a ramp up the number of times that I personally have 26:28 encountered this kind of moment or I have seen friends encounter these situations. 26:33 Our colleagues encounter these situations where we're treated as though we should be grateful that someone has decided to 26:41 accommodate US disability access advances Disability inclusion. You're right. 26:46 Also, Sean, airlines do not think about sensory at all. They took forever to start, actually. Doing right, they still don't do 26:53 right by many blind and deaf and other sensory disabled passengers. So in a narrow sense, 27:00 access our technical requirements that allow the participation of disabled people in the physical space, 27:06 meaning ramps, doors, lighting specifics at a meeting room or also access to information, 27:12 websites, video captioning or other technological access. Accessibility is most powerful when 27:18 it's tide to inclusive practices and policies that welcome and celebrate the participation of disabled people 27:25 and not simply compliance with laws. I think about this. All the time, how many of you have ever been 27:32 in a job where I've been in this situation where you get an email from HR or HR suddenly puts a an 27:38 appointment on your calendar? You could have done nothing wrong. You could have just started at the job, 27:43 but merely seeing you know an HR appointment on your calendar or like, oh, crap, what did I do? 27:48 What's wrong? What's the problem? You know that feeling is amplified when you're a person with a disability, 27:55 because frequently it has to do with your ability to access accommodations. And I often think what would it look like, 28:02 especially in this next phase of COVID? If the conversation around 28:07 accommodations turned to one of success instead of one of compliance, 28:13 what if your accommodations office? If it's on college or disability student services office? 28:18 If it's in a, you know in a corporate office. If you have an ADA or 504 office, 28:24 what if going back to work? Let's say January of 2022? They put an email out to all 28:30 staff and say look, we know that this has been a really rough time. We know that many of you may 28:36 have acquired health conditions, disabilities, chronic health illnesses, 28:41 mental illnesses that acquire accommodations, what would it mean? 28:48 Or what would it take for us to be able to make this work place as accessible as possible for you? 28:53 Are there things that you did over the last year and a half that helped and include some examples? Did you change up your lighting? 29:00 Did you get a new chair? Did you switch around the hours that you worked hours that actually don't 29:06 conflict with your medication side effects? Come share that with us and let's figure out what we can do. 29:12 Let's be partners in this. And I think honestly, it's the most responsible thing that 29:18 employers could be doing as we head back, because the reality is, we know that COVID shone a light on 29:23 how many people with disabilities are in the workforce. How many people with disabilities had been asking for Tele work for decades 29:30 and been told it was unreasonable? But also there are so many more now and it would go so such a far distance and 29:38 destigmatizing disability to actually make the conversation be one grounded in success versus legal compliance. 29:44 Even the legal compliance piece is very important. OK, we have a question. 29:50 People with disabilities are the largest segment of the population, but when it comes to digital accessibility, the space is unregulated and a feeding frenzy 29:56 of vendors and personal injury attorneys. Trying to help people trying to help fully fund and partially funded 30:03 government agencies navigate space. Any advice to get the message more top of mind before the demand 30:09 letters or 508 mandates? This is actually great. I was thinking about 508 which is the 30:14 federal regulation around accessibility, but specifically Internet accessibility. It's important to remember that 30:23 the ADA was written at the very early days of the Internet. The Internet was not what it all 30:29 what it is today by any means when the idea was first written, when the ADA started being drafted. 30:34 Actually the week of the Challenger explosion was the first time that the 30:40 the legislation had been drafted. And so the Internet was largely a twinkle in Al Gore's eye, I guess, 30:47 as it were at that point in time. Thinking about the fact that even today there is such a lack of accessibility. 30:54 When I worked in the White House, I got a text message from a senior official. Who had forwarded me a text message from 31:03 a very famous blind African American musician who was touring at the time on? 31:09 I think it was the 20th anniversary of an album, perhaps called Songs, in the Key of Life. 31:16 And he emailed the White House official from Los Angeles and said. 31:21 I'm here in LA. It's two in the morning. I wanna order Roscoe's chicken and waffles and I can't because 31:29 grubhub's not accessible. And the White House official sported me the email and said this very well known. 31:35 Very famous African American blind entertainer wants to order fried chicken 31:41 at three o'clock in the 2:00 o'clock in the morning in Los Angeles and can't. What what can we do for him 31:47 and why can't we do this? And I said, well? You could pick up the phone and order it from yourself, 31:52 because we haven't signed the 508 regulations which would actually require 31:58 Grubhub and a multitude of other sites. Yes, it is pizza. The Pizza Hut case all over again. 32:03 We haven't, you know, required that websites fall 32:09 into legal compliance. Because of at that point in time, and probably I would say 32:14 it's still relevant today, like fear of costs from the business community. And so it really is. 32:20 Beyond time. I mean, you think about people pay their bills online. You think about the number of things 32:25 that you use your cell phone for, and that for a multitude of groups within the disability community. 32:31 We don't have that luxury. We don't have that ability, and that's a real problem. 32:38 So let's start delving into to justice equity, diversity and inclusion. 32:44 I love this slide too. This is one of my favourites. UM and it says, diversity asks who's in the room? 32:52 Equity responds. Who's trying to get in the room? But can't? Whose presence in the room is 32:57 under constant threat of erasure? I have a colleague, I think of a lot who was a senior 33:02 official at the Social Security Administration who has cerebral palsy and uses augmentative 33:07 communication board to talk. Bob is easily the smartest person that I know, or one of the smartest people that I know. 33:14 And I have been in a multitude of rooms over the years where I watch people, including people with disabilities 33:20 talk over Bob because they don't like waiting for him to be able to respond to the question asked. 33:27 And I think about how many times Bob's genius has been erased. Or talked over and it really is 33:34 important to think about not just who can't physically get in the room, but whose comments are being erased, 33:41 whose comments are being talked over. Inclusion asks, has everyones ideas been heard? 33:46 Is the information in a format that everyone can access? Justice responds whose ideas won't 33:51 be taken as seriously because they aren't in the majority. I often think about being at diversity 33:58 or civil rights conferences, and I joked that it's always the disabled. Folks, the First Nations Native American 34:03 community and the trans community that are like the three kids waiting to be the three leftover kids 34:09 waiting to be picked in kickball, and we all sort of stand against the back wall like giving each other the nod and being like, 34:15 yeah, we're here. We're the only people from our community here. We're inviting his were CEOs of organizations and it would 34:21 look bad if we're not here. But yet we still aren't at the table. Diversity asks how many more of X 34:28 do we have this year versus last? That one I think is important 34:34 because it really is critical that you measure things. I I'm excited to say that when 34:40 I was in the well, I'm sad to say that when I was in the Obama administration we were not publicly releasing 34:45 diversity data on disability. But I'm really happy because several of those colleagues that I worked 34:51 with then are now part of the Biden Presidential Personnel Office and are releasing disability data 34:56 and actually watching those numbers double matters, you can't be what you can't see. 35:02 And we also know that it doesn't count if you can't measure it. And so it really does matter that we're 35:07 actually being able to ask that question, even though often diversity doesn't get us to where we really need to be to 35:14 have those conversations around justice. Equity responds what conditions have we created that maintains certain 35:21 groups as a perpetual majority? Here I was on a board once where they only selected EDs of other 35:28 organizations to be on the board. And it was majority white 35:34 straight able bodied men. And because they feel that that 35:40 the the board focused on was also largely very much white cis able 35:46 bodied straight men centered and they couldn't figure out why they couldn't diversify the board and it was like, 35:52 well, if you set your pool to be X, that's what you're going to get. 35:57 Inclusion asked is this environment safe for everyone to feel like they belong, and then justice challenges whose 36:04 safety is being sacrificed and minimized to allow others to be comfortable 36:11 maintaining dehumanizing views. These questions are all really important and I think as we assess what it is that we're thinking about 36:17 when we're talking about creating a place where everyone can bring them their whole selves to the table. 36:23 Really pushes us to get beyond just the the notion of D and I to really delve into what does equity mean? 36:30 What does justice mean and why are they critical to actually having that conversation and creating organizations? 36:37 Class settings, spaces that allow people to bring their whole selves to the table 36:42 and thrive in doing so? Let's talk about ableism and racism a bit. 36:50 So as I said, ableism and racism really are branches of the same tree. One of the earliest mental illnesses 36:57 publicly discussed in American discourse was the notion of drapetomania. 37:03 Our founding fathers and and thinkers at the time actually developed a fake 37:09 mental illness called Drapetomania. In order to diagnose it to runaway slaves 37:14 as part of the justification for the formal militarisation of slave catchers. 37:21 They said that they were crazy that they were ill, and for the good of themselves and 37:27 society they had to be brought back to the plantation. And so they actually like made 37:33 up a mental illness. To justify the arming of of slave catchers to go out 37:41 and catch escaped former slaves. You know that the field of science called phrenology, 37:47 which later plays heavily into eugenics, which has to do with measuring of body types and measuring of 37:54 proportions on a human body, was actually used to justify slavery 37:59 from its earliest days, and so there is this connection of the medicalized sense of a person 38:05 and what they're capable love that we actually heard talked about when we were talking about ableism, 38:11 the ability of one to produce, reproduce, to engage in the economy etc. is never more clearly displayed. 38:20 Then when you're looking at the conversation around the earliest days and pretty much the entire tenure of slavery, 38:26 and even let's also be real, you can see this also show up today and how we hear sports commentators often 38:33 talk about black and brown athletes, and so it's important when you hear that exactly look at what's 38:40 happening in the NFL and concussions. Look at the look at the difference in the settlements that black athletes. 38:46 Forgetting versus white athletes and tell me that that's not the Nexus of racism and ableism, so I'm going to challenge you all. 38:52 If you're still watching football, I'm from I. I lived in DC. I'm a former 49er fan. I stand with Kaepernick 100% so I 38:59 haven't watched football in a long time. But you cannot watch Major League 39:04 sports and specifically football without forcing yourself to examine ableism and racism. 39:10 Let's go to intersections of racism and ableism next, and this is how it plays out in society. 39:17 We know that at least 50% of people that are killed by cops are people of color with disabilities. 39:23 We actually don't know the exact numbers because law enforcement and the Department of Justice don't allow 39:30 the data to be cross referenced to be able to get at both the data that we do have. 39:36 Currently, the best data that's available is from the Washington Post and as purely what's Pulled from media reports. 39:42 We know that students of color with disabilities are more likely to be suspended or expelled. 39:48 Specifically, black girls with disabilities have the highest rates of suspension and expulsion in the country. 39:54 Uhm, the attack on the public charge this last several years of the Trump administration, 40:00 we saw a pushing of the public charge, which was something actually, 40:05 that the US had done away with for a long time that the Trump administration brought back that still exists in a lot of countries. 40:11 That says if you want to immigrate to that country, they're going to evaluate your health and what public services you receive, 40:18 and they will evaluate if you should ever need those public services. You'll be attacks on the society. 40:23 And they won't allow you to immigrate. This issue was the first time that we had ever largely seen the disability 40:30 rights and justice community engage in a fight on immigration policy that was really exciting to see. 40:36 It was important to see us show up in solidarity with our long standing, immigration activist allies and 40:42 the reason for that was twofold. One, as you know, as bad as the last four years where the 40:49 number of times I watched able bodied or non disabled people on the Internet say, well, if you don't like it here, 40:54 you can leave. Disabled people can't leave. Over 80% of other countries in the world have a 41:00 public charge that prevents us from leaving. And being able to to immigrate to 41:05 another country because we would be seen as a tax on their system. Uhm, you know. And furthermore there are a multitude 41:13 of of home health care aides, nurses, medical professions that actually come to the US 41:19 And want to immigrate because they have a loved one with a disability and they know that they can receive a better quality of care here than 41:25 they can in their home country. It's also important to note that climate change creates disabilities 41:31 and exacerbates disabilities specifically in communities of color. The last piece, I think is really interesting. 41:37 Over 70% of people with disabilities in this country are unemployed, resulting in increased rates for 41:44 entrepreneurship among our community. However, the Small Business Administration does not include Disability as a qualified category 41:51 for minority owned small business loans and they include women, women, 41:57 communities of color and veterans. But not just your average run of the mill disabled person. 42:04 Go to the next slide. The laborious expectation of education. 42:12 And as a Martin, I will talk to you about Jon Gruden later. As a Niners fan I automatically 42:17 always have paid for Raider Nation. But that's just me. The laborious expectation of education, 42:24 so this is a koala I share the koala because koalas are cute and cuddly and 42:30 often as a person with a disability, That's how you're treated. This is also a reminder that often we 42:37 expect people with disabilities to have to do the education for non disabled people, 42:42 and that's not a fair expectation of Labor. We often have to operate off of a limited picture of what it means 42:48 for ourselves and our condition, and I like to call traumatic voyeurism. Come as people with disabilities from 42:54 the time that were first diagnosed, we're often told that we should share the worst case scenario for our conditions. 43:01 We should focus on the pain we should focus on the oppression we should focus on telling the worst story possible because the reality 43:07 is that is the only way that we end up getting the services we need by painting the worst picture possible. 43:14 We live in a system where we want to hear people's sob stories and it really makes it hard to be successful 43:22 to be ambitious When society continues to want to hear about your worst day ever and it 43:29 really need means that we as educators, we in the field of education in the field, that employment helping hire people need 43:35 to be more thoughtful and strategic with how we have these conversations with people and how we ask them to engage. 43:43 Often we call this the self narrating zoo exhibit because as a person with a disability, sometimes you feel like you're 43:49 your own David Attenborough, relaying a planet Earth-esq episode about your life 43:56 and your experience. Let's go to performatory allyship. 44:02 So this is defined by Jamila Thomas and Brianna Agyemang. You'll notice that I cite all of this stuff 44:08 where I have citations for other people because I think that's really important, especially as we talk about the 44:13 erasure of credit in a lot of fields, especially that disabled people face. But I also want to acknowledge it is 44:19 disproportionately faced by black women, so performatory allyship is when someone from that same non 44:25 marginalized group professor support and solidarity with a marginalized group in a way that either isn't 44:30 helpful or actively harm to the group. Performative allyship usually involves the ally receiving some 44:35 kind of reward on social media. It's that virtual pat on the back for being such a good person or on the right side. 44:43 I often think about this when you see people fundraise to get their dogs wheelchairs, 44:48 not that dogs don't need wheelchairs, but I think it's important to note that over 1/3 of GO fund Mes in 44:55 this country are actually led by human beings that are attempting to get a medical cost reimbursed that 45:01 Is not covered by health insurance and yet you sit if you go on go fund me and you watch how long it takes to get 45:08 a dog a $50,000 wheelchair compared to a person a $50,000 wheelchair and the 45:14 dog will inevitably get the wheelchair within a number of days and the people that fundraise for the dog are very excited. 45:20 Look, I put money in to get Fido a wheelchair that's so important and I'm a dog owner. 45:26 I love dogs, but the fact that people with disabilities are out there struggling 45:32 to be able to get to work. To be able to live their life and. Society does not build structures 45:39 that enable them to do that, and then society turns around and pats on the back, 45:45 non disabled people for buying a dog a wheelchair or you know does a special news story. 45:51 Yes, I was exactly about to say that Christina I'm so happy you said that prom king shares crown with a person 45:57 with an intellectual disability. Wow, that prom king is the best. I was gonna say like prompt someone 46:03 called it what did they call it last year inspiration prom. Or something like that every time 46:10 they see whether it be that the high school quarterback takes the poor 46:16 lonley girls with autism to the prom. Things like that. It's so obnoxious. 46:21 We don't appreciate you for that. We actually talk crap about you as non disabled people behind your back when you do that sort of thing. 46:27 We're like, oh look, they're able to have discovered prom again, yay ables, you could be so much better than 46:32 that and actually thinking about how to move forward and actual Co. Conspirator ship, let's go to the next slide. 46:40 So moving beyond performatory allyship, I have a couple of quotes here from people I love, 46:46 one of which is my CEO, Darren Walker. Darren talks a lot about embracing risk 46:52 and reflecting honesty when Darren came to the Ford Foundation in 2016, 46:57 he committed Ford's dollars to going directly to social justice. And he talked about racial justice, gender, 47:05 justice, LGBT justice, immigrant justice, knows who he didn't leave in the mix? 47:10 The disability community. And as I said, as a Sagittarius, I'm a bit of a troll streak, 47:15 and so the disability community trolled him really hard on the Internet. And one of the things that I credit 47:22 him with a man, and I lift him up, and why he is my friend, my boss, and every now and then a bit of a hero, uhm? 47:29 Is he took it really seriously and he took about a year and a half? 47:35 And spent a lot of time talking to disabled people in his life and that he had encountered through philanthropy and 47:42 through his other community service work. He started examining his bias. He started examining corporation's bias and 47:49 he started really examining philanthropies bias and the notion that in all of the time, that the Ford Foundation had existed in and 47:56 only ever given away 1 grant to a disability justice or disability rights organization. 48:01 And it was to a legal defense fund in the Bay Area. It was a $10,000 check in 48:06 the 1970s and with it, when a note saying go out, go beg the federal government for money. 48:13 This is the one and only check you're getting from us. And the reality is that is how philanthropy 48:18 is treated disability for decades, if not centuries, that we are the responsibility of 48:23 government to take care of, and of charity, and that we shouldn't expect other organizations whose job is 48:30 funding social justice movements to include us at their table. And I really want to credit Darren 48:35 because he's actually done a phenomenal bit to turn around philanthropy. But part of it really did involve 48:41 him having to unpack bias. This work doesn't just happen, you actually have to do the tangible 48:46 work of moving beyond the Performatory stuff to actual coaccompliceship. Uhm, it's speaking out so others don't have to. 48:54 It's, uh, I remember being in a room years ago and they were talking about coming up with a new blueprint for 49:01 domestic for domestic economic agenda. And they were going to call it 49:06 the hometown agenda. Remember sitting in that room and watching all of my black and brown colleagues sort of like throw the eye 49:12 at each other and give each other the nod. And the the level of unease. I could feel it as a little person. 49:19 I tend to find that I am more sensitive to those sorts of things, but the people facilitating just moved along and we're acting like 49:25 it was the greatest thing that we were going to have a hoedown and you know, there would be, like, hey rides and whatever. 49:30 I don't even know. And I remember pausing. And you know, having that moment where I sort of, 49:36 had you know, the old school angel on one shoulder and devil on the other. And I was new at this job. I've been in the job about two 49:42 or three weeks and it was when I was in the nonprofit space and I remember raising my hand and being like hometown agenda. 49:48 Doesn't that sound a bit pedantic? Doesn't that sound a bit? Like I was like hometown to me tells 49:55 me that I can't get in the library because there are steps and not a ramp, and there's no elevator and that all 50:01 the books are going to be at least at the six foot level that I need. Hometown for me means I go with my 50:07 dad to vote and I have to carry his ballot in because the only place to vote in the hometown is the 50:13 church and 85% of churches in this country still don't comply with the ADA because they don't have to. 50:18 And I was like hometown also sounds a lot like sundown towns. Can we actually unpack? 50:24 That and get to a better place and come up with the terminology that's more inclusive of everyone. 50:32 And I remember like shaking as I was saying 'cause I was new. I was also the only disabled only visibly disabled person in the room as I often do. 50:39 And sometimes you have to put yourself out there because it's the right thing to do. The last thing is I'm going to quote my 50:46 colleague Brittany Packnett Cunningham Who says budgets are moral documents 50:51 spending money on accommodations and access needs makes you a better employer. It's also it is also the law. 50:57 It is also the right thing to do, and it does make people with disabilities want to work at your organization? 51:02 Does it make us want to stay there forever even if there's bad pay and bad management? No. But it opens the door for opportunities 51:10 and it's important not to forget that. Up next is a slide from a... 51:16 We have, actually we have a question. Lori did you want to take a moment and ask your question? 51:28 (moderator) Participants are unable to unmute Rebecca, so she'll have to either type it... (Rebecca Cokley) Lori if you want to type it in the chat 51:34 or put it in the Q&A. That's great. Tabatha brought up a really important to saying disabled chronically ill people 51:40 may rely on online organizing and activism when unable to occupy other spaces, especially physically. This gets incorrectly rolled into 51:47 performative acts. That is so true. I hate the term slacktivism because what it tells me is that non disabled 51:53 people still haven't figured out how to keep up with us on the Internet. We are the most 51:58 Organized group online. We know how to build things up. We know how to tear things down and often 52:04 that will get maligned and that will be told Well, the disabled people didn't show up to the rally. 52:09 No, we didn't show up to your rally 'cause it was hot as heck. We're in a pandemic. It was inaccessible. There were not interpreters. 52:16 Whatever the reason is, but we still cannot organize you in 5 minutes compared to non 52:21 disabled people can do in hours because we have to because we live in a world that you have built 52:27 to be fundamentally inaccessible. And I think it's really important to note that this does raise discomfort, 52:34 and that you know thinking. Having conversations around access and inclusion to make people uncomfortable, 52:39 and this slide is a quote from my friend Maurice Mitchell who says 52:44 your individual anxiety about possibly getting things wrong has nothing to do with my liberation. 52:50 I remember having a conversation with some non disabled colleagues and saying hey we thought about access needs 52:55 for X event and the response was well, it's really awkward to have that conversation with so and so or oh 53:01 we forgot to hire interpreters, but we're not going to say anything until the event and we're just going to 53:06 hope that like "Bob" and "Molly" don't show up. That is the worst thing that you can do. I don't really care that these 53:12 conversations might be awkward for you. We have to have these conversations all the time. We have to put our entire medical 53:18 record out there sometimes in order to get a step stool on a job. The fact that somebody might be 53:24 made uncomfortable by us talking about access by having to wait for Bob's words to come out of his AAC 53:30 device, by having to wait for our our autistic colleagues to have a break because we've been on zoom for 53:36 four hours in a day and it's over Stimulating, that's the reality. Your anxiety has nothing to do 53:43 with my my liberation. Let's go to the next slide. So how can we do the learning? 53:50 Google and Internet research is really important. As I said, 53:55 we don't want to be self narrating zoo exhibits so at least start doing the research on your own learning cohorts at the Ford Foundation we 54:02 have a disability learning group which includes program officers and other staff who want to get better 54:08 about disability grantmaking but also want to learn more about the community. It's different than our employee 54:13 resource group because it's beyond just disabled folks, but it allows for us to Bring in different speakers with different 54:20 types of backgrounds and learn more. Teaming up for various months of commemoration. I was really excited to see that 54:26 list that you all had and like I said I'm wearing purple for Spirit Day 'cause it matters to me to be an ally specifically to my black and 54:33 brown LGBT loved ones and colleagues. But it's also important to think through each of those days for 54:39 Hispanic Heritage Month. Are you lifting up Doctor Javier Robles, who's a quadriplegic doctor at Rutgers? 54:44 He's doing amazing work on Covid, you know, when you're talking about Harriet Tubman or Black History Month, 54:50 are you talking about the fact that she had epilepsy That was acquired as a result of being hit on the head by a shovel? 54:57 But that she used her seizures as part of the lore around her. She actually created hype around 55:03 it and would tell people that when she would have a spell when she was on a liberatory journey 55:09 that it was actually how she got the vision of where they needed to go and actually gave people 55:15 faith in her as a leader, which I think is so profoundly powerful and is so important because 55:21 so rarely do we actually see people Frame a disability from a position 55:26 of strength and from assets. Honestly, the best organized disability group I know of right now is the Asian 55:33 American Disability Initiative, which is a bunch of college students at Princeton that have all self 55:39 identified as students with disabilities, largely with chronic health conditions and they are so organized they 55:45 are going to take on the world. And I'm just hoping that they decide to actually like do the college thing at this time, 55:51 but it's really important to note that as we're Talking about disability Actually creating a learning does 55:57 not mean segregating it in National Disability Employment Awareness Month, but thinking about how can you bring 56:03 like your disability ERG together with your African American ERG. How are you bringing the LGBT 56:08 community in the mix around around what pride looks like in these different months around what it means 56:15 You know my friend David Johns who runs the Black Justice Coalition, talks about has moved past the language 56:20 of coming out and instead says what does it mean to invite people Into your truth, yes. 56:25 The movie Harriet did a really great job and actually I will give additional credit to Misha Green's Show 56:32 Underground which if you have not seen it, is the best two seasons of television that you likely never saw. 56:39 And actually the first time that we ever saw Harriet Tubman portrayed on screen as having a disability and I 56:44 strongly recommend it. You will, You will hate yourself for not having watched it when it was on, 56:49 it was probably one of the few shows I saw that I've actually done a really good job 56:54 Demonstrating intersecting oppressions on television in a way that I haven't seen it before. 57:00 And I believe that that's it. Yes, Oh my God Tondra and you me were meant to be 57:06 friends like Underground is is my show. I I love it so much. 57:11 Such a fangirl. So here's how to find me. My email address r.cokley@fordfoundation.org but honestly 57:17 the easiest way to track me down I'm not gonna lie is Twitter @RebeccaCokley My mailbox is a dumpster fire. 57:23 I wanted to open it up one last time. I think we do have a couple of other questions in the chat. 57:28 Struggling on where to start with ERG and what to focus on since it covers so many things. 57:33 Any suggestions? The coronavirus gives us a unique 57:38 opportunity to really think about disability. Organizations are all having 57:44 conversations about What does it mean to return to work? I think it's a huge opportunity 57:49 for disability ERGs to flex their muscle in their expertise. We're used to being flexible. We're used to being thoughtful, 57:55 being able to have conversations about what should return to work look like. 58:01 What does responsible return to work look like? Is there the opportunity for folks that are currently in the disability 58:08 ERG to mentor any returning staff who now have long haul COVID and are now trying to figure out 58:14 how to navigate the world With a new disability that's really important. 58:19 Uhm? You know, but I think that there is a multitude of things that you can work on. And Laura, 58:24 I'm happy to have conversations with you about this offline. In a leadership development cohort, 58:30 let's see group project in its infancy that relates to DEI and creating a business mentorship program to help facilitate the next 58:37 crop of diverse business people. Any tips? 58:44 You know, I think it's important that you know a lot of people can't be what you can't see. 58:50 But so many senior leaders. I mean, I do firmly believe that they are way more senior business leaders with 58:57 disabilities that are safe being out. Uhm, and so I think there is a really important role for allies 59:03 and finding folks who are Uhm, you celebrate the diversity of other folks and so thinking about 59:11 Uhm, where you get your mentors from? Also thinking that if you're centering people with disabilities that 59:16 they may also be people of color. They may also be LGBT and so tapping those networks as well. 59:22 And really, thinking about how do you create a safe space where anybody can bring the whole of their identities to 59:28 the table for that conversation? Uhm, do I have any recommendations for a high school counselor working 59:34 with students with disabilities? Oh, I have so many. The first I would say 59:40 is I would strongly encourage you to work with families to have their 59:45 student with a disability in their 504 or their IEP meetings starting freshman year. Waiting until someone is 16 to involve 59:52 them in transition planning is an abomination and has set young people with 59:57 disabilities up for failure for decades. The fact that we don't transition plan until high school is horrible. 1:00:03 One of the things I loved about working with Julian Castro was he actually wanted to move transition planning for young people with 1:00:09 disabilities to the transition. From elementary school to middle school and start requiring the presence of students with disabilities 1:00:15 in their 504 plans and IEPs. starting in our starting in in 5th grade. Because students need to understand 1:00:21 how to advocate for themselves, they need to understand their parents aren't always going to be there for them to do it. 1:00:27 And there is such an opportunity to think about like what that looks like, but you can't do it if you're not at 1:00:33 the table and so actually teaching young people with disabilities to expect to be at the table and that they have a right to be at the table 1:00:40 as early on is critically important. And one last question, how can we partner with career management 1:00:46 and do a better job of transitioning disabled students to meaningful career paths? Uhm, 1:00:51 that's a much longer question. I would love to have a conversation on that Sherry. Hit me up on either email or Twitter 1:00:57 and we can have that conversation. But that's a really important piece. Transition from school to work is 1:01:03 huge and it means moving beyond the Eight Fs of Disability Employment, which Tondra made me talk about that next year, which is food, film, 1:01:11 fetching, folding, filing, flowers, festive and friendly. Those are the eight areas of jobs 1:01:16 that often young people with disabilities get tracked into. Instead of the top grossing top. 1:01:21 Moving jobs in the in the economy and so happy to have that conversation with you Sherry and thank you 1:01:27 so much for all of you for joining me today. Y'all stuck with this. I'm a few minutes over and and I'm happy 1:01:33 to be a resource going further and thank you so much Tondra you're the best. (Tondra Richardson) Thank you Rebecca. 1:01:38 You are the best and what a way to end with the promise that we can bring her back. Yeah, silent clap, I'm so excited about that. 1:01:46 This was awesome as you all can see there was so much to learn here Rebecca packed it 1:01:51 all into an hour, maybe she can host a separate session on how to run a PowerPoint and also 1:01:57 manage the chat and effectively do it without missing a beat that was just absolutely amazing, 1:02:04 so we thank you all for joining us and for everything that you learn today we 1:02:09 ask for you to come back next month for our webinar on November 19th. The QR code is here. 1:02:15 We have shared a link in the chat. In addition, please, please check your emails we will be releasing 1:02:22 the recording of this session and all prior sessions, via our YouTube channel. The link to that is in the chat as well. 1:02:29 We thank you all for joining us today and we wish you a well week thank you bye bye.

0:00 We are going to go ahead and get started right now. Welcome to University of Phoenix 0:06 Educational Equity Webinar Series. We would like to start by acknowledging the land in which we occupy: 0:12 Akimel O'odham, Piipaash, Yavapai, people's traditional territories. 0:20 We invite you to share where you're joining us in the chat. https://native-land.ca/ please and perhaps your own land acknowledgment. 0:27 If you're not sure how and you're interested in learning more about this, 0:32 we're going to share a link in the chat that you can learn what lands you're sitting on. 0:39 Thank you. Next slide. The educational equity webinar series was 0:47 created with the hope to foster a learning environment where we can explore past and empower 0:53 individual action towards greater unity and impact change. 0:58 As a higher education institution with more than 50 percent underrepresented students 1:03 employed across different industries, it is our hope to facilitate thought 1:08 provoking conversations to prepare and encourage the practice of inclusive leadership in a culturally complex society. 1:18 Today's topic is healing racism beyond the dialogue, Part 1. What is Racism? 1:26 This is the first of a two-part series to establish the reality of racism followed by 1:32 some strategy for healing that personal, group, institutional and systemic levels. 1:38 We're definitely looking forward to our speaker today. Can you go to the next slide please? 1:44 Before we move forward, we want to make sure to invite you to register for our Part 2 webinar next month on May 20th. 1:54 This is the QR code or the link is in the chat as well and if we can move forward, please. 2:04 A little housekeeping before we get started, we want to first set the stage for today's session. 2:12 Listed here are guidelines we believe essential to fostering respectful conversations. 2:18 We value your participation in potentially uncomfortable discussions as 2:23 this only reinforces our willingness to learn and grow. We encourage you to share 2:29 your experiences and perspective in the chat box. Through your questions, please be respectful and 2:36 considerate of all human beings represented in this session. We ask all participants to contribute to 2:45 an atmosphere of mutual respect and sensitivity. We're connected because we are all human. 2:53 In addition, we highly encourage you to connect with one another. Use this platform to network, 3:00 share your LinkedIn profile, any helpful resources related to today's topic. 3:05 We definitely want this to be a learning environment for all of us as we go through our own journeys as inclusive leaders. 3:14 If you have any questions during the presentation, please type them in the chat, 3:19 especially in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. Your questions will be brought up at the end and 3:27 if we have any additional time, we'll do a Q&A at the end. 3:33 Let's get to the meat of this session, our speaker. 3:39 Today we're joined by Jacque Starks. She is a certified diversity executive 3:46 and independent consultant of Jacque of All Trades. Jacque is committed to 3:52 inclusive excellence and making a sustainable difference. She has been recognized by distinguished organizations, 4:00 offering us only a small glimpse of Jacque's tireless work for equity, 4:05 inclusion, mediation and non-violence practices that make a difference. 4:11 Jacque is also the Manager of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Maricopa County Community College District, 4:19 co-lead of the Healing Racism Committee, co-founder of the Arizona Multicultural Education Conference 4:27 and sits on various councils and boards. As you can see, Jacque is the epitome of jack of all trades. 4:35 I think here at University of Phoenix, we're very fortunate to collaborate with Jacque over the years and 4:41 learn from her leadership and passion for advocacy and justice. Today, we have the opportunity to 4:48 share her wisdom with all of you. Now without further ado, we'll turn over our time to Jacque. 4:54 Thank you so much Saray. I'm sharing my PowerPoint with everyone. Welcome everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, 5:00 good evening wherever you are. Saray I really loved that bio. I'm going to have you write 5:05 it for me. I'm like, who is that? Oh, that's me, I appreciate it. [Overlapping] I'm so glad to be here with you all today. 5:13 My pronouns, she, her, hers, heir, you can also call me boo and queen. 5:18 I learned that from Shemariah (Dr. Shemariahj. Arki) So I'm definitely going to own that here this morning. As we talk about healing racism, 5:29 put that question out there. What is racism? Quite often I will have people come to me and they'll say that, 5:35 we want to have a conversation about healing racism. We really want to get to healing racism. I have to ask, what do you mean by that? 5:42 When you say you want to heal racism, what are you talking about? How do you define racism? 5:49 Quite often I will also hear, well, I have people in my organizations, they don't understand. 5:54 I feel like I'm always preaching to the choir. Well, the choir is not always in tune. We always have the space to grow and 6:01 understand before we can heal racism, there's so many things that we have to do before that. 6:07 First of all, we have to understand it. If we have people in our organizations or in our space and they don't 6:13 believe in racism or they're going, I don't get it, how can they heal? How can you get them on board? 6:19 What we really want to take a step back before we get into healing is really thinking about, what is racism? 6:25 What are we talking about? Keep this in mind, before you can heal racism, you have to end racism and before you can end racism, 6:36 you have to understand it, you have to acknowledge it and you have to really be real and clear 6:42 about what racism is and how it operates as an individual, in your groups, in your organizations, 6:49 in your homes, you have to understand that. Understand, acknowledge and then we can get to healing. 6:55 Now, some of you are probably writing that down because you're thinking, four simple steps, not four simple steps because they 7:00 require so much to make that happen. How many of you are familiar 7:05 with the National Day of Racial Healing? 7:11 If you missed it this year, it was January 19th of 2021. It's going to be January 18th of 2022. 7:19 I had a few people participate now and it's a fabulous day, I encourage you to participate. 7:24 They said, ''Well, I went to this day of racial healing.'' I'm like, yes and what you get out of that was fabulous. 7:29 What are you going to do for the rest of the year? Well, I'm going to wait until next year. That's not it. It's fabulous to have a day of racial healing, 7:36 but you can't heal racism in a day, correct? If we could heal racism in a day, sign me up. 7:41 We'd all signed up for that course or that space. This is a good space to understand some things and hopefully, 7:47 to energize you for the work that you have to do continuously every day 7:53 that you have to work with that. I also put this up here to talk about the National Day of Racial Healing, 7:59 because we know we can't heal racism in a day. I don't want you to after today 8:04 and then if you all will sign up for Part 2, you're going to do both of these or you finish after Part 2 and you're going, 8:10 there's still so much to do. You're not going to get everything in these two hours, but we're going give you a glimpse 8:16 of some things that you really need to do when we talk about healing racism. Let me put you all to work. 8:23 I'd like you to think about and you can jot down on a note pad or you can put it in the chat. 8:28 We do have people monitoring the chat. If you were to define race and racism, 8:34 what is your working definition of race and racism? I'm going to pause here and give you 8:40 all a minute or two to think about that. Write it on your notes or go ahead and put it in the chat. 8:45 What is your working definition of race and racism? 8:59 Prejudice plus power, I see. Race is made up of social construct. 9:08 Racism is a created construct, construction that allows one group to dominate another. 9:19 Human race. I have the chat, but I'd love to, I know I have Tondra and others monitoring the chats, 9:26 allow me to have you Tondra, if you can share some things that you see that's there in the chat. 9:35 Definitely, Jacque. We have here an artificial construct used to categorize people based upon skin color, 9:44 nationality or religion, racist contrived. Racism is racial prejudice plus 9:50 power to institutionalize that prejudice. Racism has to do with the systemic issues and 9:58 all levels of society that disproportionately impact BIPOC. Race is the human race, 10:04 other than that race is a social construct. 10:10 Race is a way to divide and control people. An inferior way to accuse and or 10:16 discriminate another human being. A systematic injustice, it's subjective. 10:25 Prejudice discrimination or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership in 10:32 a particular racial or ethnic group. All right. Just maybe one or two more. 10:39 It is a made-up concept to take land and property from those without power, 10:45 and race relates to one's ethnicity and perhaps cultural background. Racism is when one race 10:52 assumes it is dominant or superior to another. 10:59 Wonderful. Thank you, Tondra. I love it that it's moving fast and you all are participating and contributing. 11:04 Again, I want you to keep in mind how you define race and racism because that's an important thing. 11:10 Think about that if you've ever been in a situation where you wanted to have a conversation 11:15 with someone about race or racism, and you all were dismissing one another, and you do the words out 11:21 there about having this conversation about racism, but you were not seeing it in the same way. 11:26 You did not have the same concept about what it is. This is why we have to take a step back and 11:31 really define what we're talking about. You all have a really good handle on that. I have another question for you. 11:38 This is like the chicken and the egg question. [NOISE] Sorry, I'm losing things here. 11:44 I'm sorry about that. Based on your working definition, which came first, race or racism? 11:53 Let me open my curtains again. Based on your working definition, which came first, race or racism? 12:00 Tondra, again, you can tell me what you're seeing in the chat, please. 12:05 Definitely. We're seeing a lot of racism. 12:12 Most of the comments are racism. That's good. Most of you said racism came before race, 12:19 again, and it depends on how you define this. Let me propose something for you and see what you think about this. Just ponder this. 12:26 What I think, and this is my own Jacque's perspective based on how I define race and racism. 12:32 If it weren't for race, which is the racialization and grouping of people in a system that was 12:39 set up for white supremacy as an ideology to exploit other racialized groups of people, 12:46 then racism would not exist. I'm proposing that if we did not have the race group set up, 12:54 then we would not have racism. Other people might say, well, because of racism and setting up the systems, 13:01 then you had to have these races to make that happen. However, you see that as fine. I'm just going to propose that for you to ponder. 13:08 What I'd like to do is I'm going to share a video clip with you. It's how America invented race. 13:15 This is a nine-minute clip. As you watch this clip, what I'd like you to do is think about 13:20 your working definition of race because we're going to start with race first. I'm going to start with race maybe as 13:25 a foundation for racism. See what you think about this and then we'll come back and have a conversation after the clip. 13:42 Jeremy, you have the clip? Thank you. 13:48 [Music / video starts] Hey you, Caucasian. Hey, man. [overlapping speaking] Hey, blanco, gringo, [overlapping speaking] pale face, 13:55 I got to tell you a secret. [Music / spoken word continues]. 14:14 (See: www.wgbh.org The History Of White People In America, Episode One: How America Invented Race) 15:14 [Music / video continues] 1650, Jamestown. Meet William Berkeley, 15:20 appointed by King Charles II of England to govern colonial Virginia. He rules with an iron hand and enriches a small cadre 15:28 of English landowners. They grow tobacco. The sweet leaf is gold. America's first road to riches. 15:40 [Music / singing] 16:23 When Berkeley looks at the servants, what does he see? Color, of course, but color doesn't mean much to a man of means. 16:29 They're heathens, waste, dirty, disease, lazy animals. 16:36 I would sooner call my hound brother, than a servant of any shade. Under God and by law, he has the right 16:43 to whip, maim, starve, buy or sell them at his pleasure. But he fears them. He should. 16:50 The rich are few and the poor are many. It's almost impossible to imagine now, but the poor sees themselves as one. 16:59 They have a common bond and a common enemy. [Music / spoken word] 17:58 [Music / video continues] There's no life-time slavery yet. The indentured Europeans and Africans can still buy their freedom. 18:04 Released from bondage, they'd set out in search of land. For this new frontiersman, freedom is a rotten promise. 18:12 The rich own all the good soil and the indigenous tribes desperately grasp for the rest, 18:18 fighting for every acre they have left. [Music] 18:24 The frontiersman seethe with each new tax, each broken promise, each death, each rich man that grows richer, 18:31 each poor man that grows poorer until they can't take it anymore. [MUSIC] 18:37 1676, time to take matters into their own hands. They cast one, Nathaniel Bacon as leader. 18:44 The son of an aristocrat who came to the frontier after squandering his inheritance. 18:49 Under Bacon, they band together to take land from the tribes and power from Berkeley. 18:57 [MUSIC] 20:19 Berkeley watches Jamestown burn and he burns with vengeance. 20:25 The waste must be cleansed from God's green Earth. Behind a British gunship, retribution. 20:34 Berkeley hangs 20 and scatters the rest into the wilderness. 20:40 [MUSIC] The rich of Jamestown know it could have been their own necks 20:46 hanging from the end of a poor man's noose. To survive as rich men, 20:52 as powerful men, they vowed never to let the poor rise up again as one. But how? What scheme? 21:00 What deception? In 1681, white will appear in a legal document for the first time in 21:06 history when Virginia bans Africans for marrying the whites. One law of dozens creating and separating the races. 21:14 Blacks across the colonies would be enslaved for life, no longer treated as human but as property. 21:21 [Music /spoken word continues ] 22:13 We are no longer allowed. To marry. We're no longer allowed. To start a family. 22:19 We are no longer allowed. [OVERLAPPING] [Music, video ends] (Jacque) You can go ahead and stop the clip, we're going to stop right there. 22:25 Thank you. I forgot it advertises the next one as you move on from that. 22:30 Before I pull my screen, I just want to take a minute to have you all think about that nine-minute clip. 22:38 Does that cause you to rethink your working definition of race? 22:43 Does it reaffirm your working definition of race? 22:48 Does it allow you to see race and racism differently from where you started or 22:54 again, does it reaffirm that for you? I wish I could unmute you all so we can have a conversation, 23:00 but go ahead in the chat and Tondra is right there to see what your thoughts are. We already have a response here, Jacque. 23:08 It says, this is my reasoning for stating race came first. Racism escalated by means of 23:14 biases and/or abuse of various cultures and races. It reaffirms that race came first. 23:21 Race has always been about divide and conquer. Enslaved, not slaved. 23:28 Excellent. Those are the comments so far. Wonderful. It's nine minutes 23:34 and I just gave you time to really think about that, and that's something that we don't dig into, it's really the history and understanding the foundation. 23:42 I go back to how can you heal something that you don't understand? If we don't understand 23:47 the foundation of race and how it's in the very roots of United States' system that we're in, 23:55 then it's going to be difficult to create the racial healing that we need to create. Another question always comes 24:01 up when I do this work is that, you all talk so much about black and white, are there other racial groups? 24:06 Absolutely. All racial groups have been impacted, but we have to go back to the root. The root was about black and white. 24:13 That's not because black people want to be a part of, let me win the oppression olympics, 24:19 that is the way that it was set up. That's another thing that we have to reconcile and understand and say, yes, 24:24 it was set up to separate white from black, and of course, other people were impacted, 24:29 but that was huge in terms of how our systems were set up. Now we have to take a look at the way 24:34 the United States systems were set up because business, industry, families, and many things that we do to operate within our 24:41 own was established as a result of this foundation. Makes sense? Any questions? 24:48 Again, if you have questions and you put them in the chat or Q&A, they will definitely let me know. 24:53 Let me go through and review just a few other definitions when we take a look at race. 24:59 I'd like to because we're talking about this system and most of us participate in the United States system 25:04 of race and racism where people will say, "Well, you have these constructs. If they're just constructs, 25:09 then let's just stop checking the boxes." It's not as easy as that because those boxes are based on so many different things. 25:16 Let's take a look at, let me get past this, some of the US Census Bureau definitions 25:23 of race so that we can see that it's a lot more than just the boxes that we're talking about here. 25:29 Before we already saw that. If the boxes didn't matter and there weren't 25:35 consequences associated with the boxes, we wouldn't still be doing this census 25:40 every 10 years asking us to racialize ourselves. But we know that that census there's money 25:45 and all sorts of things that is attached to that. Even if we stop checking the boxes, it will still matter to different communities. 25:53 Here, this US census says that when we think about racial categories, it's a social definition and it includes 26:01 racial and national origins, social-cultural groups. I love that if you look at the bullets as a part of the census, 26:07 they even let you choose more now, you can be American Indian and white, they give you examples. If you identify as Hispanic or Latino, 26:15 then you can just pick any race. Now again, people or a group of people are coming together to 26:20 make these decisions based on whatever outcomes they want to achieve. Most of us didn't participate in this, 26:26 but we're still impacted by that. Then they go on to define the different categories, 26:31 I'm not going to read each of these for you, but they defined what somebody came up with as American Indian, Alaskan Native. 26:38 That's one category. Another one on this past census was Asian and who they feel 26:43 belongs into the different groups of being Asian. Then the government had black or African American, 26:50 and it's a person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. Think about that, any of 26:56 the Black racial groups of Africa. The United States really gets to tell this whole continent of Africa 27:03 that they have racial groups. Think about that. We're now 27:08 dictating to other countries and so this is why we see other places buying into this concept of 27:14 racism that was constructed in our system here in the United States. You have the group that's native 27:20 Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, they identified in this past census. 27:26 Then there was the white group. Remember we saw the black one about the black groups in Africa. 27:33 Take a look at this one where it says white, a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, 27:40 the Middle East, or North Africa. I thought about that because 27:47 we talked about the blood groups, and you said, North Africa. When I look at it from my own perspective, I have Algerian family. 27:53 Algeria is part of North Africa. If I'm looking at the census and I'm racializing myself, 27:58 do I get to racialize myself as white? Or do I racialize myself as black, because Algeria is a black racial group? 28:06 Again, you see how this construction happen and how we start participating in buying 28:12 into this setting the foundation, that will impact people through this thing that we call racism. Go ahead, Tondra. 28:21 Jacque, if I can ask you a quick question that came in the chat and this is one that we've seen quite a bit. Adrian says, "I have a friend who said that she wanted to 28:29 be considered black, not African-American. What is appropriate, black or African-American?" 28:34 I know I love that question. It come up all the time. Whatever you prefer. Some people prefer African-American. 28:41 We see people who say I'm a part of the African diaspora. For myself, I typically use black only because of 28:47 the fact that I do have family that's Algerian, and people close to me who are Jamaican, and they don't necessarily consider themselves American. 28:56 I feel we have an affinity through ethnicity. I might use the term black. 29:02 I don't get to speak for all the black people to say, "You know what, when you live here call them all African-Americans, and all is good." 29:08 We need to refer to groups of people in a way that works for that person as an individual. 29:13 We can do this. It's not difficult. We learn all the individual names. You know that Tondra is Tondra, 29:20 Jacque is Jacque, so here is the way. We can do the same thing with people racialized groups. We can refer to them 29:26 in a way that they want to be referred. But, of course, I would take a step back and ask myself, why do I want 29:33 to know this and what am I going to do with it? Those are good questions to ask yourself, 29:38 before you just put a whole group of people, any one person, in a particular category. Thank you for that question. Thank you, Tondra. 29:46 Those instances, be your category. If we think about race and we know that it 29:53 was constructed here in the United States and many of you put that in the chat, and we know that the way we 30:00 name groups is also a part of white supremacy, it's part of a white supremacist system, 30:06 that says if you're racialized as white, you get advantaged in certain ways compared to those who are not. 30:14 With that, think about how we name, and should we think about how are we refer to 30:19 reinvent naming? Here's an example. Maybe instead of calling people, instead of saying race, 30:25 what about racialized groups? Because people aren't racist, but we have been racialized. 30:32 Our groups have been racialized based on whatever definitions they've come up with. What if we're starting racialized group to 30:38 people or people who are racialized? We love to throw around the term minority because that was written in 30:44 documents that were created. We have minorities. Using that term minority is 30:50 very pejorative to many groups of people. Instead of seeing people as minority, we see people who are minoritized. 30:57 It shows that I didn't do this to myself, these groups of indigenous, Latinx, Asian people, they didn't do them to themselves, 31:03 it happened as a result of something. They have been minoritized. We even see in places like California where 31:11 Latinx people are the majority and they're still called minorities, or they're called majority-minority, 31:18 which still is a way to racially minimize that group of people. 31:23 They had been minoritized by no fault of their own. Or maybe they're just historically marginalized people, 31:30 people who have been historically marginalized. Think about these words and how we frame them, 31:36 that it changes the way we think about who they are and what they bring to the table. 31:41 Now, instead of BIPOC, we are the global majority. 31:48 How does that ring for you? Because again, BIPOC, and again, I don't have an issue with the way we use, 31:54 biracial people of color, but we are the global minority of people that exists. 31:59 Think about using that terminology, versus terminology that was steeped in race and racism, 32:05 that continues to minimize. In your organizations, in your spaces, 32:10 how do you have things written in your policies? How do you refer to people? What is the language that you hear? 32:16 That makes a difference in how we see race and racism in our spaces. Just to sum up the race for you, 32:24 I'm going to give you the Starks' working definition of race. It's a United States construct, 32:30 and categorization of people. You all are thinking, okay, Jacque, if it's a construct and just a categorization, 32:38 I still don't see the big deal. Let's move on to a different definition. 32:44 Ibram Kendi, on How to Be an Anti-racist, he defines raised as a power construct of collected or merged differences. 32:52 This is the part that I highlighted. It lives socially. Whether it's imagined, or real, or constructed, 32:59 this concept of race, it's a living thing that happens and it lifts socially in so many different spaces. 33:05 This is why you can't just remove a box. This is why you can't just say, it doesn't matter, because it's constructed, 33:12 and somebody came up with it. Does that make sense? If not, let me know. 33:18 We've talked about race. Let's talk about racism now. We need to understand race. 33:23 You see a little bit, from my perspective, why I see race as a foundation to racism, 33:29 as opposed to racism being the foundation for race. I'm sure those of you who see it the other way, 33:34 you have very strong reasons for that, go with it. I'm just giving you my perspective, based on how I see this flop. 33:42 What about racism? If you all paid attention in the video clip, it talked about how skin 33:47 became color and color became race. We've talked about that categorization. Where does racism fit in? 33:53 They also talked about another word. Do you all remember the other word that they've mentioned? They said race became what? 33:59 I know you can't unmute, but somebody put it in the chat. 34:04 I'm sure you all put this in the chat. I'm going to give you all an A plus for this. 34:10 Race became power. Power is where racism comes in. 34:18 These systems and structures that creates power, powers of an equity, 34:24 powers that are unequal between these racialized groups. This is where we see that happen. 34:30 Again, if you have questions, put them in the chat, or the Q&A. Then I'd also like to remind you that, 34:37 when we talk about this power, it exist in many different levels. 34:43 We're not going to get into the levels today. But when you come to session 2, we're going to look at 34:49 these different levels and we're going to talk about what we can do with these different levels. When you're looking at race when you're looking at racism, 34:54 we're looking at power, we have to understand how power works at an individual level. 34:59 That's between me and the person that I'm interacting with. How does this racial power work when 35:05 we look at it from the group perspective? How does the racial power exists on institutional level, 35:11 on how rules and policies, and guidelines are written? How does it look on a systemic level? 35:16 So you have to look at all these levels. Quite often when people focus on racial healing, they think, let's just focus on the individual. 35:23 What do you need to do? What do I need to do? That's only one part, because I as an individual, 35:28 may continue to work on myself and to learn and to really deal with my own racialized identity, 35:34 understand my own history to grieve where I've been, myself and my family from a racial lands, 35:41 but I might have to deal with the group or rules or things happening in a system, 35:46 that, as a result of that, I'm still acting in ways that might be contradictory to what I believe. 35:52 You can't deal with one piece and end racism, 35:57 become anti-racist, or heal from racism without dealing with all pieces, 36:02 and where institutions that are strongly embedded really have a hard time, 36:08 is breaking down their institutional rules and policies that had been in place for a long time. 36:14 I talk about dress codes. Dress codes are really an epitome of racism and white supremacy. 36:21 If we think about dress codes, how did they get implemented, why, who benefits from that? 36:27 Look at some of the rules around dress codes and interrogate them and then ask yourself, do we really even need a dress code once you think 36:33 about why or how that code was implemented? That would be one of those institutional things 36:38 that you would want to explore. Go ahead, Tondra. We have a question here from a few moments ago. 36:44 If we agree that racism, oh, it's maybe too fast, if we agree that racism is about power, 36:50 how can this contribute to understanding if racism, can exist toward white people, particularly, in America? 36:58 Let me let you ask that again. I think I got it. I want to make sure. This is where I wish I had the person 37:04 in front of me so that I can get it straight. Go ahead one more time, please Tondra. If we agree that racism is about power, 37:10 how can this contribute to understanding if racism can exist toward white people, particularly in America. 37:19 Thank you for that question. I think if we go back and analyze this a bit, 37:24 this concept of racism and power and how does it interact with whiteness is that, 37:30 if you go back and look at the setup of our system, our system's set up to say, if you are white, 37:37 these are the benefits of being white, this is the way that is going to operate. I understand if you happen to be a white person, 37:45 poor, female, disabled, you're probably going, "I am totally disconnecting from this." Your positionality would be different 37:52 from a person that is white, able bodied, rich, male, very different positionalities. 38:01 Let's talk about single-family housing. Single-family housing is a part of 38:07 another institutionalist system that was set up to maintain white supremacy, 38:13 to give white people a upper hand on others. If you're not aware of that, let me give you a little bit background on that. 38:19 Typically, for black people, for indigenous and like Latinx, 38:24 other groups of people, Asian, they typically operate collectively. Their family unit can be this mother and father 38:32 with their 2.5 kids as well as a grandmother and an auntie. If they wanted to move to a particular division 38:39 that was set up to only house white people, and they would say, "Well, this is a single family development. 38:45 You can't move in because you have three families." So they were deciding how families should be defined and 38:50 it was defined based on how white families operated. That becomes a power place. 38:56 Now, whether you buy into it or not, you were advantaged by that as 39:01 a white person in terms of how you could buy, where you could live, and how you could amass wealth. 39:07 That still exists in in terms of the system. Again, most of the time, 39:12 you're not going to find these systems that are setup where the power is operating in the other direction. 39:19 I'm not saying it doesn't exist. We could probably analyze that. But that's not the way most systems were set up. 39:24 You can say, "Well, I've worked for my employer, or in my organization, we're not set up that way." I go, "When did you exist? 39:32 When have you interrogated your rules and policies? When have you interrogated your HR? Have you look at things, 39:38 because it's very difficult to undo something that's been in place." I think when companies say, 39:44 "Well, we've been in business for 70 years." Some people might go, "Yeah," I go, "Ouch." 39:50 Because I'm wondering what I'm going to experience. If you're operating based on a 70-year-old philosophy, I'm not sure that I want to go in 39:57 or do business in that space because I don't know how you've been able to operate and deal with 40:03 and interrogate how race and racism might operate within your space. I know that's a long answer, 40:10 but hopefully, I answered. If not, just get back with Tondra and we'll go there again or 40:15 we can reach out separately and have a more detailed conversation. Again, just to remind you all again. 40:23 If we are going to end racism, we have to understand, 40:29 we have to acknowledge, we have to end it before we can heal, 40:34 and it must be done at all levels. You can't put it on one level and expect that to happen. 40:41 Let's take a look at a few working definitions. Go ahead, Saray. We do have another question related to this. 40:49 How do we differentiate institutional racism and systemic racism? 40:55 That was the question for part 2. But since you've asked it, I will put it in there, 41:01 so don't expect me to answer this in part 2 if we handle it now. No, that's nuts. Institutional racism are 41:08 the rules within your organization, your family, your home. It is the rules that are set up, that are written, 41:15 that sets up inequities, inequality between racialized groups and racialized people. 41:22 Systemic has nothing to do with the way the rules are set up. It happens. If I give you an example of systemic, 41:29 we could think about, crack, we could think about powder. There's these different forms of cocaine. 41:36 But what gets policed? Typically the rock gets policed. Well, who does that typically relate to? 41:42 Poor people and people of color. Who ends up going to prison? Although if you look at the institutional rules, 41:48 it will have you believe that everybody is policed the same, everybody is in this criminal legal system the same. 41:56 That's what the institutional rules say. But what we see systemically is that it's not the way it is. This is what we say is happening, 42:03 but let's take a look at what's really happening. So people start to normalize 42:08 and accept the systemic things as normal, this is just the way it is, then we start holding other people accountable to that and we say, 42:14 "Well, they're just bad people who use drugs. That's why all the black and Latinx people are there." 42:20 We don't question the institutional and the systemic that happen that got them there. That would be the difference between those two. 42:28 That is a very good question. Let's look at a few other working definitions of racism and 42:33 see how that stacks up to your own working definition of racism. The first one is from Dismantling Racism Works. 42:42 They look at racism as a prejudgment plus the social and institutional power. We have to have a prejudice as well as that. 42:49 They also talk about racism as being a system of advantages based on your race, 42:55 or it could be a system of oppression based on your race. Then they talk about it being a white supremacist system. 43:03 I know that's a word that I wish we had time to totally unpack it today. 43:08 We don't, but you have to unpack white supremacy in order to understand race and racism. 43:14 But what I will briefly say is that white supremacy in the context of racism operates in everything. 43:20 It operates in housing, it operates in the legal criminal system, it operates in banking and finance, 43:26 it operates in education, yes, in education academia, it operates in degrees and attainment, 43:32 it operates in health and healthcare outcomes, it operates in employment opportunities, 43:37 it operates in humanity, and so many other areas. I only named a few. 43:43 It operates within those, which is why it's important to interrogate and understand how that works. 43:49 They also define racism as something different than racial prejudice, hatred, or discrimination. 43:55 What I'd like to say about this one is people will say, "Well, we have EEO policies. 44:00 Jacque, we have these rules and we have these laws, so don't they deal with racism?" I'm going to propose so you, no. 44:07 Your EEO rules and investigations will not deal with discrimination because 44:13 they don't deal with racism. They don't get to the heart of institutional power. 44:18 The investigations do not have you interrogate racism, they do not have you interrogate 44:24 white supremacy to decide what's happening. If you're counting on 44:29 your HR policies and your EEO statements to handle and heal and end racism in your organization, 44:39 it's probably not going to happen because if that were the case, we would be there already because many of these things had been in place in a long time. 44:46 Not any fault of the investigators. You can have the best investigator, that's the most equitable investigator out there, 44:55 but they're still tied by the way the rules and policies are set up and how they define discrimination. 45:00 It is not defined or setup again, institutionally to get to racism, 45:05 racist system, racist thinking that would impact other people. Go ahead, Tondra. We have a good question here. 45:12 It says, "My question is this. I'm assuming most people here are probably aware of the constructed nature of 45:18 race and the issues that causes. How do we reach those who don't know these things? 45:24 How do we reach out so that we are not just preaching to the choir? Also, how do we get people to see past 45:31 their knee-jerk reactions, i.e. those who equate anti-racist with the anti-white?" 45:37 Sure. Boy, that's a lot packed in that. First of all, I want to say that you're 45:43 never preaching to the choir. As I said upfront, the choir is out of tune. When we live in that world with 45:49 the choir and we already get this, we miss the opportunities to learn, and you can't ever 45:55 get to the place where you know it all. That's that concept of cultural humility. There's always something more, 46:00 there's always something to learn, you can never know it all. You never have a mass that you're getting to. 46:06 If you have people who don't understand this and don't get it and they can't see it, it's going to be very difficult 46:12 to have somebody see racism, or they don't even believe it exists. What I would suggest that you 46:18 might do if you can encourage them to do this, Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr. on the Privileged Institute website, 46:24 he has a 21-day race equity challenge program. I designed a 21-day race equity challenge for 46:29 Maricopa Community Colleges that we did at the beginning of the year. Our students at Mesa Community College put 46:35 a fabulous 21-day race equity program together. It's a space where people to go there on their own to, 46:43 at their pace, learn and grow and develop and have conversations with themselves and others. 46:49 That 21-day race equity challenge is a great place to refer someone to just say, 46:54 "Why don't you go ahead and take a look at this." Or if you go through the challenge, then maybe reach out to them and say, "Hey, here's something that I learned. 47:00 What do you think about that?" Instead of just banging them over the head with it. That is a great place to start, 47:07 and there are many different 21-day race equity challenges. Some are based on looking at the indigenous community. 47:13 There are those that are steeped in education, so I would put that out there as a great place to start with people who don't get it. 47:19 Another thing is sometimes you just have to start back at ground zero when people are in denial and say, 47:25 "Let's just share a meal and have a conversation about that." Sometimes you have to get back to that space. 47:30 But also know that if you feel that you are the choir and you already got this, there's still a space for 47:36 you even in those spaces that you might think that, "Well, I'm really above this. I already get that." Because then, what I would say, 47:43 if you already get this and you already know that and you're the choir, what are you doing to teach others the song? 47:50 I would encourage you to think about that. Wonderful question. Thank you so much. 47:56 Let me give you a few other definitions of racism that's out there. 48:02 Again, pervasive, deep-rooted. Again, it's exploitation, it's deep-rooted, 48:09 it's longstanding, it creates violence and death and all this. There's something deep about this concept of racism. 48:17 If it's that deep, how do you solve it with a training class? How do you solve it with a dialogue? 48:24 In order to end and heal, you have to get beyond the dialogue. For those of you who feel that you're the choir, 48:31 all you're doing is having dialogue. I'm going to say that you're not doing enough. What's your actions? 48:38 What are the actions behind that related to this deep-rooted control and violence that you see as a result of racism. 48:45 Ibram X Kendi, I love where he talked about that it's a marriage, 48:51 you have racial policies and ideas, you have this marriage happening that 48:57 normalizes racial inequities to the point that if it's normalized, we all see it as real. 49:02 I'm not saying that, "Oh, if that's happened to white." We all do that. If I was educated and raised and 49:09 steeped and raised in white norms of operating, chances are, I'm operating in those same norms. 49:15 Not chances, I am operating in those norms until I re-educate myself in a different way. 49:20 I'm not going to define racial inequity policies and all of that, but if you read How to Be an Antiracist, 49:25 and you go look at that, Kendi does a great job of explaining those, so again, that you understand how they connect to racism. 49:32 Typically, when I work with people who feel that I'm already here with racism, these are concepts that they can't explain to me. 49:39 I already got it, someone else need to get it. Well, talk to me about the racial inequities in your organization. 49:44 Where do they exist? Explain to me what policies you've examined and what you're going to do with those policies. 49:51 I go through this and 99 percent of the time, the organizations who bring me in to consult, 49:56 who feel that they are arrived or they're woke, they can't answer these questions. 50:01 These are some questions that you need to answer when you're uprooting, rooting out racism. 50:07 Thanks, [inaudible] I'm not going to go through all of these, but what I'm going to share with you very quickly, 50:14 and you can just jot these down, you need to be clear about these other terms that I'm going to talk about, 50:20 these other concepts and how they operate. You need to be clear about how they operate within your home, your systems, 50:26 and your places if you want to truly understand racism so that you can end it and that you can heal. 50:32 You need to understand white supremacy. You need to also understand how it operates and what you're doing. 50:38 You can't be afraid of it. You have to look at it and ask the question, does it operate? How does it operate? What's the impact of that? 50:46 Who benefits? Who loses and what are we going to do with that? You need to have a concept of colorism. Colorism and racism is not the same thing. 50:53 I love when we tell people in Canada, "You have a racism problem." Now, what happens in Canada is more colorism than racism. 51:00 Again, I don't have time to explain the difference in why based on what we've done with that, 51:05 but look, it's different in how it operates. They're cousins or they're relatives. 51:12 Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that they're different. No, that's part of the same family, 51:18 definitely part of the same family. You have to understand casteism. We'd love to talk about casteism, 51:23 about Germany and India and other countries. They have caste systems. It's based on religion and 51:29 it's based on socio and all these things. Well, we in the United States, as Isabel Wilkerson really 51:34 points out so clearly in caste is that the casteism in the United States or the caste system is based on the racialization of people. 51:43 We can't just see caste happening in other societies, and somehow we're exempt from that, 51:49 and somehow if we're exempt as United States, then we're exempt as an organization. 51:54 How do we explore and understand casteism within these systems that we're talking about? Then, of course, ethnicity. 52:01 How does that operate differently from racism in terms of the different collections and 52:06 community that we have with the different groups. Things to think about. Flip through a few resources 52:12 and then I want to get to questions. I'm going to actually give Tondra and Saray, 52:17 a list of resources, but these are just some that I like to refer to. Most people are not familiar with the funding of scientific racism. 52:23 I think that will blow your mind. If you all ever want to do a book club around this, call me in, I'd love to be able to do that with you. 52:31 The Myth of Race, The Reality of Racism is another good one. The Racial Healing Handbook, 52:37 fabulous book, and it really takes you through different phases instead. Most of this is really about the individual, 52:44 but it gets to within the other levels a little bit. Those are some things to really think about here. 52:51 I am going to stop sharing to see if we have any other questions before we move on. 52:58 I'm going to stop sharing here. Any question, comments, or thoughts. We're down to about six minutes 53:04 and I do want to take time to answer any questions or hear any comments. 53:09 Let's see here. Since we asked some of the questions during the session, 53:18 let's see which others we have. I see that there's some raised hands. 53:26 For the raised hands, if you all can just enter your questions in the Q&A or in the chat, 53:34 and we'll be able to ask those to Jacque. Great. While you're waiting for them to have questions, 53:41 why don't we launch the poll and see where people are right now? 53:52 You have a poll here with three choices; racism is real, does not exist, 53:57 I just don't know. 54:23 We're not going to wait for 164, but we'll give you time to respond. It looks like pretty much everybody is saying it's real. 54:30 Hey, if we have anybody right now in this webinar and they didn't get it when they came, they got it now. 54:35 They're going, okay, there's some real things happening here. I also want to share. 54:41 I will go to the questions, but I do want to just tell you Jacque one of the comments that we have here 54:46 is this is one of the most amazing Zooms on racism I've had the pleasure of being a part of. 54:51 Thank you. [Tondra's and Jacque's speech overlapping] Well, come back for Part 2. [Laughing together] Yes, indeed. Here are a few other questions. 54:58 First being, "I have been not identifying my race and 55:03 ethnicity when applying for jobs because I don't want my white privilege to give me an advantage. 55:08 I struggle with whether or not I should do this. Can we discuss, if possible?" Sure. Let's discuss, except I get to do 55:16 all the talking because they have you on mute. It's not fair. There's more to it than just 55:23 checking the box related to your race. Most of the time when people are actually interviewing and they're 55:29 looking at your application, they don't get that information. That information is usually with HR, 55:35 or once you do it online, it goes into this other pockets, so it's usually separate. What you see more of in terms of 55:42 advantages based on race might be how people see names. They may not have anything 55:47 about the fact that you're white, but they might look at your name and it's Michelle Smith, and then they see Margarita Luna. 55:54 This is where we see that race creeping in based on names and how we see names. 56:00 Margarita might get in over you not because they saw that you check the white box, but because names tend to play a part in how 56:08 people bring people in and what they're comfortable with. Okay. Thank you, Miss Jacque. 56:14 The next one is, "How would a white person who wants to help combat racism know where or how to start?" 56:21 Start with the 21-Day Race Equity Challenge. I say that because as you go through 56:27 that, you're educating yourself. As you go through, what I found when I just launched that for Maricopa (Community Colleges), people came back to me. 56:34 We would have our roundtables and they had plans of actions. They within themselves knew where they were, where they wanted to go, 56:41 what they want to do within their classroom or within their families. It allowed them to make the decisions and come up with 56:47 the plans that best suited where they were on their journey. That's a great place to start. Again, if you're going through that, 56:54 I would say find myself or somebody to have process things with you, if you feel that there are issues. 56:59 Again, go to Google. There's a lot of things on Google, but always go to many different things so that you can discern 57:05 what's out there to decide who it's coming from, who put it out there, why did they put this out there, 57:11 to decide what you would like to select. Look at some of the white caucus spaces. 57:16 I know we don't do as many within the state of Arizona, but if you again google, there are white caucus spaces of people who work toward 57:25 anti-racism and liberation who are working together to do their work. 57:35 Now the next question is, what is the difference between race and ethnicity? 57:41 Race, we've defined that road. Race is that constructed thing that we did in 57:46 the United States that separate groups of people for many different reasons, to exploit them, to have power and control. 57:53 Ethnicity is about who I connect with based on my cultural norms. 57:59 That we share similar food, we share similar celebrations, and things like that that we do, 58:05 that we've created culturally, not that the government or somebody placed 58:10 on us based on their definition. That would be my quick and easy definition between the two. 58:16 We do have two minutes left. I don't know if you have a burning question, Tondra, but I would like to ask, 58:22 and we can put this in the chat and do another question, is based on what's been shared here today in this presentation, 58:29 if someone asked you, what do you mean by healing racism? How would you respond to them? 58:36 You say, I want to heal racism, and they say, what do you mean by that? How would you respond? 58:41 If some of you can give us your ideas in the chat, I'd appreciate it. While you're doing that, I will have Tondra ask 58:47 me the next question if there's another one. Looks like that was our last question. I'll start reading some of these comments here. 58:54 More knowledge, dismantle racism. 59:05 There's very powerful but also practical information that are different ways to connect with white friends and family 59:12 on the topic of race and racism, attend workshops and get educated. 59:19 I would like for everyone to learn why we are where we are. 59:29 I would tell them don't be afraid to get uncomfortable and join the conversation such as today's conversation. 59:36 All right. I'm going to just because of time, I know it's time and I want to respect 59:42 your time and I totally appreciate the University of Phoenix and I want to leave you all with this from Dr. Joia Crear-Perry. 59:49 This is something that blocks dealing with racism as we just saw. Well, this is just perception. She says, "We have to stop 59:55 seeing racism and other forms of oppression as merely perceptions of one person compared to another." 1:00:00 We have to stop doing that because it serves no purpose for moving forward in terms of healing racism. 1:00:06 Thank you all so much. Enjoy the rest of your day and I look forward to seeing you all for Part 2. 1:00:12 Jacque, just before we end, just another reminder now that more than ever, 1:00:18 it's crucial to stay actively engaged with intentional inclusive leadership to successfully impact 1:00:23 change within systems that were historically built for a society not as culturally diverse as what we live in today. 1:00:30 Our goal here is to share, learn, and redefine the approach to diversity and inclusion. 1:00:36 To fully integrate equitable practices into daily activities, organizational policies, 1:00:42 procedures, strategic goals, and objectives. We want to make diversity and inclusion the essence of business as usual 1:00:49 by fostering an inclusive culture where all are valued, respected, and heard. Our series is held on the 3rd Thursday of each month. 1:00:56 We ask you to use this QR code to register for our May 20th session. If you enjoy today, 1:01:02 come back and hear more from Jacque on healing racism beyond the dialogue. In Part 2, we're going to talk about basic strategies 1:01:09 at four levels of socialization and oppression. Thank you all so much and have a great rest.