 Good morning, Highline College Windows Diaz. My name is Doris Martinez. She heard her pronouns and I serve as a member of this year's Unity through Diversity Planning Committee. Before we begin today's program, I would love to present our land and labor acknowledgement. We take a moment to acknowledge all Indigenous and First People of the land and space in which we live and breathe. For our community here at Highline College, we recognize that we are on stolen and occupied Duwamish, Coast Salish, Muckleshoot, and Puyallup lands and we want to thank all relations and tribes today as we prepare to hold space as a community. We recognize that all of us are joining this conversation from different locations through Zoom and so let us also acknowledge all the Indigenous and First People of the land and spaces in which you currently occupy. Further, we respectfully acknowledge the enslaved people primarily of African descent and who provided an exploited labor on which this country was built with little to no recognition. Today we are indebted to their labor and the labor of many black and brown bodies that continue to work in the shadows of our collective benefit. And now I will pass the virtual mic to my family, Dr. Bryce, who will introduce today's feature presenter. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Doris. And welcome, everybody. It gives me great pleasure to introduce our speaker today. He is no stranger to Highline. His name is Dr. Derrick Brooms. He is Professor of Africana Studies and Sociology, a faculty affiliate in women, gender and sexualities program and a fellow with the Center for the Study for Social Justice at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. And he serves as a youth worker as well. His research primarily focuses on the lived experiences of black boys and men, including representation in the media and identity development, as well as their paths to and through college. Dr. Broom also explores black men and boys' sense of self and sense-making and navigating various social institutions. He is the author of several books, including Stakes as High, Lessons, Trials, and Young Black Men's Educational Journeys, and Being Black Being Male on Campus, Understanding and Confronting Black Male Collegiate Experiences. He also serves as founding editor of the Critical Race Studies and Education Book Series with SUNY Press. And on top of all of that, he finds time to mentor and serves as a big brother to folks like me and many others in the community. So with that, I will turn the mic over to Dr. Derrick Brooms. Greetings, greetings. Good morning and good afternoon, depending on where you are. Given thanks to my brother and colleague, Dr. Daryl Bryce, for the introduction. And as we get started here, before I share my slides, I wanted to give acknowledgments as well. Thank you, Doris Martinez, for the land acknowledgment and the welcome for all who are joining us here today. I want to give my sincere thanks to the Center for Cultural and Inclusive Excellence at Highline College for the invitation to join this year's 25th annual Unity Through Diversity Week. And also want to give thanks to the Planning Committee, in particular, just a few names. I know this is not encompassed all folks. Better doing the Fui, served as the chair. There are Bryce, as I mentioned, Doris Martinez, Monica Torque, and Beatrice Vedder. So I wanted to give thank you before I even pull up my work just as a way to acknowledge all the folks who are doing this work, including folks on staff as well. So I'm going to start by sharing my screen and I'll get it all up and going here. And my screen should be, as I mentioned, 25th annual Unity Through Diversity Week. And one of the things that I wanted to acknowledge right here as we begin is that it takes a bit of intentionality and commitment to carry on a tradition that has lasted for two and a half decades. So as I think about the work that's being done at Highline College and in particular the Multicultural Student Affairs, the CIE, and other entities across the institution, I think it's important that we recognize this work, this steadfast effort. And also want to just acknowledge for those folks who might be the first event that they've attended for this year's Unity Through Diversity Week, the main title, the main theme of this year's week is Lean on Me. So we got some of the music planned there, folks who had joined at the time when we had some of the music planned. So what I want to do today as I begin is to offer what I call a panoramic view on the one hand or take you through what I might call 10 scenes and making sense of the lives and experiences of Black boys and men. And as Dr. Bryce mentioned, most of my work primarily looks at the lived experiences and educational experiences of Black boys and men, particularly the pathways to and through college. So I really pay attention to secondary school years and then how are they trying to pursue and access higher education? And what does that look like in their experiences? So that's on the one hand. On the other hand, I'm very much interested in racial justice as it relates to Black men and boys. And in that realm, I think about and do work that relates to stereotype and profile and racism and, unfortunately, the realities of violence against Black boys and men, and in particular, police violence or interpersonal violence in the ways in which their lives have been cut short. And so as I mentioned, I wanted to take you through 10 scenes that I want to present my work through today. And as I begin before I jump into that, I also wanted to provide a little bit of positionality. And so I'm from the South Side of Chicago and always share where I'm from because part of that is it informs my own positionality. It also informs my own experiential knowledge as well as my epistemology. And so always acknowledge where I'm from because it helped shape the particular worldview that I navigate the world in and make sense of my own life world. I am an educator. I'm a writer slash scholar, depending on who you talk to, author. I'm a community member, right? I'm a family member. I also work in the community in ways that connects to young people's lives. And so I think about the youth work that I engage in. And by youth, you know, these are folks, I would say, probably up to 22, 24 years of age, which would mean that it encompasses, if you will, the traditionally-aged college community folk as well across different race and ethnic backgrounds, across different gender identities, expressions, et cetera. And so I offer my positionality because I bring all of myself to this work, along with my brilliant and distinguished friend and colleague, Jelisa Clark. One of the things we kind of conceptualize is this unapologetic black inquiry. And that is that it makes no sense to us where we would want to, in trying to make sense of black people's lives, lived experiences, education, et cetera, that then we would want to filter our understanding through the lens or adjusted position of somebody else. Part of what we argue, and this is what I wholly embrace in my work, is that we are who we are. We don't need to compare ourselves to others. Let us make sense of who we are through our very real heterogeneous communities, plural, that includes the diaspora, includes the US-born black folk, includes the different ways in which we are connected and expanded in our community connections, family connections, et cetera. And so my positionality is one that does not apologize at all for a hyper-focus on black folk, black communities, black families, black lived experiences, primarily because I'm also learning even more about myself, my family, my community, or communities, et cetera. So I wanted to begin with a little bit of background about myself as we begin to explore. And so what I wanna do is take you on a tour. As I mentioned, I have 10 scenes. Some of these may be familiar to some folks. Some of these may be a little bit distant for some other folks or some of these may be new for even another set of folks. But I wanna use these scenes as a way to tap into your own kind of cultural repertoire, your cultural toolkit, your frames of understanding to help you see that even as I speak through a research-informed lens, what I really am trying to present as a wider corpus and a wider perspective of the lives and experiences of black boys and men. All right. So we're gonna go ahead and get going. And so partially what I wanna do is talk about navigating the stakes. And of course, in order to talk about navigating the stakes, part of what I wanna do is, even at least briefly, is explicated and make sure that I'm clear on what are some of the stakes. And so in this first half of the talk, I wanna share what some of these stakes are and by scenes overwhelmingly, what I'm presenting are movie scenes. And so this is the first one that I used to really ground what I'm presenting today. And this is, of course, Shairan from the movie Moonlight. And this is a particular scene from being at school. But the scene is so much more than that. There's some representation with regards to looking out at a fence and the things that might elicit in terms of our own kind of social memories or community memories. So I'm thinking about the ways in which there are social institutions within this nation where black folks in general, but I'm gonna specifically focus on black boys and men, experience multiple forms of suffering, right? And school is no exception to that, right? So in some ways, our schools, our sites of suffering or create these higher stakes for black boys to navigate. And here I'm particularly thinking about that pre-K through 12 spectrum. But we also have community concerns, right? So there are a number of ways in which black boys and men are troubled, challenged within the communities in which they live. This includes the ways in which they try to navigate peer associations and peer relationships. So in some of my work, I've talked about things like navigating the neighborhood, the ways in which some black boys particularly think about not letting, what they call, this is their terminology, not letting the neighborhood win. And by that, this is not an at all a critique of the people who live in the neighborhood, but in effect, one of the stakes that black boys and men really have to try to navigate is the conditions of the neighborhood, right? So what does it mean to live in some of our urban environments that are economically deprived, that are short on resources, et cetera? So this is not, again, a commentary about the people who live there, but even the strategies that they might have to engage in to navigate the structural violence of these particular entities, these communities, these communal spaces, et cetera. So when they talk about not letting the neighborhood win, they're talking about trying to navigate particular types of elements. And then the third lens, two other lens, if you will, the third one is the criminal justice system. So again, I mentioned the social institutions and I'll say a little bit more about the criminal justice system in a few moments here. And then the fourth one, again, I'll reference this again a bit later, is the media. So when we think about what are the stakes that black boys and men are trying to navigate, it is the already assumed knowledge that people try to project against them as it relates to already knowing who they are potentially on the one hand and at the same time, rendering them as marginal, as denigrated as disposable. So how then do black boys and men not only learn of these particular framings and projections, but how do they also develop strategies to try to navigate them? And so I began here with Shyron very intentionally because of his lived experiences that also includes aspects about his identity, race, gender, sexuality, et cetera, that he's trying to make sense of, where does he fit in the world? And of course, I'll invoke W.E.B DeBoys' critical inquiry, how does it feel to be a problem? And so for many black boys and men, they're always already labeled and positioned as problems regardless of where they are, whether it's their own neighborhoods, whether it's a neighboring community, whether it's on college campuses, whether it's across P through 12 education systems, et cetera, they are already considered as this problem that needs to be surveilled, hyperpoliced. And so these then make navigating these particular types of spaces, but also trying to make sense of who you are, where you are and who you are a bit more challenging. So let us move forward here. And I wanted to, just in a few instances, I've sprinkled in a couple of quotes from some of my work to really bring to life some of the narratives that some boys, mostly young men and men have offered to me through a couple of sets of research projects that I'm bringing together here. So I'm starting with this notion that stakes is high. And I'll begin with this lyric from hip hop artist, Joey Badass on his album, All American. And he says, my brother's under a spell, it's clear we live in inhale the life of a black male right out of the womb you come out and it's a bunch of black male just waiting for you to fail a special room in the jail. And so here we also see this notions of the stakes, the challenges, the obstacles, the reposition of black boys and men, infused in hip hop and I could of course connect this to a range of other artists and some of the work that they've put out. But I really like the way Joey Badass is offered it here because he's hitting on against several of the different ways in which black boys and men are just repositioned within society, right? There's the overwhelming expectation of failure. There are various ways in which schools engage in both miseducation and education and neglect. And so Joey Badass kind of offers that for us here. And here's Chris sharing about a particular experience he had in the neighborhood that he lived in and was going to school in or he was going to school in and lived in a neighboring community he talked about, there's a transit employee that he had a particular interaction with his friend didn't have any money to get home from school and Chris lent him his bus card so that his friend or associate could get home. And he's reflecting here on this interaction that he had with this public transit employee and he says, I remember the guy saying I wasn't going to be anything and stuff like those guys who were hanging out on the corner or in games. And I said, this is Chris, what do you mean? I have a 3.5 grade point average and I'm about to go to college. And this employee laughed and said, college, yeah, right. So he rendered Chris's aspirations and actual reality as unreasonable, as laughable as something that isn't, it's not even fathomally possible. And the important thing here is that because of his association with a particular neighborhood primarily in this particular case that his school was just in the neighborhood this public transit employee literally rendered his life as disposable. You're not going to be anything except like those guys who were hanging out or in gangs. And so in many ways, this particular narrative this particular message says that those guys who are hanging out or in gangs, their lives don't matter. So therefore your life doesn't matter. It makes me think of my colleague, Roger Terry who talks about the marginal mattering of black boys and men. And so here we see this employee who had no idea who Chris was even as Chris tried to share with him not only his academic performances but then also his aspirations is still rendered as both impossible and or improbable. Here's Chris responding, I was frustrated and I was one of those events when I realized that this is what people might think and they didn't even know me. It highlighted to me that black males are seen as statistics and bound by our social conditions. And one of the reasons why I want to also share with the audience here, some of the statements and narratives and experiences and meaning making from some of the young men that I've talked to it's because I want you to see it through their own words or hear it through their own words as I read it primarily because one of the arguments I make is that there's a great deal to be learned if we talk to black men and boys themselves. But in fact, we have utterly failed in those regards and instead what we do is talk at them and talk about them. But we very rarely in any meaningful ways engage with them to learn who they are and learn what they're about because again, we already have a narrative and a projection and a position that we think they ought to be in. Here's another short statement by Malink. I was asking him in terms of what did you learn about being a black man from your schooling years, education, your college? She says, he had a longer quota kind of narrowed it down here. So as I think about all the scrutiny we get from being a black man from everyday situations and things like that. He talked about when you go in a restaurant whether you're approaching the ATM whether you're just on a college campus just all these everyday situations that makes it hard to be a black man in society. People aren't letting go of what they see in the media or TV and they don't give us a chance to be us. And here I just wanna hone in on this last portion, right? This notion that there are others who don't even allow black boys and men to be who they are on the one hand. And at the same time, they also then in many ways are working to deny and marginalize their future selves, right? And so these are some of these stakes or some of these ways in which I argue that stakes is high. Here's my second scene pulled from, of course, the iconic movie Boys in the Hood with Ricky, Trey and Doughboy and part of what I use for this particular image is to kind of reiterate the points that I raised about these kind of neighborhood effects. What does it mean to live in particular neighborhoods that elicit particular types of challenges that you try to navigate? Again, that connects to your peer relationships or associations. And what that might mean for your lived experiences, life outcomes, trajectory, pathways, et cetera. There are multiple elements in this film that I could pretty much do a whole and unpack a whole kind of talk, if you will, or engagement with this film. But for me, one of the things that I really wanted to articulate and really bring to bear is even within our neighborhoods, there are particular challenges that we are faced with. And in this particular case, it might be gang affiliations, right? So gonna give a few more statements here from some of the guys talking about these kind of neighborhood effects that they were trying to navigate. Here's Tyson talking about navigating the neighborhood. It was tough, it was difficult. It was just a tough neighborhood. Everybody don't make it out. You have those that make it out, they come back and don't make it out again and you have those that make it out and don't ever come back. And so part of what he's talking about here is some of the tension and conflict that some of our youth faced with regards to staying and being connected with their home environment, their home neighborhood and what that might mean for their very real as Malik put it, everyday situation, right? And so here's Tyson trying to make sense of what the neighborhood, the messages might mean for some of our young folk, particularly black boys. Here's another statement from Dwayne. He says, you know, navigating the neighborhood. I had to look over my shoulder walking. I couldn't just walk and only look straight ahead. I had to be aware. I had to watch and listen because anything could happen. It's an unpredictable place, this particular neighborhood. Even though the issues were predictable, right? Again, some of these issues were economic depravity which then contributes to the violence of poverty which of course then creates particular type of conditions where folks are in survival mode which is fertile ground for perhaps some of the illegal and illicit activities that happens in that neighborhood. So in that sense, what Dwayne is referring to those behaviors become predictable because of the conditions that people are faced with, challenged with, and then they're trying to navigate those. And then here's Malik. It says, I think, you know, it had this particular neighborhood with all the negativity going on. It had a positive impact on me. I saw the violence and all the negative stuff going on in my mind. I knew I didn't want anything to do with it. I tried to get the best grades, obviously speaking educationally, school performance that I could and get to college and get away. And so here we see some of the young men, Malik in particular, but this resonates with others talking about how they use these particular elements of their lives, right? These lived experiences as opportunities for what I call and talk about and borrowing from Merza's work, these educational desires, right? So took these challenges, transformed them, if you will, as aspiration, as motivation that informed part of, you know, a good portion of what it was that they tried to do. So even as they identified the stakes, we also see some of the ways that they're trying to navigate some of these critical decisions that they're making. This is a scene from the movie, Minister of Society. So this is scene number three. I won't go into great detail and I wanted to be mindful of not, you know, placating to black death, because again, in the past, I would say five to 10 years where we've seen go viral, we can go all the way back to the killing of Oscar Grant in 2009. And of course we can think more recently and I'll talk about that in just a bit. And so I wanna be mindful of the images that I present. And so here I'm again, borrowing from a movie scene, not because I have a fascination and fixation on black death or black male death. But part of what I wanna talk about is, even within their particular neighborhood dynamic, there are ways in which over-policing, hyper-policing, hyper-surveillance kinda condemns their lives again, I use this word again, as disposable, as marginalized, as unworthy, right? And so this particular scene from that film really kind of resonates with some of, you know, an additional layer of challenges where the criminal justice system, state sanctioned authorities can levy their weight against some, you know, some of our community members, again, across race, ethnic backgrounds and gender identities, et cetera. And so I just evoked this image to really highlight kind of what Victor Rios talks about, that hyper-criminalization of our youth, in particular, black and Latino. But of course here, my focus is on black boys and men. And again, I could choose a number of different images, I'm just choosing one. And I'm choosing this one for a number of different reasons. And I'll be pretty, I try to be pretty succinct here. Number one, that this just past February was the 10th year anniversary of the killing of Trayvon Martin. So he was killed in February of 2012. So this is 10, we're 10 years later. And for those of us who are familiar with, you know, what transpired, it was basically because Trayvon Martin had on a hoodie in a particular neighborhood that he, again, looked suspicious. And so we can see the correlations between an image such as this, where there's an incident that potentially happened in Trayvon Martin's case, it was not an incident. But there's an incident that has happened or reported to have happened. And the state can be called as, you know, agents to police, surveil, detain and question folks. And again, I can map this to more recent events. I could think of Amy Cooper in New York City in Central Park where she threatened, you know, Cooper, Chris Cooper, the black male that because he asked her to put her dog on a leash, which is the park rules, she threatened in a response. You know, I'm gonna call a police and then I'm gonna tell them that you're harassing me. So there are ways in which within this society, as mentioned, that anti-black violence, particularly in the form of state sanctioned authority and weight can be caught up on not only to police, but also to punish black life. And so I just evoke both of these as part of that. But the other reason I also show these images because we can see that there's a very stark difference in this juxtapositioning of how George Zimmerman on the my left and Trayvon Martin are both represented in these images. Even, let me make one more quick point, the initial pictures that were actually used to depict Trayvon Martin was actually from the rapper, The Game. And so again, it didn't matter who Trayvon Martin was, any young black male would do, even one who was not a picture of Trayvon Martin. And so there are ways in which their, you know, humanity is under constant attack. This picture of Trayvon Martin was actually a picture from five years earlier. So again, it is quite suggestive of how we ought to think about him. And again, as I mentioned from Roger Carey's work, it's kind of marginal mattering, right? But it also evokes these legacies of fear. It also evokes these ways in which we shouldn't really care about these young boys, these young men, because in this particular way, maybe they don't even care about themselves. So in talking with some men, I've got two longer quotes here and talking with some men about how they're making sense of the racial profile of it they might have seen and experienced themselves racial stereotyping and also the killing of black boys and men, again, I wanted to invoke some of their words. So here's Mason, a 35-year-old teacher who I talked to. He says, ultimately, I really believe they were killed because of someone else's perception of them, just because of race, just because of gender. They were automatically threats. Other people were threatened by them. If it hadn't been Trayvon Martin, but it was another black man, he would have been dead. If it wouldn't, if it would have been another black man in the street in North Carolina here is referring to Jonathan Ferrell. He's dead. If it's another black man sitting in handcuffs, he's dead. So again, we can catalog these number of things and sitting in handcuffs is in alluding to Oscar Grant in the San Francisco area, Oakland. They were victims because of the self-perceived perceptions of these black men that no matter what, they were going to kill these black men. So a decision had already been made that if I have a particular interaction or a particular type of interaction with a black man, if I'd steam a black man out of place, as was the case for Jonathan Ferrell in North Carolina, who had had a car accident, knocked on the door, asked for help, police were called, but the police were told that this black man, it's potentially a threat, et cetera. Of course, he's discombobulated. The police show up. Jonathan Ferrell very likely believes that they were there to help him. He shot and killed in the street, right? I can also think about Charles Kinsey. I'm not sure. I'm gonna mention a few other names because I'm not sure that folks understand that there are some that are high profile and then there's others that we don't hear about and not all of them have to be fatals. So Charles Kinsey is a medical worker and he actually, this is North Miami, Florida working with a patient of his who was autistic and trying to help them. Police show up, order him down to the ground. The police officer orders him down to the ground. Charles Kinsey is laying on the ground with his hands up. No movement, no threat of action. The police officer shoots him in the leg anyway. In the aftermath, Charles Kinsey asks the police officer, why did you shoot me? And the police officer says, I don't know, right? So when I think about what Mason is offering here, is this appetite for what Tony Heesey Coast talked about in the United States of America. It is heritage to destroy the black body. So you don't even have to think about it. It could be the reactionary response to the appearance, the presence, the out of placeness, the non belonging and the non being of black boys and men. So again, just to finish up here, Mason says, I don't think that it's gonna change because that's their possession, no matter who we are as black men. It doesn't matter if we're wearing a hoodie or if we're in handcuffs, it's simply because we're black men. Again, he's talking about how he's, you know, black boys and men are treated within larger society. And then here's another quick quote from Jeff. He says, I'm proud to be a young black male in the United States, but at the same time, I'm kind of reminded of WB Du Bois's point, quote, how does it feel to be a problem? I know it's just as a black man in America, me being a black man pretty much everywhere I go, people are gonna be looking at me as a criminal or looking like I don't belong. So I know that I'm gonna be criminalized until we have some serious conversations about race and I might still be. As a black man in this country, I know that somebody's thinking that I don't belong or that I'm a criminal or a thug or an athlete, right? And so here, again, we think about combining what Jeff offers, what Mason offers in kind of this larger picture that I'm painting, these stakes that they're trying to, you know, make sense of and trying to navigate in many regards are very high stakes to the extent that in some cases, it may be, you know, life or death or it may be punishment and consequence or it may be policing and surveillance or it may be, you know, any number of, you know, different scenarios where they are troubled and challenged and basically trying to assert their humanity in the hope that it might be considered in some way. Here is another scene. This is, of course, not a movie. This is from the series, The Wire. I still watch this even though it hasn't shown in about 12 years, but this is from season four with the four guys who were in the school that that particular season focused on black youth in school and it's centered on these black boys here, Randy, sorry, Duquan, Randy, Michael and Naaman. And I really wanna use this image because there are particular ways, as I mentioned, that school can be a site of suffering where you could be in institutions, social institutions where you're to be cared for but you can be invisible, you can be marginalized, you can be deemed and considered as unworthy. And so this particular school scene, for me, helps set this stage for even how black boys who can all be from the same neighborhood can really be on different paths depending on a number of different elements that they are both confronted with and invited into. I've got a couple more school scenes here. And so this is another kind of iconic movie juice with Bishop, a character's Bishop and Q here played by Tupac and Omar Epps. And this is particularly important because again, depending on kind of neighborhood dynamics, culture, et cetera, there may be ways in which people who are friends, who have really close bonds and associations begin to drift apart because of a series of set of choices and decisions. And so part of the stakes that I argue that black boys and men are trying to navigate is not only these kind of wider society perceptions of them but how do we maintain who we are in the face of changes and considerations to how people see us, view us and their particular interests. One more school scene here is from the movie Finding Forester and this is the main teacher in the film, Mr. Crawford. And I'm showing his picture as opposed to Jamal's picture because this particular scene resonates with this kind of larger corpus of data, thinking about folks like William Smith and several others who talk about this notions of black Miss Andrew and the ways in which black boys and men have to always prove themselves to others to be considered as worthy. And in this particular scene or in the earlier scene, Jamal was being schooled by a classmate that you don't ask teachers questions, just whatever the teacher says goes. So really thinking about this kind of unilateral form of education, which would of course, fly in the face of what, you know, Bell Hooks talks about teaching the trans grass and teaching to the souls of our students or creating schooling as a home place or creating parts of our school as a home place where folks feel cared for in this particular case because Jamal did not cater to the particular ethos of this school and this specific teacher, he was rendered as unwelcome. And, you know, there's a number of different scenes that I could have pulled from this film, but Mr. Crawford kind of offers this notion of the ways in which we've got to prove ourselves. And even when we do, we can still be condemned and marginalized. And then my final kind of school scene, if you will, I'm just taking it up to higher education and thinking about the ways in which we navigate the stakes. And this is another kind of iconic film, Higher Learning where, you know, there's a re, there's a ream of different things that happened during these these college years that are represented. And in this particular scene, what I'm looking at is, how do we navigate those stakes in dealing with racism on campus and dealing with racial animas, dealing with hostilities, being repositioned as an outsider and as a perpetual guest. And this particular scene for me helps to represent the importance of these micro communities and strong peer relationships. But then also the faculty teacher or student teacher, not faculty teacher, student teacher relationships with student faculty relationships that clearly plays a significant role in how black men in higher education, black young men, black men might be able to navigate it a bit smoother if they're embedded in communities where there's a kind of critical axis of care. And so I evoke or use this particular scene to really kind of bring that point to light. Part of this resonates with some of my work with black male initiative programs or black male micro communities on campus and the ways in which these culturally engaging spaces help contribute to different ways of knowing. So navigated mistakes, I've got two quotes here that I wanna share. I'm talking to these guys about, you know, what was it that kept you motivated? What was it that, you know, helped you get through some of the challenges that you face? Here's Julius, he says, excuse me, I'm resilient. I don't quit, which could be a good thing or a bad thing in some scenarios. I mean, it could be a good to quit and start it all over, but I don't quit. I'm a thinker, planner, and when I don't, when I think about college, every time I didn't think and I didn't plan, it didn't turn out well for me, you know, kind of laughed in reflection. So I'm gonna think and I'm gonna plan so that I can have better results than when I don't. I realize that I make a lot of mistakes and I'm not perfect. And so part of what I wanna argue is critically important about navigating the stakes is for our black boys and young men, you know, as I talked about even in the previous slide, you know, there's one component of that is building community that's peer associations as well as with, you know, adults who might play a range of different roles. Some of these can include, you know, there's a hyper focus on role models. I think we can kind of, you know, dissect that a bit further, but we can think about fictive kinships. We can think about father figures. We can think about mentors and guides, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a number of different ways in which they can be supported. But in Julia's particular point, and the next point I'm gonna raise as well, this is about how these young men might reflect themselves and think about their own agency, right? So what is it that I've done in my experiences that I can take stock of that I can activate as I move forward that might help yield different or better results? Here's Edwin sharing as well. I learned that I had to get better. I had to better myself. I think I allowed myself to put others before me and I allowed myself to let others hurt me mentally and emotionally, that if I didn't learn how to deal with that, then I probably wouldn't be where I am now. So I believe that I became strong-minded. I believe that when it came down to, excuse me, what my heart says and my mind does, and they kind of go hand in hand, I didn't allow people to change me for who they wanted me to be, right? And so one of the profound lessons in this project, the same project on the racial profile and stereotyping and the killing of black boys and men, one of the critical findings as I talked to these men that I interviewed was 49 and all about what would be some of the things that they would share with youth. What Edwin says here is one of those things that the men in this other study talked about, and that is stay true to yourself. And one of the ways that you can stay true to yourself is kind of as Julia's and Edwin are sharing here is, you got to learn who you are and don't allow people to change me for who they want to be. And of course here, I'm thinking about Sister Argy Lord, if talking about how we think about ourselves, how we perceive ourselves, if I don't define myself for myself, I'll be eaten up by other people's fantasies of me. So I returned to Chiron again, just to kind of set the stage for these kind of last two pivot points. And here I'm going with the last black man of the last black man in San Francisco. And this is a particularly, incredibly important scene. In my view, at least here's Jimmy and Montgomery, really talking about digging into that sense of self. So again, I'm tapping into ways in which black boys and men really begin to develop, what's the word I'm looking for, explore and pursue their sense of self, right? Who am I? How do I make sense of who I am in this world? And then what are the types of strategies that I might develop in order to navigate this? So I'm thinking about Montgomery and Jimmy here and these kind of critical moments being at the dock, really interrogating what does it mean for me to be a black male in a particular place that is changing all around me, that may not really appreciate me in ways, in terms of who I am. This includes folks in the community across different race and ethnic backgrounds if you've seen this film. But then also, how do I get settled with myself? And this is kind of the last scene that I'm offering here. And of course, for those folks who might've seen the movie, Dope, this is from that movie. This is Malcolm, one of the main characters in the film, along with two other friends. And I use this particular image here to show Malcolm laying in his bed and one of the plots in the movie, one of the storylines, I should say, is Malcolm's aspirations for college and in particular, Harvard University. For me, I wanna use this scene to make it even broader. I'm thinking about some work that I'm doing with my colleagues, Jelisa Clark and Keisha Wendell, we're talking about black boys' possibilities. And so what is the space that we might allow for a black boy dreaming? For them to think about and imagine, right? This imaginative play, this dream world, or it's not necessarily a world, right? It's being able to elicit their dreams about what's possible for them in their lives or thinking about their future selves, thinking about their possible selves. And so for me, I use this image to really kind of bring that point to the front. So again, thinking about where I started with Chiron and the ways in which black boy and black boyhood might even be caged, limited, constrained. Again, I could think about Invisible Man, I could think about Ralph Ellison's work Invisible Man, I could think about works such as Black Boy by Richard Wright. What are the ways in which we create opportunities and create spaces for black boys and men to dream and fantasize about who they are and who they can be or what they might want to pursue or what they might be interested in. I argue that this is a critical part of navigating mistakes, that we have to be able to see ourselves beyond the particular conditions that we might be constrained by or trying to make sense of or trying to negotiate. We have to be able to see ourselves beyond that particular setting because then that could tap into some of our desires, aspirations, motivations to help us move forward. So I'll bring a conclusion here with a few critical points and I'll wrap up talking to Michael about what it's like to be a black man. It's not easy laughing and frustration looking at me like, you know what it's like, you're a black man. This seems to be a rhetorical question, but he continues, it's not easy at all being a black male. Sometimes you're a statistic, sometimes you're a murder rate, sometimes you're lost, sometimes you're blind, sometimes the odds are just stacked against you just to see how willing you are to go through the obstacles. And this is, you know, a handful here. I've got a few kind of critical takeaway points. Black boys and men have experiential knowledges, plural, that can help us better understand and appreciate their situated standpoints, meaning making cultural knowledges and cultural wealth. Black boys and men's educational experiences and lives provide powerful narratives about their educational agency, their motivation, aspirations of authorship, resilience, right, their ability to bounce back. The narratives of black boys and men's lives certify that failure, challenge and struggle are not conclusive, right? They're not conclusive. So just because they've struggled in another particular time period or season in their lives is not overly deterministic as we've heard from a few voices that I've shared here today. And then as we think about kind of black male success should be heard, measured and understood through the lens of their efforts and their own meanings. So we should not subscribe to, I may reference to the last black man in San Francisco, I'm thinking about Jimmy and Montgomery. We should not subscribe them to everybody else's expectations of who they are and who they should be, but instead invest more time and energy in thinking about who they are and how they make sense of themselves. This is my last image here, some photographs by this artist, E.J. Brown, and here you see six black men in cap and gown, but also holding a placard that would be suggestive of when you are, you know, taken into custody to be detained in the police center. And so E.J. Brown's artwork, this particular artwork that I'm really fascinated by is in some ways contesting the narratives, right? What Anthony Brown talks about is the same old narratives of black male failure or we, you know, or even going all the way back to one of the earlier points I shared with Chris where, you know, this transit employee suggested that he would, you know, be hanging out on the corner or in gains that therefore his life is unworthy, is disposable, et cetera. And so these images kind of help really push those boundaries in ways of challenging the expectations, the dominant narratives, the same old stories about black boys men. And what I argue, as I mentioned, is that we need to pay attention to their possibilities. Thank you all so much. I look forward to our Q&A. Thank you for allowing me to share with you. Thank you so much, Dr. Browns. Man, I appreciate your perspective. I always appreciate you sharing. I know this work is, you know, deeply personal to us both. So really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. We're gonna take about an eight minute break and we'll be back at 11. Let's start the Q&A with Dr. Browns. All right, thank you. We are back. Does anybody have any questions for Dr. Browns? We actually have a couple on our chat. So I'll read the first one, Dr. Browns, for you. How do we mandate teachers to be required to be trained in cultural responsiveness so they do not continue to label boisterous kids as a problem and stop education to prison pipeline? Thank you for this question. I think there's something really, two things. Number one is the question from Ross here. I'm gonna use the last name because I don't wanna mispronounce anyone's first name. Anyone's name. I think the question, first of all, highlights the very real ways that youth in many of our schools are challenged. And in this particular question, we can talk about boisterous kids. One of the things I immediately thought of, even though my presentation was about black boys and men, I immediately thought of black girls. What are the ways in which even black girls' speech patterns and auditory patterns are labeled and surveilled in school, often called loud, often called angry, and then are set up for all manner of consequences, et cetera. We can think about Latino, Latinx girls as well. So I think that's something that, again, not only resonates with the population that I was speaking about, but even a broader population as well. So I chuckled a little bit because I'm just thinking about the theme for this year's Unity Through Diversity Week, right? I'm just thinking about the theme. And the theme is lean on me embracing humanity as a radical act of resistance, right? And so to the question, how do we mandate it? Number one, I think it's fascinating that we had to ask people or even try to mandate that people treat other folks with some human dignity and respect. So I think the question highlights a significant tension within the Education Arena where even as I talked about this, thinking about Michael Dumas's work, he talks about schooling as a site of black suffering, right? And so why is it that so many of our students suffer in schools and a lot of that has to do with interpersonal interactions, as well as policies and practices that folks engage in. So should we mandate it? I know that was not the question. I'm just tweaking the question a little bit. I think when we talk about the way people are treated in schools, it continues to reveal to us that school success is not intended for everybody. And if that's the case, we need to have some very real honest dialogues about who we are and who we claim to be. And as, again, going to that last portion of the question, the School of Prison Pipeline, I have some colleagues like Dr. Nathan Bryan, who talks about the Playguard to Prison Pipeline, right? Because again, you can be problematized in your play. So you can be boisterous, you can be loud in a school setting, you can be on the playground and just, you know, I'm thinking about the young boy, I can't think of his name, but he was in a staring, playing the staring game with another young child. And basically got these, you know, it's not a spell, but suspended from school, detention, et cetera, because it quote-unquote hurt the other person's feelings. So anyway, I'm just thinking of multiple examples of the ways in which we don't respect and honor people's humanity, and in particular young people. We don't appreciate the different ways of being and cultural knowledges that folks bring into the building or into our educational spaces, not always just the building. So, you know, mandating could be something we consider, but of course we're gonna get resistance to that. And I don't care if folks are resisted, but I think that when we have to mandate that we treat other people with respect, I think it shows the lack of care that is embedded within our educational system as well. So I'm a little bit, not that I don't have responses, it's just frustrating to think about how our kids can be abused in schools. Again, you know, there's various ways that our kids are violated in schools that contribute to their underperformance, their lack of opportunities, their lack of access to resources, et cetera. And we really need to be much better and committed to what I'd love to see is a mandate of a humanizing pedagogy where we understand that, you know, you don't just teach a subject, you teach people. So we're teaching people first and foremost, we need to treat them as people who are, you know, requires us to really engage in, you know, a humanizing pedagogy. So thank you for that question. Thank you, Dr. Burms. All right. We have another one that's kind of a statement and a question that says, I appreciate your use of public media to help us see and imagine a world you are talking about. Your last point regarding black boys and men's imagined lives and futures is so interesting too. What are specific tactics that faculty and other educators can use to invite and cultivate the kinds of imagination you are talking about? Or if that's not our role, what role do faculty educators at a community college slash university level play in cultivating that imagination? I'm going to thank you for that question. And this is something like I mentioned that my colleagues, Jelisa Clark and Keisha Winnow, we've been, you know, doing this, working on this for, I think maybe about a year and a half now we've been thinking about these different things. And so one of the things we talk about is that what we really need to curb is people who position themselves as what we call dream killers, right? So that a young person, black boy, black man in particular, shares their aspirations and what it is they think they want to pursue. And off the jump, we don't see them as an adventure. We turn to statistics and probabilities and correlations and say, I just don't think you're going to be able to do that because there's so many people who are trying to do it or very few people are able to accomplish that. And so in what ways might we be dream keepers, right? So that if I'm coming to you sharing about, here's this particular type of desire that I have. Here's this, again, I'm thinking about this very specifically through the lens of a particular type of goal that they're trying to reach or pursue. We kill the dream before they even get to take a step into it. So when I think about what are some things we can do to cultivate it, number one is build relationships. I'm a fundamental believer that if we're going to support people holistically, it has to be through these very real tangible ways of care and caring for them and caring about them so that they even believe and feel that they have space to share out what it is they might be imagining, dreaming, et cetera. And sometimes it can be difficult in the post-secondary realm because we don't always know what some of those experiences are leading up to that. So that in some ways, for some of our youth, by the time they make it to college, they may be a little bit more hesitant. So the first thing I would say is build relationships. The second thing I would say is create and sustain open lines of communication so that you can have these very real robust conversations about life, not just about school. Our students are not just their academic selves. Too many black boys and men get pigeonholed into particular types of roles, as we saw in one of the quotes, if you're a desire to be an entertainer, perhaps an athlete, and that's a little bit dicey too, depending on who you are, those are two lanes that we get a lot of support for, but in a number of other realms, we don't get that same type of support. So I think about the village and community approach that if we work in an educational setting, then all of us are responsible for everybody who's there. And therefore, we need to be contributors to a particular type of environment that allows our students to not only thrive academically, but to feel safe, to feel cared for, to feel nurtured, to feel supported, and to continue to become who they are, right? Because none of us are fixed products, and we should not treat our young people in those ways either. So I'm just kind of talking about that part of the question, if this is not our role, everybody has the opportunity to contribute in that way. It may be more likely that there's one or two or a small number of people who might be doing it. For instance, I might have built a relationship with Doris through her role in the Multicultural Student Affairs or Professor Bryce, Dr. Bryce. And so those may be two people that I connect with and I'm sharing with them, but it also can be supported and facilitated by others as well. So I think all of us can play a critical role in supporting this kind of holistic perspective of our young people, that then also means allowing them to dream, allowing them to imagine. It could be if you work in the classroom setting, it could be about the type of assignments, right? Are we providing students with assignments that allows them to evoke their own agency, their own sense of self? And how might we be creative with that? Again, I know different classes we have to accomplish different things. If we work on staff and we're working with students, both formally and or informally, maybe I'm an advisor for a particular student group or maybe I connect with particular student associations, et cetera, student organizations. How might I bring that or support their aspirations and goals and dreaming in those kinds of ways? So I think we can think about that from a different perspective. Thank you very much. Thank you for that question, Ian. We have another one that says, how can we provide resources for black men who are immigrants who don't speak English? Thank you for that question, Mahat. I think that number one is that, especially in educational settings, we need to tap into the resources that are there. I'm thinking about resources. I'm thinking about instructional resources. I'm thinking about staff support resources. In my view, there ought to be multiple resources on campus to support students. I know that each of the institutions I've been affiliated with, there are particular types of resources available on campuses that can support students who may not have English as a resource. There could be resources within the community. So again, if I work at a particular community, if I work in a particular educational institution, and I've come across seeing or know that we have a number of interested folks, interested people who might want to transition to our institution, but we need to continue to develop critical and strategic relationships with community agencies so that we can develop partnerships to collaborate through a collective effort to support folks who might want to pursue education. Obviously, I'm giving this talk at Highline and Highline being a college invested in the community, it would make sense to me that these are types of ventures that I know that are already in place. So we might need to seek out those particular entities or institutions or organizations that have those resources and continue to build relationships both within those particular spaces, but also across spaces as well. Those would be the main ways that I think about supporting those folks who might be racialized or be of African descent where English clearly is not their first language or they don't speak English fluently or well enough in ways to try to navigate an institution is we need to make sure that we make those resources not only available but also known so that not only those individuals but folks in the community can know about them and share with others as well. That's a structural one. How do we even approach breaking this cycle when it is embedded in the DNA of this country? So by this cycle I'm going to try to do a correlation that I think it's connected to the denigrating ways if you will that black boys and men are positioned and repositioned within our society. So I think that's where I'm kind of seeing that question generated from. So how do we break that cycle? I think that's multi-pronged. Number one is we need to continue to build and sustain strong communities because what we don't want to do is approach this from an individual, again, given the question and given the larger point that no one individual can really alleviate and solve these structural problems. In fact, we have to be very careful in our teaching and support of young people, black boys and young men is to not teach them to buy into the ways in which this country really engages and endorses exceptionalism. So one of the things that I think it does is we'll point to someone who has achieved in whatever particular venue, arena, et cetera. And then we point to them as who we all ought to subscribe to be like. We can't let folks put one individual on a pedestal and then both request and demand that all of us try to do is as a community we have to support folks in their multiple aspirations and motivations, not just in a singular venue. And I think that another critical thing that we have to do and in fact for me, the question, you know, in a lot of ways resonates with my work and resonates with the research that I do and part of the reason why I got engaged in some of this work is simply because I knew through my own personal lived experience, not just my life, but I knew and come in contact with our friends, associations, et cetera, that the narratives and the stories that were told about Black boys and men were just one story. It was not the quote-unquote the story, but they were presented as the story. And so how do we kind of break that cycle is we have to use our voices and our own stories. This is why I didn't just talk about me, I wanted to bring you all and present to you all in this work voices from what I talked to in, you know, my research work or in, you know, these folks I have relationships with. So I mean that would be another way is that we need to make sure that our voices are spoken and heard orally written, et cetera. And then I think another thing that with history tells us and again I'm thinking about this long history is we need to create our own entity so that in our own venue so that we can get our things out in the ways that we can get them out. So again when we have to try to put them on other people's platforms and get other people's approval or other people's investment that sometimes can change the way that, you know, the end product looks. And so we have to be, you know, creative but then also investing in our own ways of kind of getting our messages out getting our words out, et cetera. And I can I can mushroom that right that could be business related that could be community related that could be media related. So again because this is this is a multi-pronged constraining, I think we need a multi-pronged approach and think about, you know, Fred Hampton is we don't need one particular way to you know respond to a particular problem we need multiple ways. And so I think about, you know, Fred Hampton, you know where there's people there's power. So I think that's an opportunity, you know, a way in which we chip away. We might not break it all at once, but we might chip away at these constraints and these, you know, this you know, dominant cycle but also think another way is that we have to we have to teach our youth thinking about, you know, Malcolm X only only a fool will let the enemy teach their Georgian, right? So we have to understand that school, you know, learning happens all the time and we have to be intentional in ensuring that our young people are learning about themselves from people like them from folks who are invested in them from folks who care about them in holistic way so they can learn not only who they are but also who they can be. Thank you. Appreciate that, Dr. Berms. You have reminded me of, you know, the all the trouble we had trying to get our piece you know bring the noise, you know, when we were trying to tell our stories as black male educators and got a bunch of pushback on, you know, trying to make it a theoretical piece. And not only did we get pushback, I think that piece got rejected from six different journals and two of those journals we had gotten communication that had been accepted only the next day or a few days later the next communication was actually is not accepted. Like what happened since yesterday when you told us that it was accepted so our persistence right has to be part of that and I think that's part of our larger kind of story is that just because we get one no or two no's or three no's that doesn't mean that we can't move forward. We just got to find the right venue to get our workout. Yeah, yeah. All right, reflecting on the work you do. Have you seen a felt transformation within your world or spaces you inhabit? This is a Super dope question. Absolutely. I mean I can't I can't be the same. I can't be the same knowing what I know now. You know and you know learning each year if you will and each season from the folks that I've worked with and connected with and by work I'm thinking about students and young people in school educational settings in community I'm thinking about colleagues and friends as I mentioned Dr. Bryce Doris I could think about like Josh Melangellis I could think about I saw loyal was on earlier as well. So when I think about the ways in which I get situated and the supports that I receive the ways in which I learn through other from other people through other people it is fundamentally been transformative in even how I you know not only how I talk about the work that I do but how I engage in the work that I do and what it is I'm trying to accomplish in my work what I appreciate is so much of the alignment and you know with the folks main that's just a few names because I know connections here you know from folks in my audience so when I think about those folks who I'm connected with and connected to when I think about the learning that I've done and you know literally not just me but others it is absolutely been transformative because there's no way that you know I think about I mentioned I think I mentioned Jalisa's Clark name a couple of times like even working with Jalisa she's a grad student now a professor there's no way that I can I could have done some of the work that I've been doing without learning literally learning from folks like Dr. Jalisa Clark so to you know as Audre Laura says right that my liberation is in my community right without community that can be no liberation and so therefore when I think about that transformation I think about my own growth I think about the ways in which I have heightened my aspirations so in the work that I do and the work that I do with the people I do the work with absolutely 100% has been transformative and serves as inspiration, admiration and motivation so in many ways you know from an indefatigable point you know you know can't stop won't stop this is this is the work because I've seen the power that it's had in my life and I've seen the power that it's had in some other people's lives that that I'm connected to like you know I'm thinking about Devin Jackson I'm thinking about Aaron Gentry I'm thinking about Paul Will thinking about you know folks like Darion Blaylock I'm just mentioning a few names, Joe Goodman and some others who I've worked with whereas it's yeah absolutely has been transformative so I appreciate I appreciate that thank you all right we have a comment it says thank you for introducing me to EJ Brown mugshot series I also read this image as a double entendre of student debt amongst black students hmm wow I mean that's I want to do some writing just on the the EJ Brown series and just that point about student debt you know working on this piece on the cost of college and I won't say too much about it because I got to develop it some more but but here's here's a here's a and I know that was a comment and I just really appreciate that comment and I'm raising it as a question and it's a bit rhetorical because I'm not trying to answer it right here but you know I talked about and I'm doing some writing on it so probably why I'm not answering it as well I'm trying to get my thoughts together but yeah I talked about schooling as a side of black suffering you know there are ways in which black boys at early preschool ages think about Joanzika and Jufu and his work about the fourth grade syndrome the ways in which they are problematized in school where where teachers will say they care and I'm not talking about grade fail no I'm not talking about grade fail I'm talking about fail them as a as a person on a daily basis though they claim that they care so I'm thinking about that and so when I think about the student debt crisis it's funny to that to that kind of point there's clearly this financial student debt and particularly we think about places like four-year institutions and excuse me for-profit institutions and things like that but I'm also thinking about student debt in the ways that Gloria Lassen-Millen talks about the education of debt right so what is the debt that we owe to black students so not a month black students but what is the debt we owe to black students that stemming all the way back to Carter G. Woodson's work the Miss Education of the Negro that this I would argue that this schooling system right not an educational system this schooling system is in large part centered on this educating black folks right and we've seen that in policy we've seen it in law and even some of the newer laws and we've seen it in practice on an annual basis where there is a lack of investment in teaching black folks about who they are that's not an accident right that's an investment in anti-blackness so when I think about student debt I think about the student debt to black students as well as the student debt among black students so we have to ask the question of given that so many blacks boys girls regardless of gender identity expressions etc black youth and black peoples we have always been committed to education we committed to education before they were schools right because we know that through law during enslavement we were forbidden to read and write so there's a particular investment that black folks folks racialized as black have had in this country as it relates to education again not just going to school but learning that there's a particular investment and interest and desire that black folks have had in education that is regardless of schools right it is about who we are as a people and you know in our own place in time but then also our elders and ancestors as well so there are significant debts that I say that are within you know and across black communities black families and across institutions again I know this question didn't ask about that I can think about Wouter's work about everything I read and the slave labor that built many of these you know quote unquote elite institutions right so let's talk about the debt there so I don't know I just took that question and thought about debt in a multifaceted way because we also know just going back to the particular statement I should question the statement we also know that the for-profit colleges you know engage in predatory lending that then contributes to you know student loan debt crisis etc so thank you for that statement it really kind of pushed me a little bit there Dr. Berms I would like to thank you man we can't thank you enough always a pleasure to learn from from you always a pleasure you know you sharing your time with us really appreciate it thank you for the opportunity to engage with the Highline community and all the folks who came out earlier and who was able to stay for Q&A thank you thank you thank you for this again to the center for culturally inclusive excellence to the team to the you know the multicultural student affairs to the Highline college community thank you all so much for inviting me out and allowing me to share both some of you know some of my work but also some of my perspectives on the work that I do thank you so very much appreciate you I'ma pass the mic on to Eweezy to close us out for Unity Week thank you Dr. Bryce and thank you again Dr. Berms keep showing love Highline in the chat this concludes our Unity Week it's really sad to say but I mean I feel like it's such a great way to take what Dr. Berms has shared today and like how do we then apply it to our action steps and moving forward as a community and so thank you again Dr. Berms I'm just here just to share a few announcements thank you to everyone for joining all three I guess four of our programs throughout this week I hope that it's been a time of not just connecting with community but really taking in what each of our speakers have brought to our team and so if you're looking for more ways to continue to engage in dialogue here at the Center for Culture and Inclusive Excellence we do have some ways that you can still connect with us students staff faculty next week our service and mentorship engagement team will be kicking off our letters to community and so thinking about ways if you want to show gratitude or if you want to write things to folks that you know come see the same team at here in Building 8 they are going to be in person tabling on those two days and so come through come say hi as well as in the intercultural center if you want to continue to talk and engage with some of our student peer facilitators there are going to be a few programs coming up in May you can email the team at ICC at Highland.edu or just come visit the center is open mainly in the afternoon between Tuesday to Thursday 12 to 5 so come through come say hi let's chat some more let's unpack more of what Unity Week has taught us and last but not least here at the center for leadership and service students we want to celebrate you and so for folks who are going to get nominated May 25 will be student legacy awards it will also be our final say for all of our students who've been a part of the connect program we want to celebrate you and also a super early congratulations to folks who are graduating this year I know you'll get more details about commencement but thank you again for being with us holding space with us and we hope to see you around virtually or in person take care everyone