 Hi everyone. First I'm going to take off my jacket and I want you to tell me what you think. It's actually a little bit disturbing because I get different responses when I wear this shirt. If I wear it in an affluent, mainly white environment, I get a lot of kudos and hands up and I've done something right. But if I walk in Oakland, if I'm fortunate to see another African-American walking down the street, I get, you know, I want to have some triggers. This might trigger some stuff if I sound a little cynical, forgive me, but it's not intentional. But I get a little bit different response. It's more like, hey, wait a minute, the way I speak is okay too. You know, so I want to be here to represent from my cohorts which are, which I'm calling African, African diaspora, mainly descendants of slaves who have never quite made it past poverty. You know, me myself, frankly, I've never made more than $40,000 a year and I've done a lot of shit. I've done some good shit. And I always wonder why. So more trigger stuff. I'm not a black male. I was just told today that black women have it worse. I used to accept that, but I really don't accept that anymore. I'm with all due respect to the person who said it. It's just sort of an archetype out there that's false. I only gave myself ten minutes for this because I wanted to make room for other folks. So I can't say half of most of what I want to say. But the person who said that was being supportive and I know where that's coming from, but I'm starting to reject that stuff. I'm starting to reject that I am the lowest on the totem pole. And I reject that others are more privileged than me and that I don't have certain amounts of privilege. And I've made certain decisions in my career not to compromise beliefs that I have and it has sort of like affected things in kind of a negative way. I don't really, I mean I can be very vivacious at times, but also I can be a bit shy so I don't always laugh at jokes and I certainly will not laugh at a joke that I think has any modicum and I owed of racism and that's just not going to happen. So that might make somebody feel a little bit uncomfortable and you know a little bit uncomfortable in their zone. So I was going to come up here and if somebody can tell me if I'm like over in time please like let me know. But I just want to say that I'm noticing you know my my thing working in tech is somehow I've always slipped through the cracks even though I was the top percentile in English language, even in kindergarten amongst a lot of little excuse me but gosh I have to be very careful with my language but I'm just going to speak contemporaneously white girls and you know they were always telling me how they were prettier than me etc. etc. And I read very early, did really well but somehow no one ever really noticed. And I was just content to be the smart person that I am. I don't really toot my horn really big like that because that's part of the capitalist system by the way that I really don't like. But so I just want to kind of like ask folks to see that maybe there's a little bit of unconscious racism or classism in the shirt that I'm wearing. Thank you. You're welcome. And I get a lot of compliments and smiles on the street from mainly white people and you know I get where it's coming from but sometimes I just want to take it off and it was a gift from my sister. Other little issues that I didn't by the way I want to say thanks to Ash Dryadin for putting on this amazing conference which I'm just so honored to be here and also I want to give a shout out to some other sisters that I have. Shanley Kane who is kick ass amazing. I love her. She's supporting me. I've written two pieces for MBC. So it's not that I have an issue with white women but I just want to say that no white woman came up to me and said hi can I help make your career better? Hey can I help you be better? No in fact I was actually underlined several times because they just were like and I'm not talking I'm probably preaching to the choir here but in certain corporate and tech environments it was sort of like I just wasn't expected to be good. It was like wait a minute you can't be smart. There's something wrong here so you know I just got overlooked and it was kind of sad and I'm not saying that that's everyone but that there's been a bit of a trend. They're mainly corporations and I've worked for some pretty amazing tech firms as a temp here in San Francisco but somehow like they'd be talking like I know that I know that but somehow no one assumed that I knew this stuff and if I tried to say I knew it I was over explained and et cetera and it's just been very frustrating so also I think appropriation is really annoying like when I go into a mainly white space and I see folks like giving the hand bumps and talking doing the bump and you know all this sort of like culturally, socially marginalized mannerisms and stuff that my people which I'm not supposed to say my people recently but I will say that because I had that love there and I want to bring everybody up basically initiated just naturally have done like look around there are no brown people like me with kinky hair and dark brown skin that are actually doing that stuff and that's kind of disturbing and it makes me not want to work in tech as hard as it is anyway and I'm very smart and right now I'm learning programming alone and it's really cool and my mom was doing Fortran and other things like in the past and it's just it was really she would come home with hives and stress of work so it's not easy for everybody out there I'm not saying it's easy for everybody at all and this is difficult to even talk about so I'm also want to say that if you see a name okay so five more minutes wow if you see if there's a name on a resume that sounds black and somehow that person doesn't get seen like I'm small to be the small and I'm a really good writer and I write really good letters and I take a lot of time but sometimes I think maybe I was overlooked because my last name is small you know that's kind of like a black name we don't really want to deal with her then I had so it's just like that's kind of unconscious kind of stuff because maybe I would be out of their culture zone and also I had an interview this marketing like email marketing thing viral marketing thing that was right before things were really hitting in the 90s and me and okay we all have to interview with three folks I know that that's cool but then she was like I mean I really did well in the interview and she was like you know what you're really good but you know what write an essay would you just write an essay for me okay and I'm what just just write an essay I'm like what this meant to you with this interview was I write this long essay it was like a litmus test you know and maybe all of you have to do that actually I'm not going to worry about you guys I've also get dressed in the caretaker role a lot so I'm going to let that go but um yeah it is I got no response back you know it's just I feel like sometimes I have to jump through a lot of hoops that I'm really bored jumping through don't want to do that anymore um I had a whole bunch of other stuff that I thought you know the nervous smiles and stuff like the pitting smiles I don't get it you know don't look there's nothing to feel sorry for I I'm fine um and so I'm just I hope you understand saying this from love actually and not accusation but I'm just hoping like we can get to a place where people who are from the hood at risk ghetto all these horrible to me um somehow bring them us into the fold and just have that vibrant diversity which I think we all really want to have and we're really using it already you know so yeah I thank you for having me here and it was it's a great opportunity and aboard and onward