 Peter nods, one's reward, yes, be deliberate with what costume one puts on and make sure it fits, holding all the exploded parts inside and barely. Makes me think of a mom's manly routine I found on the internet who says, diverting how awake or not awake we are, trying to help me expand my thinking, I thought. Jackie, mom's manly, the stand-up comedian, veteran of the Bodleville Chipmunk Circuit, an opening routine with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1962, I heard for you that Linus Lones, all the pop-usin' Arabian, can't beat their Sloan Linus. And camp, camp, that boy in the band, which one? That little drummer. Oh, you let that young boy alone, you're kidding. Let him alone, that's why. Not as long as I can make fifty dollars, we're gonna fire him, and I'm gonna fire him. Hey, Jackie, listen to me please. When I first came out here to introduce you, all that big build-up I gave you told everybody you was my love. Now you gonna tell me something about the drummer. Let me be your love, but let me take care of your little boy, please. Nothing but a baby. What? The baby. I like babies. Oh my goodness, can I like the way that monkey said drum? Beat up drum, I was thinking he could kind of... All my bones start to give me stiff, I can't stop going down the street. And one said to the other one, I smell a hand burning him. The other one said, maybe we walk into it. I'm too old, baby, baby, baby, heard one of them say, Now I'm going to be friends. She said, no, you were the friend that would bring it to life. You'll make skin in me, everyone who's eating. And if that isn't love, it will not be beauty. Pleasure. Thinking about pleasure as a mental state, and is it something that I am thinking about, or is it more sensorial at the body, or my body has some organic natural need to feel pleasure, or is feeling pleasure some action to some pause, or one moment, medicine or something that's not pleasurable. Thinking about it as a reaction, or as just biological beauty. And then if you take the sound, or the actual word, pleasure, and how we ever have life included in my life, which is largely retort or literary, I mean, I can't imagine somebody trying to out-of-the-dream me a little bit, taking it on the 24th Street, describing these experiences. But anyway, what I can call it, what is that biological activity, that energy is actually created, is needed. Coming with that description. And, you know, historically, for like, I think, all of human existence, there has been no relationship to pleasure, and oftentimes under the management of plant drugs, and pleasure's relationship. There's a relationship to celebration, organization of our agriculture, food, meals to our existence, nourishment. And that's Ross and Jelani, I'm the director of the Community Programs at Madison National, one of the two mythologies of NIVA, which is part of our labor program, Cultural Consciousness, three engagement series to really talk about black and white anatomy. And we're here on the occasion of a long-table discussion. Long-table discussion is not the traditional panel, some people may call it the flip-down, and what we do is we have a group of discussants at the table talking about the table topic, but they're also the panel. So do not be shy. It's very important that you're not shy. And what all I ask of you is to come to the table if you have a burning question, comments, or enjoy the conversation. And please do not have conversations in the audience, because that's not what it's about, it's about bringing it here. And it's from democracy. All voices, opinions are valued, no one is wrong, no one is right, and it's just entertaining. So some etiquette for a long-table discussion. It's a performance of a dinner party discussion. So we're all performers for this performance. In order to join your discussion to sit at the table, you can leave the table at any time. And if the table is filled and you want to join the conversation, you must have someone in the shoulder and they leave and they take your seat. The only people that get down to the table aren't the discussants that are planning to be on this side. We will have hosts that will, once it gets a little crowded at the table, we want to kind of control the flow in traffic so it's not totally energy. But I have myself who will be a host here, the host here and a host in the back. And when you're ready to go to the table, it's filled, you go to the host first and it will give you the promise you'll go to the table. The other thing I want to say is please stay on top of it. Even if you go off a little bit we'll try to get you down on top of it but it's really not about Shalaya or what you've done in life. Keep it pertaining to the conversation. And also be mindful of anticipation. And this is kind of all of my prepositional life is be mindful of other people's participation in the table. It's very important. Some housekeeping. This series was produced by Mappington National 651 and Royal Museum. The Royal Museum has been putting together this type of discussion as they engage in the public and ways to really keep the conversation moving forward. Mappington National 651 has been the center of putting thought into what the artists and the center of these type of conversations has been pushing them forward, implicating the community and changing the solutions. And that's what we hear. So please, go on the discussion and now I will introduce the character of this series. I'm going to give you the vision of why we're here and where this is going. How's everyone feeling? I'm glad to be here. It's really an honor to be with you this afternoon for part two of our three series engagement. This has been an awesome, awesome, awesome time. Very challenging, very vigorous and really enlightening. So I'm glad to be here. So when I thought about this long table I immediately began to think about cultural practices where black women and girls have been coming to the table, coming to the porch, coming to the backyard, coming to the garden to have critical conversations about what's going on in our lives. So we are calling this the long table slash kitchen table conversation. And on topic for today on the menu is this idea of divaism. And some of us know what this is. Some of us know about the diva from a very kind of curated space but today is an opportunity for us to get inside of that and to trouble that and to think about what are the progressive ways to embody this identity or change it and move it around. So I'm excited for us to get into the messiness of this conversation. We are oftentimes dealing with the poor Madonna complex, bad bitches, bosses and all of these constructions that come out of performances of black female identity. And it's time for us to dig into the origin of these identities as well as their current constructions. I'm most excited about the open chairs and I want to really show you that these chairs although they're turned face to this wall if you need to turn around and say something out here and not just people here like this is our living room, this is our kitchen table. So feel free to embody this space in an empowering way. I saw most excited about the girls and the women and the folks who bring questions out here. The parents have been prepared for your lifestyles or your life experiences. So I'm really excited to hear what you have to say. And I'm actually excited to think about redevelopment and re-examination and reclamation and shedding of stereotypes and ideas that don't suit us. So this is a very hot topic. We think about what's going on in the world today. The wall here. If there's another slide I would love to see the way these images have been crafted and what do we think of a diva when we see these images. So it's time to talk about this. Time to get into the messiness of it. Don't be scurred. We don't have a good time. Thank you. Our moderator for today is none other than Shani Jamila an artist, traveler, and the director of the Bourbon Justice Center's Human Rights Project. Her career and studies had taken her to more than 35 countries, a journey that is reflected in her community work, media commentary, writing, and creative production. Her work has been exhibited or performed at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, the Phillips Gallery, Porter Gallery, and City College of New York. Shani is a free word public speaker about African American culture and identity. Please check her out at ShaniJamila.com and on Twitter at ShaniJamila. Please join me in warmly welcoming our moderator and facilitator, Ms. Shani Jamila. This is going to be a collective community conversation. I'm really excited about being able to engage in this model with the women that we have and with each and every one of you. That is why I'm coming right here to the table. I'm going to the pool here because we're going to set our future table right now. Is that all right? So let me ask each of the sisters to come join as a collective to the table and once they get here I'll tell you a little bit about which of them and as my grandma like to say who they be and where they go. Ms. Shani just gives them a round of applause. Please check the program where you can find a little bit more about each one of us and then also those who are websites that everyone has you can find out even more in the sources, even more details about what each of these brilliant women have going on in their lives. But let's begin by welcoming April Madness, who you've heard from already today. She is currently one of the lead performers in Ralph Lemon's The Ideas of the Female Artist in American Pop Culture. And then we have Oakley, Oakley Poise Did I say right this? It's the most luscious thing that I've ever done so I wanted to do my best. Oakley is interested in stories as markers, presents, accents, perspective, inclusion and exclusion that signal the psychic scenes of the storytelling. Camila Jeanan Rashid is a conceptual artist working primarily with photography, installation and text. She redeems herself an artist artist, which I think is a extremely important thing to have in our culture. So let's please give it up for Camila Jeanan. Do we have any CNN Watchers in the audience? I saw somebody go, that was her! That was her! Amanda Seals has written Produce and Started for One Woman Shows and she wrote it down as in a conversation about street harassment and CNN Please give it up for Amanda Seals. Do we have a Don Wu Tan? A Don who is a community herbalist, liberation educator, Liberation Educator. Can I just say for that? Yes ma'am. And the performance artist, she is the founder of Soul for Bliss and she helped us all send her before we walked out into the States of the US and I feel like the virtual is really the same too. Let's give it up for Amanda. What I wish I could do is introduce each one of you. These people all give the table to but we will let your words do that as you join us. And I think that what we will start with is just a conversation about definitions and identity. We talk about diva, that means something different probably to every single person in this room. As everyone who is watching us on the live stream, welcome to all of you by the way. Let's talk about what this is. The context of our Black women bodies is we explore our own identities as we come up with our own conceptions of what diva may be. They could be separate in a part from the popular culture, says the Indians. What does it mean to each of you in any order? To be a diva. Yes, what does diva mean? Actually that used to be my name. I used to go by the moniker Amanda diva and then I turned 30 and was like that's just silly. But it's funny, one of the big reasons why I changed my name just to my given name Amanda Seales was because my meaning of diva was different than what the consensus society's meaning of diva had become. My original understanding of diva came from the theatrical space because when she's on the stage she's the one you're watching. She's the ticket drawer, originally it's the head soloist of the opera house, Maria Carlos. That was where that came from. I wanted that when I was on stage you knew that this is the line for lack of other explanation. But then it began to shift when I mean that diva meant that you were negative and demanding and disrespectful and let's just be real, a bitch. And that started to become an albatross around my neck. But before I would even go somewhere or be considered for a job they'd be like, oh I don't know if we want a diva here. Whereas I had the name for the purpose of like, of course you want a diva, it's a diva! You know? So yeah, I just say that to say that there's several definitions of course but it's interesting that, and that's why this panel is so relevant, is that over time the definition of the diva as a powerful woman has become deconstructed to mean that powerful means that you are negative. And I think there's a lot of folks who blame for that and part of those folks are the divas themselves. Because do you really need white devs in the living room? No. Yeah, that's kind of interesting to me because I think that sometimes power when a black woman is presenting it has tended to be negative. From the point of hand of course that suggested that what was this in the 60's and 70's that the death of the black family or the position of the black family is weak in position to have to do with the dominant and powerful woman. So I think anytime we've had powers associated with our bodies and so on it's been kind of contentious and negative like being able to walk through being able to have a baby in the field and get back to making content and also kind of connected us to something that was pre-human and so it's always been kind of a complicated space I think to enter or have that baggage really as diva might apply to our bodies. I'm just responding to that. What I think about the word diva and the ways that it's embodied within mainstream pop culture is often embodied within a cisgendered woman body so what we see is English, someone who is heterosexual, someone who is rich someone who is in the entertainment industry and has a certain level of social status someone who is from the west someone who is a particular body size someone who is able-bodied and has a queer Nigerian working class woman who moves this country almost 20 years ago now and thinking about all the different communities that I work with are reflections of maybe that the term diva, the mainstream definition of the way that it's embodied does not fit all of us. It's obviously like you mentioned a term that is limited and it's a form of expression so whenever people occupy people only occupy so much of themselves and those different identities that are connected to divaism within pop culture are very much rooted in these normative historical ideas of what is valuable what is beautiful and what is powerful and I think we deserve more than that when I think about the definition of diva that I want to provide it that we're having this conversation this conversation is an act of decolonization which is an act of resistance which is an act of love and so we get to in this really powerful way and bring ourselves to the forefront rather than feeling what we have to perform in these specific bosses that don't serve us at all. And thinking about diva is sort of my family's history and my own personal history and I think that diva growing up was used as the term to sort of police myself and female family members, right? So as I did if you're asking diva you're believing in yourself too strongly or acting in a way that is too self-possessed and too confident and diva was used as a term to sort of police your behaviors that should be less confident so that you could be more in line with expectations of what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a black man and just generally what it means what it means to learn how to take a back seat. So a lot of diva I think embodies a lot of positive characteristics of owning yourself and owning your narrative and being self-possessed and going for what you want but I think it's also been used as a term to police a lot of women's behavior and I taught that I was in schools for a decade I still work in schools and I diva is a term that's not used towards black students, female students but it is a term that has taken on derivative terms that are not diva that are also used to police and so I'm really interested in thinking about definitions and the ways that language from police and the ways that language can also sort of free us and allow us to occupy spaces that we've been told we cannot keep quiet but also so we can break out of bias and I think there's a way to be confident and self-possessed and not have to preamble before you go into a war or have to preamble before you take a confident pose that needs to be more welcomed and engaged with especially black women who are often told that even if you want to prize even if you are successful you still should be quiet and polite about the way that you express your success and your confidence. I um I like this I like the I like the received idea that we have of this this grand damn who is fabulous and um who owns her space and might be a little bit hard to deal with um I like the freedom and the permission in that um I love hearing everything that's been said about thoughts around that and how it can be impressive and I I'm so glad that we're having this conversation too but um I guess um my headspace is always at more performance and ideas of performance and like just permission and it's just fun to me to be all the things that people say that they don't want and to be all the things that people want and they don't know that they want or they wouldn't admit that they want um and I don't have any preconceived ideas of what that can look like even if it existed before we had a word for them in English or in Italian um and I don't know I think what we really mean when we call up that word as opposed to any other word um it is this um kind of like, I don't know I kind of think of it gestureily a little bit but you know this kind of whatever that is like I love that whatever that is um and I'm glad it's in the world Is there something we can do about the sound there's a bringing, I mean is this a diva moment for me to make sound um because I feel like someone's head is going to explode How's that? How's that? Is that too little too late or too less? Is that there? I'm loving this whole diva thing too but like you know so I I do think that the whole idea of the diva is also someone who can sort of make and construct a space around themselves so I think you talked about claiming space and I think that it's really um fantastic to think of a woman moving through the world as a really black woman right? shaping the space around her because I don't think there are a lot of spaces for us to move in publicly that we have shaped ourselves so the idea to me too about a diva of a diva is that kind of thing um but it's true that power and feminine specifically in a cisgender way seems to in a western patriarchal sense are supposed to be conflicting things it's an oxymoron so I think that that's the thing that a diva does right? She exhibits a kind of power almost a relentless fearsome power and then also a kind of vulnerability right? about these opera singers there's something about them that is incredibly powerful but at any moment they can kind of break or come apart and then they're always putting themselves back together again just in time to break again they'll come apart on you but they're coming apart on themselves and they're coming apart on themselves and so there's also this space of this idea that like a woman kind of in public and tearing herself down and everyone around is kind of storm unpredictable unreliable and in that ideas of like for performance that's a powerful place to be I mean I was a former work assistant but I love that space of being in between coming together and falling apart now obviously in your waging sort of pedestrian life interacting with various modes of power and having to present a kind of a personage like what is the projection that you have to send out into the world to survive and Diva, the label Diva was much more complicated than that but that's why I wanted to I wanted to take a moment to affirm what you just did with the sound and claiming that as the Diva moment and the act of naming what we needed at this moment is really powerful and I think something that we all needed is something that we all needed right it's hurting me absolutely and I really appreciate it I really appreciated that act of Diva-ness that you named that was housed in you naming your names and how I want to see more of that Diva-ship the capacity for us to express our power in naming what we need because often times there's a myriad of ways that our lives as Black women are acted upon and controlled and vilified and punished and to be able to walk into a space like I think of artists who come into a space and they have a right they're like I need these particular things in order for me to be able to perform and what would it look like if they were able to walk into any space into their relationships into their schools, into their jobs into their communities and say this is my rider in order for me to live in this community I need to have access to healthy food I need to have access to a healthcare system that does not misgender me I need to go to a school that does not automatically put me on a pipeline to prison what could that actually look like if we were able to walk into a space to serve that diva ship in naming what we need and what we deserve that is actually in alignment with who we are and then channeling that diva ship letting it infect the masses and how people really listen to us because you were mentioning that's the power whether people want to or not they have to listen to a diva and what she's saying and so even though I think that's complicated that can be really complicated but just like in terms of reimagining imagining the kind of world that I want to see I want to see folks being able to evoke this diva ship where they're able to name what they need and design the spaces co-design the spaces that they want to exist in powerfully but I also think I want diva, I also want all of the complexities absolutely absolutely so there's also the diva imperative aspect of the world and then the one in the world because I think as a performer sometimes we don't see enough perspectives I don't see the groundedness of the experience but anyway there's so much beauty and complexity and nuance and what we've already said in just these introductory questions and what I'd like to encourage as a spreader just did is to have that unlagged that you did come and join us hello? I'd rather speak without the mic we're live streaming we're live streaming oh you're live streaming can you use the mic cool so my name is Mark Vaughn White and I'm inspired by this whole movement and I really think this is what is needed as a society at this moment but I do have an issue with the whole concept of diva and this is the very fact that we need the title diva for a woman to be a woman now what's the opposite of diva for a man the very fact that you claim that is it going to be too diva of me and you said I appreciate this diva-ness and her power to just announce that she needed someone and it almost seemed like she needed to put herself in this title of diva and it seems like in this whole presentation we're fighting to take back a word that shows a woman has power I am a diva why do you have to be a diva to be powerful as a woman if I walk the streets and I'm powerful I'm considered a man a woman is walking the streets and she considers herself a diva she is a diva secondary woman that's my only issue well that's a strange assumption that you're making that they do isn't somehow inherently within diva framework or that power what we're saying is but I did say something about women and diva being somehow women in power is something that everyone has to we're still learning but I didn't necessarily mean to suggest that me acting like a diva I mean I was even joking because I saw people wincing and so it wasn't just about even my power it was just trying to address like she said something that I felt people would believe but I didn't necessarily mean I don't think that the two are separate and not intricately connected but I think that's a good question what's the man like why is it just a man is powerful I totally believe that diva is entwined with I mean a diva is a woman's possession I will never be a diva I can claim myself to be a diva who called who called who called who called he is a diva and I but it doesn't erase other things it doesn't but I had a conversation with somebody the other day with someone when we're having a discussion about breastfeeding and it led into pregnancy and the new term now is queer pregnancy now throughout history and I myself as a man and I cringe at this whole history of man and women that how many things do you have personally that you can claim to yourself as a woman without a man already stepping on your pedestal if you think of sports it is a man and a thing a woman in sports is let me just interject for a moment if I may thank you because because you're saying a lot and I see a lot of reactions to it and I want to allow the space for some of the things that you're raising to be addressed so if those of you who are would like to I feel like your intentions are good like if we're sensing energies I don't think you're coming from a place of ignorance or malice in that space you're coming from a place of perspective like when you say you know when a man is a man he's considered powerful that's not accurate you know like I don't consider that to be and I feel like there's probably a lot of individuals in here that may share the thought process with me that like that doesn't inherently encourage the other you know and in the same way that you know being a woman doesn't inherently just mean you're powerful I think sometimes too we get very very very general and there's also like individual character that comes to that you know that speaks to that as for sports you know sports is a man thing that is just sexist like bottom line you know the idea that sports is a man thing is part of like the everyday examples of sexism that are so drained and indoctrinated into our culture that we we now then somehow feel like we are just a part of that but honestly like sports is not a man thing like sports is a sports thing and people participate in it whether they are men or women or disabled or you know transgender etc I mean it's an activity the problem is that it's considered a man thing you know and so that's part of the change and I wonder what you're saying and I feel like you're coming from a place of wanting to empower and I actually thought for a second just a second but I did think for a second what you said which was like why do we have to have a word to describe like a powerful woman you know like why can't that just be what it is and for me like I do feel like I have always associated Diva with a performance space energy you know and it has then you know permeated into our whole world and then you were speaking just on like a working class level just on a day to day basis of being a Diva but I think that's what this whole discussion is about just like claiming terms of power and identity and at the end of the day I mean there's just no way to blanket all of that without it inevitably sounding sexist coming from a man let me actually ask the next question because it's what you just said which is when we look at our current cultural climate what is the value of a Diva identity I'm sorry and we're moving on but I have to say I'm sorry she's going to have to moderate me actually I think that he was saying it's all about what is projected I don't think he was claiming that idea my issue is that oh my gosh quickly my issue is that the we is problematic that's what I find is inherently male this idea that like even for pregnancy if women are now saying we're pregnant you're saying why can't they have anything why can't they claim anything and have other things be their own actually perhaps the women the idea of womanness is that you don't need to claim it there's something very masculine about saying this is mine this is yours maybe the way that we can start moving towards kind of a distinctly feminine ideological position is to assume less of a binary or a one person owns a thing claims it and then you get yours and you get what I mean I feel like that's where we could really be expansive no I appreciate that I would like to maybe just a quick statement I want to say this in the defense because I came up here not with the intention to present myself as a man or seeing sexes I came to only use my voice my own name the example I made of sports was only to just showcase just the general things that we associate with and I think that is the reason that we're having this discussion because diva is a general perspective you think of anything you would associate with something and I think our usual associations doesn't really show the true portrayal of something and before we go on and this is going to be my last statement I do still believe and this is why I came up here I do still believe the very fact that we're we're discussing that a woman is a diva and that is associated with a sense of power and we're trying to reclaim this title of diva to associate it back to power, strong sense of women I think that is the issue why do we have to fight back for a title if we already know that we're strong I've claimed no title and I believe I am powerful I didn't just come up here as a man I came up here as a voice you could be a boss, you could be a job you could be like a player that's the thing that is the problem too that is the problem too I think it's the delving to historical constructions of womanhood historical constructions of man but what moves us and why is there need for any kind of assertion if you lose that kind of frame but isn't that why we're here I'm not synonyms I'm not synonyms I want language I want as many words as possible to define a powerful woman I don't see anything wrong with defining that the beauty of language especially as a language myself you want as many words as possible to use to get your point across just saying woman as co but it's so much more flavorful to have all these other options and to have diva as an option to define a powerful woman who knows her space and who defines her space I want that option I think it's fine I'd like to thank you that's one of the things that she wanted us to do that this is not a conversation where we're all necessarily here to believe of each other that's not what a kitchen table is right so I'm glad that you're here I'm glad that you're here I'd like to welcome anybody who would like to join us so we can sit around the table and let me turn now to you my name is Mara what comes to mind for me is that one words are powerful and complicated and when I think of diva I think that it's something extravagant or exceptional sorry, it's something extravagant out of the norm excessive exceptional and for me exceptionalism is a very problematic word and I wonder if it's I think it's problematic to ask for what our baseline needs are we have to be a diva to ask for it because it shouldn't be that to be exceptional you shouldn't have to be exceptional to get whatever you human being deserves so I just wanted to add that I just want to say that I love the idea that there's no right or wrong and there's conversation and it's great that people that we can strongly disagree and get charged and I feel like I'm aware of this like the way that we talk and I feel like a lot of times these discussions can get very academic in their language and the vocabulary that we use and while I appreciate like being careful and being clear there's also just like sometimes if you are not using the exact correct, careful term then it can seem like oh you're making this assumption oh you're making this you think this automatically which may not always be happening and it's so funny because you know I've been thinking about the whole cat-call thing there was like in my Facebook community there was a showdown about what are we gonna what are we gonna do about this are we gonna get mad at this or are we not gonna get mad about it and I was like yes let's get mad because it's in my life but at the same time I you know I was walking down the street today by myself, unaccompanied by my husband and you know they were coming and there's a little bit of like oh I acknowledge that someone wants me to have a good day but I acknowledge also that on a dime I could turn into like days I said have a good day and I don't know there's just like there's so much gray area in language and then the intention behind it and the culture around it and I don't know I just that's kind of what I'm thinking about while we talk and what we say and what's the intention behind like good intentions like really have good intentions like what we feel and just the spirit of like you know if this person is sitting at my kitchen table that means that we broke bread together and I'm glad that this person is here and you know it's all with like what you say it but I love you have some more, have some more so and then I'd like to welcome the voices that we have on the table now please let us know what you'd like to contribute when you spoke about please speak into the mic because we're live streaming when you spoke about this conversation being really academic I think it to myself I work with teenagers I work at the high school and when I think about my girls toward divas like this conversation would be up here they're just thinking about a diva who is a bad bitch and who just takes what she wants says what she wants without regard for anyone else right and then so how do we address that like it's great to be a diva but you can know you were joking it was great to be a diva to say listen let's turn these mics down okay I'm being a little diva-ish but that is for the community I'm joking right but then you know some of my girls I won't characterize all of them you know it's just about what I what I want and then it uses that whole community because it'll come from a selfish place because if you don't know who you are I'm trying to say to address what the young man said if you don't know if you don't have a definition of what woman means then when you equate woman with diva for what popular culture is then diva is just about you doing what you want and not really care about anything else and it's the opposite of what the definition of woman and I want to jump in on that because one thing that I keep thinking about is how there need to be a moral simplicity of our understanding of the iteration of the ways of being is why I want to let young women own what they're becoming and growing into is being women who takes what they want because that's what they want without regard for anyone else and if they grow into someone else they grow into someone else but if they don't grow into someone else there's no moral iterations while acknowledging that maybe it may not be as community-oriented and collective as we've made one but how do we how do we make space for all of us to exist without complications without having to ask permission to exist in that way or without challenges and the fact that we are at this particular moment in the process of becoming because at this particular moment I may be a particular way but I may become someone else in the future but even if I don't that in some ways I'm trying to figure out how is that still okay but that's guidance I was going to say as an educator I read the field half of me read the field the other half is like but my girls are hurt girls hurting people hurting themselves and risking behavior for themselves I did that action of being that and it's coming from a real sense of hurt and it's coming to be themselves they won't necessarily grow by osmosis it needs some sort of explicit instruction into how to grow I agree and I hope again because how do you nurture someone to facilitate this growth without it being the directive or being the form of discipline and the don't-ass as their process of thinking to develop into who they want to be because there may be some women who say after I've hurt all this facilitate all this conversation after I've seen all these different iterations of being a black woman I'm still making the choice to be who that is who I choose to be who I am at that particular moment and how do we make space to acknowledge that we can't shift everything we can't shift everyone how do we make space for that to happen and thinking about pedagogical approaches to nurturing and not direct discipline and policing of black bodies and black women which is hard so many different comments now I do want to say something though now on this because I don't know what was said what came down to me was and I care about anybody else and I don't think whether you're a black woman a black man a white woman, a white man, a Chinese or someone from Mars you shouldn't encourage to become a black woman who does not care about anybody else so if we're saying we care about these young girls then our job is to guide them as we are women and it is not proper you don't judge somebody by guiding them I had nieces who came to me and told me that they didn't tell their mom because I didn't make a judgment about them you understand humans are humans they don't make mistakes but still it's your job to guide them these are the consequences of that so I don't think it's alright to say nothing about caring about no one else or even encouraging that now I do want to make a comment on the diva issue and first I want to know come in the young brother I forgot his name because I had a brother he had five sisters and a mother and a son at the table and a seven-year-old but on this whole thing about diva I think it's one of the pictures that made me think about her stand-up so many, many years ago and her dad said you can just stay in Brooklyn and be a maiden why are you going to Hollywood because the only jobs were to be a maiden or a prostitute you were a black actress so the concept of the diva developing that personality was understood it had a purpose yet what I feel today is just like over you so superficial it's nonsense it's like a wrap around yourself to present some false image because we are so so overwhelmed with so many images that we can't get a picture of who we are I think the young man was correct for you to be a person to exert power our authority in a particular position there should not need to be this title especially one that has a connotation and by the way even for the soprano it had a negative connotation and there is no such equivalent for males and the same thing happens in corporate America when the woman is the boss I mean they call her the B word so it's all about being able to exert authority and to make decisions and to demand things that you need to demand and there shouldn't be this name for diva but I understand conceptuality which is why I used the real horn example made in prostitute why he came to be and why it may have been needed as a vehicle at a certain point in time but I hope we move past that time so from there let me just pose this question to the audience because one of the things we are talking about is how we are identifying even as a woman to the brain and there's the look at pop culture we are looking at images of diva and pop culture as these panels are about so one of the most popular songs about diva is the Beyonce track a diva is a female version of us so let's talk a little bit about that let's unpack that the gender assumptions that are embodied is that what diva is to us let's decolonize these words that we mentioned at the beginning of the conversation let's go in actually I have a question just thinking about not only Beyonce but just how womanhood and diva is and feminism is being portrayed in the media today and how we are using this term diva and feminist as a pseudo marketing strategy rather than just reclaiming the word and just saying oh this is popular representations of what a feminist is and we are going to take her from our own definitions you know what are the problems in unpacking media representations of a diva versus what we think should be next man hello my name is Bisha shabazz I was sitting in my seat praying should I come up here because I wanted to stay center but you know okay I want to say a couple things A we are having this conversation let's be very clear we are not talking about what a black woman is and I just had to say that that was really my spirit because there is a difference with that and then sister what you were saying when we were having a conversation that is another preconceived notion about black women because I bring energy because I'm hyped about what I'm saying it's like oh don't say it like that maybe that was not your intention but that's how I felt because I am a real live black girl I talk for a living I'm a publicist I have the energy that comes and I have people tell me all my life tone that down so when we're having a conversation about black women this hype is very necessary and to the brother I give you love and praise for coming up here but some of those things we're kind of sideways and I'm over here burning up so that is a thing about the young people I get what the elders are saying yes we don't want to just let them be in that place but what we do want to do and I was thinking about this we want to send them supreme love and life but I'm young like that and that keeps going but I say all that to now I have a question for the man I'm just about to black women and how this looks, Diva looks for black women because I'm not publicist at all God is my witness I just got this diamond first and bird book and she's talking about how powerful she is how she's going over the world she's a boss and I was like wow she has a freedom to do that because she is a white woman so let's brand this back and I swear this is divine and Diva and how it looks in the corporate environment, the non-profit environment because we are talking about black women and that was kind of why I came up and started talking about teenagers because my black girls who are Divas it is not received well by anyone, by other black girls by society it's not received well so we're here having this intellectual conversation about all the ways that Diva can be received well but when you have black skin are those ways still there when you're poor when you know you know, my school is across the street all across the country so when you're in that situation when you come in and you're a Diva and you're ready to pop off at any point how does Diva serve you? I mean, but it has been very relegated I feel like there is a racial distinction between the way it has been defined I did a show where one of the other performers on the show was a white woman and she was demanding that for her wardrobe she needed to have all labels like major, you know fashion labels they needed to all be samples that could not be out in the streets like no one could have been wearing them yet and they were like, oh my god she is a Diva when I was like I need some extra shoes because I can't wear black shoes with this pastel fit it was like, you're being extra and it was like wait, hope slower how am I being extra by demanding what I need so that's why I feel like it is important to say no, this Diva thing can be ours too because it is very inherently something else when there is a different color attached to it and part of the reason my breaking point of taking Diva out of my name was when I saw an article that said Stacey Dash fired from single ladies for being a Diva and I was like and the article described all these ways that she was just horrible to her cast members and I was like, well, dang that's not how I've seen Diva describe to Celine Dion that's not how I've seen Diva describe to Barbara Streisand or to Ben Midler I can go on, you know if you see Patty LaBelle, that's a Diva to me you know, she's not a Diva because she's wildin' she's a Diva because she's got her reason, she's got her power through skill, through time through perseverance and our young women I feel don't understand that that is a way of being a Diva not by just being like this is me I just want to insert that we're making a lot of generalizations about black, young women and as an educator, that's I know, I'm just some of us are black, young women absolutely, absolutely and as an educator who considers young people as my teachers as my prophets who I am constantly learning from how to be better as somebody who has been hurt from systems of violence that impact my own life I think it's really important that as we're talking about black, young women not to problematize them and then also to act as adultist folks who are the only ones with information or the only space of guidance and the only space of information and resource and really think about how can we create a space how can we co-create a space with the young people that we work with that really allows both the adults and the young people to really tap into the authenticity of who they are and to be able to tap into the powers that they have in a really real way that does not oppress anybody in the room or in the circle or whoever is up in that space but really honors all of us but why does guidance have to be oppressive? I'm sitting here taking deep breaths trying to not take it personally because it didn't come here and I made no example of how I work with my girls I simply brought up an idea about some of my girls and then it was like oh a lot of women have space I have a women's room and I do a lot of just listening and having a soft face and a place to talk but they still need guidance I needed guidance I hit someone who would let me be curious with them but would also say now girl now, now, now let me tell you now you got a real black owner so I'm like I hear what everybody's saying I'm like don't take it personally I'm not talking about me but I would black girls I would black girls in my experience in education and just being black on myself there aren't a lot of spaces with someone who will guide us you know what's the name of the family my mother's guidance was don't bring your children into my house don't bring up people you want get real transparent with y'all so I'm a comic and in one of my bids I made reference to how I lost my virginity and my mom watched the video the other day and I got a call well I guess I don't know yet anymore I had sex one time on January 8th, 2000 that was the first time but she gave me all the guidance she had to give me but as I was sitting down I got books on the couch one day you know that was my guidance in that space and I told her listen I understand that you had what you had to give me and that wasn't a part of what you had to give me and I as I've grown as an adult I want to be able to give that to the young women that I know because I felt like I could have benefited from some guidance in that space that I didn't have I don't think there's a lot of distance between what you two are doing the point I was not about what the guidance should be in place it's just simply about how where they go up with their own and who is in control of that guy and I want to make sure that we have space for the other folks to join us at the table to come into the conversation and then we'll please good evening so alright so I'm Dr. Lonnie and I am just very pleased to be here I'm pleased to be at a kitchen table in the Brooklyn Museum and I want to put differences on that because as we talk about how Divas represented the popular culture within our own communities our work with young people we are at a kitchen table we are not in the public medium so there's conversations that we have about what Divas is in the public and we talk about that one way and there's another conversation we talk about amongst ourselves so even trying to define the whole role of how Divas use in the media to me that's a different conversation when I speak to it in a different way because a diva I have been defined as a diva I do not define myself as a diva one of my best friends said to me you keep running from your diva hood that is just now how I accept myself but I am mindful that there are a lot of young women who see me as a diva there are men who see me as a diva there are women who see me as a diva and each one of those people see me as a diva is what their own understanding of what that word means to them so there might be men that see me as a diva and one once someone's had to learn to say because I'm too much work and the idea of a diva is a woman that required a lot of work some young people might see me as a diva some of the young girls like y'all doctors you don't take it out on men you know running bands and whatever so everyone has that different notion so this is what I love about being at the kitchen table is that this conversation and whenever math is my first one of these is doing I love it because it's teaching us the tolerance these are not definitions I, this gentleman said it's an idea, idea, idea and us resisting the need to have to add any value to it other than listening because a diva doesn't care what Barbra Scheitzer gets called or whatever gets called because when you're a diva and you define your own term it's how you define it so I don't define myself as a diva but I can tell you one thing that if I allow someone to refer to that term associated with me I will break it down from what it means to the kind of diva that I am alright yeah I just wanted to double back into the conversation around Diana first to make sure that the woman who stepped off the stage that remember your name but just wanted to clarify that I wasn't making assumptions about what you do with your students neither was I the thing that I keep thinking about is that you probably are the only person in their 8 hour school day who is having positive conversations about their identity and so my point is not about you but it's about all the other structures that those girls are going to come in contact with during that day so those 45 years which you have until this is extremely powerful but I'm thinking about all the other ways that every single day in their day-to-day action in the class walk to mental detectives they're being policed and disciplined rather than being told they are people in the progress process of becoming who have the potential to become other people so that was my concern the other girls who are disciplined that don't have to do but that they still come in contact with every day that goes back to that point before you have to go to society where women girls come up in this class and they start to say this is what I need in one at this particular moment without that being too overwhelming or too being too self-possessed and I think that's something that comes to go back to how our schools are not structured as nurturing sides for girls black girls in particular I will say black girls exclusively to exist as humans and I feel like this conversation around demons is not about like a certain power it's about a certain baseline of humanity because everything I've been talking about here is like saying like if I need the mic to be turned down I'm going to say I need the mic to be turned down but it's also like growing up if you were a diva that was used when I walked down the street and had people call me out of my name that's not a certain power that's saying I'm a human being and not an object and I deserve these three assets so I just want to shift the conversation I think about humanity and not so much power because before you even talk about this idea of having power we still need to be conceived of as people who are humans who deserve humanity and that becomes a human rights issue not an issue of daily engagement with whether or not I can get what I want to be as a human subject or subject to be and not as an object we move to place as people so choose to move to placement can we trouble the idea of power too yeah I also feel like I don't know when people talk about conversation getting too academic I'm not necessarily an academic but I hope that wasn't a problem to speak I'm offended she didn't make, she always wants to offend me but I think we have to trouble the idea of power you know and we have to suggest and how do we show women frameworks of power that aren't I at First and Verge and flying all over the country what kind of power is that in the service and in the service of what her own wealth her own accumulation I mean I think that how do we show women and young girls that models of power that are like freaking Harriet Tubman choose her invisibility against the people who made her invisible and thought it would be someone that would keep her enslaved when it actually empowered her to go back in the underground railroad and find more people and bring them to freedom you know I feel like women aren't, Beyonce is not enough Will Kim or what's her name, Nicki Minaj that's not enough that's what their gentleman said when he sat here let's talk about how the media is packing and projecting these terms and throwing them out into the world and half the time we're just taking them on and buying things so how do we teach women and young girls that power is not just about what you can accumulate and then how you can deploy that accumulation to project some kind of status so let me just throw this out here because I thought it was so interesting because I was preparing for today's conversation at Google Diva just to see what would come up and then I said let me Google Diva black women since I do that's what we write there so I'm getting my mind right I'm like this is gonna be a bad idea let me tell you the first thing that came up which I thought was so dope there's a woman, I haven't read the book but I love that it exists as the first entry on Google it was a woman named Kimberly Brown who wrote a book writing the black revolutionary Diva women's subjectivity in the decolonizing text right so in terms of like that's very Diva to do insinuate yourself into the conversation in a way that reclaims what it is that we're talking about and this is what we say so I also like to just go a little bit deeper in terms of you mentioned Harriet Tubman we also had some pictures up on the wall before we came to the table where we can invoke some ancestral ideas of what Diva might be for black women in particular my name is Lashad I'm actually a feminist blogger and this actually was intriguing to me because my perception, I'm 29 years old my perception of the Diva is not Nicki Minaj it's not Beyonce it's not Lil Ken, it's Harriet Tubman Rosa Parks Felicia Rousseff but I'm one of the very few in my generation who actually think by that because everybody wants to be a bad bitch they want to have the banging body and like you were saying we're not humanized what objections have yes so that was I'm back there burning up like you know I see the pictures of Nicki Minaj and yeah she's successful when some of her stuff is good where her anaconda doesn't like I don't like I feel like Rosa Parks was a Diva when she said nah I'm not getting up my feet hurt I didn't hear whether it means I have to go instead of she was a part of a collective yeah there's a choice to do that so I wish people of my generation would actually get that hit that's what I try to instill in some of the girls that I know but it takes things like this to actually get that across cause it can be both Rosa Parks and Nicki Minaj can both be Diva cause it all at the core comes from the same place of don't move me I'm gonna do what I need to do right now and I think that it's great what you're saying because I still stand by the fact that no we do need to define Diva for black women like I do want that word and I don't wanna have to be a part of that in a negative connotation when others don't have to be you know I want access to it I like the word it's cool and I think it's important though for us to just like you said to identify that this is not just about an entertainment thing it's not just about being the baby which why but it's really just about owning your space and defining your space and there's something to be said for the amount of you have to have experience and time also and like guidance to even do that I think the problem is when the women who are claiming Diva who aren't doing the action of you know they're just putting on I think you would say like they're just putting on this like someone I think someone said we had a very flexible panel here but you know just this cloak of like oh cause this is the look you know yeah you know and I commend that because I understand why you wanna be that but we wanna encourage that you know there's also action and like foundation in that that speaks to what power really is and it's not just saying I have power it's exuding it and being rooted in it you know I just wanna put on the table not the idea of capitalism but the existence of capitalism and what it means to think about owning space and taking control and empowering oneself and to say that we get what we get and we have power over that within the system of capitalism and how we understand femininity and feminism within a system of capitalism which means that we can profit and our currency is in selling these ideas that don't always have any substance or content to them so I'm really interested in thinking about like we're using this term like what value does diva have in contemporary concepts we're still revisiting the idea that we have to place that we're placing value that we're sort of binary in this idea of what it means to be a feminist what it means to be a diva and I think sometimes it troubles me to think about to think about this within this context of capitalism in the ways that we are selling identities and profiting and empty identities and the ways that people who are choosing not to buy into the system of exchange and value are excluded from these conversations and that's why the precision of language is so important to me is because someone brought this up and again we don't collect but someone made a comment about the precision of language because I think one of the things that has happened historically that has made it impossible for us to make sense for ourselves or to assert ourselves as individuals and as a collective community is the the continued broad use of language that sort of obscures our community right so I think it's important for us when we say something to be intentional about it and to use precision in what we're saying because again we are just going to keep modifying this process to say like all women, all women but it's like we put in black women we have trans women black women we have queer but we have all these different responses that we need to pull apart so as we continue to think about how do we make sense of not just cisgender straight black women how do we make space for everyone else even young women who didn't make it in here because they didn't make 9.5 hours an hour or didn't make it in here because they don't know that the museum exists at all so how do we make space for these conversations that happen here but also outside of that conversations between people who need to have conversations with the black women I think that's interesting for the one who brought up the language thing I just at the same time I feel like there's a privilege in language and knowing the language and having done the homework or whatever book you got from whatever school you went to before you came here today to be armed with it and as I've been more and more in these spaces you know sure I've read critical theory and like wrong my brain thinking about things in a very precise way you know my husband is French and sometimes he doesn't understand when my mother writes him sock it to me he's like your mom said suck it up you know what so he really teaches me like you know there's I don't know just what the privilege is in the way that we speak to and just my whole thing was not like don't be loud I mean I feel like be loud or be not loud I can be totally black woman without being loud and that doesn't make me lose with black women and I just I was just thinking about like how we invite people into this space at my own comfort levels of like well if we're not saying it the right way then no no no no no no no at the same time I'm thankful for the people that do the work and get the language more precise and teach us what cis-changer is and what makes us think more about like oh well I'm a I'm a woman woman you know whatever we're using awkward and I just I'd like to have that moment to acknowledge like I may not be getting at this the right way help me thank you but here's what I'd like to say is still I still have a place to talk from whatever my thing is let's work it out so I'd like to welcome the new voices to the table and as I give you space to come to the mic let me also just say that I mentioned the beginning of the conversation this is being live streamed and there are some questions that are coming in from our live stream audience so I'm going to throw those out to the panel and offer you space for the mic there are two here where do you see the diva in the future one question from our live stream audience and then what does a diva think of sugar daddies is that a real relationship we have a question back a serious question this is not at all about sugar daddies good afternoon my name is Juma Tatu and among other things I'm an educator and I'm a performer first of all I'd like to say that it is very thrilling to be at a kitchen table sure sure it's really thrilling to be at a kitchen table here with these brilliant folks I mean like I feel very jittery so thank you for this experience like for setting this up I wanted to in thinking about language which seems necessarily a part of the discussion of the diva and I'm also thinking about the idea of reclaiming re-appropriating language and I think particularly with respect to being within capitalist structures like Camilla was talking about a moment ago there's I feel like I've always had an agitation with the idea of reclaiming language especially as has come out before you know language is really powerful and I think one of the reasons that I identify language as being really powerful is because of language is really powerful here and I think that that has a lot to do with the structures that we're within you know capitalist white supremacist patriarchal I think that those the ways of identifying the ways of utilizing language it seems to go hand in hand with a lot of those structures which which I problematize and I don't want to assume that everybody here is doing that in the same ways but I'm wondering in the beginning I was wondering about you know these what is the what's the potential power for imagining new words you know maybe there are new words that could be offered as opposed to or as an alternative to reclaiming these words that are already in existence but then you know beyond that I was also thinking about again back to that role of language it made me start to question what is is that the most valuable thing what about other ways of learning what about other ways of defining information of of a oh man I have sick notes of my phone but anyway other ways of identifying communication patterns other ways of of fortune community that maybe aren't centered around language I was wondering if you all had any ideas about what those could be and I think this seems like one of them this placing of the kitchen table here and what that does I wanted to respond to that and call into the room my grandmother and my mother so I'm from the Evo tribe in Nigeria and before a child is born there is first station and there is ritual about who this child needs to be with society and what kind of power they need to be with and they think about the community thinks about the name but the child is given and my name Adak who Adak is first child that's a girl first daughter and Aku means wealth of good things and I was told at a very early age that my power comes from my name and that my name everybody says my name is like a magic spell you know and that every time somebody evokes that name it evokes the power that I have and that it will pass on to me from my own ancestors it will pass on to me from the stars and so I think when I think about renaming and humanity thinking about starting with our names and starting with our hearts and starting with our spirits one of the very first exercises that I do within educational spaces that I have with the young folks that I work with is going around sharing our names and what does your name mean and if you don't like the meaning of your name what do you want your name to mean and how do you make sure that this name articulates the kind of world that you want to envision and walk with and move with and is in line with the commitments that you have for yourself and is in line with the commitments that you have for your community and encourage you guys because I think there's a space in that where people find power in those labels and then there's also spaces like our own names and our own ancestors names and what they were able to do in our communities that evoke that power that are not known in this but are so essential and are such incredible medicine in us healing and in us I'm living in Atlanta Hi, I'm Megan Skadija and I wanted to add on to what you were saying as well as the sister that said she works with the young ladies I wanted to say in terms of being defined as a diva we have so much reality TV going on that they get the perception that they have to rise to be the superhero in order to be acknowledged but then when you look at it from another aspect they may be a diva of their family not meeting the odds of teenage pregnancy domestic violence the list can go one in one that's what gives them their wonder when we talk to them and their bracelets that they need to wear in order to be a functioning society and be accepted so sometimes when the teenagers are acting out it's not always out of conceit everyone is writing their own truth and we all have a story to tell so sometimes you just sit down and listen to them and give them a little more time again without judgment and you listen to their stories their mom may be incarcerated they may not know their dad it's just a lot of things and we're also living in the generation of the crackheads' grandchildren and they come with a lot of emotion and discernment they were born to know full of their own but this is what we're tackling you see the robberies and the populace being snatched they slept on an aunt's couch they slept on a friend's couch they need a hug this is where it's all going so a diva doesn't necessarily have to be someone who has an Ivy League education they just may not be the odds and they are on the truth I don't agree because I have to get back to my technical duties however I love this idea of our own names and our own power out of what we are naturally born with and what our truth is but also what's coming up for me is the word diva just seems small it just seems small it seems Boston it seems like it's passed down with so many different flavors and combinations that I'm less interested in the diva I'm more interested in the queen I'm more interested in the woman who is who sees herself and sees others as royalty and as spirits and lights are invoking this energy of just a quiet song or just love and respect for themselves and for others that's what my 22 years has taught me even though it has meant a lot I'm not concerned about the diva the smallness of this this character I'm concerned about the big, crotter how do I see myself and others and others see themselves in me and that is where it is the root of that love and light of being a queen and just admiring yourself and others so I just want to put that word on the table as maybe a possible alternative to something as small and as mixed mixed connotations as a diva but not a normal thing thank you hello, I'm Panya Noel please come closer to the mic I'm Panya Noel I'm French I'm running a non-profit in Paris about the race gender issue and I wanted to talk about the to know that small diva have not been classes because I'm here, so I'm still here for people to ask questions whether they can follow me I'm the leader of the class of 2020 I'm running a non-profit group I'm a graduate she's not a graduate she's learning nothing but she can be involved to be a diva too so all the stuff about make the comparison between I don't know I know the places we are tied for black women I know the places we are maybe if we invent a place like that everyone can be in this place and I'm talking about the black women not to be but women sex worker, incarcerated and all the black women all the black women can fit inside because we can just put away the black men with the misogynois put away so I just want this place diva be about all of us and I want to take this world for all the people I fight to in France, all the sex worker all the women of color but a lot of people live with the work of all the sex workers, all the speech stuff etc all a lot of people live because of her thank you so this actually feels like a good transition model for us to go into our closing statements and what I would ask is that as you close out we have another question from our live stream audience that you can possibly incorporate into what you say which is where can we continue these conversations so April we'll start with you all the way down where can we continue these conversations I would start around us our peers our family members in the grocery store another intellectual buzz word that's getting out there becoming more mainstream is microaggressions and I think it's great that people are starting to name those little names that didn't feel right and have a name for that and give the lead to it is it just me being sensitive or you being diva but no there's something not right in the tiniest exchange that I can't name the way that you assumed that it was okay to walk right past me when I was the first customer I say let's start there if it's not like you don't have time to have a kitchen table conversation but I don't know it's a way to speak back to that moment in that moment and not let past that's where I started yeah I first want to say it's been a pleasure to be here with everybody and it's quite exciting I hope the conversations do continue but I personally feel like in my work I try to keep these conversations going and the conversations are really attacking or undermining any sense of a binary or any sense of one person having to only possess one characteristic you know I feel like I'm interested also in the diva that is the thunderstorm that is tearing everything apart and building it back up I think that sometimes and too as a teenager as a young woman sometimes you have to break and then rebuild so I don't know I don't necessarily know how that functions practically but I think we need to teach I would like to teach my daughter and I would like to keep teaching myself that I am still forming and that it is ok to be vulnerable and to come apart and there is something after that and perhaps it is in the strength of coming apart and rebuilding and the diva that is an interesting place for me personally so the gratitude it has been a pleasure to sit here and listen and also to share something that comes to mind right away as somebody who identifies as a healer in my community is thinking about the different ways in which these different labels how they suffocate our abilities to be our whole selves and what that physically emotionally mentally and spiritually does to us on an individual collective and generational level and how we heal from all of that there is manifestations of that I think about fibroids that a lot of black women have that is intricately linked to the ability to not be able to see what you need to express about your power in yourself I think about the increasing rates of suicide in our community I think about the increasing rates of depression and I think a lot of that is housed in one obviously the systems that be these systems of violence that impact us and then also how we internalize all of the systems of violence and then get separated from who we are and not be able to see who we are and define and that is traumatic that is a kind of trauma that plays out in how we see ourselves, how we treat ourselves how we look at ourselves and how we treat each other as a community and how we build the kind of community that we need to be liberated and free and so when I think about having continuing these conversations I think about immediately starting with the self first you know what is what are the questions that we're asking ourselves you know what are the spaces that we're creating for ourselves to be more intimate with who we are that really allows us to illuminate who we want to be that's outside of these normative boxes that don't always serve who we are and how could we continue at every given moment that we can have these conversations create these spaces with ourselves and then ripple that on out into the different communities that we occupy so the churches our schools our children everything, every single space that we can think of so that this conversation doesn't only exist within these particular realms but they really go into all the different spaces that we occupy I got into the ringtone sorry you know Raven Simone you know the thing about labels is that it's not even about the label it's about the option of being able to choose the label if you so please you know and I want to be able to if I feel like saying I'm a diva say I'm a diva the real freedom isn't having the choice to define yourself in any way that you want so that you don't get fibroids and so that you aren't marginalized and so that you aren't suppressed etc etc not everybody wants to be a diva and that's cool but I think that there's a beauty in the option in having the option to be you know I think that's really what this conversation was really helpful to me about like defining like you know where that lives and being able to choose like how you want to breathe into that space or not breathe into that space and that's fine too and you know these conversations happen with ourselves they happen at real kitchen tables without mics you know they happen on twitter they happen on facebook that you know I find it fascinating that I went viral this week for being what some would say is a diva like for being like oh hell no white man you know and and that to me was like really major just to see that like our society will still share a woman for being smart plenty and black like will willingly share that amongst each other because I have become very frustrated when I would talk to young women to try and tell them like if you just have your integrity you're gonna make it because when you look at the mainstream images of what make it looks like a lot of times like that isn't like we're not there you know we're not in those mainstream images making it is like I'm on tv or I got did you see how many lights I got on myself you know like that's for a lot of women that's making it so I just I just feel like it's important to have these conversations because of the guidance that we have to give right our youth and because of the context that we give each other as adult women as well because I know a lot of peers that I'm like why is this your choice you know like this she sighed at it she's like girl so I just say all that to say that I think it's beautiful that we come here and that we have these discussions and I really liked this long table format right because that because a lot of times when you do these panels you just feel like you know you're just like talking at folks and you know none of us up here well I'm just gonna take a leap of faith that none of us up here feel like we are the be all end all of knowledge on any of these things and you know we are all a part of 4 change to happen it has to be communal you know 4 change to happen there's there are leaders but for leaders you know intention set to be applied in practicum there have to be people there who are doing that on a daily basis and so I appreciate you all being here to even acknowledge you know your interest in this topic and our expertise and talking about it and today I have decided to choose the label Tifa maybe tomorrow I'll just be alright you know but thank you all the entire stage is really just me leading with a lot more questions answers I think that's really good because I shouldn't lead with answers that would mean a lot of things so one of the things I'm really curious about after this conversation is whether the work around renaming and reclaiming is the most urgent work whether it's the work that and isn't the right work and that's the question that I had during this whole conversation about language and who is the Tifa and what is the Tifa and just thinking back to my interest being and to subjectivity and who gets to be who I'm being and who doesn't get to be who I'm being and that at the end of the day I was agreeing on the right until you stole my right and you had it but the thing that was interesting to me about that was this issue of choice but was also this assumption that all black women at all points of time have to move at the same pace same movement, same everything you don't need to be an individual people so I'm really interested in recognizing an individual black woman who can express herself as she chooses to express herself without having a storm of criticism because in that particular move you chose to be an individual but what does it also mean for us to collectively have humanity to be treated whether or not that can come out of NAMI or whether or not that comes out of structural shifts, there's a lot of moving parts so that's what that conversation was about for me and I think that as far as where this conversation happened outside of this space I think one thing that's really awesome for this city I think is how many times we can have conversations with strangers and I don't think that I'm crazy but I talk to strangers all the time because we have the most amazing conversations and so I think that as one starting point if you happen to have a conversation with someone on the street we use that opportunity as an entry point to really delve into these issues because you never know what type of conversation you're going to have of whether you can be generative out of that moment if you were in a school trying to get a space to be a commentator there's a lot of space not to use things but I think there are a lot of openings and so this is what our openings are available to have those conversations as often as possible as often as possible so let me just say last night I was talking with Ebony who curated the brilliant vision for this and the other three things that are happening about what her thoughts on this are and one of the things that we said that we wanted to kind of invoke was W.A. Commerter y'all remember when Viola Davis those of you who watched that show or perhaps you saw this clip had a moment where she was confronting and ugly truth and what she decided to do in that moment was to strip her wig strip her makeup strip her jewelry and be her most authentic self in that space and that's one of the metaphor I think for the kind of spirit that we wanted to bring is to stay with all of you classically beautiful people to begin to explore this conversation from our most authentic selves and so I'd like to just thank each of our panelists and everybody who contributed to the conversation whether you did that by coming to the mic or whether you did that from the energy that you gave in your seat I think this was an experiment for me in this kind of conversation before but I really enjoyed it because I think what it does Amanda like you were saying is invert this idea that knowledge is ever simply just behind the microphone here right like the people who are on this table are the only ones who know about this subject every time you come into a room everybody's coming with their own knowledge with their own experiences with their own ideas and I thank you for contributing them today I'd also like to make sure to thank 5.1 Arts Shea and Candice and all of you brilliant people I'd like to thank MAP International Productions I want to thank the Brooklyn Museum for giving us this beautiful space and in the vein of being in the museum all of us on the panel are artists we are photographers we are performance artists we began this conversation with art and we're going to end it with art so I'd like to ask you to welcome Amanda back to the stage for the performance and when she finishes we're going to have a reception outside in this area with DJ Val so please stay for that continue the conversation here and thank you so much for coming so I'd like to create some interesting spaces outside of Jess doing stand up in the club in the comedy club and so I write these one woman shows and three years ago I wrote a show called Death at the Diva where I challenged pop culture's portrayal of a character at a time and you know so it makes sense why I'm on this panel so so in the show I switch between narrative and character in acknowledging some different ways that I feel that like the image of the Diva has been dismantled and turned into a negative way one of those ways is through the marginalization of women in Gangster Rack where we just all of us a hose all of us to Gangster Rack an executive who is talking to a possible performer that could be on their network and she's basically saying like well if you're not crazy by the actual clinical definition or you're not willing to drop it we don't really have room for you right now so come back when things change around in the show and she speaks to one of the other ways the positive imagining of a Diva has been dismantled is the performer and really give a Diva a better name they're trying to be negative I think sometimes it's just you reach a certain point where you just don't care anymore because you've been through the fire and I would like to introduce you all to this character and she would like to share her story with you do you want to hear her story? report seeing you in the reception