 This morning, I have the honor of introducing our keynote speaker. I remember Dr. Debbie from the first time I met her was at the faculty and staff of color conference about three years ago. She just had such a welcoming spirit as she led a workshop called From Sister to Sisterhood. And so it was a workshop that created an intentional space that empowered women of color. And just her energy, her joy and engagement within any space is just an encouragement within itself. You'll soon see that. And so a little bit about, a little more information about Dr. Debbie Jenkins is that she has a PhD and is an award winning life coach, an author, a presenter, a facilitator and an educator with expertise in developmental, liberation and transformational psychology within the context of diversity, equity and inclusion. Clients will refer to Dr. Debbie's whole life approach as enlightening, refreshing and innovative. Dr. Debbie powerfully and meaningfully engages with individuals and groups to ignite growth, development and change on personal, professional and organizational levels. In addition to Dr. Debbie being the founder of Share the Flame LLC, she has experience in leadership and education with degrees in education administration. She has an associate in arts and early childhood education and a PhD in higher education administration. A human development bachelor's of arts degree within developmental education and also a master of arts within bi-cultural development and a master's of science and psychology. She just does it all, y'all. She's so incredible. Today in connection to our theme, Dr. Debbie will share on the topic of ignite and united, inspiring within to do the critical work without. Highline, can you please help me show love to Dr. Debbie Jenkins? Yeah. Good. And it's good that you didn't hear me say that the way I sound right now. Okay, so I was so excited to see you today that I told everybody I packed two wrong shoes. I don't have that on. I have on the shoes I wear to drive up here. But it was so funny. This morning I was like, oh, okay. I started to wear them anyway, just so you could know. Folks, no matter what kind of degree you got, some days is just them to kind of date. But I decided not to because you don't know me. Well, some of you do, but some of you don't. And I didn't want that to be my first impression, somebody who can't pick out her own shoes. Okay. So I'm going to be like moving back and forth here. And where did it go? I see it. It disappeared. I found it. Okay. So I kind of like to do an agenda. This one's out the window because we really didn't do that. So one of the things that came to my heart based on your topic, first of all, I loved it because my LLC is called Share the Flame. And what your Unity Week means is exactly where my heart was when I named my LLC. And so one of the definitions of today's topic is about the word without. And the word without means beyond. It means going outside of what you typically understand or what you're typically familiar with. So one of the things I'm going to do today is challenge you to think beyond what you typically think about with regards to development. I'm a developmental strategist, which means that my primary focus being in the field of psychology, Dr. Bryce, wherever you are, he's a sociologist. So we're alike, but then we're not alike. So the social psychologist, whoever that person is in the room, would be our bridge. So I'm going to come from a little bit of sociology, but a lot of developmental education. So I'm going to be challenging you and you may be feeling a little bit, and I may push you in your feelings a little bit, but it's nothing personal. I just want you to know that. One of the critical questions, how do we become ignited to do our own critical work within ourselves in order to unite in the kind of diversity, inclusion, equity, and social justice layers that can impact our collective communities in and out of Highline? I have other critical questions here and I'm going to throw them out because I'll be referring back to them. But I don't want to give you vertical by going back to them. So how do you see yourself is a critical question in development. How do you see yourself? Because how we see ourselves is different than how other people see us. And depending on how we identify with regards to our core identity, and we'll have more conversations about that, depends on how I show up for you, what you see in the room, what you see in the space. And some days I could scare you, just like some days you could scare me if I followed you home across this campus. Or if I talk to some of the people who love you most, they may have a different interpretation of you than what shows up here on campus, because you see yourself differently than how other people see you. How does society see you? We'll be talking about social constructions, we'll be talking about intersectionality and how that work impacts us on that layer. Intersectionality, and we'll cover that a little more, really covers identity to an extent. But there's some developmental aspects of intersectionality that because Crenshaw and Collins were sociologists and an attorney, they really didn't have that developmental aspect that I plan on taking today. And how have those social constructions impacted your lived experiences? How were you impacted by your lived experiences to respond to social justice? So I will be challenging you today. Your Unity Week questions that Doris had shared with us earlier, what does equity look like for you? And what ignites you to do the work you do? Are your questions today for this Unity portion of your week? I didn't put this in because I like to see myself. That's not why I did this. My daughter is a digital, both of my daughters are STEM people, they did not get it from me at all. And so my daughter insists that once a month, or once every two months that I do one of these, she goes, you keep saying these things and I really like them and I just want to apply them to something. But I didn't know she was going to apply them to a picture of me. So you just look at it and then if you don't want to close your eyes. But I want to read to you what it says out loud, not assuming that everyone will be able to read this. Moving critically throughout this world to ignite reflective developmental social change in others requires that we first move critically toward igniting reflective developmental social change within ourselves. I think a lot of times we get excited about doing social, I mean, I would say stepping into social change or doing social change work. And sometimes we do it, well, for reasons of I've never done it before, I'm excited about this new experience and I'm coming on board. But sometimes you become in that group, you become the learner and so you end up wanting to learn the whole time and the people there are there to work. So you end up sucking literally the life out of the committee or the group because you expect them to teach you every time a meeting happens. Anybody ever know anyone like that? Raise your hand but don't look at the person next to you so that you don't want them to know it's them. Okay, okay. And so what I want to do developmentally is I want to let you know that sometimes when you suck the life out of people, they don't want you on a committee and it's not because they don't like you, it's because they don't like what you do. So we're going to talk about how you are a part of what you do and how you show up as a part of how people see you and how people see you is how they want you and how they want you is how they keep you. Ooh, hey. I'm going to tell my daughter that. I don't know what pictures she'll put up. I'm kind of scared to see what she'll put up for that one. Okay, now again, and mind you, she took these pictures. When I was presenting at Encore in New Orleans, she decided to walk me through the French Quarter and a woman that was a vendor there made me wear this outfit and then she liked it on me so she gave it to me. What now? I need to look her up again. Okay, so I'm going to read this one as well because this is extremely important. How many of you have ever been to a social justice anything and the presenter came up and they literally told you off, made you feel bad, made you just never want to go to another social justice thing again. Raise your hand but don't look at the person next to you because they may have been there with you and they know the person who presented. Okay, yes. And a lot of times people are presenting out of an unhealed heart. They shouldn't be doing social justice presentations, social justice anything. You shouldn't even be on a social justice committee if your heart ain't together. You need to be healed first. How many of you know that? Clap for that because you do. Okay, so those of you who didn't clap just know those claps might be talking about you. But they didn't look at you because we worked on that. Alright, so social justice work must stem from a heart that is healed. If you are not healed, then you can cause the work of social justice to clot or hemorrhage in the hearts and souls of the lives you are touching and impart the direction of the flow, I mean impact the direction of the flow. Take the time to heal. If you're not healed, just wait. If somebody comes up to you and says, come on girl, come on do this work or come on man, come on do this work or however you identify, come on do this work. You can go not right now, I'm not ready. And that's an okay response. Okay, that's an okay response. I've been doing this for 25 years and there are times when, and I'll show you why that happens, there are times when the world just beats you up. It beats you up real bad. Anybody ever feel beat up? I'm talking about beyond your professors. Yeah, okay, because I'm a professor, so I know. We have our days, do you know? Because we're human. You notice I'm trying to fix it because I'm a professor. But, you know, besides your professor, there are people that get on your last one, right? Yes, and although we shouldn't have a last one, we do because we're human. So, sometimes it's on the road. How many of you raise your hand if you've experienced that on the road? Go ahead, raise your hand real high. Okay, don't drive by these people. Raise your hand again. Yeah, stay off the road. It's real though. It doesn't matter. It could be something someone says. It impacts us greatly. Okay, so what does equity look like for you? This is my answers to these questions. But why should you just be the only one to have to answer? I should be accountable as well. So, working individually and collectively at the intersections to dismantle oppression. By the end of my presentation today, you will know what at the intersections means. Dr. Bryce already knows what that means. If I need help, you'll be there to help me. Get to the intersection, okay? And what ignites you to do the work you do? My core of who I am does that. And my intersectional identity should be identities. But the reason why I made it singular is because once I pull them together, they are one. And being healed on the inside. On the inside. Identity is never static. Always in the making and never made. So we are all an unfinished work in here. Look at each other and go, you unfinished, you ain't done yet. Go ahead, look at each other and go, you not done. You not done. Right? You not done. So if you have a class after this and you have to leave early and you have a class, just go in the room and your professor asks you something and you go, I don't have the answer to that. Why don't you have the answer? Well, you ain't done. You ain't done either. And just see what grade you get because I can't fix that. I can't fix that. All right. Yeah, I'm not coming to fix that. I'm not coming. Now, when I said that there are some things that impact us in such a way that it could make us behave differently than what people are used to us behaving, sometimes societal messages can do that to you. Sometimes society slaps you with a label, with a definition, with an interpretation that you didn't leave your house thinking you had, but it met you after you left your house. And it impacted you. Sometimes it's in your house. Sometimes it's in your family. Don't look at each other because some of y'all may be related. So I'm going to explain to you, this is a friend of mine, Dr. Antonia Dardaire. And I say that because I just really honor her and her work. She is phenomenal. Look her up because I don't have time to give her whole resume, but she's phenomenal. And the most down-to-earth person you can ever meet. But in the 90s, actually late 80s, she did this work. She did this work with people from the Latino culture. And she wanted to find out their response to societal messages and what it ended up making them do. Then she tried it with other people of color. And this is what she came up with. Now this language is in the 90s. I have since shifted language. But if you take the word cultural out, you can put anything in. That's what good research does. It's transferable. It can be generalized. It can be switched up to where you can be able to put anything in the place of culture. Cultural alienation is a space where the person believes the stereotypes that are said about them and their group. They believe them to be true. And so because they believe them to be true, they don't appreciate their own people. Anybody know that? Watch out. They might be in this room. If you're in this room, that's okay. Because awareness, being aware that somebody saw that, sometimes helps you to shift from that. Sometimes just because it's been named. So African-Americans are lazy. That person would be an African-American who believes that. Who will not hire African-Americans because they believe that. That's just one example. Cultural dualism. Oh, and before we go there, look at where those arrows are pointing. You see those arrows are pointing absolutely away from bicultural affirmation. Bicultural affirmation says, I get it around me. I know me. Not only do I know me, I know myself in the context of where I live and how I live. I love me. I love me enough to where no matter what you say, you can't change that core of me. I'm not shifting it, rearranging it, redecorating it for you. I'm going to keep it just like it is. And if you want to see something different, maybe the difference needs to come from you. Because I'm not moving. Okay. Cultural dualism. Look at those arrows. One's coming and one's going. This happens sometimes on campuses. People are isolated from each other. Sometimes students are isolated from each other. I don't see nobody like you until, until, because their classes are different than yours. Sometimes faculty never see other faculty that look like them or that are like them or similar to them. So that isolation sometimes causes people to move here because the campus or the environment is saying, it's not safe to be my authentic self here. I can't be real here. When I go home, I can do that, but I can't do that here. When I do it here, people think I'm less intelligent. When I do it here, people think I don't belong here. So I just keep that at home. I had a co-worker. She came to work every day. She looked white. Now I'm speaking in the context of race, not because I want to bug you. I'm speaking in the context of race because I can't be sued for talking about race because I'm a woman of color. So they'd be like, oh, yeah, okay. So I'll be using that. But I'm also using it because it's one of the most difficult conversations to have in this country. And so I'm going to say it a lot. If you know, like, if you want to say, well, she didn't use other examples. The very fact that you knew I didn't use the other examples meant you already knew there were other examples. You already knew that, so okay. Okay. So cultural dualism. She passed away. She looked white. She passed away. We went to her funeral. There were all people from the Latino culture there and darker-skinned Latino people. We thought we were at the wrong funeral until they passed out the program. It was her family. We felt terrible. Why? Because she never wanted to share that with us. She didn't trust that enough to share that with our campus. She kept it to herself. Can you imagine being in a space and you can't tell your authentic self? You have gatherings and you can't bring the people you love because you don't know how they're going to be treated or how you're going to be treated after they show up. Then cultural separatists. I have to say I love cultural separatists. I don't love their behavior all the time, but I do love the fact that they feel bold enough to just tell you what they think. And cultural separatists are like this. You think I'm like that. And if you think I'm like that, then I'm just going to be that. And not only will I be that, I'm going to take that to the infigy. And you're going to wish you never thought I was that because I'm going to get on your last nerve with being that. To where you're going to beg me to be something else. That's the cultural separatists. Cultural separatists is also, I'm only going to hang around my people. I'm only going to hang around them because the rest of y'all make me work a little too hard. I have to bring my dictionary and everything so I can point out things to you in the people of color dictionary so that I can look up things for you and educate you on me. I'm tired, you know? I need some downtime. So I'm going to hang out with the people like me because they're not going to ask me how long it took to do my hair. Is this a relaxer? No, it's not. By the way, I'm allergic to relaxers. For real. But you know those kind of questions, if you braid your hair a certain way, ooh, how long does that take? Can I tuck? Can I tuck? Can I tuck? If you never said that, if you never did, don't do that. Don't do that. You come back with, just don't. Don't do that. Okay. So that's cultural separatists. They're like, uh-uh, not today. Okay. Then there's a cultural negotiator. Now, you notice I said negotiation. I did not say compromise. There's a difference. Cultural negotiator knows who they are to the point of where they're not going to stop being that. But they're not going to be the stereotype of that. That's what the separatist is doing. The separatist is like, oh, you think I'm lazy? Watch me not do this assignment. Okay. But the cultural negotiator is like, I am bringing my whole intelligence to this assignment. I will do this assignment. You will not grade me down because of who I am. Not only will you grade me up, but I'm going to outdo everybody else in here to show you that I'm the student you dream of. I had to do that a couple of times as a student. And as you can see, I went to school a little bit. So I face that a lot of having to show people, oh, okay. You think I can't do this? I'm going to do this. And I'm going to show you, you need to up your little assignments. I'm going to make you question if you need to be a teacher. Yeah, don't do that to me. Don't do that. Sometimes you have to do that. But you don't change who you are when you're doing that. But you see where the arrows are going with negotiation? Straight to bicultural affirmation. Part of identity is being affirmed. Being affirmed. Not in a maladaptation. You don't want to be affirmed in something maladaptive. But you want to be affirmed in something you are aware is a wonderful thing. And you know what it is because you're not in your head. Like, yeah, I know that. And some of you are like, yeah, my mama told me that, but I don't want to admit it. But you do want to admit it. There are some awesome things that are part of each one of us that you don't have to give up for anybody. You just negotiate it, okay? Compromise is when you give up something for something. And you don't need to give anything up. Now, sometimes when we hear the negative societal messages, like I said, we move into these developmental modes. The first mode where alienation was is a freeze mode. It stops you in your tracks. The societal messages, they hurt you because you haven't worked on you. Your core is not strong enough to handle a message that doesn't align with who you thought you were. That's the work. You've got to get to a place where you're strong enough to get it around who you are. So you're not afraid of what anybody has to say about you because you are working on your counter narratives. You are working on retelling the story that they're saying about you. Their story is not the final story. I'm like, write your book. But I have a series on me. I have a volume on me. Write your book or your paragraph, and I will never line up with the series that I wrote about myself. Okay? That's where you need to get to. That's where you go. That's where you go. And you rephrase it. Every time it's said, you rephrase it. But this person believes it to be true. The fight or flight, this is the flight person, the isolation person, the person that hides themselves from the real issue. They are hiding their authentic self. They're not true to who they are. Then you have the fight mode. We already talked about separatists. Yeah. They're willing to remain in combat. Now, these three spaces are not healthy for you. They're survival modes. How many of you know that the chemicals in our body cannot sustain these levels of survival? You can't. Your body can't sustain the stress being in these particular developmental spaces. You have to move through that and get to negotiation so you can be healthy. If you don't, you're going to wear yourself out or burn yourself out. So your energy balance is essential. Now, some people are like, I don't talk about energy because you know it's like, ooh. But energy is scientific. Now, I'm not saying that we have so much that we're exploding. Because as human beings, we only have enough in us to equate to a light bulb. So it's not a lot. But we do have it in our bodies. And emotions impact us very much. So when you hear a negative societal message from now on, you want to retell it. You've got to get your energy and your body aligned differently so you don't end up wearing yourself out. Sometimes you're tired, not because you forgot your latte. You're tired because your body is weary from all of the societal things that are happening. The things that are happening nationally, things that are happening locally, things that are happening inside with your family, the things that are happening outside. All of that is making you tired. And so you try to overload yourself with additional unhealthy things. Red Bulls. I'm not saying I see your rip. I'm not saying it. And you know, Starbucks lattes are just a milkshake with caffeine in it. So you're loading your body up with sugar. You're loading your body up with something that's going to take you up and bring you right back down. So you want to ask yourself, do I really want to be healthy? Do I really want to move from where I'm at? Or do I just want to stay in the physical space that I'm in? So you need to own the feelings that you have. Yes. But you also need to redirect them. You're in charge of that. And this is why when you get ready to do the work of social justice, this is what happens when you're not healed on this side. If you are internalized, if you have internalized oppression, you can't move through this cycle. And if you're fearful, you can't move through this cycle. It will stop you. It will stop you in your tracks. You will become so afraid of liberation, you'll start doing things that sacrifice and sabotage the very work you're doing. You'll start sabotaging it. Women walking around with the B word on shirts, proud of it, I'm a B, I'm a B. And I'm like, no, I will never be anybody's female dog, ever. I don't care what generation you throw that word in. The bottom line, snap, snap, snap, is that it's a female dog. And if you feel like, I'm talking to those of you who identify as men in this space, if you feel like a woman should be called that, then you want me to call your mama that? Because your mama's identified as a woman, maybe. You want me to call your grandma that? You'd be like, no, don't you call my grandmama all this? But yet you call the one you wit that, thinking you all that, when it just shows you ain't got that together. Okay? So women, we don't need to call ourselves that. And those who identify as men, you don't call yourself that. In word people. I don't care how you fix that up in a generation. It still was given to us by slave masters. And I don't care how you turned around, I'ma turn it around. Well, that's like talking in the kitchen. Because the people who named you that are in your kitchen, and they're not buying your records, and they're not listening to your music, and they can care less. And when they call you that, they're not trying to empower you. And don't try to make that out to be a counter story. You know, Dr. Jenkins, you said turn it around. Some things can be turned around, but some things just need to be turned away. Turn it away. Come up with something else. You know, this generation, I'ma tell you what's so funny, my children will turn on a song and be like, ooh, did you hear? I remember when Lauren Hill put out Killing Me Softly. And people were like, oh my, did you hear that? And I'm like, yeah, Roberta Flack put it out. You know, in the same, and then another song, and I go, yeah, you know, so and so put that out in the whatever. And this, oh, so and so put that out. They're like, how you know all these songs, mom? Because y'all people don't come up with no new songs. Y'all do leftovers. There's leftover leftovers that have been left over, leftover and over. I want to hear this generation come up with some new songs. So I could be like, go ahead, generation. Instead, I'm like, okay, that's a remix. It's a remix. Right? I need y'all to stop remixing. Stop. Okay, and come up with something else. All right? Something else. Something else. Okay. You stop fearing, you stop fearing liberation. You can move on to a dialogue. You can move on to imagining the world like you want it to be. What is the world you want to see? What is it? What do you want to see? How do you want to see it? And how do you want to contribute to making that happen? What is it? What do you want to do? That's what this is about. Because when you're healed, that's where that's going. And you start reading the word, not reading the world as I can't read. Y'all stop looking at them. They're going to class. They want to get A. Reading the world. Reading the world means you're able to interpret it in such a way that you're able to step into it and make change in it. So it becomes legible. It becomes literal to you. It makes sense. That's work. Now, BU and in your own power is essential for social justice work. It's critical. And you do not need to be in order to do social justice work right away. You don't need to be that because being is continuum. It's a continuous movement. So you're always going to be changing and growing. I am not at, I'm going to tell you my age, just don't show out. Okay. So at almost 59, I am not the same woman I was at 20. You know, I look at her and I just want to go, oh, honey, because she just didn't, she was okay. But she was all right. But you know, she had a lot of learning to do. And so I like this almost 59 brain. I like her body. I'm not going to lie. She could get up out of bed like this and stuff. See, I did that. I'm tired already. Emphasis is on becoming. That's what Paulo Freire said. It's on becoming. And then here comes Michelle Obama. Yes. Becoming. So you're always becoming. Always becoming. Don't use it as an excuse not to finish your schoolwork. My assignment is becoming. I know I didn't turn it in because it's becoming. All right. So dialogue is the means by which people encounter each other in order to name and transform the world. This is how identity happens on a personal level for you to reach a place of being inspired. So this is inspiration. Creativity, imagination, expressiveness, originality, ingenuity, individuality, innovation, and exploration are all ways that you become that ignited person to do this work. Now, look at the person next to you after you think of a word that relates to you. Take one of these words, say it to the person next to you, and then tell them why that word is one of the words for you. What? We have to think about us? Yes. Yes. You're supposed to be getting ignited. That means I'm lighting a fire under you. All right. So do it right now. Do it right now. And the faster you do it, the faster we're done with it. Oh, OK. Creativity. It's creativity and imagination. And then there's individuality. And then there's expressiveness. Then there's innovation, exploration, and ingenuity, and originality. So it's a lot of work. I think it's like seven of them up there. But whichever one comes to mind, go with that one. Yeah. And then that you do have some type of inspiration already because these words, you didn't sit here and go, none of these words apply to me. How many people had creative imaginative or imagination? How many of you had that? It's OK if you have it right on. We haven't imagined. OK. And expressiveness. How many expressed? All right now. OK. And originality. OK. So there's no originality in here. Explains the remix. OK. All right. No sad. Thank you. That was a research project right there. OK. Ingenuity. OK. All right. Oh, hey. I saw you. Individuality. Everybody should have a little ad. I hope. Innovation. All right. Look at this. OK. Exploration. All right. And you better be exploring what I think you're supposed to. OK. Now, this is me. This is me. Creativity and imagination in the context of social justice. This is acting for change. It's a social justice theater group. And we go around. We haven't this year, last two years. But we used to book theaters or book museums or book spaces or show up in a park or some weird place in a mall or something. And we would just act out social change things. And it got people's attention. And they started asking questions about social change. So you can be creative and imagine and use your imagination to do social change work. It just doesn't have to be a bunch of committees and, you know, situations like that. You can do it this way. You can do it in service to other people. This is me. I call it dedicated to individual and collective service as a devastating diva of DST. How many of you know what DST is? It is Delta Sigma Theta. I forgot, Incorporated. That's my group. OK. So we do service projects helping the poor, helping the youth, doing a lot of things within our community. There are ways you could do social justice without it being traditionally social justice. Now, this right here is 15 years ago. Somebody took this picture of me at a meeting where my words couldn't say how I was feeling, but my face said it all. So my niece, my niece put these words to it. You tried it, but not today. Next week's not looking too good either. That's about how I was feeling. And whenever I have an email that I don't like, that somebody is just deliberately being, just deliberately becoming, then what I do is I don't say anything in the email. I just put her. I just put her in the email and send it. And she says it all. Clap for her. Yes. She says it all, honey. She gets it done. OK. Exploration, originality, innovation, and ingenuity. I'm an accidental entrepreneur. People kept calling me to do these presentations for 25 years. And I got tired of handing out my social security number. So I figured I might as well, you know, do it right after my identity was stolen. So don't wait that long. OK. Get innovative with a quickness. If you're going to start a business, don't hand out your business starting a business, because you can get messed up. So anyway, so share the flame. You can look it up and see what that is. And my life coaching part of it, I love that component of it, getting to work individually. Sometimes with corporate agencies, like now I work with corporate agencies as well, I do coaching after every workshop that we do. I individually coach their people. So there's another layer to social justice that happens there, the workshop and an individualized coaching. Then I'm also doing work outside of the United States. So this book was published by Pellgrave McMillan. I was a contributing author to this book. This book was written by people from all around the world. I also did research on women in education with women from all around the world. And I also traveled to Jamaica to do 15 years of work with teaching Emoja. And we were a participatory action program with Dr. Sharon Cronin. We would travel to Jamaica. Woo, woo, girl, yes! And we would travel to Jamaica and go up into Moortown, where they have pipes for roads and the truck and the bus we were on. The guy had smoked a bunch of weed before, because you know it's legal there. It's legal here too now, sort of, kind of. But there they have like in restaurants, no weed signs. Like we have no smoking signs in ours, they have no weed. No weed smoking in here. You know, it's like, what? Yeah, and he was loaded. But he got across them pipes real good. Okay, I'm still here. Okay, so another part of my innovation was to change language. So another part of social justice work is not to go with the status quo if it doesn't make sense to you. You invent your own status quo, alright? So I didn't like what was happening in my classroom. When I taught, began teaching and still, the majority of my students were not looking like me. So when I would talk about race, they'd be like, you soap boxing. I did not have any soap, I did use soap. I just didn't have any soap and a box with me. I was just trying to share with them what the research said. But they looked at it as she's just trying to have a platform. So I tried to help them understand this is what I meant. I was talking about systems of oppression that as long as they're in existence, we really can't use terms like historically disadvantaged, why? Because people figuring that was history. They were disadvantaged way back then. They're not disadvantaged now. I saw them pull up in a Mercedes. And never mind that the income don't match the car. It's an accidental car. They thought they wanted it until they got the first payment. It's like, no, I don't want that car and they're like, we don't want it either. So you're keeping it. See? But that's historically disadvantage. Or marginalized. And they bring a couple of chairs up, four chairs up to the table. They're not marginalized anymore. We pulled them in. Four of them. We brought them in from the margins. Right? What's another one? What's another one? Underserved. Underserved. As soon as you give them a little something, they're not underserved anymore. Like it's a cafeteria with a tray of food. Like Cedric the Entertainer throwing. We ain't got no more on it. All we got is grain, veins and comb. Okay, that's what they throwing straight on the plate. And they served. So they're no longer underserved because we served them this much. And at risk. You know some grants won't even look at your grant unless you use those key words in them. words in them, they won't even award you the grant. So I came up with the term, along with isstimulism, I came up with these terms, systemically non-dominant and systemically dominant. When you say systemically dominant and systemically non-dominant, what it means is if the systems are still in place, so is the issue. And if the issue is not gone, neither is the system. So the isstimulism is the one the system was created to benefit. That's all. So white people in this room, or those who identify as white, even if you don't identify as white, can't I today because sometimes people of color, you look white too, so you have white privilege too. Okay? Okay? So when they call you racist under this, that's not the word to get upset about. I'm a developmental specialist, remember? So I'm thinking developmentally. Developmentally your prejudice is occurring on your developmental levels, your personal level, your behavior, your character, your character and your behavior is what distinguishes whether or not you are race prejudiced, race biased, race perpetuating. That happens in your character and on your personal behavior. It impacts systems. Don't get me wrong. But the isstimulism is the one the system was created to benefit, therefore you cannot be a white person calling a person of color racist. Why? Because the isstimulism is the one the system was created to benefit and racism was never created to benefit people of color. Ever. Ever. No, not ever. Ever. Okay. So we got that straight. All right. Snap, snap, clap, clap for innovation. All right. Intersectionality and identity, I'm going to pass that up to do this. Identities, these are your social construction identities. How many of you already know that because you had Dr. Darrell Bryce as your teacher? You better have taught them this. All these awards you didn't got. You ain't taught them this, you fired. Okay. So he's my brother. I can fire. Okay. No, I can't fire him, but you're not going to fire him. Okay. So the identities you think about most often, these are questions to ask yourself. Identities you think about least often. The identities you own. The identities you would like to learn more about. The identities that you have the strongest effect on how you perceive yourself. Identities that you have the greatest effect on how others perceive you. This is how you think about your identity in the context of social constructions. Because you can say, I'm not going to let nobody label me and call me blah, blah, blah, and then a census comes out and you tell me, I'm not feeling in the box. Okay. Let me tell you what happens when you don't feel in the box. Don't feel the box in. Don't. Don't feel the box in. Because then you're going to be like, how come they don't give this group, ever give this group any money? Because nobody from your group is in the United States. Because you didn't check the box. The boxes are connected to money. Say that. Boxes are connected to money. Until you change boxes being connected to money, check the box. Check it. Because if you don't, I'm African American, African American women stop checking the box to see what happened. How come we don't have any programs for African American women? There are no African American women here in the country because we stop checking the box. If everybody, if everybody checks other, then we're just going to be a country of others. And nobody will get funding. Just the, just other people. You know what I'm saying to you? It's okay. It's okay to be other and be other when it works. But when other is connected to money, you need to be. Okay. You need to be something else. Something connected to the money. All right. So we talked about identifying as capital, personal identity, social historical, social justice work is what we're going to look at now. So if we look at your work, you have to think about how your power is held. So are you a subject of the power or are you an object of power? Being a subject of power means that you have a constant reflection, active reflection on a process, not in. Active reflection in a process is like, I'm going to date myself. All right, told you my age. But you know those, those toys that are atop, like you push it in, it spins. That's what active reflection in a process is. It's like you wait till something happens, like Starbucks last year. Everybody was just sitting down drinking their latte. Soon as the people got, you know, ex, escorted out inappropriately. I'm trying to say it nice. From Starbucks. Then all of a sudden I'm not, I'm not going, I'm not drinking any more Starbucks. Ooh, go activism. So you stop drinking it and then they build another one someplace else and they drink more than you drank here. You got to do something effective. It needs to be thoughtful, thoughtful. Okay, object powerless, disempowered. You don't feel like you have anything you can do or nothing you can do. Why? Because you're working alone. When you feel like there's nothing you can do, you need to find your group. Find out who they are. The pathways to social change, and we're almost finished. These are pathways for social change. Can you work in a direct services way? Can you do something in advocacy? Can you do some kind of community organizing? Or can you do some kind of economic development piece? Think about what you can do. Know your power. Know your lane. Don't get into something because you want to be seen. We have enough of them. They have enough of them and they're messing it up. Okay, yeah, you can snap for that. Snap and write and tell them to sat down. Let me just say sat down because they are messing things up. All right. Why get the community involved? Because that's where your power is. Look, you get more than adores. How many people were on the committee? Fourteen. She and Edwina could have did it by themselves, but they got 12 of the people and they still smiling. They did good. Okay, so I want to do something here. So I need six people to come up here. Six people really quick because we all hungry. Six people. Six people. And then I'm going to call some more of you up. So the six people are going to come. You hold it. And I want these back y'all. And you saw my face, right? You saw my face up there, the one I emailed the people. All right. Okay. So you see how they light up? Try to make it light up for yourself. This represents working together in your energy. This is you alone. Yeah, okay. This is you by yourself. All right. Now I'm going to take yours away and I want you two to make that light up without you touching both ends. I'm going to take yours away. I want you to do the same. I'm going to take yours away. I want you to do the same. Yeah, y'all work together very well. You need to ask Doris. There you go. Try to make it work. Can you make it work without you touching both the ends so she can touch an end you touching in or maybe you touch another part of her body. There you go. Yes. Can you make it work? Keep trying. You know what? That's exactly what you have to do. All right. I need three more people because I'm going to spread this out. In fact, I want as many of you watch a purse. So if you got something valuable, watch that, but come on up here. I'm give you one. Everybody come up because what I need whoever wants to come up, come up because they can't touch both ends. They need to keep this going. Now you need to touch her with one hand and somebody's going to come touch you, but somehow yours has to start lighting up. Who else wants to come? Community, community. Come on community. Come on community. Come on community. I saw you bring your phone. Yeah, girl. I bring my phone if I were you. Bring your phone. Come on community. Come on community. Come on Nassau. Come on Nassau. All right. Yes. Come on. Here you come. Come on. Come on community. I need two more community people. Come on. Okay. Did it work? Now one of you let go and see what happens. Let one of you let go and see what happens. Oh, make it start back. Make it go back. Did yours light up? Oh, yes. This group right here. Yes. Oh, yes. Thank you everybody for doing that. Okay. How are you doing that? It's because I want you to remember your collective only is effective as you are as an individual. You have to get yourself together so that we can get it together with the rest of this world. It's depending on us. It can't light up. It can't light up unless our energy is to a place to be able to help it light up or we'd be sitting up there with just nothing lit. I don't mean lit because we y'all do know now we y'all is getting lit. I don't mean that kind of lit. I mean this kind of lit where social justice happens and it happens in a powerful way. Listen, this week is about igniting. You just saw some igniting happen. That same excitement you got when you lit up when Nassau came and helped y'all light up because they was there for a minute. It was there for a minute and you lit up and you were excited about that. Oh, it worked. That's how you are to come to this week. Whenever you come and you hear a speaker, whatever they're going to talk about you should be researching before they get here. Exploring exploration is a part of it. All right. Give yourselves a hand clap for just showing up and give yourselves a hand clap for continuing to show up. Oh, just give yourself a hand clap because you highlight. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate being here. I'm so humble. This is my first time at Highline, believe it or not. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.