Speaker 1: This is a hundred dollar bill, and remembering its value is the most important aspect of our conversation today. My name is Nadiya Heron, and I'm an educator. And like you, I am exhausted. I'm exhausted from the Zoom meetings, the conference calls, the memos, and the email threads about race. Our country is having a reckoning following the death of George Floyd. A reckoning with systemic racism. All this time, I couldn't help but think, do we as educators lack the capability to better serve our students when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion in our classrooms? The truth is much darker and much more complex than we'd care to realize. We lack the will and even the motivation to try. We lack the consciousness to take responsibility for the collective failings of inequity and social injustice so deeply ingrained in our educational system. Oh, I'm exhausted though because I care, and you should too. You should care because classrooms have long been the battleground in the struggle for social injustice, and students, oh, they have consistently been leaders on the front lines. For example, in 1947, a courageous Mexican-American farming family out of California, California, we are always making trouble, but good trouble. This family, they dared to challenge the law and the consciousness of the American justice system, and they won. They fought for equal schooling for their three children. This Mendez v. Westminster case was able to lay the foundation for Thurgood Marshall to argue the Brown v. Board of Education case in front of the Supreme Court, and that is the case that upended segregated classrooms across this nation. And yeah, that's great. But 67 years later, we are still waiting on equality in the classroom, wildly grasping at diversity through a haze of racial tension and virtue signaling as inequality persists. Oh, you should care because we know that the research says that students internalize the unfair treatment that they experience in the classroom. When you see them as limited, small, subhuman, they begin to believe the same about themselves. We must not tolerate such conduct from a professional segment of persons entrusted to educate, enlighten, and inspire. The truth is, if our classrooms are the symbolic barometer for the future health of our nation, then instructors must intentionally embody their role in the health of said nation or risk ideological genocide. We must have equality in our classrooms and restructure the function of those who refuse to change. After all, classrooms are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. According to the U.S. Census in 2018, of the undergraduate student population, 52.9% were white, 20.9% were Hispanic, 15.1% were black, 7.6% were Asian, and everybody else identified as other. Keep up. That same year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, of the full-time professors, 75% were white, 12% were Asian, and for Hispanic and African American full-time professors, they represented 6% respectively. There is a glaring gap between the faculty and the student population that we claim to serve. These statistics speak to the chasms and polarization that have long impeded meaningful progress in the aim of social justice and mobilizing for change in our classrooms. Moreover, this profound gap is the primer for a slurry of potentially harmful interactions similar to what we saw with the professor whose response regarding a simple question surrounding the recent unrest earned him a suspension and cause to be fired. Furthermore, it led to a breakdown of trust and a loss of that relationship, that sacred relationship between teacher and pupil. If academic minds can come together and solve Pierre Vermont's last theorem, then surely we can solve this issue of racism in our lifetime. If we can put a man on the moon, then certainly we can address inequity and social injustice in our classrooms. We can begin by closing the representation gap in institutions of higher learning across this country. You should care because the future of our nation will look like the student population that we serve today. Their tomorrow rests upon our shoulders. Now, if a black student walks into your classroom, know that they have defied the odds. Know that they continue to participate in a system designed for their failure. A system that created laws to prevent them from gaining wealth and then would criminalize their poverty. A system that would prevent them from reading, making it illegal for them to read and then punish them for being illiterate. A system designed to send them from the classroom to the prison pipeline. A uniquely American system that assaults them on every front, from disparities in their health care to confinement in impoverished neighborhoods to disproportionate exposure to inferior schoolings to significantly greater dangers and encounters with law enforcement. And I could go on. From the labor market discrimination that's waiting for them on the other side of graduation to a television media, and this one is important, to a television media that manufactures and reinforces disparaging portraits of their identity by telling you that they, as black people, are subhuman, validating the abuse that they receive. Know that when these students sign their names on the papers and assignments that they turn into you, they're not really signing their names. They're actually signing the names of the person who owned their great, great grandparent in slavery. Pause for just a second and realize how deep the veins of systemic racism run. Many are going to be defeated before they even walk through the door, but they're still coming. They are walking through your classroom doors. And many are met with instructors who express dissent for their skin through harmful microaggressions or pathologizing of their culture. These affronts are often coupled with assumptions of criminality, resulting in over-policing on our college campuses and universities, black people portrayed as violent in America, when more often than not we are on the receiving end of said violence. They face ascriptions of their intelligence while they're more accurately experiencing historic growth in education. In 2015, a report by Nielsen documented that high school graduation rates and the percentage of black high school graduates enrolled in college jumped to historic heights, outpacing that of any other ethnic group, outpacing that of the total population, period. But just because they're brilliant doesn't mean that they don't feel. Know that ironically, the first time many of them experienced racism was in the classroom and know that they will more than likely continue to experience the weight and trauma of racism throughout their lifetime. But I know, this too really has nothing to do with you. So the question remains, why should you care? As the nation recovers from the polarizing events that follow the death of George Floyd and we return to our campuses, classrooms, and community, as educators, we must acknowledge some pretty daunting realities. This is not just about the death of George Floyd. We must acknowledge that his death is only a singular occurrence in a scathing epidemic of collective race-based violence and systemic oppression perpetrated on black persons in this country since its inception. We must cease in our failure to recognize the undeniable truth. America is a great nation, but it was built on a foundation of hate that encompassed slavery, white supremacy, and mass genocide, a foundation that cannot stand if you choose to, if we choose to. Will we continue to be passive participants in a culture of silence in our classrooms? Or will we begin to develop a consciousness to be a part of something bigger than ourselves? Now I understand, no, no, you are not responsible for something that happened centuries ago that you have nothing to do with. But you do have the opportunity to be a part of a solution for what's going on right now. Contemporary oppression, contemporary marginalization, and contemporary brutal violence. We are dying today. You have the opportunity to be a part of a kind of justice that will ripple through the generations. The academic community must, we must adopt an iterative process of developing and enforcing meaningful strategies in the aim of peace from systemic violence and racism aimed at minoritized communities, more specifically African American people in our educational system and society as a whole. We are here today because a man propelled by centuries of racial injustice kneeled on another man's neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds. Now there were three other people there and had one taken one of those seconds to speak up. We might not be here today. I'm not asking you to abandon any long held religious or political beliefs. I'm just asking you, no, I am begging you to speak up. Inequality persists in our classrooms and it is time that we adjust our behavior accordingly. This will require collective efforts of deliberative engagement, authentic dialogic interaction with interorganizational, interdivisional, and interdisciplinary alignment. The future of this country will be decided in our classrooms. The future of this country, educators, it will be shaped by you and that's why it is time to care. Now I did not forget about this $100 bill. To the African American students under the sound of my voice, like this $100 bill you may have been walked on, stepped over, you may feel overlooked, but you must never forget your value. You see I didn't forget this $100 bill because it still has its value. You must never forget your value so that in your success you may pay homage to the generation of black folks that came before you and shed their blood that their progeny might know true freedom. You must never forget your value that you may give hope and inspire action in the next generation that's coming up behind you, that they may take the torch of progress, that they may take the tenets of black genius and run with it without restraint. No, you must never forget your value. Remember that you are seen, you are supported, you are loved. You are invaluable. My name is Nadiya Heron and I thank you so much for listening.