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

[Applause] isn't it interesting how one moment can connect to another moment and it creates an event and how this intersection of events creates an opportunity to experience something wonderful that not just changes your perspective but maybe even changes your life in a little bit well let me tell you about a couple of times where that's happened to me yes I was born in Sierra Leone now for those of you that are not familiar Sierra Leone is a beautiful country on the west coast of Africa we've got white sand beaches palm trees filled with all kinds of fruits and every single 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 whenever our family was able to go we would travel with him so you can imagine how excited we were because we've been a lot of places already and I've been to New York and it's fabulous so he came home and he told us guys we're moving to the United States of America so we packed up all of our things we got on a flight and we flew for what felt like a little bit of forever and then we got in a car and we drove and we drove and we drove and we drove and we finally pulled up into the driveway of our brand-new house in McAlester Oklahoma now for those of you that have never been to Macalester or if you've never been to New York let me tell you they are not the same place and I was not happy about it so I padded for a weekend and Monday rolls around and my mother enrolled me and my sisters into school one of my sisters is older she went to the middle school and I have a sister that's just 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 walk each of us down to our respective classrooms and whenever we get to my classroom the teacher opens the door and she says okay everyone this is our new student Kenya my name is not Kenya and I am NOT from Kenya so I introduced myself and she just showed me to my seat we went through the morning routine for all of the activities and one of those included group activities and no one talked to me and asked questions I tried to give input I made suggestions nothing so I started looking around the class and there were all these really cool little pictures of kids on the wall and ABCs and one two threes and words and I noticed that it looked like I really didn't belong there maybe they didn't know I was coming I don't know so then fast forward we have lunch which included no fruit no rice and then we go to recess so I think out my little sister because I know that she is probably having the similar experience but I asked her hey how was your first day going what do you think do you like it she said that she did not like it she did not like the food she did not like the people and no one spoke to her except for one little girl who made fun of her name now my sister's name is Ayman not two but four short we call her not too so this little girl would say things like you are not to use my crayons and you are not to sit next to me or you are not to color the same thing that I'm coloring and so my big sister instincts kicked in immediately and I said point her out to me and she did so I walked right over there to her and I said hey listen my sister told me that you've been making fun of her name she doesn't like it it's not very nice please stop well some of her friends were around and I think that she didn't want to be embarrassed so she decided that it was a better idea to make fun of my little sister while I was standing right there so she makes fun of her name again and I asked for the stop she makes fun of her name again so right there at recess in front of everybody I just hit her and she stopped good for her yeah good for her I tell my little sister if anything else happens this afternoon let me know because we can revisit this conversation after school so we get back into the classrooms and whenever I sit down the little girl next to me she leans over and says hey my name is Amanda but everyone calls me Mandy okay hey Mandy no I saw what you did at recess I really want to go bye Amanda can you do something about that oh yeah sure um excuse me mrs. Hardin this is Amanda but everyone calls her Mandy can we all just start Connor Amanda so we started calling her Amanda because that's her name and that's what she chose and from that day forward I earned my first American nickname The Fixer so at recess for about three weeks kids would come up to me and they would tell me this person's done this can you go do something about it this person said this to me go fix it and I would and I made a lot of great friends it was fun until I got sent to the principal's office because they called my mother so my mother 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 mama I'm the fixer this is good I'm helping children and I'm making people feel better and she said well you're making some people feel better but you're also making other people feel worse you have to find a way to help people without hurting people you have to be able to help people without hitting use your words you know a lot of them so fast-forward through life I decided that it made sense that I joined the police force because I mean I've been fighting petty crime since second grade so it worked out and so I did but as you might imagine working on the police force there were some institutional things that were very challenging and made it really difficult for someone like me to continue on the force so I decided you know maybe this isn't the best fit I should do something else but I still want to intervene in the lives of people so I thought take a step back maybe instead of working with adults after they made maybe not a great decision I should work with children so I decided I should be a special education teacher fantastic work shout out to all the teachers good stuff but what I found was when I was working with these children I had these limitations by administration that wouldn't really allow me to get into the family like I really felt like I needed to so I decided to go back to school and get a masters in Social Work so I applied it was accepted to the University of Oklahoma and I attended the campus on in Tulsa now I went to the initial meeting and I did my enrollment did my financial aid could completed all my paperwork but as I was walking down the halls I noticed that there are all these pictures and I realized that there was a theme to these pictures there were there were old pictures you could tell they were in black and white they were historical but the people in the pictures were almost completely Caucasian male about the same size they looked about the same age and none of them looks like me none of it looks like I was supposed to be there or that I belonged and I got that same feeling that I had in second grade when I looked around the classroom so I thought well this is probably just this hallway it's not the whole 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 the entire campus down 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 talk to some people who do I need to talk to about these pictures because some of them were just kind of in poor taste some of them were just historic but some of them were absolutely offensive and I thought who can I find they can help do something about this and I asked questions and I was given some information to some directives and I ran to wrote black you were there and I ran into a couple of speed bumps but eventually we found someone and that person took the things that I was saying seriously I explained that there were some other students that I shared the same feeling with and we all are uncomfortable and some of us are more than just a little uncomfortable we're really offended and the result of that conversation was that we started changing pictures but not only are the new pictures now there's a new policy and that policy is that two out of every three groupings of pictures are being replaced with color photos with photos that represent the current student body as well as the current employment and these pictures are not only changing now they will continue to change because the interests to the school and the people that come will continue to change and we wanted to look like whoever is there is welcome so moving forward we're thinking okay well I'm talking about things that happened to me and this whole thing is not about me it's really about empowering people to empower others so just for two minutes imagine with me that we're gonna host a dinner party for the entire world so let's invite like everybody people from all the countries that's a good idea right because that's diversity we should do that so we do okay let's do more let's um let's make sure that when they get there that they have a seat at the table and there's a place for everyone when they get there man that's better because that's inclusion but I feel like we can do more like I feel like there's something else we can offer so how about how about we make a really diverse menu so that everyone that shows up to the dinner has a chance to eat instead of assuming that everyone wants steak and potatoes because maybe for religious or health or just personal preference not everybody eats beef so let's not assume those things I want to offer a couple of just real-life things because that was just a pretend example but in real life what can we do well on a national or state level we can vote we can write email text or contact our Congress person I mean this is America we can actually run and become our Congress person but I get it politics is not everyone's in-game and it doesn't need to be but if you're a student or if you're an employee what about looking around where you are and see if the images that are on display really communicate the messages that you believe what if I mean that people come in they actually can feel like they should be there but I also know that for those of you that are extreme introvert that's still kind of a tall order but I have something that every single one of us can do now this is kind of a well-kept secret but I'm going to tell you it's not that many of you one thing that every single person can do is learn people's names learn people's names learn how to pronounce them correctly and learn what they want to be called we're all the experts on our own names it's okay to ask now some of us have some pretty uncommon names I will tell you if we have an uncommon name we are fully aware of the fact that we have an uncommon name so we don't even expect you to get it right the first time there's no pressure we don't even expect you to get it the second time it's not hard to ask please ask in fact for me every time someone asked me my name and I get to say it I think about my parents I think about how loving and how intentional my parents were when giving each and every single one of me and my siblings our names with our meanings I also think about Sierra Leone and that little piece of paradise that I get to call home so instead of being ashamed or embarrassed that you have to ask that person their name again maybe be honored and grateful at the fact that you get to be an agent to deliver 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 which brings community which brings belonging because at the end of all of this it's not just about diversity and inclusion those are really important but it's really more about community and belonging so if a seven-year-old new kid was in attitude because she wasn't in New York can become the fixer what can intelligent educated adults become and more than that what could we all become together well let's find out [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 39,232

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Community

Id: kZaNa17yeaQ

Length: 14min 25sec (865 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 22 2019