Transcript

You Don't Get To Name Me | Ebony White | TEDxDrexelU

hey all right yes so tell me what's more important how others view you or how you view yourself okay so the most common or socially acceptable response seems to be how you view yourself of course but is it our own perceptions that determine our trajectory or is it the perceptions of others when I thought about this talk momentous the first thing that came to mind was being the first African-American to earn a PhD from the program that I earned my doctoral degree from and the first in my family line to achieve this accomplishment and on my degree are written these words rights privileges responsibilities at pertaining thereto right and I didn't really think about those words at all because all I was thinking is I'm a doctor now put some respect on my name and so but what I noticed was that once people learned that I had a PhD that they started to act differently around me they started to defer to me you know and become super accommodating and I was like oh those rights and privileges appertaining they run too and then when they find out that I'm also a licensed professional counselor a mental health counselor they asked me for a diagnosis for themselves or for a friend their parents that's common um or even colleagues and the funny thing is most of the times when I'm responding to people I don't even talk about any type of educational training or expertise most of the time how I'm responding to people is based on my embodied experience that brought me back to the question what is more important or more impactful or more significant how others view me or how I view myself when I was completing my dissertation I did it on how African-American women in the U.S view success and how to attain it overwhelmingly and unsurprisingly they talked about the three F's formal support formal education excuse me family support and faith but what was surprising is they also talked about something that's called controlling images and so what are controlling images they are these caricatures that are that were developed for black women and they came out of the slavery era and they were designed to basically pigeonhole or solidify black women's position at the bottom of the social hierarchy they were a naming and a labeling and the participants in my study were overwhelmingly talking about their influence on their lives whether explicitly or implicitly they spoke about navigating these images sometimes their behavior was solely based on others or society's subscription to these images and so what does that look like for example one of my participants said you know at work I don't even correct people on the pronunciation of my name because I don't want to be seen as an angry black woman and then have to suffer the consequences of that of that perception another participant talked about not having time to be depressed because her family was depending on her to take care of them and then sadly one of the surprises that came from my dissertation was that many of my participants have been molested as girls and they talked about being really mindful of their bodies and attire to try to minimize the opportunity for harm now we know that racial stress and discrimination negatively impacts mental and physical health this is something that we all know we know that experiences of continued discrimination leads to stress increased blood pressure substance use and mental health issues such as depression and anxiety yet we continue to engage in behaviors that perpetuate a cycle of suffering and an expectation of toughing it out not only that these women were very aware of these images and these expectations that others had of them but also they also internalized those images for themselves think about that that the very thing on one hand I'm saying no this is not what I am on another I feel like this is who I am because I've been called it for so long and so I have to act accordingly and so although these conversations with these women happened years ago now right I'm not going to tell you how long because we don't tell our agents but years ago now it greatly impacted me because I'm still talking about it and I began to think about my own negotiation of these images and the things that came to mind was that you know there are many times where I would have been Justified to respond in anger but I didn't because I knew the consequences of that choice and how I would be perceived or for the academics in here the many times where I really wanted to say no I don't have time to be on that committee or do that additional task but instead I said yes out of fear of retaliation or how that know might impact my promotion or advancement in my career and so even me having this knowledge explicitly the very thing I was fighting against I realized I was actually my behaviors that I was choosing was actually in response to these things which brings me to the momentous moment that I actually want to talk about today so picture it it's 20 20. and a lot is going down right I'm sitting at home this one particular weekend with my dog homes and I can't turn off the TV I'm unable to mute my social media notifications and you know my mental health my emotional health is under attack I get to work on Monday virtually a course because at this point everything was virtual and I go into a meeting and my colleagues are talking about regular everyday things like laundry and cleaning the house and grading papers and I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone because I'm sitting at my screen immobile literally feeling trauma and my bones and I realized in that moment that this space will always render me invisible that no matter how well I spoke I was still invisible in this space that PhD that I'm so proud of did not make me more visible wearing suits did not make me more visible code switching it did not make me more visible and that realization was momentous now before I tell you about my response to what happened I first want to tell you a story it's a story about an elephant and a giraffe so I didn't write this story it's written by R Roosevelt Thomas and you can find it in the book building a house for diversity but it's one of my favorite stories that I use as a teaching tool and it goes a little something like this all right so there's this giraffe who's a woodworker and he's built this amazing Giraffe House so amazing that it got a national award it was featured in the newspaper and he is so proud of this house one day he's working in his garage and he looks out and he sees his friend the elephant the elephant is also a woodworker and he invites him over well the elephant tries to get in but the doorway is tall and then and he can only get his head in the door so the giraffe says lucky for you I have a latch here for my equipment he flipped it so the elephant could come in the house when the elephant gets in the house the giraffe has to take a call upstairs before he goes upstairs a giraffe says to the elephant make yourself at home cool before I continue I want you to think about what it means to make yourself at home so the elephant looks he sees an unfinished project and he says oh let me go check it out he takes a step and the floor starts to Crunch so then he says well I'll just go upstairs he goes to go up the steps and the steps crack which startled him so he jumps back falls into the wall and the wall crumbles giraffe comes down and says what happened and the elephant's response was I was trying to make myself at home the draft then looks around and says I see the problem and he starts to list things for the elephant to do he says you know go on a diet take some exercise classes and lose weight and take some ballet classes so that you're lighter on your feet so he lists all these things so that the elephant could be comfortable in his house and I think the elephant responds masterfully the elephant looks at the giraffe and says perhaps you're right but maybe a house built for a giraffe can never really work for an elephant and that sentiment describes exactly best sentiment describes exactly how I felt sitting in that moment right this my colleagues they were completely blind or oblivious to my experience because the house that was built was working working perfectly for them and interestingly enough I felt like I'd done the metaphorical exercise and diets and ballet classes and yet I still did not feel comfortable and so that means that every time I spoke up and said something to them it felt like I was trying to tear down their house I was cracking their stairs and crumbling their walls but not speaking up not saying anything toward my soul my very spirit so what did I decide to do I decided that who I am as I am In This Moment is enough I decided that I was going to be authentically unapologetically and unabashedly myself and now don't get me wrong I understand the price of uh the the toll that it takes to fight this battle on a regular basis I completely get that but by conforming I was fighting another battle that I wasn't okay with then I just simply wasn't okay with and I decided you know what I could just go and do work with my community but then that led to another issue because among the giraffes I'm an elephant but when I go back to my elephants I smell like a giraffe right and so the story that I told it doesn't address that conundrum right it doesn't talk about the cost of conformity the price of exceptionalism it does not talk about the stripping of identities that sometimes occur when you're trying to survive in these spaces it doesn't talk about how now there's a within group naming that happens where you are seen as out of touch or bougie right and that in your own community that too hurts and so the name by dissertation or the title of my dissertation was exceptional but not an exception how African-American women make their way and what did I do I decided to make my own way as so many people have done before me I decided to teach the way I wanted to teach right do research the way that I wanted to do research and I moved now to this model of research that's really emancipatory and I want to shout out my mentor Dr cerisi West olentuji and I also do what I call FUBU research for us by us and so I know I talked a lot today about my own experiences as a black woman from the hood with a PhD but I realized that this experience of navigating two spaces and not being fully accepted and either is not that unique of an experience I'm thinking about the Immigrant experience the biracial or multiracial experience I'm thinking about the black queer experience and so on and so forth and so I want to end my talk today in two ways first with some instructions all right and then finally I'm going to end with a personal one of my personal mantras but I'm going to ask you to do the personal Mantra with me so I'm telling you now so you can be ready all right so if you can relate to that experience I'm going to ask you to do three things these are the instructions reflect renounce rejoice engage in some self-reflection about who you are especially when people keep telling you who you are sometimes that takes a lot of work right I say to ask yourself well for non calls are Central questions who am I Am I who I say I am and am I all I ought to be and then I want you to renounce no matter how far you go and what you achieve there are going to be people that will try to name you and I want you to say to them you don't get to name me I want you to reject it now this is hard work but it is rewarding work and then finally rejoice my colleague Amira said the other day to be intentional about having a good day she said don't just expect a good day to happen to you and so I'm going to tell you the same thing about Joy don't just expect to find joy in the flowers and the trees and the grass right I want you to be intentional about creating Joy because Joy is a way of to resist right we need it to move forward all right so one of my personal mantras I want you to repeat after me are you ready are you ready all right that sounded better so it goes like this I look in the mirror and I say be mindful and be yourself do your job and do you have faith and have a drink reach back while moving forward see the moment and seize the moment and slaying is non-negotiable period [Music]