dismantling our legacy of racism is still one of the biggest challenges that we face as a society i'd like to experience a day when we no longer need and overcoming racism conference actually but that is not this day but the reason why i'm here is to remind you that our work is not finished our work is not finished when most indicators of health education community wellbeing and racial disparities of all types are so large and persistent our work is not finished when allies for and champions for equity like sue hag of the met council are not supported in our community our work is not finished when we have so many college students and graduates of color without jobs even though they're highly qualified want to keep talking about employment disparities and though it is bittersweet when i listen to leaders that work with me talk about a deficit mentality with a deficit mentality about people of color and i'm in the room i know that our work is not finished it's not like all of us who are people of color are criminals low income or lack of aspirations to pull ourselves up and yet i am there and they forget and finally our work is not finished when we're still afraid as parents of color that michael brown will be our child and the challenges often come in forms that you can't even anticipate right so when i first got married my husband lou and i lived in a really rough neighborhood in the on the east side of st paul and i are both mung and we were settled as refugees first generation college students we overcome a lot of barriers i grew up in st paul he grew up in a town of two hundred people german lutherans in michigan coming out of poverty being homeless displaced learning a new language on top of that was really challenging for both of us  so here's the example of the rough neighborhood we lived in one day when my husband left his car in the alley he came out of the apartment to find that hoop and urine had been tossed over his honda acco it was normal to find broken windows in our neighborhood because there were so many rocks thrown at our windows this was a neighborhood that was mostly in transition becoming low income white to black to mung we don't even know who hated us it seemed that even the children on the streets called ourselves names like i'd be outside and someone would write a bike and someone with throw out a racial slur and one night my husband rushed to aid a neighbor who had been stabbed in the stomach he was stopping the flow blood with his hands his wife had stabbed because of a domestic situation she he had been choking her and at the time i was actually giving my son food she who was six months old a bath the struggle s and less an unsurmountable to me even having lived the life that i had lived and then one day when i was doing dishes in relative peace i looked out of the kitchen window and saw something that almost made my heart stop and the tears started streaming down my face can anyone guess what it was well i'll tell y in the alley behind our apartment building i saw the backs of two little girls with their skirts fluttering in the wind one was black and the other was asian i think the asian girl was monk and they were both about seven years old they were holding hands and keeping each other safe walking across the shards of broken glass down the long narrow alley it was obviously a dangerous path and each was helping the other get across their hands reached out for each other half way taking turns and in that moment i still i still tear up when i think about it in that moment i saw a flash of the beauty that is the unconditional love and friendship that is present in humankind before we destroy it with our structural inequality and the forces of social socialization that work to continuously separate ourselves from our humanity the future was so present in these girls this image almost immediately erased my pessimism and the growing hatred that had planted itself in my heart i was able to become more forgiving again and to let my optimism flow back here's the thing i've never understood about americans were a country built with displaced people we have legacies we have been heritage from previous generations three hundred fifty years of violence terror and horror which we have to overcome today we want transformation but forget that it was only fifty years ago that women and people of color and those who are disadvantaged gain the full rights of citizenship and that previous to this those who were in these categories if we asserted ourselves were subjected to violence death torture ignorance and so many other things climbing outside of our social boundaries was reinforced with terror and destitution and so many things until the civil rights movement so advancing social justice and we've been able to have excellent feature speakers here and also some some workshops that really help us get down to the day to day activity that we can do to overcome racism everyone so scared to talk about race and therefore we sit with the status quo nobody talks that by opening it up here we're able to have people of all different races as we label them sit in a room and talk with each other about their experiences there where they're coming from in their life and and what we can do to try and bring ourselves together as the only race the one human rights transformation process so for maybe with the audience that maybe you didn't get a chance to see in the video so let's start with well there are lots of lessons i i guess one that i was actually thinking about as reference to the first question but relates very much to this question also and that we have the ability to come together we have the ability to do great things people inspire people inspire me because i see a deep sense of creativity in us and i'm fortunate that creativity sometimes is stamped out very early in our socialization and the lessons i've learned is when you dig a little deeper when you create the space people bring out the best i've been known to cry when four year olds at a daycare center skip and they bring out their creativity it just brings tears to my eyes my son was about eight years old and he was learning to play the trombone and his arms were not long enough and he was creative and he played in that school band and the band didn't sound you know as well as it could but those kids were trying and that's probably why i work in higher education because people come to be better to learn more to work harder and i just take great joy when i see the end product when i meet them in the street and they tell me where they're working and what contribution they're making and i try to attend the award ceremonies when they're on and that's really inspires me and that is the s of the lessons that i've learned is let's show up if we look in the room today and was not i can think of at least twenty five people that i wish were a year and it makes me uncomfortable that i didn't do enough to make sure those twenty five were today let's create the space to be creative and let's create the space to get to know each other that's wonderful so one of the one of the things i reflect on a lot while there but just work in the community is when transformation is happening what does it look like what does it look like it's so you know one of things that it looks like to me at the wilder foundation is that it's not just people of color who are actually talking about race and racism and it's and that at least from my view white people see themselves as a part of eliminating racism that they're part of the racially equation what does transformation look like you for you in terms of cultivating transformation overcoming racism what have you seen in the community and what does it look like what does it feel like to so why don't we start out  when i say when i see the change that's occurring in the narrative about what creates health i see transformation when we start talking about the fact that it's community it's relationships it's the power structure it's policies and systems that really create change when people start thinking differently about it about what health is and in my world that it's not about just about individual choice or about medical care it's really about the policies and the systems in the structure and and the power when i see that change in the narrative that i see is transformational because it transforms who's part of the conversation it also transforms thinking about who has  onset who is in the room but who's in the room who's around the decision making tables who gets to make the decisions who sets the agenda who holds people accountable that's all part of the narrative that i see changing and i think that's transformative and as i go around the state i hear those things i see those things and i'm really encouraged that the community is ready for that transformational change that began with a change of the narrative wonderful once again and i on my way here this morning i got a phone call from someone who was going into who isn't in the hospital and in the life and the children have to make the decision to disconnect you know her words were have to pull the plug and she was really struggling with the fact that she could not be with this group of children and her family who had to pull the plug so what when i saw her what i heard from her and when i hear from her relative to the children is the children were not  blaming anybody for the death the children were not feeling so totally overwhelmed and paralyzed with thinking about death that they were going to be disruptive and chaotic because we see that often but the children were saying he i will see him again that he 's not gone he is going to be with me as an ancestor he can continue to direct me and guide me so i don't have to feel like i'm along transformation  is recognizing life at all into the cycle and seeing it play out in your decisions but typically those decisions that have to do with death because the fear of death seems to really be so pervasive around us because we experience so much so i see it in the decisions that are made in the way people get together and celebrate life even if death is present children are referring to and says toure's without feeling like it's some kana you do or something you know that people are really transformation starts to show up in you know genic and again direct and concrete ways of how we deal with our pain and suffering and share at that particular moment bringing up  how everybody in this room regardless of your culture regardless of your culture because here we are in the that benefits more than any other place in the world from neo liberalism and yet neo liberalism is killing black boys in minneapolis so this is the best place the safest place and yet it's not equally say that makes sense so in my own organizing work i used to believe that organizing was about fighting fighting i live my life as a clenched fist my first wife away since decided that i wasn't healthy enough yet to be in a relationship and moved on one day she woke me up because i was screaming in my sleep and my fist was clenched i was foaming at the mouth when i was around she gently pursed here and got me to sit up and she said i need to know whatever that is so i can decide if i'm sleeping another night in this bed and i was back in the war zone i was back on my front porch with white boys with loaded guns aiming at me and pulling the triggers and i was holding a gun and i shooting back and she said you need to heal that you need to heal there or we can be here together because that gets in the way of your capacity to love another human being i never thought about it we grew up in the age of you know revolutionary black nationalism and the american indian movement for my indigenous brothers here we say today is a good data died if i fade away let me take ten of them with me right that's what i grew up with this kind of military contract and it was you know we worshiped it we romanced it with our egos and it was in that moment that i realize that i had to change my definition of what it means to be a warrior in order to be a husband in order to be a father in order to be a human being so i started building relationships with white men like from a deeper place no longer from the head so used to you know the training was you think about you have to figure out whether or not the part of the klan or not before you can take that next step this was my training so i just started listening to their stories and sing let me know you and as i began to know them i felt myself in my body start to shift that i didn't have to hold this as a way of being anymore i could hold this is constant process of relating you letting you relate to me from this deeper place healing together as a fundamental aspect of the journey of the two like in the midst of all the relatives here my name is joe davis and i'm e i guess the place of where my people thirty eight dakotas come from and i guess  one of the reasons that they were here is because we're given tobacco to to come and to share some songs with with everybody because you know like i was mentioning yesterday we're at a point in our and our life in our history where a lot of our interpreters they tell us that what's up ahead for humanity doesn't look good for us but that through the pipe way of  life how we are referred to it as the chano paul walk on to sacred pipe that there is nothing impossible and we can change things i know one of the things my wife and i we spoke about on numerous occasions was exactly this hour how do we overcome racism i remember last year when we were here i told the people that when i was in the parking lot i was getting ready to get out of my car and i seen a white woman coming towards me and i locked my door so i think you know we all feel that from time to time it takes our self worth away whenever i go to a clinic whenever i go to a hospital when i have to interact i was made to be felt like i'm not worth it because of the color of my skin but i've come to understand we all encounter that i know in our home that we talk about stereotypes if we want to begin my wife and i my brother my uncle here my dexie we can't come here and fix you we can't come here and fix racism but we can we can begin that at home and one of the things that we do is we recognize our stereotypes what is your stereotype what does society dictate your stereotype is for your people for us indians have been tagged as beggars and thieves alcoholics drunks that is our stereotype and we see that on movies to get their land all you have to do is give them something to drink so in our home we address that stereotype nineteen years now i've been sober and it feels good of my oldest child as well my oldest daughter she's nineteen getting ready to go into the military service and to this day  feel proud because my daughter has not seen has ever seen her father drunk she's never seen her father get violent in the home and that's something that we do to address to our stereotype but with that being said you know the thirty eight memory of them are people it's something that is touching for just myself it's only been five years since one of our people back home his name is sheldon wolf child found out that up until only five and this very disturbing to say the least because when we look at our history these things are still happening in our country not just to us but for everybody for all of our people whatever background we come from there's a historical trauma that is associated with how we are today one of the things that i think is important is that as we see young people that you might not know it to look at me i am i am forty four years  old and i have to say i am tired i am tired of walking into rooms and people saying we are so glad that young people are in this room and they're talking about me so so when we about being more song is a bilingual song in my native language an english organization forward thinking and realizes that the strength in the neighborhood is everybody working together so others there's an equity committee that i'm part of and i'm really happy that there are organizations doing that work it's not always easy not everybody wants to live in the twenty first century some people would like to go back to one hundred fifty but can't do it in order to make a change we need to first take knowledge that racism is in our front yard in our backyard and it's not ever really going to stop if we keep having this attitude that we don't need to do yard work and leave but we don't need to break them know not unless people start acknowledging that at least so i don't go around saying hey mike oh asian person among you know ethnic whatever and then something says something some some people you know they just forget may they do stuff and then it makes me remember so i started getting really curious about white people right and here i am and i decided to change jobs i went to wilder and i thought you know i'll just do this doctorate in public administration at hamlin university so i can figure out what the heck's going on because i was really curious you know why are we always studying racism from the perspective of people of color i mean aren't there more white people in the world who are in leadership positions so after a couple years of wandering around on my proposals those of you who have ph d s you know what i'm talking about the risk which search question is so hard to come up with at least it was for me and i was trying to do this working full time while there's a new c e o for kids and going to graduate school but i finally landed on a great topic which i was highly curious about so i focused my dissertation on white people in government who are actually working to represent racial minorities like how are they actually doing it you know what are the personal an organizational factors that contribute to that because i knew i was contributing to myself to kind of move things along but i had no idea why are these white people doing this and  you know we assume it's true that you know if you're a black you're representing maybe people who are black and you have that you know view of the world but you know what does it really say what does the research really say well you know the research says that that is actually in fact true for those of you are curious about that but no studies of any kind on white people in government mine was the first of its kind can you believe that yeah i had to draw from the fields of sociology psychology political science you know to study public administration which is a huge huge powerful force in our society right so why study race and representation the perspective white people are moving into the second segment here which is really about my studies so in public service we have this ethic and you know if you're working a nonprofit nonprofit sector you know you have this ethic as well there's really an ethic of service in public administration that says we are here to represent all and serve all people and to make sure that all are included this ethic of race to achieve social equity is really really challenging right because of our  centuries oppression slavery colonialism war and white racial framing racial disparities persist across sector and public and efforts are underway but oftentimes it's those public institutions that need to change they need to inform themselves and we keep trying to say well can you please people of color i hear kind of inform us and it's like no you're the ones that need to change all right the study was really unique because it was really looking at white allies and  you know people of color over the centuries have not been alone in making the progress that's been made partly it's been because we've had very little power in an authoritative sense to actually make changes so what do we know from the research about being white we all know that race is socially constructed there's no biological basis and that race forms in relation to others reinforced because we socialize inside of our racial group and then we get kicked out of other racial groups right were assigned as a social value and actually when you get out too far then people actually push you back in again so if you get too successful as a person of color or you know you get  too oriented towards understanding as a white person the experience of people of color your own group actually tosses you out you know that's a really hard thing so it can work against you your own group can work against you because they also define those boundaries  and because society because of how we have socialized people actually assigns value to a person and it follows them throughout society in jobs in community organizing in academia  well we have wealth inequality right being white is also being about the norm you know the norm was created by white people who are in power nothing against white people today use your privilege as a tool and a weapon for good white it's it's just there we can't even identify it anymore now what are the characteristics of whiteness this was interesting social dynamics that create structural advantages without us needing to think about it a lot of white people who are anti racist allies actually reject their whiteness because they feel like they did nothing to earn it and i hate to tell you guys this white people but i know you didn't do anything that's what racism  ok like i reject my asian us to like i actually think of myself as a right but you know society kind of tells me i'm asian and they treat me that way and i there's nothing i can do about it so it's all very frustrating for all of us in society but i want you to know that i finally get it after these studies that white people also don't like it and it's ok you don't have to being white the characteristics of whiteness is that you are unmarked and invisible which means there's color blindness arguments around color blindness it's not conscious and a lot of times people who are white say i don't have a culture yeah you do everybody has a culture understanding it making it visible is actually the first step to gaining consciousness white resists challenges so actually whiteness asserts itself when it is the most challenged and by the way that's true for people of color too but i was studying white people so i'm talking about white people you know the  myth of meritocracy reinforces white superiority manifest destiny given to us by god individual action got me here all these different things when in fact there were a lot of federal local and state policies that actually and private actions that reinforce those things and white identity can be positive or negative in other words you can be a really a white person who has a strong white identity who is an anti racist ally and you can be a strong white person who has a really strong identity to be fascist and to believe that you're the most superior race kind of scary actually i felt when i found that out you know one of the things and looking through the research was that actually the more educated a white person is the more the more like  likely they are to actually think about race or to actually think about racial equity at all so you think that that would be the opposite right that the most educated of us who are white would actually be because of our big brains and our ability to g consciousness that that we would actually do better but it turns out that's not true low income whites and middle class whites are actually a lot more racially conscious and care about it than upper income whites so in anti racism work which is a lot of what you guys do exposure of white people to people of color is supposed to like raise consciousness right and move towards the creation of a non racist world turns out that's not so true because exposure doesn't mean engagement and belief doesn't mean action minnesota is a great teacher of apartheid this is the best place to live in the world and it's the worst don't think i've sworn yet i normally do a lot of that even throwing chairs across the classroom to help make up you know important pedagogical point and i was about to tell a story and i forgot what it was like misery index like organizers so look at the employment disparities we have the worst unemployment disparity for black people here in minnesota of all major metro areas now th unemployment rate is worse in some other cities but the racial mean the relative disparity of white on employment of black unemployment is worst here than anywhere else so even though the oppression index is high for all people it's particularly high persistent for american indians and african americans here in minnesota so you look at a child out of home placement you look at the criminal justice system you look at health disparities you look at employment disparities housing disparities particularly ugly and painful on a daily basis for indigenous people and black people i'm not sure about the numbers we have to do a lot of work on healing our relationship with data and building powerful compelling appropriate accurate data with each other but i just looked at a study that said that in order to end the employment disparity for african americans in american indians by twenty twenty we have to create eighty three thousand additional jobs specifically for blacks and indians by twenty twenty in the twin cities metro area eighty three thousand additional jobs specifically for blacks and indians so think about everybody in the room right now listen magine everybody in the room is on facebook or linked in or something like that and you've got a thousand friends if you it all a thousand of your friends and those with the wherewithal to hire if they all made the decision to hire an african american or an american indian you refer to them today could we solve that problem today good week you know i mean night is right maybe we could part of why the severe oppression continues is that we lack the awareness the imagination in the courage to act the most powerful self today so the journey of transformation begins with you being the bigger you so marianne williamson wrote this great poll that people wrongly attributed to nelson mandela as his inaugural speech and i'm going to paraphrase it because i don't have a good memory but at the core she says the world needs the biggest you to show up in every instance we can afford the small only neither can you what does it take for you to be the biggest you which is the same thing that gandhi talked about saw your grandma be your highest self