TJ Stewart
But I’m always interested in as a practitioner, what is on the way to come on, we’re never gonna get to reparations if we don’t have a framework for understanding something like labor and slave labor, stolen labor. And so I said, Well, let me write something about that. Because it seems to be that there is an understanding even though a lot of indigenous folks trouble land acknowledgments, particularly how they’re done at the performativity you know, is it a settler moved innocents to sort of think about knee tucks work. And so but I knew that that was familiar to folks. So I could use that as a point of entry to talk about labor, as we then also talk about land.

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW, I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today we’re discussing laborer acknowledgments, many may be familiar with land acknowledgments, labor acknowledgments are similar and different. Today we’ll be discussing the purpose, history practice and cautions around Labor acknowledgments. I’m so glad to have three wonderful thinkers here to explore this with us today. Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week. On Wednesdays find out details about this episode or browser archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Today’s episode is sponsored by Symplicity, true partners Symplicity, sports supports all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him his, I’m a speaker, consultant, and Coach, you can find out more about me at Keithedwards.com. I’m broadcasting from Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples. So let’s get to the conversation as I just did a land acknowledgement. Folks may be familiar with that. And we one of our very first episodes in the podcast was about land acknowledgments, what they are kind of troubling them kind of thinking through them, avoiding performative ways, and expanding on them. And one of the things that has been coming up for me is labor acknowledgments and, and seeing some of those done in some places, seeing them done a little bit more frequently. And so I’m really glad to have folks here who have worked with this thought about this. Help us learn more about it, think through it and talk about it. So let’s, let’s meet the folks we have. Joan, we’ll start with you.

Joan Collier
All right. I’m glad to be here today. Good to see my friends. I’m talking to Joan Collier. I’m Assistant Vice President for Equity and Inclusion at Rutgers University. So work across all four Chancellor units and central administration. I use she her pronouns, and this is land unseeded. And so for me, this conversation is timely because I’m a practitioner. And so what does that mean? To You know, there’s theory and and there’s practice, and practice and theory are really dope. And sometimes they fight and they tussle. And so this is a tussle topic, right? And so I’m excited for us to get into it. I know TJ, we went to grad school together go dogs, and Leila is our cousin, though she did not go to Georgia, she was always with the Georgia crew. So we are basically having a family reunion and folks are getting to listen into the conversation about something that for me was the practice that TJ brought to attention. We’ve had these conversations about how land acknowledgments were, you know, really helpful, really thoughtful way that people could like, exploit them and be like, ridiculous. And if we’re talking about exploitation of land, well, the land was used with people. And so who are those people? And how do we repair so I do a lot of RJ work or restorative justice and restorative practices where we start talking about repair, you actually have to acknowledge is the starting point for some of that work. And so that’s my connection. Glad to be here. And I’m gonna pass it over to I think, Leila, for her introduction.

Laila McCloud
Sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Laila McCloud. I’m assistant professor of Higher Education at Grand Valley State University, which is in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I come to this topic, again, as cousins of my Georgia folks, but also thinking about someone as someone who teaches at a master’s only graduate student affairs graduate preparation program, students are often asking questions about land and labor acknowledgments, how to use them, what are they to be used for? A lot of our work as graduate faculty is social socializing folks into the field. And a lot of that socialization is around practices like these. And so I’m always encouraging my students to ask different questions, right, and to really interrogate are they doing certain things? Because that’s the norm of the field and What connection do they have to that? And what messaging are they passing on to the students they work with? So I’m going to pass it on to Dr. Stewart.

TJ Stewart
Thanks. It’s good to be here and good to be here with my kin. My name is TJ Stewart, he and him are my pronouns. I’m an assistant professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs at Iowa State University. And for me, this topic, I guess, I’m most sort of aligned or connected to it from an op ed kind of piece that I wrote in diverse issues of higher education, titled On Labor acknowledgments and honoring the sacrifice of black Americans. And so this connects to some broader work and interest that I have around issues and concerns of black people generally, but specifically in higher education, but particularly this stems from my interest in anti blackness as a phenomenon, and sort of was part of sort of the impetus to that piece. But it’s something that has always interested me, and really stems from like thinking about what Leila offered, and what Joan has offered as a practitioner. So my work my stomping grounds was in multicultural student affairs, equity and justice related work. And really thinking about how we bring those together in meaningful and material ways. And so I was at Ohio State University for many years. And we were a multicultural center, but we had what was called an intercultural model. And so what that meant was that we did both, and we did the constituency specific stuff like the heritage and awareness month, but there was also this broader issue of like, were we together as minoritized people, and why might that matter? And so that was sort of a lot of my introduction to thinking about, particularly anti blackness and how that shows up, or how we might think about that, even within equity and justice spaces.

Keith Edwards
Well, let’s continue down that. And thanks for letting me join the family reunion, I appreciate that you’re very generous. You know, I first learned about this idea through your piece and diverse issues in higher education, TJ, and I thought it really provocative and thoughtful, made me think about that, and also made me think about land acknowledgments differently, in sort of thinking through a little bit further. And it’s been a while since that came out was probably a while further before he wrote it while further to thinking about it. So can you tell us a little bit about how that piece came to be in terms of the history and purpose of labor acknowledgments? And maybe how your thinking has evolved since then? Yeah.

TJ Stewart
So I’m going to try to tell this as concisely as possible, because it doesn’t really have a story. But I think that the short version is, as I, from an academic perspective, I have a master’s degree in labor and human resources. So I’m interested in labor as a concept and a construct to begin with, particularly labor under capitalism, meaning we all have to work if we want to eat and like have somewhere to live. So I’m interested in that concept. So moving forward, as I was doing equity and justice work, I began, particularly with the rise of Black Lives Matter. One of the critiques I kept hearing, particularly from non black people of color, or non black non white folks, was it seems like we’re always talking about black people and black stuff. What about our issues, which I think is a really important consideration for us. But what kept coming up for me is it felt like that there was a interest in wanting to use the labor that black people had kind of created in martial to bring this particular issue to the forefront for other communities issues. And that didn’t feel good to me. So I kept sitting with this, like, why is it that whenever we talk about Black Lives Matter, it seems to be there’s some folks who feels like that we’re taking up too much space? And what about our issues? And my question is always, what what about your issues, tell us about them bring those to the fore. So then we get to, I’m going to, you know, to conferences, and we’re doing these land acknowledgments. I’m doing them and I was always trying to make sure they weren’t performative. What do indigenous knowledge systems have to say to whatever it is I’m talking about? And how do we think about that. And so I’m doing that and picture it, right. We’ve all been to conferences, or many of us have been to conferences, you’re in a room you’re presenting, it’s a, you know, a hotel or Convention Center. And in the back, there’s this tray, with everyone’s coffee and trash and food, and some black person, usually a person of color comes in to clean up that trash. And those are the folks that are making our beds. And those are the folks that are serving us food and all these restaurants, usually in the cities. And so I’m sitting here with like how we’re acknowledging place in space, which is important, but not really thinking about issues around labor, capitalism, wages, and we come to the cities. And I’ve noticed at times, we are not always good guests, not only to the land, but to the people who labor on our behalf while we’re there. And so I started to think about that. And I started to, you know, try to synthesize that with some of the conversations we’ve had in this country around reparations. I’m particularly thinking about enslaved Africans and their descendants, and what would that look like? And and what would that mean? We are nowhere near reparations in a meaningful way in practice happening in this country. But I’m always interested in as a practitioner, what is on the way to come on, we’re never gonna get to reparations if we don’t have a framework for understanding something like labor and slave labor, stolen labor. And so I said, Well, let me write something about that. Because it seems to be that there is an understanding even though a lot of indigenous folks trouble land acknowledgments, particularly how they’re done at the performativity you know, is it a settler moved innocents to sort of think about work. And so but I knew that that was familiar to folks. So I could use that as a point of entry to talk about labor, as we then also talk about land. And so when I wrote the piece that was sort of the sense, and I wanted to do two things, I wanted to one push us all to do better with land acknowledgments that, how can we move beyond just stating the thing? For me, that’s really easy as a professor, because I can always tie that in and weave it in to the curriculum into the teaching, I do think we still need to do some work around the practice. And then I wanted to sort of introduce this idea of how do we think about labor in two ways, historical issues around forced slavery, enslaved Africans and their descendants, but also contemporary issues around labor, capitalism, income inequality, because what we know about colonialism, people often like to think about is that something that happened in the past and isn’t anymore? scholars tell us is Nope, it’s always already ongoing. I’m saying the same thing about labor, people were forced to steal from their lands. And part of the economic growth of this country that we know today was due to that. And we still see the tremors of that today. You see disproportionately black and brown people not having the same income not having the same quality of life. And so it’s a past and present and sort of future. The biggest change, I still feel the same way. As I what I would have changed it to the phrasing from acknowledgement to a commitment, if I would have done it again, I would say, on labor commitments, and that is a different way of thinking about it, because we can acknowledge and then what is your commitment in the space in your life in your work? That will be the only sort of transformation I’ve had would have been just changing the language a little

Joan Collier
by like, Oh, interesting. Teacher, that’s. So I have ADHD, and my brain is like, but coming out of that, and I’m not at the question yet. I’m still processing a couple of things. So the piece of TJ expect Wait, TJ, were you done? Yeah, the expansion, right. Probably is done. For now. I think better than ever, right is not just the historical piece of it. But the historic piece matter. So I’m honeycomb justice, particularly jazz, who’s over it talks about harms and four discreet ways in the restorative way. And the fourth way that actually got to the harm repair part was around inflamed historical and structural sort of pieces, that people often sort of miss over, right? They go to the emotional, the relational, and like the material, but then there’s this, there’s this piece that’s missing. And so for the historical pieces of like, people were brought here, and enslaved forced into labor. And then the second piece of existing today, like unless you are independently wealthy, you are working by like, working to survive. And there are people and right and there are people whose work is invisible, but required. I’m at an institution where our faculty unions just came off of a unified strike. And it was fascinating to watch in real time their ambulances downstairs. So it was really loud, my apologies. So I was fascinated to watch that in real time and the racial politics around Labor conversations. So I am appreciative for TJ, parsing out some more of sort of what that was. But if we go into the pieces around, what does that look like in practice? So moving from just the acknowledgment to the commitment, the acknowledgement, I will still stand by that people actually have to acknowledge because there’s some of that that doesn’t happen. And in real time on campuses, if we’re talking about college campuses, and probably particularly for years schools is where stuff sort of sort of Bumbles up not bubbles, but like flares up is around, not even, not even starting at talking about enslaved labor or forced labor. It’s really around people were enslaved here. And this building is named after someone who enslaved those people so that I see it often come up. It’s like we wait, even God did that because y’all still trying to tell us that these were just random black people in this time period were collectively, the labor of enslaved people was like the literal largest form of currency for the United States. I’m currently reading Clint Smith, how the word was passed. But 19 project goes on to go ahead.

Keith Edwards
Well, I just use the passive voice in that rhetoric switch there. People were enslaved. Cash, right. It just did. mystify mystifies the perpetrators the active as though it happened to people through this mythological alien being we’re not really quite sure about when we know exactly who it was and how that had it.

Joan Collier
And so actually having to say right people were enslaved, why were they enslaved because they were exploited. And that’s right. There are systems in place that were created, they just didn’t fall out of the sky. They were created to do this work. And so that’s how I often see any sense of labor coming up, particularly with our students. Faculty might come up in research and staff are like, what do we do for students when they come to us with this, and practice? My institution does not have a for a an official labor, we have no labor acknowledgement, we have a land one. There’s one constituency of our institution that does utilize a land a labor acknowledgement, because of tgase work. And so I had shared that in our group that I pulled together our diversity education network, as one of one of our colleagues took it and use it at the black and Latinx graduation this weekend. And it was interesting to see people’s reactions to it, because it was like, oh, yeah, I’ve heard of lamb but labor like, what is that? And what I appreciate about it is that it actually invites people to question and it invites people to get curious and say, Well, I wonder what that looks like on my campus, which isn’t as hard to do now. Because folks are doing historical reviews and sort of understanding at conferences. ACPA, you know, starts moving through their pieces, I believe we have one through ACPA or at least is starting to bubble up to the surface. But when thing was in January, February, Cory Bay’s more James and I did a land acknowledgement workshop for a researchers in higher ed, financial sort of group. We brought up labor acknowledgement, and they were mystified, they did not they not heard of it. And so trying to expand the word out that people understand that this is part of a broader conversation of acknowledgement making right and moving to action around it. One of the hiccups I’m gonna stop talking, because I’ve been talking for like four minutes, is that folks don’t know where to start. Or they say, I’m concerned because of legal counsel, that if you say there was a slave labor force labor, you run into like, well, now what do we all believe in?

TJ Stewart
That’s interesting. Because when I because one of the resources I put in, I’m sure will show up in the show in the show notes are sort of the University studying slavery. And so it’s interesting because we have this consortium of nearly 100 institutions that are looking at their histories and legacies with slavery, a lot of it coming from Wilders, text Ebony and Ivy and looking at how higher ed is not absolved from right, these histories and legacies. But when I started to look because I have said, Well, surely, you know, in academia, we have to always be careful when I think about Layla always reminds us like, we’re not the first to come up with an idea somebody somewhere has written about and talked about it like so I always try to be very diligent. And so I didn’t, I was under no illusion that I was the first person to have thought about these things. But when I went to search a lot of the pieces I mean, University of Louisville was one Fitchburg State when you search labor acknowledgments, went back to this diverse issues piece. And so what that tells me is a couple things. One, I know that we have a understanding and a paradigm for understanding issues of chattel slavery historically and contemporarily. I don’t think it’s been operationalized in a way that allows people to think about why we should always be talking about it. So I don’t think it’s lost on people that oh, yeah, slavery exists, and it matters. But that’s why I connected it to lead acknowledges because there was a paradigm for understanding that importance. So now we’re talking about bodies and people doing things. So I just wanted to, I mean, countless black scholars, Black Studies, scholars that talked about issues of labor. I mean, I put in, you know, Kathy weeks on, you know, the problem with work. So I talked about my injury was in labor and human resources, but I don’t think there was a paradigm for thinking about why we need to always already talking about it. So I think that’s interesting. And so you can have an institution studying something like slavery, and still not make the connection of why Okay, beyond we put up these beautiful websites and found all this information. And so what does that mean? And so then the next question, which really scare people is and then what do we owe?

Joan Collier
And what? That that that that is literally where see now you don’t pull it out my stutter, because I don’t start it running too fast. That is where people get stuck, right? Because you have kids or student affairs folks, or some professor who’s read and it’s like, oh, this is great. What what do we do? What do we do? We want to do more, we want to do more, we want to do more and as a more senior administrator, right? My mind is running to who’s going to try to stop who’s going to be politely getting in the way. Who’s going to say well, we can say this right and they will say a labor acknowledgement to begin right. And I will say this is not the end of our work. It is the beginning. I am always troubled by a troubling with people can speak but institutions have to act and institutions that I believe in or someone who will then say, well, I’m not sure what does that look like. And so what I offer people is do what you can where you can as you push the diversity, but do what you can where you can. So if your institution doesn’t have one, that may or may not be fine, and you can still do one in your area, right? And you can move beyond just saying it and say, Okay, well, we started, right, if we’re on a spectrum and not a binary, this is a first step. There’s some other things that we can do. We can acknowledge the labor that’s in our room. I mean, it’s really simple. Sometimes stuff like, Did you thank your catering staff? Yeah. Think about the impact of your event or program on the people that have to clean and move the space are is labor, a concept that you’re thinking about and how you move your work forward? That’s actually really useful. It may not repair all of that it starts to put us into a more thoughtful ethical practice around labor, because then we extrapolate it out more think about the ongoing tussles we have in student affairs around labor, ethics, Hall life, all that sort of stuff. Right. That’s, that’s, that’s what comes up in my realm around Labor acknowledgments and more thoughtfully around labor. And I love that you’re centering in labor, I knew that I forgot to TJ. So

Keith Edwards
before we get too far down the road, I want to get Laila in here. And then I got to circle back to a quick question for TJ, that something you dropped real quick that I want to give you a little bit more time on, but like get in here?

Laila McCloud
Oh, no, I again, I feel great to hear y’all processing this. I mean, one of the things I want to I’m sitting with is the fact that this is an urgent now thing, a lot of times when we think about, you know the labor, I’m gonna start saying commitment, because I really appreciate that language. And I think it’s more valuable for lack of a better word than acknowledgment. Similarly, with the land acknowledgement is that it makes everything historical, right, as if there aren’t living breathing, people that are moving and having conversations about this, and how do we make it contemporary. And so when I think particularly with Student Affairs, I’m thinking about, you know, the peace, around certification, the issues with relationships between student affairs divisions and graduate preparation programs, that is a labor exchange, your students are in my classroom, and then I send them off to work for you in a couple of hours. But your expect your expectation is that I’m preparing them to do the work in your office, and then you send you know, so it’s a labor exchange, right, and we I, if we started calling that I calling it, that I think people will have a different reaction to the relationship between graduate preparation programs, and our student affairs or campus partners. But that labor exchange has a lot of expectations, what I like to call on communicate expectations about what would happen. And those, those expectations are also layered in lots of ways, particularly around race, gender, sexuality, faith, right, all the ways that we show up in the world. And I think to be able to name those and to get language in terms of what do you expect these students really graduate students to do for 20 hours a week when they’re making $9,000 a year, but you expect them to work as if they are full time, you know, full time salaried employees that already have the master’s degree that they’ve come here to get, right, that is a an equitable exchange of labor, right. And if we were to acknowledge our students, graduate students, future professionals that we want to go in this field or field are severely underpaid for the amount of labor that they do on college campuses. Right. And this is also impacted by you know, and I think particularly about black graduate students, and the ways that they are also pulled to do hidden but expected labor, right, or black faculty or black administrators, the ways that, you know, there are no Herson calls were the meals of the world, particularly black women expected to do this hidden but expected labor. And so what happens when you call that out, then you’re seen as a problem, right? And so similarly, I would say to the way that labor acknowledged labor commitments have been viewed, it’s like, oh, you’re trying to shift attention away from land acknowledgments. It’s like, no, that’s not how this works. This is not an either or this is not a you know, a competition to see who’s more marginalized. We’re not We’re not playing those games. We’re trying to pull attention to the ways that labor shapes all of us and particularly black folks, which I feel like people you know, that have a T shirt that says love black people just as much or more than you love black culture, right? So Black people are convenient in certain spaces, but when we call attention to the ways that our labor is misused, or not fully acknowledged or committed to, you know, for example, you invite or you expect black administrators or faculty or students to do things that you don’t pay them for. There’s we’re just expected to do that. because that’s what you hire, you know, that’s what we’re hired to do. We’re supposed to be this diverse person on campus who does, you know, work that we’re not fairly compensated for. So I can go on and on. And I just wanted my lover. Yeah.

Keith Edwards
And I want to I want to sort of trouble some of that in terms of how do we do it? Because we are doing a lot of and, and, and which is great. And then I’m thinking, well, that’s a long paragraph. We’re gonna get here. But before we get to some of that TJ, you used earlier, and I’ve heard us before, Ascendance, rather than descendance. Will you talk about that a little bit more?

TJ Stewart
Yeah. So I lean on the work of Dr. Cynthia Dillard, who among many things, you know, has a beautiful ethic of care for black folks, for African folks. But one of the things that she cites in her work as a scholar by the name of Asante, she asserts this claim, and now I do in my own work. And the short version is we have a belief that language is at the stomach. And what that means is, it’s often doing things toward particular ways of knowing and being I’ll give you a very simple example. So in my classes, when I’m talking with students, and we’re talking about those who might be from historically underrepresented groups, we often talk about what is the difference between minority and minoritized, right, and there’s a article that I have them read. And what we talked about is what minority is, is a quantitative measure, right? It’s a number minoritized means someone’s doing this to you, or to me or to them. And so that’s a very simple example, to say, similarly to passive voice versus active voice, right. And so it’s all of that sort of wrapped up. So when we use something like and so in Dr. Dillards work, one of her sort of theoretical frameworks is in darkened feminist epistemology. And that’s just sort of a complex way of say, Black women’s ways of knowing and being that is also connected to their race, their gender and their spirit, right. But she uses in darkened as a rejection of enlightenment, because that is often centered in traditional white feminism, the canons of white feminism. And what she sort of asked us is what is wrong with the dark and being in dark, and wherever the we take that literally from the complexion of our skin? What does it mean for something to be concentrated and enrich and saturated, so there’s nothing wrong with something being in darkened. And so she also uses this, this language of Ascendance. And so it’s a way to talk about the upward trajectory, the uplift, and movement of black people who have come from right, the strong and like, incalculable strength of people who have experienced some of the worst force in history, right? And so that we are ascending from these folks. We’re not descending from these folks. And so it’s one of those things that it’s really about, it’s a linguistic sort of move, but because language is often doing something, and so I use that language because it feels good to me. I did my spirit and thinking about efe, so efe is a it’s not just another black feminist theory, right? I have, we’re working on a piece of some colleagues that all black feminist theories, they’re not just all the same, they actually have different views. Imagine that, but an EFP spirit is a big part. And so for me ascendant feels good to my spirit and feels good for what I hope for black people, is our ability is our is the hope for us to rise and continue to be and do better. Yes, a layman talks about his hope for black people as being that we should all have good love healthy choices and second chances. And so it’s in that same vein that I use ascendant some people will think about and hear and understand descendant, but it is just me sort of rejecting some of the white supremacist worship of the word and as embracing an epistemological and linguistic sort of framing of our own.

Keith Edwards
Well, I’ll just share my experience hearing you use that at ACPA. Super quick in passing, I just like it in that moment. I was like, Whoa, and I just slow down. And I was like, that’s different. That’s new. I think this is what’s going on. That’s interesting. And so I had like a whole conversation with myself while you continue saying other things. So what you were hoping to evoke is exactly what I had hoped in me, which was this sort of questioning this awareness, this thinking this connecting. So I really appreciate it. I just want to throw, we have a script folks. We’ve thrown it out completely. Which is great. I want to just throw some of the complications that I’ve been thinking out about and then and then Leila, maybe you can lead us in, feel free to pick up and these are go in your own direction. I’m thinking about how would the labor acknowledgments or labor commitments be different if you’re in a place that had slavery in the South, perhaps, versus a place where perhaps didn’t? And how would that shift? I’m also not that I live in Minnesota, not that centuries of racism hasn’t existed here, in different formats. I’m also thinking about how to do how to do the both and of recognizing the historical. But then, as TJ mentioned, recognizing, like literally what’s in the room, as we’re doing keynotes and doing a labor commitment at the beginning of a keynote, while folks of color often are picking up plates and moving things around. And depending on where you are, those may be mostly by black folks. Or they maybe not mostly black folks, but other people of color, depending on on where we are. I’m just trying to think about how we might actualize this, how it might be done different in different contexts, because I think one of the things that does lead to performative land acknowledgments is sort of a one size fits all, you know, Nuance repeated every time in the same way. Well, what do you think?

Laila McCloud
Yeah, so I think there’s a lot there, I would, I mean, I would argue or push back that the labor of black folks is what has made this country what it is, and regardless of where you are in the country, there are remnants of blackness there. I’m also thinking about folks, black folks from different ethnic backgrounds and what that means for them. So like, you know, in a place like Minnesota, where you have, you know, black folks are not just from the US, but from other parts of the world, and how, what is their relationship to that, but I also think that diaspora speaks to that. Right, wherever we are, there’s we’ve been involved in labor in some kind. And also people understand themselves and relationships of blackness and black labor. And so anti blackness. Yes, essentially. So I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s specific, I don’t think it’s limited in any way. But I do think it calls similarly to the ways that land acknowledgments it requires people to do some additional work, right to understand those relationships. So for example, with land acknowledgments, you know, there’s no, you know, there’s websites now where you can find, you know, the, the original stewards of the land that you live on. Okay, well, what would it look like for us to do some of that additional work to understand the black communities that have existed in certain communities? You know, currently And historically, right? So for example, I went to school at University of Iowa, and everyone’s like, Oh, you know, there are no black folks in Iowa. There’s a Black History Museum in Iowa, that documents this, you know, centuries of black folks that have been in this space, what was their experience there? What was their history there?

TJ Stewart
Right. So this to Waterloo, and also talk to Nicole Hannah Jones, she would totally reject that.

Laila McCloud
Right? You know, so like, there is history there. And these places where you’re like, Oh, I only, you know, like people living, you know, before I moved there, and no one thought, and I and I’m like, there’s lots and generations of families that have been there, it’s just you have to do the additional work and get out of, you know, obviously, there’s some pushback on this, having conversations about history, from different state governments, but there is a need for us to do that additional work to understand the presence. And the ways that black folks, black people, black culture, and our labor have influenced every sector of this, of this particular country. Um, I don’t know if other folks wanted to jump in, because I just want to be mindful of space.

Joan Collier
So part of me just had a visceral reaction, right? It’s and I think some of this is because geographic location is something I’m from the south, I descended from ascend and descend to pinpoint how folks understand it from enslaved people, I can count back on six fingers and be back in enslavement on my dad’s side. And I now live in New Jersey, and the concept of a labor acknowledgement here. People get it, and they get into it. But there’s this idea that but we’re not the south. And I really want folks in this country to wrap their brain around at this entire country benefited from the labor force of enslaved Africans. Again, it was literally a slave labor was the largest currency mortgage. That’s literally where that comes from. And so what we know is that colonial projects is still going on. So if you can, if you can get it people’s labor, right there people who are chronically poor, poor, poverty is a policy issue. And a lot of our policies are around anti blackness. And so when we find other people, right, people who are not black in roles where they are chronically For an overworked, underpaid, right, yes, capitalism, but also white supremacy, also anti blackness, and it falls on other people. And so the nuance of what a labor commitment looks like and if we talk about commitment, what are we actually committing to? Right? There are some schools where all they have is a land acknowledgement, because that’s as far as they’re willing to go. Okay, so if we have a labor acknowledgement, that’s as far as they’re willing to go, what else can people do? So I just I want folks to hear Dr. McLeod’s word of doing their work where they are to see what it looks like we’re there’s a port right here in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where folks came in. But if I think about labor in his in his contemporary context, I am I am thinking about, in my context, a lot of black and Latinx folks who are doing actually Newark, New Jersey is very ethnically diverse. There’s a lot of immigrant labor that has had that that does the work that goes unaddressed or not publicly recognized, and being able to actually say, what do we do with this to bring to make visible the honor and appreciation that we have for that labor, and not doing it at the expense of recognizing that a lot of that history comes back to anti blackness, if you don’t want to touch my blackness, they just it is just like, they just can’t, I’m like, you have to, we can’t get right until we get right around anti blackness, okay.

Laila McCloud
I wanted to jump in really quickly, because I also want to reiterate that we need to be mindful how we use not and this is not for Dr. Collier, but we want to make sure people understand the anti black racism is not just racism against black people. It’s literally that you can’t imagine the humanity of black people black bodies, and I know folks have trouble the term black bodies, but literally the presence of black people, right. So when you talk about the presidents of black people throughout the US, our physical ability to move has been legislated. Right? So if you don’t see black people there, that’s a policy decision. And there’s a reason not because we didn’t want to go or something like that. It’s like, No, you can’t go you will die. Right you will be you will be taken out if you try to go here. And that’s still an issue today, right? Black folks have been very clear about where we can and cannot go, why we can and cannot go there. And if we enter into certain spaces, people will watch us to see why are you here. Right. So also thinking about how that impacts our ability to engage with labor to move about the country to to enter certain spaces, our bodies are still legislated whether legally or just you know, through just social norms, right? It’s like why, you know, I talk about, you know, being a faculty member, where I don’t see other black faculty, the assumption is never that I’m a faculty member, right? Like my labor, my academic labor is never fully acknowledged, or my ability to be an intellectual or thought producer is not acknowledged, because I am so surprised my body is not supposed to be there, right? Or it’s supposed to be there in certain ways. And so I think that’s also something that we need to recognize when it comes to labor acknowledgments is that you only see me in certain ways. And so when I don’t show up in those ways, or if I do show up in those ways, I am a surprise either way. So I think you know, we think about geographic space. I think that’s also important to acknowledge the ways that black bodies are restricted insert. Yeah.

TJ Stewart
Yeah, the only other thing I would add to this particular conversation, Keith, and I think it’s a good question is that I think you can’t get to the present without going through the past. That’s always would be my offering. And so I think about there’s this really interesting documentary, it’s a little older now, I think, early 2010, somewhere called food chains, and it was executive produced by Eva Longoria. It was narrated by Forrest Whitaker. And it basically asked the simple question, do you know where your food comes from? And what it did is it exposed the conditions of migrants, immigrant workers, some documented some not, and literally on these farms, pulling tomatoes, pulling vegetables pulling fruit, talking about how they get paid cent cents for every so many dozens or hundreds of pounds. And if we cannot make a connection between people who are forced to work for free, right, and people who are basically working for free today, then we’re we’re in bad shape. And so I think for me, irrespective of if you feel like you have a framework for or a history related to chattel slavery or not, that that those echoes still sort of permeate and haunt us today. I believe that No one should have to work for food, healthcare and housing. I didn’t ask to be here. The reality is, is that we do. And there are some people who work full time, 40 5060 hours a week and are still struggling to get by. That is a justice issue. And so for me, and so we can see that in the past, we see it sort of now, in the present, right, we see it with inflation and having these other sort of issues. So even if you take concern with the what I believe is a genesis for this country, we can if you have you take a step back and sort of have a more structural analysis around labor, capitalism and survival, you should be outraged, right, that the ways people are not able to sort of make a living or to be well, and so for me, I think for us in this country, having a labor acknowledgement and or commitment allows us to get to the present by going through the past, and then to sort of understand and have a framework for Okay, so what do we do now? What are our values? What are the things that we want to fight and advocate for? To address some of these concerns?

Keith Edwards
Well, let’s, that’s exactly where I want to go. Next is I’m imagining people listening to this and thinking, Okay, I know I could do a labor acknowledgement. But now you’re pushing to a labor commitment, and I’m on board. But what would I do? Like what if I didn’t I see this with with land acknowledgments people saying, we’re not just doing the land acknowledgments. And then here is what we are doing. And you know, there’s there’s lots of different varying degrees of that, but I’m seeing people sort of move beyond just the acknowledgement into other things. What would that look like to move beyond a labor acknowledgement? Into commitment? What would be some of the things on the menu?

TJ Stewart
Oh, my gosh, how much time do we have? So here’s what I would say

Keith Edwards
we got about 10 minutes, okay.

TJ Stewart
I’m gonna give some ideas. And I think the short version is there was this wonderful scholar by the name of Frank W. Hill, Jr. That’s the name of the Black Cultural Center at Ohio State University. And he had a famous phrase, there was no known campus, that commitment without cash is counterfeit. And so what I would say is, there’s a lot of different things we can think about. But they’re hard conversations. For example, we know that many corporations don’t pay a fair living wage and go and pay benefits. So it might look like when you’re doing programs in the halls, or for students, that you’re no longer going to go to Walmart, because it’s cheap and local, you might go to Target or somewhere else, where they’re paying their employees more fairly, to produce the things that you need for your program. It may look like when you’re making catering decisions, that you don’t go to companies that don’t provide a living wage, or benefits for their employees, but that you go to places that do those things. And so some people will say, Well, what about those companies, those people still work there, I get that, but then we get to make choices around how we spend our resources that support the types of things we care about, as a laborer commitment, if you’re at a conference or a convention, part of your acknowledgement is to be able to say that and to put people on notice, but then to invite people to make choices about where they will spend their money, about how they engage the people that are engaged in service roles for and with them while they are there. I think that it looks like advocating in our own hiring for a living wage, I no longer think that fringe benefits that people receive, including folks, you know, that work in housing is enough to withhold particular types of compensation that allow them to be well. And so I hate that it has to always be tied to that. But that’s why I said an analysis of labor under capitalism matters, because people need to be able to, to pay for the things that they need sort of to be well, so I think when you think about labor commitments, it’s who is working on my behalf, either in a facility or in a space, where can I use my resources in places and spaces that fairly treat benefit, compensate those folks? Who do I invite? How do I invite them and I’ll give you another one. Some people may say, Well, we just can’t we are asked to do more and more with less and less, that’s an often refrain from student affairs professionals, well, then the pushback is, then we just have to do less. And so that way, when we do it, it’s ethical. That way, when we do it, we’re able to afford the people that we need to come speak to serve us. And so I think that is the gift we can’t do more and more with less, you have to get out because that’s also capitalistic in its own right. And so those are just some examples. I don’t want to go on and on. But there’s many things we can do to commit to sort of equitable and fair labor practices that commit to allowing people to be more well and more home.

Keith Edwards
I think that’s super helpful. And Joan and Laila, if you have some other things to add in there. I think that would be wonderful.

Joan Collier
Laila, you’re welcome to go my, my actual responses, it might be actually helpful to name them more and more because where people get stuck is what does that actually mean? And having a hard conversation of it might mean you have to do less and I know for the practitioner, some of them it’s my job is to say if I do less and I’m like, Yeah, Yeah, so I’m talking to leaders now as assistant vice president, leader to leader aren’t we have budgetary decisions we need to make? And what that means is what is it that we’re asking folks to do? How are we understanding? The ethical nature of money? I mean, within capitalism, what’s ethical, right? Like we’re all doing, like the best that we can. And if that means that we’re doing less, how are we prioritizing? So for me, it’s not just the right now conversation, it’s an ongoing, what are our priorities? And what ethics undergird? What the work that we’re going to do one of the complaints that my that I, I believe my office gets, we are officer predominantly black women, we are a university equity. And so there are a lot of thoughts about what we do. And what we should air quotes be doing is that we don’t do enough. And we are clear, we do what only we can do, doing what only we can do, as is our organizational function. And we will do what is a strategic priority, right? If there’s room for us to do other stuff than we will. And that is one way that we can embody and acknowledgement of like what we do get I paid well, I’m not gonna hold you My salary is fine. What it did to give me my proper salary is a whole nother ballgame. But those commitments for leaders mean, we actually have to have an awareness and my hope is that leaders actually think about labor in their work and not as like an official university labor issue in the south labor, there’s no office on labor in the way that they are in more unionized states. So I want to say labor as a practice or concept. And the way TJ was saying, not as your labor as your institutional functioning Labor Office, but how we actually thinking about what we do, how we’re honoring work, and the history of it, and how our current practices inflame historical and structural exploitation and harm in ways that we may or may not be aware of. So we need to get curious, and we need to put practice to it. And that’s on us as leaders, if we’re actually trying to cultivate more just I don’t know, ever get the justice, but more just as work environments.

Keith Edwards
I’m hearing from TJ put resources where it needs to be, I’m hearing from you, let’s be ethical about how we’re utilizing labor.

Joan Collier
I’m saying the best we got Oh, yeah, right. No, my leaves are gonna say we don’t have no money. I’m gonna say what the current commitments you have, you have no more money, but those are the commitments that you’ve made. So how do you read? Imagine your commitments, and that was not actually an invitation for me to start talking, but I’m Baptist. So I’m gonna be quiet though. I’m gonna be quiet lately.

Laila McCloud
Yeah, I’m just to wrap it up. Something else that I think about in terms of practical ways. We’ve mentioned that often on college campuses, there are folks who work in housekeeping sanitation were groundskeeping. A lot of times universities will have award ceremonies to recognize staff or doing stuff, that population of staff is often left out of those conversations. So how do we meet in those? Those folks are often the people that a lot of our students have really deep in unfulfilling relationships with. So how do we honor the labor? They keep our campuses going, especially I’m thinking during COVID, those are the folks that couldn’t work from home. And so how do we make sure that we do the work that they’re doing another thing, I have to shout out Dr. Collier, and Dr. Britt Williams for their work around citational practices and honoring the labor of black women and research, right. So that’s another labor of love. We’re often writing without compensation. And we know that black faculty, in particular, black researchers, in particular, our work is often not cited. So that’s another commitment that folks can make to make sure that when you’re doing research that you are you are honoring the labor of black, queer and trans folks in your work. And so I think those are two offerings that I have other commitments that people can make to honor the folks that keep our institutions running. And also to make sure that we’re engaging in ethical citation practices and highlighting the voices of black, queer and trans folks.

Keith Edwards
I’m really glad you brought it up. You were talking about the recognition in terms of wards and one of the things I was thinking about is just seeing people, just that kind of recognition. And I’m thinking particularly about at conferences and hotels and just seeing the people who are doing these things, and acknowledging them and eye contact and interacting and not being comfortable with making them invisible, which I think is troubling in so many different ways. Alright, so we are running out of time. So this podcast is called Student Affairs now we would love to hear what you are thinking pondering troubling Now it may be related to this conversation and might be just something that is that is close to you at this moment. And if you want to share where folks can connect with you, feel free to share that. So TJ, we’re going to start with you.

TJ Stewart
Yeah, I mean, I’m just really humbled that for the folks institutions in places that have engaged this work, and it’s always surprising, I’ll do a search and just sort of see what else is out there. But so many of you just point back to this piece, which is unsettling in some ways, but exciting and others. And so I think what’s next for me is to engage in some scholarly writing around this, like I wrote that sort of as an op ed editorial piece, but really engaging in some epistemological ontological thinking around this in relation to labor and black people and blackness. So that’s what’s up for me what’s next. And I do think making some practical, here’s what you can do is helpful. And if you want to find me, my username is at I’m on. That’s the same one on all the platforms because I can’t I don’t creative enough to come up with different names. So happy to connect offline about this or other things.

Keith Edwards
Wonderful. Joan, what’s good, you know,

Joan Collier
My mind I’m an EDI equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility justice, I’m thinking first amendment rights. And they’re often Telcel with commit commitments air quoted or not to inclusion and equity on our campuses. Think of our colleagues down without thinking of the future activity of equity and inclusion work, particularly in places where there are actual like laws on the books now, or there’s a mid social and societal pressure. People are losing money, they’re losing their jobs. And what what that means when we are having policy and law that says we don’t see difference, even though that is a choice for the law itself to make this raggedy and goes back to some mess that we don’t want. So I’m thinking about that. And I’m thinking also to myself about mutual aid amongst like, organic mutual aid, our institutions cannot by definition, do transformative justice. So what that means is our students get frustrated. And I’m like, you can do restorative justice, but not transformative justice. But that doesn’t mean that mutual aid does not already exist. And as a way of being that folks from around the world have always function sure that we have what we need. And there’s a tremendous amount need be it, material, be it health and wellness for folks to be well to feel loved, longing, all that sort of stuff. If folks want to find me, I’m on the Twitter’s at Joan Collier. PhD, on Twitter. And you know, you can hit me up on my institutional email, but baby open records do exist, so keep it in Mute.

Keith Edwards
Okay let me just let me just emphasize you said future tivity future tivity There you go. Thank you. Yeah. I’m gonna be thinking about that tomorrow. Yeah, go ahead Laila.

Laila McCloud
um, so next for me is I’ve been thinking a lot about labor exchanges as it relates to student affairs, graduate programs and divisions of Student Affairs. So a lot of my future conversations will talk about how can we address that, that trend, the transactional nature of that relationship, to really honor the well being of both sides and to help move our, our profession forward, because right now, it’s not. It’s not sustainable. It’s been hanging on by a thread, and it’s often led folks to rethink remaining in the field. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Hey, Dr. Laila.

Keith Edwards
Awesome, wonderful. Well, thanks all of you so much, you, you have each given me some little nuggets that I’m going to be chewing on. So this is fantastic. And so thanks to all three of you for being here for being in conversation and for giving us so much to think about. And to put into practice. This has been terrific, thanks for your leadership. Thanks also to our sponsor of today’s episode Symplicity. Symplicity is the global leader in student services technology platforms with state of the art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partner to the institutions Symplicity supports all aspects of student life, including but not limited to Career Services and Development, Student Conduct and well being student success and accessibility services. To learn more visit symplicity.com or connect with them on social media. A huge shout out to our producer Nat Ambrosey who does all of the behind the scenes labor to make us look and sound good. We love the support for those these important conversations from our community. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to our podcast, YouTube and weekly newsletter announcing each new episode, and more. If you’re so inclined, you can also leave us five star review. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to the fabulous guest today and to everyone who’s watching and listening. Make it a great week. Thanks all.

• Shenita Hubbard’s – Ride or die: A Feminist manifesto for the well-being of Black women
• Weeks K. (2011). The problem with work : feminism marxism antiwork politics and postwork imaginaries. Duke University Press.
• Additional Resources from Fitchburg State University Labor Acknowledgement Library Guide
• Unpaid Labor Contribution
  An organization whose mission is “Acknowledge the Contribution…, Abolish the myth of racial inferiority and superiority…, and Advocate for national racial reconciliation”
• Universities Studying Slavery
  The Universities Studying Slavery (USS) consortium, created and led by the University of Virginia, represents a multi-institutional collaboration focused in sharing best practices and guiding principles about truth-telling projects addressing human bondage and racism in institutional histories.
• How to Acknowledge a Shameful Past Universities across America are apologizing for their checkered histories.
• Acknowledging Slavery in Early American Art at the Worcester Art Museum
  An article discussing how Worcester Art Museum includes labels referencing the subject’s economic relationship to slavery for works in their collection
• What Does It Mean to Acknowledge the Past?
  New York Times Op-Ed by Angela Flournoy about land and labor acknowledgments.
• https://honeycombjustice.org/
• https://paramountaurora.com/2021/05/black-labor-acknowledgment/
• https://www.amazon.com/Ebony-Ivy-Troubled-Americas-Universities/dp/1596916818
• https://nilelivingston.com/black-women-are-the-mules-of-the-earth/
• https://youtu.be/lqZLrXVAde4
• https://buckeyevoices.osu.edu/articles/2014/11/16/all-hail-hale-hall/