 So, my name is Tanya McHenry. I was actually born in Washington. My mom's family has been in the valley since for a very long time. And my dad, he's technically my stepfather, but that's just biological. He's been my dad since I was seven years old. He was a truck driver. And at some point, he was spending more time down here than he was at home, and we wound up moving here when I was basically a sophomore in high school. I started sophomore in Ashland. And one of the first things I remember coming to the valley after we kind of lived in a little mobile, like a trailer in my great aunt's house and talents was when we were looking for houses. And Ashland was described as this really diverse, great place to be. And we were supposed to avoid Gold Hill because the KKK existed there. This was not something I actually really knew about. I mean, the KKK is something we barely cover in history. But the idea that it was here, it was probably one of the first eye opening things because it just, we came from the suburbs, like on the outside of Tacoma, Puyallup, that area. And it just wasn't something that ever came up. We did wind up moving to Ashland. It was outside the city limits, but Valley View. And then we started going to Ashland High School as a sophomore. This is me and my twin, Terainia McHenry. And that's kind of our introductory to the Rogue Valley. At some point we had visited here when we were younger. I don't actually really remember that because I think we saw great grandparents or something, but I have almost no memories of that visit. So that technically wasn't the first time we came to the Rogue Valley. But moving here is the first time I have strong memories of it. Ashland High School is not diverse. It was not diverse. So somehow early on I realized that when people say Ashland is diverse, they're talking about lifestyles and different cultures. But going there, I know it was not diverse. We were like, I don't even know if there were other black children or bi-racial children. I know there's a couple, but they weren't black there. So I wouldn't say it was odd because you get this impression because everyone's always talking about how diverse Ashland is. But it never really was that. And I don't think it really is today. I think that it's still being described as that. But I like to kind of laugh and say I can kind of make fun of Ashland because I grew up there. It's not an outsider. I mean, I'm high school. I went there. I was a senior class that didn't have a cafeteria because they tore down the building. We were there during the flood because we were outside the city limits. We never really lost water, which couldn't drink it. I mean, there's just these experiences until this year. The biscuit fire would have been the big fire that everybody talked about. But I mean, it's just these experiences. But Ashland did have a good music program. That's kind of where my social aspect came from. I love band. I was in jazz band. It wasn't great with music in terms of... I never really wanted to make that a career. But I did get a couple of awards there because I was good at it. But it was never like a... I didn't pursue it in college because that competition didn't interest me. This fight to get first chair, second chair. The large amount of studies that would take to actually turn that into a career or a lifelong pursuit. I just love playing it. It was one of my most favorite memories coming from performing at Ashland. I always thought it was hilarious that we had a marching band, but we didn't really have the uniforms like Phoenix did or Bedford. We just kind of went around in cover buns. It was just... And even the 4th of July parade, we wore tie-dye shirts and stuff, which was out of the school season. But I did it at least once because why not? But it was hot. And when we go to Klamath Falls and it gets so cold, the heads of the drums just burst. So you're not even getting a beat by halfway through. But I played a trombone, so I could at least wear mittens because you don't really need fingers to play a trombone. But going to Klamath was always interesting. Some of the other early memories I have from Ashland, though, especially when it comes to feminism, is actually surrounded around 90210, the show which was really big when I was a kid. We were allowed to watch 90210. The place was an absolute stop which came on right after it or something because it was just too racy. And one of the reasons that it has such a strong memory is there's this episode where they're talking... I think they're talking about condoms. And there's this... At some point, I think it was the carer, was it Donna? I can't remember her name, but she starts talking about if you have a swimming pool in the backyard, whether or not you should teach the kids a swim, even if you don't want them to, because there's always that risk. And this is something that came up at Ashland a few times because I remember they were freaking out because the nurses... I don't know if they were providing... She was providing condoms or talking about them or something. Whatever it was, I didn't want it on public school grounds. So my memory is that a group set up across the street, the parking lot, and just handed them out there. And I mean, Mountain Street, I don't know who actually owned the parking lot back then, but it sounded like any time there was some sort of protest or whatever that that was not considered school grounds or something, I'm not sure why they were allowed to do it across the parking lot. But I remember there was more than one sign where somebody would just stand across the schools right at the parking lot on a sidewalk or something and do things, because that was considered public. So, yeah, and the other memory I had was there was something going on with daycare. They had this day being adults, parents. I didn't really kind of separate them at the time. I mean, parents were adults, vice versa. This real strange fear that if you made it easy for a teenage girl to get through high school that the rest of us would just run out and get pregnant, which was just crazy because that's not really how that works. But at some point I feel like someone was trying to get a daycare there so that the girls that did have babies could finish school. And this was a big controversy at the time. I don't actually remember where my parents fell on this. I have a feeling, though, where they fell then might actually be different today. They seem a little bit like different people to me, but some of that has to do with how I perceive them. But, yeah, I do remember that coming up. And also remember we had a friend, Kimmy. She's still in the area. We were trying to put together a diversity club. I believe Kimmy is Mexican, and she might also be Native American. I don't think I knew that until recently because it just didn't come up. We had no staff member who was a minority back in there. There was one part-time art teacher that we tried to get involved with. And she did try to help, but we didn't really know what we were doing. They had no... I mean, this hugely diverse city had like one minority staff member who was a part-time art teacher. And as much as Ashton likes to say that they really love the arts and the music, you look at how they support football and cheerleaders, and the fact that we had to pay for our own music part-way through. They like having band and art, but it was never supported to the degree that the sports and the cheerleaders were. They went to Japan. They got new uniforms. Band didn't even have uniforms. We had jazz band. We had... I think we had... Definitely had choir because we went to Disneyland with the choir, I think, at once. And maybe the orchestra? I think there might have been an orchestra then. But again, we were outside the city limits. I remember we rented my trombone for years. And when I went off to college, all I had was the mouthpiece because I needed a different mouthpiece for jazz in order to get the higher notes. Couldn't afford the actual trombone itself. And they had to pay, I don't know, something because we weren't in the city limits. They had to pay this extra fee in order for us to do extra curricular activities. And I know in the end that was a bit of a struggle. We didn't go to Disneyland the last time the band went because there was just no money for it. And I remember telling them, you know, not to worry about it. We'd been there a couple times already. But that was just a thing. I think there's a lot of concerns now like the bullying that I hear about. Okay, so that was not a thing in school. I mean, bullying was. But there was no way for bullies to chase me down on my cell phone into my house. I think we had maybe one or two people in my class that ever had a cell phone and they were the wealthiest kids in the school. So I grew up, I mean, they kind of call us, I like to call us the Oregon Trail Babies. I think the other one is like, maybe it's an Exinial. We're this group where we grew up without certain things. Like we didn't have cell phones in school. We did do the online cat screeching modem thing. But we're not, I mean, sometimes I'm classified as Gen X. But I'm really not. I didn't have the dot-com boom was happening when I was like in school. So I wasn't in the workplace. I wasn't really buying from it. I wasn't part of creating it. And then you have the millennials, which I do have a lot more in common with, but I remember when there were not cell phones. It's just this kind of like why I remember when we had like these huge, I don't know, 50 foot telephone cords. I mean, that was mostly like the 80s, but I do have some memories of that. And also the laser disc kind of thing with the VHS and my parents were whining about like, I think eight track tapes were not a thing or going out. Like I have these memories. I didn't use an eight track tape, but I remember the fights about it arguments or something. And those weirdo like car truck things they had. Like the front part was like a car, but the back had this like little tiny truck thing that you don't really see anymore. I mean, I guess they're on the right idea because hatchbacks kind of do the same thing, but don't look as weird. But so as an Oregon trail, baby, I have these memories where the tech was coming in and I had used both the one before it, the one after it. Kind of lost track where I was going with that. Oh, the internet. Yes. So I was around when AOL was like 395 an hour. And one of my earliest video games online was a game called Neverwinter Nights. It was at the time it would have been one of the first massive multiplayer online games. And AOL, you got it for free going through AOL, but you were paying by the hour. And that's probably, I mean, I had a lot of experience with like Nintendo, the original NES, and arcades and some of the earlier computer games like Karendia and them. But Neverwinter Nights was the first time that you got on and played with other people. And it was pretty, pretty amazing. And it sucked up a lot of my allowance because if you could think about 395 an hour and how just a few hours a day, you were suddenly just paying this extreme amount. And then I think it was prodigy. Was it prodigy? No, no, maybe that was prodigy. I'm probably confusing. One of them went to monthly fee and all of a sudden you could just do as much as you can. You just pay this monthly fee. And the worst thing is you just get disconnected all the time. Linked dead is what they would call it later in like the EverQuest days or stuff. So being part of the gaming group was always an early thing I was interested in. Always. There's just something about video games that were just incredible. And I was playing board games at the same time too. Just the earlier stuff like Monopoly, Chutes and Ladders, Candyland. I mean, I had always been interested in board games. My access to an online community and other gamers probably hit electronic a little bit first, but board games were never far behind. My gaming group, so we also did Dungeons & Dragons in high school, and I was the Dungeon Master. And what's interesting about that is my gaming group was mostly women. Because those were my friends and then we had a couple of guys, brothers, friends too, but almost always my gaming groups have always been dominated by women. And one of the biggest frustrations that we've had with that, board games, video games, pretty much any of them except the big mass of online, is even today in a four or five player game there's going to be one female character. So I just kind of learned to let one of the other girls take her and pick some other character, but it's almost impossible to get it. When they have distinct characters, we're still down. It's always like an elf with a bow. It's a female character with a bow. She might be an elf, she might be human. It's just, even today, you don't see like, they're making a new version of Hero Quest, which is a game that I grew up with. It's an online, or it's not online, but it's a board game with four characters and you go around and you beat a dungeon, get gold, get equipment. They're all men in the original version, even the elf, and we just kind of played because that's what you had. And there's a new version coming out, one of those kind of Kickstarter-like game, and they turned the elf into a woman, which I think zero people are surprised they did that. And then they added the extra models as kind of like, extra as part of the Kickstarter, so that you can actually have all guys or all girls, but the girls are like the extra, so it's like, why can't they just include them with the original one? Because, I mean, even when there's a lady option, I don't always pick her. I got used to not doing that, but it's just nice to have the option. There's always a struggle. There's an athletic, agile bow elf. You almost never see the barbarian woman, the one that's strong, the one that's the warrior. They're just going to pick the sorcerer or the elf and then make that a woman. It's just the ponytail thing, like how many of them have to have ponytails? There's usually always an excuse, though, while the extra characters are cost more money. The ponytails are easier to do because of hair. As a woman and as a biracial woman and someone who's part of the black community, seeing someone with my kind of hair almost never happens. Even if they're black, they're not going to have my kind of hair. And I don't think people understand why that matters because there's an entire movie that I think is Chris Rock put out, Good Hair, talking about why from birth we're told our hair is bad hair. Nobody wants it, it's just messy, unprofessional. And growing up here, I haven't had my hair done probably since I was 18 years old. There's nobody here that does my kind of hair and I don't trust them. I've gone to a few places and I asked them, have you done ethnic hair? They say yes. And I'm like, I'm not Mexican. Have you done my kind of hair? They say yes. And I'm like, well, how many have you done? Oh, well, I did it in school. So you don't do it. If you look at the black community, at least, again, this is not my experience, but based on media and books, there's this culture around going to salons and barbershops. I don't have it. It doesn't exist here. I mean, I don't know what I would get out of going to something like that, but I get the impression that in black communities, this is a large part of it. So I just, I let my hair go natural years ago and I am absolutely certain I have lost jobs over it because women, especially women, don't consider it professional. They think it's messy and I just do not care anymore because this is the hair God gave me and I'm not... I gave up on doing that sort of thing a long time ago. I was always a pretty good student, actually a really good student, and then things started sliding a little bit in junior high or when I was a junior and going into senior. And the number one thing that kept me getting up every day is I love music. I mean, it's almost always the first thing, school's cut, but when I didn't want to go to school, when I didn't want to do any schoolwork, I wanted to play. And I even got up early for jazz and anyone who knows me for a long time, I do not like getting up in the morning. I got up early to play jazz. And Susan Foster was our band director and at some point I became the eldest trombone person and she pushed me for solos. I hate being in front of people. So coming out of high school, things started falling apart. I was depressed. I was fighting a lot with my siblings and my parents. And I was starting to realize that I was black and I was kind of mad about it. I spent most of my life not being able to talk about it. I bet the word racism never came up in most of my household because nobody wanted to touch that topic and I think they maybe thought it would cause problems or make people uncomfortable. It's just almost everyone I grew up with just never bothered to ask what the experience was. And so I was going through all of that when I told my parents I didn't want to go to college. I wanted to take a year off, just kind of breathe or do something before I pushed myself. And what Ashlyn did is they got my counselor, which I think his name was Rodney at the time, and the principal and another teacher and my parents. So I had five people sitting around the table telling me why I had to go. And if I didn't go, I'd ruin my life and I'd never go again. It's all these statistics that say if you don't go straight out of college, or straight out of high school to college, you're just not going to do it. So I actually wound up getting scholarships to I think a specific Lutheran up in Washington. And they did the whole brag thing where they said I got like $2,500 in scholarship money and something else. And then I got my award letter. I think it was $17,000 short. I mean, I could do math. I graduated high school. And I didn't understand what I was supposed to do with that. So because I was so depressed and my parents, I'm a first generation college grad. They didn't know. So I just kind of slept in bed every day, didn't do anything. Just thinking that I don't know what you're supposed to do when you have this shortfall because it doesn't tell you. And so I called up to sign up for my classes. And I think I was trying to pick like, I think they had like a black history, whatever, choice. But I'd waited so long that the classes were full so they were putting me in a bunch of classes I didn't want. And I finally told my parents I'm not going. So I never did go to that school. My twin went to U of O. And she was up there doing relatively well. And so I worked at Harry and David for a little while. I think I was back then, it was like the catalog. Processed the catalog orders with the male, the man. And it was like graveyard shift or something. And I did that for a little while. And then I joined her at U of O. And U of O, and we shared a dorm. I mean, it just felt more comfortable because she's there. I mean, she's my twin. It's like having your best friend connected to you forever, basically. And I was at U of O where I was the first time I was walking around campus. And I don't remember his name because we never stayed in contact. But a black man yelled at me, sister. He's like, hey, sister. And I had no idea he was talking to me. Because no one had ever referred to me as a sister before. I mean, not outside of my immediate family. And when I didn't respond, he said it again. And then he came over and started talking to me. And then I wound up joining a black women's achievement student union group there. But I still hadn't actually recovered from this anger, this resentment thing that was going on. And I didn't do real well at U of O. I withdrew before everything fell apart, so my grades wouldn't go down. And then I ran into Lily Parker. She was an advisor. She went back to school at 55 years old and became an advisor at U of O. And she was, so she is, she was a black woman. And I was kind of floundering. And she brings me into this room and she shows me this picture of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Mandela. I knew who one of those people were. Because they don't teach you that in school. They don't think it's important. And she just started opening up to me. She wanted to keep me in school if she could, but she cared more about like how I felt, how I was handling things. And we had discussions about black women of achievement group because they were nice ladies, but they would say some things like inviting mixes to parties and stuff. Mixes is me, biracial. I call myself a biracial. I don't like the term mix because we use that with dogs. But there's not a right term to describe people who are not all of one thing. We're still trying to figure that out as a country and as a world really. And I told her how some of those things made me uncomfortable. And we just had these long conversations. And she's like, well, they're not saying that to be racist. They're saying that because they're black. And I was like, it feels, it feels similar. But it was never quite as bad as what I ran into here in Southern Oregon. But this is just kind of a long story to say that I struggled for a long time for a lot of reasons at U of O. Then I had to move home because no money, no work. Went back home, went to Harry and David again. Just the seasonal work year after year until the point where when I tried to get full time work I was punished because of the gaps in these seasonal works. And they're like, well, you didn't work for three months. And I'm like, well, Harry and David doesn't hire most people for a purpose. So it's like I didn't do anything wrong. But they're like, there's too many gaps. And then at one point my twin suggested that I look at SOU because that's where she went to. And I was like, they're not going to give me financial aid. I screwed up everything at U of O. And then while working at Harry and David I went to financial aid office to a lady named, I think it was Peggy Nostosis. And she sat down with me and she's like, here's what we can do with your financial aid. She's like, you won't get enough money to live on because at this point I'm living on my own. But we can get you into one class once a week and you can continue working. And that's what I did. My dad gave me like $400 or something for books because I didn't have money for books. I mean, I'm working an almost a minimum wage job at Harry and David once a week, like Wednesdays at the time they didn't have the RCC SOU building. So it was like with the job council building on Market Street. That's where they're having the evening classes. And I started with one class a week. And I had to beg my supervisor for those tests because for reasons that make no sense to me, you have all these nice schedules that work with work and they work with school. And then when they put out the finals, they don't care. And you could lose your job for not showing up. So I just let them know long in advance the weeks of the finals. And I'm like, please just let, I don't know what day yet because they don't really release the final test days. And I'm like, I just need the one, even just a few hours to take the test. And then I did that for a little while. So that was like, it's not even a part time. It's like, no, it's a part time student. So that was the one class. Then I went to half time at some point, got hired by US Cellular that closed the call center the day that we graduated our training. That was probably made the news for a little bit. And at that point, I finally went full time. So by the time I was full time at SOU, I was a non-traditional student, barely like the age group, just barely. And what that meant was, it was just a different experience. I never really had the full college party, whatever student, it's just different. And so then I graduated from there with an offer at Asante. And I finally thought, you know, I made it. I'm in decision support. I'm doing reports. I'm doing this critical thinking thing. I'm making more money than I could ever imagine. And then I get laid off six months later because we hit a massive recession. And so I'm unemployed for almost 99 weeks, which is the extent, because they extended it to two years, trying to keep people from basically we had nothing. And I'm still having this problem because I have these seasonal gaps. Sure. You're trying at SOU. So you really work towards getting full time. You saw that as an opportunity and an avenue. What about being black at SOU? What about being vibrational at SOU? You know, I remember... You were working. I was. I had very little social life because I'm a non-traditional student mostly. Non-traditional enough where they didn't... I didn't have to chase my parents down for tax returns anymore. They were always late. It didn't matter that I needed it for financial aid. Just constantly could never give them anything. And they were constantly self-employed, which made it just a huge mess. So I think it was like a 25 or something. You don't have to ask them anymore. So when I went back, finally I didn't have to wait and beg. So I'm a non-traditional student. I'm working full time. And I just didn't have much of a social life. I did clash a lot with different SOU students. I remember going into... They put up this... I want to call it a green tax, a green fee. It was something to help SOU get off of traditional energy. And they're trying to get me to sign a petition in the middle of class. So it's not like ringing out in the courtyard and just bypass them or talk to them. It's in the middle of class. You're a captive audience. And I basically said, no. I had scholarships at one for it. I actually got a diversity scholarship. My scholarship does not cover fees. So all these fees they tack on comes directly from me. And I can barely afford it. I'm living in a mobile home part because I can't afford to live anywhere. And if you live too far out, they try to push it again on dorms or whatever. So I'm just living in the same mobile home park that burned this year. And I'm telling them, no. For those of us who are just struggling to make it, we can't afford these $15, $20, $30 fees that keep tacking on. And she looks me straight in the eye. She says, buy one less CD. And I'm like, I don't buy CDs. I can't afford those either. And so my engagement with SOU didn't improve over time. It got less because the relationship with these, I understand why they want to do it, but the people that struggle, I don't think they understand the technology fees, the green fees, even if it's a good cause. The students that were pushing these, they just had no concept of going to WENCO and pulling out your $20 and counting it so that when you come up, you're counting in your head the entire time. This is what I have. You don't just put out another dollar. This is your budget. And then they're just like, well, we're just going to add a $15 fee on there. You should have no problem, but that's not buying your CDs. And I'm like, well, that, first of all, it's traditional for the first year of students. They don't really like the first, like when your parents haven't gone to college, my family constantly said, ask why I wasn't doing more. Like you're going to college. How come you're not working more or whatever? They don't understand that like two hours in class is like four hours studying or something in order to do well. I mean, you could do less and maybe not achieve as well, but just that whole idea, you're struggling with people who don't understand what you're doing. You're struggling with things that work. I remember I got hated group projects to spies them and every professor's out there sitting there thinking like, well, I'm going to have a group project. This is going to do something because they're going to work that, because you have to work group projects at work. I understand that, but every time I had a group project, the same conversation always came up. Well, I don't want to do anything on the weekdays, so we'll just wait on the week or something like that. I'm like, I work. So if you guys want me to contribute anything with this, these are the days that we meet. I mean, it was, and that's more of a non-traditional thing. SOU, I graduate. Get hired by Asante. Get laid off very shortly after. Do the unemployment thing for almost 99 weeks. By now, because of the Harry and David off and on seasons, a very short time at Asante, nobody in the Valley would touch me. They're basically saying, I'm not a good employee. Chase automatically rejected my application and I hadn't even submitted it. Like, I guess they were scrubbing pre-applications and they just saw the multiple years and I kept trying to tell them like, yeah, but there's only been one job since I had my degree and it was during like the worst recession ever and nobody would give me any time of day. And my sisters telling me, you know, this might be a chance to leave the Valley. And a lot of people do. We can't stay here. There's the jobs aren't here. A lot of people who live here, locals have to leave and then try and come back. But of course at this point, I'm thinking I'm just going to leave and why would I come back? I mean, if it works out in New Jersey, I guess that'll be it. But at some point I do decide, okay, so I'm on unemployment. My biggest problem now is nobody trusts that I can actually be a good worker because of all these odd jobs over the years and none of them are in the actual field that I'm interested in. So AmeriCorps puts up these volunteer positions and one of them's with the job council. I don't know anything about AmeriCorps. I've heard a little bit about Peace Corps, but at this point I have no idea. So I start looking into AmeriCorps because even when you have no money, just barely because my unemployment was not good. I mean, it wasn't even a full year on my last job, so I'm just kind of holding on to what little money I have, making very little. But I still have internet. I'm playing games because that's my social thing, but I'm not usually enjoying it because I'm so depressed. And job council basically talks about needing a volunteer to work with their youth. This is called troubled youth. People who didn't finish high school, most of them, or have some other thing that's kind of getting in their way. So I apply. And I go to the job council and I think I'd use the job council maybe once or twice to put my resume together. And I have this conversation with Tiffany Grimes, who's in charge of the youth program there. And they have a lot of questions for me. And it's like the most realistic interview I've ever had. I mean, I feel like I want this and I can do it, but... And there is probably some desperation on my part, but I'm also thinking like, this could have been me. There were several parts during my journey where I could have wound up as a teenage girl who was pregnant or someone who got into drugs or all these other things that could have led me into this troubled youth description. And I think I could do it. And I'm all worried about it too. Even after I do the interviews and I'm kind of high on the list. Also, they just don't get people with economics, business degrees, that sort of thing. And I'm thinking, you know, a year of doing something will look good on the resume and also it's absolutely true. I come from a family who's not educated, who often didn't have a lot of money, struggled, and there's just so many places where I could have been in this position where I don't even have a high school degree or something is just kind of getting in the way. And then they offer it and I accept it and I just keep... I keep one thing in my head this entire time. You got to get through this because one thing she did tell me is once they get a volunteer, if that volunteer doesn't work out, they don't get another one. Like this is the spot they need filled. And so I worked with YouthBuild and I worked with... it was like kind of a clinical healthcare. There's like two parts to it, kind of construction and then the healthcare piece. This program is largely run by women and I have never encountered that before either. There are men, the two construction guys, they're great. And then... Oh shoot, I just lost his name. Here's the teacher. Oh my gosh, like a picture of two. He's on my Facebook. Kelvin? No, that's not right. Anyways, but Tiffany is running it. Don is there. The forestry program that they also have. It's a woman. They go out to the woods and just... I don't really know what they did, but I mean there's all these women in charge of these stuff and they're intelligent. And it's just, I never... even in decision support, I got kind of a traditional gentleman manager. And this is the first time that it's... it's not traditional. Tiffany is very... she's still in the area. She lives in Jacksonville. She's very... it broke me out of my shell to some extent. Because at this point, had the unemployment thing not happened and the AmeriCorps thing not happened, I could have turned into a very judgmental person. Hugely. Because one of the problems with going through a lot of struggles and then coming out of them is judging people who don't do that. And that... I could almost feel myself going that way because I got a great job at Asante. I make it more money than I could ever dream of. It's certainly not something most of my family's experienced with. And you could almost forget all that path it took to get there. And then slam, unemployment. Nobody will even look at my application. And then here I am in the AmeriCorps program with the job council and I'm like... And at this point I have very little confidence. But then they start doing things like filling out resumes. And like, what do I know about resumes? Well, I know that's not right. So, you know, help them fix that. Or helping them prep interviews. And I'm like, what do I know about interviews? I can't even get it. And then I'm like, oh, yeah, nope. And then I start realizing that there are things that I do know even if it's not on a piece of paper. And I'm like, what do I know about resumes? This critical thinking is not written on there. But it's like, I didn't get this far without doing it. At one point they had a word... They had a word in Excel teacher that actually... She does both the adult and the youth program. And something happened and they were overlapping. And the adult... They didn't have someone to do word or Excel. And so I was like... Well, what do they teach them? And they're like, what do you mean? Well, I know word in Excel. But I don't really know how to teach. And then she basically just handed me her lesson plans. And I just kind of rolled into teaching them word and stuff. And it was more than that too. It's like... I had to teach them like... We had a couple of students that would just put their bags on their chair and then go out and smoke. And then they would try and explain to me why they were on time. It's like, your bag is not your body. You're not on time if you're not... The clock turns and you're not here. This does not work. So these life skills that I evidently developed... I wasn't very good at them in the beginning but I was actually part of that and the job council helped me teach that. And the other thing was Ashlyn... If you don't really teach it in high school Ashlyn has this perception that they teach inclusion and diversity especially around the LGBTQTA plus group. I never... I knew that there was a presence there. It was never taught to me. Not in a way that you would actually mean it. I mean the parades were inclusive but it wasn't until we actually had a transgender individual in that youth group that I actually understood the need the struggles where the pain points are how so much of the system isn't designed for this and just watch one of our students just encounter the most unfortunate things and it just seems so pointless. These are fixable things if only society would do it. My position on that group was almost wholly formed in a complete and wholesome way by my American experience because it can be easy to forget that other people have struggles and I was angry for a long time because I don't feel like I was ever allowed to be black. I was black but I wasn't allowed to be black and so that anger and resentment lasted for quite a while and it's also one of the reasons I didn't really identify with the woman part nearly as much because the other one was overwhelming. What difference does it make when I'm a double minority? And as far as I could see the second part of that minority has it way better than the other part and then I encounter this transgender individual and just different members from that group and I start realizing that the groups are coming together that some of the needs overlap they're not the same there's different needs, different issues but seeing someone else struggle with that made me realize that the struggles can be similar. Employees are also part of this group and I'm learning from them still don't really have that racial part but now I'm getting, these are feminists these women are and I'm starting to hear a different version of what that word actually means. Growing up feminism was a negative thing. You didn't want to be a feminist because that just means you're frankly you're a bitch and you don't like men and men don't like you and it just didn't sound like something that you wanted to be a part of and then at AmeriCorps almost more than half the people I'm working with in charge are women and that's just not something I had experienced before and not only that, they're open talking about, they know about my struggles they know about and this is probably true for some cultures where you just, you don't talk about these things at work. You don't share, you don't overlap I mean but these are like their combination of coworkers and mentors and they have different skill sets than me we did that whole there's Briggs personality thing they always encouraged me to try and do things along with the students I was a volunteer but they're also, they're trying to grow the students and it became evident they were trying to grow me too they have a little more resistance with me because I'm not one of their students so they can't like, you know use the same tools they do to guide my behavior they tried to get me to drive a bus once and I was like, oh no you're lucky I'm driving this big old van I'm not getting in this, absolutely not there was nothing they were going to say to change my mind down there but the Myers-Briggs thing and then that's where I realized certain personality types for Shining and why some of my stage fright actually kind of makes a little sense and why like Tiffany was I can't remember the exact words but she can be in charge of an army like in front of a ton of people guiding them and stuff and then there's this kind of this middle group where they're good with like 20 or 30 people or whatever and there were two of us where we we shine one on one you can put me in a room with a student that is struggling with math with reading or something and I could be in there for hours it will not destroy me the one on one aspect, they had a name for it is why I could actually sit down and just communicate with people usually pretty openly and not feel drained from that experience you put me in front of 50 people and I get frustrated I can still do it but I am it is draining my energy to be in charge of groups like that but it's not impossible and that's also where I learned like I have a tendency to be a leader but not a requirement which is why I can follow somebody who leads and will take over if I feel that leadership is failing but I don't have a need to lead all the time but I am a leader so this is kind of this personality thing that they're getting to so through this exploration of with the students along with the students and talking with largely these women because the guys in the construction group they're out at the build site all the time and I'm not always there I spent more time with the other groups but I'm just kind of learning more about myself and like I said these women I think most of them could call themselves feminists and that was not I'm pretty sure it's especially the one but that was not like that was a positive view it wasn't you know old school and I say that not to be like disrespectful but the idea of burning bras running around naked in parades or something it's just not something that I think the current generation like myself can really I mean we know what it is and we know that it's important but we don't really link to it and the man hating and the men hating you that was easy to link to I think that's where the problem was like this is easy to understand and you don't want it this is still foreign to happen and then just kind of seeing these groups come together and and then not just being told like this is diverse actually being in it again the racial diversity wasn't there largely because of where we live but actually seeing people say we're diverse and then actually showing that was just different and so at some point and I don't know that there was a specific point but I know AmeriCorps and job council was a large part of it being I wouldn't call it active because I didn't really get active until recently just the consideration of other groups the consideration of cementing where I fall when it comes to caring about other people which is basically I do and where I sit when it comes to quality which I absolutely believe in I believe that it needs to happen I don't believe that it is happening and that's that quality part that kind of drew me out especially so I have a degree in economics and I work in IT these are not areas that either women or minorities are especially represented in but I have seen very strong women in those areas so it became a little bit easier to link to other women when I started working at UCLA I started encountering other races I don't see them on a daily basis but they are there and I've had some long conversations with some of them about my experience here and then I had another group another black woman which is also a double minority like me I don't know I just start linking the two the other issue that came negative with feminism was the term white feminism I don't actually know when I first encountered that term and understood when it met I suspect it was somewhere in college and the struggle there is we just celebrated a hundred years of women being able to vote but not all women and that struggle still remains because I want to celebrate but I don't have the privilege or opportunity to forget the other women part because I am well aware when someone like me actually began to be able to vote and it didn't come with just a law there was several years of violence and turmoil that made actually enforcing that law very difficult um so um I guess where I'm getting at is at this point in my life I have a lot to consider anytime I take a position on something but I feel like I feel like I can do both and I'm not avoiding it anymore so for a while I was avoiding certain it's like I didn't want to get involved I didn't have time the women's march was probably one of the times when I realized that people around me were engaged in some level I did not participate in women's march but I know several people who did did and their excitement around it and their concerns about it um I have friends from the LBGQTA plus community that had some concerns about it the black community had some concerns about it and um it's hard because when you live in an area where you don't really have a group to talk this about because it's like so the women's organization that was in charge of the women's march is they had a lot of accusations about what was going on in terms of race and the other groups and you don't really know how that's playing out because social media isn't the best place for it um but at the same time the messages are almost right like close, I don't expect perfection messages are close to right and um I'm new to the AAUW Medford group, Carol, which is a neighbor um, invited me and I don't really know how to describe it other than they're a lot older than me I'm not sure if there's someone there might be one person who's younger than me but their perspective and their description of things are interesting um and I want to and I say interesting although I think I want to say more like honest and I think that's where part of my resistance to getting involved with any of these groups for years had ever been with the black women of achievement when they were talking about dividing mixes two parties like even filling the need to say that and trying to talk about it it felt like you couldn't be honest and say I mean yeah this makes me uncomfortable because I'm one of the people you're talking about and just not getting anyone to actually be honest that this is happening same with all the Ashson stuff like like keeps saying how diverse you are when the KKK is burned into Medford's lawn and trying to claim well that's not happening in Ashland Ashland is not inclusive it is simply not it ignores like ignoring problems does not make it inclusive it's just simply not I grew up there it's not there I don't know why anyone thinks the diversity is barely there but the inclusive definitely isn't there it's just if it's happening in Medford it's happening in Ashland we do not have hard borders in this valley when I go shopping and someone looks me in the eye and asks the person behind me if they need help that is not a problem that I experience only in Medford it happens where often when I go shopping in the valley I do not do most of my shopping in the valley what you mean by that was the person older than you in the back? she was white and she was behind me so I had a person look me directly in the eye I was next in line and she asked the person behind me if she could have if she could assist her this happens to me all the time in the valley and for a long time friends and family didn't really believe it they've actually seen it and now they know but that's not it's not exclusive to a particular part of the valley it's one of the reasons why I shop online I do not get deals in this area not with cars not with furniture they will not negotiate with me I could spend 30 minutes in a store and I probably won't even be approached and offered anything the woman Lily Parker who from U of O the academic advisor she visited Ashlyn once couldn't get service at one of the restaurants she'd been here once and she doesn't have talk about and I mean that's the reason why feminism has often taken a second place in my particular perspective in life because the other one is prominent not by choice I just encounter it more I have no idea if someone treats me like garbage if it's because I'm a woman or it's because I'm black or biracial I think it's mostly deliberate but they are probably ignorant of how how bad it is you is it more than microaggression or is this what you're describing is this one of the all microaggressions are those even smaller and more insidious it's hard to say because for example when I worked at Sante you could say something you're really ignored and then someone else would say something it's the best thing since sliced bread how many women have said that in that situation what I learned at Sante though is it was happening to other women because these women became my friends I have shifted belief that I believe that's a woman thing I do not know if it's worse for biracial women because they're doing it to all women it could very well be there aren't enough biracial women there to really to know but that is a huge problem in IT and it does happen in the healthcare industry too I mean the healthcare industry has a lot of women but in certain departments and stuff you just don't see them in leadership positions so I think privilege has its own confidence its own assumption do you think women do you think women eat their girls do you know what I mean yes some of the worse especially when it comes to women against other women yeah I do and I don't really I guess if we don't really have it like the hair thing I suspect it's more women that are telling black women that natural hair and then not just black women I think it's more women because they're also the ones that complain about clothes more guys can certainly notice these things I just don't I just find it hard to believe they care a lot of them I mean are they really going to notice the difference between one skirt and another and they're going to like complain about it I think that's more of a women thing and it's almost an impossibility too because we see this with our politicians like we're taught not to toot our own horn but then if you don't toot it enough we're not assertive enough but if we're too assertive then we're just angry and I am who I am it's I don't it's not a it wasn't a personal choice like I was born the way that I am and I engage things in similar ways as others and sometimes I experience different things but it doesn't stop I mean it's just it's not something you just turn off so if I hear the word color blind or I don't see color again it's going to flip my lid that is like one of the worst things you can ever say to a person my vision of the future isn't that anyone's color blind because no matter who says that it's simply not true it's that it's not the prominent thing on a young girl's mind that someone might tell her when she's nine year olds what coding actually is I could have easily gone that route and I actually understood what I really thought it was just someone over there typing zeros and ones for hours a day it sounded horrible and later that that's like machine language and what the programmers do are using programs close to what I use now no one ever bothered to tell me that hidden figures I didn't even know that black women were involved in the NASA program no one told me that I didn't know who Nelson Mandela was people describe Malcolm X as just some sort of terrorist which is a complete gross oversimplication of what happened I didn't understand the black panthers were actually a political party I mean and they weren't just black people in the black panthers there's just things that we don't we don't get taught and so you don't know and they assume that your families tell you but somewhere out there is a young person of a black family getting the talk and the talk in the black community is basically what to do not to get killed by police and there's an assumption that we all get to talk well I wasn't raised in a black family I was raised in a white family I didn't get the talk and I'm not sure if black women get the talk or if it's mostly black men it seems like it's mostly black men so I don't have a direct connection to the black community it's getting stronger now as I reach out to more people and same with the women my experience in IT has led me to some very strong and open women because that's what it takes to get into IT and it's unfortunate because I think I think women who are not like if they try to avoid confrontation I don't see how well they're gonna do in these fields and I don't think that's right so there is nothing that says that you need to constantly do battles in order to program or in order to work in IT it's just something we have to encounter right now because of the way the systems are made the future doesn't have to look that way if someone is quiet and they're shy and they want to be involved in something because they love it there should be nothing to stop them because there is nothing about sitting at a computer and helping people and learning systems that requires a confrontation that a lot of us encounter now and we do we have to push our views and we have to push to get credit for the work that we do I'm hoping that in the future that's not the case because if you love video games if you just love working with people in medicine the providers are constantly on systems I mean computer systems are not something you avoid there's just no reason and I think we lose a lot of women in interest because one they don't see themselves in the most prominent things that use computer generated graphics, video games, you just don't see the variety there there's people in charge that they don't always show the women that are behind it I mean you just need to be more visual if I walked into elementary school or high school now and tried to describe what I do I don't know that I would do very well because there's no foundation for it like who who tells you how to tell other people you can do it this would be something you'd enjoy do you not think it is approved as much as people say it is but I I feel like my contribution beyond just you know the daily stuff is probably why I'm in front of this camera right now even though I hate cameras is sharing because I think there's so many points where people tell you know where it can't happen and they're wrong it's not because things are better than they are it's not because they're where they need to be it's because every single day we are making decisions on what the future is going to look like and I do not know whether or not I'm going to have a large impact on anybody but I do know that when I go somewhere and when I'm in a classroom when I'm at work, when I'm in a meeting it is very rare for someone not to know that Tonya is there because I do not allow that whether they like it or not I am not invisible and I think a lot of attempts have been made to soften that over the years and any time that comes up my first thought is if I allowed that criticism to stop me I would not be here today that's where I am today