Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Conference 

Text on screen: Navigating an Unclear Path Together, DEI in 2024, #WebsterDEI

Webster University logo

[Artwork on screen is three arrows pointing upward.]

Flewellen: I'm Vincent Flewellen, Associate Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer here at Webster University. I use he/him and his pronouns. It's a pleasure to welcome each of you attending in person, as well as our friends who are virtually joining us, but we still have that technical difficulty that I mentioned earlier so we're going to move on.

And we have a recording, and we will share it out with them later. Over the next two days, we encourage you to share your insights and moments and inspirations through your social media platforms and use the #WebsterDEI. We look forward to engaging in conversation with you. Before we begin, I would like to extend our greatest gratitude to our sponsors who share our vision for inclusive excellence, as well as sustainable and significant community-wide transformation. Their support and investment allow us to present this conference completely free of charge, including admission, parking, refreshments, program books, closed captioning and digital resources. Not only does their generosity allow us to provide tonight's opening keynote session and tomorrow sessions free of charge, but it also allows us to present the entire conference virtually, so that thousands of participants across the globe, from more than 20 countries, including the United States, can participate and share in these critical conversations.

Our presenting sponsor is INUNI, a division of Global University Systems. Our visionary sponsor is Reassurance Group of America, Incorporated. Our advocate sponsors are BJC Healthcare and Schnucks. Our sponsors are Brown and Crouppen, Signa Health Care, Delta Dental, Lockton and Nestle Purina. Our print media sponsor is the St. Louis American, and our radio media sponsor is St. Louis Public Radio. Please join me in welcoming activist, minister, philanthropist and my pastor and good friend, Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson.

[Applause]

[Stage with two chairs and podium with the Webster University logo background.]

Wilson: Good evening. Good evening. It is good to be here. I'm grateful to the president, the chancellor, to my dear friend, Vincent Flewellen for the invitation and, mostly, for not being afraid to say that he was my friend. These are times and work in which solidarity, friendship, joy and laughter together are critically important, so I'm glad to be able to be back here in St. Louis to enjoy some of that on a block that I know a little bit about, having gotten my master of Divinity right across the street. Probably illegally parked on this campus a few times, and I trust that nobody's coming after me, ‘cuz I've changed my license plate since the last time I did that. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to have this extended conversation, and I say that to recognizing and situating ourselves in the context of a nine-year conversation that is a response to the voices of young people from 10 years ago.

So I want to take that seriously as a point of departure for conversation, and I usually get really creative in sermonic or keynote moments. I am reminded this is a keynote moment not a sermonic moment with titles, but I think the best I've come up with in the context of having this conversation about DEI today is run it back, So I'm going to use for reflection for conversation today the topic run, run it back now while this is a keynote. I remember it's a keynote, but I'm a preacher too, so there's a moment, there are moments here where I will expect to hear from people. It'll help me keep my time and stay focused. Is that all right?

See y'all why we got to practice this thing. Is that, is that all right? All right, All right I say run it back. And I want to begin this conversation about DEI and perhaps help to set up the conversations for tomorrow by seeking to disentangle some elements that we have come to entangle in a way that give people political cover and cause us some difficulty with response. So first I want to be a little more precise in our analysis so that we might have a focused response in a moment that calls for us to move and to act as much as we speak. In this moment we have come in the context of the pandemic perhaps because of the fog of it or because we have a date certain for a Supreme Court decision, we have come to conflate at least three streams of conversation that are related to one another but are not the same thing. Somebody say: It's not the same.

Crowd: It’s not the same.

Wilson: In the context of the pandemic because of the United States, in particular, and the West's work more broadly to undermine and displace children and youth rights, children and youth voice with parents voice most especially in the argents over the UN convention, of the rights of the child that occurred when I was a child in middle school, we have come to understand parents’ rights as an appropriate placeholder and appropriate voice in public conversations especially ones related to education for children, the challenge in that of course is that we undermine the whole han dignity of children and youth themselves as if they cannot speak for themselves in matters that are related to them. That may not sound like a problem to you until I say Moms for Liberty.

Moms for Liberty is that group who on a parents’ rights platform as designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group went into and guided even without their own children in the school districts, went into school districts across the country and argued against teaching relevant history in those schools, argued against social, emotional wellness for those students argued that those young people did not need to be vaccinated from Covid-19. On a parents’ rights platform, we had people use the term critical race theory in appropriately to speak of accurate history and we experienced that together over the course of 2020 and 2021. And it has come to be informing our conversation because it evolved, of course, into stories about the banning of books, the stripping of history from schools. And while public schools as a location of conflict and a location of conversation have come to be, to have come to inform our dialogue about accurate history, about diversity, equity and inclusion. We see one stream that came at one particular time in the location of schools, particularly K-12 public schools, to inform a dialogue about DEI.

And often when we say DEI, that's what some people are thinking about. But that's not the only thing in 2020. We began to see public response to public pressure, because, because of the police killing of George Floyd many philanthropies, corporations other institutions, any institution that had an institutional expression thought they had to say something. They felt public pressure to be on the record in the moment and they also began to invest in roles newly created roles, roles of subversion within institutions attached to diversity equity and inclusion, often with chief in the title to make it feel really important even if these individuals didn't have budgets, even if they didn't have other staff, even if they were set up for failure by being placed within institution that didn't want diversity, equity or inclusion.

In the interest of responding to external and public pressures, these institutions got themselves on the record, hired some people, gave them a high title gave them a few resources and gave them the challenge of changing 100 years of institutional exclusion, normalization of whiteness, and challenges that marginalize students, faculty and staff in a few years. And in June, very important CNBC reporting, New York Times reporting in June of 2023, after these public declarations that started midyear in 2020 — there were reports of these jobs being eliminated, of people being removed from these historic positions and a drawback in these corporate and institutional settings from the publicly declared commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion that came in 2020. I've not talked at all yet about the money that was promised. I've not spoken at all about the philanthropic commitments, of those that lack significant accountability.

I won't even get into those numbers, frankly because we can't number those numbers. The math “ain't mathing,” as they say. The public declarations that were made in 2020 were beginning to be rolled back in these jobs, being pulled back from our most public institutions and our largest corporations by June of 2023. This is important. It is important because that second strand if the first strand had to do with culturally relevant pedagogy and the argent of parents’ rights to oversee education in the context of public schools that are K through 12 is one strand of what people think about when they consider DEI. This second strand finds its location in large corporate and institutional settings. It is manifested by the market's response to public pressure and it didn't just include corporate settings, it included all other institutional philanthropic and, yes, even some higher education institutions through the creation of these kinds of roles but I'll say broadly that this is from a locational standpoint — this is corporate response.

If the first is school, the second is corporate. If the first is about culturally relevant pedagogy, then the second is really about institutional commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion as manifested by high-level staff, and a commitment of institutional resources.

Y'all still with me?

So then we find ourselves at a third strand that I locate very intentionally after June, of 2023, because on June 29, the end of the month June 29, 2023, we began to see another expression, because of the work of the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision, began to articulate what came to be understood, what came to be understood, what came to be understood as a roll back of any race-based, consideration, for admission within these universities for admissions. I say ‘came to be understood’ because Faith Sandler is sitting in the room from the Scholarship Foundation of St Louis. Came to be understood because much of the conversation, is informed by people who are not as committed to this as Faith, and who have not fully read what is happening there. Who have not studied the realities of what is said in that particular decision have not considered that the University of California Davis had already come to a resolution to this particular challenge because they dealt with the issue many years before and so this response to the June 29, 2023, Supreme Court decision that some people say stripped all commitments or abilities to make affirmative steps or engage affirmative action in order to ensure that there is diversity of thought and perspective in classrooms is another strand. Located primarily having its impact at higher institutions of higher education because, of course, that U.S. Supreme Court cases, had to do with Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

There are at least three things from three different settings that people tend to be talking about when it come to a conversation about DEI in this particular moment, in our particular context and it's important for us to name all three in order to focus our conversation and have a conversation about the specifics. So that we may perform actions that are impactful. Is that all right?

And so I want to name them. One location that's generally in schools that is about culturally relevant pedagogy where we've seen an argent based upon parents’ rights to push back that followed largely chronologically even though there is overlap here to the reporting on the pull back of corporate commitments around DEI that started before. Let the church say before that started, before the US Supreme Court decision and that may be given cover by the US Supreme Court decision This third strand I locate primarily with higher education institutions. I do that because of the case itself and I do it because of what I want to do next. No matter how we come to this conversation across the board. These three strands of conversation that we've come to blend, and I am them so that you can tease them out over the course of the varying panels that you'll be a part of tomorrow, we have a prevailing voice that has become even more controversial, that has guided the course of this conversation and people's definitions about diversity, equity and inclusion over the course of the last decade.

That voice would be one of an Ibram Kendi. I named Ibram Kendi because I want to lift his work that came before this decade of engagement, under another name and point people, perhaps, to this scholarship, to inform what I think would be a more effective response. When known as Ibram H. Rogers in 2012, Ibram Kendi produced, produced for the world a book entitled, “The Black Campus Movement” talking about black students and the racial reconstruction of higher education between the years 1965 and 1972. Pause, stop. Why'd you make that leap? I made that leap because it's Black History Month. I know it's a DEI conference. I know there are other expressions that we will seek to affirm. I'm standing in the particularity of my own Blackness. I'm standing in the context of a space in place that has come to transform conversations about the black freedom struggle 10 years after the killing of a black boy who was 18 years old. I stand in a context where a mobilization of thousands of citizens in this community over the course of a year catalyzed and topped off the largest mobilization for civil rights and social justice in America since the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

I stand in this because I believe there is something about the brilliance of the blackness that shows up on campuses across the nation that has something to say. I also say it because it's Black History Month. And when this was about Negro History Week, Carter G. Woodson made an impressive claim. He suggested in 1926, he began this work on Feb. 7, 1926, he expressed in that context of lynching, many would say Aug. 9, 2014, was a lynching the, the context of lynching he suggested that this crusade was larger than lynching. This work of African-American history and its teaching was larger than the crusades against lynching because there would be no lynching in our society, perhaps, no police killing in our society, perhaps no reputational lynching of Harvard University presidents in our society if the lynching did not begin in the classroom, and so.

[Applause]

Wilson: And so I come to suggest that part of the challenge with these three strands of the conversation about DEI is that we have not stopped by the way of the place where we could have stopped it in the first place, in the classroom. I come to suggest that one of the reasons why the affirmative action debate is typified in the U.S. Supreme Court case is because those who were and those who perhaps are enemies of having the realities or the fullness of hanity affirmed on our campuses, in our institutions and in our schools, they may not make good han judgment about our collectivity. But they make very good political decisions with precision, and they understood that universities were the appropriate grounds upon which to advance upon multicultural expressions. They were the appropriate ground upon which to gain political points by using others particularity, and humanity. And we perhaps should learn that these are grounds that need to be protected, as well.

And so because I believe in the brilliance of young Black students and students, in general, and because I am informed by this perspective in history in Carter G. Woodson. Because I happen to be talking to you in Black History Month and having to be a Black dude, I want to consider that the fulcr point between these K-12 schools that are impacted by people who are not always even parents. Declaring that we don't need to teach history. And the corporations that will hire, generally, black women into made-up roles, to do their bidding for a few years and then send them on their way. Set them up for failure in the context of corporations and philanthropies to do a job that they know they didn't want done in the first place. That between these two places we find institutions of higher education where we have responsibility for setting the standards for how we will admit the students who come to us from K12 public schools. And where we have the ability to inform the pipeline of corporate figures who will be making those decisions for our largest institutions. We no longer need to make the case.

I'm, I'm just going to tell you all a few things. I'm, I'm, I'm finish the talk but, you no longer need to make the case that it is in the beneficial interest of the institutions to be diverse. You no longer need to make the business case, the policy link, good St Louis. And Angela Glover Blackwell, founder of Policy Link, made the case a long time ago that equity was the superior business imperative. You no longer need to make the case that if a company wants to sell their product, then they need a staff, they need an administration, they need a team that actually looks like the community they want to sell it to. The reality is these things were proven long time ago. If anybody don't believe that diversity is in the best interest of their institution, in their corporation or their classroom today, if they won’t to admit that to you today — they don't want to believe it, don't waste time on trying to make an intellectual and rational argent on someone who's not a legitimate partner. See for what is in front of you.

A commitment to a particular political perspective, or see for what is in front of you a commitment to the aggregation of authority and/or privilege within the context of a people who are becoming, or who are already a part of the global minority. See what is in front of you, a political stance. Not a place to make a rational argent. I'm just suggesting you don't waste your time.

[Applause]

Wilson: Rather what I want to suggest you do based upon the things that I trust the institutions that have informed me, and maybe I should say something about that and how I come to this that there is an approach that may be more effective to sustain the transformation that we desire in our institutions, if we understand and we find ourselves on a moment that individuals will use the courts or other minoritized prospect or other institutions that minority certain perspectives, but center them at the same time. In order to sustain the status quo, then maybe you should, we should, I should use a different approach to trying to impact and effectuate the change that we want in society. Maybe these settings are not the ones we need to use. How did I come to this before I begin to lay some things I want to argue, you, I well, I want to, I want to confess. This is this school is founded by nuns, right? OK, sisters, I, I can confess, I can confess I want to confess that it's not just that I work for the Children's Defense Fund. I'm not here trying to do the institution's business but 10 years ago in this community, I was radicalized by young people.

I want to confess that I was one of those people Gen Xer that I am, went to his historically black college or university raised in the context of the black church supported and affirmed by a black mama. Black mama's run the world. You do understand this, right? That in order to get ahead, I had to learn to get along. That I had to learn to, excuse the terminology for those who ain't heard it before, ‘outwhite white folks.’ I remember sitting in settings with my philanthropic colleagues I already got into. . I was in my third position being a CEO. One of my white colleagues told me, ‘You know, you don't have to wear a suit in a tie all the time.’ I said, No, you don't have to wear a suit in a tie all the time. I do.

[Applause]

Wilson: After having come through a historically black college where I had a required course in public speaking, after being taught to articulate by Dr. Shirley Harris, a remarkably courageous and counterintuitive and countercultural Doctorate in Education, who decided she would teach kindergarten. Learning how to articulate my ending sounds in kindergarten because I had to be able to speak in a certain way. Then going through a historically black college with a required public speaking course, with a required unit on code switching. Informed with this perspective, being sent forth into the world learning to learning elocution and public settings and including the NAACP oratorical competition on my campus. Saying my Easter speeches at Beth Eden, the Union Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas.

Having all the appropriate marks of how to impress people with how much I could accommodate to a culture that was frankly killing me every moment. Having all of those and having advanced in that context, it was here in this community, in these streets where these young people finding sufficiency in the hue of their own skin and the beauty of their own humanity. Finding resistance in their own capacity to stand against institutions and expressions that literally tried to take their lives and in some cases did.

Standing among them, I was radicalized. It became real hard to sit in meetings with people talking about the problem and benefiting from the fact that there was no solution at the time. It became really hard to go to philanthropic conferences where people talked about poverty and talked about violence and pulled out of the sessions to go get a nice massage. Because we're at such a nice resort. To talk about the intractable issues of our day. That I have to tell you before I suggest the solution that I want to offer that I have been radicalized by young people and I trust them. I believe in them. I have a sense that there is something about them that. They, they have in them as James Bevel and Diane Nash convinced Martin King, in Birmingham in 1963. They have implicit and embedded in them a yearning for freedom that God placed inside them. And that the future of the struggle is based upon them. And so I'm, I'm biased y'all. I'm trying to own my bias. I'm trying to be intellectually and emotionally honest. Is that all right?

With all of those things in mind, I don't believe market forces could ever resolve our challenges or sustain a movement for diversity, equity and inclusion. With all of those things in mind, I believe the market will find a way to commodify and to certify and to have people credentialed in order to do this work even if they really, if we don't know really what the field is, such that we can't credential or shouldn't credential anybody in this work. I'm sorry I have been challenged by the sitting in institutional settings and seeing people without any perspective in HR or any legal background or any work among people who have been marginalized, advanced into these roles and they trusted to advance an issue that they've not worked out in for themselves and in themselves.

And so I'm just, I'm going to offer that I don't, I ain't got a whole lot of time for a lot of these professionals, these markets. I've told you that I believe the institutions of higher education are the most critical places to do this work. I've told you that I believe that those who want to roll back DEI, those who want to cause a chilling effect upon people who are committed to the work want to stop it here in the higher educational institutions and I, I've told you that not just because I'm reading what somebody else is doing, but because of where I see the resource. I told y'all I was biased.

I see in college-age, young people and students across the country the greatest resource for a sustained transformation for diversity, equity and inclusion, the greatest resource that we have as a nation. And I say this based upon the work of affirmation of the Ibram H. Rogers. When he came to study the black campus movement between 1965 and 1972 what Ibram was doing in, this work published in 2012, what he was pulling together, he was first making distinction as I've done before, some varying movements that were happening at the time that people conflated. People conflated the black power movement, and the civil rights movement and the student movement broadly into a thing they call the black student movement. He sought to disentangle them and speak specifically to the black campus movement.

That expression of young people on more than a thousand campuses over seven- to eight-year period predominantly white institutions and historically black institutions seeking to push back against some normalizing forces, some critical elements that, that had caused, what he caused the constitution of higher education at the time. These four critical elements he talked about at the time were a moralized contraption The moralized contraption had to do with those especially on HBCU campuses like mine. The, the connection between the classroom and the chapel in the community where people were getting, given certain marks of what it meant to be a negro educated in America. The moralized contraption that told black students when to walk, when to talk, how to speak, when to speak, that shape them in a particular kind of image to get ahead in community. The moralized contraption met with the standardization of exclusion.

This standardization of inclusion affirmed the reality that it wasn't just that black students got left out. That black faculty got left out that black, administrators got left out, that black presidents got left out. Once we shifted to campuses that were predominantly white, what we were talking about was an effort and a system to keep people out. So, this response had to have as much of a systemic structured approach to responding as this system of exclusion. The standardized, the standardization of exclusion had built in itself.

There on white campuses, we also found or maybe find a normalized mask of whiteness. This doesn't take a whole lot of work. You just take something like European literature and call it literature. You, you just take American history and call it history, you normalize. You center the perspectives of that which you want to be the norm and you don't consider the others at all. And finally, of course, he talked about ladder altruism. You particularly prominent on HBCU campuses. But also on predominantly white campuses that have had black students even for some time, ladder altruism is this commitment and this affirmation that you are the chosen ones and that you, black students, if you will do well and get ahead and you will be the ones who will create the ladders upon which your people will be lifted to another level in society and in community. And you have the responsibility to be a role model.

This effort, these affirming phrases that keep you separated from the people that you actually need to be in community with, and solidarity with, against the real institutions that are creating the harm. Not just the predominantly white institutions, but also the HBCUs — what they called at the time the Negro universities.

That these students decided needed to finally be black, that it mean anything to some people?, I, I learned this thing from this dude that y'all might know. His, his name is Mike Jones. Who? Mike Jones?, ask, ask somebody around you, around my age. But I just did. There it's a political leader over a course of years here. Here in St Louis who I've come to call a mentor and I he had yet denied me to my face that I'm that, I'm a mentee and a decent student, hopefully, He has this construction about the difference, between African-American elected officials and black politicians. I hope I can say this out, out in public, Mike, African-American is a census category. Elected officials are those who have figured out how to find their way into office. Politicians, on the other hand, are people who understand the use of power. And those who are black are people who are sent forth from a community with a particular perspective that is grounded in that community and held accountable to the community. Black politicians can answer the question, ‘Who sent you?’ The community will claim them as much as they claim the community. Students on these campuses wanted their universities to be more than negro. They wanted them to be black, accountable to a more progressive perspective, accountable to a growing body of work, accountable to Pana-Africanism in some ways, accountable to a growth that reached beyond the accommodation of society at the time, accommodation to whiteness in particular.

Why, why am I saying all of this? I'm saying all of this because it was this group of students responding to these four critical elements that transform the face of American higher education. These students without syllabi and without faculty in place, without black people on the board develop their own curricula and syllabi, to advance and to make the argent for black studies courses, for black cultural centers, for black faculty. These students created an expression that has sat within higher education and transformed its face often in the face not just of recalcitrants and trustees, regents and curators, not just in the face of chancellors and presidents who didn't want to go along, but also in the face of police who would break down barriers on campuses where they had to find themselves in safety.

I'm suggesting to you, for those who don't like my long stories, that in internal contestation for the transformation of institutions is more sustainable than responsiveness to external pressures in a political moment. I'm suggesting that these students who understood and saw a bigger brighter and better way are the ones who transform the face of higher education in the, in the ways that we have found it in this room. And it will be this kind of commitment, of these kinds of students in a sustained way pressing, that will sustain efforts of diversity, equity and inclusion in this moment, in the ways that they did in the moment before we had language to call it such. Had conversation with a remarkable group of high school students who are here today in the reception prior to this about the pre-DEI movement, the pre-DEI language, the pre-DEI commitment. At that point, it was just a freedom struggle, freedom struggle for people trying to find their way in the center and transform the institution so that they might live.

This is ultimately what I'm suggesting I'm suggesting that, yes, there will be and should be appropriately fights in the courts I am suggesting that those fights will not resolve the timidity of trustees of large philanthropies in this country — who would rather listen to the general counsels who tell them, hey, we might want to pause on that program we've been running for 20 years to get more black people in health care through fellowships. That we not going to find the answers through corporate charitable giving programs, that we’re rather count the nber of heads in a classroom than actually invest in movements for transformation. Who are really just giving out of social and corporate interests rather than giving because they need the community to change. You can choose who you want to trust. You should vote. But please don't trust the future of your dignity and sanity to elected officials who have to raise resources in order to run and get in front of you.

What I'm suggesting is trust students, trust young people. Maybe it makes sense to trust for the commitment of a transformed world that has diversity, equity and inclusion at its center to trust the most diverse segment of the American population. Those who are under the age of 18, the 74 million whole han souls in this country, or the 30 million between the ages of 18 and 25 who joined them to make up the most diverse population America has ever seen. Maybe that should be the fuel, the workforce for diversity, equity and inclusion in this country. Maybe their hopes for han dignity, their desire for space, their wish to have a place where they might express their joy is the most significant thing we can trust in for this future. Maybe it's not an electoral cycle, maybe it's not a capitalistic construction, perhaps it's just the hopes, the dreams, the dignity and the joy of young kids who are sun kissed by God. That's who I trust with the work. I'm suggesting you trust the same. Blessings family.

[Applause]

[Wilson moves to sit in a chair on stage. Flewellen joins him in the other chair.]

Flewellen: As I figure this out, just join me in giving another thunderous round of applause for Starsky Wilson.

[Applause]

Flewellen: Man, powerful. Thank you so much. Those of you who know me know that I rarely wear socks, but you know, I had to wear socks tonight to sit next to him. So I'm wearing my socks. We're going to do some Q&A and it is my understanding that there are some mics or will be some mics out have an opportunity to ask a question and Starsky and I will, he will answer the question, I may just add a thought or two to that.

Wilson: I'm ma save the hard ones for him though.

Flewellen: We will take questions in the aisle. I see Kate's coming down with the mic, and, Remy, maybe if you can grab one and, and, and do this aisle here please. We can't see very well from here so we're going to trust that you all are. Remy and Kate are managing. Ready? OK, I did see a hand here though, one over here as well. OK, said they were ready. OK, let's do this instead. Instead of having them run, will you all join them in this aisle for Kate? And in this aisle, for Remy? If you have a question just cue up behind them, please.

Harmony: OK hello my name is Harmony, my question to you I plan to major in international relations and political science, but I want to bring diversity to that major because it is very white, as I've heard. So what is some advice that you would give me to successfully make it diverse?

Wilson: So thank you and thank you for your commitment to this area of study. one of the things I learned in this neighborhood, I, I got one of my degrees across the street is, so what I'll would say first is I want you to commit to diversifying the conversation, so that more perspectives are included. One of the things I had to do at one of the predominant white institutions that I went to school in is I had to commit to finding a scholar of color, particular black scholar, was my commitment, I found a black scholar who was affirmed in the discipline for every one of my courses and I added it to my syllabus. Not for everybody, but for me. So I wasn't going to have a conversation about a certain kind of theology or a church history unless I was reading a black scholar as well. So I want to suggest to you that part of what you may have to do or I encourage you to do is to make sure that you have affirmed whether the syllabus calls for it or not, you have affirmed scholarship you that is informed by the perspective you want to bring to come into the classroom, one of the things I learned greatest thing I learned in, in graduate school is publishing houses, they may not assign the stuff that I need to read for my context and the work that I've got to do. But the publishing house may very well have it so I didn't have to learn scholars, I learned who produced, and who put out the books that I needed and I looked at their catalogs to find scholars, particularly black scholars who I could bring into the conversation. And so what I say to you is you've got to do the work that your soul must have and because you must do that work you may have to find additional resources for the conversation so that you can be well prepared and that will also bring diversity and of diversity of perspectives into the room that you need to be in and by bringing that voice in the room. You create more room for yourself.

Harmony: Thank you.

Wilson: Yeah, blessings.

Brian Pearson:, hello I guess we're saying our name and stuff like that. My name's Brian Pearson, Jr. I am the CEO of a tech company here in St. Louis, is actually a partner with Webster University for their off- campus housing program. I'm super thankful for Webster University and everything it's done, was the first college to believe in me in the world and now is a part of a growing network of colleges in America, America. And I'm super thankful for that, and you know just as a person that's, I've been in 13 cities in the last two months, and I've seen this kind of this like silent anger from like a class of this, this kind of, kind of secretive institution of like white money. As the world becomes more and more diverse and there's more and more opportunities which means there's more money to be made because there's more people in the economy and, and as able to you know to, to participate what do you see the role of like groups like The Children Defense Fund and, and educational institutions playing in, in an environment where it's becoming incredibly toxic behind the scenes and still having events like this, still trying to diversify majors and like what are your thoughts on that? Your opinions and what do you hope to see?

Wilson: Thank you I mean connected to what I was kind of sharing here. I think our primary work in this moment is to make sure that young people are prepared and, and I say this in a couple of different ways I've written some pieces to suggest we're also having these conversations right now about democracy. As we're talking about diversity we're also talking about democracy. We're talking about the, the potentiality of the American dream. This multi-racial, multicultural democracy, and frankly, we've not had the demographic capacity to produce that until now. Young people actually present to us the first opportunity to live out what King talked about in beloved community. This multi-racial, multiethnic community of peace and justice. Where love is the governing ethic so the demographics set the stage but they don't shift power on their own. So I think part of the work we've got to do is to make sure that we are informing and preparing young people for citizenship, for full engagement in this conversation. I think our work in training young people to be able to analyze public policy and engage and community organizing is critically important one of the things that one of the roots of this. I talked a little bit about Ibrim Kendi’s work. I didn't talk about Dr. Sekou Franklin's work and Dr. Sekou Franklin is at Middle Tennessee University. He is a Political Science Professor there. He was also along with our neighbor from across the way, Dr. Shawn Joe over at the Brown School of Social Work at Wash-U.. They were two members of the steering committee, a national steering committee of the Black Student Leadership Network 30 years ago, this was an effort started by the Children's Defense Fund to train young people in community organizing to orient them to movement, to teach them servant leadership in order that they might be prepared to engage in the franchise and transform work in their communities.

Now, if you read some history books they will tell you that the decline in crime in places like New York came because of broken windows policing. If you read more expansively you will see that that decline in crime happened at the same time as the largest boom in youth organizing that we had seen since the student movement in the 1970s and they would say that, that and that community organizing responding to community issues is actually what led to that decreasing crime. Now I know how the things go and I know we attribute all credit to the people who write the books. But I'm just saying. Part of our work of preparation is creating spaces where young people can be prepared to engage the franchise to engage in citizenship, in civic ways, to solve issues in our community as informed by the perspectives of history and as we do that work — I think we're doing the work to create a broader conversation and we're responding to some of the challenges that we, we see. The reality is you kind of got at this with some of the kind of corporate conversations. It is absolutely diversity, is broadly and absolutely in the interest of all our American institutions. And in a globalized society who it's not in the interest of is small groups of folks who want to hold control of power and authority because they see themselves being erased or replaced, which frankly in and of itself I think is delusional.

I had the occasion, I don't know why I'm talking myself into this. Last night, on social media the attorney general of this great state decided to attack a school superintendent who I had to for this school district where we find ourselves now it's one thing to like. He's a lawyer. Never ask a question in open court that you don't know the answer to. That's a rule. It's one thing to say that you found a thing. It's another thing to go off is highly irresponsible, to go off talking about things that you say somebody said. Like he, he declared a bunch of rors and pointed at or called out the commitment to diversity of a school superintendent in a, in an increasingly diverse school district suggesting, with a shot across the bow, that he may face the consequences of the state's judicial system for trying to make sure that the faculty look like the students. Can we have a teaching moment? I suggested in, in a media interview earlier. I don't know if it'll make the news so I, I'll repeat it here. That brother got some learning to do. There's this thing called relational capacity. Say relational capacity.

Flewellen: Relational capacity.

Wilson: Relational capacity is a cultural connection between a teacher and a student that allows a student the safety to learn. Quality education has to do with the affirmation of a context where young people see themselves not just in the books but also in the faculty, the teachers, the educators, the administrators around them.

[Applause]

Wilson: So the attorney general, who doesn't know much about education, decided to attack a school superintendent whose job is education, about creating the conditions for young people to be educated. Now I'm biased. I told ya. I'mma tell you my bias. I'm biased because this school superintendent has been working with the Children's Defense Fund to create and local congregations to create space for young people in this school district, in this neighborhood to have access to literacy and leadership development that tells them that they can make a difference in themselves, in their families in their homes, in their neighborhoods, in their communities, in the state and the nation. And I believe young children ought to be told that, but evidently, the attorney general has a problem with that y'all might not. But I think you ought to have a problem with him.

[Applause]

Flewellen: Can you tell us a little bit about the Children's Defense Freedom Schools?

Wilson: Sure the Children's Defense Freedom Schools are first and foremost I say the history right. They are the first expressed organizing project of the Black Student Leadership Network from 30 years ago. We now have a network that serves, will serve 15,000 students in their families this year, in 30 states, in 110 different sites. Because college a students decided that they wanted to train for service and then organize projects to help students younger than them. So that's on the history.

If I bring it forward what this model really is, is out of schooltime intervention, where we work with an integrated reading curricul. You, that is culturally relevant that means more than the textbooks that are coming out of my home state of Texas. Young people see black and brown people and their story people of the global majority in the books. And because they have that connection they're more in tune with the books but they also see college students who are trained as servant leader interns, driving the curriculum so every classroom is led by college students who have been trained for this work and service and they do this in communities across the country and every week, in every freedom schools. In every freedom school across the country there's a parent meeting where parents learn about the issues related to their children, their education and the community. They may organize around some different topics and so that curriculum is something.

Something that has been advanced really over the course of the last 30 years some of the largest expressions and networks around freedom schools have been right here between Kansas City and St Louis. It has produced remarkable scores of leaders who have come through this community. Some who are pastoring churches, some who have been state legislators right here in this community, and so it's our signature program, it is at once literacy development, leadership development organizing community and parent engagement all wrapped up in a nice little package, and it's real fun.

Flewellen: Nice. And there's the one then here in the Webster Groves School District.

Wilson: Yes here at Webster Groves School District partners with, peace. United Church of Christ. They host Freedom School right across the street peace worships, at Eden Seminary and so the Freedom School will be at the Eden Seminary this smer. Also partners, at folks like at places like Webster Hills, United Methodist Church beyond housing in this community is a Freedom School Partners Life Wise supports and works with folks like Maplewood United Methodist Church so really in this community and in this state we actually find a lot of faith grounded and hosted Freedom Schools which is a model for what we're doing across the country as well.

Flewellen: Excellent. Thank you. Some more questions? I hear Remy. If you could also come down this.

Kate Daniels: We've got some right up here, Vincent.

Flewellen: Remy.

Unknown: You know it's good to hear what you saying, but, I found out if you don't know where you've come from you're doomed to repeat. And in this generation, we have a lot of young people black and white. They don't know where they come from and where they're going. So how can we get this leadership? How can we get this? I learned at home why I came from. But then we don't have the fathers in the home and even some mothers in the home. But you need to know where you come from so it won't be repeated. I went to school in the city. Oh, back in the ‘60s and the ‘70s and we had some trouble. I wouldn't say a lot like you see up in North County nowadays. But I grew up here. My grandfather built a house in 1920 in North Webster. I end up coming to this college. I remember when it was all-female college. My fifth-hour gym used to tear the nuns up because they wore habits. We played golf. They were perfect targets, but what I'm, I'm sorry to say that. But that's what happened. But if you don't know where you come from you don't know where you going. And you need to learn it at home, I met black and white youngsters. I have talked to and things he said, ‘Miss, Miss Perry, I didn't know that happened?’ or well didn't your parents tell you that? So we need to kind of come back together and get in these schools. I'm talking about parents see the problem now. The schools are running your kids. There's no parents there. There's nobody. I was in everything with my kids but if you don't know where you're coming from you're doomed to repeat it again. I don't care how high you go in education, but you need to know where you come from so you can do it. I'm with the NAACP St. Louis County, thank you.

Wilson: Yeah. I want to, there are a couple things I think are really important here, and that I want to, I want to be thoughtful about, this matter of knowing history is critically important which is why it's the contested ground before we were having national conversation about whether we would teach accurate history. Children's Defense Fund state office was was surveying the systematic removal of civics education from schools in Texas, I say this for a couple of critical reasons. So I need y'all to lean in for a second because I can't say this real loud, public school is not about getting jobs. We have allowed, over the course of the last 15-20 years, a codification, and a commodification of public education. I sit here in the St. Louis region which attributed gave the nation its first public kindergarten. To say that we have a crisis of mission in public education. That it was not to prepare people for the work force.

Public education is to prepare, and it is to prepare and educated citizenry to engage the franchise. It is to prepare people to be the volunteers and the voters — that we need them to be educated when they go out to the polls and so the systematic removal of civics education from eighth grade, from middle school, generally, from high school, specifically, has this effect -we have studied in our Texas state office, it has the effect, that it reduces civic participation, broadly of black and brown students, specifically, if you don't go to college. If you don't learn civics in school and you don't go to college, you don't vote. You don't volunteer if you're black or brown. Who benefits from that in the state of Texas? The same people who will benefit nationally. So, yes, you must know your history. And you fund a public program. That should be teaching history, and it is displacing the history in order to prepare your children to be cogs for people. I'm not against corporations. I am against people taking what should be an educational program and turning into a training program so that they can benefit from my children. And I think you should be too.

That's one, the other thing I want to be clear about is I'm, I pay enough attention to the data and maybe to the data and maybe because I'm a black daddy, I find it important to say that civic engagement is critical to policy analysis, and policy analysis helps us to understand how our great memories of family are important and should be affirmed and were systematically broken down by public policies. That made particularly black parents, make decisions about whether they economically are better breadwinners when they stay or whether more resources come to the family when they leave because there's a penalty for them being there.

So if I can only earn $15,000 a year and I'm told that my primary job is breadwinner then if state resources can come in at $20,000 a year — then am I better breadwinner if I stay or if I go? And when we understand that housing policy and family support policies in the U.S. have made black families make that critical decision — then we think differently about the critique of the black family. Black family stability that somebody wanted me to study when they assigned me to the Ferguson commission. We just forgot that part ‘cuz we knew better. We knew what people were up to with that analysis. We also understood that in an African cosmology, ‘cuz we have talking about diversity, equity and inclusion here, right? In African cosmology, the nuclear family of the West ain't never worked, frankly. It ain't never work for white people, and it definitely never worked for black people. The African-American family is matriarchal and matrilineal. It is centered around not just mama, but big mama. It does not stop at the household, it goes all the way up the street.

That philanthropy in our community doesn't stop at money, is cooking in a pot big enough to feed them Johnson kids from up the street. And we don't define family in the same kind of way we're talking about diversity, equity and inclusion, right? And so different constructions of family have to be affirmed as well. We have a communal definition of family and that should be affirmed and normalized. When we don't, we have desperate impact with the child welfare system because people look at our family and say that it's not normal. They say it's inappropriate and then they take kids away and put them into custodial care so, yes, we got to know it, the public schools have a charge to teach it and while we have appropriate sometimes critiques of these schools and how they do their work, we also got to name another thing. People are not making enough money to engage in the public square in the manner that our parents did.

My mother, largely a single mother, five children, was a Parent Teacher Association president three times at Benjamin Franklin Derell Elementary School in Dallas, Texas. Three times ‘cuz it was five of us and every time one of us came through, sometimes we overlapped, she served the Parent Teacher Association as the president. But she didn't have to deal with the same things that the parents on the north side have to deal with. I passed on the north side. I engage with a middle school in the neighborhood, and I realized with the consolidation, with the decline in population and the consolidate — y'all don't want to hear about this part.

The decline in population, the consolidation of districts that young people got bussed from one side of town to the other side of town in order to go to school. The parents had to then catch a bus from one side of town to the other side of town on a school in a public transportation system that did not make sense to make it to parent meetings at night. It don't fit.

And if I got a second job in order to feed the same kids and I'm trying to make sure to go to school and get educated then I ain't got time for that. I'm sorry not that I don't want to, not that I love them any less, but could y'all please get these grocery stores to pay me a little bit more? Could you please deal with a system that allowed for you. Yes, you got to be engaged in your, in your child's life and you got paid more of a livable wage than I do, and so these are, this is that and that is this these things are connected. And I just want to say just like we do with the kids before we ask what they did we should ask what happened to them. We need to do the same thing with some of these parents. Don't just ask what did you do or what didn't you do. But what happened to you how did these policies act upon you to create the system in which you live? I'm sorry.

[Applause]

Flewellen: Church.

Cory Nicole: Good evening. My name is Cory Nicole. I am an author. I'm also a corporate trainer and one thing that I've done recently is released two coloring books for Black History Month for black and brown children. So one of the things as a creative and an influencer that I would like to know is what do you see a person like myself moving towards to be more effective with children? I, I have, have two degrees in communication and study pedagogy, so I do understand the importance and the difference between that and adult learning. So I would like to know, based on that information that you shared earlier, what do you think that is the most effective way, and what would you like to see even in content? Thank you.

Wilson: Thank you. I ask really quickly are you familiar with Goldie Mammad's work on unearthing Joy? I commend that to you, we've been talking a lot at the Children's Defense Fund about not seeing children as a source of intervention but rather seeing the community around children as the source of intervention, that young people have, just like I said they have, a yearning for freedom. They also have embedded with them a sense of joy that they desire to express. If you leave a child long enough. You leave them alone. Let them know that they safe, they secure and they’re sing, they're gonna sing and dance like nobody's watching.

There's an educator by the name of Goldie Mammad who's been doing work around unearthing joy, helping us to think about pedagogy in a new moment, her previous work was around brilliance and genius with young people and now she's beginning to socialize some work around joy. And so we, we are learning from her. I invite you to learn with us about that, yes it's about social emotional wellness. But it's more than that right? It's helping us to think about the aspirational frames we should have around young people. And how we want to see that expressed. I tell people all the time. Like we can stop child, we can end child poverty tomorrow and not have young people have enough. We can end child abuse and neglect tomorrow and not have young people thrive. What we really want is joy and we want that expressed. And so I invite you to consider that work as a support to what you're already doing with our thanks, you for the ways in which you're using your gifts with young people.

Daniels: If I can just remind folks if you have a question to come and cue up in the aisles behind the microphone so that we can get to everyone.

Flewellen: Mike, Mike Jones.

Wilson: Who Mike Jones?

Mike Jones: I got the message, OK? question based on literally the body of work you talked about this evening. I'm old enough to be a product of the last generation raised in a segregated America. I'm also the first generation of black men who lived in desegregated America. Notice I didn't say integrated. I said desegregated. And in a lot of ways diversity, equity, inclusion is another way to say integration in the 21st century. I'd like to, to hear your thinking on the unintended consequences of the success of civil rights quote integration or the desegregation and how that impacted the devolution of what was a cohesive black community?

Wilson: Yeah, thank you, Mike, not like it's like a public test to where I've been listening to him all these years, so now I think, I think it's a real thing like and I guess I want to push a little bit to suggest that diversity, equity and inclusion can be an expansion on what we talked about in the fights for desegregation. If it is careful enough not to be so lazy as to displace desegregation with integration Mike, I don't want to talk past everybody else in the room. What me and Mike are talking about is that King MLK was, was trying to desegregate not integrate. His interest was in making sure that black people had access, but he wasn't telling them that they had to go, some to be next to an approximate to whiteness in order to be affirmed. And of course, he had his own critique of that, that later asked at Ebenezer Baptist Church how he felt about integration and desegregation. He expressed his own concern that he may have been integrating his people into a burning house.

And so the lesson to be learned there is, you know, nber one criticality the, the criticality of being clear about what we mean and defining terms, and I say that diversity, equity inclusion can be an expansion, if it can be clear that what we're talking about is a bigger table. Not a piece of somebody else's pie. If we're talking about opening the aperture and expanding the frame such that we are affirming people where they are rather than saying people have to be a part of a thing that already is, or to navigate that central thing, and you know the piece around integration is I think about it spatially like what to the second part of your question? … like what have been the challenge of that, right?, the challenges the neighborhood I passed it in at Grand and Lee?, that once you told black people they could integrate into homes in North County that they be in the leave North City go to North County to live among and, with frankly, they come to some that's the neighborhoods of North City where in case, in the case of our neighborhood establish by German immigrants — integrate those neighborhoods. Because now they have access and then those people move to North County.

They plant new churches by the way when they go in our case it was a church they planted in Ferguson when they left that neighborhood, and then black people go to integrate to be with them and then they move to West County, so it's a chase first. It's a spatial chase but what it ultimately does is it hollows out the core of neighborhoods that were indigenous, cohesive and strongly black in their cultural expression and identity and they also dilute dilute political power. If you vote based upon your address, your zip code and you spread all of your cultural and political power into all of these other places with others and become a minority when you actually had a majority together — then you actually also have, by implication, reduced your political voice, so all of these things have implications as we talk about the politics, so it's really important in the context of this conversation to say diversity, equity and inclusion should be an expansion, an opening of the table and the aperture, and affirmation of folks that had not previously been affirmed in the conversation with those who have been previously normalized.

Because what it's not, I, I should say this. I hear my, my friend, Carmen, speaking to me, because it's not that we're going to ever get to America where there ain't no white people. Like we had these conversations about diversity, equity inclusion like, well, what about the white, like the white people are not going anywhere people, right? And so our picture has to fully be when I said it because like I do, I talk to activist people like white people, like who talk like act white, people going somewhere. Like white people not going anywhere. How you going to figure out how to get along? How you going to figure out how to affirm a wider table, not to try to displace somebody else's table? It's not about displacement. It actually is about expansion and so I think that's how we wrestle with that while we learn that old lesson.

Unknown person: Welcome, St Louis, back. Thank you, brother a lot of what you said I was going to jp into, but you covered it which is great, it's good to see the diversity here, but Wester University does add a lot of just like Wash-U and Dr. Joe over there. With that being said when Michael Brown, Jr. was murdered — his body laid there four hours or so. We were there, a lot of us. I see we were there all day because it was a moving moment that had to have some change occur. With that, the Ferguson movement came about, the commission came about. Also with that, we started a mentoring program. I'm co-founder, with gentleman here as well and some others. One here in St. Louis in the Missouri area, another one, Illinois. With that, we found a lot of young people are not, not really happy with the way things are going in their lives. One thing you mentioned about the 18 to under and 18 to 24. Just yesterday I was speaking at a church about a few researches, did a study, was very disturbing. I'll email it to you. With that, how do we get the correct information when I say correct, verifiable correct information and not misted information to our young people with social media moving about?

Wilson: Yeah, so there's, there's some really good work pointed to our partners at Common Sense Media for solid resources on the impact of social media on young people. Their social emotional wellness, and commend you to kind of take leads and cues from that both on how they're suggesting people do some monitoring and care for young people in that space. But also, some policies that we might need to be advancing in order to make sure that the internet is a safe environment for young people.

I also kind of raised in this conversation the necessity of being thoughtful about social, emotional wellness broadly for young people, so it's not just about social media. It's about safe environments broadly, it's about social connections generally so things like mentoring programs, youth development programs. I tell people all the time I don't care whether you think your young person is quote unquote “at risk” or not. Every teenager needs to be in somebody's program. They need some kind of youth development, youth engagement, pew talks about how religious engagement is a protective factor for young people for you for not getting engaged and destructive behavior.

So I think all of these things are things that we want to be caring and intentional about, but we also have to own it. Is not sufficient for us to curse the darkness. I was really excited some of the work we do at the Children's Defense Fund is some religious organizing work. So we've been doing some capacity building with congregations and one kind and journeying with them to develop theologies of child well-being and then seeking to inform their work and ministries with some of the challenges they see in their community. And one of the congregations just this past weekend, as we were gathered presented a project about developing a virtual safe space for young people, informed by progressive theology, because they know, like young people, they're going to hang out, they're going to be on social media. The question is what will they find there? Will they find the resources of your varying youth development programs? Will they find a way to connect with your mentoring program? Or will they get caught in a rabbit hole around things that as we study this information around young girls and young women that we find will they find things that cause them to feel bad about their self-image. Will they find them that cause them to fall deeper in depression, or will they find connection with you.

And so I encourage more and more people to make sure your young people are connected in some kind of youth development program and to say there need to be positive spaces on the internet and social media for young people as well, I, you know, I use it in my own parenting. I send stuff. I got a 13-year-old who just decided he, on decided, he the smallest thing on the court but he decided he going D1 as a point guard. So he now has a social media account because I messed around and took him out of St. Louis and took him all the way to D.C. so what do I do? I send him on Instagram encouraging things about how many shots he needs to get up a day. I send him things about, I send him encouragement from Kobe Bryan about his work ethic because as small as he is, he gonna have to work harder than everybody else if he gonna make D1, right? So be in the place with your young people as well as make sure there are safe places for them and things that I encourage. Yeah, thank you. I promise shorter answers.

Flewellen: Is there a question over there?

Washington: Yeah, so I have a quick question. So I'm Denise Washington. So, I really enjoyed your talk and conversation. I really didn't see where it was going so I loved how you ended with having faith in the young people. And so two things: one, one of the previous, somebody, earlier alluded to the fact that segregation or desegregation wasn't necessarily a good thing for our community. So I kind of wanted to pull two things together and quite frankly, so I've heard the conversation in my family time and again that desegregation in fact was ruinous to the black community. And I'm from North St Louis and they still live there and would never leave there, and so some can interpret that to mean that segregation was better right? And so if you bridge that with your conversation on young people — I wanted to hear more. So, are you talking about black young people? Are you talking about people of color? You talking about all does this include white young people, as well? And how do we view that in in sync with some people's interpretation of what might be best for us as a community? Yeah, OK. If that makes sense.

Wilson: Thanks for the opportunity to go deeper, so first I think there's a, a particular value in folks whose lived experience is vested in the struggle right? So I point to this reality about the black campus movement because of two things. Number one, these are people who are focused in institutions and seek and focus their energy for transformation on the institution. So they're in invested in the transformation.

And I counterpose that to people who find themselves outside the institution trying to dictate what should happen inside it. Right? The other thing I want to name. I tried to name there. . is that these are young people for whom, who are advocating for things that are directly connected to their identity. So I need, I don't know if that was me or not. I was right, hey, they're saying, ‘I need black studies and I need black professors and I want black people on the trustee board and I want a certain kind of president with a certain perspective,’ because I need to create space for myself. Part of what I'm sharing is, is what I'm informed by this, by what I learned in some of this work around racial equity, here is that the people who are most impacted have to have first and last word. So as it relates to others, right? So in a conversation about diversity, equity, inclusion, my question is who's most impacted? So are there LGBTQ, LGBTQIA students who need to be a part of this? Yes, are there are there, students to identify as women, assigned women at birth who need? Yes. And there needs to be a form solidarity for that kind of change.

So I trust young people broadly. I trust some particularity about this collective of young people. And I'm saying that people who are fighting, if you want struggle to be sustainable — then you can't outsource it to people who get paid to do it from nine to five. The way, the way we would talk about it in some of the commission work is and way we talk about in collective impact work when I was seeing this community, is if you get to go home from the problem then you can't have the last word on the problem or on the solution. So, so that's what, what I'm saying. Is those who are most deeply interested and impacted and listen to what they say about the path because they'll have different solutions, right? Yeah. thank you.

Maryann Merrs: Hi, Dr. Wilson. I was so happy to see that you were going to be here tonight and I'm glad that I could come. My name is Maryann Merrs, and like you, I am a Gen-Xer, and I also see a lot of hope and faith in the college age the younger generations. I'm current at a place in my career where I get to work with, around a lot of them and it's cool, you know. I'm not, not a faculty member, I'm a peer. We're all team members selling bakery goods and it's fun. But I wanted to say that I feel like our generation, I look around at my peers, and I see that we have a lot to contribute to what's going on in our country today. And I don't know, I see a myself and others that aren't, aren't. Some of my peers, you know, have so much to give and they're not quite engaged. And I know myself, personally, I feel a calling to become more radical, you know, than I have been. And I'm in a phase where I'm in a more of a caregiver role now and I'm, but I'm, I'm searching and so I'm here to be inspired and, and just see if you see a connection between our generation and this, this great generation that's out there making things happen.

Wilson: Yes, so you call me at a great time because I used to have this really horrible language for this so there's a young organizer in this town. I'll call her name too. Her name is Kayla Reed, and, Kayla, once gave me a remarkable, , I count Kayla as one of my millennial mentors. So we mutually mentor one another. and, she once gave me a remarkable reality check. She said, ‘look you are not old enough to be an elder, but you were too old to be one of us.’ So I decided like you know, preacher. I'm supposed to have good words and stuff but I, I decided this made me a middler.

Flewellen: Middler

Wilson: My, my dear sister, Rev. Deon Basier. I spoke with earlier this week, she has served as the chaplain to the United Nations for a number of years, remarkable, prophetic, dear sister. We were talking earlier this week, and she's, she, she gave me better language she understood. She approximates the two of us in age and we were in a setting together last week in Chicago where clearly four different waves of black faith leaders committed to liberation were gathered there together. Our elders, including Rev. Jesse Jackson and, and Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright Jr. and students in seminary coming fresh out of undergrad all in the same space, and here we sit in our 40s in that space. And we were talking about what our role really was there and we talked about this frame of bridge building and Rev. Deon said what she's come to recognize is that the responsibility is actually bridge being.

We are a bridge. I find part of the call to being a bridge sharing the stories. So I'm, I'm not often without a story from the struggles that I didn't live through. I sit at the feet of elders I've been gifted to have that to be a part of my life in this community. People like Earl Nance, Jr. and Dr. Suggs and Mike Jones and the late Jim Buford have allowed me access and proximity to learn from their stories and to learn of stories that came before them. And so part of I think part of our charge is to be able to share stories that give perspective not direction. I also find that we're at a point in life where we have access to resources that that younger people don't necessarily have and that some who came before us have acquiesced to our charge. And so part of our responsibility is stewardship, how do we appropriately allocate the things that we have access to, to make sure that young people who have vital energy and perspective for the struggle that they can effectively deploy it. I happened in the midst of the Ferguson uprising to be sitting on a resource of multiple millions of dollars, and I didn't know why I had the job. I knew I could do the job. I had the job for three years before the uprising. I found out in the uprising why I had it.

Because there was nobody else in this town who was going to step out and throw money at young people organizing in the streets. That's why I had that job at that moment, and because I would invest in it. I could organize other people to do it. I had that job in that moment ‘cuz there wasn't a lot of black people in this town in a nonprofit industrial complex who didn't have to ask the same purveyors of, of whiteness and capitalism in this town, didn't have to go ask them for money. And I didn't have to ask them for money. So I could tell him to go to hell. And somebody needed to tell him to go to hell every now and then.

[Applause]

Wilson: ‘Cuz the young people were telling them, and they weren't listening, so somebody who actually had resource had to tell, so some of this is right. What is our responsibility to be bridges which stage wisdom from the generation before with stewardship and allocation of resources so that they have what they need even though somebody didn't give it to them. And what is our responsibility to speak in their voice, create space for their voice. Don't try to, but to speak in their voice and so, yeah, I sometimes I say stuff I, I had to believe myself into saying some of the stuff I say. Me and Kayla had argents over, over who should have been there, was a particular political office that we were engaging some organizing around and I was like that person can't do the job. And Kayla was like but this, this is the movement's person. I said, well hell, I guess that's who it is. Right?, so some of it is about speaking in their voice as well so this is what I try to do. So you know, take my mistakes too.

Flewellen: It's what you try to do. But it's what you have done, and you do so well. Thank you very much for spending your time with us tonight and sharing with us. I encourage you all to join us tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. as we continue our ninth annual Diversity, Equity and Inclusion conference. I thank you for your time tonight and please join me in thanking Rev. Dr. Starsky D. Wilson.