Welcome back to another episode of the Origination Point Podcast. This week, Bill de la Cruz continues his race conversations and dives a little bit deeper. Be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast and share it with your friends.

 

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Origination Point Podcast Ft. Eric Rowe

The origination point is connected to bias awareness and bias deconstruction. The origination point is the notion that all of our biases, implicit or explicit, have a point in time where they started, where we were given a narrative or had an experience with a small group of people that then we extrapolate to a larger group of people.

The reason why the origination point is so important is because that is the point of healing and understanding. As we are deconstructing and making our biases more conscious, the origination point supports us in understanding where they came from and healing any emotional impacts that they are having in our lives. Sit back, open your mind, open your heart, and let’s see if we can find your origination points to bias.

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For those of you who have been engaged in our sessions, you know that part of our role here in this show is to bring up topics of the day, break them down, and talk about them from a real perspective. To get you all to start to think about what’s the origin point of all of these topics, we’re going to jump into another episode in our race series where, if you’ve been reading, I’ve been introducing concepts around race. The first one we did was about the myth of race, and then talked a little bit about youth, race, and how that’s playing out in our communities and country.

I have a special friend and guest, Eric, who’s going to go a little bit deeper and have a conversation with me about how he sees race playing out not only in our country and community, but in our schools and the conversations, especially. Why are people afraid to have this conversation? I think we’re almost paralyzed in the race conversation. Forbid us if we happen to say the wrong thing and have a misstep or a blind spot. People jump all over us as if we’re horrible people because we have a misstep. We’re going to jump into a conversation. Eric, welcome. It’s great to see you. I’ll let you introduce yourself and tell our readers a little bit about what you did.

I’m glad to be here. Thank you for having me. My name is Eric. I am in education. I call it maybe working with children, youth, and adults. This is a human endeavor. I’m the Executive Director of Empower Community High School, living on purpose and calling right now. I’m an educator for sure, but I’ve taken on the word of designer and builder.

Knowing you, that’s a great identity for you because I’ve always known you to be a designer and builder. Not everybody likes to be a builder. I love to take that all with a grain of salt. It’s great to have you here. Here’s my experience, and I’d love to know yours. I’m going to pose a question to you. I get to travel across the country. Race is the most fear-laden conversation in our country. The reason I think it is is because we approach it from this mindset of, “Are you a racist?”

No matter what color the room is, the conversation is approaching this narrative or mindset about like, “Are you a racist? Who’s the racist in the room?” because we’re going to talk about racism. I found that to be a limiting conversation. What I’ve intentionally reframed that to now is tell me how race has impacted you.

One is a conversation that we’re looking for the racist, and it’s limiting because if people don’t meet your expectations, then you’re going to have to make stories about them. One is more inquisitive, where I’m asking you to tell me how race is impacted you because I believe no matter what color you are, you have been impacted by race.

Race is a social construct. It was created by a group of theoreticians, people who will do research, theory and scientists, as far back as the 1400s, where they looked at skull size and said based on the shape of your skull that you’re less than, and it was typically people of color who were less than. White people whose skull development was the right size for that level of perfection. I’d love to get your thoughts on that.

It is the irony that idea of the concept of fake science and phrenology confirms our biases about people who don’t look like us. I like that question. What’s been the impact? You can talk about that more, but I think starting with that question helps folks maybe center back on the self. In my experience, that’s where the work has to start. What I’ve experienced and known is this. I walk in this world as a Black man. Other people’s perceptions or stereotypes about Black men have followed me since I was a young child. I was almost placed in special ed when my parents were divorced. You remember the term latchkey kid.

I was one of those. I was a latch window kid because I had to jump the window sometimes to escape.

In all of those ideas that I was going to be angry, there was going to be depression, or I was going to decline in my grades, and in all these other things, assumptions were made. It took Mrs. Anderson way back in third grade. She signed me up and had me tested for gifted and talented. Even now, that narrative is familiar to me. It’s showing up in many ways. If I think about my career in education, early on, I internalized a lot of that.

I have some type of positional power as a dean, assistant principal or principal. It took another person to ask me a similar question you have like, “What do you see? What do you notice?” I was the AP as a Black man following things by the book and suspending a lot of Black boys. Whether it was respectability politics or they didn’t look like everybody else, they were maybe a little too loud, or the teachers were complaining about the students and I needed to do something about it, it took someone getting me to ask me a similar question like, “What do you see? What’s happening for me with some of these decisions that you’re making?” I like the question because you always have to start with yourself first.

You bring up a number of things that we can go into. One is what we were talking about earlier around how we become systematized. That story about how you were doing things by the book and suspending more Black kids is a perfect example of it doesn’t matter what your racial background is, to go along in a system that wasn’t designed for the diversity that we have nowadays means that you have to continue to perpetuate bias policies and practices that we know are hurting kids. At the same time, recognize that that doesn’t make you a bad person because you’re doing that.

It’s interesting because for the readers who don’t know, Black males across the country in K-12 education are over-referred to discipline 4 to 6 times for discipline and suspension as White boys for exactly the same behavior. We’re talking about those low-level, disrespectful, disruptive behaviors. The only difference in what they’re doing is their race. I’m curious how you would answer this question. When people see or meet you, do you think overall they see you as a person or as a Black man? What is the difference?

It depends. I’m going to show up. Black is my identity, no matter what. That’s me. That’s how I’m showing up. It does depend. I had a teacher coach one time say this, “I see you as a person,” and dismissing some other aspects about that. There are others who, on the other hand, see me as a Black male, but it’s also this idea of like, “You can go talk to the Black kids.” Think about it. I have to show up.

 

I had to learn how to do this to show up as my authentic self because in the systems that I’ve been in K-12 education of the Black male, here are the choices, “We’re not going to give you a say at the table. You’ll have some authority and autonomy but not really.” You’re in this role but you can’t really make decisions and you have to report to someone else.

The other role that you get pigeonholed in is, “Here’s the other choice. We need you to handle all of the discipline problems but purely discipline problems with Black children because that’s how we see you.” Not maybe skilled at the will and capacity to lead, but we still have this expectation that you’re going to perform some magic, and all alone, deal with discipline issues and culture in our building or be tasked with the work of doing equity work solo with unrealistic outcomes and no help.

That’s an interesting dichotomy that you bring up because I work coaching a Black teacher who was in a predominantly White school who said, “I get tired because the White teachers send all the Black kids to me to discipline. I do it because I want them to understand that they have to have good behavior. There’s an impact when you don’t. It makes it so that not only am I doing the teaching but also the disciplining.” She burned out and ended up leaving school. All these kids lost a great Black teacher role model.

The White teachers didn’t have to get pushed to start to think about, “Why don’t I have a relationship with this student?” Essentially, when we’re talking about behavior and accountability, we’re talking about whether you have the relationship to hold them accountable and hold them to high expectations because they know you care about them, or you don’t care to learn that because they don’t reflect you. I’m not sure why it is for some people.

What we miss sometimes is being in those situations long-term has a toll. It takes a toll on you emotionally, physically, and mentally. Good for that teacher for choosing themselves. I’m going to remove myself from that situation because if affirmation, respect, and I would even say love are not on the table for you professionally in that space, you should probably think about getting out of that space.

This is the hard part. I’ll go back to me. I tended to say, “I’m just going to work harder.” No matter what the assignment or responsibility was, as impossible as it may seem, as stressed out as I was, I said, “This is the work. This is what I’m going to take on and carry and do.” It finally caught up to me physically. My stress started having a physical impact on me. I’ll be speaking for me. In my experience, I didn’t know another way. I knew that this was the reality that we were in. I don’t have a lot of efficacy to change this environment that I’m in.

I’m going to work harder and work around it. Subconsciously, I knew it. That’s impossible and crazy. There’s a lot I began to ignore and I was doing the job. I had to come out of there because there were some real physical impacts on me. I also had to find my voice to bring my whole self into the building. I had to unlearn like, “What part of my identity am I going to drop off today before I walk across this threshold?” That’s a weight. That’s heavy and it is hard.

These are recent lessons for me. I’m not talking like I figured it out at 25. No. I’m not silencing part of the way I am or how I show up in space. I’m going to advocate for myself and what I may need. I’m going to be my authentic self. It looks different in context, but I’m still me. I can lead, teach, mentor and coach in a way that’s much freer but also holds that same space for others.

It’s interesting because in a lot of organizations now across the country, people are talking about this whole idea of having a sense of belonging versus othering. Belonging is what you described. It’s the idea that I can be a part of this organization, church or community group without having to give up a part of myself to do so. Instead of consciously thinking about, “What do I leave at the door before I come in?” It’s, “What am I going to bring with me that is an indicator of my more authentic self?”

Yet, we don’t have those conversations, especially in the educational space, because we don’t have time. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier about becoming systematized, and not only having some of the detrimental effects that you talked about in terms of physical and mental, I think also creative things as well. I’ll tell you about my story of working in Denver Public Schools for almost twelve years. When I left, it made me realize all of a sudden that I had almost lost my creativity. Here’s how I found out that I lost it.

I spent twenty years in the construction trades, where I always had to think about, “How am I going to solve this?” I have to think creatively out of the box sometimes to get something done, get it on time and on budget. When I left DPS, I bought a house. It needed some remodeling. I realized, that all of a sudden, that whole side of my brain was gone because I was looking at this project that I had to not only deconstruct, I had to measure and rebuild. I’m going, “How do I do this?”

I was like, “Where did that part of me go?” I thought back over the previous five years and one of the things that happened pretty repeatedly in those last 4 or 5 years was I was always asked to create an equity strategic plan. I was asked, “What kind of training and development would you do in a district?” Every year I said the same thing, foundational bias, conflict transformation bias, and my strategic plan to one of my supervisors. I’d be excited to hear what the leadership team said, and I didn’t hear a word for months and then I’d ask, “They’re still looking at it.”

The next year would come around finally, after year three, I took the exact same plan and changed the dates on it because I knew that nobody either would read it or would come back. I stopped thinking out of the box after that because I thought, “If it’s not valued, why should I do that?” That’s what I said, “I’m going to shift into doing my work where I feel that it’s of value.” I did it in schools and did it with leaders that resonated with it.

I think about all the people and all the organizations across the country, both in for-profit, non-profit, hospitals, schools, or wherever. How many people have, at this point where we are in this world, lost their creativity and their drive to think out of the box, not only because of the systems but because of the fear of having these conversations? I’m curious, from your perspective, how do you see this fear across our country, permeating the relationships that we have with each other, especially around this race conversation or thinking out of the box?

The fear has stuck. I don’t want to say the wrong thing or I don’t want to maybe unpack some of my biases or the stuff that I’m addressing. Think about some of the languages we’re using right now with one another. You’re woke or anti-woke. Anti-racist or racist. On some level, I’m talking about the research, I think a lot of the talk right now is either/or.

 

I appreciate all that researchers do and yet it’s been presented in this way. As you said, either you are or you aren’t. I’ve seen so much gray area and nuance.

I remember a friend of mine from college called me up. He has a diversity role. He wanted me to do a session. You talked about belonging. I like that a lot of other people dipped into Susie Wise’s book from Stanford D school called Designing For Belonging. That was the topic, but there’s a group of architects and engineers. You talk about that creative side. This is where that question about self comes up. I showed a couple of small clips from TED Talks.

One was by a Black architect. He talked about his grandmother’s house in Philly and how those houses were designed. At this point, the house didn’t fit his grandma anymore because grandma couldn’t get up the 30 stairs to get from the first floor. Everything was narrow and dark. I push them on to think about this question. As you come in and design, they don’t take community input. They don’t take time to ask the question of like, “How did you live? How are you going to potentially use this space?”

For the contractors who paid them to come to design this, there are some design specs that they’re working from, “We need a bedroom that’s 12×12. We need a bathroom that’s 8×8.” How are people going to be using and living in the space? You can’t get that data until you go ask people. What struck them was that there were a lot of questions that were coming up for them as they were designing spaces, because they started thinking about, able-bodied or not, how they use it and maneuver within these spaces in the community they build.

Affordability of that space and the materials that they even use. There were questions that they had, a one-size-fits-all, the blueprint that they were working from. It renders silent the people who are eventually going to be using that space. We’ve got to start asking each other and getting past that fear to ask each other some real questions about who we are, how we show up in space, and how we can reconnect.

Some of this is related to the pandemic, but it’s not. I think we have been disconnected for a long time. I think throwing everything on the pandemic is easy at this point right now. That’s what was happening already. It exacerbated it and maybe brought some things to light. It’s a hard space to be in. How do you ask folks to reconnect with one another when largely we had this moment in time where we were isolated?

What I see is we have to re-humanize ourselves to each other and stop playing into the politics of division. I don’t know how else to say it because I think that also plays a role in terms of how we see each other as the other instead of part of our community. The Black-Brown divide is a great example. I’ll tell you a secret. Anyone who’s lived in Denver for any period of time knows that there’s a pretty big division between the Latino, Mexican, that whole community, and the Black community. It’s no different than what we saw in Los Angeles.

We have to re-humanize ourselves to each other and stop playing into the politics of division. Share on X

They’re saying, “What happened to the Black and Brown working together?” It plays into the larger structure of politics for us to fight with each other. I’m a Latino. You’re a Black man. On the stereotype, we shouldn’t even be in a conversation together because we’re fighting against each other versus working together. I’m curious how you see that whole pattern playing out not just in Denver, but I think we see it across the country. It plays into the people in power, your majority White men, for us to fight for each other because we’ll never come together.

I’m going to get my quotes from Fannie Lou Hamer, “If everybody isn’t free, we all are not free.” We are tied together in this fight. Until we recognize that, we’re going to stay at odds. I found it interesting in that situation in California. There was a lot of uproar with the words they were using, the racial slurs. I get it, but let’s be very clear. They were talking about marginalizing the political gains, spoils, or access of the Black community in California to benefit Latino and Hispanic voters and community. That’s deep. That’s hard. Part of it is you’re right. That is also a symptom of this system where there has to be a winner and a loser. We don’t talk about collectivism and community, even though those are Black, Brown, and indigenous cultural practices.

We are tied together in this fight. Until we recognize that, we're going to stay at odds. Share on X

As we become systematized to individuals, even as collectivist ancestral heritage, the whole system that we all live in is about me, “What’s in it for me?”

I had a friend remind me of that words in COFA. I’d like to go back and reclaim. It’s not the conversation or self-reflection examination. The other part of it has to be, “What do we need to go back and reclaim? What are the practices in our systems that we need to remind ourselves that exist?” I think literally, pun intended, a lot of the practices that I see in K-12 education, whether you talk about a protocol, an icebreaker, or a system, a lot of it has been whitewashed. We’re doing land acknowledgments that don’t have any meaning. We’re doing libation ceremonies, but we don’t call it that because that’s a little too cultural. We need to make it safe for everybody. We’ll call it something different that is bland and devoid of any type of cultural connection to indigenous practices.

It’s interesting because I often wonder, is that more performative or is it because prior to George Floyd, nobody had DEI directors or equity statements? After he was murdered, and people couldn’t ignore it, now everybody wanted to hire somebody to be their DEI person and create an equity statement, “Let’s do land acknowledgments as well.” The real understanding of why we’re doing it, for some White folks, it was taking away their historical context or some slight towards them.

For some native people, it was not done in a way that was honoring. It was more something that people did. You could look at equity statements the same way and wonder, “How did we get here? How do we move forward? Why did it take a Black man being murdered in front of our eyes for people to finally realize that what we’re talking about with racial disparities, gender disparities, people with disability disparities?

Put any identity you want. They are real. I wonder how much has been accomplished through the last few years since George Floyd’s murder and since all of this work has been done in our country now. I don’t know. It’s an interesting research topic to look at in terms of what’s changed with all of this work that we’re doing.

A lot of the response to George Floyd’s murder was performative. For a moment in that summer of 2020, it felt like there was this collective energy and move. I don’t know what happened or when it happened, but it slowly dissipated. At that moment, I felt hopeful. His murder was tragic and senseless, and he did not have to die.

 

It would be some type of catalyst to motivate us because it was right there in front of us. We were all isolated in our homes. On TV, we watched a man murdered by the state police. There was no denying that there was no one needed to see the first three minutes of the video. I need to see the last one, it was right there. I felt hopeful that maybe this time would be different, therefore could not unsee that moment happening and unfolding, and then it went away.

It’s almost like we’ve become normalized and complacent with these things. I refuse to do that. I can’t live a life where I’m going to say, “It’s normal that we have school shootings every other week. Let’s get over it. It’s normal that people are being disparaged and canceled out because they say something that other people label as wrong for whatever reason.” I’m not going to live that way. This is not my version of normal. I don’t know what normal is, but I don’t believe it’s what I meant.

I realized I had stopped dreaming. You stay stuck in this place of we are back to where we are. Things are back to normal again. Normal was in an equitable sort of hard place to be in. I had to reset myself and say, “Do I want to stay in this place, in this cycle or I can’t do anything,” to then think about, “What if we can think and dream a little bit deeper about what could be like to talk possibilities again?”

Leaning into some spaces with other folks collectively to do that dreaming, non-isolated but connected to other folks and to some real work and outcomes and manifest that. It is possible. We become systematized. We become numb because the events keep happening. It’s almost like, “Are things ever going to change?”

I have a good friend. She was telling me about a prophetic thing that she’s aware of, with some work that she does and said that we’re in this time of division. This divisiveness is part of our evolution. We have a choice. We can either go down this path and stay divided or become connected. That’s a choice we’re all going to have to make.

You’re pretty quick because you can’t live in ambiguity and jump from one side to the other, “Today, I’m going to trash you. Tomorrow, I’m going to call you my friend,” that we have to do one or the other. That’s why I’m choosing to have these conversations and to do this work in the way that I’m doing this because I’m not going to play on the divisive side. I’ve lived through a good portion of my life like that and I know how hurtful it was.

Jamila Dugan wrote a nice piece. There are a lot of jewels in it. She and Shane Safir co-authored Street Data. Her piece is about the idea of returning the social dreaming. Instead of going back to normal in the systems we have, particularly in education, still have that hope that this pause to reflects, how do we take advantage of this moment to maybe design and dream for something different? Where can it thrive? I want to lean into those spaces with other folks because, you’re right, the divisive side of that isn’t going to move us forward.

There’s got to be some space. I had the gift and benefit of my brother, and my friend pulled me aside when I was stuck, and I’ve been systematized to pause and reflect on what I saw in the harmful story, but he did that in love. He didn’t call me out and be like, “You are internally oppressed. You are being real racist right now.” He loves me enough to pull me aside and be like, “Let me tell you something. What do you see? Let’s talk about it.” On the other side of that is what could our culture look like if this was different? What could that work be instead of you putting this energy and time into suspending students every day?

There is a lot to talk about. The last couple of questions I have is what are you hopeful for? What do you want to do and what do you think others should do to move us through this divisive time that we’re all experiencing now in the world?

I’m speaking to myself here too. I would recommend to take some time to heal because trauma is real. Those experiences are real. That did happen to you. Before you start going in and thinking like, “I’m going to start dreaming. I’m going to do this renewal work. I’m going to have joy.” Be easy on yourself but start doing the real work of healing and not staying in that in that place of trauma. That’s going to look different for each one of us because it’s fair to say that, particularly in K-12 spaces and for Black and Brown folks, it is not safe in all spaces. Where do you find that opportunity where you can be your authentic self? What are those circles that you can lean into? What are those activities, those things and passions that you have that you can lean into where you can find joy again?

 

I might not know the answer. Is that the same that you would like to see other people do as well?

Yes, because it’s needed. We’ve been there. For those who have been in education for a while, I think we may realize that we have been bleeding all over each other in these cases. Causing harm, in some cases, to one another in these spaces. That has an impact. How can we think about something different, but how do we get well? How do we heal from something that’s been done?

That’s a big question for us and the readers. How do we heal? How do we stop seeing each other as the other and realize that whether we live across the street or planet, we’re all in community together? Somehow, we have to circle back to that. Two things that I learned a long time ago from a facilitator who came to Boulder to do some work with us. She said, “If you remember these two things, you’ll be successful in your work with others and in your own work.”

Those two things were everybody has a good heart and everyone deserves to be trusted. My hope is that we can get to that. I appreciate your willingness to be in conversation with me, to share some of your thoughts, experiences, and insights about race and being systematized, healing, and the impacts of trauma. We’ve covered a lot of topics. I’ll look forward to more conversations. Any last pearls you’d like to share with our readers?

Kudos because you’ve been doing this for a while, but it’s always great to connect with you.

For everybody out there, this is another series on the race conversation, and I guess I’m going to keep adding to it, and also on how we become more connected. At a certain point, I’m going to stop talking about the obvious, which everybody knows we live in a divisive world. We’ve got wars and all kinds of things happening that we could talk about that are creating division. It’s time for us to start to shift over to talk about how we create more belonging and more connectedness. Eric, thanks for being our guest.

For all of the readers, if this is inspiring to you, share, subscribe, and you can comment at Contact@DeLaCruzSolutions.com. We’d love to know your feedback. If you have a compelling story that you would like to get on and share on our show, reach out and let me know. Thanks, everybody. Take care. Remember to keep growing.

 

Important Link

• Eric Rowe
• Designing For Belonging
• Street Data
• Contact@DeLaCruzSolutions.com
• @Bill.DeLaCruz – TikTok
• @BilldelaC – Twitter
• @BilldelaC – Instagram