How to Go Beyond Diversity and Inclusion to Community and Belonging | E'Ula Green | TEDxOU

Isn't it interesting how one moment can connect to another moment and create an event and how this intersection of events creates an opportunity to experience something wonderful that not only changes your perspective but maybe even changes your life a little? Well, let me. I'll tell you a couple of times when that happened to me. Yes, I was born in Sierra Leone. For those of you who are not familiar, Sierra Leone is a beautiful country on the west coast of Africa. We have white sand beaches full of palm trees. with all kinds of fruits and every day we have the best rice on the planet now my father works in a business that requires a lot of international travel and most of the time when our family could go we traveled with him so I can imagine how excited we were because we've been to a lot of places already and I was in New York and it's fabulous, so he came home and told us we were moving to the United States of America, so we packed up.

All our stuff took a flight and we flew for what seemed like an eternity and then we got in a car and we drove and drove and drove and drove and finally we pulled into the driveway of our new house in McAlester Oklahoma now for those of you If you have never been to Macalester or if you have never been to New York let me tell you they are not the same place and I was not happy with that so I walked by a It comes on the weekend and Monday and my mother signed me and my sisters at school, one of my sisters is older, she went to high school and I have a sister who is only 14 months younger than me, so we were enrolled in the same elementary school when we arrived, both of our teachers are in the office and they greet us and escort each of us to our respective classrooms and every time we arrive at my classroom, the teacher opens the door and says: "Okay everyone, this is our new student Kenya, my name it's not".

Kenya and I am NOT from Kenya so I introduced myself and she just walked me to my seat. We went through the morning routine for all the activities and one of them included group activities and no one spoke to me or asked me questions. I didn't make any suggestions, so I started looking around the class and there were all these really cool little pictures of kids on the wall and the ABCs and one, two, three and words, and I realized it looked like it didn't really belong. there, maybe I didn't know it was coming, I don't know, so let's go ahead and have lunch that didn't include fruit or rice and then we go to recess, so I think about my little sister because I know she's probably having a similar experience, but I asked him hey, how was your first day?

What do you think you like? She said she didn't like her. She didn't like the food. She didn't like people. No one spoke to her except a girl who made fun of her name now my sister's name is Ayman not two but four shorts we didn't call her too so this girl would say things like you shouldn't use my crayons and you shouldn't sit next to me or not You should Color the same thing I'm coloring, so my big sister instincts kicked in immediately and I told her to point it out to me and she did.

I walked up to her and said, "Hey, listen, my sister told me that you have been making fun of her name. She doesn't like it. It's not very nice. Please stop. Some of her friends were nearby and I think she He didn't want to be embarrassed so he decided it was a better idea to make fun of him. My little sister while standing there made fun of his name again and I asked her to stop, she made fun of his name again so there at recess. in front of everyone I hit her and she stopped good for her, yes, good for her I tell my little sister if anything else happens this afternoon let me know because we can resume this conversation after school so we can go back to the classrooms and every time I sit down The girl next to me leans over and says hi My name is Amanda but everyone calls me Mandy.

It's okay. Hi Mandy. I really want to go. Amanda. Oh, yes, of course, excuse me, Mrs. Hardin, this is Amanda, but everyone calls her Mandy. Can we all start with Connor Amanda? So we started calling her Amanda because that's her name and that's what she chose and from that day on I earned my first American nickname, The Fixer, so at recess for about three. For weeks, kids would come up to me and tell me this person did this. Can you do something about it? This person told me this, go fix it and I would do it.

I made a lot of fantastic friends. It was fun until they sent me. to the principal's office because they called my mom so my mom on the other end of the phone told me that I had to stop hitting the kids at school and I taught her well no mom I'm the one who fixes this it's good I'm helping kids and I'm making people feel better and she said well you're making some people feel better but you're also making others feel worse you have to find a way to help people without hurting them you have to be able to help people without hit use your words, you know a lot of them, so I moved quickly in life.

I decided it made sense to join the police force because I mean, I've been fighting petty crimes since second grade, so it worked out and so I did it, but as you can imagine, working in the police force there were some institutional things that were very challenging. and they made it really difficult for someone like me to continue on the force, so I decided that maybe this isn't the best thing I should do. something else, but I still want to intervene in people's lives, so I thought I'd take a step back, maybe instead of working with adults after they made it, maybe it's not a great decision.

I should work with children, so I decided I should be a special education teacher. Fantastic. job, shout out to all the teachers, good things, but what I discovered was that when I worked with these kids I had these limitations from the administration that didn't really allow me to come into the family like I really felt I needed, so I decided I wanted to go back to school and get a master's degree in Social Work, so I applied to be accepted to the University of Oklahoma and attended the campus in Tulsa. Now I went to the initial meeting and made my registration.

Was my financial aid able to complete everything? my papers, but as I walked through the hallways I realized that there were all these photographs and I realized that there was a theme in these photographs, there were old photographs, you could tell they were in black and white, they were historical, but the people in the photos they were almost entirely caucasian men the same size, they looked the same age and none of them look like me, nothing looks like I was there or belonged and I had the same feeling I had in second grade when I looked around the room of classes so I thought, well, this is probably just this hallway, it's not the entire campus and at that time it was summer.

I wasn't teaching summer school, so I had plenty of time. I decided to take a walk. I walked all over campus for the same thing, there were three exceptions, everything else was exactly what I saw in the administration hallway, so I decided to ask some questions and talk to some people that I need to talk to about these photographs because some of them They were just in bad taste, some of them were just historical, but some of them were downright offensive and I thought, who can I find that can help do something about this? I asked questions and they gave me information about some directives and I ran to I wrote in black, you were there and I ran into a couple of obstacles, but we finally found someone and that person took the things he was saying to heart.

I explained that there were other students with whom I shared the same feeling and we all felt uncomfortable. and some of us are more than a little uncomfortable, we are really offended and the result of that conversation was that we started changing the images, but not only the new images now there is a new policy and that policy is that two out of three The groups of images are being replaced by color photographs with photographs that represent the current student body as well as current employment and these images are not only changing now, but will continue to change because the interests of the school and the people coming will continue. change and we wanted to seem like whoever is there is welcome, so going forward we're thinking, well, I'm talking about things that happened to me and this isn't all about me, it's really about empowering people. to empower others, so just for two minutes imagine with me that we are going to organize a dinner for the whole world, so let's invite everyone, people from all countries, that's a good idea, because that's

diversity

, we should do that, so we'll do it, okay, let's do more. make sure when they come they have a seat at the table and there's a place for everyone when they come man that's better because that's

inclusion

but I feel like we can do more I feel like there's something else we can offer so How about we make a really diverse menu so that everyone who attends the dinner has the opportunity to eat instead of assuming that everyone wants steak and potatoes because maybe for religious reasons, health reasons or just personal preference not everyone eats meat , so let's not do it?

Let's assume those things. I want to offer a couple of things from real life because that was just an imaginary example, but in real life, what can we do well at the national or state level? We can vote, we can text, email, or contact our person in Congress. I mean, this is America, we can run and become our person in Congress, but I understand that politics is not something that everyone can participate in and it doesn't have to be, but if you are a student or an employee, what what if you look? around where you are and see if the images shown really communicate the messages you believe.

What if I mean the people who walk in can actually feel like they should be there? But I also know that for those of you who are extremely introverted. It's still a difficult task, but I have something each of us can do. This is kind of a well-kept secret, but I will tell you that it is not a thing that many of you can do. what we do is learn people's names learn people's names learn how to pronounce them correctly and learn what they want us to call them we're all experts at our own names it's okay to ask now some of us have some pretty unusual names.

I'll tell you if we have an unusual name we are fully aware of the fact that we have an unusual name so we don't even expect you to get it right the first time there is no pressure we don't even expect you to understand it the second time it's not hard to ask Please ask for me every time someone asks me my name and I can say it. I think of my parents. I think about how loving and intentional my parents were in giving to each and every one of me and me. brothers, our names with our meanings.

I also think about Sierra Leone and that little piece of paradise I get to call home, so instead of feeling embarrassed or embarrassed about having to ask that person their name again, maybe feel honored and grateful for the fact that you can be an agent to provide that kind of warmth to another human being and maybe, instead of being afraid, you can ask and that question can help build a bond between you and that person that creates

community

, that creates

belonging

, because at the end of the day all. This isn't just about

diversity

and

inclusion

, those are really important, but it's actually more about

community

and

belonging

, so if a new seven-year-old girl was in attitude because she wasn't in New York, she can become in the repairer of what can be intelligently educated. adults become and more than that what we could all become together well, let's find out