Tumwater City Council & School Board Joint Equity Meeting: Session 2

001i haven't had anything to eat so we'll see how it goes tonight i'm looking to see if we have a critical mass here i have three four council members so far what five one two three four five i've got two myself and darby looks like yeah i think eileen is trying to get in um we had a oh there she is hello eileen hi i'm here excellent lori just came in she needs to get elevated perfect got it there we go harvey can everybody hear me real quick hello how's everybody doing i just wanted to let you all know that i'm i will be back and forth because tonight is parent-teacher conference night for tumwater middle school and i have two more conferences one at 6 15 and one is 6 30. um so i

002apologize if my screen goes just to the black with the name but i have those 10-minute conferences and then i'll be right back so i apologize ahead of time but i want to let you all know what's going on when you saw that screen thank you laurie uh eileen just note noted to me that she is having trouble getting in she doesn't have internet so um anyway and we're still waiting for joan on our end melissa how are you doing in terms of your expectations uh my expectations have been met okay so we're ready to go uh and uh what we're talking about when we're first getting on here about at least from uh for the school board members maybe putting school board because interestingly enough not everyone knows who we are um so you'll

003see all the city council has council member after their name um so renaming yourself to put school board member or however you want to be identified as to what your role is yeah so if you look at your your on your uh picture you should have a three dots up in the corner if you click on that it'll allow you to rename yourself so debbie you you probably should do that as well and jonas here so i think i've got everyone here that looks like can be here this evening uh so uh why don't we go ahead and call this meeting to order and uh of course it's uh november 4th the day after election i guess i should start by just congratulating those of you that just got re-elected and our mayor-elect debbie sullivan

004who will be uh taking over at the beginning of next year so congratulations everyone uh welcome and uh i think probably the best way to do this is just to do we want to have folks just say their name and and who they're representing for the purposes of the audience is that would probably be a good thing so again i'm mayor pete comment time warner mayor uh and i'll just call out the council members charlie you can introduce yourself hi i'm charlie schneider i'm a council member for the city of town water and michael hi michael altausser tomorrow city council position five debbie debbie sullivan at tillwater city council position six uh liana hi everyone lita dollhoff tomorrow city council position one angela good evening angela jefferson city council position number two and joan and

005joan you're on mute probably there you go i'm joan cassie and i'm a council member and the mayor pro tem very good thank you all and uh we have some staff here john doan our city administrator i see we have chief weeks here and ann cook is also here who's our communications manager so turn it over to you melissa thank you melissa beard uh school board president i'm position number four darby hi everyone i'm darby kaikenen uh school board director position number five lori good evening everyone i'm lori sales school board director representing district one scott good evening scott killough school board member district three or position three however you want to phrase it and casey hi casey taylor district 2 representative and then we have shawn dotson our superintendent and that's that's tomorrow's school

006district very good so um my understanding is we're gonna turn it over to our facilitators to walk us through from now on so i will do that and uh let them introduce themselves and and uh continue from there so who wants to start eileen you're gonna start okay sure [Music] hi everybody it's great to see you all again um aileen yoshino i'm one of the directors of equity and education at puget sound esd um and i am your neighbor so i'm here in olympia washington and um hopefully we'll see some of your faces out and about in the community sometime in the future so good to be here and hello everybody i'm matthew branson um also with psesd i'm the family community partnerships director in our equity department um and i do not live in

007tom water or olympia but i grew up in olympia so um i spent 30 some odd years there so i'm very familiar with with with the area okay i'm going to share my screen and say welcome back thanks again for being here and for engaging with us in this um really meaningful really courageous um conversation and for undertaking the work to to do the 21 day racial equity challenge matthew and i every time we look through it we're like wow this is some meaty stuff so um it's uh you know a lot of the a lot of the things that you're diving into by doing this challenge are um are pretty pretty complex and pretty intense and um really engaging topics so um just really so appreciative for all of you for for taking this

008on and for for taking that time to engage with this work really thoughtfully so um thanks again for having us back okay and as we talked about last time and as you know if you've seen us before this is a practice that we engage in at puget sound esd in um in a sign of our commitment to to becoming an anti-racist multicultural organization one of the things that we try to do is to recognize that we are all on indigenous land um and to think about who were the people who have been here since time immemorial um who settled here whose history is deeply embedded in this land um what it means to be indigenous in this time and place um in what ways those of us who are not indigenous in this land are

009in solidarity and working with humility towards our own um self-education and ways in which we can um be partners in uplifting the sovereignty of our tribal nation partners and community members and so today uh i am coming to you from the land the traditional lands of this boxing island tribe i believe tom water is also situated on the traditional lines of this boxing island tribe as well so just think thanking them for their um continued generosity to this community and my own personal gratitude for all the ways in which um we have benefited as a community from um everything that they do to uphold their own community and to to uh contribute so generously to the rest of us as well okay matthew do you want to go over these yeah just um as a

010reminder we always bring these um to the beginning of our time um because not these aren't just agreements but there are practices they are the ways of engaging um creating a container and being able to process process our conversations um and how we show up and what we do and and and the kind of conversations we have with each other um just a note because i know we've talked about this a couple times but um like usually usually the most critical times to use these practices is when they're the hardest to use which means you know something's up for us we're feeling triggered we're feeling emotional there's some kind of button that gets pushed um and and those are the hardest times to to really stay engaged to just be okay with that discomfort and

011keep leaning in um and not check out so uh we know this work uh we're not gonna solve it today or next week or next year that this is legacy work this is generational work um and it's urgent and it's a it's something that that's urgent every day and that this work is centered on relationships and how we how we own our impact when that happens regardless of what our good intent was so just kind of a little reminder of of our container and um and thinking about how we practice with each other not only in this space but you know when we leave the space and we come to work tomorrow as well um these are always really helpful yeah i the only thing i guess i'll add is that um just going back

012again to the content that you experienced in days six through nine um you probably had the opportunity to practice all of these right um at least experiencing this comfort maybe the expecting and accepting non-closure maybe something came up for you around you know maybe you saw yourself reflected in some of the the um patterns or behaviors that were highlighted in that content um which was not your intention and yet how do we think about our impact and how do we own our impact in that space um and your commitment to stay engaged with all of this um is always again much appreciated so already we we have been in practice around these okay um so what we'd like to start with is with actually i think this was day seven these are the reflective questions

013from i think day seven and uh we want to actually give you an opportunity to first self-reflect if you haven't done this yet we're going to actually give you a couple of minutes to think about these questions independently um and then we're gonna go around and have everyone here have the opportunity to share their reflections on on this journey so far on these conversations so far and um on the last uh several days of content content that you experienced so far so um you can maybe if you want to you can turn your video off if that's okay or um you can just you know put yourself on you just to actually take that those couple these couple of minutes to just maybe write some thoughts down how do you respond to these questions is

014there anything that you see differently based on your participation so far how does this impact how you think about your life your work your volunteerism your public service i think for this group um your studies um is there anything that you are inspired to do differently i for me uh in thinking about this 21 day challenge it would be it would be a waste of all of our times if you undertook all this work and all this engagement and then nothing changed because of it right so let's actually spend that moment thinking about these questions pretty deeply and reflectively what is different about you um internally personally and what are you going to do differently um in how you interact with and engage with this work in your role because of this opportunity okay so

015we'll give you a couple of minutes here to just sit with that and reflect and then when we come back we'll share so um let's see i don't have look at michael um it's 6 15 now so how about if we start back up again be ready to share it about 6 18 ish we'll check in with you at 6 18 and see um if people feel ready okay okay how are folks doing feel ready to check back in and share all right yes great anyone want to start is that angela yes okay wonderful let's hear from you i can start um i knew that this was going to be hard work and it's hard work reflective work i felt vulnerable day six when i saw the video post traumatic slave um disorder and i

016just felt what my ancestors went through um both physically but today it manifests emotionally because black people have been through so much in america and still they're here still contributing to society um still love this country what do i plan to do i plan to advocate more i plan to share more of myself and my background with people because i realized that not many people have worked with or lived with people like myself so um i was fortunate to have lunch with someone who wanted to know how can i advocate you know and i had lunch with them and i said this is how you can advocate first of all by inviting me to lunch and just being present just you know appreciate where we came from and i just felt so good after having

017lunch with that individual just because of this training they reached out to me so that's the thing so i'm gonna open up more um i'm also going to invite someone to dinner and on the menu is going to be ah shrimp and grits so just to bring them into my space just to you know to open up more to uh my fellow co-workers that's what i plan to do that's incredible thank you so much for starting us off with matt it is an incredible and your generosity with that offers amazing and so beautiful it and i'm also reflecting on um some work we did i think we introduced you to some of our colleagues from sumner bonnie lake school district at some point in time and um one of the things i asked them on

018their journey like how did you they moved they moved a lot in the course of three years like they saw a lot of change um and um in terms of their commitment and what they're um doing in the school district and in terms of some of the relationships that they were able to heal and repair and i asked them what did you do and their answer was um one million cups of coffee so just sitting down and talking to people and listening to people with with true appreciation and um true generosity of spirit but um what i was kind of reflecting on as you were talking so thank you so much for for starting us off with that may i ask angela something yes i want to know um are you having a sign up

019list for dinner or i'm going to invite you separate i i know but are you going to have a sign up and then you choose how to go through your list i just want to make sure i don't miss out on dinner that's all answered everyone who wants to attend is welcome [Laughter] all right wonderful okay is anyone ready to go next on your reflection all right scott all right so something i have been inspired to do differently is the land acknowledgement uh so my day job i do professional development with teachers and a group of teachers i meet with four times each year and my fear is that the land acknowledgement is just going to become another version of the pledge of allegiance and that there's no context it's just simply words and we

020don't really know what they mean or what they stand for um my examples when i was in middle school is when i first learned what indivisible meant yet i had been saying the pledge of allegiance since i was in kindergarten and i had no idea what that word meant and i think even to this day i don't know if i can adequately or correctly describe what a republic is and i'm 51 years old with a master's degree in education and i don't know if i can describe that word correctly yet i've been saying it every day of my life so my fear is that land acknowledgement is going to become that just wrote memory we say it day after day week after week month after month year after year and it just becomes something we

021do it's like loses context so what i'm doing differently is with these with this group of teachers is i'm telling a story so it's always based on the people and their land but i'm adding to the story as i meet with them each subsequent month so at the end of the fourth uh event they'll now have the whole story about this group that's what i'm doing differently that's it thank you so much that's really powerful thanks scott all right debbie so one of the things i've been uh struggling with is uh feeling the empathy of what people go through and not unders not knowing what effective thing i can do to help you know sometimes you just feel inadequate uh not helpful and so um and then frustrated with all of the the things that

022are put towards people who are different than them you know i i understand i have white privilege i have um come from an area i grew up in montana it's very uh white or hispanic or native american and um uh so i've grown up with that um friction between the different groups and never feeling it was ever right but not knowing how i could fix it so i think now i feel like i have more tools to be able to address it and to engage with people and and ask them what they need from me as opposed to me trying to figure out what i need to do for them i'm going to ask them what they need from me thank you debbie um yeah building that relationship and asking is always a good way

023to go um yeah and then doing that reflective work along the journeys thank you michael i see your hand sorry i raised my hand but i didn't mean to cut you off if you had other things to take up your space no um cool uh i i think the thing that one of the things that i have struggled with in the past that i'm now trying to be more cognizant of is sort of like one of the prompts but was also talked a lot about in the detour document was that non-closure is not a liability or not advice or not a bad thing like i think that in a particularly in a legislative space or in a policy space when you sense that something is not the way that it should be you know your

024initial goal or reaction is like okay let's fix it like let's come up with a thing we'll fix it and then we'll move on to the next thing because there's an unlimited list of things all of which need to be addressed and i think like the challenge that i sort of initially face is that there is no short-term fix to many things that you have to embody anti-racist work in your approach and your intention every single day with every single issue that comes up as opposed to doing a training and then saying well we did the training so we we should be okay um so i think like one thing that i want to explore doing differently and i did a little bit of research on it is um the race and social justice initiative

025in seattle has a toolkit that they use for evaluating public policy proposals which is really i mean toolkit sounds very fancy but it's really a list of very simple intentional questions to make sure that as you're evaluating policy or working on a proposal that you are approaching the right parties and that you are being intentional and understanding the effects that policies will have even if they are unintended and might have unintended consequences on particular groups or might benefit certain groups more than other groups of people so i i think what i would really like to explore is if we could ha develop some kind of process or some kind of effort to have either a racial impact statement or some kind of analysis that we can conduct as a legislative body when we're considering policies

026because it seems like if we're not asking the right questions then we've just you know we've assumed that we have found closure and that we have fixed the thing when really we've just talked about it for a little bit but haven't implemented anything to sort of address that so i i think that would be a good thing for us to explore and one thing i want to keep looking into and maybe try to implement for the city yeah that's great um we love we love that tool kit we we have one that we use at psesd that is very similar that was built off of that um off of that toolkit and i think but you're right like calling it a toolkit is not it's not what it is it actually it actually opens the

027cans up rather than like packs them away nicely so um but that that that aspect of partnership and relationship and how we show up and how we invite folks to the table and how we have conversations is such a huge part of the work um so we could we could dive into that into the pool um really quick because that gets me all excited but um i will stop there uh thank you michael yes that's that's awesome um darby i see your hand yeah so i'm trying to figure out uh somewhat non-awkward way to describe the kinds of things i've been um thinking about quite a bit so i've i've been engaged in this kind of work for several years now and uh i came into it feeling like i had a tremendous amount to

028learn and i was really excited about that looked around at everyone else around me as the experts and um was just intrigued by this what i i mean i just characterized it as a movement you know this move forward towards the concept of diversity equity and inclusion and um what i'm seeing now over time having been engaged in this for quite some time and i'm in my in particularly in school board role but um also my professional role i'm surrounded by a lot of of leaders you know supervisors as leaders or colleagues as leaders other school board members principals that you know all of these other leaders and there's a lot of people that are working on this a lot of people that are saying that they believe in this work and are talking a

029lot about it but what i am really beginning to struggle with is the in the inaction and this probably isn't the best term but the only thing that comes to mind is cognitive dissonance and that's starting to make this entire situation very challenging for me to see entities leaders organizations say that we're all about diversity equity and inclusion this is our goal this is what we are are striving for but then you look at the practices and they're just not at all in line with that and there's no answers around why is this happening why is it that we're saying that we really truly value this and it's our number one goal but yet nothing is changing behind the scenes you know the the the concept of looking at the policy review um so that's

030a big one i've heard that a lot in my professional world as this is critical this is what we're going to do we're going to engage in this process and people have they've spent a year plus it's what they said they spent a year plus engaging in a policy review but there's nothing to show for it nothing has changed and so the thing that i realized um in one of these similar kinds of conversations lately that is kind of a long way to get around to the question of what will i do differently it's more what i what i will need to do which is to challenge these leaders when their speaking about the kinds of activities and the viewpoint around diversity equity and inclusion and yet the practices are not not at all and

031feeling comfortable that i can go ahead and challenge those leaders because that hasn't been a place where i have felt comfortable because once again i always have looked at myself as the learner and other people know more than i other people are are way ahead in this work and i think what i'm realizing now is i might actually be closer um closer along to being somebody who can say yes it's been a few years now i've seen this i've been through so many of these trainings i i probably have been through eight or nine of these trainings very similar kinds of things with all different groups of people um and so once again everyone's got the everybody has the heart for it but the change is just not there it's just not happening so um

032that can be that can be very challenging and it can be uncomfortable to to have those kinds of conversations but if i am to have any kind of an impact it's something that i will i will definitely have to keep a focus on and do that was an incredible reflection darby i really appreciate that a lot um it's something that um that we that we hear a lot matthew and i as we go around to different districts and um the um i think i'm most impacted when we hear it from students so students will say to us we know our district keeps telling us you've done all this work on equity and inclusion you know we you keep telling us our teachers have all been to training all of these things when are we gonna

033feel it right and so i think that there's a couple there's so much in what you just said um and one is how are we how are we measuring our progress how are we evaluating ourselves our our students and i think this goes back to what michael was saying too the process of the racial equity tool is the people most impacted are the people who are saying what success feels like right and they're our ultimate evaluators so until our students who are most impacted by inequity are telling us we're doing our work we're not doing our work right um and another thing that that matthew and i often say when we're when we're doing trainings like these and we are those people that go around and deliver like those eight or nine trainings that you've

034been to but we always say like this is not the work right this this is the opportunity to talk about the work and to reflect on the work and the work happens tomorrow when you go back into whatever role you're in and saying how are our actions matching what we talked about last night so how is this translating into a realignment of our priorities how is this translating into um a budget line item and you know allocation of resources and staffing like everybody's on board until it becomes inconvenient right until it becomes until it rubs up against actually changing some policies actually reallocating funding actually dedicating staff right everybody's on board until until it bumps up against like the way we actually do things um and i i think what you're saying and i and

035your commitment to saying like okay i've i've got to be that one right like i've been i've been sort of in these trainings a long time now and um i'm looking at other people as the experts and that expert is not going to arrive right like i've got to be that person so it's like reminding all of us um i think we told you this last time like when we sit in traffic and we complain about the traffic and then we look around and realize oh we are the traffic we are i'm sitting here in my car too i'm part of the traffic just like everyone else um and i have just as much power as anyone else to do something differently about it but at least i drive better eileen yeah okay you're a

036better driver than everyone other reflections this is great so far yeah melissa i can go next because i had a similar um it was interesting how darby portrays it she talks about challenging um and i and i wrote down i'm going to work on asking the question um so it's a sim it's a similar thing in terms of i'm sitting here i'm very accepting of what people give me i'm very i can work within whatever i'm given but i need to i need to work on asking more than accepting i like to be accommodating um and so that's kind of a stretch for me to do that and what i'm trying to do right now my goal my goal this year we just met with our student board reps on tuesday to try to orient

037them so they can start and get you know start coming to meetings um and last year because of covid we had them sitting kind of in the back of the room away from us you know so we were distanced and all of that which really made me feel uncomfortable that they felt like they were sitting literally at the kids table um and so i am having them sit with us my goal is for them to feel as empowered as we do to ask questions of what's going on so we can hear that voice of those who are most impacted by our decisions and that's basically what i was trying to prop them up to do is you're not you're you know you could be questioning something your principal is doing and that's not bad like

038don't feel bad um because that's what i would feel like i was uh i i don't like to criticize anyone when i know everyone's trying their hardest and so i'm trying to make sure that our students feel that when they're bringing something up that they're helping their fellow student and trying to create a space for them to do that and that doesn't just mean having them sit at the table but also making sure i'm checking in with them before they get there that they feel um prepared enough to be able to participate in the conversation because the stuff that we do sometimes i don't know what it is that we're going to be talking about so i can only imagine that they will not feel prepared so that's my that is what i'm actually doing

039because i when you first ask this question i was like i feel defeated after watching all that stuff like the work is so hard i don't i have no clue what what i can do um and then meeting with the student board they're really excited and i really want them to feel like this is an exciting thing to do which is they have art they have our ears because we love listening to them um and how do we make sure that they are um that they are they feel valued they're not token student reps like that is like they're not just sitting there so we can check the box they are actual participants in the meeting yeah that's awesome thank you melissa um i'm just wondering too if any of the rest of you had

040that similar experience of feeling defeated or overwhelmed like this is so big um it wouldn't be unusual for people to feel that way um and i i think sometimes i i mean i remind myself of this too because it is so big this is centuries in the making this is baked into our system we're going to talk about it right and so we are not going to change it overnight or even in a year or even in the time of our tenure on whatever public service we're in right and we're not going to do it by ourselves but we can change yourself and you can show up differently tomorrow and you can take the actions that you can take tomorrow right and i'm hearing you're all in in really you're in positions where you have

041influence and you have decision decision making power and you can make some decisions that start transforming things um and you can start tonight and you can start tomorrow so i just try to remind myself of that when i'm feeling overwhelmed it's like what what do i have control over um and that's where i start so thank you melissa i appreciate that uh joan is your hand up well i'm listening to all this i almost stepped from every person who's spoken has touched on something that um fits for me uh you know emotionally or experientially or something i've experienced in my life or in my work and i just i also want to go back and say as far as a council member in the city of tumwater i i want to be part of michael's

042project or if he's going to head something and look at our our policies and look at what we do and we practice what we preach and and we become a model a model city for um for how we how we live up to the things that we personally call important and we speak about so um i really i really appreciate that michael and i i'm worried about getting on a list tonight dinner with angela a group with you hi anyway i i want to say that i have been totally unnerved and i've been angry i've been sad i could cry right now watching what we have done to our fellow sojourners in this political battle and all this stuff that's going on politically and how we're treating one another and how dismissive we are of

043people who are different and it just um you know i'm a i'm an old political person i've marched in many of these marches for justice and for women's rights and for all kinds of different things over the last you know 60 years and to just watch it be torn apart somehow fits with what we're trying to do here and and how how do you stay the course you know that's the hard thing we can i can talk about some new things to do or whatever but how do i stay the course that is true to myself and to what i have given a lot of my life's work for so one of the things that i that i did this this week is i thought back on some of the people i'm still in contact

044with and others that i wonder about they were they were students of mine they were members of the different congregations i served and their black their latina latino their um indigenous their asian all all of this all through thing and i thought i'm going to pick out some of these people some that i've talked to more recently notice and i'm going to call them up and i'm going to say how are you how are things going i remember me um and and just find out in this parade of ugliness and disrespect that's going on where are they how do they feel about how they're being treated or not and and listen listen to people and it made a big difference you know my black friends were saying something different than my indigenous friends and um

045but they were all kind of saying the same thing which goes back to what michael said they're all wondering why we say we believe in these things or we want change or we want difference to things to be different and we don't know what to do we don't know how to do it we're we're whatever and they're discouraged many of them because they're they're um you know not young high school kids like melissa is going to work with that they've they've been through all that and and there we kind of shared a little bit of our discouragement of of how can we do the work now that that'll change and it will we we want it all to last but then we realized some of the changes have been made so it was an emotional

046experience to to do the work this time my and i i love the water and the first 20 years i lived in thurston county i i lived on on lake lakes two different lakes and i had my red canoe and um i loved i loved canoeing and when life got or i got to feeling like i am now i'd go out get my canoe and just paddle around on a quiet lake and um this week i thought darn wish i still had it so that's where i've been part of this time thank you joan i appreciate that all right who's next charlie okay thank you so much so i i want to address the question uh one of the questions did you brought up it was is there anything that you see differently based on

047your participation so far and that's the question i would like to address between that and the lessons that we learned for tonight to prepare for tonight i realized how much racism is embedded in our society and i mean even the words we choose and what what stuck out to me a lot other than the fact that the treatment of how we move different categories of people so it looks like the right majority becomes more majority because his if he's had a little bit hispanic you at one time doing our history you were considered white and then later on we moved you to a different section that's one thing that stood out the other thing that stood out to me is my choice of words and what i mean by that and it really stuck with

048me all week because you know some simple words you say you don't realize what the implications are such as magic okay it's a simple word that we all use but when you use black magic it implies something only gathered different maybe mysterious or even evil uh we also i watched the cowboy movies back in in my days the good guys always wore white the white hat and the bad guys always wore black hats um that's that was mentioned you know if you get your mail that's a simple process but when you say blackmail also you turn it into something ugly and it's related to the word black so it made me realize when i start using certain words that it can apply something well beyond what i wanted to and it could be directed to

049people of colors so i'm going to be a little different on that one other thing is and this one stuck out is when i eat angel food cake i love angel food cake and it's white and fluffy and double food cake is heavy and dark so it's just those simple words that can be harmful so i'm gonna like i said i'm gonna practice choosing the words wisely when i go forward from now on thank you everybody are you gonna quit eating angel food cake charlie no no maybe we'll just call it cake yeah just cake point cake but no just think i think what you bring up charlie is something that i think often is embedded for us white folks just in in ways that we don't see we don't see how we've been shaped

050and socialized as white people um because we're so centered as what's normal standard and good right and i think that gets into some of those other levels of racism and the definition of white supremacy is that we live and we swim and we breathe in every day so it's hard for us to see that but then once we start to do we can we can't unsee it right we think about how how prevalent that is in the media and like you say like in all of these little sayings they get so embedded in in everyday life like just last week i learned uh i learned about the history be uh behind um the syrup brand and jemima that oh my god that is like such an incredibly racist thing that is on that syrup label

051that i never knew about that i never thought about um and if you want to learn more you can go do research on that but um but just all of those things that are embedded everywhere that that we don't see because of our condition not to see them and it's our job to kind of peel back those layers and know what that is and know what the impacts are um because it's what we can be good intentioned people walking around all day long and being reinforcing the same thing that we say that we want to change so thank you for that all right uh diana thank you besides wanting food now thank you charlie i have not had dinner yet um you know i was writing a whole bunch of stuff down and it gets

052back to that moment where it's so much right it's so overwhelming so like piecemeal so that's something i need to work on as well right not trying to fix everything but do work on myself and so what stood out for me is um with the work that we're doing so many times we talk about well we didn't get a lot of comments or just a certain demographic that's replying to a survey so what i want to do we've talked about here and there is pulling that thread a little tighter of us doing the work right circling back with the organizations that are providing services are on the front lines and us being more proactive and instead of saying well we didn't get any comments refiner no one's complained or we haven't heard anything like what

053does it look like to be proactive and make myself even more tired right like i have to do the work why do i keep expecting everyone to come to me and if i don't hear anything we're fine so being more proactive circling back and building trust and respect with voices that have been ignored or dismissed and following through so circling back and following through not just having a meeting thanks right and then i'm done but um scheduling and building that trust and respect yep that follow-through i feel like is such a huge part of accountability um because it's honoring what's been shared right um versus so much of the time institutions will take information and and and take that that knowledge that wealth that wisdom um and then take it and then and then not

054not ever come back with what happened or what the results or or what they did with it um and then and then what happens is the institutions get the benefit of that and those communities um that are that are giving that information and giving that wealth um lose out so thank you for naming that dynamic all right who hasn't gone yet i think eileen and laurie i think and uh mayor pete i'm not sure where we are i apologize um i was listening on by phone and my internet wasn't connected so i think we're on our day of reflection is that correct okay thank you um one of the i guess the thing that uh really hit me is um the i was took a note and it was under white fragility and it was

055the lack of humility and i was and it's in close because we don't know what we don't know and that's something i fall back on i'm always kind of like thinking oh well i don't know what i don't know but that's not an excuse any longer um it brought me up short so um like it absolves me from having to find out more um and yeah and then i can fall back on oh you know i was raised that way or different things but you know but just using that as my excuse for i don't know what i you know i don't know and i do need to know so um and there was another one that made me think about laurie sales comment um with last time when you're talking about like being the

056poster child that uh it how it makes you relive things and i never that was another thing that just really brought me up short that um you know if we're trying to be you know to reach out to our friends and all but by trying to help us relieve ourselves from our guilt or whatever that it can re-traumatize our friends and um and so that was another thing that that made me think um that i need to rethink you know that my ins my maybe try to be pure in my intent but it may be unintentionally hurting other people so something i need to work on great thank you eileen uh i'll go next that's if that's okay with mirror pete unless he wants to go next uh go ahead laurie okay all right so

057um my reflection is i'm not uh i guess i guess it's called reflection but i i think um mine's coming more in the way of our culture and how we see life through television and how we live our life um seeing who we are reflected in our pop culture and for me growing up i did not see halle berry or jennifer lopez or beyonce or any of the beautiful women of color that are mainstream today rihanna um let alone kamala harris um you can name quite a few nowadays as opposed to when i was younger you weren't seeing that and that's just pop culture uh so and then even more so i think is commercials that i see now in the last five or so years i see tons of biracial families being featured in

058commercials nowadays i see tons of black families asian families um hispanic families so i think that in order to get to where we're hoping to get people are fed and and sadly we all watch tv and we see ourselves through that medium um and i think it's a positive thing so my reflection is very positive that i'm identifying and seeing and relating to um more folks that look like myself um in our day-to-day lives and i think when you're growing up as a person of color and you see nothing but white faces on in every medium and you're reading white stories and you're hearing um you're inundated and you're immersed in the culture and i'd like to ask everybody that's a white folk on on here tonight to think about how when you grew up

059and if everything you saw had a black face or a face of color what how do you think that would have shaped who you are today as opposed to the opposite it's just something to think about right so you think about those things and at the age i am now which i'm not going to tell you um but i'm so proud and so excited about the fact that i'm seeing so many different diverse families represented in our in our corporate world in our pop culture world and that gives me a feeling of real power and hope for our children um coming up and seeing that not only my biracial children but all of our children getting to see that there's there's more than one face to look at and i think when we have that

060engrained in our pop culture um our corporate world that kind of levels the playing field and we're going to get to where we're talking about what we're trying to get with these discussions because you need to see it to understand it so from my reflection um it's just a real positive one of hope and being able to see uh not only myself but so many other people of of color and diverse backgrounds reflected in our um pop culture in our corporate world today thank you lori that's really powerful sorry that reminds me of um i used when i was teaching at the community college i taught a class called multicultural america and we used the book a different mirror by ron takaki and he had a quote from audre lorde in it and the quote

061was something i'm not i'm gonna misquote it because i can't remember it exactly but it was something along the lines of what happens when someone with authority such as a teacher or you know i think anyone who has that kind of like authority whether it's media or you know public figures in your life what happens when someone with that kind of authority presents you a mirror and when you look in the mirror you're not in it right what does that do to a person so i just thinking about the power of what you're sharing and and how we can make sure that um like our community is reflected i just am appreciating your your language around reflection and the power of representation and reflection thank you i guess i'll close it out by it's interesting

062that laurie mentioned television because i was kind of thinking the same thing but in a different way i've been i've been uh spending some time watching old western movies interestingly enough and uh in part for the for the some of them are historical depictions of certain parts of our history and uh uh i was just appalled by the way some of the african-americans are uh are portrayed and so in some of these uh some of these movies um and uh i've also been uh uh listening to this uh show on the civil war and particularly the early early stages of it and and how much slavery was embedded in the southern culture i didn't i didn't realize that growing up in new hampshire i guess so um but um uh so i think just being

063more aware that's one of the things i'm different perhaps is just being aware and more uh more cognizant of what what has led us to where we're at and then i had the i had the uh uh i guess privilege of of attending a trick-or-treat trunk or treat uh um event up on tomorrow hill elementary and uh was struck by the diversity of the student body up there and and the unconditional uh acceptance of this you know students of color and and white students sort of intermixing and not really thinking about it and giving me hope that perhaps that generation will look at things differently than than our generation um so you know i think for me what i'm doing differently is just trying to be more conscious and and really critically re uh see

064what what i'm what i'm seeing uh and trying to learn from that all right thank you mayor mayor b um and casey i don't think you've gone yet either of you invite you to share to close this out oh sure yeah no a lot of things already been touched on but um you know the anything that i see differently based on my participation um i didn't i missed the last meeting on this so uh another commitment but uh as darby mentioned i've been participating in this type of work in other areas for sure and tomorrow school district been doing this for a while um so i i get what we've done and i've reviewed the materials as well so i've learned to kind of listen and ask questions uh learn to read a little bit

065more about the topic and listen to others um i guess i was fortunate enough to have uh you know a diverse group of friends growing up through high school and in college um so some of this is new to me in ways that you know i just kind of well that's just kind of the way you act or you should act but there's definitely some differences there i see so um what i've done with that though is looking to see um you know like i said it's more of a listening role and asking what i can do but it's more of looking at what we can do with what's in place so i heard a lot of frustration around you know nothing's being done um you know trying to fix a problem and and i

066kind of relate this to like climate change on a national level like you know 10 years ago they were going to fix it all and they swear they would but here you are 10 years later and now it's the same thing like what were you doing for 10 years so i look at look what can we do with what's in place now there's several equity policies within our district that we can enforce and follow and if we truly follow those you know it's not going to fix everything but it's certainly a good start and it's something i can focus on i can't my strong point wouldn't be coming up with something new that's not my voice i want to hear from those type of people that um you know they can represent that but i

067also focus on what's in place and what can i do now with what we haven't in there so i'm just trying to listen and learn and then and then follow the existing as well too so all right great thank you casey that is a fun fact um i'm wondering if people watch the same civil war teaching the civil war documentary that i watched that was really fascinating yeah good good good program okay so um now we're gonna just take some time to kind of dive into the content a little bit and what matthew and i were talking about as we were prepping for this is um we feel like they gave you some pretty hefty content like you know kind of kind of front loaded it um and then as we get towards the the

068last the ending parts of the 21 day challenge typically that's where matthew and i would have begun um to sort of lay some foundational work and then moved you into you know i think the first the first time we met with you you had done something on the the intersection of um hetero patriarchy and capitalism and we were like whoa okay they're going for the graduate level here um but great good for good for you for for diving in so um we just wanted to kind of do a little grounding and maybe some of the the language that they were using to make sure that we're kind of all on the same page and then they kind of get your reflections on on what that language was so um let's see oh and it's tiny

069okay here we go um so um are you seeing my powerpoint yes great i can see the the whole slide deck but not the presentation version there you go okay all right okay so this was a big focus right of this past um this past chunk that you that you took a look at so we wanted to make sure that we just had some like shared shared language shared analysis of what these terms are referring to so um in terms of individual racism does somebody want to read that for us you can hear some different voices besides me and matthew anyone want to read that one for us i can read that individual racism prejudgment bias or discrimination by an individual based on race okay so based on that definition and also thinking about and

070about the content you you interacted um with over the last the last chunk of um days in the challenge um what are some examples of individual racism what do you what do you what are your reflections about what does that mean what are what's individual racism well in reading this is pete in in reading this i mean one of the things that that unbelievable to me but uh some people view races affecting the level of intelligence of an individual for example it just seems hard to believe that's the case but in this day and age but that's that's one uh internal racism yeah absolutely right so an individual belief that's held by a person um that makes judgment that's that uh is a prejudgment a bias or discrimination about another individual based on their race

071right so unfortunately we know that those people do still exist right that there are lots of there are unfortunately quite a few examples that we can point to um from national media from local media from our own community in which people still hold biases stereotypes prejudices in which people of all ages use racial slurs epithets make jokes have aspersions about or have judgments about people's intelligence or their character based on their race right that's individual racism um and angela saw that you unmuted yourself did you want to add to that yes we have some of those people in our own families also and they're the hardest ones to deal with because as you try to change it's like you know so and so don't you get it that's all i wanted to add absolutely um

072i see some heads nodding there as well i i find that i find that the same to me those are often the hardest conversations that to have are with the people closest to us right like people who we love people who are in our families and they'll say some things and you'll be like um yeah we gotta address that right so we know that individual racism is real and we know that its impact is harmful and um you know a lot of times when we go to schools those are the things that kids will tell you about right the kids will all the time tell you about microaggressions slurs use of certain words that shouldn't be getting used by other kids um jokes all of those things individual racism is very real and it's very

073hurtful um and it and it exists so um that's that's the first thing we want to talk about um oftentimes that is where our conversation about racism stops right those are the things that are often easiest to point to and give examples about and when we do that when we limit our conversation and our understanding about racism to the individual level of racism then it's easy for us to distance ourselves from larger problems right it's easy for us to say oh well i'm not a person who makes those jokes i'm not a person who um makes judgments about other people based on their race i don't use that word i don't use those slurs therefore i'm not part of the problem right and number one i think it's important for us to all to understand

074that individual racism can manifest itself in a way that we're not always conscious of with our with our implicit biases um and number two that we all are implicated in these other levels of racism right so um matthew do you want to do the next one yeah i wanted to say something about the individual level before getting on to the next one but um is oftentimes you know we can um what we think the definition of somebody you know like doing a racist act um is that it's like it's intentional um that it was meant that way um that they're a bad person right um and we know that that that that we don't it doesn't necessarily have to be that way it can be um i cannot know what i'm saying i think you

075know to charlie's point like earlier like you can say something and have no idea what the meaning is and yet the impact of that is um is is huge right um so you can be a good person it can be not not not intentful and it can still have that same impact so so that it can be any any of those things um i think what we tend to see in the media a lot is examples of um people doing very intentional things um in very mean ways right um but we have this idea of like the either you're a card-carrying racist or you're a nice person and you're not right like that's like an either or thing um and we know that that's not true so i just wanted to kind of name that

076as well um so for this level we're thinking of specific institutions so you know we have the city of tom water here today we have somewhere school district here today um if we think of other institutions such as such as like banking real estate um so so many different kinds of institutions is that we're thinking about the policies practices and procedures that work to the benefit within those institutions of white people and to the detriment of people of color often unintentionally or inadvertently and sometimes very intentionally and very advertently so it goes both ways with that can somebody name a policy a practice or a procedure within an institution that works to the benefit of white people and to the detriment of black indigenous people of color there you go okay i just added even

077if it's unintentional right right um this is michael i could try um one thing that i was thinking about that was um sort of a brief discussion at our at a public works meeting that we had recently was about sidewalks and because i was trying to think of an example of something that would be on its face very benign or unintentional until you look a little bit deeper and we were looking at a program that would essentially repair sidewalks that have been a little bit damaged over time which is like a ton of sidewalks um which got me sort of to thinking about well where are the neighborhoods where the sidewalks currently exist and those happen to be the neighborhoods that are a bit more affluent that are whiter that if you look far more

078back in the history charts where i think historically red line neighborhoods as well and so if we have a program where we are looking at repairing sidewalks instead of adding sidewalks to neighborhoods that don't have them are we benefiting um the majority white people that live in those neighborhoods as opposed to creating additional equity for homeowners and the neighbors that don't have sidewalks because your house is going to be worth more if it's on a connected street with sidewalks um so that that's sort of one thing that stuck out to me and i'm not sure if the analysis totally bore that out because we don't and that's another speaks to another problem is that we don't have that level of data to to know that affirmatively but it sort of strikes me now as i'm

079kind of asking those intentional questions of we're repairing sidewalks on tumwater hill are we increasing generational wealth for white people when we could be increasing generational wealth for people by by creating new sidewalks in neighborhoods that are not historically major disproportionately white compared to the rest of the city um so that was something i was thinking of but yeah that's awesome that's a great example um i'll just say like the reverse of what you just said so say you just went ahead and you know didn't ask that question and repaired the sidewalks and you know just did what you did right there was no intentionality probably from the committee of people working on this to say let's let's invest more wealth and more resource in a in a predominantly white community right and yet that

080would be the outcome and that's the way institutional racism often works without intention um without um often without intention often without often being inadvertent just we just didn't consider or think through or ask the people um who are furthest from from justice or furthest from equity and so we created a situation in which we exacerbated inequity right so that is a great example of how institutional racism works and perpetuates itself um and and i love that you offered sort of like the the other side of that which is like and if we were to ask this question maybe we could do something differently that's a great example okay anybody else have an example of policies practices and procedures that benefit white people and um work to the detriment of people of color even if it's

081unintentional yeah i see joan and debbie okay great thank you um it's all it's almost well it's very similar to what michael said but every time i um think of the real estate business uh i think of redlining and i mean i know we think that that's not that much here it was terrible here and i want to make the comment that um i think it's intentional and um and i think it's still happening because i watched two black families attempt to buy a house in my neighborhood and quote they didn't get chosen and it just happened that i was out in the yard and i talked to one of the black families and they said they were having a very difficult time finding something in what michael's referring to is the the more uppity

082or prosperous or what we see is our all sidewalk area of mostly people i guess in white homes and they said simply they felt um racial animus and dismissal toward them from the very beginning and then the other black family came and um got similar treatment and so i i just want to stay aware that things that you know i've studied or i've taught or you know you hope are going away um we have to still stay vigilant because there's definitely institutional racism alive and uh and well so that that was that's what came to my mind so what michael's saying is thinking through those things and and setting some you know parameters around how we make our decisions or what we include in making our decisions i should say all right great thank you

083yeah thank you joe debbie well one of the things that i have noticed is that you know on a national level and i know it does affect on the local level is this rage i mean you've got the critical race theory the whole false narratives of all this stuff that's going on and the white nationalists and you know that they are in our community they're just not as vocal here is because they probably don't feel as safe and just being able to recognize that so that that doesn't um grant get roots into what happens and that we're able to uh look at those and you know like what joan was saying making sure that those things are just not so passive because they've always been that way that we don't need to have a hundred

084people showing up somewhere with that to be able to recognize it when it's coming up that's great um to me i'm here i'm hearing some a really important connection between the individual and the institutional as well right so it's like people can have individual biases and prejudices and beliefs and misconceptions right and um it's it takes on a new power when it becomes institutionalized so and i think about like you know for example the school board the school board has the authority to um to make decisions about curriculum right and if you made decisions about curriculum that um that that institutionalized a prejudice or a misconception about a whole group of people or left out the perspective of a whole group of people um that's when those individual perspectives become institutionalized rights and similarly with

085the red lining a single real estate agent or a single person living in a neighborhood could have prejudice or bias against another family moving in and when that becomes institutionalized is when banks will only loan to these sorts of people or when the neighborhood becomes zoned so that banks only want to invest in this neighborhood but and divest from this neighborhood right so that's like all those personal prejudices take on that new power when they become institutionalized in that way and then then suddenly it becomes just the way that we do things right it's like well i didn't make that law i just i'm just enforcing the law i'm just enforcing the policy i didn't make it i'm just doing my job right um and that's that's the that's the real danger of institutionalized racism

086is that well-meaning people can uphold it every single day and we do and i think i think bringing in michael's point to the next level which is structural let's say let's keep on going with that analogy of the neighborhoods those neighborhoods that are getting invested in get all of the resources so they get the nice grocery stores they get the health care they get the benefits they have they have all of the resources all of the tools if you know if they're doing school level levies if they have pta funding you know the schools get more money they can do more arts so it all starts to snowball when all when these institutions start connecting in that way right and it's also embedded in the history so like the redlining example is a great example

087of that because what what's happened over the years is those as as eileen said when those um certain neighborhoods get divested of wealth um it it it it keeps going right generationally those those families don't hold on to the same amount of wealth as the as as as the the white neighborhoods that have all the benefits to have all the resources right um those those families in those neighborhoods are actually getting subsidized for their wealth and generationally um so like a way that i like to kind of see these interwoven is i love the analogy of trees and like this idea of the individual racism piece of being a single tree that's rooted in a place the institution is like a as like a mountain or like a hill and the structural is like a

088whole mountain range right it's the connection of all of those things together um that that works to the benefit um of white people into the detriment of black indigenous people of color both now and embedded um throughout our entire history yeah so this one um this one i think is is is really important um and we've talked about we've talked a lot about this today actually um just not in the terms of defining it as this but if we're thinking about white supremacy as the culture that we live in in a culture that positions white people and all that's associated with them as a deal or the racist ideology based upon the belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races right and then the the definition from dr workbooks

089which i know is in your which is embedded in your um challenge is the the the idea that white people and the ideas thoughts and beliefs and actions of white people are superior to people of color their ideas thoughts and beliefs and actions right so white supremacy is ever present in our institutions and our cultural assembly assumptions and in our history that assign value morality goodness and humanity to the white group while testing people in communities of color as worthless immoral bad and inhuman and undeserving right um so thinking about this as a political and social economic system where people enjoy structural advantages and rates that other racial and ethnic groups do not right both at a collective and an individual level so we're not talking about we're not talking about the extreme versions of

090white supremacy um thinking about like you know the kkk thinking about the white nationalists kind of that that extreme version of this this this idea of what this is is like the soil that we're all rooted in right so if we're using the analogy of a tree in in mountains in the mountain range it's the soil that covers everything so when we talked about like the language that we used and we talked about um you know when i heard the mayor talk about old westerns um when when when i heard talking about like tv shows and representation um of folks within those tv shows um what what are those representations what do they mean what are they um what are they saying that it's it's in the air that we breathe like literally it's the

091soil that we're all rooted in and rooted in that certain place is going to shape us as people in that place and in certain ways right so a lot of what with a lot of what was embedded in these last few days of this challenge around um you know with dr joy de gru's work on post-traumatic slave syndrome and we're thinking about our internalization of white supremacy and racism it's how we all internalize internalize it based on our um rootedness in white supremacy our rootedness in those values in those mindsets in those beliefs um in those things that we've been socialized and taught and and how that's embedded in us as people and as we show up every day and i think for um right thanks eileen yeah charlie's example of language is a good

092example of how it shows up every day and oftentimes i will say for white people we have no idea we don't even know that it's there we will say the things and not even know what that means right um we can have all the good intentions of the world and still be perpetuating a culture and a system and an institution that upholds and perpetuates racism all the time and i think especially for white folks because we're the ones that have been socialized as what's normal standard and good right um so it's sometimes it's a lot harder for us to see that because we you know our whole lives that's what we've been taught so to peel back those layers and really dig into that and say how has that shaped me as a as as

093a white person you know in this part of the world um i'll be i'll be undoing that work for the rest of my life you know i don't think i'll ever get to the bottom of it but it's so important to lean into that and to think about what has that internalization meant for me right anything to add eileen and so this is like when me and eileen talked we're looking at the 21 days and it was quite literally like like the last day is like where we would start and like this what we we refer to like this this this conversation around internalization is really the deepest end of the pool like it's it's the deepest hardest work that we can do because it's usually the stuff that we can't see it's hard it's

094really hard for us to see it and when we do it's painful like it hurts it sucks right to think about oh no i've been showing up in this way and doing this my whole entire life and this is and this is where it goes ouch that is not that is not that hurts that's painful and it's important to lean into that and to work with that do you want to go to the next one eileen could i ask you a question about that yeah um you know you're talking about the soil and the ground and what we're rooted in and i'm i'm listening to this as uh as a woman and yes i'm a white woman that has had some privilege of that but i i have i have been denied many things and

095treated in a whole different kind of ways than white men and i think that there that those roots in this soil you're talking about are also things we need we need to face um and you know how proud we are when finally after 250 years we get a woman to be the vice president united states and i'm very proud of that i think it's wonderful but why why why that because we're rooted in in a culture that says not only are people of color but women aren't capable don't don't have the right you know strength or ability so i always want to throw that in which i did with my students back many years ago and wanting to say yes we recognize that in the founding of this country that was true for all of

096you young women in this room so i just wanted to throw that in of course yep and it's that it's it's that intersectionality right so yes it's not thinking about that that takes away from anybody else right it's that there is um there's there's always that intersectionality and the way that me and eileen talk about it is that we don't we don't end we start with race but we don't end with race right if we're focusing on race that's going to help us get to all of the other intersectionalities that are also a part of that same oppression and a part of that same devaluing and a part of that same um scene is what's what what's not the um the standard right um so it's it's a it's a both and and and and

097i just want to give a quick example of how it's important to talk about race when we're talking about gender right so a couple years ago um it was a couple years ago google do you know how they do google doodles right and they celebrate different things so they were doing a thing about celebrating the centennial of women getting the right to vote um and so they put it like this beautiful this cute little cartoon like 100 years women could vote and all of these black women and all of these women of color said 100 years of white women getting the right to vote right when did black women really in effect get the right to vote not till much much much later it hasn't even been a hundred years and so when we don't

098think about those things we erase a whole group of people we leave them out of a question from our impulse to celebrate um and to uplift um and to acknowledge the impact of sexism if we don't also consider the impact of racism we can perpetuate harm in that space so just to kind of illustrate why it's important for us to have um to talk about race and right okay moving back to the iceberg okay this is one of my favorite slides um the iceberg slide is a slide from systems thinking and it's really thinking about how do we effectively change organizational and systemic structures um and when we're thinking about these kind of the levels of racism and thinking about this image of the tree the deepest level of change in the and the deepest

099level of leverage for change that we have is is this deepest level on the on the iceberg so when we're talking about um underlying systems and structures like the design part that that's the one up those are our policies those are our practices those are the procedures right those are those things that are often kind of outside of self as a person within an institution but we know that like if we're going deeper in that and we're thinking about our ways of thinking our mindsets our beliefs our values how are we showing up to implement those policies and procedures and practices that's our deepest level of transformation so because there is no institution without people right if we took all the people away we wouldn't have these same systems we wouldn't have these structures we

100wouldn't have these these institutions right so it's us as people that drive this stuff um so being able to think about how we internalize our relationship to white supremacy and all the different intersectional ways if if we're able to see that and recognize it and know um how we're able to change that in order to get something different that's what's actually going to be our transformation like that's that's that's the transformational journey um and i've heard every single one of you have named something on that journey tonight right um so it's not leaning into that every day and that gift that we have of the moment of being able to see it and recognize it so then we have the choice to change it because if it's something that stays in our unconscious it stays

101underground that we can't see it we don't know we don't know how it affects us um we won't be able to change it if we can't see it we can't change it um so that's our digging right that's our like that's our root work versus our leaf work is that we have to be able to do our own work and dig into ourselves in that way to see to see how it's showing up so that way we're not just trying to address the issues on our leafs but um but in our roots um and this this iceberg model is a great model because what we see a lot especially in the media um and this one this is what happens when you have uh this going back to those levels and the individual person doing

102an individual individual like racist act right like an event then it's all about reaction to that event it's about the publicity it's about the media it's about what do we do now um it's that like everything's on fire and we need to like put out the fire right but we know that this the fire is gonna come back because it's patterns it's gonna keep coming back again and again and again and again right because it's driven by the systems and the structures and the design of it which is driven by us as people and our mindsets values and beliefs and ways that we show up in relationship to each other and in relationship to ourselves so i wanted to kind of give you that because that's heavy that's our that's the deepest part of work

103we can do like that's our legacy work for every single person that we touch that we have a relationship with that we can call in those folks when we see somebody doing something that is like ooh maybe they don't maybe they don't know if they said this thing that's going to have this impact or maybe they can't really see how they're showing up today and that that is doing the harm if we have a relationship with that person we can call them in we can have a conversation we can sit down and lean into that discomfort together um i will i will leave it there eileen do you have anything to add this is pete i just had a comment you know um in talking about structural racism uh we already uh in part have

104tried to address this in our hiring of firefighters for example we realized that the screening the upfront screening process that we use disqualified many women and people of color um and um plus we you know you charge a fairly significant testing fee that takes out people that might might otherwise be good and i i got to thinking about this in other terms too you know i think you know we always look for someone who has experience in in what we're doing but if you think about a lot a lot of uh particularly women of color are in service jobs right they're not necessarily they're their first job or their uh their many of their jobs are in that area they work very hard and are are great people but they may not have the experience

105in the in the area that we're looking and um i think we need to to think more broadly about our eligibility criteria for people we interview uh and not uh and not get necessarily hung up so much on prior experience certainly that's that's helpful but that can also screen out some uh otherwise very capable candidates so just i throw that in it's a great example um from the world of education this is the example i know best but we know for a fact that similarly with teachers with people trying to become teachers a lot of excellent candidates who are multilingual and who are people of color are screened out because of things like the the um preliminary testing requirements um and so what one thing we know about those testing requirements like the westy the

106west b is that um people of color and people who speak english as their second or third language um don't pass those tests at the same rates um the other thing we know is that those tests are not predictive of how good of a teacher you'll be so then it's like it's things like that right it's like how how are we deciding what qualifies a person those tests mean nothing the sat is not a predictor of how well someone will do in college why do we use it right it's it's very disproportionate who's passing it and who's not it's not a predictor of how well someone will do in college why do we use these things right so if we just do these things because we've always done them without asking those questions um that's

107how we perpetuate institutional racism right and so asking those questions is really really important okay i i wanted to say something to you i've been asking like why we why we fail a student right and it really came up during coved we we decided we weren't failing anyone and so why is that different any other time of the year when students are facing um challenges like internet anytime whether it's covet or not or no one at home to help them or you know they don't have time you know just all sorts of things it it takes a while to change the system in terms of how people view um their work so just i don't know i've just been thinking about that and discipline and how we identify special education students and and all of

108that where it's not overtly racist but it just those those participate you know participation numbers look very odd mm-hmm absolutely um another thing we often say is if it's predictable then it's systemic right if we already know we already can predict who's going to end up in honors and ap and who's going to end up in disciplinary action and special ed then we know it's systemic right okay so moving on we're gonna take ourselves into the internalization conversation um this is something that we talk a lot about in our team um there's a lot of times when we hear different um phrases like white privilege or white fragility we we want to put them in boxes that don't necessarily connect to each other and we wanted to kind of um bring that back to this

109place where it's all interconnected right that it's all part of the same system it's all part of the same thing so thinking about white supremacy in effect as the disease right um white fragility is something that that is a symptom of that disease right it's something that is that happens because we are rooted in that and so that white fragility is a way that it shows up in us um and why privilege is that outcome white privilege is like that it's like the leaf it's like the last it's the thing that happens because of white supremacy um and fragility is usually is the thing that shows up when it's all when it's at all challenged so that's all i wanted to say with that it's just that it's that it's i think seeing that as

110a part of that system so um this takes us into this conversation about what it means to internalize all of this stuff what happens when i think um um um laurie started us off on this you know she was really speaking to that that experience of not when you go through life and this is your constant reflection back to you where you don't see yourself reflected or you only see yourself reflected in very distorted or inaccurate ways what does that do to a person right what does that do to my psyche what does that do to my sense of self and that those questions are all about internalization so um internalized oppression eternalized racism is one of the most challenging things that i talk to black and indigenous and people of color about because it's

111the most painful right it's like um there are there are many many ways in which we internalize racism it's always harmful to us um and we have learned how to survive and we've learned how to adapt in ways that are not always healthy right so um just as a as a um as a starting point internalized depression is when systemically non-dominant people take on and believe the stereotypes are lies that are told about them and their people so when i start to believe these inaccuracies and these lies and these distortions about myself that's when i've internalized racism and the thing to know about it is that i may not be aware i'm doing it i just may feel about myself that i'm not good enough i may feel unqualified i may feel dumb i may

112feel ugly right and i don't necessarily want to feel that way and if you asked me um i would say no people of color are beautiful and smart and just as good and i might still feel that way so when i when i talk about this to people i say you know i can i can talk to a room full of people of brilliant accomplished people of color and say say you walked into a room and it was filled with white men and you were the only person of color there you how many of you would have the experience of doubting yourself like if you were though like everyone else was agreeing on one thing and you were the only one who was gonna say like uh maybe we shouldn't do it that way how

113many of you would would do it like that like very tentative question yourself should i say it am i the only one that's feeling this um am i going nuts did no one else notice that that person just said something really offensive right i think most of us who have been in that situation recognize that experience even if we know and we we spend lots of time building ourselves up to see ourselves as smart capable brilliant people we can still get into that moment at any time right so um i think there's a really couple of important points i want to share about internalized racism um and and just have you think about like how this how this resonates with you if you're a person of color like where do you see yourself in this

114or not okay um so internalized racism is an involuntary reaction to racism it's adaptive it's actually sometimes the smart thing to do right it's the way we have survived it's a reaction to racism that originates from outside the groups of black indigenous and people of color we do not voluntarily adopt negative beliefs about ourselves we only do it because racism exists if racism didn't exist we wouldn't be we wouldn't be in this situation we wouldn't be adopting these beliefs about ourselves we're trained to internalize lies and this training begins before we're able to screen out the lies um you know we're exposed to racism at very early ages some of you have probably seen the doll test right with um where they show young children a black doll and a white doll um and ask

115children which one's the good doll which one's the pretty doll which one's the the well-behaved doll right and it's they've repeated this test over and over again um throughout generations and and children and children of color are still picking white children and preferring the white doll and saying the white doll's the pretty one the white doll is the good one um and and that's a sign that you know that's that's one of those early signs of internalized racism right and it's something that starts really really young okay um people of color fight valiantly to resist taking on the effects of racism a lot of us are really intentional teaching our children like this is these things are not true about you um and it's such a constant experience that it can be really hard to

116resist so like i said i'll use myself as an example i believe in myself i believe i'm smart i believe i'm capable and you put me in a room that's filled with white men and i'll start to question myself i'll start to say do i belong here am i as am i as good as these people am i as competent as these other people just because that's been my training my whole life and i have to be really intentional in order to to make sure that i can show up in the way that i really believe that i can show up um so these are things that i've gathered from the the group of educators of color that i work with that i think are important for us to name about internalized racism it is

117not our fault it's a response to racism that exists in the world right so if we're doing it to let go of shame about it and to realize it's a survival mechanism it's something we had to do to adapt and to fit in into the environments that we're in it's not the same as low self-esteem right so like i said like i believe in myself i believe i'm smart i believe i'm capable so i have good self-esteem and i could still fall into that those moments of self-doubt um it can impact our self-esteem if it keeps happening to us over and over when we start to believe those things about ourselves it's a natural response to surviving white supremacy and it hurts us it hurts us it hurts our own feelings about ourselves and it

118hurts our relationships with other members of our own and other bipod communities right so um um so the way it hurts us is that you know if i'm internalizing racism and i believe this is what it means to to achieve this is what it means to be smart this is what it means to be accepted in this world this is what it means to be a professional and the measuring stick i'm using is whiteness then i am going to try to align myself with that and i'm going to try to push myself away from other people of color and that's where things like anti-blackness come from right so you might have heard that term anti-blackness so it's where it's where colorism comes from it's where it's like um you know judging each other and policing

119each other on our attitudes and our behaviors and the way we dress and the way we show up and the way we speak if i'm in judgment on other people of color because they're representing me poorly that's because i've internalized racism right so just a couple of other examples of those manifestations of internalized racism and just again think about where you see these examples as well this is what it can look like self-hatred of how you look and act self-doubt fear of your own power like i've i've told this to like lots of women of color where i've said you know what i've never heard a white man say i'm not ready for that job i don't think i'm qualified never heard a white man say that so i've heard lots of women of color

120say that so an urgent pull to assimilate her to prove them wrong just so to put all of your energy and all of your time and to exhaust yourself improving yourself all the time right um not doing something because it's considered acting white so i'm not going to take that honors class because that's acting white right i'm not going to travel to europe because that's acting white um but so like not to say that that's what we should aspire to but to say um to make a decision because you're afraid of how you're going to be judged on it and if you're choosing whiteness over your own authenticity isolation from your own group self-blame for a lack of success dependency changing how you look act or talk to be more accepted by white people mistreating

121or judging other people of color for not being enough right not being black enough not being latino enough are you really one of us are you down are you are you like authentic enough like questioning your own or other people's authenticity blaming people of color for being the victims of racism so being like if you would just work harder than da da right um and this can happen between communities of color so i can hear people in my asian american community saying like well if black people would just work harder like us then they'd be doing fine right that's internalized racism that's saying like you know we're closer to whiteness that means we're doing better and when i hear asian people doing that i try to talk to them and challenge that and work with

122them on like you know like in what ways have we ascribed to a white definition of what successes and what does that mean for our relationship with black communities um so colorism again um and then fighting over the smallest slice of the economic pie so putting us in competition with one another and saying if if i uplift black and latinx people as an asian american does that mean like less for me as an asian american right so playing those oppression olympics games um is all part of internalized racism believing that there's not enough to go around and i'm gonna move myself closer to whiteness and distance myself from other people of color um okay i'm gonna stop talking there um and just i'll just let that sit for a moment and um matthew you want

123to do your piece and then we can kind of see if we have enough time to come back to it well i am wondering since it's 7 55 at least on my clock yeah um we can give you the slides you've already been through the material you've had the frame so i would rather you take those pieces as homework and really kind of like my challenge would you for you would be this is this is for my white folks is um to come up with something every single day of how you internalize your relationship to white supremacy so um there's the next slide is some examples you can take those examples you could do some research on your own um but thinking about thinking about how these things show up um i have i have

124i have i have more of a list than this if you want that as well um so let me know um but i would much rather kind of prioritize the last few minutes of just of just uh having a few words from you all because i know me and elite have been talking a bit um for this lesson i'm going to say one quick last thing i promise is quick the homework for people of color is how are you attending to your own healing from internalized racism okay and we can send you some resources around that but just reflecting on how am i naming how it shows up in me and how am i being intentional about healing from it okay so that being said um maybe in the chat or or going around um

125just having a couple words to close out like what what is currently what are a couple feeling words that you have right now to kind of close out our time together tonight for me i'm just i'm thankful and um overwhelmed at the same time just thankful that we have the courage as a community and as leaders to take this on because this is this is deep and i'm getting some some good information out of it and by the way send me that uh information for the people of color i will thank you absolutely thank you angela michael um i'm sort of thinking about the connection between vulnerability and fragility and accepting vulnerability as not something that makes you weak or ill-equipped or anything along those lines and trying to use that as a bit of

126an antidote to fragility which is often the taught knee-jerk reaction like when i was reading through the detour document i was like man as people have read everything i've ever done and made a list and like i i just could for each every single one on those i could probably sit and it wouldn't take me a long time to remember instances where i've done each of those things and then you sort of have this feeling of like holy i'm the worst person in the world right and it's not that that's the thing you have to you like the other readings i think were kind of ordered in a good fashion so that you get knocked down and then picked back up a bit because you are also then given the tools to understand why your

127brain thinks that way and that talking about the ways in which you've hurt people in that fashion is the way that in which you understand the pain that you've caused and understand that you need to make amends for that to people too and that you need to be vulnerable about it and honest and candid and articulate so that that's sort of where where i am at at day nine um which on on the conveyor belt i think was like step three or something um in the previous allegories um so that that that's sort of what i'm thinking about is the connection between fragility and and being candid and open and honest great yeah thank you and the vulnerability piece is a whole new um thing uh intersectionality of uh patriarchy and white supremacy which is

128which is another conversation but yeah thank you feel free to put your words in the chat too if you want it's trying to be cognizant of the time i'm just thinking about how much i need to think about this like i know how i played the game well and the guilt i feel about it is overwhelming um and and who who who didn't who didn't understand the rules enough and and i feel bad that i didn't help so uh but i just don't have time to deal with that um you know so that's the other thing i'd rather help all these help other people and i just don't have time to deal with this so that's what i'm thinking about right now all right if i could give you if i had a magic wand

129i would relieve you of all the guilt um and i would give you time and and um to attend to this is probably your top priority and to say like for me to help other people i've got to show like what what kids need to see is a healthy resilient well human being right um and so we do that for ourselves and we do that for our children and i put two books in the chat and i'll send i'll send you more is this goodbye okay this is goodbye until next time until we meet again and my grandmother's hands is wonderful for all of you in case all of you want to read it all right thank you everybody thank you all so much thanks for bringing so much heart and presence have a great

130night