Fear.

That was my first thought when I read the New York Times headline: “More Hispanics Declaring Themselves White.”

Apparently the preliminary data from a new study show that 2.5 million Americans who identified as Hispanic and “some other race” in 2000 changed their identification in 2010, reporting that they were Hispanic and white. With disturbingly sweeping conclusions Nate Cohn asserts that the data “call into question whether America is destined to become a so-called minority-majority nation, where whites represent a minority of the nation’s population.”   “It is particularly significant,” continues Cohn, “that the shift toward white identification withstood a decade of debate over immigration and the country’s exploding Hispanic population, which might have been expected to inculcate or reinforce a sense of Hispanic identity.”

What about fear?

In 1989 I was working in Washington, DC, which made me the official public policy analyst for my family. I was not surprised when my sister called long distance, wanting my advice on what was her first Census.

“Should I check ‘Hispanic’?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “Why not?”

I could picture my sister, hundreds of miles away, with skin darker than mine, who was often mistaken for Chippewa or one of the other Native American tribes in Michigan where we grew up. My skin was lighter, so people assumed I was Chaldean, part of the large Christian Iraqi community in Detroit. No one ever guessed Ecuadorian.

“I’m just kind of scared,” she said. “Like maybe they’ll use that against me somehow. I mean, could they use it to discriminate against me?”

I assured her that she would be okay and that checking the “Hispanic” box would be helpful for Latino communities needing government resources.

But I was struck by her question and her fear. While my public policy brain could dismiss her concerns, I knew they were real. From FBI surveillance of Cesar Chavez to Department of Homeland Security data used in millions of deportations, I knew that being Latino in the US was never without risk.

“White Supremacy kills,” writes Blanca E. Vega in Latinidad Without Latinos: In Response to the Question: “Will Hispanics be The New White?”

 …it is insignificant to ask how many White people there will be in 2050 and how Latinos will contribute to this number if we don’t consider that the values, beliefs, and practices that uphold White Supremacy are much stronger than our mortal bodies. Yes – we are all carriers of these values, beliefs, and practices. Thus, Latinos “choosing” White could only mean something when we consider what we are taught about Whiteness and the mechanisms that are still firmly in place that make people desire Whiteness and reject Latinidad.

Whatever the numbers are and however we ask the questions, let’s not forget that stepping forward as a person of color in this country has always been a dangerous act. Let’s not forget that courageous organizing – like Mujeres Unidas y Activas, Puente Arizona, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, and so much more – is what brings safety and strength to our communities, and allows us to nurture an identity of leadership for a loving and equitable world.

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Feature photo: Courtesy of Julie Quiroz

Today our collective failure to provide real educational opportunity for youth of color leaves me shaken and emboldened to speak. It’s been 60 years since Brown v. Board struck down segregation laws in schools – and 16 years since I began organizing with low-income parents and students to achieve a decent education for youth of color.

In 2008 I took a job as Campaign Organizer for the “Campaign for College and Career,” launched by the members of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth in San Francisco. As Campaign Organizer, it was my job to educate, train, and organize African American, Latino, and Pacific Islander parents and students to work with allies to push for resources to ensure students’ access to the minimum requirements for entry into California public universities (called the “A-G” course requirements).

The campaign pushed for San Francisco Unified School District to graduate 60% of all students to be college and career ready by aligning the graduation requirement with “A-G.” We also demanded student access to socio-emotional supports, tutoring, alternatives to suspension and options for retaking failed classes.

When we started the campaign, lack of access and supports meant that only one out of six African American and one out of five Latino students in SFUSD were graduating with these courses completed. Each and every year we advocated and organized for increases in resources for students to be successful and graduate on time. Each and every year, we discovered barrier after barrier that went way beyond policy changes.

The results of this work have been bitterly disappointing: According to SFUSD’s New Graduation Requirement Task Force, in 2014 less than half of African American, Latino, and Pacific Islander students are on track to complete the A-G requirements needed for graduation. By comparison, more than two thirds of White students are on track, as well as more than four fifths of Asian students. Watching the presentation of these not-yet-released data to the school board I could barely contain my anger and frustration. The data showed that the goal we had worked so hard for – the goal of graduating more than 60 percent of all subgroups – had not been achieved.

I am outraged but not surprised. In my analysis of data during implementation – and every conversation with principals, teachers, counselors, department chairs, and countless other staff and adults at all levels in and out of the classroom – the biggest barrier was people who did not believe African American, Latino, and Pacific Islander students should be college and career ready, who blatantly did not follow policy, who would not change their interpersonal practice, and who refused to give students access to the courses they needed to stay on track to graduation. More difficult to witness were the adults who did shift their interpersonal practice, who advocated and coached their colleagues, but were too few to have impact or who did not feel they had the power to be the whistleblower on their colleagues’ destructive behaviors and practices.

As the campaign organizer who fought so hard for these policies, I am enraged and disappointed that everything we did resulted in so little change for my community.

My personal experience in the education system has taught me that oppression creates the tracking system so many education justice organizers, parent leaders, and youth leaders are fighting to dismantle. For example, I entered public middle school after a year of being homeless and transitioning from my Catholic elementary school. Right away I noticed that sixth  graders in “General Education” were covering material from my fourth  grade lessons in Catholic School. My biggest shock was when I was identified for the Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) Program, then skipped to seventh grade Honors, that I quickly recognized as the college prep track. I learned that in public school someone was clearly deciding who would and wouldn’t get the opportunity to be college or career prepared. In fact, from eighth to eleventh grade, I was among fewer than five African American students each grade year who were in the Honors track. This was not my decision, nor was it the decision of those left behind.

How did “the system” get so entrenched in tracking? How do we accept that a school-to-prison pipeline exists? How are we okay with a majority of graduates struggling for low wage work and glass ceiling careers? How did education become the home of data-driven practices rather than the well being of every student?

I believe that the US education system has an ugly problem: it is a system run by adults. Adults don’t change quickly, unless the most critical reality is brought to their face and they are forced to make changes.

Oppression in the education system has everything to do with adults whose ideology and interpersonal and internalized oppression impact their actions. Adults create the majority of the laws, regulations, and policies, and perpetuate the practices that make it possible to have an institution. The tracking system exists because adults hold beliefs about who will be college or career prepared.

As an education justice movement, we need to be better at articulating what the school-to-prison pipeline is — a tracking system. We must go beyond throwing more money at a system designed to track. Tests are no longer needed for the tracking system to work because individual adults in the system — proponents or not — sustain tracking as a standard practice due to their personal ideologies.

In my new position as Program Director for Parent Leadership Action Network (PLAN), an organization that works primarily in the Oakland Unified School District, I continue to find that true change in education – and any other movement sector – requires us to shift the beliefs of adults to see all humans have the capacity to learn. At PLAN, we believe that increasing the skills, knowledge, and confidence of parents is critical to empowering them to transform schools so that all students have access to an education. We create trainings that require both parents and school staff to learn about how to navigate the system, how to talk about institutional racism, and how to begin building relationships that change behavior and improve school climate.

I applaud the work of groups like Kenwood Oakland Community Organizations and Journey for Justice who supported cities across the nation to file civil rights complaints with the Department of Education, demonstrating how school closures and disproportionate suspensions and expulsions are devastating Black and Latino neighborhoods. Campaigns such as these begin to call national attention to what discrimination looks like today.

All education organizers, parent leaders, student leaders, and community leaders need to tell the truth about how discrimination and adults’ personal ideology are deciding the future of students. We must never stop telling the stories of our members, leaders, and schools that live through the discrimination. We must tell the truth that oppression is so normal that it is indeed unconsciously accepted in our communities and supported in the US education system.

Education organizing is a critical element for achieving any level of justice within any sector. It is where oppression beats down the sparks of light in the next generation and trains them to believe they cannot learn, they do not matter, that they belong in prison or dead. It is our organizing, our leadership development, and our faith in our students and parents that, in the darkest times, keeps their hope alive for creating a different life for themselves,

A movement that cares about every child can look amazing. It can look like boycotting percentages being used in data and seeing every student as more than a number. It can look like honest conversations about oppression – across roles and jobs  – that are beautiful, uncomfortable, and dynamic.

A movement that cares about every child does not look like silence. Silence is compliance, permission for the end result of students of color to be in the school-to-prison pipeline. I am thankful every day that I was trained to be an organizer, that I am blessed with the chance to remind our parents and students that collectively we can transform education.

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Feature photo: twbuckner, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Gender Justice Series. Gender is shifting in the U.S., spawning deep soul searching, fear, and backlash – as well as new opportunities for social transformation. In our Gender Justice series Let’s Talk will explore how gender is woven together with other social identities such as race and class, and how a liberative approach to gender can inform and strengthen a wide range of social movements.

I am a queer Chicana building an alliance with boys and men of color.

The connections between who I am and who I work with may not seem obvious to you or to many people, including those launching My Brother’s Keeper, President Obama’s new initiative aimed at empowering boys and young men of color. In fact, the connections weren’t even completely clear to me just three years ago.

Three years ago I was pregnant and bombarded with the question, “What do you want – a boy or a girl?”  “A healthy baby,” I would answer.

A month into my second trimester I had a vivid dream, my wise curandera Tereza rubbed my swollen belly and gave me a consejo to take care of the little girl inside of me. I woke up from that dream thinking about how I would raise this child with the least amount of pink and dolls, and with the greatest amount of spunk and spirit.

Weeks later at the ultrasound that would confirm the sex of our baby, I looked at my partner with disbelief as the technician ceremoniously announced that we were having a boy. I was incredulous. Over and over I asked the technician to check again. In the end my partner and I were sent home with an ultrasound picture with an arrow pointing to our son’s anatomy and capitalized letters that read BOY!!!

The awesome responsibility of raising a boy of color weighed on me heavily. Having grown up with two brothers in a predominantly people of color community, I am painfully and intimately familiar with the low expectations, school tracking, and racial profiling boys and men of color are subjected to. I know that youth and men of color are seen as expendable by systems that are stacked against them.

Unconsciously I decided that the best way of protecting my yet unborn child was to keep him inside of me for as long as I could. I felt that he would be safer inside of me. Because how could I possibly protect him from the outside world? I was in denial about birthing him. Fortunately for me, I was in the care of an experienced and intuitive midwife, Eva, who saw right through my fright. At our 39th week visit, Eva and my partner gently confronted me and started chipping away at my fears. I was flooded with emotion, realizing that my role was to guide this baby into, and in, this world.

My son was born on his due date, one ounce shy of nine pounds. My fears of the world around him have not disappeared but have been abated by the network of people and organizations engaged in Boys and Men of Color (BMOC) work in local communities and through statewide initiatives funded by The California Endowment.

As a queer mami of color, my faith in a better world is restored through this work as I hear, witness, and engage in challenging yet healthy struggles about the boys of color who are traditionally left out of the conversation – queer identified and transgender boys of color. It’s undeniable that outcomes for boys and men of color are dire when it comes to higher education, employment, health, and life expectancy. These issues are compounded when we talk about queer and transgender boys and men of color.

In our work with BMOC we have found that focusing on gender and sexuality is crucial for empowering men of color. For example, the experiences of youth leaders in the Young Men’s Empowerment Program (YMEP) at the Long Beach-based Khmer Girls in Action (KGA) illustrate the power of creating safe spaces to address gender identity and sexuality with young men of color. In the words of Seng So, Young Men’s Empowerment Coordinator at KGA and a leader in the Brothers Sons Selves coalition in Los Angeles County,

YMEP serves as a safe space where young Southeast Asian men share in collective knowledge, growth, and transformation…Through YMEP we are redefining the markers of manhood, reshaping masculinity and the role that we play in being allies to our sisters and young women who are fighting to dismantle patriarchy.

Seng So describes how the empowerment of young men has allowed some to come out to their friends, family, and community – serving as leaders and advocates of LGBTQ rights in the process. Through YMEP young men are developing into effective organizers in their local communities, fighting for wellness centers and restorative discipline practices in their schools.

As Seng So’s story illustrates, focusing on gender means broadening the definition of “what a man is,” how masculinity is defined, enforced in our families, cultures, and society. In statewide gatherings and curriculum for BMOC, participants explore and challenge limiting concepts of what a man looks like. This exploration goes beyond breaking down familiar stereotypes to challenging the gender binary and widening the lens to look at the intersections of gender and sexuality.

Ultimately, a focus on gender means an inclusive way of looking at issues that affect all of us. How do we uplift our black and brown, young people of color without leaving out part of who they are – gender identity and sexuality? How do we raise our children to express their full humanity and all of who they are — for gender to support that expression — not be a prison, an expectation, a limitation, a target for state violence, a purveyor of unearned privilege and power.

Understanding and exploring gender is important for all men and boys as an essential part of their development and empowerment. Understanding and exploring gender is necessary for any program or initiative because otherwise we end up excluding and discriminating and traumatizing those who don’t fit into the established boxes, and reinforcing oppression for all.

My hope is that my son will grow to become a kind, thoughtful, community oriented human being: someone who believes in inclusion, who will struggle to find another way, a third way, that transcends the “either-or” options to which we’ve limited ourselves.

Let’s have this conversation as if the lives of all boys of color are on the line, because they are. Just like the lives of girls of color are on the line. Let’s find another way, a third way, to include boys of color in all of their wholeness.

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Feature photo: © iStockphoto.com/digitalskllet

I am ready to admit: I am burnt out.

I’ve been working towards social justice, in one way or another, for at least twenty years. I’ve been a popular educator, a policy analyst, an organizer, an evaluator, and a facilitator for small and large non-profits and public agencies. The passion I once felt about the possibility of collective action, community organizing, and policy change to bring about a more equal world is fizzling. And it isn’t just me; I regularly hear a real yearning for change from activists and change agents of all kinds.

I believe the root of our exhaustion is the amount of time we spend blaming ourselves for our lack of progress, blaming each other, and blaming the power brokers. I believe in accountability and taking responsibility for healing our world, but I also believe our movements have over-dosed on blame.

In my coaching practice, I hear from leaders who are often publicly revered for their contributions to social justice yet confess an inner state of dissatisfaction with themselves. They almost seem to believe they just aren’t good enough, telling me they don’t work hard enough, think hard enough, fight hard enough, and on and on. Activists don’t just have inner critics, they have inner bullies. But our inner bullies don’t actually serve the movement. And like real bullies – they are really hard to escape.

Coaching has taught me some ways to move beyond blame, first by understanding the shame underneath. Shame is blame turned inward – the belief that we really aren’t worthy of love and belonging. I want to share three coaching practices that I believe have the potential to transform our inner bullies into inner allies.

#1: Practice Unconditional Love & Forgiveness

I believe the practice of unconditional love and forgiveness is essential to free ourselves from shame and blame, and that it’s a practice that begins with ourselves. In my social change work, I have clung tightly to the notion that every mistake was a learning opportunity. In my mind I tirelessly analyzed my mistakes, as if my commitment to learning could orchestrate a state of near perfection.

Once, when I was being coached, my coach asked me to try forgiving myself. I balked. My inner bully wanted none of this self-help, self-indulgent, new-age coach talk! But the comment struck a chord with me so I took a deep breath and gave it a try. Over time I found that being in a loving relationship with my mistakes wasn’t self-indulgence. I wasn’t “letting myself off the hook.” By forgiving myself – not analyzing – I was freeing myself to do more. Later that year when I started a new consulting project, I discovered that I had taken on a whole new attitude towards my work, and myself. I was able to listen more and longer, to create more space for others’ ideas, and to resist the urge to take on more than my actual responsibility for the work — which led to fewer mistakes!

Forgiveness and unconditional love are also the foundations of non-violent social movement building. The practice of unconditional love and forgiveness isn’t unique to coaching; it’s the premise that fueled some of the greatest changes this country has ever experienced. Martin Luther King, for example, inspired by Gandhi, was driven not only by rage, but also by the hope and inner calm that comes from practicing forgiveness and unconditional love.

Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars…Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. (Martin Luther King, 1956).

This doesn’t mean that I see goodness exhibited in violent behavior or unfair policies. But I do believe those who perpetrate violence can transform, and that their transformation is most likely when I believe in their potential. Believing in my own worth feeds my ability to make room for my colleagues’ full contributions, which deepens my faith that even those who don’t share my values have a spot of grace.

#2: Reveal Racial & Economic Injustice

Let me be clear: Practicing unconditional love and forgiveness does not mean ignoring racial and economic injustice. I believe focusing on the power of love and forgiveness can empower us to bravely reveal what we know about racial and economic injustice in a way that creates connection. But dealing with the facts of racial and economic injustice can be tricky. Activists often fall into a data trap, lifting up statistic after statistic, assuming the “facts” are enough to instigate action. Others fear that lifting up data on racial inequality might shame our communities. Those on the right use data to blame people of color for their condition.

While honestly examining facts sounds easy enough, it is actually really hard. Neuroscience demonstrates that our brain does three things nearly simultaneously: it perceives facts, has an emotional reaction, and assigns a story to the facts, all in the blink of an eye. Not convinced? Try reading this fact from a recent Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) report: “In fourth grade 84 percent of Black public school students cannot read at grade level and 83 percent cannot do math at grade level.” As you were reading this you most likely had an emotional reaction as well as the inklings of a story of why this is happening, who’s at fault, or how it should be solved, right?

When it comes to looking at race and inequality, separating the facts from the emotions and the stories is especially challenging, no matter what side of an issue you’re on.

john powell, expert on race and collective consciousness, writes that many Americans (both white and of color) reach a conclusion that poor people (who are predominately people of color) are at fault for their condition and that “this assessment process is largely unconscious and fairly immune to the facts.” Rather, their assessment depends more on their stories and emotions.

Activists of color often get triggered around race. With information like that from CDF I’ve heard my colleagues say, “I can’t share this data. People will think I am racist for bringing it up.” Our feelings of rage and frustration at injustice fuel our inner bully, pumping him up to fight back. It is important to remember that the fighter in us has helped us make some important strides for ourselves and for the movement. But letting the fighter/bully run the show also limits our potential. Powell urges us to re-embrace a “higher order love” such as used by Dr. King, while simultaneously examining the facts that demonstrate unequal opportunities built into our systems and structures.

#3: Rewrite the Narrative

I have learned from coaching that it is possible to direct our consciousness. We can step back and say “Oh! Those are my feelings!” and “Oh! That’s the interpretation of meaning!”, and “Oh! Those are the facts!” I’ve learned that new possibilities emerge, not from outsmarting the problems, pointing the finger at my rage, or finding fault (like my inner bully wants), but from simply being willing to look at things as they are and being willing to ask, “What now?”

Once we come to “What now?” we have the opportunity to change the narrative. The “narrative” is the collectively embraced story about why inequality persists. john powell shares that our policy decisions are “powerfully influenced by the stories we embrace to allocate meaning, a power that can be more impactful than material conditions.” He encourages us to be deliberate in the stories we create so that we can foster a wider sense of belonging for all people. Once we realize that our stories are actually inventions we can choose to create new ones.

So, this year, thank your Inner Bully for all he’s done for you over the years. Then find a willing partner – a friend, a coach, or a mentor – to listen while you release your anger and frustration about injustice. Then show yourself some unconditional love by telling yourself: you are already enough! And, without blame, recognize injustice and shift the story to emphasize love and belonging for all. This year, let’s set out to re-write the narrative, give our inner bullies a break, and truly open ourselves and each other up to make real changes in the lives of our communities.

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Feature photo: Deep_In_Platos_Cave, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Over the past few days as I’ve watched people gather in Soweto, Birmingham, Bahia and Deli to sing, dance and celebrate the life of a simple man who changed us all, a flood of memory and imagination has washed over me.

My mind and heart go most often to the story of Nelson Mandela’s prison yard garden, which taught me the extraordinary power of simple things to keep us connected to our deepest roots and to our humanity, even when facing the worst brutality.  Mandela shared the bounty of the garden not only with other inmates and political prisoners, but also with the prison guards who were the instruments of the system that had imprisoned him, the system of violence that had dehumanized him and his people for over 300 years.  His generosity taught me that even in those who cannot see us, a spark of humanity is always there, waiting to be rekindled.

In Nelson Mandela we saw a man with unwavering commitment to his vision and an unencumbered willingness to build deep relationships with all who shared that vision – and even with those who did not, yet, share it.  These qualities carried him through the most trying times and ultimately brought triumph to the movement which shaped him and of which he was a part.

As I think of what was achieved in South Africa and how the movement there seeks to finish the long walk to freedom, I see a new path being forged to overcome the present challenges.  South Africa, like the rest of the world, struggles with an even greater opponent than apartheid: persistent and deepening economic inequality.  We are all complicit in having strengthened this opponent, until we find the courage to create a global economy rooted in valuing human need.  In this shared global struggle, I know that the relentless pursuit of a vision that binds people of different beliefs together must be the praxis and practice of all our movement building, making the most impossible change seem nearer in our every breath.  As we build our vision, let us also stay rooted in our own humanity, and see the humanity in each other, even in those who do not see our own.