The MisEducation of the Negro Live Panel

The MisEducation of the Negro by Dr. Carter G Woodson was ahead of its time in 1933 and is still relevant today. In this roundtable we invite University Professors, Educators, Community Leaders, and Business Owners to connect to discuss the future of Black Education. It's vital we plan and strategize for the future. Send this conversation to someone you know is passionate about education.


This panel was a part of the 5th annual Black Future Month, a dedicated month of programming and dialogue around the future of the African Diaspora. Get the book "Black Future Month: A Visionary Plan to Reshape of Future" today on amazon using the link below.

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Transcript

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We have Black studies courses available today for just $1. Your kids can't learn everything they need to on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook alone. So we created the most powerful online black studies course and platform we could. You can start today for just $1. Learn about Mansa Musa, learn about Tulsa Black Wall Street. Learn about Queen Calafia, Queen Ceraona, and all the other melanated genius and brilliance that this world has to offer today for just $1. Go ahead and click the link below. Below and we'll see your scholars in class. Greetings. Greetings, beautiful people. Welcome again to Black Future Month. We've been doing this every June for the past five years, and it's really our time to create dedicated and intentional space to talk about our future. In case this is your first time to the channel, my name is Devon Travail, creator of Black Wall street, the board game and director of curriculum for I am I Institute of Melanated Innovation. We have a dope panel, an amazing roundtable of educators for y'all today, and hopefully you can have an active engagement, active conversation with us. All right, so let's start off with a little bit of action. Go ahead right now. If you're watching live or you're watching in the future, put your city in the comments. And if you have any questions about education, go ahead and drop those questions below. Again, this is your first time tapping into imi. We're here for two specific reasons. Number one, to increase access to Black studies courses and experiences for K12 youth and community members. And number two, to serve as a think tank and research centered around solving the problems of improving the black life in African Diaspora. When I learned and when I took my first African American studies class, and my professor is in the building today. So y'all gonna get a good sneak peek. It literally changed the trajectory of my life and helped me become an entrepreneur, helped me employ people, helped me create an impact in society simply by learning about myself and the full potential of my ancestors. And that's what we wanna do with Black Studies. We wanna be able to give that to our students all around the world and show them a mirror of what they can be. All right, what we do or we do that through three different components in IMI on demand courses that you can take free live events just like this. And we are currently developing our incubator and accelerator program to help students take their ideas, manifest their ideas and dreams that they have in their head, and create real businesses out into the world. Okay, now, without further ado, we are going to start our Black Future Month education Roundtable. I got three guests for y'all from different corners of California, different corners of education system, and we're going to have an amazing conversation. Up first, I gotta go deference order in. In my chapter. You know, I'm not trying to get in trouble on here. Brother. Brother Powell, welcome to the. Welcome to the Black Education Roundtable. King, how you living? I'm good, sir. How you doing, man? I appreciate being here, of course. Can you give folks a quick introduction of yourself and your connection to education? Absolutely, man. So for all those who are tuning in, I appreciate the opportunity. My name is Dr. Joel Powell. I'm a professor of law and politics at a variety of institutions actually up and down Northern California. I'm a former dean and educational administrator as well. Currently, I'm the brand new coordinator of an emojia program, which is. Which is wonderful. I'm also the coordinator of the California Law Pathway program here through our community college network. And I'm also the president of the Western Regional Council on Black American affairs, which is the western branch of the National Council on Black American Affairs. So really excited to be here, man. Being connected with education and higher education for about the past almost two decades, man. So I'm really excited about the conversation, all the different things we got planned. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you very much for your time. Up next, we got another good brother that I've known since 2017, at least when I got my first job working for UC Riverside. Brother Banks, welcome to the conversation. Peace, peace. How we doing today, man? Hey. Blessed and highly favored. How are you? I'm good, man. I'm thinking back to 2017. You still have the low cut? Yeah, yeah, man. So just to see the growth and progression is amazing, man. But thank you for having me here today. Of course. Can you give folks a little bit of a rundown of your education or at least where you are involved in the education system currently? Absolutely. So I've been working in higher education. So with four year and two year colleges here in California for about 15 years. Years at this point. The later half of my career has been focused in community colleges, our community college adjacent, working with educational nonprofits. I currently serve as the director for the Black and Males of Color success initiative at Compton College and also as one of the partners of 3Bd Consulting. But just a lot of passion for working with our community, working with disproportionately impacted communities, and, you know, just furthering the diversity Equity and inclusion agenda. Yes, sir. Was. It was. Can we. Do we thank you for getting Kendrick to speak at the graduation. I wish, man. I saw that video, I was like, Dr. Nah, man. That was all Dr. Curry. I was just in the background, man. But. But it was a pleasure to get to meet Bro for 0.2 seconds. But it was a good time for sure. And last but not least, I want to welcome to the stage. And I've talked about this person several times in books and interviews, podcast interviews, because she's the professor that introduced me to the history of Tulsa's black Wall Street. I know to her, she was just doing her job. She was just doing being a professor, teaching. But me as a 18 year old student sitting in that UC Davis lecture hall, soaking up that game and then being able to literally create a game out of that curriculum and history has again changed my life. So please give a warm round of applause to Dr. Dream coming to the stage. Hey, hey, everybody. Happy Saturday. It's good to be here with my brothers. Devon, like, honestly, this is just like, super amazing. This is a gift. Like, this is a gift back to me of something. Like you said, I was just doing my job that day. I never knew until you told me all these years later how that sparked your brain. You know, like Tupac said, I might not change the world, but I guarantee I will spark the brain that will. So I'm so excited to be here again. My name is Dr. Andrea L. Smith, aka Intellectually Hyphy, aka Dr. Dream, and I am currently the professor, a professor at Sacramento State in Ethnic studies. I teach Pan African Studies. I'm also the director of the Cooper Woodson Pan African Retention Program, which has been around since 1990 at Sacramento State. I'm also the founder of Dream More Consulting, which is an educational creative consulting firm which wants to really bring the creative arts and education together in a way that allows us to use more of our right brain sometimes than just our left brain. And so again, I am in a position right now where I'm transitioning my roles in education. So it'll be a part of some of these questions that we talk about today, actually. And like, when we get to a certain place in our careers, we sometimes pivot in a different direction so that we can have more autonomy on how we choose to see and reach and touch our people. Yes, that's good. That's good. Thank you. Thank you. So again, a warm welcome to all of our panelists. If you're watching live, this is your opportunity at Any moment. Go ahead and drop a question inside of the comments. And if you're watching in the future, we're all about black future. Go ahead and drop a comment either way as well. Okay, so I want to kind of riff on what you just said, Dr. Dream. And as you pivot and you move and you go, all throughout education, I feel like there's still a core purpose of education that each one of us are trying to fulfill. Right. So if y'all don't mind if we can go around and ask to you, right, and it's going to be different for everybody. But to you, what is the true or core purpose of education? And if anyone feels extra energetic to jump in, feel free. I'll start and then y'all can just build on top of what I want to say. I think the true purpose of education begins with knowledge of self. And so that is going to be based on all how you see yourself, how you identify what you know about yourself in that immediate moment. And then go and study that history. Go and do what we call go. Go engage in the process of saying, go back and get that. And also the second piece is to be able to critically think for yourself. That's the main piece. Be able to critically think for yourself. Don't just accept what's being handed to you, but know how to question it, go research it, sit with it in your spirit. But to think for yourself in a world where you're just given so much information, but also reading. Yeah, it's so important to continue to do is to continue to read, to continue to learn about yourself and to continue to learn about our histories and how we operate. But main thing is critically think for yourself. Yeah, that's good. That's a good one. And I have a follow up to that. But I see, Dr. Banks, you about to jump right in. So go ahead, I'll remember. Okay, for sure. I was just going to say building off of Dr. Dream, really just that with that knowledge itself really comes liberation. Right. And the ability to move through the world being secure in who you are. Right. One of the things that my mom told me very early on is, you know, education is the best way to change your situation. And, you know, I come from a first generation, low income type of household and things like that. And so I knew early on whether I agree with everything that was going on or not, I had to excel at this because I wanted to, you know, be mobile and things like that. And so I think that liberation and that mobility in addition to the things that Dr. Dream alluded to are some of the biggest things that education can provide. That's good. That's good. All right. Giving you a chance to move on up. Go ahead, Brother Powell. See you. I don't know what else I can add to what's already been said, but real quick, man, I think I would just drop in and just say education, man. For me, I think it equitizes, it creates this level of. Of equity within the structure that allows us to kind of grow. We know that Booker T. And WB didn't see eye to eye at a lot of different things, but one of the things they did see eye to eye was this idea about how education has the ability to uplift individuals, man. And so I think if we can find ways to not only make it a priority, but find ways to also improve the access to it, man. It equitizes, it uplifts, it does all those different things that give us opportunities that we have sorely kind of lacked in the past. That's good. That's good. And I wanna. I wanna challenge folks just a little bit. I'm gonna bring the question right back. I'm gonna bring the question right back. What to you? What is the true purpose of education? Right? I want to put that there. Purpose of education, because I think when we see education, we see it in today, 2024, the purpose of education. Not to say that you are wrong, but the purpose of education is to make us all equal. But if we think about 3,000 years ago, were still being educated, and hopefully at that point were equal. So was that still the purpose of education or going back to Brother Banks, talking about education is to uplift us and put us on an economic scale of everyone, right? But again, were in a perfect society, we would be in an equal playing field already. So I just want to bring it back one more time because I do agree that the purpose of education in today's context is what we're talking about. But I want to know if we. If we strip away the imperfections of society today, let's say we're equal. Let's say we're all living high quality life now. What is the purpose of education? Right? I'll just say really quick, man. I think if you strip away all those different things, the purpose of education is to provide truth, right? To provide us the ability to. To see things as they actually are rather than to confound and conflate our own ideas and opinions and then create our own kind of truth. And facts out of that. Right. Instead, education provides us with this ability to see things as they actually are. That's good. That's good. Thank you. All right, again, I just want. I want to give us opportunity to peel past the first layer that we typically hear at conferences. Right. I just want to. I want to peel back that layer. Like, this is the Black future month we're at im. I want to peel back that usual layer that we hear. Not to say that usual layer is wrong, but I just want to explore some deeper realms. Okay. To take that a little further. You know, you were saying, and my apologies for the background. There's a dog outside somewhere. You were saying they're participating too. They are, because they're getting excited. If were equals, if were equals again, you know, I think, like, whose mindset are we speaking from? Because we. We. We have always been equal and more than if, you know, like, we've been. We have always been who we are. Plus some, you know, the goal was. Was misguided to be. To say, I want to be where you are. I want to be like you. I want to have what you have. To me, that was part of the miseducation and misunderstanding. But to peel it back and to take it even further. I think we are all here to understand what our purpose on earth is. Right? And so the part of our educational journey is to understand what is it that God has put inside of you? What is the craft you're supposed to be mastering? So mastering our craft, whatever that is different for every person, whatever that is for you. So for me, teaching is one of them. But it's also acting. I also like to act. I like to go into story lines and bring integrity to the art and tell stories in a way that heal. But I have to study that. I have to do repetitions. I have to do that daily. It's a constant discipline and building that muscle. So mastering your crafts, whatever those are for you, whatever it is that God put inside of you to do while you are here on Earth, I feel like that's what your purpose of education is. To find that, to study that and just keep driving and delivering with that. Yes. Yeah, that's good. I'm not gonna hold you, Devon. I, I. You know, I've always thought about education in those contexts of it being a liberatory tool. So the question had me jammed up for a little bit. But just to build off of some of the other panelists, I think really one of the key points of education is about granting perspective beyond your current lived experience and where you are and granting you different insights into different fields of study like history, art or politics or whatever the case may be, mathematics, engineering and things like that. So that you can discover what your true calling is and what your passion is and how you can contribute to the overall well being of society. Right. If we're in this utopia where everything is good, right. We still have to have a function in making society go about. Right? So exactly. Ms. Sinclair. Education grants that exposure. And I'm a big proponent of exposure for my students, right? Granting them something beyond their current lived experience, beyond the blocks that they're on, beyond the city, beyond the county, right. When you grant exposure to folks, you know their brain can never go back, right? They know that it's more out there. And so the more people are allowed to be educated, the more they can think big about what they can, who they are in the world and what they can contribute to the world. Love it. Love it. And I double back on that question because when we think of the purpose of education and the purpose of the educational system in America, I think they're different, right? When we think of educational system in America, kids used to work in factories in America, right? But before that, before there was school, when you were seven, you were six, eight, you were in the factories working until finally they said, you know what? That maybe we shouldn't have kids in factories. Maybe that's a little dangerous, let's put them somewhere else, right? So, and then they started putting them in a different type of factory, right? An education system where they're sitting down and now they're being prepared to work in the factory 10, 20 years later. And I think that's still where the education system is today. It's a place to house kids until they are ready to enter the workforce. So as we're thinking about what the future of black education looks like, I think it's important to think about what our purpose is going to be so that we can design and cook intentionally what our education system is going to look like. So I wanted to bring one more question back up and I think this is from where Dr. Dream was going in and she was saying how, you know, point of education to teach students how to think critically, think for themselves. Which I think is difficult sometimes to do it in today with all thoughts coming from all different directions. So from Yalls perspective, how do we or how can we teach students how to teach or how to think for themselves? I want to quote the dao de jing. When the student is ready, the teacher will disappear. But the beginning of that is when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Run that back slowly. The dao de jing says, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And then it says, when the student is ready, the teacher will disappear. So we become our own teachers. And so how do we give that to some? Our children, our babies, our young folks? And a lot of that is to, like, walk through what's happening in here and, like, really walk slow, which is very difficult to do, as you were saying, especially at young ages, is to get inside of here and really engage with them and how they're thinking and how they're processing. I have learned so much, and I'm still learning. How do I figure out how you learn? So I have to figure out what is your learning mechanism? Not necessarily the way I like to teach things, but I need to, like, study you enough to figure out how you're learning. And then I need to adapt the information that I want to give you within those frameworks and then give you an opportunity to engage, activating your own agency on the subject. And oftentimes that means meeting students or young people where they are. So if they like hip hop, then let's talk about hip hop and let's break it down and have these honest conversations, as Dr. Powell was saying, these honest conversations about what's happening, but give them an opportunity to engage in the subject they love. So then they're excited. They. They feel like they can connect and they can identify. And then let's question, let's ask, let's go back and forth so we can see what's in here and also how they're learning. And it's also more than just talking. Right. So we. We have to think about touch, we have to think about sound, we have to think about the visuals, and we need the whole surround. We need the holistic approach to learning. Yeah. So I want to say that and stop before I get too long winded. Oh, you're good. I want to draw back in. You said as an educator, as a teacher, you need to study your students. That. That was a great bar. I love that. Brother Powell, I saw you on mute. Yeah. Let me just jump in here, because Dr. Smith, you said something, and I was like, that's. That's on point. That's. I just had to just. Just get in real quick, because one of the things that I think about when you. When you engage with students is understanding the fact of. Howard Gardner. Right. This idea of multiple intelligences, like students learn A lot of different ways, a lot of different structures and different systems in which students can thrive in. And so if we're just. One of the things that I always focus on is that education really hasn't changed a lot in terms of how we do education in so many years. Right. We still kind of getting up, standing in front of students, talking to them or talking at them in some cases. Right. And so one of the things is understanding that not every student responds to a lecture, not every student responds to maybe PowerPoint slides. Right. So how do you engage them in different ways that allow them, like Dr. Smith said, to kind of activate their creativity, activate different way, different ideas and things they've never encountered? Right. And I think part of that goes to this idea. I'm a big fan of Socrates, man. Part of that goes to this idea of the engagement you have with students kind of to focus that creative. That creative thought is to ask questions. You've got to be able to ask questions and generate students to think on their own. Right. It's too often that students want to, like, look something up on Google or whatever. And it's like, look, let's get away from that. Let's actually engage in a conversation with each other. Let's ask the probing questions. Let's ask the difficult questions. Sometimes that we don't even want, that we try to avoid in many cases and have students engage with that content in a way that maybe they've never engaged with it but before. Right. So that becomes. I think it's a little bit of both, man. It's a little bit of making sure that we find ways to engage the students, but then also as educators, making sure that we're taking time to really figure out how can we best engage the students and meet them where they're at and what they need and how they best receive and take in the information, man. Oh, yeah. Asking questions. Love it. But brother Banks, hop in. Most definitely. I'll rip off of this a little bit just in terms of critical thinking and how we get our students to engage in that in a more effective and efficient way really stems off of what they were talking about in terms of having those conversations with students. Right. Helping them identify what their values are. Right. What their moral compass is, I think is big in determining how they engage in critical thinking. And if you sit down with a lot of students, you'll realize that sometimes those foundations haven't been set. And so you have to do that exploratory practice of helping them decide. You know, up until this point, how have you made decisions in your life? What has been that moral compass for you? Right? Has it been honesty, vulnerability, transparency? You know, what. What are the things that guide you in your everyday? And then once you have them, really be able to zero in on what their values are and what their foundation is, you can then, you know, expose them to greater concepts and how they would utilize those foundations and their moral compass to engage in those higher levels of problem solving and decision making and things like that. That's good. Ooh. All right, I got a. I got a question. We're riffing right now, y'all. My question is how does our cultural upbringing impact students openness to ask questions in the classroom? And I asked that because, as we know, how we operate in the house is gonna impact how we operate outside the house and in the classroom. And I don't know about how y'all grew up. How I grew up is you don't ask questions to adults like that. Right. Or you stay out of grown folks business, or you don't ask questions to adults. And I think. I don't know how that is manifesting in the classroom to where now our students feel like they can't ask questions to other adults or other authority figures because that's how they're raised, possibly in their own home. And I know not every household is the same, so that's why I wanted to bring this up and see how y'all perspective on how parents engage with their students in the house impacts how the students engage with the teachers in the school. Sorry, parents. Y'all not. Y'all not. Could get away. Yo, y'all gonna have some homework tonight, too, y'all. It's. It's. It's love, though. It's love. I. I don't want to step on anybody's toes. If somebody wants to go before me, that's perfectly fine. I. So I got a comment, but I got a question as well, Devon. I don't know. I don't know how we want to handle this, man, because part of my. Part of my. The kind of. The calculus in my brain, man, is going towards this idea of how much do. How much responsibility do we need to put on parents for the education and the educational structure of what's happening with the kids. Right? And I think that's kind of tied to your question a little bit. And so for me, my thing is there could be something happening in the household. Absolutely. That is impacting how students are going to engage in the classroom. But also. And it could be something that's, you know, positive or negative, who knows. But one of the things that I've seen in many cases though, especially I had a chance to work even in high schools for a little while too. One of the things I've seen is that in some cases parents are just not invested in their kids education. I've had parents tell me, well, you know, it doesn't matter that so and so is getting the D. Like a D D is still passing, right? Like that's still good enough. Right. And so that kind of mindset I think has a completely deleterious effect on what the student's overall success could be in the class. So you might see that if the education is invaluable in the household, the student doesn't even have an interest to ask a question in class. So I think all those things are kind of interconnected. Man, that's good. Thank you. Anyone else want to riff off of that? Sure. I think again the conversation has changed over time and it is really going to be a case by case, you know, family type of situation. To take it back to myself personally, I thought about like myself as a student early on, it infuriated me. Like can you feel it? Can you feel how infuriated I am? It infuriated me when I asked my mother questions and she said, I don't know for some reason I don't, I didn't like it. I don't like it to this day. And so that must have sat in here somewhere to feel like what did you look, did you go, did you try to go and find the answer before? You just said I don't know. As a little kid, I looked at you as the authority. You're supposed to know. And if you don't know, there's supposed to be something you can do to get to know. I guess that's how my brain thought. So it infuriated it. And I still talk about this to this day because it makes me feel like, why didn't you take your own education into your own hands? Or why are you giving that away? Like there's this disconnect that happens with us in our education. Like so then to bring it back to the kids in the classroom, they want to avoid, many of them want to avoid the teacher calling on them. And again, this is a, you know, talking about college and elementary school and junior high and high school could be slightly different. But students want to avoid the attention from the teacher. There is an outlier of them who want to be the teacher's favorite. But most of them are like, don't bring that in. Don't bring that over here. Because I am so concerned with the peers and how they're going to perceive me and what other people think before I am affirmed in my own thoughts. That's, I feel like, is a big area we need to strengthen within every age right now. Is this idea that we're too caught up on. If I say something that the group doesn't agree with, how is that going to impact me? So to avoid all that, don't call on me. I'm not going to say anything. And I think about my son, who's 11, and I make him read again. I have to make him read. He's not the kid that's like, I love that. I want to do that. Yeah, let me do that. Where I was a bibliophile, I. But for him, he's like, I don't want to do this, but I'm going to because you're telling me to do this. And so if I ask him questions about not the text he's reading, just in general, sometimes I'll ask him questions about what we're talking about. And he might be like, I don't know. I'm like, that's a lazy answer. You're too intelligent to say, I don't know. Did you give yourself some time to sit and think about it? Did you let it hit you and then formulate a thought? So what is even the thought process of just like, escaping for having to show up? So I know. I don't know if that answered your question, but it kind of. Those are the thoughts that came up. When I think about, like, I don't think there's a necessarily answer for everybody, but I do think I'm pointing out how I've seen myself and other people show up. And even, like little kids today and even older college students, they don't want to engage in some of the most controversial subjects. Like in my hip hop class that I just taught last semester, same thing that Dr. Halifu Osumari taught me with gender debates. We have this debate around, like, how is gender represented in hip hop? Nobody wants touch that subject because they didn't want to say that people are going to piss them off or they didn't want to upset people if they said, you're sexist or you're promoting, like, women to be in such a way that I don't find liberating for the culture. They did not want to engage so to. Let's just avoid that all together because we're not going to agree, and I might not agree with you, and then you might look at me a certain kind of way, and I don't want that. So they're so caught up in this judgment value of others, which goes back to knowledge of self and really having a firm set of self confidence, which comes from what Dr. Banks was saying is the education. And because that's that key to that liberated mindset and being free enough to show up in different ways. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Oh, this is good. This is good. If you're just joining us, y'all, we're talking about in Brother Banks. I'm gonna pass it back to you after this. We're just talking about the importance or your perception on how parents should be involved in the educational process and how what happens inside the home also impacts how students may be engaging in the classroom as well. Dr. Banks, go ahead, King. Most definitely. I was just kind of doing some time traveling and going back when this question came up, and I thought about, you know, just how I was brought up in my house and just having some conversations with my mom about how she allowed us to be just curious about the world around us. Right. And be able to have that openness to ask questions about why things were the way that they were. Right. And really have that dialogue with us and engage us in comparison to some of our, you know, our friends and things like that, where they were just told all the time to be still, sit down, go sit down somewhere. Right. My mom allowed us that's space in that room to explore and have that dialogue. But I was also very blessed. You know, I wouldn't realize until later. I didn't realize until later, but I was very blessed that when I did enter into the public school system, my first two teachers were black women. Right. Who also fostered that curiosity in the classroom. Right. But every student isn't necessarily that fortunate. Right. And if you get the message early on that you can duck and hide away and you'll be fine, or the teacher doesn't want you to engage, if you have those learned behaviors early on in your education, that'll follow you throughout. Right. Until it takes a teacher like a Dr. Dream or Dr. Powell to really want to bring that out, and then they have to struggle to bring that out of you. But when you're fortunate to have that upbringing coupled with some pedagogy that fosters openness and dialogue, I think is fortunate. But oftentimes students have one or the other, or neither. Right. But very rarely do you have that opportunity to have both, unfortunately. Yeah. That's good. So I think when I was growing up, my grandma was like, go read the encyclopedia. If you got a question and I don't have the answer for you, go read the encyclopedia. So I was that 9, 10 year old reading encyclopedias during the summer. And I think to Dr. Banks point, what you do as a kid kind of sometimes carries over. Now I'm kind of that same way. If I got a question, I'm going to hit the books, I'm going to read, I'm going to do my research, and I'm going to find the answer, because that's kind of how I was taught as a kid, to find your answer. All right, so I want to. I want to bring us back to our. Our scheduled questions because were riffing. This was. This was great conversation, y'all. I love this. Thank you. But back to our schedule questions. And Dr. Dream brought this up earlier. We're going to bring it back. Dr. Carter G. Woodson wrote the Miseducation of the Negro in 1933. All right, this is almost 100 years ago. Is this concept still relevant today? And if so, what hasn't changed? If so, how? If not, what has changed since 1933? The miseducation of the Negro. And if you've read this book, other folks that are watching live or in the future, go ahead and drop your own thoughts also in the comments. Do you think there it is right there. That's a different version than I got. Nice. If you've read it, go ahead and drop your comments. If you haven't read it, I think even by the title, you can maybe grasp what it's about, Right? It's about the educational system and how it's not set up to create freedom for black folks. And if you think that is still true today or whatever year you're watching this, go ahead and drop your comments below. Dr. Banks, I see you. I'm gonna hop in before the big dogs go, because I know they about to lay the law down with this one. But I think some of the things, like as I was reflecting back on some of the tenets of the book, it just made me realize that a lot of things are still the same, but there's also been a lot of progression. Right. So I think one of the things that I really think about when they talk about, like, the failure for schools to support black students because they could improperly teach them, one of the biggest things that I'm a proponent of in my career. And one of the things I go around the state talking about is how to develop more culturally responsive and culturally engaging pedagogy, but also curriculum for the students. Right. When students don't see themselves represented in the materials, they're more quick to disengage from the learning experience. And so for black students, especially if they don't have those teachers that are intentional about it, you know, K through 5, K through 8, they become disinterested in the education process because they don't see themselves represented. And that's still a thing. Right. That was happening back then. One of my hot takes that some people might agree with, but I think that integration was. It was more detrimental than it was beneficial to our community. Right. I mean, we're here now, but when you had that dissolution of, you know, black schools and, you know, black teachers were displaced in order for. To make room for white teachers and things like that was one of the biggest blows to our progression as a people. From where I sit and then one of the tenants, just talking about the failure to make a living and not knowing how to apply your education. Right. Or, you know, own or operate businesses, I think that's a big one that I talk to a lot of my students about is how to make that degree work for them, but also understanding that it's more to it than just acquiring a degree. Right. What connections did you make while you were in college? What professors did you establish rapport with? Right. What internships did you take part in? Right. It's. It's more than just going to class and getting the grades. It's a. It's a whole experience. But if we don't have that navigational capital or a doctor dream or a Dr. Powell to look out for us and say, young brother, this is what you need to do in order to make sure that degree works for you. We find ourselves frustrated and more disillusioned with the educational system, which is why I think it's important for black educators to be in the system. But they make it really tough for us. I know we're going to get to one of those in a second, but we need more black educators in the system to, you know, shepherd black success, black student success. But I'll let the big dogs go now. Oh, yeah, no, you. You were a big dog. You are a big dog. And we go get back to that hot take, too. Don't think you can just drop that. And we're not gonna circle back to it. But Dr. Dream, I believe I saw you unmute as well. Okay, so my first answer is absolutely. It absolutely is still relevant today. But it's a yes and right. It's a yes and in the first. Let me just say the reason why I say absolutely. I want to just say a lot of people in the room may have read the book, but some people may have not. And the gist of this book talks about how once black people become educated in higher education, it's like we're put on like this assembly line, if you will. Right. And we're going through this assembly. Assembly line of the process of assimilation and conformity. And usually it's assimilation and conformity to dominant white society historically has been dominant white society. And so they put us in like this incubator. We can't. We went in looking like ourselves, but then we come out completely looking like the dominant society. Right. Whatever dominant society has told us to look like, talk like, be like, hang around, etc. Etc. And what ends up happening is we become disconnected. Disconnected from the communities that we actually were born in and grew up in. So it's unfortunate that higher education doesn't bring us back to our community and help us. Our community. It. Help us build our communities. It disconnects. It has historically disconnected us from our communities, disconnected us from the uplift, disconnected us to go back from where we left. And so because of that, along with that process, there's been a stripping of learning about self and learning about your own history and learning about your own education. And Carter G. Woodson talks about, with black people, how were. They're so focused on pop. The. The system is so focused on teaching us how we show up in pop culture and dancing and singing and our bodies and labor that we don't also think about our intellect and our actual values that we truly have and those morals and what's our moral compass and teaching us about those things in relation to subjects like science, math, etc. So what ends up happening is we go through the system and we come out boom, not having any knowledge of self. But now we've been misguided and duped to put on the mask that someone told us to wear. Yeah. And we're walking around performative and not building our communities, but instead building the master's house continuously. And so I just want to say that really quickly. So that's why I'm saying yes, still. Absolutely. Education is still like that. We need to decolonize the classroom because the way in which we're teaching people is There's a hierarchy. Yes, yes, I support hierarchy. But there's also different ways and cultural practices of building community. The classroom doesn't have to be lined up in rows and somebody standing in front. It can be in a circle and we can all be sitting together learning. So there's so many different things that I would say about our educational system that teaches us to continuously assimilate and conform to dominant white society. But I will say there is always a solid group of people, revolutionaries, right. Who are in the. And I, us like, oh, in the system. Just to hear you say that in the system, I'm like, fuck the system. I'm trying to get out the system. Right. How can we avoid the system? But we are a part of the system. So acknowledging the system, parallel to the plantation, parallel to lack of self knowledge, we have to understand that it's up to us to educate ourselves. I, I would say 2020 also, again, took the blinders off in terms of education. We were looking at our health care system, but were also looking at educators as. It's your fault that America is still so racist. Is your fault. Because this system is so trash. And y'all need to rebuild it all together. You need to rebuild this system all together. I stopped telling students to figure out what career you want to have and where you want to major, so what company you want to go to work for. I was doing you a disservice. I apologize. I had to apologize to my students for years. Now I want you to think about all the skills that you have acquired since you were born. If you was braiding hair at 5, whatever the case may be, all the skills that you acquired outside of school and inside of school and collectively figure out how you're gonna work for yourself. Yep. How are you going to work for yourself? Because the mindset of I'm. I'm programming you so that you can go and work again for the master's house, go work for us, but not for you. And I'll just get off of that a little bit. Just. Yes, all good. So I wanna. Oh, go ahead, brother pal. Go ahead. No, no, I don't got much to say, man. Dr. Dream, Dr. Banks said it all. So I don't got much to say. I'll just, I'll just kind of say. I think the. One of the things that kind of goes to the whole structure. What we're looking at is. And there's a. There's a great book was written about maybe 15 years ago, but it's a pretty Interesting book by Tom Burrell called Brainwashed. And it talks a lot about this idea man, of just how education in some respects promotes the idea of a black inferiority campaign. Right? So the way education has been structured in this country is designed in some capacity to take African American students, take black students, and like Dr. Dream said, kind of push us through this assembly line. But what comes out on the other end is not just this cookie cutter that looks like what the dominant culture is, but it's also these individuals now who have a mindset that understand that I can only go so far in this society. Like I'm already programmed to understand that I'm inferior to some capacity. Now, it may not be put out there, you know, in a very blatant way, but there is some level of subconscious and even kind of subliminal messaging about, yeah, you're good, but you're never going to be, you know, what this person is or what that person is, right? And so that level of structure is kind of baked into our educational system. And why we need, like what Dr. Banks said, why we need more people of color, these positions, to kind of deconstruct that and tear that whole system apart. That's major, man. That's major. Oh, yeah. It's built into even the curriculum. When we look at the studying of civilizations, when we study African civilizations, we don't study us when were at our prime. We're not studying Kemet, we're not studying Mali. We're looking at really slavery, and that's our kind of cut out of history. But then we look at the Greeks, we look at the Romans, we even learn about the Mongols. We learn about all these other high level civilizations that were conquering different countries, that were starting civilizations, libraries, universities. But we don't learn about our universities, our libraries, our architectural wonders that they still can't understand how we built today, and they still think aliens built it right. We don't learn that in A K through 12 education. So to your point, Brother Powell, I think it's 100% intentional simply looking at the curriculum and the language that we're using. But I also wanted to go back to Dr. Dream because a question that I ask all my students, all right, is this question right here. If you knew you could not fail, what business would you start? I asked this to third graders, eighth graders, twelfth graders. I asked at the Black College Expo. I'm asking the students as they're going by, because all the students, like they have this lens on and they have these blinders on, and it's just, what job can I get? What job can I get? Where can I get hired? And I don't think often enough. We even ask them the question, what is your dream? And how could you hire other people? Right. And I think that's one of the ways that I'm trying to just shake the consciousness and shake the education system and have students as early as fourth grade already know. I want to build a hospital. I want to start a movie studio. I want to start a video game studio. And now they're going through education with their own purpose. This. I'm learning all these things because one day I want to do this as opposed to going through thinking, okay, I'm gonna get a job someday. I think it gives them a different kind of rigor and motivation going through the system. Right. If y'all, oh, Dr. Dream, hit us. Listen, I struggle with a one thing answer. I'm gonna just tell you straight up. So what's the quote? Jack of all trade, but a master of none. Oftentimes better than a master of one. Shout out. To shout out to Xavier Star for that. Because people forget out the second half of that quote. Yeah. And so for me to find the one thing I'm like, because we are all the things I am all the things I do so many things. But to try to categorize them all, I would love to create a business. Well, I already have a business. Right. So I would love with this business that I have is to foster really like, creativity, whether that be writing children's books, whether that be writing black stories again, that heal for. For just family sitcoms that can turn into films. But I am really interested in engaging and creek reimagining and creating narratives that talk about everyday experiences, but also bring children into telling of these stories. Love it. Authoring these stories and sharing in these stories and participating in these stories. That's one thing. That's just one thing that I would like to do. Another thing that I would like to do and that I am doing with this consulting business is coming to people to help them figure out how to master plan a year of goals and understand goals, projects, action steps, like do the whole breakdown of what you need to do in order to accomplish what it is you're trying to accomplish. Just the mastery of that process alone. I love to do that. So whether that be for a job you want or project you're working on, a look you're doing for a show, whatever it is, I. I like the planning from the Beginning to the end, helping people create and birth and watching this process that they create in birth themselves and being a part of that's just another one thing. So I'll stop there. But there's a few things that I would. I would like to continue doing as well. That's good. I might need to tap you for that whole master plan. Consulting or coaching? Absolutely, Absolutely. Okay. All right, y'all ready for the next one? How y'all feeling? Feeling good? Feeling great. All right, let's go into the next one. Do you support the integration of AI, augmented reality, and other technologies into the classroom? If so, why? If not, why not? All right, where we are in the AI generative AI phase right now. Dr. Banks, talk to us. Yeah, I'll hop out. Because this was also kind of like in line with my answer to, if you knew you could start a business and not fail, what would you do? My first love was really technology right from a very early age. But I think one of the things that my mom used to talk to us about is she would say, and this is just from what I remember, she would say, you know, over here, they teaching y'all how to play Nintendo, but over there, where there was. I don't know, but over there, they're teaching them how to. How to. How to build Nintendo's. Right? And I think that's a. A big thing. Right? We, as a community are large consumers of content and technology and whatever the case may be, but we're often not the people that know how to design, troubleshoot, you know, and build these things from the ground up. And so, yes, I would be in support of integration of AI and, you know, augmented reality and things like that, but less from a consumer standpoint, but more of a Teaching these students very early on how to interface and interact with this technology so that they can implement it in whatever their workflow is when they decide to build their own businesses. Right. Because it's not going anywhere. Artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality is here. That's a part of Black Future for sure. But the earlier that we can teach our youth about how to interface and how to use these tools versus just consuming the byproduct of them, the better off we'll be. So that's what I would say about those technologies. Oh, yeah. And if I can riff briefly. Oh, go ahead, brother Powell. No, no. You go first, bro. You go first. All right, Riff. Because it connects back to an earlier question, right? Because right now, interfacing with AI is all about prompt engineering and can you ask a question. And that goes back to what I think Brother Powell was saying. Dollar dream was saying our students sometimes have difficulties not only answering questions that we're asking them, but they have trouble with just asking a deep question. I don't know if that's. That could be Covid. Right. Whereas, like, we don't want to engage with people, and it's hard to. I don't know. I don't know you. So I don't want to ask questions to you. But I think it also could be that we need to help develop that critical thinking. And, like, what. What questions do you have? And how do you really engineer a question to a person or to an AI bot so that you can get the answers that you need? All right. But Brother Palma, lob it over to you. So I. I'm kind of torn on this one, man, to be honest with you. And I agree with what Dr. Banks is saying. If we're utilizing AI from that standpoint of we're the ones who are developing the user interface or understanding how it works or doing the programming, I think that's really critical and important. As a consumer side, though, and especially as an instructor in the classroom, there. There's great opportunity to. To abuse it. Right. And that. That opportunity to abuse it typically manifests itself in a variety of ways whereby instructors. Now, part of our job, in many cases, is not just to teach students and to inspire them. We now become police officers who have to, you know, find ways to make sure that you aren't using AI and this and that, and then other instructors are finding ways, well, how can I integrate AI into what I'm doing so that maybe students don't feel the need to have to utilize it as a. As a grade booster or something to help them with their project? My thing, honestly, is that I'm not anti AI, but I think that when used in the wrong way, man, it has the ability to handicap students in terms of their critical thinking and critical analysis. Right. They rely too much on some sort of machine learning to help them complete a project, rather than to understand what the core of that. Of that information is going to be used for, how it can help grow them both intellectually and. And so it's. I. I'm not sure. I'm not sure, bro. Like, I want to say yes or no, but I'm. I'm on the fence because of. Because of the potential of the abuse of it, but I think it can be utilized in a way that's productive. It's just finding ways to harness it because the technology is new right now, but it's going to get more advanced and the more advanced that it becomes, I think this question is going to be really critical, especially for what education looks like in our communities. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. I see you. I, I think for me to answer that question, my opinions have also shifted over time. So I would say, yes, I'm open to the AI functions of learning. Again, still with like, really honest conversations about it. I want to say shout out to Dr. Betty Diggs, number one, who wrote a book called the AI Dissertation Writing Guide, Chat GPT Techniques and Strategies for a Successful Dissertation. She is someone who's in my community who talks about this narrative of. She said, isn't it interesting how the message that our community is getting is to stay away from AI, stay away from AI. And she was like, but other communities are utilizing AI to enhance their learning and using it as actually as an educational tool. Not to plagiarize, but actually use it as an education tool. So she argued that message to run away, stay away from, and stay away from it is being targeted to like, black and brown communities to keep us away from the advancement of technology so our kids can actually learn to code, get these jobs, and stay abreast of technology as it evolves. And that instead we need to think about how it is share with our students as a very powerful tool, like you said, to help them to prompt their thinking but not to think for them. Because you still don't want to be a dummy. You still don't want to be the one who's just like completely cop. Because also again, copying something else, still taking agency for your own learning. But it's okay to assist you to start thinking about this in a different way and organize your thoughts. She uses the example of the calculator. When the calculator came out, did we stop learning math? No. It assisted us with some complexity in math and we can get to those answers quickly, quicker. But we didn't stop learning math because we have calculators. And so she wanted to. She argues that we need to think about how AI can be a tool for us to help us, our students, get the jobs that will be jobs for the future. Because to tell them that it's just negative, bad. She's like, that's a little propaganda we need to pay attention to there because that's pushing them away from a skill or a tool that they're going to need in the workforce as they get older. So I've started thinking about it in that way and started thinking about how do we utilize it as a tool and hold our students accountable for saying I, I'm okay if you use this. However, I'm going to check if a computer wrote your whole thing. So I want you to know that you still get to take responsibility in your own education. Don't just be a sheep like, take, take an active role in your learning. So again, that's part of the foundational building of your space in your room to get people to show up for themselves in that way. But I also know that you'll have so many people who are just so inundated with life and they're so busy they can't. Right. Get to these things. So they're doing, they're jumping in really quickly using AI and they're participating, allegedly, but they're actually missing out completely on the subjects, on everything. And is that really how you want to spend all this money that you about to pay this institution. Institution. You just wanna. So then we have to keep having these conversations around a way to use it as a tool because it's not going anywhere. More apps are, you know, our students are using discord in the classroom and they're yelling and complaining about their teacher and they're getting, sharing answers with each other and all the sorts. So how do we just talk about this out loud and say, I am asking you to honor yourself and honor your learning. Because again, there is an honor system with AI system. So can I pop it real quick and just ask a question? Because I think it's a fascinating conversation. But I'm always curious about this idea of have we taken away the ability in some respects of asking students to kind of the point you're making, Dr. Dream about being responsibility and having some agency over their education. But even going a little bit further and saying, what is the goal that we have in mind? Do we want students to actually learn or do we want students to just get good grades? Because in many cases, students walk in with this focus on, I'm trying to get this grade. I just want to get this A. And then I want to walk out this classroom. So the focus really isn't on learning. It's just about what is the easiest and best path to getting an A. And so how do we kind of maybe change that narrative where we say learning is learning is the key? Whether you. My parents used to tell me like a Hard earned C is better than a soft earned A. That's what used to tell me when I was growing up. It's like, look, I can take the C as long as you tell me you learned something, you tried your hardest, you put the effort in. And sometimes I kind of communicate that to my students where I look, maybe you didn't get the A, but you walk out of this classroom with the greater level of understanding and the level of intention about how this process works and how these different systems connect together versus the person who said, yeah, I just went, you know, got the whole thing done with AI or whatever you did, and you got the A, but you have nothing. You have nothing, no intellectual structure that you can walk out of the classroom that's tangible, right? So I'm like, how do we change that narrative? How do we change that conversation? Maybe. Oh, I mean, I. I definitely got something if y'all want me to hop in. Let me see. So I think it goes back to this question right here, brother pal, what is the purpose of education? And I think we can say what we think the purpose is. But at the end of the day, most of our students are in school to get a job. Most of our students are going through this educational system to be able to get money. So when you tell a student, oh, it's about learning at one point, yes, it is about learning. But if a C is going to determine the type of college that you go to versus an A going to determine the type of college you go to is going to determine what job you get. That what job you get is going to determine your salary, and that's going to determine your quality of life. Now it's like, I don't need to learn. I need to get an A so I can get the best quality of life for myself. So I think we need to. If we want students to prioritize learning over prioritizing the grade, we need to shift how we grade, right? So maybe we have some type of sliding grade system that kind of goes back to what Dr. Dream was saying in studying our students. Maybe an A for one student looks different than A for another student. Maybe it's about improvement, maybe it's about truthfully learning, right? There's some students that may come into. For example, for our financial literacy class, we take a pre assessment, or all of our students, whether you're in third grade, eighth grade, twelfth grade, every student takes a pre assessment to see where are you in your financial literacy right? Now and then they get a score. And at the end, we take a post. Post assessment. Where. Where'd you leave? And you get a score. Some students come into our class, they already know what a budget is. They already know what an LLC is. They already know introductory stock market. Right. So we would grade them differently than a student that's coming in 10th grade, has no idea what a budget, has never heard of the stock market. But by the end of the class, they know what an LLC is. They know what a corporation is. They know the difference between a mutual fund and index fund. Their grades should look different than the person that came in knowing 80% of the curriculum already. Right. So I think as educators, we have the opportunity to shift the values of the students based on shifting the values of our syllabus and how we're grading them. Yeah. I think part of our. This. We need to rebuild our entire educational system from the ground up. Includes the grading process. Process. And you get a 3, a 2, a 1, a 4, a, B, C. It teaches performativity. It does in so many ways. So I don't. Which is also part of, again, the American structure of. Of how they want us to show up and be competitive in a way which I don't know if it does us a good service, where I really think giving students the onus to say, what grade do you think you deserve? Like, really having real conversations with them about stuff like that and putting it back onto them. So you get to grade this assignment yourself. And again, giving. Again giving them back this idea of honesty. You have an opportunity to be honest, or you have an opportunity to disengage or not engage, but the onus essentially on you. So how do we keep giving this accountability back to the student in a way that's going to engage them and keep them excited about it. But I do think sometimes even giving them an opportunity to grade themselves and then tell us why you got that. Great. Yep. Yeah. Or earned that. Great. Even that whole concept of earning. These are things that I struggle with. So. Yes. Good. Brother Banks. Anything. Anything on that? You want us to keep going? Keep going. He's like, keep it coming. Come on, keep it coming. But I had another thought on the AI conversation. I had an interesting experience with AI with my MBA program where they asked us, hey, write your own personal answer. And then write an AI answer. And what's the gap in between? What did you do well? What did the AI do Well, what did the AI miss? What did you get? And it kind of forces us to see how AI has a different perspective than we do. So you can ask AI a question. And it's very interesting if y'all ask ChatGPT black history questions, one, they're usually off, right? But, but two, like, it doesn't have the context. So it's very interesting from a black studies perspective, how AI really isn't that useful. But again, it's interesting to compare your thoughts as a person, as a student, as a scholar, and the AI stars and how are they different? So I think that's something that we can do as educators. If we know they're going to use AI, how do we force them to. Okay, go ahead, use it to give you part of the answer, but I want you to critique the answer of the AI and then one more for I pass it to you, Dr. Dream. Another thing that I've seen is you use AI to generate possibly the script or the concept. But your assignment is you need to record a video. So now you're forcing the students to learn communication skills, which sometimes they struggle with. So it's okay, get the research from AI that's fine, but you still need to hop on camera. You need to learn how to be professional on camera, set your background up and then be able to talk and communicate your words or the script from AI So it's still a learning outcome. Yes. I want to say to everybody listening, AI is representing a white man's perspective. And you can research that yourself because that's who's been behind the initial coding and programming. It is a white man's perspective, which again is the same thing of like our educational system, historically dominant, white society, white males lens. And so for my classes, you could try to do AI all day, but it's not going to make sense because of how I need what the assignment requires. This assignment requires you to think about your opinion. I need to know how you have processed and understood A and B. And then I need your voice to be the loudest telling me your perspective. So you can, AI can do that for you. AI can tell you what A said and what B said, but it can't tell you what, how you're bringing these thoughts together and thinking about them yourselves. So it's interesting to me because I teach in ethnic studies. And so even like with the hip hop class, it's going to be very difficult. Yes, you can get like dates, like hip hop was started in this, you know, August 11th. Like you can get these random facts, but the qualitative content that I require, it's interesting. You Can't. You can't really get that from AI. So, yeah, so there are different ways. Yeah, yeah. So you can get it from AI, you can't get it from the models that are currently in existence. But to Dr. Banks's point, how. We need to teach the students how to build, right? If we. We can create a hip hop gen AI, we can tell it what to study, we can give it the albums, we can give it the books, we can have a whole listening session on, you know, top 100 hip hop albums. We can give it some KRS1 lectures in there, and we can train it to think a certain way. I just think it involves us. Like Dr. Banks say, we need to be a part of the creation and not just the consumption. And as soon as we start teaching students at Compton College how to do this, at El Camino College how to do this at the UC Davis Black Studies program, at the New Sacramento. What's that new college called, Dr. Black Honors College. Black Honors College. As soon as we start incorporating this AI or generative AI curriculum into places like that, as soon as we start having a black future lens on AI, I think that's when we can start building our own models from our culture, from our history, for our purpose. Okay, great convo. Okay, I want to get to. I want to get to some building. Are you all ready to build? Y'all ready to build? Okay, so I want, as specific as you can, what does the future? And I'll say, what is the positive future of black education look like to you? Again, going kind of back to that utopia type of vision. Right? So I don't want the. If we're on the same trajectory as today, what does the future look like? Because I understand it doesn't look good, and that's exactly why we're here. But if were in charge of that future, what would the future black education system look like? This can be how AI is or is not involved. This can be how the classroom is set up. This can be how teachers are teaching. This can be the involvement of parents. When you look at the future, what's an aspect that you see that's deep? I see the. I see the wheels turning. I'll start off. I think, for me, man, if I'm looking at it from kind of this utopia of what black education could look like in the future, first thing for me would be more black instructors in the classroom. Like, that's. That's like the first thing. My very first. My very first black instructor came my Last year at UC Davis, in my African American Studies class, Dr. Christine Akam, big shout out to her, man. And that was powerful for me, man, but also disappointing because that's the first time I had a black instructor, man, in all my years of education. The first time was my last year in college, last class in college. Right. And. And so it's. It's. It's upsetting, and it's disturbing to me. I mean, I had an encounter one time where I was. I was doing some substitute teaching for a school in Northern California, and I walked into the classroom, and a black student walked in. She saw me, and she said, are you the instructor? And I said, yeah. And she goes. And, you know, loud enough for everybody to hear, she's like, hell, yeah. About time we got a black teacher over here. Right? So, so. And, and again, that's powerful for me. Ran. I. I'm. When I started teaching at the college level, and you had students walking and saying, I can't believe, you know, we got a black instructor up. And you're like, this is crazy. And, and for me, those kinds of experiences, they're. They're. They're encouraging. I mean, I'm encouraged by it, but I'm also just so disturbed by it. Right. Because we just don't have enough black instructors. We don't have enough people of color in the classroom. And one of the things I mentioned earlier about being. Being, excuse me, part of the Western Regional Council on Black American affairs, one of the things we talk about is how do we get more black instructors in the classroom? Like, what's the. What's the goal and how do we do that? And one of the things that. That we've noticed is that we just don't have. Even in the interview process, man. And don't. I don't want to get. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, because I can talk all day about that. But even in the interview process, we just don't have enough people of color. No matter who they are, we don't have enough people of color in these interview spaces to actually make sure that the narratives that are happening behind closed doors are not ones that disenfranchise and take away opportunities from people of color to be in those spaces. And I think that's super important. I had a. I had a situation where there was an instructor who wore baseball caps every day. Talented instructor. But that's. That culturally, this is what he did. He just wore baseball caps every day. That was his personality. And he came interviewed for the full time position. And when he left, the conversation of the people in the room was not about his presentation, was not about his education. It was not about how well he was suited for the conversation, how well he was suited for the position. It was, I can't believe you wore that hat into this interview. That's so unprofessional. That's not. And so I had to refocus the conversation and say, that has nothing to do with it. Right. Like, let's talk about him as an individual, how his qualifications fit the needs of the students here. Right. And if you don't have people in the room to advocate and change the narrative, I'm telling you just do not know. You do not know what's happening behind those closed doors and the kinds of conversations people are having that have nothing to do with people's ability to actually impact education in a positive way. So we got to have more black instructors. And I think it starts primarily with having people of color in those spaces and in those rooms to help advocate and change the context of those narratives. Man, Boom, there it is. So number one priority to even create this utopia of black education is we need more folks like us inside of those spaces. Building. All right. Thank you, Brother Banks. I saw you. Yeah. One thing I'll build off of that a little bit is I think we definitely need to have more black folks and people of color in the classroom, but we have to be careful about who. Right. Just because they are us doesn't mean that they're always for us. Right? So I think that's one thing to be mindful of. I think another pitfall, especially in K12. I don't have a lot of experience personally with K12, but I do have a lot of black friends that are educators in the K12. And one of the things that often dissuades them from continuing in education is the fact that they're often appointed to disciplinary roles for the entirety of the student body. Right. And they came there to teach. Right. They came there to be positive figures in their lives. And for many of them, they become disciplinarians. And they're like, I didn't sign. This is not what I signed up for. Right. But the schools have an interesting way of putting the onus of being a disciplinarian on black bodies. Right. Black men and black women and things like that. So I think that's a big point. In terms of quality representation, we always talk about representation is the key, but I always say, like, quality representation is the key on that point in Addition to that, looking at the future of black education, I think that I know that we have to have an enhanced curriculum for knowledge of self early on for our students. Right. When I think back, I mean, I talked to you all about this earlier, but I didn't realize how fundamental that was to my learning and my ability. Right. Because even though I did have those teachers early on, the rest of my, you know, I would say from 4th grade until 12th grade, it was not a positive environment in terms of my K12 just educational journey. But that foundation that had been laid so early on allowed me to persist in a positive manner. Right. So the ability to teach our students early on the beauty and the intellect and the wisdom that comes from them people, the more likely they are to be able to persist in a successful way. Love it. Love it. So giving us the opportunity not just to be over. Was it discipline, but how can we be over joy as well within education spaces. Quality over quantity for who's in those spaces. And then providing curriculum that is in alignment with self discovery and self. Love it. Love it. I really like your y'all. You want answers? I struggled with this question when I first saw it. And I'm just going to walk you through my process. Leave the institutions. That's leaving these current institutions and. But then, okay. Thinking about the world that we currently live in America and my son still needing to be in education, I think in a utopia, understanding what it looks like to center blackness in education means that we provide a holistic framework. So we're providing education in the subjects and disciplines, but we're also doing physical education. We're also doing spiritual. We're also doing emotion. We're also doing family. Like we're hitting the all of the areas that's in your. Like attraction planner or life planner. Where these adults. Where we are as adults trying to make sure we hit all of these areas of our growth. Personally, career, families, spirituality, all. I feel like every single piece needs to be in the curriculum. Every single piece needs to be in the curriculum. And what we are going to get out of that is a lot of people who are constantly questioning and activating their own agency. Where that control and power dynamic has to shift of the way the current educational structure is set up. But for not just really. Yes, for the future of black education. We're serving the entire person. We have to. We have to serve the entire student. I also think that in that we need to dismantle so much of the regurgitation, memorization and the test, the standardized testing I'm, I struggle with all of these things and I really want to get into like, how do we tap into our creativity? How do we tap into the students creativity so they can create something that they want to create. It could be a tick tock video, it could be a blanket, but whatever it is, what do we need to put them in a position where they can create. Yeah, where they can create. And I, and I'm still struggling with this because I don't agree with institutions as the answer. And, but I hear what you all are saying, like this system exists, so it gives very much. It keeps making me think about the spook who sat by the door. And that's exhausting, that's tiring. So I also wanted to read something in relation to the future of black education because as black educators, what does the future look like for black educators? Right? Not just the people who receive the education, but for us as black educators. And I think something that I might still be struggling to make sense of and to share with our community culturally is A quote by Dr. Carter G. Woodson where he says, if the highly educated negro would forget most of the untried theories taught to him in school, again, this gender, right? So we notice all these things that our mind is like, okay, if he could see through the propaganda which has been instilled into his mind under the pretext of education, if he would fall in love with his own people and begin to sacrifice for their uplift, if the highly educated Negro would do these things, he could solve some of the problems now confronting the race. So one of the purposes of black education is to also heal the areas that we need healing in. What, what is that? Where we are still today that we need to be sacrificing for the upliftment of our people, what does that mean to us as the black educator? What has it shown for me as a black educator has shown burnout and shown like, am I really trying to fall on the sword like this? This is not the way. And it gives very much. Amanda Seals and what I see her doing right now in the world and how she's emoting and how she's sharing, it's like, girl, you are tired, go lay down. You have chosen the wrong battle. We love you, we are here for you. We understand what you're trying to tell us, but there's a way in which you're delivering this A is an issue for us, but two, we don't need you to die for us. And that's something I think as all black people who want to be in our community, who want to show up for us, there's this idea that we have to. We gotta choose this suffering. We gotta choose this sacrifice. It has to, like, break us. And I struggle with that because that's killing us. That's. We're going. We're having strokes. We're not able to show up for our family members. Like, it's killing us. So I'm like, what does it mean for us? What does the future of black education look like for black educators? Yeah, I love this. And that's. Oh, my bad. I was. I was going to say, you know, that. That really resonates with. You know, we've worked with a lot of educators, like educators across the state. And one of our colleagues, his name is Dr. Jonathan Henderson, he recently published his dissertation that says, I love the students, but I hate the pimping. Right? And this really gets at. What is that added tax score for black educators, right. And there are so many people who are starting to question, right? Is this worth it to my personal. Right. For my family, for my community, right? Like, I'm spending so much time pouring into my students, which I love them, so I'm going to do that. But I'm also having to deal with institutional politics, right? Having to abide by the passive aggressiveness that exists in higher education or in education in general, right. While still trying to build these safe and inclusive environments for my students. Right? That's taxing on the body. Right. That's taxing on the mind. That's taxing on the spirit. And so if we're going to be able to sustain and be able to thrive, right? Because a lot of our black educators, especially in higher education, I can't really speak to K12, I would imagine it's very similar, right? But a lot of them are surviving. They're not really thriving, Right. They don't have the space and it's not set up for them to thrive, Right. They're expected to make wine out of water, right. They're given the least resources and expected to solve the problems for the entirety of the black student body. Right? And those things are. Are difficult. And you have a lot of people. I've seen so many quality, passionate, dedicated educators over the last five years who simply had. They had to walk away, right? Because it was going to be. It was going to look bad, right? They were going to be out here on their Madison, as Dr. Jean talked about, if they didn't leave, right? And so I think in order for us to have a future where black education is. Is thriving in a utopian sense, as Devon put it. You know, we really have to be mindful of how we're taking care of our black educators as well. Yes, sir. And I'm struggling with. Is it possible to do something revolutionary without the struggle? And I don't know if that's just looking at the historical revolutionaries and people that we kind of put on a pedestal today. All of them have either struggled, suffered or died for this cause or for a cause, period. So I'm wondering, within education, right, we zoom it down, yes, there's the full fight for black liberation as a whole, but we zoom it down to educators. Is there a way to revolutionize education without struggle? And if they. Look, I'm hoping there's a creative yes out there because, you know, I'm not trying to struggle. But is that possible? I think Dr. Dream, you were about to unmute. Yes. You know, he. You're referencing Frederick. Dougie, right? Frederick Douglass's quote. Right. So. But this idea again, that we as black people gotta always suffer and we have never gotten anything in this country without protest, without fighting for it. That's the messed up part about it. And that's a true fact. We have not. But at the expense of our beings. What is, what is the harm that's happening? Yes, I do think it can be without struggle, but we have to shift our mindsets. And that's. That's a lot of. That's a lot of sacred work as well with knowledge itself and going in and re looking at that. I want to say that we are going to need people like you who are in the room to talk about your experiences than how you were able to maintain your. Your energetic frequency and how you take. Because then we have these conversations, oh, take care of yourself. You know, self care, which can seem again, also very performative and. And surface level us not really getting into the. The deeper. The deeper rooted mindsets of that type of thinking. And that connects us to submission and, you know, ways that we have to rework ourselves out of. I want to say there is a book for those of you who are listening right now. I want to shout out Dr. Mia Settles Tidwell, who actually left Sacramento State. Dr. Banks. Just talking. I'm talking about people who will leave. She left Sacramento State and she just published her book called Unscathed, A Harm Reduction Strategy for the Women of Color in the Workplace. And so she has written a book that talks about how you can. How women leaders in these educational systems are Often the ones not to say black men are not. But her book is designed for black women. And I think it could also be applied to black men. How we are black men and women leaders in the workplace. We lead the social justice. Like Dr. Banks was just saying, we lead all of these things while dealing with sanctioned violence against ourselves in the institution, while dealing with imposter syndrome, while dealing with work induced stress. So she believes that there is a way for us to work within these structures and come out unscathed. But we have to learn and acknowledge that it is a harmful institution for us, just like educating our students in these same systems. Black students feel more harmed going through higher education sometimes than they do as a place that's offering them resources for development. So I think that we have to keep having conversations about this and bringing our minds together because I don't think there has to be the suffering. I think that's something in our mindset that has to shift in the way that we reimagine how we show up to the work. But it's deeply rooted in us that we need that struggle is a part of it all. Yeah, it stops with struggle. It doesn't talk about how. Well, there's going to be a point in your discipline where it gets hard and you have to do it not because you want to, but because you have to. But like, but there's a way that we have romanticized struggle in juxtaposition to being black and being in educating people and walking through this. So, yes, don't have the perfect answer, but just to acknowledge we are in a place where we have to continue to bring our meanings of the mind because none but ourselves can free ourselves. Right. None but ourselves. And so we still have a lot of that to break down, acknowledge and break down because we are told, show up as the smartest, be the smartest, work hard. You got to work two times. It's harder three times that hard. Yep. We're still telling them that. That's. Should we be telling them that? We are still telling them that. It's unfortunate, you know, I'm telling my son, they don't care about you in school. I'm sorry to say this to you, son. If you don't read and if you don't learn, they're not going to care. It's on you to take, act to take your responsibility of your ownership of learning. And it's a true fact that it's not the school's job to educate you. You as the parent or the guardian are the primary educator of that child. And it's not just teaching them math. It's how we show up in the morning, get dressed for our day and how we community oriented in the home. Are we all cleaning up and cooking? There's so many other ways of learning that go beyond math, even though we can bring math, but go beyond the similar basic ways that we address subjects and disciplines. And I know this answer is kind of like all over the place, but my point in saying is I don't think we have to have struggle. I think we need to shift our mindset and take that burden off of us as leaders and intellectuals because we know what happens. We die or we get killed or we leave. Yeah. Nope, that's real. That's real. Brother. Pal, you look like you were deep in thought for a second something that you wanted to add in. I agree with everything I've heard, man. I think everything is good points. I, I think the thing that was kind of resonating with me is the idea that if we're looking at it and we've mentioned it before already, we're talking about the system itself, right? The system and the way it's structured and those who would seek to promote kind of the continued framework that the system exists. Right. There's a great quote that I love that says the master only changes for fear or for money. Right. And so we exist in a system right now where as Dr. Dreams pointed out, like, you know, we're struggling, we're taking on that burden to try to make these systems, try to in some cases up, keep these systems uplifted in some respect. Right? And the system, as I see it myself, it's not going to change and it's not going to become the structure that we want it to become in some cases without someone taking on the burden of trying to break the yoke of what's already there. However, as we know when we take on that burden, we're the ones who suffer for it, right? And so it does. It definitely becomes this, it becomes a struggle which really like Dr. Dream said, there's really not a great answer for it at the moment. Right? It's, it's. How do we want to break the cycle of something? We know that the powers that be don't want the cycle broken. And so because that structure is kind of baked in and it's hardwired into how we're doing education, it's really challenging to find the pathway Through. Through. And so we take on struggle as kind of the mechanism to try and achieve that goal. But in many cases, all it's doing is kind of harming us. Right? And so it's. I don't know, brother. If I'm just being honest with you, man, like. Like, I don't know. I know the answer is there, but it's. It's. It's a larger conversation to figure out what that pathway looks like to get there, man. Yeah, it's definitely there. Oh, Dr. Banks, you got something? And then. Yeah, I was just gonna say, you know, this. This question is tough, right? Because I. I've been listening to Dr. Dream this whole time, and I think I understand a little bit about where she's at just in terms of her educational career and the fact that we need radical change. If we want to see a radical pivot in our trajectory as a community, there needs to be a radical change because we know that this current structure of education as it's currently situated is. Is doing our students largely a disservice. Right. And I was just introduced this weekend by one of my crowd brothers, one of my sons. I was introduced to this concept of microschooling. So he lives in Minnesota. And essentially, what they do. I'm not sure if you all have heard about this, but essentially, people in the community, they pull their resources together and they've taken their students out of the public school, and they all pay the tuition for a teacher to come in and teach a curriculum that they develop. Right? And a lot of that has a lot of culturally responsive and culturally, you know, just culturally responsive pedagogy and curriculum embedded in that. Right. And so their students, they go. They are in class, per se, for about 12 hours a week, as opposed to about the 35 to 40 hours that regular students are. But that curriculum is enriched by activities outside of class. Right. So they're going to learn about black artists and black scientists and things like that. Right. And that's a small thing. Well, it's a small gesture Right. In a microscope there. But it really. We have to think about ways of how can we enhance our. This is a little radical. Right. But how do we get our students away from that system? Because that system is toxic and it's poison for them. Right. And they're not all blessed to have a Dr. Powell or Dr. Junior Devon in their pipeline. Right. And so for those that aren't fortunate enough to have those educators come in the outcome, you know, they say systems are designed to get the output that they get. Right. And by and large our students are struggling in these systems of education. Right. But it takes such a radical change that I'm not sure if our people are ready to accept. Right. Because it's so indoctrinated since the inception of this country. Right. Like we're so used to school being school. And if we're actually wanting to make that pivot and that change, it has to be something that's completely out of line with what the current status quo is. And that's tough to imagine on a large scale. Oh yeah, Dr. Dream, go ahead. I really like this conversation. I feel like it is so necessary and so needed. Again, speaking from the point of black educators in higher education at the college level, 99% of. Okay, this stat might a little be a little off, but it's over 90% of DEI workers, whether they're the president or the vice president, they are black women. Which means to me that they are now the modern day mammys here to keep Mass's house together. Just like in the past. I struggled with that as a woman black educator in higher education who was a part of the social justice component of the union, who was like, this is what y'all need to do. This is what we do. I have, I, I think I might have some of the answers. Right. We get it. But then what position is it putting me in if this is how I'm showing up as the modern day mammy? Like what? We gotta look at ourselves black educators. Right now in Sacramento, there's a school that I want to also shout out. It's the Malcolm X Academy. My, I would love to have my son go to the Malcolm X Academy. It's a K through a community home school modeled after black Panther anchors in Oakland. Right. Why am I not sending my son? I love Jordan. I love the people who are proud of it. Because it's not going to get him into college because of the accreditation system. So how do we get them linked so that when we go to these alternative schools like the micro schooling options, how are they. They're still being disenfranchised from getting our students access to, for example, accreditation and higher access into higher education. When you go to home school, sometimes you move into public schools. They're not counting this, that and third. So now our students who should be in the. Should be in 11th grade. They're only counting so much in their grades are going to put them back in the ninth grade. So I feel like this again, the system, we have to figure out a way to make sure that a program like this or school like this can also be accepted with the rest of the charter schools that our students are getting as a pipeline if they decide to go to college. These types of forms of education should be inclusive. They should be included in the largest system as it works because everybody is different. So we need to be able to understand and be educated differently as well. I agree. I just want to echo that sentiment. And I think part of this larger narrative that Dr. Dream and Dr. Banks is talking about, I think this larger narrative, man, is this idea that, and it goes back to that I mentioned about Tom Burrell's book, but he talks about this as well in Brainwash. Is this larger structure that these institutions, whether you're talking about microschooling or these radical institutions, these different institutions, whether it's microschooling, homeschooling, magnet, you know, academies, whatever they are, they're looked at by the system and the structure as these inferior educational compass complexes. And so it's like, well, you did, you don't have the curriculum, I'm sorry, you don't have the curriculum or you don't have the certification or the WASP or whatever it is, right. You don't have in all these different structures that are part of the system to essentially legitimize the education that you're getting there. So we can't really accept you in. Right. And so then it becomes a problem where we can't, we don't want to switch to this radical notion of what education looks like because as you mentioned earlier, Devon, then it becomes, well, how does the education translate into a job? Right. And if this, if these radical forms of education don't translate into a job at the end of the day, then I guess I'm not going to go down that path and I'm going to stick with the system. So kind of our, we end up perpetuating the maintenance of the system, right? Because we can't, we're kind of not willing to make that radical change because of how the system is structured, right. It's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy in many cases. Oh yeah. And why is the job and capital still being fed is the goal? I have a problem with that. I have a problem with that. The goal is to make money. So my whole life I'm chasing money. I'm. So that's going to be the key. I have a problem with that lens on capitalism and that's going to be my key to Liberation, it's not going to stop what we're seeing in terms of the genocide. So why is that the goal that we're programming ourselves and our students? Money, money, money, money. I have a problem with that. I struggle with that. And I'm struggling for articulacy right now. But yes, and this is great because so next week our conversation is all around black wealth and economics. And I think the conversation around education much blended and codependent on each other. Right. But I had a couple of thoughts I wanted to share. One, talking through maybe a realistic process on how we can shift the education culture and possibly the education system. One, I think it starts with some type of Saturday schools or extra academy that students are going to in addition to their normal public, charter or private school. And that's kind of the model that we've even started already this year. We have a Saturday Academy that we had completely free for the Crenshaw and Baldwin community partner with Baldwin Bethany Community Development Corporation, where we had 12 Saturdays in a row where students were coming and they were learning black history, they were learning history of tolls of black Wall street and they were learning how to start a business. And then they ended their Saturday Academy experience at a pitch competition at ucla. But again, that model that we're going to replicate at South LA Cafe this summer, that model that we're going to bring back to the Crenshaw area in the fall, is our way of providing extra curriculum and extra curriculum that is around black studies and giving students that mirror in addition to what they're learning in the school. Right. So to me, that's. That's step one is a scalable Saturday academy that we can do nationwide, globally. Step two, I think, goes into what Dr. Banks was saying as far as having those micro schools nationally as well. Right. A shared curriculum, shared resource, hopefully online, some in person, where if you want your students to be homeschooled, there's a system that you can already plug into in order to get that education. Right. Step three, going to what Dr. Dream was talking about and how sometimes the accreditation doesn't match up. I think there needs to be some type of partnership or initiative with the HBCUs to where they give accreditation to certain schools. Right. That way, okay, maybe you can't go to a ucla, maybe you can't go to a USC because the accreditation doesn't line up. But we have all these micro schools that are HBCU certified. And if you graduate from any of these micro schools, you get that HBCU prep school stamp. And you're kind of like the HBCU guarantee from the California Community College system. You can go to any of these HBCUs from this system, right? That's, that's step three. And then step four goes back to the economics. We need to teach our students and our parents, right? How do we start our own businesses so that after they graduate they don't need to try to shift and go to any of these other Google, Apple, Target, whatever the other companies are. They can go work for a play Black Wall street. They can go work for a 3Bd consulting, they can go work for a Palm Photography, they can go work for a doctor Dream Moore Consulting. They can get plugged in and get a job based on who they are and their own values. And I think that creates the cycle. Right? But I think again, we need to strategize, bring folks like y'all together in this space and start working on, okay, well how do we actually do some of these steps so that our students don't have to compromise, right? They don't need to compromise on their education. They don't need to compromise on possibly the lifestyle that they want to live. They can be their authentic selves in the class and beyond. Right. So that's why. Any additional thoughts or remixes to possibly that four step strategy? Dr. Banks? Rock with me. Appreciate it. I saw the. Oh yeah, I like that. Love it, love it. Oh, so Cooperative Economics 100, the west to West movement. Yep. Shout out to Kari and the whole west to west team. Love what they're doing. Dr. Dream, you want to talk a little bit more about what west to west is? So the west to west movement was started by Kari, J and Tia and what they'd essentially did was they took and built their own Pan African curriculum and they had Saturday school. They did that for years. And it makes me think about CWC at SAC State. They meet, they have four large group meetings. They meet on the second Saturday of every month to provide the additional social and cultural piece that we need in our overall development. But I want to say that it has been beautiful to see our younger folks create this because they've understood that main education system is not it, that is still doing this repeated cycle and that I love your idea because I also see Asian communities show up at Stack State. They have their actual Saturday school for their whole young people.

They show up every, I don't know, but they show up on Saturdays or Sundays and they're there like 8:00 in the morning to like however, 10: 1:40:22

00 in the morning and that's what they do. So other communities have also done this as well. And it has shown improved as a really good model. What I was just thinking about again is like the struggle of that is like your kid play sports, so they want them to their game on Saturday. So then how do we, you know, keep all of these things somewhat connected in some ways. But I just want to shout out to the Malcolm X Academy west to west movement, the people who have already began to do what you have talked about. We need y'all to continue to do that. Absolutely. And thinking about this from a lens that when you move into all black spaces. So I'm at SAC State, I have the beautiful opportunity where I can just work with black students because I'm a director of a Pan African retention program. So we can do all black everything. And that's just, that's our mission. We get to do. We get to do that within the scope of the work. But then I think about, like, how does that relate to somebody who's in Georgia and Alabama and they already go to an all black school? So my cousins went to Gremlin. There's different sets of things that we're going to need in different places. It's not the same. There's no need for a BSU at Gremlin, you know, and these are something that things don't. People don't think about if they went to an HBC or went to an HSI or whatever the case may be. And all these terms like Sac State is now considered a bsi, a black serving institute. Cal State Dominguez will probably, like other schools are going to start adopting this concept as well. You got to have 1500 students. That's not even a lot to be declared a bsi. So so many of them. But what ends up happening is now we can say the word black. Now we can generate funding for the black community where we know that anytime we uplift blackness in these institutions, what happens is it becomes universal for everybody. And then the centering of blackness gets watered in the way. And now we're showing up for everybody again. So there's this process that happens that we have to stay focused on in keeping with what the intention is and who are we trying to center in a certain way. But there's all these current barriers and all these current structures that are in place to keep it moving in the way it has. And it's going to require a lot of conversation, a lot of Attention, a lot of shifting the way we think and understand success for ourselves and for our future generations. I say. I say a lot of conversations just like this that we're going to keep on going. Again, appreciate everybody's time today. Appreciate all the comments, the brilliance. Hopefully we can bring y'all back for more conversations around the future of black education. So as we round out today, if y'all can go through and we'll. We'll kind of go in the same order that we. We introduced y'all. Give folks where they can contact you. If you have a call to action for anybody, give them the call to action. And we want to make sure folks can stay connected with you if they really loved what you were saying. So I believe we're gonna go. Dr. Powell, lead us off. Thanks again, man. I really appreciate. It's been. It's been an honor just hanging out with. With y'all today. I definitely want to just say really quick, if you. If you want to connect, especially with the Western Regional Council on Black American affairs, please do that. We're always looking for folks in the educational space as well as in the professional space. You can hit us up. We're on Instagram, wrcbaa-ncbaa. And then also if you want to connect with me, I'm on. I'm on. I was gonna say Twitter, man, but it's X now, right? So X at polysi. Profile on X. And then also, I know we're doing entrepreneurship another day, but just on the little. On a little under in the slide, man, if you're thinking about entrepreneurship. We gave this up at Palm Photography, man. That's on Instagram as well. That's at Palm Photography on Instagram. So. But I'm just thinking, man, honestly, we just need more folks to be involved. That's. That's my call to action, man. Get involved, right? Find. Find your niche. Find your. Find your avenue, Find your lane. Find a way to get involved. Boom, there it is. Appreciate you, Dr. Banks. Talk to us. Most definitely. If you're looking to get in contact with me, social media, Instagram, you can get us at 3BD Consulting, or my personal one, which is really morphed into really my professional one. I've been getting a lot of flack about this, but I usually just post about what I'm doing in the community in terms of. Of education. But I could be reached at Warbuck. So that's W, A R, B U, X, x. And then LinkedIn, of course, Antonio D. Banks. I could be reached there. And Then, yeah, if. I mean, I'm open to everybody. So you can. You can hit me at Dr. Banks at 3Bd Consulting. So Dr. Period D A N K S at 3Bd Consulting.com help you on the talk shop. Boom. There it is. Appreciate you, Dr. Banks. Last but not least. Yes, please. Yes, you can find me at Dream More Consulting. If you are interested in bringing on me as an intellectual correspondent on your podcast, if you are writing a film or a television show, I would love to provide your academic framework for that. You can also find me there. If you're interested in bringing anti racist curriculum as practices to your institution, whether you work there or you participate as a member there, you can also find me on Instagram as Dr. Dream. But really as intellectually hyphy. You can also find me on LinkedIn as Dr. Dream. I'm everywhere, you know, like air. You feel me? Yeah. And where else can you find me? A rap song just came in and that line was not appropriate, so I'll leave that there. All right, y'all, thank you for the opportunity. And I'm gonna just say this, I did not. I've been on sabbatical the whole six months of 2024. You all, like, I've not been working. I have been writing. And when you asked me to do this, I was like, on a Saturday, I'm not even working. But it's you. I have to show up for you. And this is the part of the work that I'm still very much committed to. You, again, are a gift. All of you are gifts, I think. Dr. Joel, went to school together because your name is familiar, your face is familiar. And Tony, I saw you in Ghana, right? So it's a pleasure to be in the space that you offer me to see black male educators. It's healing for me. So thank you all for being here. We need you. We need you. Love it. Thank. Thank you. Thank everyone for answering the call. This was amazing conversation. If you are watching this presently or in the future, we appreciate your time and your dedication to the future of black education. And we hope that something in today's conversation sparked your own catalyst for you to be a scholar and hopefully change the life of another scholar. All right, as a reminder, please make sure y'all like this video, share it with another educator or future educator that you think would love this conversation and subscribe to the Play Black Wall Street Channel, where we give away free black studies courses, entrepreneurship courses, business development courses, and lead conversations just like this. So if you like the vibe, stay tapped in. Make sure y'all like and subscribe. Next week we got the conversation around black wealth. We're gonna talk about capitalism. We're gonna talk about incrementism. We're gonna talk about how to start your own business. We're gonna talk about investing in real estate. We're gonna talk about all that type of stuff right here, same platform. So make sure y'all stay tapped in. All right? Must love appreciate y'all. We'll see y'all next week. Peace. 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