 Welcome to Sister Power. I'm Sharon Thomas Yarbrough. Sister Power is celebrating Black History Month with diversity and inclusion by discussing never justify your truth. Black women navigating constructed white female spaces. And our panel and our special guest today is Sequoia Carr-Brown, Katherine Waddell-Takari, and Daphne Barbie-Wooten-Queens. Welcome back to Sister Power. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm very excited about this subject that we're going to approach today regarding never justify your truth. And as a whole, we as Black women have always had to kind of tell our stories in a certain way, look a certain way when we're expressing our truth. And today, we're just going to dig right in. And I always remind people that Sister Power is a safe space for women to air and discuss their differences, their challenges, their love, their positives, and all that good stuff. So let's discuss, ladies, the title of, you know, Sequoia, your installation, never justify your truth. Black women navigating constructed white female spaces. How does, and I'm going to start with you, Sequoia, then I'm going to come to Dr. Katherine Takara and then Daphne. So the question is, how does the title, never justify your truth, set with each of your experiences as accomplished, educated, professional women? Thank you for having me and all of us. My art installation is a performance art installation. It's based off of the major, the overall arching concept that's called walking on eggshells. So this is a topic that is kind of spoken, the unsaid, maybe amongst ourselves, not necessarily in mainstream conversation. But these are, this is information, these are experiences that we've had as white or Black women navigating constructed white female spaces. So I have been exploring through performance art, how do we navigate to that through that? Why do we even have to? And just no longer will we have to justify our experiences and to prove who we are and what we are. And that would be either through how we look and our beauty, our hair, our bodies, how we navigate an academia or a professional corporate world, and kind of just taking these tropes that historically have been, we've been burdened by, be it the Jezebel, the Mammy, right, the Sapphire, contemporary would be like the angry Black women, things like that. So I wanted to explore what that was all about and how we've had to navigate through the ages, but we no longer will do that. Now, in terms of whiteness, constructed whiteness and white women in particular, we know who our allies are. So we're not speaking to them. But there are some women out there they might call them Karen's. Back in the day, they were called Miss Ann. So it's always been some kind of title given to this type of behavior. But I found in my research that is a lot of it is based on jealousy, not able to be raised to hone in and nurture your inner spirit or strength that we've had through the ages. And, you know, when we walk in a room, we have this, this power, this magic, our skin, the way we carry ourselves, you know, and I think people are drawn to it and white women, certain white women might have a certain animus and that might even come out of, you know, enslavement times of having to deal with, you know, your man raping these African women, having children all around the plantation. So that generates a certain level of animus, right? And then you jump forward and you come into Jim Crow era and you have or just even before that you have the women's suffrage and you have Katie, Susan B. Anthony and Ida B. Wells going at it because the black women have to take a backseat to white women's suffrage, right? And then this compounds over the years over the years. And then we have Jim Crow statues and, you know, you've got the Jezebel, you've got the Mammy, you've got the Sapphire. So all these images, all this merchandising, films, Gone with the Wind, a birth of a nation, you know, the white female is centered, she has to be protected, she's pure, she's innocent. And then juxtaposed to us, we are the opposite. And then contemporary now, now you have women, non black women who are getting their lips and their, their butts done wearing booty pants panties, having operations, getting their hair braided and things, but it's supposed to be ugly on us and beautiful on them. So we can't get a job. We can't be in school with our braids, but white women can do it all the time. So I'm unpacking all of that. Well, yeah, that's a lot to unpack in. And I'd like to, you know, go to Dr. Catherine Takara. You were a professor at UH. I just want to hear your take on this title. Well, number one, I like this notion of movement, that we are in the process of moving. We have always been in the process of moving, but now we are less inhibited, perhaps by the society around us. I taught at UH from 1971, and I retired in 2007, Black Studies, and there was always resistance, whether I was in ethnic studies or in interdisciplinary studies. In fact, just two days ago, I had one of my mentors and also a colleague here, and he was reminiscing back to the time when I was going up for a permanent position, not even tenure yet. And there was one tenured professor, White, who said the only reason that I was being hired was because I was Black, implying that I was unqualified. And I think that that whole affirmative action bugaboo has haunted many of us as people take what they want to take as truth. And our truth and our presence and our manifestations are perhaps, and our history, certainly, are not the same truth that perhaps other people have, white women have. And as you mentioned, Sequoia, I think there is that element of misunderstanding and jealousy that exists historically between white women towards Black women. I'm reading a book recently, and it's talking about a louding voice. And I know that that's kind of a progressive gerund, if you will, but it's like walking, it's like movement, a louding voice. And I think that that speaks very much to how I taught and how I was received at the university. My louding voice, I would take it out into the community and speak against the policies of tokenism, of being the only one of the solitude of the indifference to what it might feel like, the lack of mentoring, the lack of putting me in contact with people, with publishers, with conferences, with all of those things that are necessary to be successful in academia. I always felt that I was, you know, clawing to hold on. And I think it's the louding voice because we know within ourselves that we shine. We shine and I'll stop there so other people can talk and then I'll come back. I love it because it's a certain confidence that when a Black woman knows who she is and what she stands for without saying a word, it shows when you show up. So I want to come to you, Attorney Daphne Barbie Wooten, you know, you're one of the top civil rights attorneys here in the state, and you've had some comments about hair in the courtroom. Talk about that. Yes. Actually, I don't know if any of you have heard of the Crown Act, but it's a law which the federal government is taking up. They didn't pass it last year. An African American senator asked that it be passed this year, basically saying that African American women and men as well can wear their hair in cornrows, dreadlocks and many of the African and Afrocentric hairstyles, which previously were. Banned, for example, many newscasters once they let their hair go into an afro or let grew cornrows or had dreadlocks were taken off the air, lost their jobs. And in fact, the military just recently, a couple of years ago, changed their rules about grooming by allowing African American women to have cornrows and natural hairs, because previously you had to have it cut short and put it in a ponytail. Well, you know, you have Afro can't go in a ponytail depending on how long it is. But now they are allowing cornrows. They are allowing dreadlocks as long as it's neat. But that's a big step forward, because previously they would get kicked out of the military for grooming reasons. And, you know, not all human beings are the same and look the same and have the same characteristics. But basically, if you were proud of being African or African descent and you wore your hair in an on European fashion, you were penalized for it. This is changing now with the Crown Act, which was enacted in several states, California and Illinois, not Hawaii yet, but soon soon to be. And there have been a lot of cases where people with dreadlocks have been kicked out of schools. And even in Hawaii, there was a situation where a young boy had his hair and dreadlocks neatly groomed. He was one of the top singers in the choir and the boys choir. And he was told it couldn't be in the choir because of his hair. Now, fortunately, the NAACP and along with the African American Lawyers Association wrote a letter which caused the school to rethink its position and he was able to go ahead and sing. But so this is something that's going on. And I just want to comment very briefly about what Sequoia said about the movies and that in the past have just instilled this very negative stereotype about African American women in Africa, the dark continent. Anyways, gone with the wind. Everybody still talks about it. Although I notice most of the people that talk about it and with stars in their eyes are not African Americans or Africans because depicted black women as servants, mammies, silly and in fact, you know, the white woman was at the tone of the beauty and, you know, the center of the world when there was slavery going on and very little was said about that slavery. And so now I know that a lot of the films now show a different picture about slavery and reveal the ugly truth underneath it. So you have 12 years as a slave and you have African American and African actresses starring and winning awards now, finally. But it took a long time to get to that place. And I know that there was a good author and I'm turning my name, Faith Ringo. I think she's also an artist and in response to the wind gone with the wind, she wrote a book, The Wind Done Gone. So it never, I hear someone say, oh, I love gone with the wind. I said, well, you need to read The Wind Done Gone. And what did you think about the way they portrayed Africans and African Americans and basically slavery? So the truth is coming out now. More and more people are accepting of the truth. Young people are realizing, you know, all of these myths are just that. Just myths. And so it's time for us. As Sequoia says, it's time for us to explain the truth and speak the truth. And and also, you know, never justify your truth. What I'm loving about this panel and this discussion, all of us have been friends for many, many years. And and it's important for women, especially black women, to have a sisterhood you know, because we can lean on each other, we can talk about these difficult subjects and feel safe. And that's what it's all about. You can feel safe. We we and the first thing is you have to respect each other's truth. My truth may not be yours. Yours may not be mine. But let's move forward, because I want to start with Sequoia. I want to know, share how you navigate spaces where you were the only black woman. How did you protect yourself? Oh, well, the first thing I do, I walk in, I'm I'm dressed to deny. Like to be fashionable, put the get well put together. And it's interesting, I will do test sometimes. I find when I wear my hair natural and not pulled back or with the hairpiece, I have a lot much more negative energy come towards me. Then if I do something that's a similar that simulates to the standard American standard, basically the white standard of beauty. But for me, I just stand in my my truth and my I know I'm intelligent. I know that I am raised well. And I just exude who I might all of those things that my family is put in instilled inside me. Also with the guidance of what I've learned through Professor Takara. She's guided me well and helping me to navigate and to speak in a way that potential oppressors know that you can't okidoke me, right? So and because of that, it's interesting when I speak and say my truth and am assertive, it's taken either as, oh, I'm an angry black woman. Or they say, oh, this is someone who was on it. I cannot mess with her. I cannot you move her laterally along the corporate line or say anything to her and she will just, you know, fall to the wayside or cry in a corner. So it depends on who it is. I approach people. I give a strong handshake when I meet people, nothing weak and noodling. So that's another indication, just a nonverbal. And when I speak, I make sure what I say is succinct. It's intelligent and that they know that they cannot. Bumbles on me. Yeah, I like that. I want to come to you, Professor Takara, Dr. Takara, when you did speak up. And out, was there a backlash? Well, yes, yes, and yes. Number one, what I noticed in my classes starting way back was that the black students were largely athletes. That there were no other black faculty that were speaking out. The couple or three that were at the university were pretty much not addressing racial issues, but perhaps celebrating the interconnectedness that they felt sometimes wrongly, I think, with the university community. That whole Kimberly Crenshaw thing about intersection sectionality is very, very powerful in that I had to go outside of the university to find support or to my students or to black organizations in the community who demanded that there be a tenure track position for a black course. But interestingly enough, and this is kind of not well known, but one of the founders of ethnic studies was a black man called English Bradshaw, who worked specifically with Franklin Odo to establish the whole ethnic studies at that time program. And he invited me to put together a proposal since our black movement, I being from Jim Crow, South Alabama and civil rights and protest oriented, that it was the backbone. It was the foundation of the whole transformative movement, not only for blacks, but for other minority groups and then for women and then for people that shared physical disabilities. So or whatever you might be the wrong word, disabilities, but physically challenged. So how that was whitewashed. It's constantly I've found at the university that we were kind of forgotten about our issues were not expressed or not allowed to be expressed, were not taught. And so English Bradshaw, when they did the ethnic studies story, I forget who published that, but he was not even mentioned. He was not asked to donate an article. And I had to say what he did, but it was just it was it made me on the defensive. It made me angry. It makes it made me feel very isolated to see how we were treated and how the stereotypes were perpetuated. And just one other quick thing at the beginning of every semester, I would ask students to write stereotypes on the board. No, I'm sorry. I would ask them to write on a piece of paper with no name on it. And then I would put them on the board and the stereotypes ranged from light skin folk to dark skin folk. The light skin folk lights and Chinese and maybe Japanese Portuguese or whatever, they had the least damaging stereotypes. I mean, they might not be fun, but it didn't hinder their access to society and their progress and their possible success. Whereas for the darker people, be it Filipinos, be it Polynesians. And of course, we were at the bottom, African Americans. We fit into those stereotypes of not being successful, being violent. We know all those negative stereotypes. And it was appalling to me, even from 1971 all the way until after 2000, 2005, 2006, that those same stereotypes would come back again and again, whether it's family or the media, very often it's the media own insecurities, whatever. It just placed us in a lower stratosphere or status or possibilities, a possibility seem limited by those stereotypes. And I'm sure that they still exist. I've long retired. Yeah. Well, you know, I always mention to people that sometimes you feel invisible. They just don't see you. They see you, but they don't want to acknowledge you. And we have so many positive role models. You know, we're not just talking about the bad. We have, you know, Stacey Abrams, Kamala Harris. We have our first African American, first lady, Michelle Obama. And we are aware of this. We are aware of the positive, but it's just not enough. You know, never justify your truth. And Daphne, I want to ask you this question. What types of troops have been ascribed to black women to justify blatant disrespect of our minds and bodies? Well, we were talking about stereotypes, negative stereotypes and images that the media portrays and that too far too many people eat up like propaganda. But one comes to mind of Michelle Obama, who is one of the most brilliant, beautiful, proudly black, female powerhouses and an attorney to boot when she was maligned by certain people and she was referred to as a gorilla by someone who was in the media. Now, to me, to refer to her as a gorilla is very stereotypical and negative, but she surpasses all of that. She's a superstar. She's written one of the books, most beautiful books about being a black female and going on to a position of power and using the power wisely as the first lady. But yet it's these haters. They don't see the brilliance and what she has to offer and what she can offer to the world. Instead, they want to just malign her full of hatred. But she rolls above it. What did Maya Angelou say? You just rise above it. Oh, she said it. Michelle Obama is the one that said it, right? You know, we rise, yep. Yeah, we rise and keep rising. And, you know, that's just one example of some of the hate and the negative stereotypes and the negative vibrations that a lot of, in my opinion, racist people subscribe to. Those who succeed and succeed very well. Oh, what does she say? She said, when they go low, you go high. High. I just want to jump in. I just want to jump in and say one, one quick thing. And that is the Department of Education and the education that people get here in the islands, in particular, but all over the country, our contributions, our successes, our inventions, our incredibly long history back before, you know, Egypt and, of course, the whitewashing of Egypt to make everyone think that Egypt was all white. These these things are not taught and but rather those negative stereotypes slip in. I think that we have to put the feet to the fire, their feet to the fire to incorporate another kind of African-American history. Forget all this stuff about what's it called? Critical risk theory. I mean, that's just that's just not right. I can't say all things. Yeah, I cannot say it on. Yeah, I hear you, but you know, you you are so right. And and before we go, I just want to let our sister viewers know about walking on eggshells, walking on eggshells. And this is something that we have been doing for so long. And that is very quickly, Sequoia. Tell us about when and where for walking on eggshells. And the panel discussion on Saturday. This is a Pico Dance Arts Project. We are NEA and Map Fund grant funded. We won this. We pitched a proposal about navigating through spaces through the intersectional elements that Kimberly Crenshaw, you know, principles that brought forth through Black women, racism, sexism, LGBTQ plus issues, all intersectional, all through a performance arts installation format. I will be at Arts at Mark's Garage, March 4th through 5th, 7 and 9 p.m. Look for the marketing and actually Saturday, we I will be leading a panel to further discuss this topic about Black women navigating through Black female spaces. And my guest panelists are here. Yeah, constructed white female spaces in my Daphne and Catherine will be there on that panel as will be Cynthia Michelle, the photographer, and we have Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, sisters in power in Hawaii, who are our organizational partner and drumming African drumming by Baba Sango. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, ladies. You know, I'm glad we're having this. We're taking this discussion further on Saturday. Never justify your truth and Daphne, Sequoia and Catherine. Thank you so much for your wisdom, Queens. I'm enjoying this. My name is Sharon Thomas Yarbrough. Thank you for tuning in to Sister Power Aloha.