Susana :
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs NOW I’m your host Susana Muñoz. Today we’re talking about the new book From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education. I am thrilled to be joined by two of the authors, Tia Brown McNair and Estela Mara Bensimon, who will also be discussing with me some of the important and timely elements of their books. Unfortunately, the third author, Lindsey Malcolm Piqueux cannot join us. We’ll miss you. And, and hopefully we can get Lindsay back on the show later in the season. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in, alongside, or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you’ll find these conversations make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find us at studentaffairsnow.com or on Twitter. Today’s episode is sponsored by Anthology. Is your goal to engage in effective assessment, boost data fluency and empower staff with strategic data collection, documented analysis, and use results for change? No matter where your campus is in the assessment journey, Anthology (formerly Campus Labs) can help you figure out what’s next with a short assessment. You’ll receive customized results and tailored recommendations to address your most immediate assessment needs. Learn more about how Anthology’s products and expert consultation can empower your division with actionable data by visiting campuslabs.com/sa-now. Now, As I mentioned, I am your host Susana Muñoz. My pronouns are she, her, hers, and ella. I am an associate professor of higher education and program director at Colorado State University. I’m hosting this conversation today from Fort Collins, Colorado which is the ancestral homelands of the Ute, Arapaho, and Cheyenne peoples and nations. Now let’s get into this conversation.We’re discussing the new book from equity, talk to equity walk. Which just came out this year and is published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, the Center for Urban Education and Jossey Bass authors. Please introduce yourselves and the relationship you have to this project, let’s start with Estela.

Estela:
Hello Susana. Thank you so much for inviting us to join you today. And I am Estela Bensimon. And I am professor at the University of Southern California at the Rossier School of Education and the director of the Center for Urban Education.

Tia:
And thank you Susana for inviting us as Estela said, looking forward to the conversation. I’m Tia McNair. I serve as the vice president for diversity equity and student success and the executive director of the truth, racial healing and transformation campus centers at AAC&U and my pronouns. Are she her and hers looking forward to it.

Susana :
Thank you. Happy that you’re here with us. So Estela, you’ve dedicated the majority of your academic career to issues of equity and racial justice. And what I really appreciate about this book is that it speaks to the action behind equity, specifically about building and assessing equity mindedness competencies. Could you say more about the importance of equity mindedness and how institutions of higher higher education can build this capacity within academic and student affairs?

Speaker 3:
Yes. Thank you, Susana. The reason why I think it’s important to focus on practice is a lot of times when we think about racial equity work, we try to change people’s minds. And I think that people’s minds are much more likely to change when they first change their practices. So I have in my work with my colleagues, Tia among them I have focused on, on creating tools that enable a faculty member in mathematics or an advisor is student services or vice president of student services to study their, their practices from a racial equity stance using a protocol or a tool. And they realized that really those people like to pride themselves as being, you know, anti-racist and they suddenly realize that there the, the, the routine practices whether it’s a syllabus, whether it’s a strategic plan are essentially the you know, the, the racial equities absence its their language, it’s race neutral. They don’t take into account that the students’ experiences of a college campus aren’t bad. They they’re in bad shape by racial identity. So I find that that’s a much more effective way than me telling individuals or groups of individuals your documents are race neutral.

Susana :
Yeah. It’s interesting that you say sort of, you know, everything is sort of centered on practices. And so, you know, where do these administrators, where does the practice come from? Like, what do you think the needs to maybe shift in terms of the practice and particularly cause I, you know, direct the, the higher ed program here in our graduate studies, you know, do we need to revamp our, how we train student affairs practitioners?

Speaker 3:
Yes, absolutely. I think so. And I would say that where I would begin with with a program like yours would be maybe to do, a very structured and disciplined and rigorous examination of the of the courses, the curriculum the syllabi. And that would be the place where I would start and essentially to ask the questions in what ways is this higher education graduate program, train student affairs professionals to be race conscious or to be equity minded. And that would be a really good way of being able to identify maybe both strengths as well as gaps in the curriculum. Yeah, I mean, that’s the way that I used to approach my course that I taught on the Administration of Higher Education. I always say, I am training you to be equity minded leaders and administrators.

Susana :
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s super important than that. Right. And you, you know, we can’t leave it up to just, you know, the Estela Bensimon’s or the Tia’s or Susana’s all faculty, correct. You know, has to be across the board.

Speaker 3:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s it’s about time.

Susana :
I agree. Tia, what are your thoughts? How do you what are your thoughts about sort of equity in mine in this, and in your world in terms of what you do and who your, your, your around your sphere influences, you know, what are your thoughts about equity mindedness and how that gets practiced?

Tia:
So, first of all, I’m always going to agree with Estela. I’m never going to disagree with her. Are you kidding me? So everything that she’s said, and, and for us, I think in the work that I lead and I’ve been at AAC&U over 10 years, is that we, our focus has always been on equity and learning. And I think we have been looking at that what most, for most people start, and that’s how we started the book. That’s why we’re looking at equity and student outcomes and trying to figure out from graduation retention course completion, progression rates, those particular pieces. I think where we, we did the project that was a catalyst for the book. And then also our work with many other institutions is that we realized that that focus Estela was saying to being race conscious and institutionally focused and willing to examine critically examine our behaviors from a race and how they exhibit, you know, racialized practices and policies. That piece was never the and. It was, the focus was on looking at equity and outcomes, but not going deeper into those conversations about, okay, WHY and what are those practices that perpetuate those inequities and student outcomes, and how are they being addressed from a race perspective or being examined critically by what we’re doing that is actually fueling and contributing to those inequities. And if you look at any reports, especially ACE, just release and Lorelle when she was there, did a wonderful job on the race and ethnicity report. And I’m glad that they’re continuing it and just recently, they did a supplement to it and did an update to it. It’s actually, I mean, even more eye opening and we should all be concerned as we are looking and thinking about the impact of COVID-19 and the impact on the reduction in funding and support and the, the resource diminishing that’s happening at our institution. I mean, that, that institutions that’s happening across the board, everything’s going in the wrong direction to actually help us meet the equity outcomes. And particularly we’ve got to be focused on this race, the race perspective, and a race based approach to this, considering that so many of our students, what is it? 46% now of our undergraduate students are representing Black, Latinx, Indigenous, you know, Asian American people. I mean, we’ve got to think about this. So I think that for me, it’s getting our campuses to really focus on the race, racial equity and, and intentionally, and we say this in the book that everyone gets to this point, and then they stop because those conversations become more difficult. They are not as open to those types of conversations as they are Estela, does a great job of I’ve heard her say this as a difference between poverty and race and having those conversations as well. So, yeah,

Tia:
No, I love that. I, I also love that you, you brought in COVID and how that should not be separated from racism. Right. And that is something that I think our, our college campuses, we we’ve been talking about COVID, you know, how has this impact your faculty life, your research, you know, your practice, but we’ve never really talked about it in the context of racism. Right. And so I think that’s one of the things, or you know, limitations is that race should always matter. Right. And in all we do. And yeah. So I appreciate you bringing that. And I also appreciate that the fact that these are tough conversations and for entire campuses to take on the, so the question that I have in relation to what we’ve been talking about, I know as someone that works, you know, Tia, you work with the association for the American college universities to improve student learning for underserved students. And I, I really love how you critique sort of like the diversity equity and inclusion statements, you know, as a vision that everyone can agree upon, but nobody really understands how to live it. And I was wondering if you can tell us how institutions should be using their equity their diversity, equity, and inclusion statements to improve student learning outcomes inside and outside the classroom.

Tia:
Well, let’s first, let’s talk about how they’re developed nine times out of 10. They’re developed by a committee. I mean, which, you know, is the downfall of all of us because things worked in community. So they’re developed by committee and then they’re endorsed or reviewed by institutional leaders. But what often doesn’t happen are those conversations with the people that are going to be implementing those particular, the goals of those statements and how they individually are going to be contributing to the more shared responsibility that that’s listed there. I mean, those, the statements, and again, I believe in vision, they’re more visionary than they are mission visionary statements about diversity, equity, inclusion. They’re important. All students will be that. And I’m going to let us tell a deal with the concept of all, because she’s taught me about not saying that, but I’m going to say this because that’s what they are. They say, all students should get. It’s a, it’s a, it’s an environment where everyone’s welcome and we want everyone to succeed. But the issue with that is that when we start examining what the institution is doing, and this is why in the book, Lindsay Estela, things that I’ve learned from them, and that we continue to talk about is that if you’re not examining data and what’s happening close to practice, then you’re not going to get to understand being where those opportunities are for improvement and where those barriers are. And I think that that is what’s happening is that we have these grandiose diversity equity and inclusion statements. And once they’re out there, we don’t have a systematic way to actually interrogate them, to examine them in a way where they are going to be data informed, where we’re actually going to hold ourselves accountable, where there’s going to be a shared responsibility across our institutions. And I think every single person on our campus, we say in our book becoming a student ready to college, and everyone has a capacity to be an effective educator. Well, in order to be an effective educator, you’ve got to understand the goals, the values, how, what are your responsibilities, no matter what role you play on the campus, no matter what role you play in this virtual environment, you’re contributing to those goals. And I think we don’t spend enough time helping or designing when our performance appraisals and our job descriptions in examining how our offices and areas function. I don’t think we do enough to say, okay, well, how is this part of what I’m doing on a daily basis or on a regular basis contributing to this overarching goal? And where am I falling short and who am I falling short with? And then how do I actually address it? We don’t spend enough time. We automatically think, well, we put into it, put an intervention in place, then that’s going to solve everything because of course everyone’s going to change. As we talked about earlier, their mindsets, their behaviors, and it’s going to work, and it doesn’t happen that way. So I’m actually, I’m less focused on the DEI statement when I go to an institution and more focused on what are they actually doing?

Susana :
Yeah, that was, that was, well, you said it, you said in terms of like, wait, it’s a pretty statement. It’s a beautiful statement, but we don’t have the systemic, a systemic way to have it touch sort of like our like teaching right. In, in ways that I think could, could make an impact or our tenure evaluations. Right. You know? So I think it’d be more, you said it it’s, it’s, it’s sort of, it sits sort of very siloed in, in many ways.

Tia:
Yeah. There are strategies though, but there are no, I’m sorry. That’s the thing is that they exist. We just don’t use them.

Estela:
I was going to say that, you know, those statements are not that different from mission statements from colleges and universities and I think it was probably my first graduate course at Teacher’s College or one of them when we read the book the Organized Anarchy and one of the one of the things that’s brought up in that book primarily, you know, James March, was that the reason why mission statements tend to be vauge and tend to be about everything and that anything sometimes is because there isn’t agreement right there, isn’t a consensus on what the university or the college stands for. So they necessarily become vauge and just about everything. And I think that’s true also for the diversity equity statements is the fear that people will feel left out. So it includes everyone.

Susana :
Yes. So is that when you, so what is your, your caveat to all students? When we say all students,

Estela:
You know the caveat is that when we say all students, it is it’s privileging the white student, because that becomes our reference point. When you say all students, you’re not going to think necessarily of Black students or Latinx students. And and I think also that saying all students then takes away the attention from what the real problem is, which, you know, the real problem is racial inequity. And then the third thing I would say is that when you say all students and that’s where your focus is not going to necessarily benefit racial equity. And I was just telling you earlier, when we were speaking that I had been reading the book by Isabel Wilkerson “Caste” and one of the points among the many, many great points that she makes is that the civil rights movement actually helped everyone, particularly white women, by the way. And and so when you focus on the racially minoritized populations and their conditions, you’re much more likely to benefit all then when you, when your focused starts out being all students, I hope that was clear.

Susana :
Yeah, no, that was really clear. Thank you for, for expanding on that for me. And I wanted to kind of touch back in terms of like teaching and learning a little bit in examining sort of pedagogy. And I think you mentioned something around how change needs to happen in all aspects like in math. And so I know on my own campus, you know, we’re examining, you know, teaching and pedagogy as it relates to, you know, equity and inclusion, but mostly, you know, in, in STEM fields, you know? And so what do you say to those who believe that it’s impossible to incorporate equity and justice and STEM fields that, you know, what fundamentally, you know, needs to shift to have those conversations, I’ll start with you Estella.

Speaker 3:
So, well, I would say that when people suggest that race have much to do with math or science, the first thing I would point to is all of the travesties that have been committed to the name of science. So, you know, so you can’t tell me that the Tuskegee experiments had nothing to do with race, or the fact that birth control was experimented with in Puerto Rico. So science has a very long history of racism, not only United States, but also needless to say in Germany. And and in fact, doctors here in the United States experimented with the Black women who were enslaved. And so so it would be to ignore all of that, but the reason why race has something to do with with math and STEM is that you can see racialization in the classroom. So in the way, in which the faculty member interacts with students who that faculty member recognizes as as knowers in the classroom, who the instructor interacts with and how they interact. So I think, I guess what I’m trying to say, teaching and learning is much more than just content it’s perhaps even more about the pedagogical practices and the extent to which that the instructor is conscious that he or she is responsible for creating a classroom climate that enables students to to learn. So the point is that you mentioned COVID earlier. So the reason why COVID has had worse impact on Blacks and Latinx has to do with racism because Black, particularly Blacks suffer high blood pressure, diabetes, and other high risk factors because of racism, racism causes health problems, and we’re seeing them now being the, the, the consequences to COVID. I would also say that racism prevents learning and that you students do not find themselves in classrooms where they feel comfortable to make mistakes in particular in learning cannot take place. So we should think about it. It just, as we think about the health risks of racism, we should think about the learning risks of racism. And I think that those are most accentuated in STEM and in math, because of the very thought that those faculty members may think it has nothing to do with race or even gender. Hm,

Susana :
No, that’s, that’s powerful. And it made me think of, you know, one of my research findings and, and working with for undocumented students is the majority of the microaggressions that occur happen in the classroom. And I remember having a student telling me that their engineering professor used a border wall as an example of, you know, steel and engineering. And so so yes, it’s,

Estela:
I had a faculty member in one of our projects and math faculty member who used this math sample, who he thought would be relevant, what would the labor of an enslaved person costs today?

Susana :
Yeah, so I have these, well, it’s the well intentions that turns into these microaggressions, right. And racism or racist incidents that happen in these, in these classes. And so so yeah, I think, you know, you, we, I think Tia, you mentioned like there’s strategies out there, right. There’s strategies out there that, you know, faculty could, can, you know, link to. And I think your book offers lots of great case studies talk a little bit about sort of like just specific strategies that perhaps we, we need to be using and applying in, in how we employ equity, diversity and inclusion.

Tia:
Yeah. I think that there, and I’m gonna, I’m actually gonna not talk about the ones in the book and so talking about, I’m going to talk about two, that we have embraced at a senior. So the first one, I want to make sure every, since we are talking about STEM, I want to make that those links between that our Kelly Mac’s work on teaching to increase diversity equity in STEM and her work with HHMI and the inclusive excellence. And that, that particular work as David Aside just came and was our opening keynote for our STEM conference. And his focus was all about race and racism within STEM. And so I think that if you have an interest in that, if you go to our website @aacu.org, you’ll also be able to see that. And I think, cause we did write about this in the book. I think we just mentioned it. One part is our work on truth, racial healing and transformation. So in the book Estela identified, those obstacles, those 10 obstacles that we had and then, and that we see, and we, and Lindsay, and I agreed with that. We see regularly on campuses and in our work with them. But for us at AC&U, we made the decision to engage in the truth, racial healing, and transformation effort. And the reason why we did that was because of that focus on being honest about race and racism on our campus, having that truth-telling looking at our symbols, our interactions, our behaviors, even the way the media, our campus media as well, also portray race and how having the conversations, doing those structured interviews and looking at historical documents and really being honest about the narrative about race, on race at our institutions, and then that focus on racial healing. And we use the work of Gail Christopher, who’s a visionary and architect of the TRHT effort when she was at the WK Kellogg foundation was, and is part of our work, and she was focused on the mental and physical impact of racism on people when it’s experienced and when are there, you know, and I think that that’s something that, and that’s why she called it RX racial healing circles, because there is that, that physical and mental impact that, that sometimes doesn’t get acknowledged. And that whole concept of what it means to be racial trauma informed leaders so that we can help our students. And that’s one of the things that I think we should challenge all educators, particularly faculty and student affairs leaders on campus to be racial trauma informed leaders. I mean, and to be able to, to understand what that means and to understand what happens when a student experiences trauma and how that manifest and how that actually influences their educational experiences. I don’t think we do enough with that. So the TRHT effort is really much involved in helping to build that institutional capacity so that we can get to sustain transformation. So that’s why it’s called the truth, racial healing and transformation, because it acknowledges that, but it also acknowledges what Estela was talking about with that hierarchy of human value that comes, I mean, and looking at it through our laws through the way we’ve separated ourselves and through our economic policies and with within that is public health and also immigration and education and workforce preparation. We have this false belief in a hierarchy of human value that is so deeply embedded into all of our decision-making and our structures and the way that we design policies that we are now because of COVID having, as an example, having this negative impact on a group of people because of their race and their ethnicity, because of long held systemic structures that, that failed us and said that one life is more valuable than another based on skin color. So I think that there are different ways. And again, those are just two examples and things. And we talk again about obstacles in the book about not using racially coded language and, and looking at to talk about the myth of universalism and, and really being able to look at behaviors as the Estela was talking about. There’s no simple answer. I want people to know that there’s no simple answer to it. There is the need for us to be committed to this work and not just put that burden on a few educators. And that’s why I’m actually that series that I’ve been talking about this too, that inside higher ed is doing about the what’s happening with Blacks in higher education and happening with other leaders from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. I hope that it’s not there just to say, Oh, what was, you know, look at this, but like, no, you know what? This is not just a responsibility of a few is the responsibility of many. And I don’t know whether or not that’s getting through because we have all those statements. And I really think we need to start talking about what, happens beyond the statements.

Estela:
I think that sometimes, you know, it’s in their routine practices. So I was reading a job announcement today from a national organization, looking for someone to lead a major initiative that’s related to the reform of developmental education. Now developmental education was a racist practice and because it disproportionately impacted racially minoritized students. And so whoever is going to reform developmental education probably needs to understand that racial history of how developmental education came about, but there was nothing in the job announcement that addressed that issue it. And I was like, this is what happens. It happens in the cumulative effect of little, you know, things like that is what continues to maintain a system that is racist and that impact prevents reform. So, you know, you, you know, Tia mentioned universalism, so that job announcement is written in what one might call Universalist language that totally misses what the what the problem is. Ah,

Tia:
With your tools and with your tools Estela, which are now available, we just hope people use them in the right way. So we’re going to put a plug in for those too, because I always do your center for urban education, racial equity tools. You can actually look at those, those artifacts and go deeper in those conversations, but you’ve gotta be willing to do the work. Yeah. I mean, you’ve been talking about that. You’ve been showing examples of not only syllabi, but job descriptions and having these coversations and working with you. You’ve gotta be honest about it. That’s an, that’s an artifact that, that actually exhibits the narrative about race. Yeah. That particular association.

Estela:
I think that if most colleges and universities, as well as their intermediary organizations did a study of their language, they would find that it is predominantly raised neutral and, or is kind of falls into the diversity, you know, category, but you will rarely ever see terms like racial equity you, or, or, or, or whiteness or social justice or justice, I mean, the language is very mute

Susana :
Hmm, which we know re you know, race neutrality is a reproduction of whiteness. So in, in essence, we’re just reproducing whiteness and many of our beautiful statements. I think one of the things that you all mentioned that I wanted to kind of turn back to was this notion of commitment and Tia, you talked about this, the racial that, the truth, racial healing, sort of using racial trauma, informed leadership models. I really that resonated with me in terms of the physicality how we embody the work in ways that impacts health and mental wellness. And, and so what does commitment from an institution look like that doesn’t weigh heavily on the labor of minoritized people on our campuses? Yeah.

Tia:
Yeah. So we’ve been working and having conversations with the group called the Steve fund, and they really focus specifically on the mental wellbeing of students who are Black, Latinx, Indigenous. I mean, they, they are no apologies. They are focusing on students that are minoritized students across the board. So let’s just say, that’s just the, so it’s called the Steve fund. And I think that we need to build and think about not just how faculty of color and from their backgrounds are dealing with this, but how do you build the institutional knowledge and the, the, I don’t want to say bandwidth, but the capacity, I mean, the capacity to actually understand trauma and understand racism and understand you don’t have to be someone who experiences it to understand it. I really don’t think that that’s, I think that there are people that have high levels of empathy too, too, that can, that can make relation to it. And I think we can have it, and I don’t want to diminish people who experience racism either because we all know, I mean, I’m myself, I’m again. I imagine that you two have as well. I think that it’s not, it cannot be the burden and the responsibility of people, of color on campus to be the only ones who have that commitment and that ability to engage with students when they experience racism or with their colleagues when they experience racism. And I think that we are not focusing on our roles as our common humanity. We focus, we don’t focus on that to actually deal with and address racism on our campus. And that’s why one of the reasons, again, why we embrace TRHT because the focus is on our interconnectedness, as human beings and our ability to engage with each other and have that deep listening and that empathy, you don’t have to experience the same thing. And you’re in our experience, your experiences are not going to be the same in mine, as mine, as a white person, but can you have empathy and caring and knowledge to act to, to understand how racism manifests itself and how racism shows up on our campuses and what that means for my experience and others who look like me. Yeah. I think that that’s possible. And I think we do, we, we just box people in, in so many different ways, but we also have to be authentic and we have to, and we quickly can recognize who’s being authentic about it and who’s not. So,

Susana :
Yeah, that’s, I love, I love that. I think it’s very powerful. You don’t have to experience it to be someone that works for and against racial inequities on our campus. I think that’s one of the things that I you know, it resonates with me because I, I, I see who is doing the work on our campuses. Right. And I think that’s, you know, on a predominantly white institution. It’s always, you know, the, same folks and I, you know, having tenure, I feel like now I’m getting tapped a lot to do, you know, some of the, some of this work. And so I, I, I feel it, but I also think, you know there, there needs to be more of that capacity building that you mentioned in that knowledge building. And , Estela, did you want to add anything to that?

Estela:
No. Well, yes. I guess what I was going to say is that there is power issue. And that speaking to what Tia mentioned that, you know, this is a we have a, we share a common humanity. We need to think in terms of we, rather than I, I, in the last few years in this country politically we have moved away from that. We see it in the lack of bipartisanship. And we see it in the movement. I mean, I suppose I can talk about politics and Trumpism, which is really on time commonality. It has been extremely divisive and it has been done at by demonizing people who are not white you know, describing Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals. So our country has we have taken a step backwards in a way from what, you know, Tia has just mentioned and it’s and it is about power, I think, because there’s this thread in, in, in, in 20 years, we’re going to be a country that’s no longer majority white. So that seems to be very threatening.

Susana :
Yeah. No, thank you for bringing that up. I think it’s, you know, and the, you know, the work that I do kind of centers are a little bit around, you know, the Trumpism and the Trump effect, you know, with undocumented people and immigrants. And so I, I also want to see that, that didn’t start with Trump either, right. And so it’s absolutely part of, you know, you know, what, what America is has been about. And so I think, you know you know, what, we were grappling with this notion of systemic racism across our country and as a nation, you know, what, what advice, or what do we know we have, you know, a president elect Biden coming in with this issue. That was a platform, you know, during the campaign season around systemic racism, particularly around in our criminal justice system, but in, in looking at higher education, you know you know, what are, what are your thoughts around, how does one begin to tackle this and, and do this work and nationally, is that even possible Estella or Tia one of you can chime in?

Tia:
I went first the past couple of times,

Estela:
you know I don’t always think in, in big ways. And so I’m not sure that I can answer the question about nationally other than to say that we need people who are not afraid to take a stand against to, to take a stand where they speak clearly about decisions, not skirt around it, or fall into the trap of euphemisms to talk about race. Right? So I think that we need people who are not afraid to say you know, Ibram Kendi says to say, this policy could have racist outcomes, and this policy will have anti-racist outcomes to be able to speak that directly. And to be able to accept that racism as critical race theorists have pointed out is endemic in this country. And it was built into this country so that in order to dismantle it, we have to be direct. And so that’s one of the things that I would say, and I would say the same thing at the campus level. So a lot of times I am warned that my wanting to be explicit about racial equity and to actually name the groups. I want us to say Black, Latinx, you know, Indigenous Pacific Islanders. I am often told that I, that you cannot do that with policymakers because that’s too divisive and will alienate them. And, and so I say, as long as we continue to compromise that, then we can never speak clearly. And I that’s what we, we need. And and people with power don’t have anything to be afraid of. It shouldn’t be you Susana, and it should not be me necessarily either or Tia. I mean, we do have, obviously we do have power. You have the power of tenure. So do I and Tia has the power of a national platform. But but it’s people, you know, it’s college precedents, it’s foundation directors, or, you know, presidents who need to say, you’re not gonna get any more of our money for instance, unless you do this. And, and so until we have that, we cannot, people think that they’re good people, that that’s part of the problem. They, because they think that they’re good, they think they can make, they cannot do any harm. And that’s how they’re doing the greatest harm.

Tia:
And that’s why, and that’s why Congresswoman Lee, that’s why Representative Lee and Senator Booker want the TRHT commission so that it’s not hidden anymore. And that you’re actually upfront in a public way in Congress talking about racism and the impact of race for the various across for people of color in naming Black and Latinx and Indigenous and Pacific Islanders, and saying, this is what’s happening and hearing the testimony in a public fashion of what, what has happened to so many different communities. And I think it’s, it’s, I I’m hoping that that legislation, I hoping that that resolution, I mean, just across the board, that that is embraced and their support from the, from this administration to actually move forward with that.

Susana :
Can you say a little bit about that resolution? So our audience can, can,

Speaker 4:
So if you Google Barbara Lee Representative, Barbara Lee from California, and then Senator Cory Booker, they both and Senator Booker just introduced it in the Senate this past week. And then Senator and representative Congresswoman Lee did this in June, she introduced it and obviously thinking about the racial injustices and the murders that were happening here saying that we need this and it needs to be public. And he’d just say it. So if you look just Google it, you can find the information about it. And it’s the TRHT commission.

Susana :
We’ll definitely put this post-it on the podcast. And, and so I appreciate this conversation. I don’t know who I need to lobby to get Estela Bensimon, as the department of secretary or secretary of education, who do I need to lobby? Because I think that’s the voice that I think is going to substantially change education systemically. So the last question that I have for you is you know, we, the this podcast is called Student Affairs Now quickly, what are you pondering or questioning or troubling now?

Tia:
Wow. That’s a big

Estela:
Us individually?

Susana :
Individually. Like, what are you like what’s keeping you up at night, you know, in terms of our field?

Susana :
Yeah.

Estela:
Well, you know, I would say for me, the, the, you know, the events of the last few months in terms of the, you know, the, the murders of Black people or also Latino males here in the Los Angelos area. I mean, that to me Is, is horrifying. And then the the, this, I, you know, I, I mentioned that I just finished reading this book “Caste”, which has left a very strong impression on me. One is anger, a horrifying history that she provides not only past, but also current that Isabel Wilkerson provides and, and, you know, and why is it that, why is it that it’s so ignored here? And why are we so ahistorical? Why is it that people feel so comfortable and say, well, that’s in the past. You know, I had nothing to do with that. Well, we all had something to do with it. And so that’s what that’s what concerns me. And, but I’m also gratified that the Black Lives Movement has become energized. And and that there are some things maybe that we can do now that we couldn’t do before. Mr. George Floyd was murdered and, you know, and, and, and the others as well.

Susana :
Thank you for that. What about you, Tia?

Tia:
What keeps me up at night is what’s going to happen to my son and my step son. Every time he walks out the door and then my friends and their sons, and I’m in an organization with a group of mothers, and we spend a lot of time focusing on our children. And I am hoping that what we’re doing is going to make some type of impact and different so that their lives are better, which is what many people want is for the next generation, their lives to be better. But I can tell you that it is a deep pit of agonizing. As my son gets older and goes into his teenage years and worrying about when he put a hoodie on and walked around our neighborhood, what was going to happen to him that keeps me up at night.

Susana:
Thank you. I felt that, thank you so much for that. And, and thank you just for all the contributions that you’ve made during this podcast, I’m grateful for all of your time today as guests on Student Affairs NOW. Thanks to our sponsor for this episode Anthology (formerly Campus Labs) visit them at campuslabs.com/sa-now. You can receive reminders about this and other episodes by subscribing to the Student Affairs NOW newsletter, or browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Please subscribe to the podcast, invite others to subscribe, share on social, or leave a 5 star review. It really helps conversations like this reach more folks and build a community so we can continue to make this free for you. Again, my name Susana Muñoz, thanks again to the fabulous guests today and to everyone who is watching/listening. Be kind to yourselves and make it a great week!