 It's an honor truly to be here. So I, as sister Eferio mentioned, I am from the East Bay. What I'd like to do with my narrative is capture my mother's story, my grandmother's story, and some of my own story as a mother, as an African American mother. And I hope that there's benefit in it. I hope that there's change that comes out of this and inspiration to stand up for those who are unheard and stand up for those who are oppressed or disenfranchised and those who have been murdered, all sorts of injustices that we're facing and we continue to face. I do believe that if we, as a faith community, are at the forefront of change and at the forefront of this conversation, that it sets the tone and it sets the example for all the rest of everyone else. So I'm happy to have everyone here. So I'll begin. I'll begin with Bismillah, which means in the name of Allah, in the name of God. I want to take you on a journey and the journey begins with my grandmother. So my mom is from Memphis, Tennessee, segregated south. My grandmother is from that same region, Memphis, Tennessee, segregated south. My mom grew up not far from the Civil Rights Museum, which is what's now a Civil Rights Museum, what was before that, the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. So she's walking distance from that area. When he was assassinated, she was maybe five or six years old, still a child, but this was the era, the Civil Rights era that she was growing up in, which means that her mother grew up in a time before that where those voices were not even being heard yet. The call for justice and the courageous, bold persistence that we have a place in this country and that we have rights in this country, it was not echoing as loudly when my grandmother was growing up. So there were two things that they were dealing with, not just being black in America, but being black and poor and segregated. The cross-section of poverty and blackness was like a double, I don't want to say a double whammy, but a double hardship in terms of being voiceless and disenfranchised. And then when you add segregation to that, it's not that you're being segregated into the best of circumstances, you're getting segregated and redlined and Jim Crowed into the worst of circumstances. So my mom shares stories of poverty even more so than race and the difficulties of hunger. She has described going to school at times, all black schools of course, because it's segregated, all black teachers, black mailmen, black grocery workers, all black everything. This is what she knows in Memphis, Tennessee. And her mother was married to a veteran. And when you serve this country as a black veteran and return to a country that still holds you as a second class citizen, it's very damaging to the psyche, it's very damaging to the spirit. And he didn't fare too well, he didn't endure that very well. And he couldn't amount to much. So you're fighting for a country that you return to and you still can't amount to much. He died at an early age, maybe in his 40s when my mom was a teen, which left then my grandmother a single mom, a widow, five children, four boys and one daughter, and that one daughter is my mom. So all she had coming in was social security and maybe some veteran benefits because her husband had died as a veteran. She never remarried and she just dedicated her life and what little she could to trying to raise these children in the segregated south. Again, not far from the Lorraine Motel. Now, we look at the Lorraine Motel, maybe some of you have even visited the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. We glamorize this place and we hail Martin Luther King Jr. now. And we are amazed at an awe by all of the contributions and sacrifices that he made. But at the time, you have to think the Lorraine Motel, as my mom has described it, this was a very seedy environment. This was not the best environment to be in. This is not, this was not, it was a motel. It was not a space that you would want to go to where skid row. You have, if you can imagine all that comes along with skid row and a motel and skid row, but someone of the caliber and excellence of Martin Luther King when he came into Tennessee, this is the only place where he was allowed to, to stay overnight because things were segregated. My mom being that young didn't have memories of the colored only water fountains, but her, her family does. And her eldest brother has lots of memories. He's a tall, large, dark-skinned man. He's growing up in the segregated south and you're, you're in an environment of poverty. And all that they had at their disposal is you get your education and you have the church. That's your hope for your child. Get an education and go to church. And you hope that God will somehow save you from these circumstances. My uncle said that in the home of most black families at the time in a Baptist home, there were three pictures that you can find on most homes on the walls of most homes. You can find a picture of JFK. You can find a picture of Martin Luther King and you can find a picture of a blue-eyed, blonde hair Jesus. These were the photos that you see in a black home. But the, so if these are the images on your walls, these are the people you're holding in high esteem. These are the people you're hailing as your heroes, your salvation, your, your, your standard of success and all things great. So imagine a black boy then if you're seeing a JFK, yes you have your Martin Luther King, but you have an image of a blonde hair blue-eyed Jesus. He is the epitome of beauty and honor and salvation and all things. If this is what dignity looks like, if this is what salvation looks like, if this is what goodness looks like, then what does that make of the black boy? What does that mean for the black boy? If the very opposite of your own image is what's considered close to godliness and then if everything that you're seeing in the community around you is reinforcing that black is degraded and ugly and not worthy, what does this do to the black child? And in recent weeks, I've, I've interviewed my uncle. I've interviewed my mother and other relatives of that generation who remembered growing up in these conditions because for me, I didn't grow up in this, but I'm always curious to know how could you endure this? How could you, how, how did you endure this level of treatment and still find the resilience and the faith to keep pushing forward and trusting that there's better for you? He said that he would ask his mom. He would say, why do they hate us? He would go to his mother, black boy, going to his black mother, why do they hate us, mom? Why do these white people hate us? Why do they treat us this way? Were we, were we born to be despised? These are the kinds of question a black boy is asking his black mom, who was poor and widowed and has a very little opportunity. She, she got in high school education herself, but have, she took in clothing and she had to clean homes because this, these were the only opportunities afforded to her. What was her answer to this, this boy who's, who's crying out for some, some, to somehow reconcile this treatment? She said, this racism is a sickness. It is a sickness. And if you act like them, you will become like them. So don't act like them. So when I hear this as a mother now, we have two burdens then to bear. I have to, I have to bear the burden of being a victim of this hatred and the red lining and Jim Crow and segregation, but I also have to have the know-how and the, the dignity to rise above it as well. So I have to be plagued by this system and, and these illnesses, but I also have to not become like that and take the higher road and become better than that. How do you do this? How, how, how can it, how does a young boy figure out how to navigate that and not react in a way that might be volatile or not react in a way that would crush his soul? It's an amazing thing to me, but my, my, my family lived through it. They, they, they be within their family structure and the village structure and the constant reinforcement and a faith, a true faith in the divine on their own terms, they still were able to rise above some of these things. So the, by the time my uncle and my mom, who's his younger sister, they reached their teenage years, they, they started getting into some trouble. They were not your church going good boys and good girls. They have reputations that are lasting. In fact, we've gone back to Memphis in recent years. They've gone back to some of the areas that they grew up in and we learned the nicknames that were held by my mom and my uncle. And I said, Oh, okay. So you had a reputation that was lasting. They, they ended up leaving Memphis, Tennessee to Long Beach. Lots of African-Americans left to the north, to Chicago, to New York. There's mass exodus of African-Americans out of the south into the, the major cities across America. My family came westward to the golden state. They came to Long Beach first. And in Long Beach, for my mother, this was a huge culture shock. Because if you come from a world of black and whites, but segregated, so really you come from a very black world where you don't interact too much with white people and then you come to Long Beach, California. My mom went to Long Beach Community College. This is for the first time she's meeting people who are of a Mexican background. She met international students from Africa. She met white people who were Californian and who thought very differently than Southern white folks. She still had her accent. So it was, it was clear that she was not from California. She still had her Southern accent. So she was still a bit of an outsider. And in Long Beach, since they traveled as a group, they sort of remained in those groups that they came in. But there was something in my mother and in my uncle as well as we had the rise of the civil rights era. We had Martin Luther King getting assassinated. We had Malcolm X getting assassinated. We had this giant of Muhammad Ali who was all over screens encouraging people to be proud of their blackness and proud of being Muslim. They were introducing new terminology Allah and Muhammad and the black man is empowered. There was something about that message that awakened something in them as opposed to like let's just bear through these injustices with forgiveness and turn the other cheek. I think they had endured that long enough and they were tired of it. They were sick and tired of being sick and tired as we know in a famous quote. So there was a rise of this nation of Islam, which I'm not, I don't know if you all know too much about it coming from the West Coast. There were chapters all across America and there was a message that was rooted in empowering black people. But on a theology that was a little, how can I put it, a theology that went to the opposite extreme in order to build the identity and build the confidence and the greatness of a people. So instead of a white superiority, it became a black superiority and connecting blackness to divine qualities and godlike qualities, but rooted in white people being evil and devil. So it was just a flip-flop. You had come from being taught that your blackness is bad or evil, but you flipped it to now we're associated whiteness with evil and blackness with goodness. This only worked for a time with my family because for my mother especially, I can speak for her mostly because I know her story well, once she got to the book Quran and read it and read the understanding of what a Muslim, how a Muslim thinks around matters of humanity and racism and injustice, there was something in that message that spoke to her spirit and reconciled a lot of those questions about how these things could happen to us. There was something that it didn't just empower her in her blackness, but it empowered her in her humanity that know whatever you've been taught in the way of your blackness making you three-fifths human or any psychological and scientific records and studies that show that you actually originate from less than human, she felt that the Quran answered all of those questions and provided her a truth that restored her humanity and restored her faith that okay, they got it wrong, they got some things wrong when she was growing up and that was not her truth and that was not the right way to go about being a human being and then raising other human beings. So she embraced initially she came through that gateway of the nation of Islam, civil rights era, struggling for justice, struggling to empower and bring the people out of darknesses into light and then she found some truths in the Quran itself and after the nation of Islam kind of began to break off into different groups, the son of that leader, Elijah Muhammad, he had a son, Dorothy Muhammad, who had traveled, he made Hajj, he studied in Egypt, he met members of the larger global Muslim community and said this is the message I need to take back to my people. This is the message I need to take back to African-Americans. When we've limited ourselves to just this American box and American structures and racial just made up social structures around race, if we can pull ourselves out of that to the global community, we can restore ourselves not just as Black people but as human beings, as people of faith, as people of aspiring to reach God. So this message, many people, my parents included, so my uncle that I spoke of, my mom, my father, they embraced this message and then they had us and that's where I get the name Afra, they changed their names. So initially this, if I'll show a picture, so we add some context, the widow that I spoke of, my grandmother, that's her there. Her name is Louis Beasley Jeffries. Jeffries is actually her maiden name and Beasley is her married name. So one of the things that came with this embracing Islam was reclaiming vestiges of our past. It's known now through lots of research that many of the Africans who were enslaved in the Americas coming from West Africa were in fact Muslim. So by taking different last names and getting back to a last name that connected us to that legacy of West Africa, it was a way of empowering ourselves as well, choosing our own names and not the name of what would have been a plantation owner or a slave master. So my dad chose the name Abdullah. My mom took that name as well and then when we were all born, we were given names that were Muslim inspired names, names that we found from Arabic Muslim name books or Muslim children's names and I was named Afra. The Arabic pronunciation is Afra, most people say Afra, but it means joy and happiness. I'm the fourth born of five from my mom and this is not to, I'm talking a lot about my mom. This is not at all to dismiss or discount my dad's amazing legacy. I have to say that in case they see a recording later, say why did you only talk about your mom but you didn't talk about your dad from San Francisco. And for the purposes of this meeting, I'm just, I'm covering my mom's journey because it's the memoirs of an African American mom and our stories are unique. Our fathers, my uncles, my brothers have a story of their own, but you know, so do the women. So my mom had five of the five. I'm the only one who was born in Hayward. So I mentioned that I think to Penelope earlier who's from Hayward and a lot of you are from Hayward. So the intention was San Francisco. That's where they were headed. I was supposed to be born in San Francisco, but I was ready. I was born December 26th. They had just been at sort of an interfaith family Christmas gathering. And at in the early hours of the morning, my mom goes into labor pains and they get on highway 880 from Union City right there off of Alvarado Niles. So if you guys are from the East Bay, you know these areas, you know these highways, she gets on, I'm ready to go. I was born ready. So she has to get off at the nearest exit Tennyson. And she goes to none other than St. Rose Hospital. And that's where I was born, St. Rose Hospital on Tennyson. She, my dad was parking the car. I was born on a gurney. I was ready to go. She'd had three previously. She was ready. I was ready. Her previous were twins who were born prematurely. I was born eight pounder. I weighed more than the two of them combined. And she delivered me on a gurney at St. Rose Hospital. And I always joke that I have an affinity for the Catholics because that's where I was born at St. Rose Hospital. So I grew up in and around the East Bay. So we were part, we grew up in Union City mostly, which many of you know who are, if you're from Hayward or Union City, there was not much there. This was most, there's gladiola fields. We had cows on the hill sides. If you go hiking, mission, not mission peak, but the one that's off of industrial. You see cows, you see gladiola fields. We're small town people working, but very, very diverse. Union City is a very diverse place. So we were growing up there, going to school there, but our faith community was in Oakland. So I was, I grew up in a very African-American Muslim community and grew up in a very diverse academic setting. So the African-American community in Oakland, California was part of a war thing community. The, the Imam looked like to me, the doctors in the area looked like me, the attorneys and the lawyers and the community people. We had a very thriving community. So I had a reinforcement of positive images of African-Americans and I had very positive images of what our community should be and could be in the face of ongoing isms that we face. Oakland has its, its share of issues and it all, it has, even while growing up. There's issues around poverty. There's issues around housing, mental health, drugs, homelessness, all of these issues that we're seeing now. If you take a visit or take a drive through Oakland, these are, these things were present back then as well while we were growing up, but we were taught to be agents of change. We were not, we were, we were, we were told that we should rise up as the leaders to confront these things and be a part of changing these conditions in order to change our condition as a people. So this was the kind of the strength and empowerment that came through an African-American journey through Islam, that it's, it's your duty. It's not just, we can't turn a blind eye. You have to stand up. If we're seeing things, we have to stand up for ourselves and stand up for other people, no matter where we see it. So coming from that community and then growing up in a very diverse academic setting, I went to a school at Searles Elementary and then Barnard White Middle School and then James Logan High School. And in 1999, we were the all-American city because of our diversity. We have people of all language backgrounds. We have people of all religious backgrounds. We had, you name it, we had it there in Logan and it's, Logan is our only school, like a little college. So we had to deal with matters related to hearing people's voices, hearing the voices of the oppressed, hearing the voices of people who are different than we are and getting to know people and being part of equality and justice and humanity for all people. I would say that that experience where in one place, we moved a lot when we were little, but in one area, we lived in a condo, the upstairs neighbors, you can hear, you can smell tortillas cooking all the time. The neighbor across the way, you can smell lumpia's cooking all the time. The neighbor in front, you could see just calm. She never spoke to us, but she would be doing her tai chi in the front. Never spoke to us. We were, we were a lot of children and we could be a little rowdy, but she's, but this is what I grew up with seeing. Okay. So the Chinese neighbor in the front is in her, her centered space of tai chi. We probably made fun of them too because we're children and this looks different and strange, but these images, I think, shaped my identity and it shaped my willingness to embrace all different types of people and be inclusive of all different types of people. So if your neighbor is Mexican and the family are immigrants and they're facing deportation, for example, you feel that the same way you would feel the African American family who's just been harassed by the police. There's an empathy there because we're growing up together and we're facing some of the same struggles as people. In terms of the police brutality, and I don't want to, I don't want to go on and on because I do want to make it interactive and have a space for people to share and ask questions. So I am looking at the time, but I would say what shaped my attitudes around police and those same questions that my uncle would ask his mom about like, why are we treated like this? I would say when the Rodney King incident happens, I was maybe in middle school and we saw LA erupting in riots and we saw people across America taking it to the streets protesting, angrily protesting, and I was trying to make sense of what is going on here and this is when the conversation started. So here again, narratives in the lives of an African American mother, my mom had two sons, three daughters. My eldest brother from her is a tall, dark, large African American man and when you see someone, this happened to Rodney King and you see all of the streets erupting because of this, it sends terror and fear into the heart of any mother because the thought is I can't let this happen to my son. There's a mother instinct that by any means you protect your son. So this is when the conversation started, okay, if ever you're pulled over by police, you say yes sir, no sir, you stand up tall, you don't make any sudden moves, you don't do anything that would make a person who might be having a bad day put bullets in you because because you want your son to become home alive and you don't want him to be dead and then in dealing with trying to get justice for your dead son because he fit a description. Those are the conversations that started when I'm 10 years old and I'm like so we're being hunted so my brother's being hunted. So just because he's walking in his black skin, this puts him at risk, why? What is this? I didn't know how to make sense of these kinds of things but this is how he has to be taught. You say yes sir, you say no sir, you don't do, you speak well, you go to school, you do everything right so that you don't bring this on yourself as if we're bringing this on ourselves. As if by being born black is a crime that I brought on myself, this isn't, this, how can this be? This is, I can't accept that, I can't but you go with it as a young person. Once I got to high school I remember I competed on the speech and debate team at James Logan High School and my coach, Mr. Tommy Lindsey, he was our just, he was our hero, he was our everything as African-American students trying to navigate the academic system. In speech and debate we did a lot of traveling around the country. I went to tournaments in St. Louis and I got trained in Florida and I remember when I went to a tournament in Loyola, Marama, down in Southern California, this was the first time that I said okay so this is what it means to fit a description. When we compete we have to put on suits, we have to speak the best we can, we're competing against privately educated students, we're competing at a state and national level where most of the competitors don't look like us and I remember at this particular tournament one of my teammates is after the tournament it ends for the day, we're all in our suits, we have to stay in hotels when we go to these different places it's Loyola, Marama, I'm in the hotel girls are in rooms with girls, boys are in the rooms with boys and I peek out at night from the hotel room, I see a police car, I see lights going and I see my teammate against the cop car with his arms behind his back and he's cuffed because he fit a description and this is one of the most preppy most, he was not even African American, he was actually African immigrant and he had been taught you dress well, you don't talk back, you get it right, you do well in school, he was competing in debate, he was one who would, you could not, who wouldn't hurt a fly, this this kind of wonderful guy and he's doing great now but at that time I'm like he fits the description, he's harmless, we're here for a speech and debate tournament at our hotel not doing anything but he fit a description and you apprehend him and his chest against the police car and my co-chess to come to his aid, listen these students are here just to compete, they're not here for any trouble, he didn't do anything wrong, you have the wrong person, this wasn't the first time, I went to school, I graduated, I went to Santa Clara University, I told you I had this affinity for Catholics, I was born at a Catholic hospital, I go to Jesuit University, my second year in living on campus, I had three roommates, we're all African American and this is a predominantly white institution, we are a minority, I'm African American, I'm female, I'm Muslim, I'm a minority every sense of the word, I just, I'm not Catholic, I'm not white, I didn't come from an affluent background but my second year, I remember we invited some of our friends over to our place, one went to Stanford, one went to UC Santa Cruz and another went to another campus, I don't know where it was, African American males and we're thinking we'll just have a nice evening of who knows what we're doing and we get called outside down to the parking lot of our campus apartments and we see our friends apprehended and we see police vehicles and we see police officers because why are they in this area, you don't belong in this area so we come to their defense, he's a student at Stanford, he's a student at UC Santa Cruz, we're students here at Santa Clara University, there are friends, they mean no harm, why are they being profiled? So these experiences with my own brothers and my friends and my teammates and my father and my cousins, it does something to you where after a while you have to speak up, you have to say come on, are we, just because you're not experiencing this yourself, do you not see what's going on here? Do not see the profile and do not see that we all fit a description and then we fast forward and I want to wrap it up with this because being African American and Muslim adds to the challenge so I was very active in the Muslim Student Association at Santa Clara University, I actually didn't finish my undergraduate studies there, I ended up going to Fresno State and finishing up there but I was still active with MSA and MSA West, these are all student organizations that organize around faith-based organizing and we're activists, so we're always at the front lines of protesting things and defending our brothers and sisters and those whose rights need to be defended, you'll find us there because this was, we felt a moral obligation, more than just a social obligation and human obligation, just a moral duty to stand up. So after 9-11, which was a tragic, just tragic event, we're just dumbfounded by what's happening here, we're viewing from California what's happening in New York and that day I had to go to school, I had to, I think I went to school and they ended up shutting school down and the aftermath of that was just, it was mind-boggling because now I'm African American and I've dealt with all of these different difficulties of the challenges facing African American communities and then now I'm going to face the challenges of being an African American Muslim woman in hijab. The aftermath of that was just, it was unbelievable because I felt the country just went into a reaction of these are our enemies, I think I was told go back to my country, I was told we don't do that in this country, I was put on no fly list, I remember I was headed to some event and I said I can't, why can I not board this plane, you're on a no fly list, you're gonna have to get that clarified, why would I be on a no fly list? So the, my identity as an African American and a Muslim have put me in a position of needing to be defended but also having to stand up against people whose rights are being just completely annihilated. I do feel now that I'm a mother, I'm totally fast forwarding here, it takes the struggle for justice and the struggle to make this world a better place for your offspring, it hits much, much deeper when you become a mother because your children are going to inherit this world, your children are going to inherit a future that my hope would be much more just and much more humane. I do believe that I've inherited a better world and a better America than my family came from, than my mother came from but certainly we have a long ways to go for what I would want my daughter to inherit, we have a long ways to go. Her father is an immigrant from Jamaica, I would say that I never, I don't think I could ever really feel the challenges of walking in a black body until I walk next to someone who walks in a black body and I see people clench their purses and I see people literally cross the street out of whatever fears because of whatever stereotypes that we've conditioned people to believe about the expectations of a black male and the fears of deportation, the fear that, oh gosh, there's added layers as a black immigrant, there's added layers as a Muslim immigrant when you have policies and you have a whole entire system that can ban you, you can ban a human being or deport a human being or segregate out, this one belongs and this one doesn't. It's a lot of struggle that comes with that and a lot of hurt, a lot of frustration, a lot of pain and sometimes it explodes into just rage but I still, because I lean on my faith and because I do believe that there's always going to be a group among us who will rise to the occasion of bringing justice and bringing the world, the balance and the humanity that we all deserve, I remain hopeful and events like today we're a small group, I can only see like 21 participants but I believe that a small group can do great, great things and I consider myself a member of that small group that's committed to change and committed to standing up and committed to making a difference for my own daughter and for future generations so I think I'll end with that, I hope I did not talk too long but we do want to open the floor for comments, for questions, feedback, I'll let Rene take over. Okay so everyone has the ability to unmute themselves so if you have a question you can please unmute yourself and then when you're done, remute yourself and if you're one of the people that came in a little late you can do a a little brief introduction and thank you very much Afra for that very powerful speech and I may have my own comments in a moment. Yeah it's Ferial here, thank you Afraat, it was really a moving presentation, you brought tears to my eyes and still it's really wonderful to hear you and I think we need a lot of voices like you to be heard so we bring humanity to the Black struggle. Thank you, sorry I didn't mean to make you perfect, it's hard to share certain things without tears, it really is but yeah. So your family is still living here in East Bay? Yes so my mom is still in the East Bay, she's in Hayward, my dad is in Union City, he's remarried, he and his wife are in Union City, I have a brother who's in Union City still near Kidiana Elementary School but many of us have scattered, I have a sister who had been living in Jordan, one who's in Texas and I have a brother who moved to Beijing and now he's in Shanghai. Yeah we're all over, hopefully making a positive difference wherever we go, that's our hope. Salam alaykum sister Afraat, I really enjoyed your presentation, I was wondering from your perspective how does your faith and your spiritual practice and the words of our Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, impact your life on a daily basis and help you to overcome the impact of racism? Great question, alaykum salam, thank you. I think when first of all I am a practicing muslim so I pray, we pray five times a day so there's something about interrupting your affairs, whatever might be going on in your life five times a day to check in with God that keeps you grounded and settled, at least it does for me because it's a reminder for me that this is so much bigger than just me and that anything that we see happening like those questions of why and how could this happen and how could God let this happen that when I come back to prayer and I come back to take these questions back to my teachers, I find solace and I find answers and in terms of the Prophet Muhammad and his message and his resolve, one of his final messages to his community before passing was that the white is not better than the black and the black is not better than the white, the Arab is not better than the non-Arab and the non-Arab is not better than the Arab, if this is the final sermon to your people that deals with this matter because this is not a modern problem, this is a historic human problem, this is not a problem unique to just America, I've lived outside of America, I lived in United Arab Emirates for a time in Abu Dhabi and what I saw in terms of racism there or almost would look like a caste system to me, this is not just an American unique to America, these issues but that reminder, it's almost like a recommitment every day that this might be what we're facing but this is a challenge to me and this is my obligation to stand up because at the very least you can change a thing, we say that you can change a thing with your hands, you can go out there and make a difference, you can change a thing by speaking out against it and at the very least you can change it in your heart and sometimes I might feel very powerless and many others do too but God knows like in my heart I do not, I cannot stand for oppression and I can because it's it's it's worse than even death and there's certain things that you between me and God you know I did not stand stand by and watch these things happen so those kinds of things keep me feeling committed to a world that was intended to be a God conscious world of equality that that's promised to us, I hope that answered Afra, Afra, hello this is Ramona, hi I'm sorry my internet band was low at the beginning and what leaped out at me though was the story about the little boy in the south now this was who I'm sorry that's my uncle my uncle my uncle and he went into a home where the three pictures on the wall were Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, yeah and a blonde blue eyed Jesus that spoke volumes to me that was a message that how could this be you know how could this be yeah I asked the same question so he my uncle Michael that's his name he's um he was a chaplain actually for many years he retired recently a chaplain in a state prison down in in uh colinga central california and um we asked the same question I'm like okay wait a second uncle take me back to that because I'm having a hard time with this so you're telling me this was commonplace in black homes he said you you have to step outside of your 2020 california raised um upbringing and try to put yourself back there this was the norm and I said but how could that be uncle like how was how was that okay it's just what was wow actually right after this talk I've been having a weekly book club with our family that that uncle included about uncle tom's cabin because I kind of wrap my mind around some of these things you know and if any of you have read uncle tom's cabin by harry at beecher stowe these are the kinds of things that come up these are the conversations that were even coming up at that time and he's giving us this historical context of try to put yourself back in those times and I said it's really hard uncle that's it's hard it's hard for me to to accept that um but it's it's um it takes time and one of the things actually in in becoming when he was with this this african-american community one of the things that war thing muhammad that um our imam did was he said remove all images remove all images of the divine there was a there was a whole movement you know what we're taking away because we muslims don't even have an image of muhammad sallallahu peace and blessings be upon him we don't keep images of what he looked like why because images are very very powerful they are what we define as beauty and and angelic and godlike it it can shape our psyche I don't know if you guys have seen those studies where they have the little children looking at the black doll and the white doll and they ask which one is prettier so there's lots of studies have been done around the impact of of images and and stereotypes or degrading images compared to uplifting images wow we came from I didn't grow up actually with pictures in the house not even of our family because we just removed all images um and concentrated on the inner work of beautiful qualities that are inward and those being defined by character and honesty and and truthfulness and these those were what defined beauty for us as opposed to look at this this image bingo I agree with that 100 percent and thank you for saying that yeah I want to ask you also put your pin because I was listening today to Martin Luther King about why the african-american community did not achieve that much where other community from outside came and and achieve more and one of the things he said which is resonate with me that none of the other community who came to America you know had slavery you know they were never been enslaved so they never experienced that so I want you to talk about how the impact of slavery do you think on the psyche and the spirit of african-american and how it stopped them from achieving what a lot of immigrants you know came and achieving this country absolutely this that's a great question these are conversations that I have um I'm surrounded by immigrants so what I didn't mention is that I became an educator and I did my masters in literacy so I taught students who were struggling readers and I taught a great deal of English as a second language which is what took me overseas um and and then when I came back teaching English as a second language I'm dealing with mostly immigrant students who are learning English as their second language refugees and political asylees and people coming from different regions of the of the globe either by force or by by choice depending on where you're coming from so the the conversations that often come up with Africans for example because if if we are considering ourselves black and we look at black struggle um even some Africans in my my friend hooded is here in this call who I love two pieces she's originally from Uganda but came here um by way of Sweden we have these conversations as well what differentiates the African immigrant let's say in in their struggle because they'll they'll face some of the same struggles here as well compared to the one who was impacted by slavery and what I've said to her so often in many of my other friends is you you still have a language you still have a culture you still have a country you still as as as as debilitated or affected by um war or all sorts of things because people are coming from difficult difficult circumstances I acknowledge that I fully acknowledge that people are coming political asylees and refugees are coming from very very challenging some circumstances but when you're dealing with people who have been cut off from language and cut off from family and sold as a as a chattel like you you have been reduced to being three fifths human there's a very different recovery process and a very different rebuilding yourself that has to happen through generations that that maybe the person who's coming from an established nation who knows their lineage and knows their culture and their language has to overcome so there's um something unique was created in the cutting off of the people and bringing them to a new land and then mixing up with other folks and and then the name that I have is not even the name that was my original name if we go back before our history before slavery this was not our name this was a name of the plantation owner and the the unique thing about chattel slavery where you're born into slavery and it's you inherit slavery so where is there where can you get free if you don't fight for your freedom so that the um that takes time that takes a lot of time even in collecting of family records we've been trying to trace our lineage as far as we can go back because now we have lots of resources like ancestry.com to start piecing together lineage right and my mom has a relative who we call our family historian she's been able to go back maybe like five generations and census records show even in the census record there was term mulatto so mulatto is a one that's mixed they're they're black and white so you've mixed up with sometimes even your own the own slave master this is your own child that you've enslaved from your seed biologically speaking i mean right but that person's born to a black woman so that child is black this this is very very damaging so to go from that and then when the us itself is constituted on all human beings being equal except this class of people who are three fifths human so i don't even have humanity i'm not even a full human being these things have had to be fought for from that time okay first i what's the other two fifths what am i right and then after that okay we've established our emancipation and texas was late to get that notice so we have something like juneteenth because even though the federal government may have issued this emancipation the states had to be the ones to change has been fought generation after generation to just establish first our humanity then some rights to be human then rights to be a woman then rights to be all sorts of things so it's it's um it's a very different kind of struggle i know that was a long-winded answer but the impact of that and then anytime you like in oklahoma we had a black wall street so you rise up and you rebuild yourself and you come together as a people and then the whole thing gets bombed and decimated right so it's it's it's not just there was slavery and then that happened and it's done and then there was jim crowen it's a revival of certain forces that are like you try to rise up against all odds and then you're still crushed and interestingly my my mom coming here to california from the south i so i will mention my dad in kcc is just recording he grew up in san francisco so his family came from near austin small town outside of austin they were really um his last name was originally turner and my dad was named after frederick douglas so these were fierce fighting type people activists you know he he his his father tried once to leave a sharecropping in texas it failed attempt second attempt he made it to san francisco and they never looked back so my dad was born and raised here and when my mom came she thought okay we're in california now we don't do like they do in the south like we don't have the same issues here in california but that's not entirely true the very city that i was born in hayward was known to be kkk headquarters it was known my dad would tell her like there's certain areas we don't go to you don't go to castor valley you don't go to hayward you don't go to nevato right having grown up in san francisco it's like you there's there's still we still have that even in california though sometimes we might consider ourselves superior over those racist folks down in the south or elsewhere right thank you so much afra can you hear me am i am i i'm not muted um i it's hard to express but you have verbalized so beautifully the experience of your not only your family and yourself but i i think kind of a microcosm of african-american experience in the united states and you know the way that the ways that you have dealt with it and your journey through islam is really interesting and totally makes sense and i just had one question in regards to that that part of the journey which was that you know you kind of alluded to the fact that originally the nation of islam had you know was substituted one devil for the for the other and and obviously you don't subscribe to that um at all so how did that change for your family or for you or yeah that's a that's a good one um so i think um if you look at for example the the journey that malcomax went through coming from that he's he's the most prolific figure i think who can who captures that that journey through faith and ideology and finding himself so i think for for my parents i would say it was a similar kind of a journey where traveling for one i think travel is so very critical my both my parents performed hajj when i was still very young and it was something that we it was just expected from a from a young age you have to travel outside of just this us box and your humanity in a global context right so that performance of hajj where you have and i i had thankfully i had the opportunity to perform hajj as well explain some people here may not know what the hajj is the pilgrimage to mecca so there's in mecca saudi arabia this there's this there's the kaba and that's that's the direction we face when we're doing our prayers this is the the um we're it's believed we believe that it was built by the son of abraham his son is smile that this was built by him and this is this has all been a historic site a sacred space for not just muslims but people of faith dating back to abraham's time this was a this was a spiritual center and um every year muslims make this pilgrimage unfortunately not this year because of covet only select pilgrims who lived in saudi arabia already were allowed to go but normally across the whole globe everyone from across the globe is is welcomed to this central point so my father made that pilgrimage i think when i was maybe in middle school and my mom when i was uh after she'd raised all of us and i was in college but being there in the space where you see the blackest of the black dark human beings of the earth with kinky hair and skin like midnight in all shapes shapes and sizes to the fair skin bluest eye blondest hair and everything in between i'm talking everything in between from abled body to disabled to people from villages to people from cities in the the most advanced cities in the world everyone is there millions of people together all praying um one direction one god one one family oneness in all that it cuts away at these notions of one being better or more superior than the other so malcom x having performed that hydrogen coming back as el hajmalik shabazz his solution what for america's race problem was we need islam we need people to understand in the in the truest sense of it not in the black man god white man devils way that he had originally learned but in the truest sense of of humanity where all monotheistic why i don't want to say people of faith i don't want to say monotheistic face but people of of faith and people of god consciousness kind of all arrive at that conclusion of this oneness and if we operate from that place of oneness and connectedness toward the betterment of all of humanity then we're getting somewhere but when we're at odds and ones an enemy and once that's very problematic if we've cast one group to be devils and one group to be like gods this is a very problematic way of uh approaching solutions for all of humanity right thank you so so that at that point your father kind of moved your family in a different direction yeah for sure he and my mother i my mother my father and my mother so this was my my my father um was the only one in his family to actually embrace islam and um raise this with this new way but my mother also this this was her this was it for her this was the answer this was an answer and this was what she instilled in us and cultivated us and encouraged us in the way i one thing i remember also grown up in union city in middle school i remember i went home and i said i'm the only black person in this class like mom this is a problem the only black person in this class and her her reaction was so there might be times where you're the only one but you you you carry on so in in my mom's um the way that she raised us and maybe it's because she came from this very segregated world uh she had i think insight and wisdom beyond what i could see when i was very young and um um so it's it's something that that's still it's it's with me it's it's the kind of diverse world inclusive world that i want to raise my my daughter in as well great thank you you mentioned the black um oh you mentioned oklahoma and the black wall street um this is a history that um a lot of people identify as white like myself have only been learning the past few years i think it's important history that we need to do in order to move forward that we all need to understand but is that a history that you that your family was aware of and always brought forward or was this part of what your father was discovering when he you know when he chose his own name and you know chose his own path and identity was it something that came out then or is this a history that's always been there for people of color uh i would say a little bit of both uh so because my my father is from california he's from san francisco he grew up in the filmore area which was an african-american community but went to school in hate ashbury i think the school is george washington um his his experience was a little different than my mom growing up in memphis tennessee which you're you're you're hugging mississippi you are deep south deep south history it looks very different than california history so there were things there was an awareness so we grew up with with certain stories and we grew up with the malcom x and the martin luther king and the mohammed ali and frederick douglas so these were central figures i had children's books of of malcom x i had because my dad was named after frederick douglas these work are exemplars so this was frederick douglas being someone who he learned to read as a slave learned how to read and was able to find his way to freedom through knowledge and literacy and uh eventually moved to uh moved out of the us and became a a prolific orator so these were the examples that i knew of more knowledge is power your education your faith your knowledge your ability to speak your ability to um influence change i think i i'm only speaking for myself here i i know that my older siblings are much more deeply uh entrenched and educated in more of these stories like oklahoma i would say even for me there's certain things now that i'm like wait a second so there was a black wall street so there was this so there's you if you go if you just grow up going to school here and learning your history here you're not learning a black history you're not learning a very rich uh a black history and i i learned the history of my family and the people that were central to our household but even um some of these stories are are new to me as well so we've been um that's why we started my older brother started a book club like okay it's it's time for us to wake up and educate ourselves we have to be informed and then not just informed that informed has to lead to to action and take in part in dialogue like this and educate the people around us um yeah so there's been a a new series that we've been watching the Lovecraft country which i think is ingenious because it slips in that history in an entertainment kind of mode so people even realize they're being educated i'm like this is really great and smart and ingenious yeah and we need all forms of that we like these even today this this discussion today all of all the efforts uh to inform ourselves and then inform the people around us it goes a long way it goes a long way okay thank you for being with us i think we're probably coming to the end is there one maybe one or one one or two more questions or have we uh i i want to ask a question you know black women play play a great role in the black family what is the strengths and the weakness of the black women in in in the african-american you know community in in terms of like the role as a mother yeah as a mother as you know because seeing the most of the time when we look at the black family it's always the women there either single women or they are the mother and you find even the adult is scared of of their mother i mean they have a lot of respect and fear of her more than you see their dad and uh you know so i understand it's partly slavery because the father used to be taken to be sold the mother will stay with the kids so so i don't know how you know what make african-american women very strong in the family and what's her weakness also she have a strength and she have a weakness well i i can't i don't i i would not want to speak on behalf of all african-american women and african-american families i think one thing that's critically important is to not make broad strokes to generalize any any group of people um and challenging so even even in the um the title of this event i said african-american mother um and even though i'm divorced i didn't want to say single mother because there's certain connotations that come with that and certain images and stereotypes of what it means to be this strong black mother and as if there's no fathers around and there's those dads or like they're like there's there's no men in our lives um that's that's a really deep um issue it's it's a it's a misconception that i think gets perpetuated because maybe um people are comfortable with that with that image i actually i i i came from a divorced household but my father and mother were very present in my life i was raised by both of them and they collaborated and they co-parented and likewise with my own my own uh raising of my daughter there's co-parenting and there's collaboration uh and i'd say that in in a historic context though their the mother is very central to the family and it might come across as being strong and more dominant and that the the man is less um less prominent but i i have very strong strong men in my family so that's not that hasn't that hasn't been so in so much so that i'm i think i i've had to try to be even stronger as a woman to confront male dominance um i have very strong men in my family and very present in the lives of their families and their children um but in terms of broken homes and um women single mothers i would say that for for single mothers that i know uh who have who are still dealing with the effects of that those separations that you mentioned and an institution so in part of the institution of slavery would be selling off families like okay husband goes there well actually was illegal to even be married right or we're a system that was just dehumanizing so a family that's cut apart by a man gets sold off this way a woman gets sold off that way and a child gets sold off this way to different masters wherever they may be this can be very debilitating to any sense of family but i would say that despite all those um systems and those uh challenges and those forces to disrupt the family you still have a sense of a tight knit village which is centered around motherhood and the warmth and the strength of motherhood and the women and the rearing of children so mothers do the raising and the educating and the instilling values and maybe the men are the ones who are the hunter-gatherers if you will like you are the your protector and the maintainer of your family um i wouldn't say that the vocal strong black woman means that is indicative of an absent man in fact sometimes the the stronger the presence of that that black mother that african-american mother it's because she's she's she can lean on the strength of a very strong supportive man um i hope that i hope that answers it yeah no it's wonderful this is not at all to dismiss or discount the struggles of single mothers because that that is it that is a that is a reality and that's a that is a struggle in itself it's just one that i can't speak to too well because it's no because as you said before there is a stereotype about african-american mother and the absence of fathers this is very you know you know you know what you call pervasive in our society and the stereotype yeah and and with that i would say just always always challenge your those stereotypes and misconceptions no people i think these are some of the best ways to to dispel myths and misconceptions and is to to ask these kinds of questions and get to know people yeah you see what when you when you when we hear voices like you and more of it this is the only way we can get rid of the stereotype because you cannot get rid of it if you don't hear the voices then the story the story and the narrative it tells you exactly it it gives humanity to the people if you're not you just hear you know opinions and and and people propagate you know and different propaganda and you don't know what is true and what's what's not yeah this is michelle speaking my neighbor yeah oh wait i might what do you know from what's up from mcc yeah oh my okay my name okay well i just want to say thank you so much and saffron like that was that was so real and um very touching um and um i just the main thing like the main focus like how you're saying right now is for me also having a mixed son who's african-american and mexican so he i just want also him to kind of see the world you know differently than what his father and what his you know that his um african blood experience and you know still like what's going on in school um yeah so yeah i just definitely why you know i thank you so much for sharing that and i hope that um in god's will inshallah that you know we can exactly keep um um our african-american neighbors and sisters and brothers family can continue sharing and speaking up and like um enlightening us and just keeping the movement alive and the change alive because yeah absolutely absolutely well thank you so much afra um this has been a really um wonderful enlightening experience for me and i'm sure everybody that's been here and i'm going to let you close out is there any um last words you would like to say to people as far as what we can do um to help support uh people of color who are especially muslims but not necessarily um us who are of different uh coming from the dominant culture what would you like from us i would i would say first of all thank you um this is a step in the right direction these conversations i think join us in our humanity and we peel away the headlines and the the notions that we come up with about each other and we hear each other's voices so yes continuing these conversations and continuing getting i'm just one of so many stories just like michelle said there's there's countless stories out there and connecting with people getting to know people just asking about as neighborly needs how can we be of help and support and service that's the best that i think we can do for each other and it goes a long way in the grand scheme yes that's perfect thank you to each other absolutely thank you it was really a treat today your your your presentation was really wonderful absolutely and thank you to everyone who who's uh came and and listened and took it into their hearts all that afra has said so um peace be upon all of all of us and um let's go on with our lives