001uh so i'd like to call to order the special board of education meeting on november 9 2020. it is currently 602 p.m um as permitted by governor pritzker's executive orders 2020-07 in 2020-33 the oak park air force high school board of education in cook county illinois will convene a remote special board meeting on november 9 2020. um board member citizens and staff may participate in the meeting by submitting public comment as indicated on our website the state of illinois continues to operate under disaster declaration related to the covenant 19 worldwide pandemic the health department continues to advise the community to practice social distancing wear face masks and avoid unnecessary contact with others based on the current public health concerns i serious by these head of the public body do not believe it is either practical
002or prudent to hold an in-person meeting of the board of education on november 9 2020. i further believe that it's neither practical nor prudent for the public to be present at the public bodies regular meeting place uh we will continue to hold a remote meeting with updated practices to comply with public act 101-640 that was signed by governor pritzker on june 12 2020 pursuant to public act 101-640 since the meeting cannot be conducted at the regular physical location due to the health crisis alternative arrangements have been made to allow any interested member of the public to hear all discussion testimony and roll call votes uh via both the link on our website as well as our youtube channel um gail do we have any public oh i'm sorry if we could take attendance please yes
003uh mr krovsky here dr moore here mr barron here mr eisley yep mr martiri here miss harris and doctor uh i'm sorry miss dixon is by me yeah not a doctor i'm here um okay gail do we have any public comment no we don't all right okay um so we are here this evening to have a conversation about race as a board uh and i'm very happy to do so and i would like to introduce our facilitator miss uh graham washington how are you i'm doing very well thank you so much to you happy good to see you too and good thank you for making the time for this conversation tonight i'm gonna uh dr ammons has a couple of words he wants to say about you as well okay thank you sure yeah thank
004you so uh like sarah just mentioned i and good evening everyone i am very excited that we uh have this opportunity to have a conversation about about race uh especially as we think about our leadership roles uh here in the district as well for a community that espouses uh racial equity as a value so um you know again excited to have rashida ground washington here tonight to facilitate this conversation uh in particular uh about uh you know race racism uh how it manifests um you know in in our everyday lives and just kind of you know taking a look at ourselves and looking at how it impacts students faculty staff and our just a larger community so again uh rasheeda graham washington i've known her ever since i've landed here in in oak park in
005river forest and uh she's done some great work not only uh with uh 297 but also i'm having an opportunity to work with her with the uh the oak park public library and the other anti-racism uh advisory committee that i'm on there so very excited to have her here in the space tonight and i won't take up too much time and i'll turn it over to to rashida now thank you so much dr amos it was it's a pleasure to be here i'm super excited for the work we're doing together but also for um the synergies that you have spoken about already um between the organizations that rgw is working with is really an exciting time to be coming alongside a park and we have two hours and if you've ever worked with me before
006you know i'm gonna take every single second um having been a high school teacher myself i i'm accustomed to teaching bail to bail so here we go um so i just want to do a quick overview i think i'm sure you've seen the agenda but we're going to start with a song by gregory porter called painted on canvas and then we're going to talk a little bit about the conditions and context in which we learn which is valuable to the equity journey but also as leaders of schools this is this is the water we swim in we're going to do a little bit of narrative sharing and dei work um developing the con context and conditions for shared language and then a little bit of time for q a as we will have embarked on
007a lot of what um our firm rgw refers to as the stage zero work um we are firm believers at rgw our methodology is such that we can't just wake up one morning get together even if we've been working with a group of people or as a group of people around particular topics and then just decide and now we're going to start talking about race jump right into that conversation with all of our context and all of our schema about what that means and just presume that that will all just be fine and go into the deep and difficult uh waters of race in america and so tonight really is about some tone setting and some norming um for this group as i suspect that even beyond the work we do together this will be
008um a pretty solid foundation for whatever ways you um hope to embark on the conversation beyond tonight um and so let us listen to a song by gregory porter called painted on canvas um i'm gonna play the song and you'll be able to hear it and as i play the song i want you to be present to what resonates with you i want you to be present to the messaging of the song but specifically to be present to the song as you think about how its messaging might inform the journey we're about to take together how does what we're about to do how might it be best supported by the messaging of the song we're sharing together so i'm going to turn it on now here we go that's a chromebook with built-in virus protection
009so you can click with confidence with no more of this and a lot more peace of mind hold on move along viruses switch to built-in virus protection switch to chromebook one second three seconds did you know they're called vacation days because we are like children we're painted on canvases picking up shades as we go we start off with gesso brushed on by people we know watch your technique as you go step back and admire my view [Music] can i use the colors [Music] of peace and light layers of color [Music] can i get something with my balloon just like children were painted on [Music] canvases [Music] do [Music] do [Music] we are like children with painted on campuses picking up shades as we go [Music] we start off with gesso brushed on by people we
010know [Music] do i have to say [Music] our stories [Music] step back and admire my views [Music] do i have some say why do [Music] like children [Music] oh we're just like we're just like children we're painted on [Music] canvases [Music] we're just like children like children [Music] all right for all the introverted and or internal processors we're going to take just two minutes to be quiet and collect our thoughts about the question of what this song has to do with how we should proceed with our work tonight and if you feel so inclined well let's just be still for two minutes and collect our thoughts you can take notes if you want i'm gonna set a timer and in two minutes we will process both the song and your reflections two minutes so you
011all right let's turn to the chat box and in it um if you would click on panelists and attendees and share in the chat box what resonated with you from the song that might be relevant and pertinent to us well i'll tell you what let's do it this way i want your voices in the space so if you could share out loud with the group i will write into the chat box as i hear your reflections and we can just popcorn this so anyone who wants to speak can um so miss graham washington per the open meetings act we really can't use the chat because that doesn't get preserved unless uh gail you have not asked the chat before yeah that's not something that we yeah i'm sorry no it's okay um it's quite all
012right this is fine we can record because when we're recording this yes we are recording it that's that's working so what i want you to do is just out loud share with me um and it is being recorded so it'll be in the recording and then i was going to just document it so that we could refer back to it if we needed to during the session is that okay that is fine yeah thank you no problem all right i'm ready do it who is that i'm usually kind of like a lead off guy um you know it's i heard you know you we we start with a blank slate a blank canvas and we pick up shades as we go based on the based on the environment we're in the people we know so
013we're we're heavily influenced by those that we've we've been with um as as we kind of paint our our canvas thank you tom that's okay yes um i want to pick up where tom left off that um we are we are a cabin and our our lived experiences frame who we are what we are and how we are perceived by others and oftentimes how we perceive others and so while we may look similar on the outside um our lived experience truly determines the multitude of colors that make up who we are other thoughts i'll go next okay gina good evening everyone good evening hi gina hi um i i actually uh yes everything that was shared i i kind of picked it up a different way there's a line that he said something about can
014i choose my own colors um that was what stuck out for me was can i choose my own colors like other people are painting on me whatever colors that they think of who i am and i heard what i heard was can i choose my own colors that stood out for me uh and i'll piggyback off of what gina said that's what i heard too that um we can't always choose how others are perceiving us um we can request it like you said can i get some green with my blue i think um we can we can want to be perceived a certain way but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's gonna actually be how others perceive us yeah there's a um on one hand when i was first listening to it uh i was
015thinking that this is a song about kind of just simply building yourself up as as you go right the layers that kind of go on you from your experiences and then as it was going on i wrote down this line and i so i don't know if i got this quote right okay but there's a line i think um something about can you use the colors i choose uh can i say what colors can i can i say what do i have some say what you use can i use the colors i choose i'm typing it in now yeah so there's this idea that um kind of how you are defining yourself is not something that is just simply you right there's the idea that it's happening kind of through other people and even the
016choices that other haves are influenced by um the choices you make and vice versa that's that's a powerful idea so the do i have some say what you use line i think is actually self-reflecting i mean you've got this opinion of me based on what i look like where i've grown up etc can i alter that opinion by being myself and giving you some input on who i really am that's how i heard that which i thought was an interesting line uh in the in the song i also you know i completely agree with what both tom and dr pruitt adams said at the beginning i i think that that's was a powerful start but i but i do think this was one where the the whoever wrote the song i don't know if the
017singer wrote it sometimes people call for other people's music so he may not have written it but whoever wrote this song was trying to see if they could have a little input on how they are perceived irrespective of their background and what they look like thank you can i i don't know if it builds on this or not but the the author uses children a lot in this conversation and i think that's i think it's used to indicate that you know we're exploring in this process like children not that we're managing it yeah and i wanted to add to that uh to rasheeda the um we're all like children were painted on canvases just the whole idea of um i have this uh little plate that has the quote on it quote on at home
018is where your story begins and it feels like that is the you know that's the start but then you go out in the world and you are perceived differently by different folks and you know there may be false narratives of what people want to put on you um but that um all of us have that experience we're all you know painted on canvases so we um as much as we're different we're all having that experience it's just the the differences of how we perceive ourselves and how others are perceiving us and i would add the thing that i um got mostly was the the repetition of were just like children and so what i thought about with that was that children are impressionable seeking guidance have a lot to learn we often don't know what
019we don't know and that permeating all of it is to handle one another with care and what would happen tonight if this if these words that are now in the chat so you can refer back to them as we go through our time together what if these became our norms what if this was just the conditions that were right tonight and all the time for embarking on these somewhat challenging and um tenacious conversations what if we expected repetition so that we didn't take on the posture of are you seriously making this mistake again um i have to tell you this again we've been over this before um and what if we understood the need to be created and impacted and influenced and designed by one another in the journey and what if we made ourselves
020open to that possibility of that um andy warhol i'm sure so many of you know who andy warhol is um andy warhol is a very famous painter who is world renowned in his work and so is basquiat by the way and at one point um people thought it was a good idea for basquiat and andy warhol to co-collaborate in a design of paint to create a series of paintings together and i smile just thinking about what that must have sounded like to each of their ears if you know their work you'll know why that sounds like a very interesting pairing um and uh initially andy warhol was actually very excited to do it and basquiat was the one who was reserved and and a little nervous about it he's a very free artist and he
021uses everything as a medium and uh warhol was much more concise and precise in his work and they finally agreed to work together and when they did andy warhol being andy warhol he made the first marks on the very initial canvas that they collaborated with and he was very excited about what he had produced he felt quite pleased with it and basquiat looked at it for a moment and then went to the canvas and painted all over the top of what warhol had put on the canvas initially warhol was not um well let's just say he wasn't excited about the idea of that um but as basquiat continued to paint and then warhol began it at first contemptuously to paint over what bosque i had painted over they developed a rhythm for trusting each other's
022coverage of the canvas and produced a wonderful series of timeless work together because they were willing to engage in the co-creation of overlap um they recognize that sometimes art intersects art and that you often come out with a different even better product when you are willing to embrace the layers what if our work was about embracing the layers there will be layers to the work we do tonight and beyond tonight and it will be hard we will be both at some points we will be war hall at other points we will be basquiat and i imagine that the practice is what will lead to our comfort in trusting the layers this is what i invite us into tonight and every night that you embark upon this topic of diversity equity and inclusion it is not
023a matter of if as much it is as it is a matter of when we will see the canvas a very particular way um and we will need to have that perception that vision informed by other ways of seeing it and when that when not if when that creates detention and the challenge and the anxiety that is often associated with such a process we now have something to refer back to can i can i have some say what you use can i get some greens and some blues we are after all like children um and we're picking up shades as we go and so um we take this journey with that in mind and allow that to serve as the norms by which we will embark on the journey together so let's shift gears um
024to talk about the conditions and context in which we learn so i want you to get some learning something that you learned in your mind it can be practical or tangible like learning how to type using a qwerty keyboard or learning how to ride a bike without training wheels it can also be something like um my mom taught me that i would always give my allowance i would get a dollar and i would hold it so tight in my hand that it would leave marks by my fingers in my inside my palm i would hold it so tight and my mom would say well the good news is it's not going to get out but the other news is nothing is going to get in either so sit with that um and so i learned
025something about holding things tightly that nothing will get out but nothing will get in right it could be a lesson like that that lesson is 40 years old and i have sometimes lost sight of it but never forgotten it so you can get any one of those kinds of things in your mind right now that is more than five years old which means that it is sustaining and enduring and it is lasting right get that in your mind once you have that in your mind as important as that lesson is to your life that is not the thing we're gonna work with tonight so now that you have it in your head in your mind i want you now to think about the conditions that were happening around you in you with you with other
026people what was the environmental context what was your head space what was your heart space what was going on in your life when you learned this valuable enduring timeless sustainable lesson and i want you to write those conditions in the chat box are we okay with that girl the boy should not write in the chat box that can't work okay oh i just love for you sorry right freedom of information we got it okay then you're gonna yell it out to me and i'm gonna write in the chat box which means it's recorded and record it it'll be in the minutes too okay so just shout out popcorn style what were some of the conditions in which you learned this valuable sustainable enduring lesson and i will write them in the checkbox and you said
027it has to be something over five years right by conditions i just want to clarify one point on this you're talking about like kind of the context of who we were in the moment we were in right i was frustrated and i wanted desperately to quit that's my context not your current job of course no this is not it's it's five years further back yeah it was worth it for it yeah um okay um i don't know the right answer and i can't control my environment insecurity and uncertainty frustration with a lack of progress and a desire to lash out strongly impatience and a bit of arrogance young and unguarded i think jackie and i shared the same moment i want to go back to hers i'll jump in a desire for um improved relationships
028generally speaking like all relationships difficulty and perseverance who has that please that was roxanna thank you um i was trying to learn something can you say yours we're not supposed to oh i'm sorry i'm sorry go ahead board members by me i can go after you no no go ahead i would just say that stand in your truce so that progress can truly be made uh and mine was gonna be that i was i was trying to learn something but i ended up i learned that but i ended up learning a lot more sort of about my about myself than i did about the topic that i was actually trying to learn about if that makes sense could i add one more transformative i would say shyness and vulnerable mine is actually a deeper understanding
029to know more just scratching the surface all right so let's take a look frustration with the desire to quit i don't know the right answer and i can't control my environment and security uncertainty a desire to lash out strongly in patience arrogance youthfulness unguardedness a desire for improved relationships difficulty with perseverance standing in truth so that progress can truly be made trying to learn a thing learning that thing but learning more about myself than i did about the thing transformative shyness and vulnerability okay awesome now what are the conditions in which we typically desire to learn what do we name as the good and right conditions for learning i believe some of what we heard people say was it was a condition a willingness i think i heard a willingness to learn to know more
030uh learning more about ourselves uh relationships play a key role in learning i'm not sure about the arrogance part but being feeling capable and i don't know if that translates to arrogance but just feeling capable and that you can awesome what are some of the other things that we actually name as conditions when we talk about a learning environment what do we want to feel what do we want to experience safety here we go feeling supported safety supported stability i'm sorry ability ability fitment and trust roxanna what was the word before trust excitement excitement breath comfort i would say inspiration and yeah inspiration all right so the chat box is there and everyone can look and see what is there how would you relate the conditions that you named that were part of your actual
031experience in relationship to the conditions that we typically name outside of an experience when we talk about the conditions we want to learn in how do how do you compare or relate those two lists i'm not clear on the question yes so as you look at the list we made based on things we actually learned that we're enduring and sustaining um long lasting lessons as you look at those words that i put in the chat and you compare those um words to the ones that you listed for how you want to learn what do you see what are the distinctives between them well i would have said that in for me a lot that the conditions that we named are not the conditions that i learned my most important lessons in and of opposites they
032are very much opposites um and when we talk about learning oftentimes when we're talking about it in a vacuum we named the ideal wouldn't it be nice if we could learn our most enduring lessons in self-discovery and willingness and relationships and capability and safety and supportive environments that are stable and exciting and trustworthy and comfortable and all full of affirmation and inspiration ideally if i could choose between the first list you made and the second list you made who wouldn't choose the second list everyone would choose the second list but this is ideal and the list you made was from actual learning that really did happen so these are the actual conditions in which you really do learn and these would be really really nice but you didn't name any of them when you made
033your actual list for how you learn what are we going to do with this and what does this mean for our time together and what does it mean for district 200 and what does it mean for our community what does it mean for our students when we've named this ideal environment that did not turn up as one that existed for any of us when we named our actual learning environment what are your thoughts about that one thought is that it's um you know the fact that you asked us to go back in time and i went to a young part of myself and um the thing that i uh take from that is that learning has happened since then and what some of those lessons um have the effect of you you know you learn
034about ways you want to do things by how you were raised or experiences and what you don't want to continue and i think that um in an opportunity like this the the aspirational is something that um the fact that all of us brought those things up to me is a sign that um it's more than aspirational it's that evolution of ourselves that when you're younger when you're five and you start kindergarten you can't you don't know a list to make right you're just kind of going to school and whatever school is going to be is what it is and over time as we hone our desires especially as learners we begin to build a list curate our elements that we desire for learning here is the challenge i am not sure that that makes the
035conditions for learning change at all we just want what we want but the conditions for learning are often still what they are unless you work at and it's hard but it's work it is yeah yes i i guess and i think it's unfair a little bit because there were things i learned in very positive environments too but maybe not but you i learned it had to learn in all environments sure right i mean you didn't really get to choose if you were gonna if you were going to learn you had to learn in all environments but craig you're making exactly the point that we have to learn in all environments and we won't always get to choose so what would it look like for our first list to meet our second list that sounds like
036greens and blues right um and that oftentimes it is more of a melding of these things as dr moore has named we have more control over how we learn now than we did when we were five and my hope is that that would serve as an enhancement to the experience and we also know from the first list we made that these other components do exist as a part of the journey so we don't have to be binary in our thinking about either of them but what we can do is widen our expectation in a way that says all of this is a part of the learning environment and maybe i'm only in trouble if i anticipate and expect one or the other but if there is room for us to hold it all in the
037learning environment then i'm not caught off guard by having a good time while talking about equity and diversity and inclusion and i'm also not caught off guard by being challenged in my thoughts and ideas because i had a wide and broad expectation that all of that could happen at the table yeah one thing i want to share is something that i've strived for over time and i've picked it up along the way and fail at it but it's to learn from criticism and when being attacked and when maybe 90 of it is unmerited what is it what's the kernel of some truth or a lesson in it that i can glean so it's not throw the cliched baby out with the bathwater and so i think that's hugely important for anyone but especially for public
038officials who are often hearing more from the critics than the the folks praising us thank you for that matt matt people praise us did you did you give him my email it's only off the record when they do it though so you never see it usually the first sentence in the email so one that you know when you asked about uh when you talked about the condition we learned from and the condition we hoped for um and you asked how would that handle or resonate with what the work we're going to do with you so we came into this meeting to talk about race to learn about race um and so when i think about the music up front i took that back to race but when we talk about learning and almost all of
039us talked about the challenges and there was something that caused us to have to learn it wasn't like hey give it to me that's what talking about race is about that it's going to be difficult it's going to be hard but if we uh you know as i look at the people in this room if we are a collective of administration and board we have to be ready to have some of these conversations together so that we can learn together in order to move forward together and knowing that it won't be easy it won't be that you that that wonderful way in which we all hoped we would learn but that at the end of the day we walk away better than we were when we started thank you what were what i'm what i
040am hopefully leaning us into is a space that doesn't have to be a space that is non-binary that is not a this or a that that is not a blank canvas or a full canvas that is not a challenging way to learn or a beautiful safe way to learn that when we start to talk about race that it won't be yes or no or left or right or black or white but that in all of this is layers of color and time right um and that when we can get curious about the layers and the colors over time that we get to see how we relate to race as a collective differently um i just i like that yeah we get to see it emerge differently over time okay um i'm going to launch us
041in well any final thoughts on that piece before we go to the next part okay so the next thing we're going to do is talk a little bit a little bit about race we've we've been kind of walking around the pond and we looked at the pond and we kind of assessed it the state of the pond now we're going to dip our toe in the water a little bit um this exercise was originally one that beverly tatum espoused to anybody familiar with the work of beverly tatum why are the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria um and beverly tatum often speaks about the importance of sharing your race narrative and the way that it informs your identity because it helps you to get to know something about yourself that you may have become
042out of touch with but as you share that in a community or in an organization it also helps you to get in touch with each other differently on the topic finally it gives us a practice that we don't come already ready already equipped to have which is talking about race um interpersonally and intersectionally this is something i think we sometimes assume we have the skill set to do and then we walk away from the meeting sort of scratching our head like what just happened in there um and it's because of um the way that we jump right into the middle of the pond and we don't get acquainted as a collective with the pond and gradually um immerse ourselves this exercise helps us to gradually become immersed and so i'm going to give you about
04310 minutes to go someplace in your story you can go as far back as you want if that sounds too frustrating you can stop at wherever you come to whatever bubbles up or resonates for you somewhere in your story where you recall first or one of the first experiences in your life where you knew racism was at play whether or not you knew to call it that because sometimes there is just a knowing without words right like something is not right about this and it's not until later that you're like that was racism right or that was injustice so i want you to go back to one of those occurrences in your life and you can write make bullet points you can start to write a narrative i'm going to give you 10 minutes to
044go and become reacquainted with that experience you can get the content of the story but also don't forget to register any epiphany that you had and how it made you feel any epiphany you had and how it made you feel as well as you know recounting the occurrence as well i'm going to give you 10 minutes to be with that and then we'll come back together and share some of our findings 10 minutes [Music] with so um so you mix so this right everyone could take this final minute to wrap up whatever thoughts you're having and before we embark on um sharing some of these narratives um i wanna i'm gonna flip the agenda a little bit and talk a little bit about a context and conditions for shared language because i think that will
045act is actually a little bit more um it will inform our narrative sharing a little better because when you share narrative you use words and when you use words you use them the way that you intend to use them what you use them from the context out of which they mean something to you and that's informed by your learning that's informed by your context your environment your experiences and all of that and so you don't all define terms the same way as a result because we've all had different experiences because we've all had different connections because we come from different environments and language is informed by all of that then even when we're using the same language we don't always mean the same things and so as we're about to start sharing narrative people are
046going to use words and they're going to use them in the ways that are most central and most appropriate to them which might be different than the way we understand certain terms oftentimes in edi work the way that we respond to that that situation or circumstance is we get a list of terms and then we define those terms together the consultant or whoever the workshop facilitator is will give those to you you receive them and much like the way we've sort of been conditioned to learn we accept what the piece of paper is in front of us but the reality is that that doesn't necessarily change the way i relate to that term so for example in my work i might use the word white supremacist all the time in fact in my work i
047see the word and use the word at least on a weekly basis but if i were to sit down with my grandmother to have a conversation about diversity equity inclusion racism civil rights injustice any of that and i went to use that that word it would shut the conversation down completely and the reason why i was shut down the conversation with my grandmother is that she can't have a conversation in which that word is being used it is too traumatic an experience for her so if i am interested in actually having the conversation with her and i'm more interested in that than i am in the terminology i get to choose that i will choose words that forward our discussion because i'm most interested and i legitimately am most interested in what my grandmother has
048to say about the civil rights movement of her day so when we have conversations she might use words and i use them differently because i do the work i do and what i have to do oftentimes is ask her what do you mean when you say those words giving us a glossary of terms would not help us in this situation because it's not a technical problem it's an adaptive challenge adaptive meaning that the issue is underneath what is on the table or at the surface and while there is a place for shared glossary of terms what maybe builds the better foundation for having conversations like this is first just understanding that we will always use words differently because our language will always be informed by our experiences and our experiences are different and the only
049way we really get to have a shared and common language is to know more about each other's experiences so that we can better understand what each other means when we use particular words what karen means when she says injustice or when she says feminist is very different than what i might mean when i use those same words but i can say to karen when you say feminist what does that imply and then i get excited because i get to get curious about her answer and i really do want to know by the way so we should figure that out at some point um but that's where the real hard work happens that's necessary to better engage these conversations not by me giving you a glossary of terms that includes my definition of injustice my definition
050of feminism and telling you these are the terms and now you must embody them in the way that i'm sharing with you as the principal consultant so as we hear our stories tonight if you hear words or even experiences that make you more curious about the person who is sharing the story i would encourage you and invite you to make the time to get curious with that person about their story so that you can authentically share a language and not just have a glossary of terms that we agree to that will come down the line any questions about that all right friends then let us have some narrative sharing um the the sort of protocol or process for this is that you're simply going to share the story that you just sat with for 10
051minutes you're going to tell a little bit about your story its impact and significance in your life and how it made you feel the rest of us are going to listen actively um and maybe even take some time at the end to get curious with you about your story and to share impressions that come as a result who wants to start i'm going to selfishly jump right in there get in there i'm going to get in there um i think the one thing that i sat with what that kind of came to mind for me was as growing up um in a very um i would say hard working blue collar to middle class community in minneapolis majority of the businesses if not all of the businesses were all black owned our community healthcare senate
052clinic was black owned our grocery store was black owned and i grew up in a very large multi-uh family southern household with many generations in that household and my aunt and my brothers were my aunt and my uncles were artists and lucky for me i grew up in an area where a lot of people don't know this um prince's mom and prince grew up three blocks away from my grandmother i would walk down the street and i would see members of the time sheila e um jimmy jam and terry lewis all the time in my neighborhood it was a very artist-rich community and my both my aunts and my uncles went to high school with prince at north high school they were painters and extraordinary artists and i can remember one day being at home
053with my cousins in my aunt one of my aunts who was one of prince's classmates came in and was extremely like emotionally distraught and she did a painting and she told my grandmother the the i overheard them talking about the painting she did for one of her art classes was presented to the rest of the class and the rest of the school community um by for a contest but unfortunately hers was not selected to be presented at the i guess the larger school community contest because of what the art teacher thought was not art and she asked the i heard her telling my grandmother the assignment was for them to paint art as they know it in the community that they're from well also in our community that was 95 96 black you had a
054lot of different people who didn't share you know the life that you live that did different things at night than you did at night with your family but there was no judgment we were all still a community so she drew she painted a woman and a man in 70s clothing very well you know very well groomed beautiful immaculately dressed in a community with a very i would say you could tell it was a very black background so there was nothing but black people in the community in the background the woman in the main you could tell we're in um a couple but to the art teacher i could overhear my my aunt telling the art teacher that she painted art as she knew it in her community well the art teacher told her you painted
055a pimp and his you didn't paint art in a community and she was extremely distraught and she never painted anymore after that so the only thing that i can remember is my grandmother and my grandfather going to the high school and having a meeting with the teacher the principal and what they were talking about what they didn't consider art and she said my daughter painted art in our community and this is what we see in our community we see a man walking down the street with a woman that he's in a relationship with we see you know other people on the block that are just walking past that are dancing or playing music which was every day in my neighborhood and she painted what she sees every day and you told her she painted a
056pimp and a how could you do that to somebody that's pretty much a young lady who's growing up in a very rich black community that she knows everybody she painted two people she sees every day and you told her that that was an art and to me that was my first impression my first experience with racism because our neighborhood was very black so i didn't know anything beyond i didn't see my first non-black classmate until i actually went to middle school so for me to see that happen and for to for me to see a person who was ex is a talented as my aunt i mean extraordinary artist to not paint for years after that by what one teacher told her who was not black um was just devastating and i just didn't really
057even know how to understand it until later as i grew up and went to college and reflected back on that experience and the fact that she didn't even start painting again until i probably was i was graduating from college when she paid it again so the the impact on her emotionally and mentally you can tell just was ravishing so i i i but i think that was my very first experience with um with oppressive um mindsets and how what that can do to a student and what that means for educational institution thank you so much to lima wow you did get us started indeed thank you thank you any impressions that you would like to share the thing that comes to my mind is there's a great book that marlo thomas um what was the
058editor of called the right words at the right time and i read it 15 20 years ago and there's been at least one sequel but it's all these well-known people and muhammad ali in the book talks about a teacher in louisville when he was there in high school who kept saying to him you're you're going to amount to nothing you're not going to go anywhere with this boxing and it really fueled him to greatness it was part of what he used to become great and um but other people right that would not be their reaction it would cause them to go the other way and so that's and so it's really dangerous um but there's more than a few stories in that book about people being negatively motivated and it's not it's in my view
059so unnecessary and so damaging and you know i think most of us could agree on that so anyway that's just a book that i find really inspiring because it's about so many of these moments of truth so i just thought i'd share that with it just came to mind as shaleem was sharing that i'll go next um oh i'm sorry go ahead jackie i just had a quick question shaleem how old were you at the time at the time i was seven seven or eight thank you just trying to get that context thanks so some of my team have heard this this story uh that i'm gonna tell um my mother raised me deliberately to be a black female in a white world but when i went to school i only went i went to
060elementary was all black high school was all black college was all black and so my first experience even my first teaching assignment was in the black neighborhood and so when i got hired uh to go to another district because of the work that i was known to do first i was told i was a quota and they were hiring me because they had to have a quota and when i walked into the building the first day the principal asked me why was i there that the teacher assistants were to show up the next day i said i am the teacher i was then sent to my classroom down in the basement back in the back uh and i sat there all day waiting for the ot the pt the speech people to come down and
061talk to me about the ieps for my students when that didn't happen at the end of the day when we had the staff meeting i went upstairs and i said i've looked at the ieps for the students in my classroom yet no one came down to talk about their iep to talk about their ot or pt and their speech and language and the therapist told me that they were waiting for the teacher to arrive and once again i had to say i am the teacher that entire summer because i went to them in the summer the only two people that spoke to me in that building were the two assistants who were assigned to my classroom and that's when i knew that all the things that my mom had said to me growing up that
062i was born with two strikes i was black and i was female um that's the first time it just really hit home that people couldn't see past the color of my skin to realize that i could be a teacher even my doctor when she filled out the physical form filled out the sign for the bus driver and not for the teacher i'll go um [Music] it's hard to follow stories like that one of course is a white woman aaron one second dr pruitt adams karen hang on just one second for me are you are you done or are you taking a moment um i had in my lifetime there's been so many stories but that you asked for the first i had heard but that was my first experience but in my 65 years i
063have a box full i um i want to as the facilitator of this space um i want to name the weight and i want to name the gift i want to name the weight and i want to name the gift um so i'm gonna state what sometimes feels like the obvious but isn't always obvious um some of us have to go far and deep to pull these stories out of our places and that is the weight of it um i did this same workshop earlier today with the executive leadership team for the library and as i was joining one minute before time for us to start i knew exactly why i was like i'm waiting to the last 60 seconds because there's the weight and i was like rashida do not ever schedule this to
064do it twice on the same day ever again especially in this context like right now you want to do this twice in the same day in this national landscape that we are experiencing not the best idea there is the weight but our narratives are the most valuable thing we hold so when we come together to share them in this way it is a precious gift and so i just want us as we are taking this journey to understand that we are holding two things that feel very contrary to one another and that's what you're feeling in the space with you feeling the greens and the blues um and so i want us to be present to that reality as we forge ahead because this is the humanity behind all the policies and the protocols and
065the procedures and the governance and the budgets and the calculations and the quantifiables this is the humanity behind that and that is a weight and a gift karen uh it's hard to follow that because mine doesn't carry that kind of weight um and i appreciate the sharing that shalima and dr pruitt adams have done um i think for me when i really thought hard about my first the first thing i could remember um you know i grew up in the white suburbs of cincinnati um and what i remember is one of my grandparents commenting on a that a black family had moved into our neighborhood and did they keep up their property um and i remember thinking the question was jarring like why specifically was she asking that question but i also think i knew
066i mean i was probably seven or so on some gut level that the question she was asking aligned with what i s the images that i saw in the media on tv and in the movies um and you know you you had said we may remember these experiences and not quite recognize it as racism at that age um but that was the first experience that i thought of can i ask karen a question did did your grandmother i just want to make sure i understood the black family moved on your street or your grandmother's strength on our street i i lived in a predominantly white neighborhood and so did you i'm just curious and don't take this the wrong way did your grandparents encourage your parents to move well no my parents had already been
067part of weight flight yeah we we we had left a neighborhood that was changing and move and moved into this neighborhood when i was in first grade karen what do you recall feeling about it do you remember having any feeling at that time or did it grow into a feeling over time how did that go you know i i guess i don't recall a lot about it but like i said what what i remember feeling is that it aligned with the images that i had of black families you know on tv living in projects or in not you know rundown neighborhoods or whatever so i i think that that's what i recognize that that that is how um black people have been portrayed in in my world you know that oh it may oh that
068makes sense why she would ask that you know and it just went on from there where i where i grew up and you said yeah yeah i think that's about yeah young other questions or comments for karen i guess you know one thing that comes to my mind is when i hear stories like that about anyone or my own family history the um for me sometimes the tension is how i might have judgment for a lack of response or a lack of push back on something like that and um then the choice become you know then all there's a whole host of choices from there right grace mercy judgment condemnation and so um that's something that is a daily battle if i'm riding my bike today and i have a massive honor i don't right
069like all these things that we can judge each other about and versus giving potential grace so thank you for naming that matt because you know i guess i'll go ahead and call myself middle-aged at this point um and it's a tricky place to be because in my 20s i didn't yet have kids old enough to hold me accountable to anything and that was more fun because then i could just hold my mom accountable for all the things and there was no one saying much of anything back to me um this is not as easy because that same why didn't you and why did you and why did you allow and why didn't you just not and why didn't you fight for but the fight maybe just looked different than my lens could hold or see
070right and i wanted all this accountability from a generation who had their own way of doing it and now my girls are 30 20 and 10 and they have a lot of why didn't you questions as well for themselves but why didn't you just say why didn't you or why are you still participating in this that was this weekend how could you be excited about this right um and when you're in that middle space it certainly makes more room for the grace and the mercy that you're talking about um and you start to have a better understanding for why maybe somebody wanted to and didn't or maybe sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't right um and uh i just think that is a probably better posture for considering this work together because it pushes
071us into a further a deeper level of curiosity and humility but every time we're like why didn't you just which makes it sound like an easy thing whatever's going to come after it we could think of all the times we simply should have just and we didn't ourselves thank you next story i'll jump in go for it tom okay so a little bit of a backdrop my my story um is actually when i was 22 so um i just want to give a little backdrop and then my story my you know i grew up in a predominantly white uh world and um i had i had friends of different races growing up i had friends in college but in those contexts it would have been the minority a long minority so fast forward i moved
072to chicago and being naive and curious uh in in the city i i actually a friend of a friend and i got together and we wanted to learn about the city and so we did two things we went to two places one was gospel fest in the uh jack i mean i'm sorry down at the south shore country club area and the other one was um a festival in humboldt park and we did this unbeknownst to what we were doing we just it sounded like good music and we went and i can vividly remember in gospel fest being one of probably a handful of white people uh in a sea of of blacks and talking to people and hearing you know their curiosity of why why would why would i be there why would i
073come out um and be there like it had never occurred to me that you know to be the standout that you couldn't go someplace because you were of a different skin color and it just hadn't been in my path and yet here i was with the shoe on the other foot and just engaging with people in in wonderful dialogue but it really woke my eyes up and the same conversation happened actually in in humble park with a whole different population of people so um you know it was it was basically being in a totally different environment than i was used to and doing it because of total naivete um but really eye-opening um for me on what i've always been able to do and you know why why should i so that's my story any
074impressions or questions or curiosities about that um i'm curious if that caused you to be more aware of other people who were in those shoes you know whether they were your skin color or not but they were the minority yeah i mean i would probably say that was a beginning of of of thinking differently about things um that i hadn't thought about but i i would say that trickle i i'm i'm in the middle age group too so it took into other you know it's it takes a number of you know incidences to kind of beat it through a thick skull so um i'll go ahead and go one second yep hold on just one second one of the things i want to point out from tom's narrative is that this is an epiphany moment
075for tom on his own continuum about race and that it happens in a space where he is experiencing life counter culturally to what he experiences every day right this is oftentimes a demarcation point on a learning trajectory about race um and so here's the catch we don't get to have it if we're not willing to immerse ourselves in a counter-cultural experience often times people use mission trips and things like that to have that experience not my favorite way to go but it is a way right i could say things about that as well but when we are completely outside of what is normative for us we um perk up in our um awareness of what is happening around us we can then also see things we've not typically and traditionally seen before and so the
076question tom's narrative begs is when are the moments in your life that you have had counter cultural immersion and what impact has it had on your life and if you have not had those interactions get curious with yourself about why not and not just what you're protected from and not having them but also what are you missing or losing as a result of not having counter cultural immersive experiences so i'ma put a pen in that because our stories do welcome and invite us to get curious about our own lives in very unique and interesting ways craig so um my story is not unlike tom's but a little different um as context i grew up in a white suburb it was outside of detroit but it was i wouldn't i would say i don't remember any
077any black friends at all growing up i went to school way up in northern michigan i graduated from there and went to work in all communities where i really had no no interaction with these issues with with issues of race in society but i moved to um i i i moved overseas i was there for about 10 or 11 years um i came back and i adopted in the process my wife and i adopted some chinese children because the chinese culture was important to us but at this point i'm you know 35 years old give or take and i'm playing golf one day with a gentleman um well i i say that with a gentleman who probably i would have played with at any time no no different i'm someplace i think i was in
078texas and this person starts to go on and on and on about chinese people and how terrible they are and how bad this is for the world and all the bad things about this culture and and i know very quickly that this person knows nothing about chinese culture and why he has these impressions i don't remember but it made me very very angry obviously because a i thought it's a great culture and i have two chinese children and i'm worried about them in people like this but where i what really hit me what really left me from that conversation that stays with me now not not necessarily in a positive way sometimes but it was positive at the time was after that conversation i looked at and said in the context of other race discussions
079am i that guy right am i so ignorant of the situation around me because of the way i grew up that i'm that guy and i don't even realize it and for me that was a big turning point to try to understand this a little better but on the flip side of that that was great but it's always made me worry in race conversations about i mean it's made me aware but i always worry too much about am i wrong you know am i actually when i am actually not wrong but you know there are times when i'm ignorant and there's times when i have biases and i see that but i haven't been able to find the balance and actually ever since then well yet so anyway that's my conversation and story any impressions
080or questions about craig's story i just want to say i really appreciate when you told that story how you switched your own viewpoint um deliberate perspective taking right you weren't just the person who was immediately offended by that uh comment but you immediately put yourself at least as you were describing it right as someone who is the producer of the of that comment i think that's powerful for you to do so thank you for doing that i think another thing that i would like to note is that when we have relationship that is personal and proximate it often shifts our posture and the way that we show up and relate to other ways of being and other people who represent other ways of being which is to say that the inverse is also true oftentimes
081we fight for ideas but when you ask if we know anybody who is proximate to this idea or issue of justice we don't know any people who are tied to it and that often negatively impacts the way in which we fight for the thing so if we say black lives matter and um we're always in these fights about which lives matter if it's black lives or blue lives or all lives or trans lives right and in my estimation you know which lives matter by how much i expend myself towards the mattering of that life so for example in my life you know my kids lives matter because i ran in here halfway catching my breath to get into this workshop but i had to go take my little one because they have new math workbooks
082at school and she's a remote learner and she had to have it today and her life matters and what matters to her matters to me so i figured out a way to make it happen because her life matters and so um when i think about how i spend my time and i think about women's lives and i think about black lives and i think about poor lives and i think about disabled lives all of these lives are lives that i spent 13 14 15 hour days talking about the issues of and also i know people who are approximate to my life who are black and who are brown and who are disabled and who are part of the lgbtqia community and if they weren't in my life then i don't know if it would be
083appropriate for me to only take up the issue right because i could say black lives matter and then come into the coffee shop and demand to speak to the owner of liv cafe and when i say you're talking to the owner of lyft cafe i'm told that can't be and i'm like well when you find her give her all these bills because she should have them and not me right um but to to dr pruitt adams point that's just not possible you can't be the owner but i'll go back home to my house with my sign on my lawn about how black lives matter right that's the disconnect between fighting for issues rather than fighting for people who are also interfacing and have experienced an oppression because of this issue i know it ethereally but
084i don't know the depth of tears associated with it and so i can then i can fight for it ethereally but i can't really fight for it with the depth of tears that are associated with it what craig experienced on the golf course was the depth of relationship tied to an issue of injustice where if that tie was not there he might have said oh my gosh this is inappropriate i mean my goodness this is unacceptable but that golf game might have gone right on because there is no proximity to the life that is so pervasively impacted by the issue and so as we continue to hear stories i will be raising up and you all are the curriculum friends you are the curriculum you've lived the curriculum you embody the curriculum and so as
085you tell your story the curriculum will emerge and that's what's happening so we see the importance of being connected to a life not just knowing an issue because i can know an issue i could plug into an issue guess what i can unplug from an issue too but human beings are much harder to unplug from especially ones you go deep and do life on life with and now you have to be connected to something much more powerful and enduring and rich and vulnerable and tender than just the idea of injustice that's the difference questions or concerns or um comments questions anything about that all right i think we have time for one more i could share if nobody else is jumping in um you know as soon as you ask this question rasheeda i knew
086exactly what story i was going to go to um exactly and it's a it's uh i was a little boy i grew up in an all-white suburb uh well almost all white uh suburb and i was in church as a little boy so i was every sunday i went to church and it was all around white people nothing but white people of course and um this is probably now late 70s uh you know i was um so probably five or six i mean i remember being very small because i can remember my stature against uh against my parent that i was standing to so we were standing outside church as we do after this service and we're in a little foyer and we're all talking basically this was a little kid just looking up watching
087adults talk all right that's pretty much how that how that worked and um as i was looking around at the adults i saw a mixed-race couple i saw a black man with a white woman um across the way and um the first time i'd ever seen that in this church and probably at that point in my life that i can recall at this point that i ever seen a mixed race couple and i remember reaching up and i remember grabbing my my my father's elbow um on his on his shirt and saying dad who is that and there was no response as if he didn't hear me but i knew he heard me and immediately i had a hand on my shoulder and when you got my dad's hand on your shoulder that meant something
088it hurt uh and i was turned around um and my dad said something to the effect of you know we don't we don't talk about that okay and we moved uh physically like we went to a different space and um it's funny because i you asked us to write down what this story was and uh i got to this point in the story and uh kind of jotting down the bullets and immediately what hit me was this uh like i still feel it i still feel it like there was this sense of confusion and there was this sense of guilt and it's not guilt that would come from later like awareness to life or shame or anything like that you know later in life thinking about race it was guilt as a kid thinking that
089i had done something wrong uh i i had i had messed up and i had no clue why i messed up i remember um well i don't i don't think i've ever talked about that with a process that with uh with my parents or parents but it stayed with me and i probably sat with that memory for i the better part of a decade before i shared that out with anybody i'm sure um so yeah it was that overwhelming sense of guilt that simply saying that was was was wrong right the verbalizing that was wrong so that's the story thank you greg for sharing that with us um any questions comments impressions that anyone would like to share with greg i i have um it it's interesting thank you uh greg for sharing that um
090such a young uh memory uh as well and it reminds me a lot of uh the work of um there's an author shannon sullivan and she talks about how white uh children are not taught about race as though that's better than um that's proof that you're not a racist and that was such a perfect example of we don't talk about that but the message that you've got it seems like was this i did something wrong and um as opposed to if it had been a conversation or we'll talk about it later but it was physical too it was that hand on your shoulder that was you know saying this is wrong and uh you know i have the kind of the the mirror um experience of that and i don't i was young i don't
091know how old i was um maybe about the same age and i remember being out with my mom and this uh baby or little boy i can't toddler baby was staring at me like mouth open staring and i was always like you know hi baby you know that kind of thing and it's i'd never seen anyone look at me like that before and i just remember looking up at my mom and not asking a question just looking up at her like what's going on and she just said to me he's never seen a black person before and the way that she said it had an edge to it and it was like it was directed at this child's uh mother and so i you know it was i hadn't thought about that in years until
092you were just talking about that and it was like how is that possible that someone not just hasn't seen this before you know a black person before but the look was of such you know like what is this and uh and so i think in in both ways it's that education what do you what do we do with that you know those kind of memories and how they affect us so that's it's very powerful what you were talking about because it was physical and words all together you know if i could comment on on jackie's story that um i'm almost sure for every person of color in this room the free the freeness of what your mother was able to say to you jackie she's never seen a black child a black person before the
093lack of comfort greg's dad felt was saying we don't talk about it and we as people of color grow up with the talk and and you know it's it's it's ingrained in us on how to walk how to talk how to act how to receive people who haven't seen us and just in hearing your two stories which are similar but so different in the way that your parents the level of comfort of your parents and being able to address it and i and you know what and that's uh the other thing and rasheeda i thought about this too with this exercise was that um you know as a black person black woman who was a little black girl um it was hard to think about first time because it's you know it was like race
094was always something that was um present and uh being careful and issues of of racism as well so like this first time thing uh it was really you know it's like well i'll pick this one that's how it felt more than than having to um it being a distinct memory i guess that's what i'm trying and that's exactly what the exercise is designed to pull out um is the distinctives between the reality that some people had their first story as adults right and it was at least possible that some white people on the call in the workshop could have their first story as an adult and that that is just simply not possible at all in the life of a black person it's not impossible right and i don't know that i would call that
095a privilege i will call it an interesting distinctive um because the reason i can't call it a privilege is because i know what it was to be a black girl growing up in in the austin community on the west side of chicago and i was having the time of my life because i could be with black people all the time and it was amazing like shalima right and i was also never of the mindset that i was somehow going to miss out on being with white people because white people were around all the time so i knew that i would have those interactions right and oftentimes when we talk about black white racism black white existence in this country we talk about how oh well i didn't have that experience until later in life and
096we talk about it as though it just is but let's consider what would life maybe have been like to have experienced the culture and existence of blackness earlier in your lifetime and consistently and pervasively like we're not conditioned to think about not having that as a l but because i had it i know it's a l right it's an l um and so it it's just kind of like oh well i didn't i didn't have to think about it but did you did you not have to think about it or did you not get to think about it and we're conditioned to think i didn't have to think about that and then we think about it as privilege but if you didn't get to experience it it's not really a privilege and so this is
097the conundrum that racial injustice creates for all of us it creates the conundrum of did i not have to or did i not get to something was taken from me that i will now never know i will never ever really know if it was i didn't have to or i didn't get to um and that's what we hold as potentially an injustice in and of itself that i never even got to choose a life of diverse intersectionality because of the way that we have carved up our country and our world so as we get right up to eight i told you bail to bail friends with this teacher any final thoughts just as we close out um what is sitting with you in your heart and your mind right now um no less than one
098word no more than one sentence share what you will sina oh you can't hear me i'm talking um i was thinking what you said is that our black students don't get to have that experience as a as a child who grew up in oak park i did not get to have that experience right i i had it in pockets i didn't have it all the time running around just being thrilled to be black and to be in a black community and our students don't get to have that experience they are cognizant from kindergarten in oak park so thank you gina any other my observation is just going to be quick because i didn't tell my story but my background is very different than anyone that gave out their background here so i did grow up
099in a low income and multicultural environment my high school 300 white kids 300 black kids 350 latino kids all poor so what i'm hearing is the importance of the interpersonal relationships because when i first started really seeing overt racism was when i left poverty and got into wealth in the practice of law and i was shocked by it honestly because my dad uh he's passed away recently but my dad you know never did more than graduate high school but he landed on d-day fought in the battle of the bulge took berlin under patton and he taught me to believe in america and what it stands for and i always grew up fiercely patriotic and seeing people of affluence who have had every advantage not recognizing other people as their peers just because of their race
100i found jarring and very anti-american and it really made me question values ralph you bring up a really good point that they're gonna be mad at me if i go into and that's the idea of like all of this just about race right um so i'm gonna pick up there you all don't let me forget i'll do a debrief with levar we're gonna pick up at all of this just about race right and then the people who did not share their narratives we're starting with narrative sharing in the next convening which will be sometime i think in january yes well so much for your engagement and your participation um the depth and the breadth of what you've shared we are only scratching the surface of the topic but we are going deep in how we
101enter it so hear that um and i am grateful for what you are embarking upon here it means the world to me for lots of reasons i'll share my story at another time thank you so much and setting the tone for us for this conversation so we are grateful for that thank you so much have a good evening everyone thank you thank you um is there an emotion there you go i'm sorry is there a second thank you all in favor aye aye any opposed all right thank you so much everyone thank you have a good night