Bold Conversations

I attended an event this afternoon called "Post Race? Trayvon and Racial Violence in the 21st Century" at the Global Activism Expo. The three panelists included Gary Younge (journalist for The Nation and The Guardian), Kevin Coval (co-founder of the Louder Than A Bomb teen poetry festival), and David Stovall (professor of everything there is that is cool at UIC, and a volunteer teacher at the Lawndale/Little Village School of Social Justice High School).

The first part of the discussion was led by the panelists. To open, a member of the Chicago Young Authors read a poem about the Trayvon Martin case, and then Gary Younge started speaking. These were some of his statements and ideas that I took note of:
"You must choose the color of poverty in the place you are, whether it is French Algeria or the Roma in Eastern Europe or the Black kids in America."
"It is important not to make this a crude morality case. This is not about a bad Latino and a good Black kid. Even if Trayvon was a bad kid, that isn't punishable by execution. And Zimmerman didn't need to be a bad guy for this to be a bad thing."
Mr. Younge discussed the conversation we need to have about race and class in this country, and the intra-race tension that is occurring. He mentioned the Skip Gates case, where people were commenting that they "couldn't believe they were treating him like a black person" or the scandal with Don Imus and his reference to "nappy headed hoes," the comment being that "they can't treat kids from a university like that!" There seems to be a sense that these sorts of things shouldn't happen to SOME people... in reality, should it ever happen to anyone?
There are more black men in prison now than there were black men enslaved in 1850. So was it irrational to assume that Trayvon was a criminal? Not really... so what this means is that we need to have a real conversation about the systemic nature of these problems.

Kevin Coval spoke about the following:
"The Black Body" as a criminalized image, rather than individual people- we have been conditioned to think this way, especially those who don't know many "black or brown" people.
Racial violence is really based on a grand and historical inequity, that continues today because of the poverty/education link.

Dave Stovall spoke about the following:
Everyday in his classroom with black or brown students, he thinks "You or I may not be here tomorrow."
From February 26th to April 2, 26 unarmed Blacks were shot and killed by law enforcement, and we have had no collective time as a nation to heal
Education is literally a life or death process in this country
This issue is bigger than America- around the world (ie the Arab Spring) people are claiming their humanity.

After the speaking was completed, there were questions from the audience. Here are some quotes and ideas:

The medical definition of hope is "having a sense of control over one's own destiny." We as educators are responsible for figuring out how to materially support "hope," and knowing what we can do to have the backs of those kids.
Chicago has a history of engineering conflict, particularly in the case of school closings. These conflicts are not caused by the pathology of young people.
President Obama's response to the Martin case was somewhat disappointing. "What if you had a Pakastani son? We've lost humanity when you can't think that everyone could be your son.

Finally, a quote from James Baldwin: "The law is meant to be my servant, not my master, still less my torturer, and certainly not my murderer."

I'll leave these to sit awhile and write more later.