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>> Good afternoon everyone and thank you for coming
to the John C. Livingston Annual Faculty Lecture.
I'm Janet Hecsh, the chair of the Faculty Senate,
and we're delighted to have you here this afternoon.
I'd ask if everyone could please find a seat,
maybe folks could help each other
by moving toward the center.
That's the school teacher and me.
I'd like to recognize the Livingston family
and thank them very much for their support of this lecture.
I'd like to have Cleve Livingston,
son of John C. Livingston.
Say hello, we're looking in this direction.
[ Applause ]
It's my understanding that Virginia Livingston,
his wife will be here little later.
Whit Livingston, Cleve and Virginia's son and grandson
of John Livingston, are you here?
[ Applause ]
And I hope of future Sac State student the smallest member
of the Livingston family, Ms Kennedy Livingston,
is here this afternoon [applause] learning what it
takes to be a Sac State Hornet.
It's my pleasure this afternoon to introduce the president
of Sacramento State University, Alexander Gonzalez.
He's going to introduce the other folks and then we're going
to have a really exciting talk this afternoon.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you Janet and welcome to everybody
to this afternoon's event.
I also want to thank the Faculty Senate
for making this event possible and especially the members
of the Livingston committee.
All the students that are here in attendance today,
I also want to thank you.
This is going to be quite an event.
And of course, my utmost congratulations go
to Dr. Rita Cameron-Wedding who gives this year's lecture.
It's a pleasure to be here with all of you
to celebrate the legacy of Professor John Livingston.
This lecture is one
of Sacramento State's proudest annual events
because it honors outstanding academic--
an academic tradition at our university.
Our campus is known for having world class faculty
who have a deep commitment to teaching, to service,
and advancing the values and virtues
of public higher education.
This commitment is gaining widespread recognition among
students as more and more
of them are listing Sacramento State as their first choice
on their college applications.
I'm also proud that we take very seriously our dual
responsibilities to examine the biggest challenges facing our
society and to use our experience and knowledge
to educate the community.
These responsibilities remain as essential today as they were
when Professor Livingston gave his inaugural lecture in 1959.
And the fact that we're here
on Election Day further reinforces this point
across California and the nation, voters are going
to the polls to decide not only the candidates
but the propositions.
Somebody's votes will determine the future
of public higher education
and still others could affect many issues
that previously recent lectures have addressed.
Thank you once again for advancing the proud tradition
of this lecture and thank you very much
for attending this afternoon.
And now, it's my pleasure to introduce last year's recipient
of the Livingston Award,
Professor Tom Krabacher of Geography.
Tom?
[ Applause ]
[ Pause ]
>> One of the benefits, one of the real joys
of being a Livingston Lecturer is that the following year,
you'd get to introduce the next Livingston Lecturer
and it gives me great pleasure to do so in this case
because Professor Cameron-Wedding
and I go back ways where both faculty members
who joined the CSUS community about the same time.
We're both the same age although we no longer say what
that age is anymore and we both have our offices
on the same floor, so we've casually been able
to interact both informally as well as formally as members
of the Sac State community of the years.
And this interaction and the friendship that's developed has
led us in sometimes a number of strange byways.
For example, there was that lively evening stroll
through the open air fish markets of Seattle which needs
to be discussed in more details sometime
but this isn't really the time or place.
What I really want to talk about here is Dr. Cameron-Wedding
and the purpose of the Livingston Lecture.
I think these things are something
that really go together very nicely and I think in doing
so it emphasizes both the strengths of Dr. Cameron-Wedding
and also the purpose of Livingston Lecture as well.
The Livingston Lecture was so named
to honor Professor Jack C. Livingston
who was an important member of our campus community.
And Dr. Livingston was described by Bob Curry himself,
a former faculty member and a recipient
of the Livingston Lecturer as someone who
"was an important conscience of the faculty for many years.
A person respected for his sense of humanity, for his wit
and good humor, and a man gifted
with an extraordinary capacity for friendship."
And the thing that strikes me
about this description is how perfectly it fits
Dr. Cameron-Wedding.
She's a scholar of the first order.
We're going to see that in just a few minutes.
She's also a teacher of the first order and it's important
to realize that her training--
her much more training was in education.
And for her teaching is not just something in the classroom
but it's taking what one knows and what one wants to say
out to the community at large.
And Dr. Cameron-Wedding has done that locally in Sacramento
at the state level,
at the national level and internationally.
And this fits very much the concept
of a faculty member being the life of the university
which is what the Livingston Lecture honors.
And in this case, the university is not just Sac State
but the broader academic community, the community
of higher education at large.
And because of that, it gives me great pleasure
to introduce someone who I think fits the goal, fits the purpose,
fits the ideal of the Livingston Lecture to a tee,
Dr. Rita Cameron-Wedding.
[ Applause ]
[ Pause ]
>> Good afternoon Sacramento State University.
>> Good afternoon.
>> Good afternoon Sacramento State University!
>> Good afternoon!
>> I have to tell you that I have never been so honored
in my entire career than to have the opportunity--
you know [laughter], this is the deal.
It's like I have been on this campus a very long time
and Tom is right, at the point now
where I don't even say how long.
Just know that it's been a while.
But to be able to be honored by my colleagues and my students
and have the opportunity to be thought of as someone
who is scholarly enough and smart enough
and well-loved enough to deliver this lecture is an honor
that I can't even begin
to express how important it is to me.
So it is with great enthusiasm and respect
that I have the opportunity to come to you on Election Day,
on Election Day [applause] and talk
about what I believe is still one
of the most compelling issues of our time.
But this is the deal, I think having conversations
about the R word; about race,
should not be something that concerns us.
I think it should be something
that we can realize will make us better at what we do.
This is what I tell, I want students,
I want you to know what I tell people off campus.
I tell people that I tell my students,
being able to have conversations about race means that I'm going
to be the most amazing person in the room
because not everybody can do it.
And I want to have a conversation about race
that brings people together
so that we can celebrate the election regardless
of the outcome because we know in fact that we are one people.
Am I right?
We're one people.
[Applause] So, now, I did have one of my kids and I have--
by the way, I have five generations in this room today.
Is that amazing?
So five generations, I need all of my family,
all five generations to stand.
But wait, that little bitty one may not be here yet.
I have one who's about this big
but the other four generations stand, whoever is here, who's,
you know, Berna [phonetic], she's the first one.
This is my mother, Ms. Diller [phonetic], my granddaughter,
my son, my granddaughter.
[Applause] So the reason this is important for me to talk
about is because I, you know, I can hear my mother in my ears
so many times when I'm giving speeches in the Deep South
and my mother would say to me, "Seriously?
Do you have to go to the Deep South to talk about race?"
And it is true that even as I was preparing for this lecture,
I said to myself, why don't I talk about something
like baking chocolate chip cookies
or maybe flower arranging or something
that would make people love me?
But the bottom line is that that is not going
to get the job done that we have to do.
So, I consider ways to get around having this conversation
but I ultimately decided that I'm going to walk right
down the middle of the road and talk about it.
So I want to know if you all are willing
to have this conversation with me and yes,
most of you are getting extra credit for being here.
But I still want to know if you're willing
to have this conversation with me today.
[Applause] Okay.
And Anthony, Anthony and I, Anthony is working
with me back there so from time
to time you'll hear me calling up his name.
I want to give Anthony a round of applause
and thank him so much.
[Applause] And Richard as well, I want to thank Richard
for helping me out today.
So these are the folks who are going
to help me take this journey and I'm glad that you are willing
to take this journey with me as well.
Okay, Anthony let's get started.
>> [Background Music] Ladies up in here tonight.
No fighting--
>> Some of you are like, "Seriously?
That must be a mistake."
No mistake.
On your feet, everybody.
>> that she could dance like this,
she makes a man wants to speak Spanish.
Como se llama, si, bonita, si,
mi casa, si, Shakira, Shakira, su casa.
Oh baby when you talk like that, you make a woman go mad.
So be wise and keep on reading the signs of my body.
And I'm on tonight you know my hips don't lie
and I'm starting to feel it's right.
All the attraction, the tension,
don't you see baby, this is perfection.
Hey Girl, I can see your body moving
and it's driving me crazy and I
didn't have the slightest idea until
I saw you dancing.
And when you walk up on the
dance floor, nobody cannot ignore
the way you move your body, girl.
And everything so unexpected, the way you right and
left it so you can keep on shaking it.
I never really knew that she could dance like this.
She makes a man want to speak Spanish.
Como se llama, si, bonita,
si, mi casa, si, Shakira, Shakira, su casa.
Oh baby when you talk like that, you make a woman go mad.
So be wise and keep on reading the signs of my body.
And I'm on tonight you know my hips don't lie
and I am starting to feel you boy.
Come on let's go, real slow, don't you
see baby asi es perfecto.
Oh I know I
am on tonight my hips don't-- [Music]
>> [Inaudible] that go.
When I play Shakira-- by the way, my kids hate Shakira.
But when I play, they're like seriously there's lots
of good music out there; you can really change it up now.
But, yeah, these are some of them.
They are here though, we're glad.
But people wonder even though they may not have the
opportunity they ask, they wonder, what does Shakira have
to do with this conversation?
And my answer is always nothing.
[Laughter] It has nothing to do with the conversation
but this is what it does have to do with.
It has to do with the fact that when we are having conversations
about race and it's so important
to get people to shift their energy
because people come into the room and we're like this
because we think with our-- we're adversaries.
And I'm telling you, we're not because ultimately,
we all want the same thing.
The second reason, can you all hear me?
>> Yes.
>> I'm losing my mic, that's not good.
The speaker is wrong.
The second reason that I like to do music, usually Shakira,
is because I confess there's nothing
that I get more enjoyment from than to imagine the looks
on the faces of my children when they see me
up here dancing to Shakira.
[Laughter]
And now people know that I'm a Wedding and they're a Wedding
and they're in the room, I'm sure they're mortified.
But it's a lot of fun for me.
So that's the thing about Shakira.
So it's really hard when you are trying to have conversations
about race when people are anxious.
But if you can get people to shift that energy,
it's amazing the work that you can get done.
Not to mention the fact that it's a lot more fun
so that's why I love to play the music.
So in the course of my work, I was approached by people
in child welfare about seven years ago.
As a matter of fact, it was right
after I took my last sabbatical.
So I have to make a decision about what am I going to do
on my sabbatical, and I decided I want
to develop a new discourse on race.
I wanted to figure out how I could have a conversation
about race and still have people sitting at the table at the end.
I mean, have you ever had a conversation about race
and people [inaudible], "Okay, it's time to go.
Now, I got to go."
It's like I wanted to shift-- I want to make it a--
this is not to say that people are always happy at the end.
But at least we could develop a way
of having more engaged conversations.
And so that was my idea.
So I have to think about what is it, I mean, what does race look
like in the 21st century?
Historically or typically when people think about race
in the 21st century, they think of those blatant
and incontrovertible acts of discrimination.
At least people in my generation do.
I think a lot of my students when I say things lynching
and cross burning, they go "What?
Not so sure of what you're talking about."
As a matter a fact, every now and then,
my students even though they are very kind about it
when I start going on about Rosa Parks
and Dr. Martin Luther King, they looked at me as if to say,
"I can't believe she's still standing
and she's friends with those people."
[Laughter] But there are enough of us in the room who remember.
And if you don't remember firsthand,
your parents remember.
And even though those are markers of race, the lynching,
the cross burning, the racial epithets,
the slurs of separate drinking fountains,
you all know what I'm talking about, right?
Those are markers of racism.
And so what happens in contemporary society
for many people is that when they don't see those markers
of race or racism, they are led to believe
that the problem has been solved because they will say, "Well,
I don't see any lynching.
I don't see any cross burning."
But this is what I want you to know.
Even in the absence of those blatant
and incontrovertible acts of discrimination,
the process of race
or the racialization process still continues,
but it continues in a much different way.
It's much more discreet, it's much more subtle,
and by the way, we don't need the *** to do it.
I can do it.
I can perpetuate racism.
I can do it.
You can do it.
So our job is to figure out what is it that I might be doing
that might be promoting racism in the society or the world
that I live in and how can I stop doing that.
So there are four factors, four things that I have thought
about that I believe make a huge difference in terms
of contributing to the current or the modern discourse on race.
Those four things are implicit bias, colorblindness,
stereotyping, and institutional racism.
Those are the four things I'm going
to cover very briefly in my remarks today.
I used a lot of media.
You won't have to dance again.
Actually, you didn't have to--
you actually got by without dancing today,
but that's for another lecture.
We will go through a few video clips and hopefully at the end,
it is my hope at the end, you will have some insight
as to what you can do to make a difference in the world
that we live in today and what you can do
so that we can all collectively live up to the goals
and the legacy of Dr. Livingston,
the person for whom this award has named.
[ Pause ]
I believe that implicit bias is actually the conflation,
the way those four things that I described,
the way those four things come together are some of the--
are the most powerful mechanisms
for preserving racial stratification in our society.
As a matter of fact, I think, if you have implicit bias operating
at the same time or stereotyping, at the same time
of colorblindness, at the same time of institutional racism,
we can maintain systems of inequality in the year 2012
in very much the same way we maintained it prior
to the civil rights movement.
So what's interesting is that the generation of the youth
who are in this room today, you have a very special charge
which is you've got to sift through the work that--
I didn't have to do that much work
to understand what racism look like in my day because I came
up prior to the civil rights movement.
So it was blatant and incontrovertible but you
on the other hand are going to do--
have to do a little bit more of thinking to figure
out what it looks like.
So, first of all, when we look at implicit bias, we're talking
about assumptions and beliefs, and concepts, and notions,
and ideas that are in our brains.
We don't even need a law.
It's like the assumptions I have about what people look like,
the assumptions that I have about what their background is,
their social class, where they went to school,
any of those things can promote biases that I have in my head.
In fact, most of the Harvard research
on implicit bias is very clear that many people that the reason
that implicit bias is so powerful is
that most people don't even know they have it.
And it's so easy for us to even deny that we have it
because nobody is taking count.
It's not-- you know, nobody is saying out loud,
"I am not going to-- I am not going to date that person
because they are this or that."
I mean, we might say it in private but typically,
we don't use those, you know, those phrases
or make those remarks in public.
We don't say, "I'm not going to serve that person
because of the color of their skin," or we don't say
that we're not going to give an individual an opportunity
because she's a woman.
We typically don't say that.
And as a matter of fact, we often don't know.
When I think of the interesting thing about bias, implicit bias
for me, is that as a professor of Women's Studies
and as a chair of Women's Studies, I become really good
on the issue of gender and mostly I am.
I mean, that's all relative, I guess.
But I can remember when my children were growing up
and they would say to me and, you know, most of you are
like of their age so you may not really get this,
but those of you who are older, you might.
When my children say things to me like, well, you think you're
so good on this whole issue of feminism but why is it
that you have me, the boy, taking out the garbage
or my sister washing the dishes over and over, and over again.
It's like that unconscious belief
that this is the world order
and that this is the way things ought to be,
or even during the last national election
when Hillary was wearing the pantsuits
and people are making comments
about the way Hillary Clinton was dressed.
How many of you all remembered that?
I mean, people talked about it all the time
and intellectually-- [Inaudible Remark] Oh, it's making noise?
[Inaudible Remark] Okay.
Okay, good.
Thank you, Janet.
Thank you.
But she didn't say where I should wear that.
[Laughter] She just said up.
So let's take it here.
So there was Hillary in the pantsuit and what's interesting
about that is that I knew better, I mean,
I knew that was problematic because I never thought once
about what Barack had on ever, or John.
I never checked out their shoes or anything like that,
but the conversations about Hillary, it was titillating
because all of a sudden we're talking about a woman.
And so what I realize is that my own unconscious bias has started
to seep out.
And I had to really pay attention to that
because on a conscious level I would say, I don't believe
that women are any different than men.
I believe that women can become the president
of the United States, that women can
so anything absolutely they want to do in the world, and yet
and still I'm laughing, you know, around and chatting it
up about what the candidate has on.
So that's what implicit biases are.
Those are those unconscious beliefs systems,
even though we think that they don't matter, the reality is,
is that according to the researchers, we make decisions
in a split second, quickly in a split second.
And if we're not mindful of the fact that we're carrying
around this unconscious beliefs, those unconscious beliefs
and biases will get filtered right into the decisions
that we make, and that's what we're going to talk about today.
So I'm going to start with colorblindness.
I want to talk about colorblindness.
I want to share some data with you because I'm going
to frame my remarks from the perspective of looking
at the school-to-prison pipeline.
How many of you have heard the school-to-prison pipeline?
Perfect. Good.
So hopefully, you will-- have learned something new today.
So the reason that I'm going to--
that I'm using the school-to-prison pipeline is
because I think that it gives me an opportunity to talk
about implicit bias, it gives me an opportunity to talk
about colorblindness and the other two factors,
and we get to follow the consequence
of implicit biases and discrimination.
We get to follow it from the beginning to the end
and I can do that in a very brief period of time.
So, I love books and I know that iPads are
like the coolest thing ever, but there are some of us
who still cart around real books, right?
[Laughs] And I'm sure that I have students in the room
who said," I wish you stop carrying around those
around those ruddy old books."
But this book is by Michelle Alexander and it's called
"The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration
in the Age of Colorblindness".
And I want you to read some of her work to you, just a couple
of paragraphs to frame my remarks.
According to Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow,
"The impact of the drug war has been astounding.
In less than 30 years, the US penal population exploded
from around 300,000 to more than two million,
with drug convictions accounting
for the majority of the increase.
The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration
in the world, dwarfing the rates
of nearly every developed country, even surpassing those
of highly suppressive regimes like Russia, China, and Iran.
In Germany, 93 people are in prison
for every 100,000 adults and children.
In the United States, the rate is roughly eight times that,
750 people in prison for every 100,000 adults and children."
That's who we are right now.
According to Alexander, "The racial dimension
of mass incarceration is its most striking feature.
No other country in the world imprisons so many
of its racial or ethnic minorities.
The United States imprisons a larger percentage
of its black population than the South Africa
at the height of apartheid.
In Washington, D.C., it is estimated that three of four,
three of four, three of four black men can expect
to serve time in prison in our country."
That's the framing of it,
so some of you are probably ready to go home now.
[Laughs] So the question that I have that I imagined
that you would be asking is, how did we get there?
How do we arrive at that place,
because we're all well-meaning people and that's the point?
How can we achieve that level of disproportionality, disparity
and inequality in a country where we are by
and large good people?
Nobody in this room woke up this morning and said I'm going
to take somebody down with me today.
I'm going to do somebody it-- who says that?
We may not say it consciously and I don't think most
of us believe it but through our actions
and our unconscious belief systems, we might make decisions
that might contribute to the day that I just read.
Colorblindness is a very powerful system.
We should never take the-- it sounds kind of like, you know,
it sounds like a software colorblindness.
As a matter of fact, most people believe
that colorblindness is a good thing.
When I go around the country and I talk about colorblindness,
people kind of smile and grin, colorblind.
You know, sometimes judges have said to me,
"I don't know this race,
I just look at what's in the court report."
That's what they say because that's what they believe.
Because, you know, after the civil rights movement
or the civil rights, that we have to come up with a way
that we could in some way suppress the public discourse
on race.
We in our country really don't want people
to keep talking about race.
I'm surprised, I haven't been pulled off the stage yet but,
you know, I have a little time left.
So we really don't want people to talk about race and--
but that is why-- and it's because it kind
of reveals our underside.
It reveals really what's probably the least positive
element or the least-- you know,
the most problematic elements of our culture.
So colorblindness even though on the surface it might sound okay,
it's really a very, in my opinion, problematic concept.
Colorblindness asserts this.
We shouldn't talk about race, we shouldn't think about race
because race doesn't matter,
because we're all on a level of what?
Playing field.
We shouldn't talk about race.
We shouldn't think about race.
Race doesn't matter because we're all
on a level field-- level playing field.
But colorblindness also asserts something else.
It also says this, "But whoever mentions race first is the
racist in the room."
So that's pretty much how we have control the discourse
on race.
And if you look at some of the talk, TV shows or talk,
you know, the more conservative talk shows, one of the things
that you'll always hear, they will always remind us is
that anybody who starts talking about race, you're just talking
about it because you're playing the what?
>> Race card.
>> Race card.
But we all know the rules for how to suppress or how
to have conversions or how not to have conversations
about race in the 21st century.
We all have been educated.
No matter where I have this conversation,
everyone pretty much knows what the rules are.
And by the way, nobody wants to violate those rules
because you-- because we know that not one of us wants to look
like the racist in the room.
I think, originally, it's fair to say that, you know,
when Dr. King cited his famous "I Have a Dream" speech,
when he talked about the fact that "I dreamed that one day,
my poor little children will be judged not by--
[Inaudible Remark] -- the color of their skin
but by the content of their character."
That was the goal, that was a dream
but it's a dream not yet realized.
Okay. I'm going to show--
Anthony, I'm going to show in just a second a girl
like me, I want to set it up.
Some of you know this as a black doll experiment.
In the introduction of this clip, they will tell you
that this is a reproduction of the film from Brown versus Board
of Education in which they first conducted this doll experiment
in order to kind of understand how people felt
about how children, in this case, how children felt
about their own color of their skin.
So, while you are, you know, saying that, well,
a lot of adults are going around saying that they are colorblind,
I think it's really important for us
to watch what these children think about race.
Thank you, Anthony.
>> [Background Music] In Brown versus Board of Education,
the famous case of desegregated schools in 1950s,
Dr. Kenneth Clark conducted a doll test with black children.
He asked them to choose between a black doll and a white doll.
In most instances, the majority
of the children preferred the white doll.
I decided to re-conduct this test as Dr. Clark did
to see how we've progressed since then.
>> Can you show me doll that you like best or that you'd
like you like to play with?
>> This one.
>> This one.
>> I like that one.
[Inaudible Remark]
>> This one.
>> That one?
>> This one.
>> I'd like to play with this.
>> And can you show me the doll that is the nice doll?
And why is that the nice doll?
>> She's white.
>> And can you show me the doll that looks bad?
Okay. And can you give-- and why does that look bad?
>> Because it's black.
>> And why do you think that's a nice doll?
>> Because she is white.
>> And can you give me the doll that looks like you?
15 out of the 21 children preferred the white doll.
>> I showed this clip in a lot of different places and I always
like to give people a chance to take it in.
A lot of the audiences that I work with are judges,
as you know, are social workers, probation officers,
people in the field, teachers.
I think it's-- and so people who are very well-educated,
highly-educated, it's really tempting for us to start
to analyze the film, right?
That's a temptation.
What I want you to do is not do that.
I want you to just take a second and get in touch
with what it felt like to watch that.
How did that feel?
Are you all clear about the question?
How did that feel?
Does anybody want to offer a response to that?
Yes? It felt very sad.
How about somebody else?
Yes?
>> Disheartening.
>> Disheartening, sad.
Anybody else?
Yes? Painful, disheartening, sad, and I think that if I were
to pull everybody in the room,
the responses would be very similar.
It's a very hard thing to watch.
So the point is simply for us to be mindful
that even though intellectually we might think
that we don't know this race, but I don't think, you know,
there might be one, but the rest
of us we know this race and it impacts us.
The second piece that I want to talk
about is looking at stereotypes.
Stereotypes, I like to use the word ubiquitous, ubiquitous.
You don't like that word?
I don't know, I have this thing
with that word, I think it's great.
And plus, I think it really tells the whole story.
This is the quote, "When I turn on the news each night,
what do I see again and again?
Black men alleged to be killing, raping, mugging, stabbing,
gangbanging, looting, rioting, selling drugs, pimping, ho-ing,
having too many babies, dropping babies from tenement windows,
fatherless, motherless, Godless, penniless.
I believe we've become so used to this image
of the black male predator that we are forever ruined
by this brainwashing."
Stereotypes are ubiquitous, you cannot watch television
or go online or blog or anything
without being assaulted by stereotypes.
But we should know that stereotypes are not benign.
They are very powerful.
And so when we're looking at the whole idea of what's happening
to kids, for example, in the juvenile justice system
or in schools or school-to-prison pipeline,
one of the things that we must pay attention to is
that that every decision point is brought with biases
that are informed by the stereotypes.
The school-to-prison pipeline is essentially a term
that has been coined to explain the fact
that schools now have taken on a more punitive role.
When I was going to kid-- to school, kids used to be,
you know, that the expression was kids will be kids
and we had many teachable moments.
So if we made a mistake, you know,
the teacher would usually come to us
and recite the golden rule, I mean that was a long time ago,
besides the golden rule or say don't do that again.
But now when children makes mistakes
or when they do something, they can even--
I often refer to it as a penny candy offense.
They could take a piece of penny candy
and they cannot only will they get a referral to the principal
but the taking of that penny candy might result
in a 3-day suspension from school or even more.
Now, this is the deal, there is no data out there that says
that school suspensions
and expulsions are making kids better.
And as a matter of fact, last year, we attended the Office
of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention, their conference.
And at the conference, what they were really clear about is
that school suspensions are increasing the likelihood
that children, particularly youth of color,
particularly those who are poor, are going to end
up in the justice system.
Now first of all, what happens is
if they have too many expulsions or suspensions, they get pushed
out of school because they can't keep up academically.
And if they can't keep up academically, they're going
to even remove themselves, but it's still a push out.
And once they're on the street with no education,
you know who gets them next.
So that's exactly-- essentially what the concept
of school-to-prison pipeline is.
So teachers are very much impacted by their, you know,
even though, you know, we're all--
there are a lot of teachers in this room and I can speak for me
and I could-- I think I can speak very well
for my colleagues, we're well-meaning people.
But I was able to-- I think, first understand the work
of implicit bias by looking at my own biases.
Now that's kind of tricky because I'm thinking
that I'm a good person, I'm--
you know, I teach in Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies,
two of the most controversial disciplines in the academy
and I'm thinking I got this down.
But when I start to pay attention
to my own implicit biases, I was actually quite appalled.
And I thought to myself, "Well, if I can have biases
and I know better not only intellectually,
I also know better academically but that's not enough."
I still has to search myself just to figure
out if a student comes into my office, am I making decisions
about that student just because, you know, of the objective facts
of the situation or does the way the student show up,
the way they look, the color of their skin, whether
or not they have tattoos.
I want to know I'm better on the whole thing
of tattoos, by the way.
[Laughter] I used to be-- my son will tell you, you know,
25 years ago, it was not a good pretty picture in my house
when he got his first tattoo and then my daughter came up next.
But then when I found out that the grandmother was behind it,
[laughter] that's when I knew we had some serious problems
in the family.
So I'm a little less biased about tattoos now
but I still have other things.
My colleague, Dr. Mossupiei [phonetic],
everybody knows Dr. Mossupiei?
Yes? Everybody who knows her also knows
that she has this thing about the poopy pants, right?
Those are the pants that go like this.
You've seen them, right?
So, I have to ask myself, is it--
are my biases strictly a reflection of the facts or is--
are my biases also influenced by things
that have nothing to do with the facts?
So reality is, is that people can have tattoos and saggy pants
and still be stellar students.
And I don't want to be a gate keeper to that.
And so whether I'm making a decision as a faculty person,
or if I'm making a decision as someone who is in the K
through 12 education, or somebody who is
in law enforcement, I have to pay attention to the extent
which my own personal biases might be informing my
decision making.
In law enforcement, one of the things that we have
to deal with, in fact, I was talking to one group in Oakland,
California and this is a room full of, you know, it was people
from probation, Oakland PD, Sheriff Department,
and social workers and [inaudible]--
I mean just a large mix of people in the room.
A lot of the officers who are in the room,
they had guns right there, and one officer actually said to me
that one of the things that promotes reasonable suspicions
for them, in other words, one of the things that causes them
to look more carefully at people whether or not they might be
about to break a law is hairstyles.
Now I want you all to know this that I would not say
that if somebody-- if that were not a direct quote
because it sounds utterly ridiculous,
to think that the way somebody wears their hair can evoke a
reasonable suspicion that they might be
about to commit a crime.
But since it's a direct quote, I have the courage to say it.
I did throb a little bit, not too much, because after all,
the officer did have a gun [laughter] on his hips,
so I didn't want to make him too nervous or make him too anxious.
But I said, "Hairstyles, can you be more specific?"
He said "Yes, you know, the curly kind of hair"
and that's how you-- I didn't say it out loud
but I'm thinking, he doesn't mean curly, he means dreadlocks.
So, what-- so this is an officer who said in front
of all his peers that people
who have dreadlocks can promote reasonable sub--
suspicion that they're about to break a rule or break the law.
So that's what an implicit bias does, and so we have
to pay attention to that because that means
that those youth are more likely to be identified as, you know,
people who have problems or people that you have to follow
or surveil than somebody who doesn't have hair like that.
And let's face this.
The majority of people who wear dreadlocks are
of a particular race or ethnicity, right?
Okay. All right.
So, one more thing about that before I go on,
a lot of the judges also talked about the fact
that biases could inform what shows up on the court reports.
So like I said before,
while judges will often say things like, "I have no biases,
I don't know this race, I just read what's
in the court reports," but this is where that's problematic.
If they just read what's in the court reports,
let's examined briefly, how biases will show
up in the court reports.
For example, one judge talked about the fact
that he has noticed in court reports
when the probation workers or probation officers
or social workers are describing white mothers,
they often will say-- oh,
and it's related to drug involvement.
They often say it like this.
It will be worded this way, "No drug involvement."
When the probation officer or social worker,
when they are describing the behavior of a black mother,
this is how it's worded, "Mother alleges no drug involvement,"
ever so slightly different, right?
But different enough that it will take you
down a different row.
Social workers are not doing this intentionally.
This is how implicit bias works.
Judges also say that they pick up on the fact that when they--
in the dependency court, when mothers are being described,
that white mothers are often referred to as
"upset" while simultaneously,
African-American mothers are often referred to as
"angry," slight different.
So this is what modern racism looks like
and this is what bias can look like in the 21st century.
So we're going to have a short clip, Anthony, on stereotypes.
[ Pause ]
>> Categorized people, automatically, unconsciously,
immediately, based on a person's race
and based on the person's sex.
>> It begins in childhood.
We brought together three groups of kids at this day camp
and showed them pictures of two men, one Arab, the other Asian.
>> Who do you like better?
This man or this man?
>> The Chinese guy.
>> Again and again, more kids prefer the Asian man.
>> He looks meaner and he looks nicer.
>> Because he looks nicer?
>> Yeah, he does look nicer and he has a smile on.
>> But both men are smiling.
And what are the kids think
about the personalities of the man?
>> Let me ask, you don't know this person
but what do you think he's like?
>> I think he's weird.
>> Why is he weird?
>> He just doesn't look like a very nice person, no.
>> He looks like a scary dude.
>> He's on the phone, what's he talking about?
>> Maybe a robbery?
>> What's he like?
>> He looks like a regular teenager to me.
>> We then showed them pictures of a black man and a white man.
What were some comments about the black man?
>> He looks mean.
>> FBI's most wanted.
>> He looks weird.
>> He looks like he's a basketball player.
>> So, tell me about this guy.
Does he seem like a nice person?
>> I think he's nice.
>> I think he's nice except he might be mad about something.
>> He was probably picking up on something.
This is Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh.
Admittedly, the pictures are a little different,
but when we asked which man is a criminal,
most kids pointed to the black man.
And when we asked which was a teacher, they said,--
>> That one.
>> The guy in the green shirt.
>> -- which is ironic because he is a Harvard professor.
Of course, we adults claim not to have these biases but--
>> Yeah, that's kind of fun,
out of the [inaudible] of babes, right?
So implicit bias, it's very-- it's a very important element
of modern racism, implicit bias and stereotyping.
So the third piece that I want to explore is where I guess
at this point it's the fourth piece is institutional racism.
Now, this is a piece that I think most people don't think
about even though we know it's there.
We often referred to it as structural racism
but it's even more than that.
The one interesting thing about institutional bias is
that it can really fly into the radar
because what people will often say
as individual decision makers is that "I just follow the rules".
What does that mean?
I just follow-- in other words, "I just follow the rules,"
it means that "I cannot be held accountable.
I'm just doing my job."
And so if you-- so think about this for a second.
If you're living in a colorblind society
in which you've been taught in condition
that race doesn't matter, then you'll look up in your courtroom
or in your classroom and you see one group of people, you know,
disproportionally one race or ethnicity of individuals,
then the bottom line is
that you're not suppose to question that.
And so that's what happens to judges all the time.
When they see that a majority of the kids who are
in their courtroom in juvenile justice settings are kids
of color, Latino and African-American kids,
Native American kids, they're not suppose
to really question that.
The same is true for, like, you know, Judge Irene Sullivan,
who is also a juvenile justice court judge, and she talked
about the fact that she had seen so many African-American kids
in her courtroom that she stopped asking questions
because it started to look normal.
So that's what colorblindness does.
It really suppresses the public discourse,
your implicit biases are, you know,
basically there informing you using all the stereotypes it can
gather up to make judgments and assumptions about people.
And now you're in an institutional setting
and you have to make decisions in a split second.
How can you not use bias as a part of the intelligence
or the information that you have to base your decision making on?
So when we think about the school-to-prison pipeline,
I like to think of what Colin Powell said in one
of his speeches, when he said that we base the need
for the building of prisons on third-grade reading scores.
He said, "We use third-grade reading scores
to just determine the number of prisons
that we will need 14 years later."
And what's frightening about that is that--
so that means to me, the way my brain works, is that that means
that we have about 14 years to get our acts together.
And I'm thinking we could redirect that money
and build more schools and more universities and things
like that, remedial prog--
whatever it is that we need to redirect those kids.
But the question that I offer you is this,
why is it that we don't do that?
Why is it that for some of the people on our society,
prisons are good enough?
And I'm sure that nobody in this room would think that going
to prison would be good enough for you.
So why do you think sending our kids to prison based
on third-grade reading scores and knowing
that if they are not able to read and that they end
up getting pushed out of school because of their, you know,
reading scores or the implicit bias that causes us to believe
that these kids are more likely to be a bad [inaudible],
to be a naughty child, then that means
that these kids are not going to ever be your contemporaries,
the contemporaries of the young people
who are in this room today.
Also, it's important to understand the relationship
between schools and the justice system.
In one report, Justice for Families reported
that nearly one entry families suggested
that that their child's first arrest took place in the school.
So we need to talk about what that looks
like in just a second.
[ Pause ]
In schools today, more and more, we have law enforcement who are
in the educational environments as school resource officers.
How many of you all had school resource officers
in your schools?
School re-- and by the way, it's important for me to point
out that there is nothing wrong, I mean,
police officers are just doing their job.
Is it to be a counselor?
No, it's to enforce the law.
So this is what one report says about that.
It says whereas we used to have teachers and counselors,
counselors were there, a lot of schools no longer have the money
for counselors so having the school resource officers there
give them more buddies.
But the reality is, is that having more police officers
in schools also put children closer to law enforcement
than they would have otherwise been.
Police in school hallways transforms the daily school
experience into a mind fill of potential crimes.
Fighting in the hallway becomes battery
or even aggravated battery,
swiping a classmate's headphones can be classified as a theft
or a robbery, and talking back to an officer
or a teacher is now disorderly conduct.
If we didn't have police officers there
or if the police officers were trained to be something other
than police officers, which I'm not quite sure why would they
would be that or why would do that,
we would probably see a much different outcome.
So, I want to show this image and I want to talk
about it for a few minutes.
It's Florida.
[ Pause ]
I want you-- I would like to get four volunteers
from the audience.
And if you'd like to be one of the volunteers--
oh, you're not going to have to dance
by the way, I just want to talk.
I would-- I just need four people who I can talk
about this image with.
Four people, just stand up and I'll just count you.
Robin [phonetic], you can be one, you sir,
and you, okay, and you.
So I've got four people.
That this way we won't have mass chaos.
Okay, Robin, stand up.
So what I want to do, and those of you who are in the back,
you may have to-- yeah, you may have to speak loud.
I want you all to tell me what you see
when you look at this image.
Robin's like, "We've already discussed this in class."
[Laughs] But Robin, can you speak louder, there's a lot
of people [inaudible].
>> I see this little girl crying [inaudible] emotional child.
The three police officers standing over her,
dominating the girl that is already [inaudible]
and emotional.
>> Okay. Thank you, Robin.
Let's give Robin a hand.
[Applause] Thank you, Robin.
So, sir, tell me what you see?
[ Inaudible Remark ]
Okay, great.
Thank you, let's give him a hand.
[Applause] And you, just tell me what you see.
[ Inaudible Remark ]
Okay, and was there one more, sir.
Okay, let's give her a hand, sorry.
[Applause] And one more, yes.
[ Inaudible Remark ]
Okay, great.
Thank you, sir.
Let's give him a hand.
[Applause] Okay, so essentially, they're right.
We have a little girl who, by the way, is a five,
I believe she was five at the time.
There are three officers standing around her,
and by the way, they are handcuffing her.
So this is a five-year-old baby girl, five-year-old baby girl
and she is being arrested.
Now, I want to ask you what do you imagine must be,
I don't want you to tell me what you know about the case
but what do you imagine must--
what do you imagine this child must have done
to have warranted, if I may say, being arrested?
What must she have done to make that make sense?
[Inaudible Remark] One in here says, "I can't imagine."
So she says, "I can't imagine."
How about somebody else?
How about you?
[Inaudible Remark] Maybe killed another person.
I mean, to me, I can't imagine but if it happened,
I imagine she-- it has to be something like ***.
So in fact, this child's offense was she was having a tantrum.
And by the way, now this situation happened in Florida
but I don't want you to say, "Oh, that's Florida."
[Laughter] I want you to know-- [Inaudible Remark] I want you
to know that we have plenty examples
of this right here in our own backyard.
I talked about this case to the Sacramento Police Department,
and the first time I discussed it with them,
they actually argued in defense of the arrest.
And one of my colleagues from the Sac PD was supposed
to be here today, I was going to give them a chance to say, "No,
he didn't" but he's not here so far.
[Laughter] But essentially, what they were saying is
that sometimes we have to do that.
But I'm saying this, the child was having a tantrum,
all of us know five-year-olds who've had tantrums.
One of the judges said is that, you know, it's one thing
for the Police Department, it's one thing for the school
to call the police but yet it's another very different thing
for the police to actually come.
And I think if you could just kind of close your eyes
for a second and imagine this happening to your child.
I mean, I can see people are ready to stand up
and storm out of here.
Yeah, I mean, Robin is like that's not going to happen.
And see, that's what I'm thinking,
and I think it's a kind of thing that shouldn't happen especially
when we have so many alternatives to this.
The very first time I showed this piece,
it was about five years ago, and it was in Northern California,
and there was a room full of social workers and I want you
to know that I had a room full of angry social workers.
And the social workers were not angry about that,
the social workers were angry at me.
Now why would you imagine they were angry at me?
They were in fact angry at me because this is inexplicable.
They are thinking to themselves,
"This couldn't happen in our society.
This couldn't happen in our country,
it just couldn't happen, therefore, doctor lady,
you must be making something up."
And another colleague of mine who was with me at the time,
she said, "Don't ever show that picture again in public
because you just make people mad."
And my response to that is this.
Because I think we need to get mad and we need
to understand how serious--
how far we've gotten with the school-to-prison
pipeline situation.
It is not a tiny or small issue, it is a huge issue
because the reality is this, for every child this happens to
and even if it doesn't go as forwards as an arrest,
the reality is that when these children are treated
like criminals for things that used to be dealt
with as kids will be kids, it's like I often refer to this
as a penny candy offense.
You know, some of you remember like the little tootsie rolls,
we used to call them penny candy, you know.
And now it's like, I have, you know, situations or examples
of kids who've taken a piece of penny candy
and they get suspended or and in one case,
not only was the child suspended but you know what ends up on
that child's permanent school record,
the child's permanent school record?
The box that got checked was a box that said, "theft."
So now the child is ready to go to college, will be applying
for financial aid, what's on the child's permanent school record?
And for everybody in this room, we have benefited
from a teachable moment.
We-- I mean, people say "Don't do that, oh, no, no, no,
don't to that, that's not a good thing," we learn from that.
But when we criminalize kids or we treat kids
as though they are going to be, you know, the next generation
of criminals, it impacts them not only in the moment
but it impacts them for the rest of their lives.
So, I continue to show this and I remember once
in one audience I had, the National Council of Juvenile
and Family Court Judges and that's one of the groups
that I'm involved with.
And in that audience was the judge whose case this was.
And she got my cellphone number from a colleague
and she called me on my cellphone and she said, "Hello,
this is Judge Irene Sullivan," and I'm like,
"Oh no" because really, sometimes I was thinking,
maybe I did like embellish that just a little bit.
[Laughter] So I said to her, I said,
"I hope I'm telling the story right."
She said "You're absolutely telling the story right.
As a matter of fact, I'm going to right a book about this
because this problem is way out of control
and we have to do something."
A year later in 2011, her book came out and it's called Raised
by the Courts by Judge Irene Sullivan.
And what she actually told me on the cellphone that day was
so outrageous in my mind that I could never repeat it
but I can quote directly from her book
and here are the quotes.
According to Judge Irene Sullivan, she says,
"Every week in my court, kids are charged as delinquents
under criminal statutes written for adults,
only the penalties are different.
Here are a few that have come before me.
Ricky threw an egg at a moving vehicle and he's charged
with a felony for throwing a deadly missile."
Now this is why I wouldn't tell you
without it being a direct quote 'cause you would think it was
this kind of like something I made up.
I didn't embellish that, directly from her book.
As a matter of fact in one group, a conference last summer,
I was at that national conference for children's,
attorneys, and I said to them, "This is unbelievable,"
you know, "This is unbelievable, I can't believe this."
And actually one judge in the room said,
"Oh yeah, I can believe it."
As a matter of fact, in his court room, he had a case
in which a child was being charged with felony
for throwing a deadly missile and it was an M&M.
And the judge said humorously, he said, "I asked, well,
was it plain or peanut?"
[Laughter] Judge Sullivan goes on,
Keira [phonetic] toss an orange and gets the same charge,
felony for throwing a deadly missile.
Alexia grabbed her friend's cellphone out of her hand
at the bus stop and threw it in the grass.
She too is charged with a felony,
"robbery by sudden snatching."
So, this is where we are in our society today.
One of the things that's going on nationally is that the Office
of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is trying
to do some inventions around this.
They want to end and put a stop
to the school-to-prison pipeline.
Just this year in 2012, Shelby County
in Memphis Tennessee was actually just declared guilty
after a three-year probe by the Department of Justice,
they were found guilty of racial discrimination
against African-American youth.
They found that African-American youth are more likely to go
into the system, they have longer stays in the system,
and they are more likely to be sent into adult court,
which means that if they are convicted, they're going
to adult penitentiaries.
That's a deal breaker for these kids.
So in this three-year investigation, the Department
of Justice is now, you know, has essentially put Shelby County,
Memphis Tennessee into receivership.
And I bet you this, I'm part of the team that's going
down to Shelby County in January to talk about this issue.
I have a room full of people just like this.
We'll be talking about implicit bias.
I bet you just about every person who's sitting
around that table is going to claim that they are colorblind.
And they're going to claim that not because they are like liars
or not because they are ridiculous
but because they believe it.
They don't believe that they're bad and they don't believe by
and large, and I now some of you are thinking, "I know some
who believe it," and we all know that there are few.
But by and large, I believe that the people who are
in our youth serving systems and who are educating our youth
and who are even educating those of you who get
to the university, we're trying to do a good thing.
But this is the deal.
Every single individual in this room has a responsibility
to recognize what your biases look like.
And I should speak for myself.
I have a responsibility
to understand what my biases look like,
and I have a responsibility to work really hard to make sure
that every student who comes into my classroom,
and by the way, it's not easy.
But I worked really hard to make sure that every student
who comes into my classroom that I'm judging them not
by some stereotypes that I have about people that--
or groups that they represent, but I am really responding
to them as individuals.
This is the hard work of the day
but this is the work that we must do.
In order for us to live up to the legacy of John Livingston,
we have got to start today.
We don't have to wait until the outcome of the election.
We don't have to wait for President Gonzalez
to deliver some sort of, you know, multi-cultural event.
There is something we can do today and every day.
So those of you who are going out into to the world,
who are delivering services, in restaurants,
or hospitals, or gas stations.
They don't have gas station workers anymore, do they?
[Laughter] But no matter what is it that you do,
the point is this, we can make a difference.
We can change the world that we live in,
and we can improve the society that we live in, and it begins
with us and it begins with me.
Thank you so very much.
[ Applause ]
Thank you.
>> Awesome.
>> Thank you.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> So thank you.
Oops. Thanks everybody for being here.
Thanks everybody for being here.
There are some very delicious things in the back.
Before you go, I just like to have us take one more moment
to thank Dr. Cameron-Wedding to give her this honor,
this plaque-- [Applause & Cheering]
>> The check.
>> And the check.
Thank you very much.
[ Noise ]
We don't want her to spend it all in one place.
Don't forget to get some food
and thank you very much for being here.
I want to also think Kathy Garcia from our Senate Office
and Bonnie Smith for all the work today.
They've done a fabulous job and you're the recipients of it.
Thank you so much.
[Applause]