mcquaid third question will be what's your experience as a person of color in your anybody can volunteer to answer this question i'm going to take a stab at that i think this could be true for most of us probably coming from ethiopia you know i don't when i grew up we don't have color divided in front of us you don't see color black white whatnot but every parent in ethiopia wants you to be a  allowed most immigrant to succeed in america i'm not saying it's not a reality i'm not saying there is no sort of a person of color does not have an impact in you but  be the key element that you have to focus in your life i think for me every single day when i go to work when i go to school i always strive to be the better me from yesterday i'll always want to have for control over what in my life things start getting a lot easier there discrimination now of course it's possible but i don't think about them like my primary concern was sort of a problem because of that now i'm kind  have a first black president right it's not easy so i took longer well i'll just tell you my experience u c l a ok so we have counselors there and i was a south campus major which is science right the first thing they'll ask me is hey are your humanities major you know i'm not a science major oh ok i see all right well that's something that i'm expected you know  i expect that all the time but anyway so i go to a counselor one day and i ask her you know i want to get into medicine she looked at me and then she said ok and that was weird right i mean and now i want to go into medicine i have my nursing license to and she was like why don't you continue with your nursing license why don't you become a nurse practitioner why do you want to go into medicine because i'm passionate about it  well ok but you know it would be easier if you do go into nursing yeah but that's not what i'm passionate about so it is easier short a year isn't like i don't care about age and i'm capable obviously so you know i was but she really kept pushing me into that so finally i said you know what your time but i think i need a schedule an appointment with another counselor and i left and she tends to do that with a lot of students at u c l a it wasn't just me i found that out later so you know people just don't believe that you can achieve something and it seems to be the stereotype here in the united states it's not just with immigrants just being black in general so you know what like what that's my experience in my career path so yeah i'll tell you a little bit more later ok so  am in the legal profession so it is the least diverse profession in the u s i believe about eighty eighty eight percent of the you know attorneys are the koch asian male or or women so just look asian so the point that i'm trying to make right now is you know the way i see myself like i said you know growing up i never knew what color meant i mean that's that's about it but then moving to the us you think about you know your enemy ground you're a person of color and also you're also a woman right so there's this three four issue that you know i don't think about it on a daily basis for sure you know but one thing that i can tell you is there is something there is nothing that hard work and patience cannot fix because you know sure i am in this profession where people get internships or jobs because they know someone or you know their fathers where you know supreme court judges or judges or attorneys in the past so they have an easier time but then it doesn't mean that you cannot get there you have to work hard and prove yourself you know you might you might you may not be able to sleep as much as you want you may not have time to socialize that's about it but then it does not prevent you to getting to where you want to go just because of the circumstance that you're in i guess i'll talk more a little bit about it later on but then you know some of you might be first generation first generation americans some of you might be immigrants just like me i understand that you have a decent you might think that you have a disadvantage or you know realistically speaking maybe we have but the thing is we can't beat this we can't be the person that we are in you know your parents or you might have a hard time i yourself in your household you know you probably have a lot of things in your head just even to to say who you are other than you know trying to get to the career that you want to go but whatever it is you need to persevere you need to fight you know your passion and go for it and you get there and then when you get there and you decide to do something different you have to face your parents and you have to tell them that you're up a see your own passion so that's kind of what happened to me and i really never thought i was going to end up in a social perspective with me and so i knew i can be whatever i want to be and it's not about me that i can't it's all about me rocking hard and pushing forward and staying on the course so that's what i i brought with me to my environment as a possum of color so i think that my perspective may be unique because it's a social justice and vironment so in terms of that  is kind of a complex issue so there's two parts right so one is you you only and then this system the system america you came into and so you individually definitely like everybody's been saying want mentality and as a system men when you get to learn a lot more and really understand what african americans went through to get our start position now we're in you will definitely understand there that there is a documentary that you guys could read from the public library in terms of how systematically african americans were oppressed in a way even past slavery and the situation they're i a story you tell people they have it like ok a black guy he got shot he's probably a gangster or something but not really the story is totally different and so there is a lot of situations but also as i say that you guys don't have  do what you got to do well i want to thank everyone because this is definitely a complex issue and i like the fact that people have mentioned that this is a tool there's a twofold piece to this is just not one first of all as a person of color in the work that i do i'm excited that i work with other people who also have color it's a good thing but growing up obviously was a little bit different because when i was going to school there was only a few black folks you know asians this stuff like that so most of the people when we say when we talk about racism they'll be like hey why don't you guys teach people these other students about you and most of us our answer was unified as black men or you know a lot you know folks went to school with and others would say we came to the university to learn we didn't come to teach white kids on how to treat us so our we were unified on the issue of race and one thing that so moving forward from that you know also with my past and stuff like that understanding the fact that you know as a young person of color i also can make a difference because the brother mentioned you know the sacrifices african american americans made they made it for us as well we are one so when you hear about issues such as black lives matter and stuff like that i want you guys to look at the movement and not the moment because a lot i see a lot of kids you know when they're little homey gets it's more like a t shirt r i p this guy that's the moment you just made your friend become a moment look at the movement is really going to help your people and everybody else so you know as a person of color when i look at people such as my heroes like malcolm x i understand that you know this is someone who shaped the world not just america but guess what he was you know so we should not look at people who are incarcerated because i have a lot of relatives as who are incarcerated i got cousins serving time talking about calendars flip for years so when i look at these issues most of you know the person that i look to the most when you look at the civil rights issues as malcolm x and he was incarcerated right people look down on people who are incarcerated so when you as young folks look at how you can change your community in terms of race  social justice issues look at the movement not the moment because if you keep looking at the moment you're going to wear a shirt or just talk about this person you know look at how you can change your community all the time and look at the movement  so this is not like directed towards one person but other than the racial obstacles you guys face were other things that you guys faced ok so for me this is kind of interesting because as someone whose family came from a refugee background obviously i come from a family and you can tell that i grew up here so growing up in colorado one thing that i always saw so one of the challenges i face is actually as you know as a kid growing up but i ended up appreciating more when i got older and that was actually a relationship between me and my mother see one analogy that i use is when we came to the s obviously all of us ended up opening up the suitcase right came from africa you know where kids were running around for us it was really different you know coming from one hundred degree weather every day to like winter in colorado ten degrees you know so for the older siblings and well mom and everybody they're freaking us kids you know you see white powder snow i'm running i'm having fun right so it was the interesting part about this is one concept i want to talk to you guys about is the difference between simulation integration so growing up obviously we really wanted as kids we moved into this american life style quicker we became americanized and as i grew older looking at my mom and  get ready for this new when my mom never unpacked her mental suitcase so it was a challenge that i always had to face as a kid i think about it looking at it as an older man now when you know as a kid i don't understand it that's why maybe i was like man my mom doesn't understand me you know i'm trying to do this but my mom is like no hold on to your culture don't do this don't do that at this point like as an older person i'm like hey my mom wanted me to really not let go of a piece of meat so that's why for me i'm a mom we're really close and she really helped me understand who i am even though she had no education my mom is that literacy couldn't read or write her growing up obviously she grew up  as teenagers we grew up in this called civilized societies so obviously us and our parents were so far apart and you have that in a generational gap between you and your parents so it was a big struggle for me growing up right and obviously seeing you know a lot of kids with the justice system i should think my mom for me not going you know into prison because my mom never knew anything about boxing but when she saw my friends you know going to stuff like that she took parenting more than other folks that i know so my challenges when i was young but one thing i want you guys to appreciate is your parents and your elders because just because you feel like you you got this american education you're not that smarter than them it doesn't make you smarter than your mother it doesn't make you smarter than your father or any of your elders just understand that you have something to give back they already gave back to you they were to give back to you but you know helping you with education education bring in you hear stuff like that so the more we think for me my challenge was after college i was not able to find a job for seven months and so there was a disconnect between my dreams and my reality and i i knew that you know i think the challenge was having a job to my accounting degree i was feeling like i was failing my my family or just the community and so i took that time to hold on to my dreams and so that i will that's what i will tell you all just hold on to  canal i'm david keyes i'm the community technology manager for the city of seattle in the department of information technology and i've had the opportunity to work with m m r t i for for all ten of its years and in fact even before that when boonie in the ethiopian community mutual association started their computer lab many fourteen years ago i think to begin to get the message out to begin to train community members and m m r t i has been a great organization and a really valuable one and we're really glad at the city of seattle and the department of information technology to have a chance to have partnered with m m r and to see them grow and get them to this point ten years later and still growing and still building community i think that m r t i has been a great a great leader in the community in bringing the voice of the east african community sometimes to the city government bringing the community together to be able to hear from each other it's equally can't take it for granted that places like  training kids and adults how to do video and and getting the messages out we can't take it for granted that they'll be here so it does require us to support it to keep it going you know it's without it i think we don't that to life so it brings it to life for for us at the city for other community members and i think it's also having people stories told in people's issues come to light and being able to see that  brings community together and it lets people feel like they're more a part of the community and when they get to hear and see each other's stories and each other's concerns and then the training programs here  just been great i think the m m r t i brings together they teach kids how to work together they teach them video skills they teach them story writing skills in so that that i think it gives them a greater sense of success a greater sense of their voice being strong and gives them skills and working together collaborating gives them technical skills and i know they get a chance to not only do the camera work but to do sound to create graphics and that's all part of things that industry needs it's part of of what brings the stories to life and so i look forward  to continuing our partnership with them r t i i'm really glad that the community is stepping forward to support them and keeping these important community media centers going in these important training programs going it certainly enables the city of seattle to be able to distribute information that we have about essential services utility discounts opportunities for lower cost cable for low income low cost internet for low income residents how to get health information online you know m m r t i as an important media center to do is for us to distribute also into the community so find some r t i keep it up thanks to all those who have contributed produce programmes just made things behind the scenes work and let's keep going about for the young people like your transition from high school to college and what that process was like i think most of them probably in that fees and i think would be really helpful if you talked about best practices specific lessons you learned things you study habits and never listen to someone who's going to tell you you can't do something because i remember for me did not come from an outside voice it came from a family member who told me hey what you trying to go to the university of colorado and to that department  know you're not going get in that actually motivated me more i was hard hit when i was growing up but in a good way not hard headed to do anything i was hard it is hard headed in a good way so i was like you know what he thinks i'm just going to go to community and even though commune colleges are great as well but i was shooting for someone else so that told me hey i can't do this to use that motivation to get in to that school and i got accepted into the program but you know not to digress a little bit study you know i don't think college is going to be just an easy ride so figure out how you can have good study habits and also like he said the noise out there there's a lot of things that you know i'm seeing you know the snap chats and all that stuff you can have  y don't you go to harvard i have cousins that graduated from harvard john hopkins we have family members that are from there so if i just look at their trade base to read a lot  anyway so yeah i went to high school here for a year but i didn't go to school after that for four or five years and then i went to community college then i went to u c l a so i wouldn't recommend that because taking a break from school is not a good thing and i think some students tend to do that and i went to advice against that but going to community college is never a bad thing it actually can help you narrow down what you want to study in university ok it also gives you time to get accustomed to how college is it's not the same as high school i can tell you that i missed three months of high school they still graduated with honors but i can do that in college it's just completely different so yeah be realistic a what you want to do now i heard someone say they don't like reading you want to go into medicine you have to read that's the reality so you have to accept the reality  first you know my i have another brother i have a brother who is really good in math and we all said oh you need to be an engineer but he doesn't want that that's not his passion so when you pick something pick something that's your passion  change someone's life that's one the second thing is that i just wanted to say is surround yourself with people that have a common interest or people who really want to see you succeed so where they're in high school i know it's different from going to you know high school took to university or college but i understand in a sense that just just be was with people you know your friends should be someone or your friend should be someone that i have the have the same paths you know that is what i think and mentors and here learn you know it's education is not just something that you learn in school it's about your interactions with other people so i don't know how i have something that is beyond you try to serve your community with you know the time that you have other done school or you know studying and then you'll get there it's all about hard work ok i'm going to say one thing find scholarships or any good to college that's going to be really how far that where you don't have to get in a lot of debt and i have a second thing just to make sure you continually seek advice from people about where you can know whenever you want to change your major or if you find yourself considering other career paths just know you know you have people to talk to in school so make use of the advisers