WEBVTT 1 00:00:47.490 --> 00:00:52.650 And we can I was sitting around talking and we were excited that one we needed it with a chance to talk about. 2 00:00:55.320 --> 00:01:04.500 Non white white academic environment and we came up How did we come up with the name, we were like. 3 00:01:05.730 --> 00:01:07.140 We said we like nothing you. 4 00:01:08.340 --> 00:01:09.060 Like vocalist. 5 00:01:10.260 --> 00:01:12.630 Because of the way the conversation flow in. 6 00:01:13.740 --> 00:01:22.050 The air we were talking about I think I think I was describing being in a classroom with a professor and. 7 00:01:24.270 --> 00:01:35.280 The Eurocentric discourse or theory whatever kind of just renders rendered mean visible I feel like i'm invisible, you know, and then I open my mouth. 8 00:01:36.600 --> 00:01:45.120 Then it's sort of like it's a it's an act of criminality so as I sit there and in this book open my mouth i'm a criminal and so. 9 00:01:46.410 --> 00:01:55.890 In so there's like those two aspects that I that we were talking about, and so we were just I think you were the one who said when when you're just sitting there. 10 00:01:58.080 --> 00:02:01.650 You were invisible but we're just like noises in the attic. 11 00:02:02.730 --> 00:02:12.870 That is exactly the experience I was sharing with a group of people, and then advanced qualitative class last week and I was telling deepak about. 12 00:02:13.440 --> 00:02:27.210 How emotional, I was in describing to this group of people that when I open this book that talks about other other other the colonizers gays talking about myself. 13 00:02:28.830 --> 00:02:42.360 it's a collection of people's thoughts about people like me, and so it it's it's extremely uncomfortable to think that i'm studying a methodology that puts me at three removed. 14 00:02:44.160 --> 00:02:51.930 That i'm listening in the other room to what somebody says about me and how they think about me and how they decided to analyze. 15 00:02:52.560 --> 00:02:59.880 me and those like me and so therefore reading the book it's like watching millions of faith is crowding in on this page. 16 00:03:00.720 --> 00:03:08.070 Trying to give this story, but there is no room for it because they've been offered right out of the picture. 17 00:03:08.730 --> 00:03:21.990 Five felt and I felt it, you know in my bones but i've never been able to remember life and because this experience has been one of you know surviving and struggling against memory, you know struggling against forgetting. 18 00:03:23.010 --> 00:03:33.720 That stroller that you slowly, you know, because you adopt the language and and now you begin to see, as you said, your yourself within these these the is in a dominant culture and. 19 00:03:35.010 --> 00:03:42.150 So you become you forget you you, you know you forget your language you forget. 20 00:03:43.320 --> 00:03:50.940 The ideas and the thoughts that were actually rooted in collectivity right because i'm the only one know if I can't. 21 00:03:53.250 --> 00:04:01.620 Their identity is rooted in collectivity and because i'm the only one in this is a strategy that so many universities us, you know that they recruit one by one and. 22 00:04:02.940 --> 00:04:04.050 we're isolated and. 23 00:04:05.370 --> 00:04:14.280 And so we can think and so it's a struggle against forgetting the struggle struggle for memory and it wasn't until they came and others and. 24 00:04:15.630 --> 00:04:32.430 I began to talk with others, that you know I could articulate what I was feeling, you know the forgetting, and you know, because all of a sudden voice, I had voice now and collectivity but and I and i'm thinking well what would it have been like without others I would have been dead. 25 00:04:33.480 --> 00:04:34.920 Part of the frustration. 26 00:04:37.230 --> 00:04:37.590 That. 27 00:04:39.060 --> 00:04:43.590 Students of color will feel in the economy has to do with some of itself images. 28 00:04:44.700 --> 00:04:45.270 and 29 00:04:46.350 --> 00:04:49.980 One of the things that i'm frustrated by is that the. 30 00:04:51.060 --> 00:04:58.530 Many times he's methodological issues that you're talking about are sort of chopped up as pure methodological issues. 31 00:04:59.100 --> 00:05:13.260 And you know, as if to say that there's nothing in the process of forming a method which has to do with identity right and when your part, when the whole background of the experience is your identity. 32 00:05:14.820 --> 00:05:23.940 I feel bad if nothing else for for this process graduate school has done for me and that's because i've been fortunate to have people who kept me grounded and who. 33 00:05:27.150 --> 00:05:41.550 While i'm while I was going through all of the negotiation within the institution reminded me all along of who I really am you know that type of thing but that's what all this about like negotiating identity. 34 00:05:52.080 --> 00:05:53.400 Family spent those being. 35 00:05:54.780 --> 00:05:55.710 The knowledge and. 36 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:05.280 Information of the Academy, and so, when you sit noises in the attic I thought about the scrapbook and if you were step child or foster child. 37 00:06:09.660 --> 00:06:23.940 Registered me that the time when I came up with that image of the scrapbook was the fact that, like I explained to that group of people in my scrapbook I have white and non white extensions. 38 00:06:25.170 --> 00:06:43.410 Of the family tree so it's not one it's not mono cultural, but the impression that you made to to accept, in general, when you're going through the school system is that other people's albums are only one. 39 00:06:44.730 --> 00:06:55.200 There monocultural they don't have other in there and and so when they come to the table to discuss with you about what a family albums like. 40 00:06:56.760 --> 00:07:07.920 They only want to talk about it in terms of what their understanding of a family album it's like and so your discussion and you're trying to integrate the fact that. 41 00:07:09.090 --> 00:07:22.950 An album can have this whole range, you know that everyone doesn't look the same everyone doesn't talk the same everyone doesn't come with the same background, but they still belong to the family there's no space for that discussion. 42 00:07:23.970 --> 00:07:31.620 that's when you start feeling invisible or live in noise in the attic because toward the kind of caught in between, because I know like being in the classroom. 43 00:07:33.480 --> 00:07:44.520 If you just sit there obviously you know you're rendered again the Eurocentric discourse renders us invisible if you say something, then maybe your window to the exotic. 44 00:07:45.390 --> 00:07:53.070 it's a question that not so much that someone would attack you for doing it, or even say may even say it's well done right it's just irrelevant right. 45 00:07:54.600 --> 00:08:03.120 The experiences that have you know the university and being you know university sanction to now produce knowledge, but that knowledge. 46 00:08:04.620 --> 00:08:06.540 has to be part of the white man scrapbook. 47 00:08:19.620 --> 00:08:20.220 What I see. 48 00:08:21.420 --> 00:08:23.280 From this position of us being here. 49 00:08:25.380 --> 00:08:25.800 That. 50 00:08:26.910 --> 00:08:36.900 does not allow you the moral comfort of assuming one point of view and kind of forces you to require this dialogic thing of everybody up me. 51 00:08:37.650 --> 00:08:47.130 Tina what is my story in relation to yours, and you know what, how can I contribute, and so I began thinking about my story, you know and. 52 00:08:47.790 --> 00:09:02.520 And I guess it had to do with my shock at at at coming to the university because of the different the different meanings and the different feelings and emotions that were invested in education that was you know very different from how I viewed education. 53 00:09:04.260 --> 00:09:20.760 When I was involved, my undergraduate years I was involved in the Community based organization, where we worked with that the some Mexican knows what they must take or sad rather than us who were just trying to get the residency and so we provided. 54 00:09:21.930 --> 00:09:23.550 Enrique Murillo Jr: education classes and. 55 00:09:25.290 --> 00:09:34.200 English esl and citizenship, but all you know focused on you know our situation as as Latinos as. 56 00:09:35.760 --> 00:09:52.470 You know peoples indigenous to to California and and we focused on in a civil, democratic participation, you know and so education took on a different meaning education man, you know we we were learning English when we were engaging in. 57 00:09:54.570 --> 00:09:59.340 These classes, so that we were able to participate in democracy. 58 00:10:00.360 --> 00:10:05.400 To carry those principles out in terms of protesting against against. 59 00:10:06.570 --> 00:10:09.480 agencies and institutions that imposed on our rights. 60 00:10:11.130 --> 00:10:13.530 And so it was education for. 61 00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:15.480 For social. 62 00:10:17.250 --> 00:10:25.440 Within the institution, we have to perform a political identity, you know and develop our political identities within the institution. 63 00:10:26.520 --> 00:10:28.650 You know, and part of that is like for me. 64 00:10:30.870 --> 00:10:31.980 Part of it is is. 65 00:10:33.750 --> 00:10:36.240 The way I represent represent. 66 00:10:37.800 --> 00:10:43.770 You know and i'm very careful I represent, myself and what I say about myself, and what I say. 67 00:10:46.230 --> 00:10:50.040 Is I don't know I it's hard to describe it other than that. 68 00:10:51.210 --> 00:10:52.350 You have to be. 69 00:10:53.850 --> 00:11:05.700 You can't you can't just be totally comfortable, for some reason, I still don't feel totally comfortable you would figure at this point, you know you know all three of us are like disclosed again our PhDs. 70 00:11:06.900 --> 00:11:10.050 you'd figure at this point would be really comfortable, yet I think that. 71 00:11:11.640 --> 00:11:17.490 That would that would be terribly dangerous that would be taken, taken the whole living room. 72 00:11:18.390 --> 00:11:28.980 design and furniture to be so much hours and to be so comfortable in it that we've forgotten, but in their visitors to that said. 73 00:11:29.730 --> 00:11:39.810 That the China and the silver and not our daily every day yeah utensils and and to take on a whole persona that excludes. 74 00:11:40.680 --> 00:11:57.120 All the other stuff that we've brought with them yeah see so there's there's there's just a sense there that i'm not you know, a sense of not being totally comfortable you know interesting about making it but you're also not allowed to feel totally comfortable you're also. 75 00:11:59.640 --> 00:12:01.800 Balancing on one foot. 76 00:12:02.970 --> 00:12:19.200 Because it keeps asking you the question are you in, or are you out have you bought our thing or are you still questioning it, it keeps you on that line right yeah well I think there's people who successfully been able to. 77 00:12:20.790 --> 00:12:23.910 To kind of whitewash themselves and get in there. 78 00:12:24.930 --> 00:12:25.980 And and. 79 00:12:28.620 --> 00:12:30.210 You know, like, for me, I don't want to. 80 00:12:31.230 --> 00:12:32.820 i'm not like that I. 81 00:12:34.620 --> 00:12:44.190 For some reason, I have a consciousness, you know and so Mike my consciousness dictates otherwise, but you know, like sometimes I wish man I just I wish I wasn't so. 82 00:12:48.240 --> 00:12:48.600 Bad. 83 00:12:51.810 --> 00:12:52.860 But it would be. 84 00:12:55.530 --> 00:13:01.980 Enrique Murillo Jr: indifferent different places in different conversation that you come in here as a Community, whether you like it or not. 85 00:13:02.370 --> 00:13:17.670 Enrique Murillo Jr: You come as a community and those hundred million faces standing behind you and never going to let you just forget that they are here, holding you on standing on their shoulders, you know what here on your own steel know walking on the back, so if I know. 86 00:13:19.170 --> 00:13:23.130 And and and to let go of that consciousness is to be the living dead. 87 00:13:35.580 --> 00:13:43.680 I think many people of our generation I guess that's the first generation born here have been frustrated with the extent to which they've been. 88 00:13:44.610 --> 00:13:49.860 failed to be cultural transmitters or that they haven't or something like that right, you know. 89 00:13:50.430 --> 00:14:01.230 A lot of them came over for the financial gain, or something like that really come over to be cultural messengers yeah yeah and I suddenly find their kids turning around and say tell me about lands. 90 00:14:03.270 --> 00:14:11.220 On one hand I don't want to be to essentially like all this is, I speak for all chicanos and whatever, but you know. 91 00:14:12.600 --> 00:14:25.680 Enrique Murillo Jr: I know springbok has a term that she's called strategic essentialism the sometimes we have to centralize because we're the one for every 1 million who's that here, and so we have to. 92 00:14:26.370 --> 00:14:33.960 Enrique Murillo Jr: You know it's not us, but we were present millions of people in his own image has made me think about something that we live. 93 00:14:34.470 --> 00:14:48.390 Enrique Murillo Jr: in writing letters i've been writing letters to help me get to my dissertation and I write this letter to a friend, and I say i'm forced to speak about the experience about African American women, but I can't discuss my mom's experiences I can't discuss my grandmother's. 94 00:14:49.650 --> 00:14:50.220 And I say. 95 00:14:51.240 --> 00:14:55.050 Enrique Murillo Jr: Do you think my presence signifies to them that something's missing. 96 00:14:56.370 --> 00:14:56.880 To be. 97 00:14:58.440 --> 00:15:03.330 I guess or Catholic, if you will, but I don't think that they recognize that that. 98 00:15:04.410 --> 00:15:07.890 In your socializing that that those million voices. 99 00:15:10.800 --> 00:15:22.620 yeah, but I think we're surrounded by arrogant yeah that, and so the discourse is arrogant and So what do you do when you when you're like trying to. 100 00:15:24.930 --> 00:15:32.340 When you're in the same room and someone who's arrogant will there's in also are you can do is kind of tap into your repertoire of identities. 101 00:15:32.940 --> 00:15:41.190 You know I like the idea of identity is not being a singular thing a fixed thing but it's been a process it's a process. 102 00:15:41.850 --> 00:15:50.430 And that we have a repertoire of identities, not just one, and so, depending on what room of the House we are we we enact. 103 00:15:50.940 --> 00:16:04.860 And, depending on what time of the day it is that's right moment, and then what you're wearing yeah your frame of mind and your take on that agenda, so we were forced to negotiate our identities within the spaces. 104 00:16:05.880 --> 00:16:22.650 Enrique Murillo Jr: And so, in a lot of ways, because of the arrogance, we we perform our identities right right so On one level in it may be an emotional Armor you know, yes, but it just is the fact is that. 105 00:16:24.270 --> 00:16:27.690 You have to a centralized strategically. 106 00:16:29.100 --> 00:16:39.630 I always ask yourself what do they even think i'm decentralized because, to say the tree centralizing the experience is to recognize that there are the whole body of people behind you yeah. 107 00:16:39.990 --> 00:16:46.620 And a lot of times I feel like they're looking at me and they don't recognize you they just feed me. 108 00:16:47.670 --> 00:16:51.660 And that actually is in some way if they could. 109 00:16:52.770 --> 00:16:56.580 see that those behind me then perhaps it would be much more powerful. 110 00:16:59.310 --> 00:17:04.110 than if it's just me or maybe overpowering I mean I have, I have the opinion but. 111 00:17:05.820 --> 00:17:07.110 To see those millions. 112 00:17:08.220 --> 00:17:10.290 In our faces would be such. 113 00:17:11.550 --> 00:17:14.160 An overpowering experience. 114 00:17:15.450 --> 00:17:33.240 that the person was shut down complete me, and so the whole our guns, which, if a man or woman to stave off million faces and to keep away from the recollection of why they are noises in the attic it's true it's a buffer. 115 00:17:34.440 --> 00:17:46.470 See and and when you start penetrating that buffer that's where you're in danger zone and becomes a criminal act, you see yeah because you're breaking and entering we're transgressing you know, to use bell her crossing borders. 116 00:17:47.340 --> 00:18:05.520 Unless it's shared experiences because again around these letters of think about how real these experiences are and how they been acted out of so many different ways, over the past four years and and teaching a course I had been a week it was in this course. 117 00:18:06.810 --> 00:18:16.410 I to tie with Sophie we had a student one I just lost him and he was very upset this is a young white man who. 118 00:18:18.330 --> 00:18:19.860 Was reacting to be. 119 00:18:21.540 --> 00:18:28.620 Across the back to black men, but I think that, in reality, he was reacting to the class the night that he came to class. 120 00:18:29.130 --> 00:18:40.740 It was like three or four days after his his experience I was there that night he wasn't there, but he came into the class and he used that particular incident to denounce the class. 121 00:18:41.940 --> 00:19:00.270 And I left, I was very upset because i'm like well what have we been doing awesome St you know, in the course we're teaching foundations and we're doing it from a cultural studies lands, you know talking using the voice to people of color to discuss education and. 122 00:19:01.350 --> 00:19:06.360 realized that he was so upset about being threatened that we can. 123 00:19:07.440 --> 00:19:10.470 As he was about being threatened information. 124 00:19:11.580 --> 00:19:22.560 You know, like what okay like he really didn't know what to do with the information Okay, and then the incident happened, which made him feel good or evil. 125 00:19:23.610 --> 00:19:28.530 You just don't know I mean because there was this traumatic event you're stopping just like something. 126 00:19:29.340 --> 00:19:42.000 You know, like from the attic you're stomping it's like you hear this like man stuff you know you can't sleep but it's so it was so ironic to me to that he felt like the Academy, with a place where he's come in there and Lucas. 127 00:19:43.890 --> 00:19:52.800 Because, and I kept thinking you're not angry before and classrooms will never let able to build so comfortable in a classroom. 128 00:19:54.030 --> 00:20:06.450 Where I could explode like that, and just take over the classroom yeah you mentioned the fact with the had a black woman in the Hispanic woman as the class leader is the leader right. 129 00:20:07.410 --> 00:20:14.580 Which completely reverses all the norm right right going through school, even for women, whether you're colored or white. 130 00:20:15.330 --> 00:20:30.600 But he felt safe enough in that classroom to to cut loose cut loose and I thought that was very interesting a that he didn't like the Board is changing and be the classroom is where we're bridges to. 131 00:20:32.130 --> 00:20:47.010 To help to help others yeah to to navigate navigate and to create new, you know and to maintain dignity and to create new avenues for you know for other people and for their communities, but again not to assimilate not to be comfortable. 132 00:20:49.020 --> 00:20:52.410 i'm trying to understanding how is it that some people can be so comfortable. 133 00:20:53.610 --> 00:20:58.860 That people who are struggling with these very questions that were raising you know white people. 134 00:20:59.820 --> 00:21:16.590 You know, European Americans who truly are trying to understand, and this was you know struggling with gosh I don't want to other you know my friend or my fellow colleagues on my student, you know what do I do, and until, how do we as people of color, how do we talk to whiteness. 135 00:21:17.970 --> 00:21:19.170 I don't know if that's a new thing. 136 00:21:20.910 --> 00:21:23.190 reaction is that's what I was. 137 00:21:24.240 --> 00:21:29.970 Trying to raise in that class discussion that we need to name the assumption. 138 00:21:32.610 --> 00:21:36.690 move the discussion in a creative constructive direction.