 Okay, welcome everybody. Welcome to the March 19th, open for anti-racism monthly webinar. We are excited to see you here. We're excited about the speakers today. But before we get into that, I do want to take a moment to acknowledge the tragic shooting in Georgia of Asians and Asian Americans. It's a powerful and horrible reminder that racism comes in many forms. And our work to be anti-racist and to educate people about anti-racism is more important than ever. So please keep our Asian, Asian American Pacific Islander brothers and sisters in mind today. So with that, welcome and let's go to the next slide. We're going to do introductions first and then we'll do a little bit of an overview of CCC OER. And then we've got two Dynamite speakers today about two Dynamite organizations, first at the African American Male Education Network and Development or AMEND and Whites for Racial Equity and Educators for Equity. We'll share some upcoming events and then open things up for questions and answers. I should back up though and say hi everybody. My name is James Glopagrossclag. I'm your moderator today. I'm with College of the Canyons and one of the co-leads on the open for education, open for anti-racism program together with my longtime partner in crime, Una Daly. Una, you want to say hi? Hey everyone. Glad that you could join us today. We're really excited to have Trevor and Anita with us. So enjoy. And we also want to give a give a special welcome and shout out to our fantastic course developers and facilitators of the OFAR course. Kim Gru and Joy Shoemake. Kim, you want to say hi? Hello everyone. And Joy, are you here? I'm here. Hi. Really great to be with all of you. Thanks so much. Great. Thank you guys for all the work that you've done with our participants. Okay, next slide please, Liz. So today we have again these two Dynamite speakers. First, we'll hear from Trevor Brackett, who is a counselor and associate professor at Pasadena City College. One of us, one of us community college folks. And he is, pardon me, again with the African-American male education network and development. And he is a co-advised, he's a development co-advisor for that project. And Anita Crawley, who is co-founder and instructor with the Whites for Equity and the Whites for Racial Equity programs. And Anita is a, she'll tell you more about herself and her path in her presentation, but she's a long time colleague in community college work specifically in the distance education world. And with that next slide, we'll share a little bit about CCCOER, our organizing organization for this project. That's the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, which is, of which Una is the director. The mission of CCCOER is to expand the adoption of high quality open educational resources, support faculty choice, foster regional OER leadership, and the ultimate goal for all of this work is to improve student equity and access. Next slide, please. And the Open for Anti-Racism Project, for those of you who did not participate in our cohort and are joining us for this webinar today, let's remind, let's let you know a bit about that project. That is, this is a one-year program to explore how faculty can use OER and Open Pedagogy to make their teaching more anti-racist. Our faculty participants completed a one-month course created and facilitated by Joy and Kim that taught about anti-racist pedagogy and linked that to Open Educational Resources and Open Pedagogy. You can see that the first cohort of participants came from 17 California colleges all over the state and represented here. Can we get the next slide, please, Liz? There we go. Okay. So without any further ado, we're going to turn this over to Trevor Brackett with Amen. And I'm catching myself to not say amen. When I see the logo, I always put the two in there. So Trevor can correct us on that one. So we're going to turn this over to Trevor. Go ahead and share screen, Trevor. Perfect. Good morning. I guess I could good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all so much first and foremost for being here and being a participant of this webinar truly means a lot. Like James said, my name is Trevor Brackett, my counselor, associate professor over at Pasadena City College. But also, I'm also an executive board member with the men, African American Education Network Development. A lot of people around the system call it A2 men, but we like to be referred as a man. So James, thank you so much for forgetting that, right? I truly appreciate that. Definitely, first and foremost, I just really just have to have my thoughts and prayers out to our Asian American population. It's really just seeing what's transpiring. It's just been devastating. And just throughout the last couple of days, just meeting with the board of a man. And so we just really just want to let everyone, you know, all of our Asian brothers and sisters know that a man, we stand here behind you 110%. And whatever y'all need, please feel free to reach out to us. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen really quick and where you are. Guys can see? Good. All right. Perfect. So this here really quick. This is the board of a man. We were comprised of individuals coming from, we have counselors within our actual board member, Dr. Brian Breeland. We have, you know, presidents and I believe we have three presidents. That's on the part of the board as well. And we also have vice presidents, deans and and professors as well. Some of the work that we do with the man is focused on working with some of our African American students within the California Community College system. And really try to do that by transforming the minds of our African American males as well as try to work with changing and altering the curriculum within the California Community College system. We're very, very passionate about what we do. We have over 20 charters and more applications for the California Community Colleges to apply for a men's student charter, which is in, you know, in my opinion, I'm going to be a little biased. But, you know, I think it's been doing, we've been doing for non-advisor, you know, over at my institution, just really just seeing the growth of the minds of the African American males as we know a lot of them are disproportionately impacted. So just really just trying to, you know, increase their success rate and persistence rates in the California Community College system. What I like to do, you know, I was getting, I got with James and so if you have any questions, just please feel free to write them in the chat. As I'm talking that way, I could kind of address. I'm James, and if you could please let me know the questions, you know, that way I could address anything that we want to, that needs to be addressed. Now, a couple of things that I did was when we talked about anti-racism and everything of that nature, so I got with myself and said, okay, Tre, what can I say? You know, I just want to just keep it real, right? So I just want to just be real about what, you know, potentially needs to be done within our, within our institutions to where we could kind of, you know, hopefully, you know, change it up a little bit. Number one is really decolonizing the curriculum, right? And just really just trying to make our students, you know, African-American male students and students of color, you know, feel more comfortable, right, within your actual course. So I think that's, that's critically, critically important. And so how are we doing this? How could we be able to do this, right? So I kind of did a presentation and, well, it's not going over. I'm sorry, I'm trying to change the slide. That always messes me up when I'm in, when I'm in Zoom. You got to click on, click on the presentation and, and then forward. Change, you want to say something? There we go. Good. Okay. Okay. So some of the four elements, the main elements, in which I would like to, you know, whenever I'm discussing or we're working with, you know, individuals when it comes to working with African-American males within our classroom settings, and to, I mean, this all goes down to, you know, trying to break that barrier, right? And number one is, is challenging African-American males with within our, within our classroom, right? So there's some of the things that a lot of them throughout the state and we challenged them. We expect them to be excellent men first, right? And then be potential, you know, you know, fathers and husbands and everything of that nature. So this is some of the, you know, since it's a graph here. So having high expectations for those students, challenging those students, supporting those students, right? With different support services in which we have on different campuses, you know, just, you know, letting them know about EOPS and TRIO and all these other different programs, right? So just really kind of get to know the actual student. And last but not least is authentic care right here, right? So, you know, I like to say that, you know, a lot of some people think that African-American males or, you know, just African-American people just think, you know, that's because you're not Black, I don't want to connect with that person. However, you know, what we do is we teach, you let our students know, hey, you know, if that individual is working, you know, is working for you and want the best for you to go, you know, that's potentially be a great mentor for you, no matter what color, you know, that individual skin may be. And so that's some of the things that we definitely try to instill within a lot of our mentees, you know, with the men. Because we know we show that authentic care. A lot of these students run through law for you, right? So that's critically important there. Some of the things I kind of want to talk about as well is, you know, just, you know, some of this, what are we doing as a system, right? As a community kind of what are we doing to try to change, you know, the stigma, I should say, you know, in, you know, working with African American males. And so that's one of the things, some questions that I wanted to ask. So we can get you guys involved with that, as far as the different institutions that you are, what are you all doing? How do we change, like, I guess I got my notes here, how do we change the policy and the system structures within our actual institutions as well? What are some systems and structures that your institutions are changing as far as creating, and if you haven't been thinking about that, just kind of think about that process of what it is that you all could be doing. That's critically important. Also, one was the last time you look at some of your disaggregated data when it comes to, you know, working with African American, you know, population, you know, students of color population as well. I talked about, you know, what are some policies that you all need to do, right? Also, what I want, let me go through it, man. Okay, here we go. So some other advice or things that we do is, you know, facilitate relationships between African American male students from underrepresented backgrounds and faculty, staff at your institution, will help them get, you know, acclimates to college life, facilitating relationship, building between faculty, staff and students, facilitating academic and social success, of students at your institution. So it's lots of things that we do with the men, and so these are just some basics, you know, things that I kind of want to share with you all. And I don't want to take up all the time because I could, you know, with this, but I kind of wanted to share it, you know, with Anita. And again, I like for my stuff to be, you know, live and direct. So just, I like to make everything interactive. So if at any time, just feel free to ask any questions. Excellent. Thank you, Trevor. Appreciate that. I'm going to take a quick peek at the chat here. We don't have any questions right now, but there may be questions that come up in the chat. And whoops, I've got my camera off. My internet is struggling a little bit here today. So I put my turn my video off. Thank you so much, Trevor. Appreciate that. We'll keep our eyes on the chat. And it's a powerful, you know, for me as a powerful example of sort of a grassroots effort to help our students, you know, it's not not waiting, waiting for somebody else to come along and do it. You and your colleagues have put the program together. And as Una noted in the chat, there are 20 colleges around our community college system that already have chapters. So make sure you find out if your college is one of those and connect with them. And if they are not, then please connect with Trevor and see if you want to get a chapter started on your campus. Because at a certain point, this is this is well, this is why you're here. This is work that we have to do ourselves. So now we are going to turn it over to our friend, Anita Crawley, to talk about another grassroots effort and organization that she is doing herself. And she'll talk more about that in a second. So Anita, go ahead and take it away and you're feel free and you're free to share your screen. Hi, everyone. I hate to start out by arguing with James, but I'm definitely not doing this myself. I'm Anita Crawley. Let me share my screen and start my presentation. Trevor, I wanted to say to you how to thank you for what you're doing to start out with when I was counseling back in the dark ages, these services did not exist. And just as an aside, one of the colleagues I'm going to be talking about and I started out by talking about curriculum infusion. I'm going to embarrass myself right out of the box. We did a presentation for ACPA National about curriculum infusion. Nobody knew what that meant, but we're taking our counseling courses and we're trying to make them welcoming to all of our students. We had my daughter, two of our colleagues and one person attend that session, a national conference with thousands of people. So that I would say that that presentation was maybe in the mid-90s. So things have come along the way since then. Anyway, let me start with my prepared comments. One of this is, I'm sorry, I didn't, let me start at the beginning. Community and college, secret sauce is what I'm going to be talking about. And it's a play on words because my entire 30 plus year career has been with community colleges. I adore community colleges, three states. So one of the things that I love about my career is that it frequently leads into my personal life. And those blurred boundaries have made both all the better. Let me start by telling you where we're going in this, in this presentation. I'm going to start talking about myself. That's not a typical subject for an OFAR webinar, but I do so as an illustration of how folks with white skin privilege walk through this world. Mingling my personal and professional background has led me to co-found two organizations, Whites for Racial Equity and Educators for Equity and Justice. My focus at home, at work, in the community is all about the role of white people in the struggle to dismantle racism, including what happened in and around Atlanta this week. We created this problem as white people and it is our responsibility to take it down. So let me take you on a pre-tour of my journey as a white person. And I will be brief because I have been around for a long time and I'm not going to tell you every last detail, but I will tell you that my consciousness of being other began in elementary school when it was clear that I was different than just about all the other kids in my school because I wasn't in school on the high holidays. Around about third grade kids started asking questions and thought it was cool that I didn't have to come to school, but for me it made me different and I did not think that was cool. Granted, the feeling of not belonging has been a microscopic percentage of my life, but it did begin my awareness of difference. I've always been pleased that I attended a high school where probably 20 to 30 percent of the students were Black or Asian Pacific Islander, the San Mateo High School, for those of you who are local. The irony was that internally the school was totally segregated. I only had one Black student in my college prep classes. The attendance boundaries changed after my freshman year and I could have chosen to go to a school with almost exclusively white students, but I stayed put. Moving on to college, in my undergraduate program, race relations in my sociology major was by far my favorite. I sometimes think that if I had to redo I would become a sociology professor. I marched in the streets of Eugene, Oregon at a time when I aligned more with the thinking of Kwame Toure Stokely-Karmukov than I did with Martin Luther King. I was a bit of a rebel. My first professional job was in Knoxville, Tennessee where I worked as a social worker first for the Department of Child and Family Services and then for the Knoxville Housing Authority. I was recruited for the Housing Authority job by my first African-American supervisor. I have had three. The secretary and I were the only white folks on the staff. This California girl did not understand nor did I have the skills to challenge Knoxville's white supremacy culture. I didn't have the vocabulary at the time, but I was certainly aware of how different issues of racial justice and equal treatment were in Tennessee than anywhere else I had lived. I remember thinking when I later learned the word culture shock that I felt more culture shock when moving to Tennessee than during the entire year and a half that I had spent living in Berlin, Germany. Culture shock is defined as the feeling of disorientation experienced by someone who is subjected to an unfamiliar culture, way of life, or set of values and attitudes. That's what Tennessee was for me. When working in the Housing Authority, I went out to lunch with an African-American male colleague of mine. We thought it was funny to make people think that we were a couple. I didn't realize until later that this could have put him in danger. Another African-American colleague's son who had a driver's license came over to work in my yard. At the time, I did not understand why his father accompanied him. In retrospect, I think his parents were concerned for his safety in my white neighborhood or may have been concerned about whether or not he was safe with me. In Tennessee, pervasive racial comments outraged me, but I did not have the courage nor the skills to interrupt them. My husband had a clerkship in Memphis and when it was time for him to look for a permanent job, I insisted that it be in north of the Mason Dixon line. We moved to a suburb outside of Chicago. Several years later, we moved from our first house in Illinois as our oldest child was about to begin school. Illinois had just come out with school report cards, so I could look at the demographics and I was able to spread all of these report cards out on my living room floor and choose a neighborhood where I knew my kids would go to school with other kids from diverse backgrounds. I think it worked. For six bridesmaids, three were women of color from high school. In the mid-90s, while working as a counselor at the community college in Illinois, an African-American colleague and I created a COTA diversity one-on-one course. We would introduce ourselves in one of two ways. One of us would choose the traditional way that instructors introduced themselves and the other would use our principal identities as our introduction. For example, I would say that I am white, currently able-bodied, Jewish woman with more than my share of educational and economic privilege. Class continues to be one of the fastest to fill in that college and my role in its creation is the piece of my career of which I am most proud. A couple of years later, I got interested in online instruction and online student support. Yes, technology was the bright shiny object at the turn of the century. I had to choose one area as a specialty and it is my white privilege that made it easy for me to just follow that online learning pathway. For the next 20 years, I work primarily in online learning, only occasionally dabbling in equity, diversity, and inclusion work. My California community college career started as the Chief Student Services Officer for the online education initiative launch team and ended this past just this January after facilitating the online learning grant at MPC. So in 2012 is when I came back to California. I call it coming home and I came home. It's kind of a play on words because I came home to California, but I also came, eventually came home to my true passion, which is equity work. And that's what I'm going to talk to you about next. First, I'm going to talk about Whites for Racial Equity. In 2015, I found myself at an inaugural meeting of what has become Whites for Racial Equity. It's a Monterey County local organization. I was invited to this meeting because I had been attending presentations facilitated by Angelus and Caroline Haskell about their book. I highly recommend this book, by the way. Combined destinies, Whites Sharing Grief about Racism. From then I learned that all of us are damaged by racism and our humanity as white folks depends on doing what we can to dismantle it. I've taken that grief seriously. At this meeting, I leaned over to a gentleman sitting next to me, turns out it was Anne's husband, and offered to create a website for the organization that was developing. And I've been serving on the Whites for Racial Equity Steering Committee ever since. I'm going to tell you a little bit about this organization by reading from the website. Whites for Racial Equity is the Monterey County affiliate of SIRGE. SIRGE stands for Showing Up for Racial Justice. SIRGE moves white folks into accountable action as part of a multiracial movement through community organizing, mobilizing, and education. WRE has monthly meetings which are designed for white people. I hesitate because we've gotten pushed back about that and you might have some questions, but let me explain why it's so important for white people to do the work that we need to do. We take risks and we dig deep as we examine our privilege both critically and personally. The Saturday meetings really are about the self-examination and learning skills and main commitment to action. These meetings are not designed for people of color, as it can be painful for those of you who are people of color to listen to white people struggle and stumble. So often, when there are people of color in the room, white folks ask you to educate us, to speak for everyone in your group. And through that behavior, white people wind up adding to the pain that we have been causing for centuries. So that's how we respond to the pushback of the white's only Saturday meetings. WRE is not a destination but a springboard. So it is not a replacement for multiracial activism. In fact, the people that have been attending our Saturday meetings have gotten involved in a variety of Monterey County organizations. For example, the criminal justice system, education, arts, local governments, the ad community, very big in Monterey County, student social service agencies, and many more. In addition to the monthly meetings, WRE holds other gatherings that are multiracial, such as a monthly book discussion or movie discussion, panel discussions, and other types of training. We co-sponsor several events throughout the year with various organizations, and some of these are led by people of color. We provide a weekly e-blast, list events in Monterey and surrounding communities, share resources on our website, and use the WRE Facebook page to encourage more spontaneous communication. We'd love to have you on our mailing list. And if you go to the website, there's a sign up for that e-blast. It's quite amazing. One of my colleagues does that. For our annual fundraising event, we are Secret Santa's to the children served by the Village Project, the local organization. For our December meeting, we celebrate the year and provide a year-end report, and I've shared a link to that on this slide to the 2020 report. And you can find additional information about specifically what we did last year. Okay. How's our time? Oh, we're good. Let me go ahead and talk about educators for equity and justice, and then perhaps there'll be some questions. In April of 2020, so before George Floyd, my Diversity 101 course colleague, the accessibility specialist from the San Illinois Community College and I formed a partnership to teach online equity courses. Let me tell you a little bit about who we are. You know about me, so I'm not going to tell you any more about me. In addition to the 30-year friendship, the strength of this partnership is supported by our diverse professional and life experiences. Stephanie is an associate dean and professor in the Graduate School of Education at a four-year school, teaching multicultural education courses, and she will be teaching the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the classroom course for E4EJA. Pasquale is a recently retired community college professor and accessibility specialist, and will be teaching accessibility courses. I add my counseling, online teaching and learning course and web development and technology to the mix, and we'll be teaching the whiteness courses, which I'll tell you a little bit more about in a minute. So Stephanie's lived experiences is as an African American woman. Pasquale's lived experience is as a person with a physical disability and a Latina with an immigrant background. Our shared values for equity, diversity, and inclusion and our passion for social justice are just a small part of what we have in common. So what do we do? I mentioned equity courses. Additionally, we offer webinars and customized trainings in the area of our free specialty. So I've linked to the website here on this slide. Hop over there and learn more about our courses and what we do. I want to spend just a few minutes talking about the whiteness courses. I'm pretty excited about this. I see this as a series of three courses. So for the white folks in the audience, whiteness 101 leads folks through a self-reflective process of understanding their life journey through a whiteness lens. Participants will name their principal identities, understand the advantages that have been afforded to them, because the first thing other people see when you walk in a room is your white skin, and examine their white identity development. The application component of this course, each course has one, will provide an opportunity for four participants to consider the changes they want to make to their attitudes, behaviors, and actions in their work and personal lives. This course addresses intra-personal racism, lots of self-reflection. The second, making implicit bias and microaggressions visible is the second course. It's one thing to understand that we all have hidden biases that translate into behaviors and unintentionally harm others. For me, the important thing is for us to be able to identify those biases and interrupt the behavior before it results in harm to others. This course, so this course emphasizes intra-personal racism. And then the third course, anti-racism, allyship, and actionist practice. Participants will deepen their understanding of intra and interpersonal racism by delving into topics such as white exceptionalism, white saviorism, tokenism, optical allyship, really an important concept, and more. So the goal of this course is to encourage white folks to adopt a commitment to anti-racist practices throughout your life and to take actions that support dismantling our white supremacist society. This course, and the other two do as well, moves folks into dismantling racism at an institutional and systemic level. I'm a big believer that we have to start with ourselves before we can come to any table as a better person. And for me, it's a lifelong process. In conclusion, in clothing, I've shared with you examples of what's led me to what I'm doing today. What I've not shared are the many times that I've made mistakes and harmed people of color. I'm aware of a few, but I know there are many others for which I am unaware. This thing I can do is to establish authentic relationships with people of color and work for their trust so they feel comfortable telling me when I have stepped into it, which I will inevitably do. Most importantly, I must listen without defensiveness and learn how to repair the damage I've done. For me, relationship building, and I love that Trevor mentioned it as well, and activism are lifelong practices. And I see this as a part of my life forever. Thanks so much for listening. This is where you can reach me. Any comments? Thank you, Anita. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. Your personal testimony is really powerful and it's inspiring how you've turned that self-awareness into action and into further education. So while our participants here throw some questions into the chat, let me go back to Trevor. Trevor, people in the chat are raving about your annual conference. Could you say a few more words about your annual conference and how and when people could sign up for that? Absolutely. Absolutely. Number one, next year is going to be our 15th year anniversary. So we plan on doing big things next year for the 15th anniversary. We've got some great speakers in mind, keynote speakers in mind of who we're going to bring to amend. We're even thinking about getting a bigger venue because we're expecting, I mean, we had over a thousand people over this last conference on Zoom. So if you haven't been to a mini conference in person and or Zoom, obviously now, I mean, it's really, really, I mean, we just, we try to make a memorable experience for many of our individuals, you know, for the individuals that come, you know, as far as having the DJ there and having, you know, good breakout sessions and good food and just the energy. And so, but, you know, what I hear from a lot of students, you know, black male students is they've never thought that a group of black men could actually be on a board and work together to provide, you know, an advocate for them. And so, you know, we're using in suits and, you know, they said they never see black men in suits and just just things like that. So we really, really take pride in what we do in amend, you know, on campus, off campus, and you know, in everything of that nature. So next year's conference is usually the first week of March. We do, we haven't finalized the actual dates yet, but it's definitely going to be the first week of March, beginning like on a Wednesday. And we also have what was great is that we start implementing the Women's Learning Institute as well for, you know, for all my female, you know, women colleagues as well. And that's on a Wednesday. That's by Dr. Dean, Dean Joe Curry. She usually moderates that it switches up every year. So it's not just for the brothers, you know, so we definitely try to get some of our sisters in there as well to, you know, to, you know, for professional development. And it's been, it was very, very well attended this year. We had over 300 women throughout the system in attendance there. Yeah. So, and again, I was supposed to share the link, James, I don't know if we have the links, if you want to start a charter on your casual campus. We got that in the chat. Okay, cool. So, and again, so for those, and I kind of really didn't get into it. I didn't want to take up too much time in regards to the student charter. However, we have our charter advisors. We have actually our charter coordinator as well. So what we do is we send individuals out to your prospective campuses to meet with the VPs, the presidents and everything of that nature to kind of talk about, you know, talk about them and talk about the benefits of having a student charter within your actual institutions. I kind of took a step back from that. But yeah, so we actually hired somebody full of time now to do that to go out there to meet with institutions. So, but please feel free to reach out at any given moment. Terrific. Thank you, Trevor. I know Deborah had a question that she wanted to ask the audio. Deborah, go ahead. Thanks. My question is for Anita. First of all, I really appreciate you sharing your personal story. So thank you for doing that. There's something that always has bugged me and I'm just really looking for some more understanding. And I understand why your Saturday meetings, the group's Saturday meetings are white only. My question is, though, what puzzles me is how do white folks get to understand my experience without experiencing me? Without requiring you to do the labor? No, no, no, that's not my question. No, not without. So it has been my experience that the only way that a white person can experience a color person, right, a person of color is through a personal interaction with that person and that person's life and that person's experiences. And so what I am curious about is in a homogeneous group of all white people who have all white experiences, understanding that there is a safe space to talk through some things and should be, what I am confused about is how they get the experience of a person of color to have a better understanding of that person. Yeah, for sure, Deborah. My response is that the Saturday meeting is just, it's the springboard. You've got to go somewhere else because this is just the beginning. This is just a place for white folks to realize the harm that we've caused. And the next step is to expand education and, to me, the best way is through relationship. Because for me, without relationship, you don't have empathy. When I see what happens in Atlanta, it hits my heart deeply because I think of my friends who are Asian Pacific Islanders and the pain that this week is causing them. And that empathy has got to be developed. I don't know where we go from here without that. And that's relationship. And so it's start on a Saturday meeting, figure out your niche, figure out what sector is resonating for you and then take action. So without action, I think it's self-indulgent. If all, I'm going to be really candid here, but if all folks do is attend our Saturday meetings, that is just, that is just more white centeredness. Yeah. And it doesn't change the world. So you've got to go, you've got to get out and take action. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate your, I appreciate your response in here. Thank you very much. Thank you, Deborah. Yeah. So let's see if there are any more questions or comments from our, from everybody here in the audience. Go ahead and type a question into the chat or feel free to unmute. And please feel free to speak freely as well. I mean, I'm all about interacting, you know, conversations like I think it's good for us to get, you know, comfortable having uncomfortable conversations. So, you know, if this, you know, my thought process with this anti-racism, you know, with this webinar is let's, let's keep it real. So please just feel free to just speak freely is my point and I'll answer whatever. Thank you. I see Monica has her hand up ready to ask a question. Thank you. And I don't know if it's a question or a comment or me not getting it. Sometimes I feel that we exclude ourselves based on our own color, right? I feel comfortable talking with anyone. It could be any color, any background, anything. And I usually, when I don't know about certain cultures, I ask to learn without stereotyping, without thinking that someone who speaks with an accent comes from certain area, or without thinking that somebody who is a person of color could be low income, you know? So why is it that we have this, this obsession with putting ourselves in little boxes? Wouldn't it be better to just mix everyone and learn from each other? Because you have good people and bad people of all colors, right? So at times, I don't know. I feel, I feel like we, we just don't, don't need to segregate ourselves and put, you know, I am a Latino. I will go with a Latino group. I will, you know, exclude this or that. I'm very confused. Great, great, great question. So, and this is a perfect question, Monica, and this is what really excites me about having both Trevor and Anita here together, right? Obviously, Trevor's organization is African American males working with African American males, and now, now women as well. And Anita's organization is predominantly working with whites. So Trevor, Trevor and Anita, which one do you want to start? Well, I will just, my first reaction, Monica, is this is so hard. I can't, it's hard for me to speak. I'm, I've got this white skin. But I feel like sometimes if I was, you know, this is not appropriate for me to respond to at all, Trevor. Absolutely. I feel like that's, but just doesn't make any sense for me to say it. No worries. I think that people just need to be more, you know, open minded, you know, and to really, I know, I want to just, you know, just, just, just be authentic, be authentic. I think I like people not, not open minded, Monica. And, you know, you kind of said that, you know, you don't really have that, but it's not too many people like, you know, like, like you that, in my opinion, that don't feel that way. For example, you know, I think that we sometimes do things because, or we say things because it's what's supposed to be said at that particular moment. For example, like the George, we talked about George Floyd, like, you know, when George Floyd with that whole thing happening, it was a big thing, right? And then literally 30 days later, nobody said anything about it as far as what individuals were out where I was at and just throughout, you know, so it's kind of like everything just kind of just, but before it was, oh, we need to do this, we just done a solidarity with the black community and this and that. And so, you know, and then it just kind of just disappears. And maybe some of my, you know, my elders, you know, on here, that's African American, you know, could kind of chime in on this. And I just think for me being, being a younger African American, it's kind of like they, we say what we have to say so it can look good in the media, it can look good in our perspective, you know, places, but then it just kind of just, just disappear. So, and I think that what we, you know, really put our mouth, you know, what I said, what was the old cliche, I'll put your money, where your mouth is, you know, and just really just doing things and creating different, you know, different things for African Americans, you know, I'm speaking to students, you know, primarily, and making sure that we see, you know, the transformation and the success rate amongst, you know, our students. So I'm trying to be as political as possible with that, with that politically correct as possible with that question. But that's, that's, that's what I think in my opinion. Thank you, Trevor. And we've got, we've got people queued up who also want to respond. You, you and first and then Elizabeth wanted to respond. Okay. Thank you very much for this forum. And, you know, just kind of a response to what's happened in Atlanta, how the carceral state rushed to minimize this violence to a perceived mental crisis, or simply a bad day underscores the reality that our fight against anti-Asian racism is connected to the fight for Black lives. Anti-Asian racism spans over centuries in the U.S. from the exploitation of Chinese row of workers, their lynching, race riots, targeting Asian illegal occupation of the Philippines, anti-Asian immigrant laws, starting from the beginning of the 19th century, incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, multiple and endless U.S. imperialist wars across Asia to the ever-increasing Islamophobic violence against Muslim communities since 911. And therefore, I think that the work that Anita is doing is really important because come on, white people, know your own history. Bravo. Thank you. And, you know, particularly here in California, Elizabeth wanted to also respond. So I'm sorry I missed the first half here. So if it was already said, that's fine. But, you know, I think that the answer to the question of why you would have a couple of different groups, this is not saying exclusively, you know, have groups that are affinity groups and then have groups that are, you know, for white people to do some internal work they need to do. It's saying it's part of a multifaceted reply, you know, to deal with different needs. And so if you look back at the stages of racial identity development, there's a different set of stages that people of color are in that has to actually emphasize partly healing, racial healing, healing of internalized racism, which from the anti-racism book is like the worst form of Black and Black violence could be on, you know, yourself from internalized racism, for example. So that's a different journey dealing with different stages of identity development if you're a person of color in a white supremacist society versus if you're a white person who may begin at the stage of development where you don't even know that there's a problem or agree that there's a situation that needs to be resolved and people need to then be met where they're at, right? Or we just end up in these groups where we exclude them as like the, I don't know, the up there and we don't bring them forward. So I think really what the approach requires is that you have to have healing and affinity spaces for people who understand each other's struggle and that's the purpose of having maybe some person of color affinity groups here and there. And then for white people to kind of educate other white people and be able to move forward, it's not saying exclusively, absolutely there are also spaces to work together, have shared dialogues, et cetera. It's incredibly important but just getting through some of the different stages requires different approaches. And what I've recommended at my school and my community college where I work is actually having three tracks for allies and people who do not identify as persons of color to be able to meet them where they're at and then something else for healing, you know, for individuals who've been experiencing the white supremacy culture in our institution and need to be able to support each other through it. It's not saying white people don't support them too, it's that they need to do the work too. Thank you. I need to add to that but many times you have people of color that are prejudiced against our own. So when we talk about African Americans, there is such a huge variety. You have people who are not first generation, very wealthy people, never experienced low income upbringing. Same thing with Latinos, you know, sometimes you have Latinos who are very poor, others very wealthy, well educated, not so when we talk about that that's my confusion, right? Because we're talking about white as if they were in a different status which they are because they are the majority and the historical prejudice that has been imposed to the culture. But every time I had someone oppressing me in my career, it was actually someone from my own background. So how do we fix that without blaming everyone? Because we have some people who are really trying hard to understand and then when we go and express how we feel, it's like are we pushing them aside or making them feel guilty for something that they don't feel? Thank you, Monica. You have definitely started us down this rich conversation. I think many of us could stay here all afternoon but we do have to keep an eye on the clock. Robert, why don't you respond as well? Ask you to keep it brief, Robert, and then we're going to move on. Thank you. Thank you. I was going to say a lot of what Elizabeth already said. Elizabeth hit a lot of those points beautifully. It's a multifaceted approach. We need those affinity groups so that folks can talk with people that they are more familiar with and we need those groups that have a very diverse background so folks can collaborate with each other. So she was right on point with that. But Monica's follow-up question just now reminds us about how all of us, no matter what background we have, all of us need to learn how to heal from our own racist wounds. We all can be racist. We all can be misogynistic. We all can be ableist and we all can exhibit all of these types of things and we have to unlearn all of these things in those affinity groups, in those diverse groups, in the spaces in which we're working with students, colleagues, our families. We all have to unlearn these things. It's not just one particular group. Thank you, Robert. Appreciate that. Can I just jump in? We do need to move on. I apologize. Let's say if we still want to hang out after the one o'clock hour, fantastic. We'll be here. We can continue a very rich discussion. So for now we're going to go back and just give a sneak peek of what else is coming up. I'm going to turn this over to Una. All right. Thank you, James, and sorry to interrupt such a rich conversation. Just wanted to mention that we do have several more webinars coming up in our series. Next month we have the pleasure of having Dr. Frank Harris III, whose education professor at San Diego State is a co-director of the Community College Equity Assessment Lab, works with Cora Learning, and I understand that he's also a dissertation advisor for Trevor. So we're just thrilled to have him. And then in May and June we're going to invite our participants from the Open for Anti-Racism program to share a little bit about their experience this semester and what's happening in their classroom. So excited to have you all join us for that. And this is just a little bit more detail about Dr. Frank Harris's presentation. It's going to be on employee, equity-minded, and culturally affirming teaching and learning practices to advance institutional equity. And all of you who are here today are automatically registered for that webinar. So just do join us on April 16th. Back to you, James. Great. Thank you, Una. So real quick, if you want to learn more about the connection with open educational resources, this is a real work that we're doing is, you know, how do we change what we're seeing in terms of racism and racist structures in our education? One way that we are delving into is utilizing open educational resources. So here on the screen you see a number of ways to learn more about open educational resources. And if you are really interested in OER, the key professional development opportunity is to get on the CCC OER email list. That is the really rich, rich, rich source for a lot of great conversation. Next slide, please, Liz. And okay, so now we're going to go, even one more slide now, Liz. And if you want more information about the Open for Anti-Racism program or CCC OER or OER in general, here's all of our contact information. Please give us feedback on this webinar. And with that, we're going to go back, well, we're going to say goodbye to anybody who has to leave. Thank you very much for those who were here and do have to leave. One more acknowledgement to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation who is making possible the Open for Anti-Racism program. Great, thanks to them. And for those of you who want to stick around for a little bit, let's go back. Hasna was next up in the queue for commenting. So Hasna, if you're still here, please feel free to unmute. Thank you so much, James. So I just wanted to share, I put on the chat too, that white hegemony and supremacy are synonymous. So when we think about colonialism, we think about supremacy as very synonymous, and it's so ingrained in our communities, especially communities of color, that racism is further perpetuated. So racism did not start with communities of color. Racism started with white hegemony. And because it's being further perpetuated and we're not dismantling the hegemony of whiteness, being the norm, being the dominant racial identity group in our communities, people are therefore continuously marginalized. So I just wanted to share that because I heard some narrative in the discussion that people of color are also racist. That I disagree with, I think that it really comes down to colonialism and white supremacy being so ingrained in our communities that has made us look and it's actually become a framework in our everyday practice, and we don't even realize it, that it's happening unconsciously. And sometimes it's consciously. So I would really encourage you to have that critical consciousness of why. Why did it start? Who is it benefiting? And as you see the what's going on in the world right now, especially in the United States with Asian Americans, African Americans, the Islamophobia, the anti-Semitism, this all comes from the fact that there's a there's a dominant group that is being threatened. They are being threatened because they're no longer getting the hegemonic power. So I would really encourage you to be critically conscious when you think about the power structures between racial identities in our community. Thank you, James. Thank you, Hassan. I appreciate that. I'm going to kick it back to Anita, whom I cut off earlier in one second. What was just said was so important, James. I can hardly I'm just bursting. Well, while you collect your thoughts, Anita, let me let me take a Hassanist comment and maybe do well for sure paraphrase to our particular context in education and as educators. Walking through the campuses of most higher education institutions in the United States, one might just say, hey, I'm a human being walking through this campus. With Hassanist critical consciousness, one can become aware that it's that you're walking through a predominantly white institution that has been created by white people and teaches a white created curriculum. That's the layer that we that not everyone understands at first glance. So, Hassan, thank you for the critical critical component of that. And Anita, over to you to continue what I cut you off from before. So I totally agree with what Hassanist just said. For me, I would love to hear your comments about what is the best way the most effective way to dismantle it. There is no denying that this is about power and fear. Absolutely positively. How do we go? I mean, to me, it's one person at a time one day at a time. But there have to be more effective ways to do this. Or I mean, where we got this is really dangerous time. Yeah, can I respond? Okay, I would say call it out. Call it out. It's going to be uncomfortable, but call it out. Change our policy. As Candy says, we got to look at policy. We got to look at the structural and systemic praxis that has been in place in our institutions, particularly if we're looking at California Community Colleges, who hasn't benefited, rather than looking at disproportionate numbers and data by creating this biological racism about people of color why not reform the system? Rather than looking at them as a deficit base, look at them as an asset base. Look at Latin Billings 2.0 remix and use and apply that cultural pedagogy in our classroom, that cultural revitalizing, cultural sustaining pedagogy in our classroom. We have to create our curriculum based on the lived experiences of our students. And that's how it should have been from the beginning. But unfortunately, this country has a history of enslaving African Americans, indigenous and Mexican Americans, and now Asian Americans, you see that the gliss goes on. And so we need to go back. And we in order to decolonize a system that was never created for people like us, how do we go back and we change that system so that we include the lived experiences? But I think for white co-conspirators, y'all need to really capitalize on the white co-conspirators. Our media does not talk about white co-conspirators. They never talk about the Jane Elliott's, the Mandy Manning, the James Tyson, the Heather Hyer, the Brannlin Toslitz. They never talk about those people because they don't want people to know that we have white co-conspirators. Even in the Black Power movement, Brown Panther movement, there were white people there. No one ever talks about them because they don't want to see, they don't want to display and show that white people have, there have been white people who have supported these movements. And that's another way of hegemony. That's another way of hegemony, controlling. And so I would say, you know, we need to have people in position of power where they can make that change. And that includes not just in the education system, but every time I have a student that comes to my office and says, I want to be a politician and they're a person of color. I'm like, yes, we need more people of color and politician and legislation and lawmaking and education system because we need to go back and reclaim what should have been ours too. 100%. Thank you. So we've got a cue. Kim and then Sharon. Oh, I was just going to quickly say I did a presentation for my team this morning, just about the language we use in our course design. And pardon me for not putting my camera on, I wasn't planning to speak. But we were just talking about how you ostracize students and you, whether intentionally or not exclude students, just surely by the language you choose. And we did look at different educational frameworks. And one of them was the deficit versus the asset lens. You know, we've been trying to quote, fix people at our institutions instead of looking at what we're doing to educate everyone and help everyone learn. And so like even if we self-examine as Anita says, but we can also bring it to our work immediately. And that was one of the things I was going to say earlier because Trevor was asking those questions we can ask to self-examine. And that's one of the things so far is done. We said, you know what, it's great that our colleges all of a sudden have these, you know, statements on our websites now about how we're equity champions. But now we can do something right now in our classrooms to have an immediate impact. And like I said in the chat, we've been having difficult conversations like these in our road for cohort among ourselves, et cetera, because we've created a safe space for people who are on a journey to be more anti-racist or trying to do that. So really exciting stuff today. Thank you, everybody. And thanks for, you know, just let me add that to the conversation because just at a presentation today, my team was blown away and on fire for this. Great. Thank you, Kim. I know Sharon had her hand up, but I don't see her here anymore. Sharon, if you're still here, there you are. Thank you. Thank you. And, Hasna, I'm jumping for joy. And thank you so much for sharing your background information with us. I just wanted to say in this OFAR course, my students are barking because they're having to deal and take a deep dive. I'm an AOJ faculty at Grossmont. They've never had one, a black faculty, never had a black instructor from K through now college. And now they're having to deal with issues relevant to mass incarceration, Jim Crow, the new Jim Crow. And they're questioning why are they having to really take a critical analysis about racism, racial, structural, systematic issues in classrooms, just in my classroom. So obviously, it needs to be broader that everyone, this is everyone's lift. This is not just one faculty on a campus dealing with these issues because then you're going to have a huge revolt when students are having to look at social issues and social injustice. My awakening happened in college. When you leave your parents' residence and you broaden your knowledge, it was Dr. Caranga that did an exercise in my own college experience that had us close our eyes to visualize what Jesus Christ looked like to us versus what was written biblically. And it's a huge contrast. So when you are looking at those things that you're learning in academic institutions, all of our responsibility to provide that opportunity for our students to critically analyze what's happening in their local communities. So when they get those jobs in law enforcement, they are going to be exposed and not taking a one-frame lens and mindset. And when they're having to deal with other cultures, they're already fully aware. So you're going to be able to deal with some of the racism and racist behavior in our law enforcement community. It starts with us. And right now, unfortunately, there are only a few of us doing it. So I just wanted to tell you thank you for the opportunity. But the struggle is real. Thank you, Sharon. Very important points. In addition to your observation about your students never before having had an African American female instructor, the fact that they are balking at the content that you're presenting or the way you're framing the content underscores that all of their previous administration or justice courses were silent on those topics, which is kind of mind blowing. Anybody else in the queue here? Let's see. Anybody else before we have one more short announcement? I want to make sure we hear from anybody else who wants to contribute to the discussion. James, it just sounds like there's a clarion call for courageous conversations on campuses. I mean, it's just that simple. You have to be real complicated, but it's got to be real. Trevor's still here. Yes. Trevor's here. Thank you. So that's gotta be real. Let me make one quick sort of organizational announcement for those of you who are participants in our 0404 cohort. Thanks to Oona's good work. We will have the opportunity coming up for you to participate in a brief video interview in which Hasna can go to town and Sharon can go to town and tell it like it is in those videos. The intention is to create a little promo reel so we can share with others the work that you all are doing so that we hopefully will have the opportunity to get more people involved in this kind of work. So just be on the lookout for that announcement coming from Oona that invitation to participate in some video interviews. Before we close, I want to turn it back to Trevor. Well, let's first Anita and then close with Trevor for any final words? Find your niche and do it. I mean, it's got to be ongoing effort for any hope of dismantling this situation. Thank you. Trevor, bring us home, man. Absolutely. Thank you. And speaking with a couple of my mentors and I told them I was getting ready to do this event and one of the things he said, he said, Trev, he's really high on the system. He said many of our ancestors and our brothers who fought in the Malcolm's, the Martin's, the Marcus Garvey's, they still for some. And he said that but they all died for wanting betterment. And so he said, so what power are we willing to relinquish in our education system that's going to make it safe and equitable and equitable space for African Americans? And I thought about that. I was like, wow. So that's what it's going to take. You know, I mean, often we are in these positions and sometimes we don't want to save us on our minds. But yes, what power are we willing to relinquish to make sure that we see the success of all of our students? So I kind of wanted to sleep in there and just kind of think about that. Thank you, Trevor. Yes, change is hard and threatening to the status quo indeed. Thank you so much. Thank you to everybody for hanging in here and thank you to our presenters for sparking this conversation along with Monica for sparking this conversation. Any final comments? No, thank you. What an amazing webinar. And hope to see you in April with Dr. Frank Harris, who I know is going to be amazing as always. So thanks, everyone. And we continue the journey. Yeah, thanks, everybody. Thank you, Trevor. Thank you, Nita. Keep up the good work. Thank you to all of you for participating and we will see you next month.