How Fear and Assumptions Can Create a Better Life
[Music]
so let’s imagine for a moment
we’re at this big huge table and all of
these different diverse voices
are sitting at this table
people from different ethnic backgrounds
cultures identities gender socioeconomic
classes religions
different languages all these diverse
voices sitting together
as one
and we all come together with our own
assumptions right because we often come
to meeting new people with our
assumptions yes
okay
and then
but then we have an opportunity to
listen to one another
and actually get to know and maybe
challenge our assumptions in that moment
and then we get to sit down and listen
really listen to one another and create
a project together that ripples off and
will affect everyone not just a select
few but everyone
and then we get to work together as one
what if
all of the choices and decisions that
were made were with all these different
voices in life
that would be revolutionary
so i’ve got an interesting story i was
adopted
grew up in a loving all-white family in
morgantown west virginia i was adopted
three days after my first birthday by dr
jim and judy culberson an all white
family
and my parents introduced me to my new
sisters my sister laura blonde hair
green eyes she was 10. and my sister
lynne dark hair big glasses she was 11.
and my sisters wanted me to meet all the
big girls in the neighborhood so they
yelled come here come here go make a
mirror you got to see my new little baby
sister sarah you’ve got to see my new
little baby sister sarah so all the
neighborhood girls came running and they
sat in this big circle
and catherine morgan looked over at me
and she looked at my sister and she said
now wait a second is she black or does
she just have a really good tan
morgantown west virginia three percent
african-american they hadn’t seen very
many kids of color in the neighborhood
and my sister said this is my new little
baby sister sarah she’s part west
african and part white american and they
said oh
okay
so i was getting to know the kids in the
neighborhood and i was also getting to
know my extended family
now when i went to meet my grandmother
it’s interesting my grandmother had a
lot of assumptions about my parents
adopting me and the call with my
grandmother and my mom went a little bit
like this
mom
we adopted this new little girl sarah
she’s really cute she’s got all this
curly hair
i can’t wait to bring her home this
summer so you can meet her
hello
hello
and there was silence on the other end
of the line
my grandmother said judy i think
adopting this black little girl into our
family is only going to cause problems
and i don’t want to talk to you about it
click
and she hung up on my mom now my mom
being the mighty five foot two about a
little over 100 pounds mighty self said
you know what
i’m tired of these assumptions my mom is
making all the time we’re all gonna get
in the car this summer to go to
litchfield illinois and she’s gonna have
to deal with this
mom doesn’t mess around
so we all got in the car mom dad lynn
laura benji the dog and we the poodle’s
so cute we all get in the car and we
drive to litchfield illinois to the
farmhouse where my mom grew up
my grandmother comes out of the
farmhouse the door screeches open
she walks out
her arms crossed she looks at me
she looks away
then she looks back at me and says
can i hold her
and in that moment my mom said i was
breaking racial barriers within my own
family so i grew up and i was really
clear i didn’t look like anybody in my
family and i really didn’t look like a
lot of people around me and that was the
journey that i was moving through and
struggling with but moving through so i
went on to college went on to graduate
school and then i moved to los angeles
where i started doing tv and film and as
i was in los angeles i did this amazing
program called landmark worldwide and i
was sitting in the class
and they said tell the person sitting
next to you where you’re holding back in
life
and i realized in that moment i was so
angry at my birth father
because my assumptions were right i
don’t know how your assumptions are
sometimes but your assumptions are just
right right
my assumptions were right well where
were you my birth mother kept me for
nine months then i was in foster care
for three months then i was adopted
where were you
and then as i sat in the course and
started to pause
i started to think about well what was
it like to be an african man in west
virginia in the 70s with a white woman
having a child maybe i should give this
guy a break
and the moment i let go of that anger
there was this new world that i got to
step into and i wanted to find my birth
father so i was sitting in the class and
i told my friend next to me i really
want to find my birth father but i’m
terrified of being rejected he said
listen i know a private investigator who
won’t charge you more than a hundred
bucks your birth father’s gonna love you
all the fear came back up okay okay
i’m gonna do this
he said let me give you the information
so i contacted the private investigator
three hours all the information i needed
for 25 bucks not thousands like i
thought
and four days later i got a phone call
and there was this woman on the other
line and she said hello santa
this is evelyn how are you i thought is
this a jamaican woman i met the other
day because i couldn’t get the dialect
and i wasn’t expecting to hear from
anyone so soon she said i’m your auntie
we received your letter
and i started to bawl
i said thank you so much for calling i i
didn’t know if i would ever hear from
you i didn’t know if i would ever see
you she said i was there when you were
born i used to take care of you when
your birth mother would go to the
grocery store hold on hold on let me get
your uncle on the phone then my uncle
gets on the phone he goes oh
sarah
he says we are so happy you’ve been
found do you know who you are
like
i’m sarah
he says
you are part
of a royal family
your great grandfather was a paramount
chief
in sierra leone
your grandfather was a paramount chief
in sierra leone your grandfather was
knighted justice of the peace by the
queen of england you can be chief
someday
you are a princess in this country
princess assumptions are back wait a
second what does this mean
do i have to wear dresses all the time
do i have to look perfect can i never
say a bad word what’s happening
but i had to kind of just be with that
and they said we’re going to contact
your father in sierra leone he’s going
to be so happy to meet you so they
contacted my father it takes two weeks
for them to get message from village to
village to village because in 2004 very
few people have access to cell phones in
sierra leone
so during those two weeks i start
getting phone calls
from all of these different african
family members who live in the united
states hello set up i’m your uncle ali
your father’s favorite uncle hello said
i’m your auntie jenae they used to call
your father and me twins when we’re
little hello hello hello
all of these different african family
members
are welcoming me to the family
when i had told myself they’re not going
to want to meet me they’re not going to
want to talk to me my assumptions again
and it was just love
and as that
family all those family calls died away
i heard my birth father’s voice he
called and the first thing he said to me
is he said please forgive me
i did not know how to find you after
you’ve been placed in adoption your name
had changed everything had changed he
said you’re
i was young i went away to school your
mother told me she was pregnant she said
i will take care of her and then she
realized she couldn’t so we chose to
give you to a family who could really
take care of you during that time i said
listen
i want to apologize to you
because i’ve been making you wrong
my entire life
just to protect myself and i’m not gonna
do that anymore
and i said if there’s a day that goes by
that you feel guilty please don’t you
gave me the best family in the world and
now i’m gonna get to meet you too right
so how do we do this
and he said it’s challenging for me to
get a visa to come to the united states
could you come here i said i would love
to so i flew to maryland to meet all the
african family members you know the ones
that hello
right and we planned a trip for six
months later to go to sierra leone we
get off the airplane i’m walking on the
tarmac into the airport i am so nervous
i am so scared and i see my birth
father’s face
and he’s so nervous and he’s so scared
that i just give him a big hug
and i say it is so good to finally meet
you and he said it’s so good to finally
meet you too
and we took a ferry that night from
lunge to freetown the capital of sierra
leone and it’s named freetown because
it’s where the africans who were
enslaved in the united states were
brought back and named
in freetown that’s why it’s called
freetown
so i got to stand
in freetown
with my birth father
and the next morning he gave me this
beautiful green african dress and he had
the same matching green shirt and i’m
like okay we get to be twins i’m so
excited and we get to go on the bumpy
roads to boom pay my family’s village
and as we arrive there’s 100 200
hundreds of people singing and dancing
and everyone parts and all the women
come forward and they’re singing
[Music]
they’re welcoming me singing we’re
preparing for sarah in mende my family’s
language
i did not know how to be with all of
that
and as the excitement started to die
down i saw what happened after an 11
year civil war in sierra leone from 1991
to 2002.
i was there in 2004
and i
kind of had to sit back with my thoughts
and i went oh i thought this trip was
for me to make my birth family and know
more about myself
nah
this trip was about something so much
bigger than all of that
being a princess is about responsibility
being a princess is about working with
your community that’s what i learned and
i realized this has nothing to do with
me
i got to go back and talk to my family
so i went back to the united states
talked to my parents i said we got to go
to sierra leone so i took my folks from
west virginia to meet my family in west
africa we got the west going on westside
west virginia to west africa
and we all came together with our
assumptions about one another right they
came to the table but then we sat down
and we all started to listen and get to
know each other that’s so powerful when
we bring our assumptions but actually
question them and get to know each other
we all started to work together and we
created our non-profit sierra leone
rising doing work in public health
education technology and female
empowerment
yes
thank you
that’s because we had all these diverse
voices at the table listening because we
sat down with the elders
with the people in the community with
the women with the children with the
amputees who lost their arms and legs
during the civil war we listen to
everyone’s voices the diverse voices all
at the table
and a young girl said
we we drop out of school because we
don’t have access to pads so we as a
group the diverse voices started to talk
about well what if we worked with days
for girls and the girls in sierra leone
could actually make reusable washable
pads that they could keep using and stay
in school and then another voice said
you know what we don’t have enough clean
drinking water i mean all this is after
a war we don’t have enough clean
drinking water so we started digging
wells working with world hope and
partnering the voices together and
digging all of these wells together and
then someone else said we don’t have
access to bank accounts
or loans okay that that’s a that’s a
problem so how do we solve that well
what if we worked with crypto currency
because people have cell phones they
could do that well the problem is we
don’t really have
solidity developers who’s going to
develop on the blockchain to develop
this app
well wait a second who should develop
this
the people in sierra leone they know
what’s who they are they know what they
need
so we partnered with a company called
harmony a blockchain protocol company
how cool is that the name is harmony
right and we all started working
together in harmony
and they said we can train a thousand
coders in sierra leone
so the coders
these solidity developers are from
sierra leone and they get to create
banks for their own community
they get to bank the unbanked that’s
revolutionary
so what i have learned also is the power
of
sharing with people and sitting down at
the table so i had the opportunity to
sit down with stephanie elaine she’s an
amazing producer african-american woman
here in los angeles and she said sarah
we need to take your book that you wrote
a princess found and we need to share
the voices of different people
in this book because our narrative as
african americans is we were all
descendants from slaves
but we’re actually descendants from
africans and we don’t have that story we
need to shift the narrative
and she said let’s do this so we sat
down and we sat down with disney
and we had diverse voices at the table
and we started to talk about learning
about adoption talking about forgiveness
talking about a culture that a lot of
people don’t know this west african
sierra leone culture and they said let’s
do this
they said let’s do a movie
so we’re not gonna yes i’m excited
thank you
and they said let’s have another little
black princess so girls get to see
themselves represented a princess of
color yes
so we all
started to work together we definitely
brought our assumptions to the table we
listened to one another and we started
to work together as one
and when we do that in life
that’s when we really see
that we are one
village
one community
we are one tribe
thank you
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[Applause]
thank you
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