In Black America; The Color of Culture, with Mona Lake Jones, Part 1

My name is Daryl On Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. My diversity consultant side wants to, my academics, I want to shift some paradigms and develop some new strategies and some timelines for pluralism and retention. But my creative self is inclined simply to take you on a poetic excursion. As a speaker, I'm often posed with that dilemma, but I have thoughtfully considered this. And I know that you are learning participants here this morning with great wisdom on many

subjects and probably have been saturated with information or engaged in innumerable conversations on these subjects. So I have decided to give you a smattering of what you will recognize as concrete research data. And a whole lot of subjective and two of your thoughts about culture and diversity of our students that you can put in your pocket and draw from when you need to or just simply leave here feeling good about having been present. Dr. Mona Lake Jones, Vice President of Marketing and Publications Impact Communications. Last November, Florida and in University held this 13th National Higher Education Conference on Student Retention and Albuquerque, New Mexico. The five day conference brought together some of the leading experts on student retention. In 1983, Dr. Anita A. Ford, then Director of the Title III Program at Florida A&M, devised a special model for institutional strategies to increase minority student retention.

Now 14 years later, her conference is the leading retention conference in the nation. I'm John L. Hanson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, The Color of Culture, with Dr. Mona Lake Jones, In Black America. Now sometimes you may find it difficult to draw conclusions because reality may mix with your illusions. And it may seem that when your thinking becomes blurred, that's when your greatest solutions have occurred. For at that moment, when you have examined all that is at stake, that you figure out which path to take. And you'll be glad when your prediction has come true and it turns out that you knew. But when life decides to take a different turn, then simply view it as a lesson learned.

And once again, know that sometimes it's good to be perplexed and to wonder what may be coming next. As a woman, an African American woman, I'm going to use my base of experience to draw from. And the work I have authored in the books on The Color of Culture, to support the notion that diversity is a positive and that the acceptance and respect for multi-cultures, and in fact the celebration of cultures, it creates optimal learning environments that affect student retention. This year's conference was truly multi-cultural. Attendees included Hispanics, Native Americans, Anglos, and African Americans. There were five concurrent sessions, nine special sessions, three video screenings, around table on the hot topic of Ibonics, and six general sessions featuring noted keynote speakers covering phases of multi-cultural retention.

Dr. Mona Lake Jones is a former teacher and poet laureate of Seattle, Washington. So she serves as a consultant for schools and businesses on issues of diversity and education. Jones holds a PhD degree in education leadership from Seattle University and has a tenant Washington state and the University of Washington. She is an orator who conveys insight about the world and the context of culture and diversity. According to the article, Campus Diversity Priority, the most successful diversity initiative designed to impact the success of our students are those with strong, administrative leadership and campus-wide vision that involves a systematic plan at all levels. Diversity continues to be headline news in higher education that's really where much of this news is happening. In the recent Hotwood versus the state of Texas where the fifth circuit court declared that diversity was not a compelling state interest that would justify the use of racial

preferences or the work of my brother, Lord Connerley, Chairman of the Civil Rights Commission in California, both bringing a sharp focus to diversity and questioning whether or not the recruitment and retention of multicultural student bodies are important. We know that higher education is on the edge of understanding multi-cultures and that we are laboratories for diversity. Colleges and universities are microcosms of this country and all the varieties of culture and you all have an awesome task of leading our institutions in the embracement, the celebration of these differences in order to do the best possible jobs of educating our students. And you know everyone has something to celebrate because everyone has culture even though

some folks think they don't. Culture is ever present, it greets you when you first wake in the morning, it rests with you when you get comfortable enough to fall asleep and say the day is over. Culture is how you love and who you choose to love. Whether you eat cornbread or pumpernickel, it's how you celebrate living and how you resolve the dilemmas that life has to offer. It shows itself without you knowing and tells who you are without you speaking. Culture is even you're all of those family members who are dead and gone because they are the ones who set the cultural patterns that many of us follow. Culture is sometimes vibrant and loud and sometimes it's quiet and subtle but you know it when you see it because it has color and cultures also contagious. At first it was thought that only could be transmitted through families with one generation turning to pass it to the next but now we know you can catch it from living in a certain

location or community or even from a close friend. It usually takes a prolonged onset and exposure but culture is wonderful to acquire. Sometimes you can catch it just by being a certain color and you know the culture I know the most about is black culture and one day I heard somebody say that blacks were culturally deprived and I wondered how they had arrived at that conclusion. I was confused by what they said and it just kept rumbling through my head but it only took a while before I began to smile. You see I figured they simply didn't know. Black folks have sure enough culture from our head down to our toe. It's the music that we sing. It's a style in which we talk. It's our preaching and our playing and the way some even walk. It's the get down way we move when the band begins to play and it's the looks we give each other without using any words to say.

And our ways that we communicate that folks outside our culture may not appreciate. It's the way we put the man on and he doesn't even know and it's the way we keep on trying when somebody tells us no. Now when they say we don't appreciate the finer things in life, I know through all my education, toils and strife, I recognize good music when I hear it on the air and to say that blue, jazz and gospel aren't culture. That's not fair. And with James Brown my brother you know I've got soul and frankly sometimes I find string quartet performances to be rather cold. Now I certainly appreciate the finest there is in food. I don't even have to be in any special mood to appreciate some green, some black eyed peas, some cornbread, a little fried chicken, and some red kool-aid. I would turn down the caviar no matter how much they pay.

It's our afros, our curls, the way we cut our hair, the clothes and the fashionable styles that we wear. It's the sisters and the brothers struggling for the cause, fighting economics and politics and unjust laws. For most of all it's the way we hang together and this kinship that we feel, that makes our culture so natural and so real. You know when I think about our blackness and what our culture is all about, it's hard to keep on talking because I really want to shout, blacks don't have any culture. I heard somebody say and I just put my hand on my hip, roll my eyes and look the other way. There is black culture and there's so much to rejoice about our culture. And those who realize their culture often celebrate and revel in it because culture is a treasure that makes you a richer human being. Understanding the reality of your color, your gender, or any of your other personal markers

is a profound experience. And unearth the beauty of self-definition and security and without apology allows you to steep in your culture. And this reality especially for our students helps them become stronger and more confident in their identity and then it is easier for them to take the risk to become learners. Who are these multi-cultured students we are trying to embrace and celebrate to ensure their success as learners who need our help to feel comfortable enough to take the risk to learn? Who are these students who are most likely not to experience success or choose to stay if they are not included, reflected or respected? They are the students of color and varied lifestyles and intentions. They are from communities of affluence and communities of poverty.

They are coming to us with language differences. Some may be physically challenged, while others appear to have no physical limitations and may be there in your institution mostly because someone has noticed and applauded their physical and physicalness enough to invite them to your institutions to help maintain the school's positions on the mega sports arena. In order for these students to hang in to stick around, our institutions must be responsive to these various cultures by developing climates that are conducive to them. Learning to stay and to choose and to take the risk to learn. So one of the things we can do is to remind them of just how smart they really are are. Talk about their history. I know in Black culture a kind of thin and mowness I wrote about just being smart and it says, they shouted slaves you will always be.

But Harriet came along and said, shh, through the underground railroad right this way. I know if we could do it. They tried to keep us from voting but we marched and we organized. This afternoon the congressional black caucus will meet in Senate room 155. Oh, I know we could do it. They said move on to the back of the bus. Rosa said no. And now watch your step please 50 cents next stop 15th and he's cherry. Oh, I know we could do it. How long ago they would provide no food service, not even a seat. May I take your order please? Oh, I'm sorry we don't serve stroganoff. Would you care for some collards? Oh, I know we could do it. They said we would work together but surely not to live next door.

My address? A 100 circle park view drive. Oh, I know we could do it. They said we weren't smart enough to learn our ABCs but the door cracked open and we went to Harvard and got our PH and D. I know I knew we could do it. You see our cognitive capabilities of assimilation and accommodation are copious and our epistemological skills are overwhelming. In other words, we are smart. And we must share that smartness and reminder of that with our students. We must help instill in them a sense of cultural pride by telling them our story. And sometimes it's hard to get their attention. There is a piece called Vanish that speaks about that and it says the old man asked before you go can I tell you some history?

I think you should know. The boy answered I'm in a hurry on my way out to play. Maybe tomorrow I can hear what you said. A grandmother said come sit my dear, I have something I think you should hear. The girl over her shoulder stopped a chime. Maybe tomorrow I'll have the time. And so it went and the years passed on and before they knew it the old man was gone. And the grandmother soon went away too and took with her all the wisdom that she knew. And when the girl and boy were older and grown, they wished for those stories. The old folks had known. We can't let that happen. We must remind them of our history and to tell them thank God your ancestor not been known by his slave name, crouched low in the ship and bent his back and grimaced well enough to bear the pain. And be grateful too that he did not excuse himself from the misery of enslavement but chose

to endure an imprisoned existence. We wonder what he's simply strong in body or what his mind so sharp he outwitted those in charge. And we must remind them that our ancestors and our folk continue to arrive, they arrive, they arrive, they arrive. They kept arriving. They were cut from the heart of Africa and crowded into the bellies of ships, stacked for the voyages across the seas, enslaved on plantations and shaffled and whipped into obedience to build a future for their masters. But they arrived, they arrived, they arrived, they kept arriving. Escaping through the underground in ordered by the emancipation proclamation to be elevated to non-citizenships, freed but unable to vote or participate in the political process and without the promised forty acres in a mule.

But they arrived, they arrived, they arrived, they kept arriving. With no civil rights or choice of home or school or job to suit their needs and seated at the back of the bus suffering from discrimination or oppression and the humiliation of misconception and stereotype, but they arrived, they arrived, they kept arriving. They came, black men and women, brilliant, resilient, strong, creative and proud with minds and bodies of great potential, amazing how few were broken and lost their way. For most arrived to be shopkeepers and teachers and ventures and scientists, they arrived to be architects and lawyers, home makers and factory workers. They arrived to be artists and performers, physicians and clinicians. They arrived to be builders and designers, philosophers and writers.

They arrived to be preachers and politicians, athletes and astronauts, both ordinary and extraordinary folks, they arrived, they arrived, they arrived and we keep arriving. We must share that history with our students. You know, it continues to amaze me that all of this beauty and difference and all of that beauty in our multi-cultures, that there are still people who negate the work of folks different from themselves. They are not seeing the beauty in diversity and don't realize the strength that comes from the exercise of listing others and as a result, there are those people all over the country and in our colleges who continue shabbings for freedom. On campuses all across the country, there are students who are suffering because they are thought to be different and if you listen closely, you can hear them shouting freedom,

freedom, freedom. They just keep shouting freedom but there are no chains around their ankles. Their bodies are not bent nor whipped from abuse. They appear to be exercised and strong, yet they just keep shouting freedom. They are not crying because of empty stomachs and many live in comfortable dwellings on ordinary streets and they look to be fine, yet they just keep shouting freedom. It must be their minds that we are not seeing. For if their minds are in bonded, struggling not to be intimidated, ignored, confused, constricted and conquered, then that could prompt their cries and that could cause them to continue to shout for freedom. They are shouting because there are those who have not yet learned to appreciate and embrace diversity.

They are shouting freedom because some folks still have the melting pot on the stove and have even turned up the heat. It is because there are those who are suffering from color mania up here, down there, over here, over there, everywhere. There are people who dislike you, they have not met you, you have not spoken. They have only seen you. They are afflicted with color mania. You can still hear the cry of freedom because some have not learned that kindness is magnetic and that it draws out the best in others. They are shouting because they are not seeing themselves reflected in the institutions which they are expected to live and learn. They are shouting because the expectation is that they will not succeed. They are shouting because the economics, the cost of higher education is unreachable. They are shouting because some people think that just because they are who they are, they can do what they do.

They don't know that it is not your age, your color, your ethnicity, your gender, your religion, your sexual preference, your physical capability. It is looking from the inside out and that that is what life should be about. It is thinking clearly with a goal in mind, it is respecting others, it is being kind. It is trying hard to make a plan of choices you think are right and in striving for the tallest type. It is not just thinking only of you but caring about those around you too, it is looking from the inside out and that that is what life should be about. So you must help them, those who are not hearing the cry for freedom, those who are not responding appropriately or quickly enough to many who are different, our students. You are in positions of leadership working with students and staff and communities following your lead. You have the capability to demonstrate for them the beauty in the multi-cultures, the diversity

within our colleges and universities. Let me just give you one example of the beauty of differences, just imagine this painting of a room full of sisters. I went into Boston, the fine arts museum there had a painting of a room full of sisters that Paul Goodnight did and then in Detroit, a BBO and did a painting of this piece of mind called a room full of sisters. You paint your own picture as I tell you about them. There was this room full of sisters like jewels in a crown, hoop of vanilla, cinnamon and dark chocolate brown. Now picture yourself in the midst of this glory as I describe the sisters who are part of this story. They were wearing purples, royal blues, all shades of red and some had elegant hats on their heads. They had sparkling eyes and shiny lips and as they moved through the room swaying their hips.

They spoke with smiles on their colorful faces, with their joy and laughter filling all the spaces. They were fashionable and stylish in what they were wearing and they were kind sisters who were loving and caring. You see, it's not about how these sisters appeared. Their beauty within the values they resist. They were smart, articulate, well-read with all kinds of family history stored in their heads. The jugglers of professions and managers of lives and mothers of children and lovers and wives, good-hearted, reaching out to others, getting back to the community and supporting our brothers. Now all of these sisters had struggled the path. They suffered from prejudice, they endured the wrath, but they brushed off their dresses and they pushed on the doors and they came back stronger than they were before. Now imagine if you wheeled the essence and thrill as you sit feeling proud in the midst of this crowd.

A sisterhood of modern sojourners today still out in front blazing the way. A room full of sisters like jewels in a crowd. They were vanilla, cinnamon and dark, chocolate brown. Aren't those pretty sisters? Can you imagine them? And that diversity and that color? We must remind our students of their beauty. John Hoyle in leadership and featuring says that clearly shared visions and modeling inspire and empower others to make those visions happen. And know that your behaviors, your words, your looks may be what will encourage our students. And speaking of looks, in my culture we really rely on nonverbal communication and sometimes it only takes a look to send a powerful message. You can look at your students sometimes and not even have to say anything. In fact, did your mother have a look that, you know, if it looks could get you, I'd be

glad because every time I got ready to do my thing, my mama, my daddy, my grandmother or my auntie Butler, who is no real relation to our family, they would catch me, look me straight in the eye and I'd nearly die and I'd have to stop what I was doing. I can't count the times I was nearly killed right on the church bench while the preacher was preaching. Once all I was fixing to do was pinch Bobby so he could see Ms. Poston had on one of those funny looking hats set in all to the front of her head and my mama's eyes caught me and pierced me so hard I felt my heart stop and I had to catch my breath. Now my grandmother, who we call grand hunting because she was so sweet, she'd always smile after she looked as if she was tickled about me being so shame. I would try my best not to look at her, but sometimes I'd check just to see if she was sleeping and she would be looking hard not saying a word and I would have to adjust my agenda.

Now my daddy, he really only had to look a half of look. He didn't look long, he didn't look hard, he didn't even wrinkle his forehead or squint his eyes, he just looked. I used to wish he'd say something out loud so the herd inside me would stop and I could go on with something else but I'd just stand and wait until I heard him say, go on girl. Now my auntie Butler, who is not my real aunt, I don't know how she thought she had the rights to looking, she looked more than anybody. She looked from her front porch while I was outside playing, she looked on my way home from school, she looked at church, she even looked when she saw you at the store, auntie Butler was always causing me to change my plan. Now I thought when I grew up I could do my thing without anybody looking but yesterday I was having a brief conversation on the phone with my best friend, Johnetta and I happened to glance up and my husband had the nerve to be looking. Looks could get your eyes be gone and while we're talking about this communication thing

listen this is just between us and nobody else needs to know and you must promise that this is as far as it will go. But when I saw Maybell whispering to Lucille in church last week I knew then there'd be a leaf. I think many was the original source but she confided in her best friend Sally of course. But when Jane came in and asked Sally what's new Sally told Jane and Jane told Sue and Sue didn't keep it for more than a day because she called John and John called men and when May gave the news to Esther, Esther told me and that's how the story got to me. I think the way the news got out is really a shame and if you tell somebody else please don't use my name. Dr. Mona Lake Jones vice president of marketing and publications impact communications. We will conclude her presentation on next week's program. If you have questions or comments or suggestions as to future in black America programs write us.

Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for IBA technical producer Cliff Hoggrove. I'm John L. Hanson Jr. thank you for joining us today and please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America cassettes, communication building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in black America cassettes, communication building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. In the University of Texas at Austin this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John L. Hanson Jr. join me this week on in black America.

I want to raise some issues around the topic of student retention being multicultural and the importance of the recognition and celebration of diversity. The color of culture with Dr. Mona Lake Jones this week on in black America.