The Rising Scholars
[Applause]
okay
what does it mean to be a scholar by
definition a scholar is a distinguished
academic
or a person who devotes themselves to
scholarly pursuits
okay so what does a scholar look like
how does a scholar
behave what kind of upbringing does a
scholar have
maybe they all wear an ascot tie and
speak the queen’s english
have private tutors and you can just
wrap them all together in a nice little
box labeled scholar
admittedly we know this isn’t the case
what about those on the fringe of
society
the addicts the homeless
the incarcerated can they be scholars
too
society seems to believe that those who
have had significant hurdles in life
somehow
lack intellectual ability
but isn’t the reverse also true there’s
a particular image in our minds when we
imagine a scholar
like the ridiculous ascot tie in the
queen’s english
what if i told you that these two
identities
can co-exist
as mentioned in my introduction i’m a
president scholar here at cal state long
beach
it’s truly an honor i’m also a united
states department of education mcnair
scholar
and an undergraduate business researcher
i’ve been fortunate enough to be able to
present at five academic conferences
and even publish some of my photography
and poetry
last year my university even named me
woman of the year
needless to say it’s been the time of my
life
so here i am with all of these
accomplishments
who sits on more boards and committees
than i can even count
all while raising four-year-old twins
you know my my friends say i’m an
overachiever even when making babies
one just wasn’t enough
if you really want to be efficient you
make a boy and a girl at the same time
you just get it out of the way
renata knows what i’m talking about
all jokes aside it’s safe to say that
you would define me as a scholar
right but if i hadn’t just told you all
of that
and you saw me on the street would you
think the same thing
it hasn’t been easy and it still
is not easy to dispel some of the
misconceptions about me
my parole officer was proud of me when
she found out about all of my
accomplishments
yeah i said parole officer i see some of
your faces
because i was incarcerated now if i
hadn’t just told you all of my
accomplishments maybe you wouldn’t have
thought of me as a scholar
but here we are i’m your proof that it’s
possible
but how right i mean it sounds
ridiculous even to me
we know that 97 of former foster youth
will not graduate from college
and approximately 80 percent of former
heroin addicts will eventually relapse
70 percent of inmates released from
california prisons will be incarcerated
again within three
years so here i am
my ambitions have me shooting for the
sky
and the system is trying to pull me down
this other path
here’s why i think that happens it’s a
two dimensional problem
the first dimension is bias and judgment
i made a conscious decision today to
start my talk with my tattoos covered
on several occasions i’ve been in an
academic or professional conference
and receive disgusted looks when taking
off my coat
which makes sense because there’s
research that shows that women with
tattoos are perceived as being
less attractive less caring
less honest and you guessed it less
intelligent
tattooed people are often stereotyped as
drug addicts
and criminals in the case of formerly
incarcerated
a article published by penal reform
international showed that most people
don’t want anything to do with those who
have been convicted of a crime
43 percent of them were not willing to
work on the same team as a former
prisoner
54 of them were not willing to live next
to a former prisoner
and 72 percent of them were not willing
to have children with them
people on the fringe are judged through
a biased
lens implicit bias
refers to the attitudes or stereotypes
that affect our understanding
our actions and our beliefs and our
decisions in an
unconscious manner it’s what we don’t
think we think
and as someone with the labels of former
convict and former addict
implicit bias affects how i’ve been
treated
despite fighting to get where i am today
i’m
still being unfairly judged
the second dimension is lack of
expectations
when i signed up to go back to college i
signed up for the welfare to work
program
and i told them that i had registered at
my local community college and that i
wanted to pursue a degree in business
administration
they wrote on my forums that my career
goal
was office clerk
another time i was at a professional
conference
at a prestigious private university and
i went to a diversity and inclusion
panel and at this panel
i asked a very simple question
what practices have you seen in your
industries that aim to hire formerly
incarcerated
and the well-intentioned man said we
work with community partners to offer
truck driving opportunities
this lack of expectations serves to hold
people down
i know that i am an exception i am an
anomaly
my parole officer sent me a message
recently that said
you are the shining star of my 25 year
career
the institutions which were there to
help me
expected so little from me
this lack of expectations will continue
to hold
people down people on the fringe don’t
make their decisions based on what they
think is best for them
or what they think are good fit for
nobody expects them to excel
instead their opportunities are limited
and they make their decisions based on
what society will allow them to do
now let’s discuss one of the inevitable
effects of the problem as i’ve outlined
it
the prison policy initiative is a
non-profit
nonpartisan organization that studies
the harm of mass criminalization
their research showed that in 2008
the u.s unemployment rate and the
general population was
5 but for the 5 million
formerly incarcerated it was 27
which is startling considering the peak
unemployment rate during the great
depression was 25
so what does this mean aside from the
fact that formerly incarcerated
are literally in a worse situation than
the great depression
more of them are looking for work yet a
disproportionate amount of them
can’t get it could it be the
exclusionary practices of employers
not the individual shortcomings of the
formerly incarcerated
it’s not just hard for the formerly
incarcerated to get jobs
51 of young adults in the u.s foster
care system are unemployed
and 24 of them don’t even have a high
school diploma
there’s a significant amount of talent
that is
untapped because of our judgments
how can we prevent that from happening
i suggest three actions that we can take
to undo the systemic stifling of our
communities
number one workforce opportunities
fair chance hiring practices can help
reduce
bias the fair chance act that went into
effect in january 2018
is a california law that prohibits
employers
from asking about conviction history
prior to offer
to offering a job by banning the box i
was able to make it through a three
interview corporate hiring process
when it came time to do that background
check i was afraid
i didn’t want to tell the truth i was
wondering how i was going to make it
through it
and it was painful but i did it and they
took a chance on me
all states should implement similar acts
and all employers should be aware of
this damaging type of bias
number two educational opportunities
many universities are making significant
strides towards inclusivity as they
realize the value and the potential of a
non-traditional student
cal state long beach is part of the
solution
[Applause]
although the president’s scholarship is
generally for incoming freshmen who are
valedictorians
they offered this prestigious merit base
this prestigious mayor based scholarship
to me a transfer student from a
community college with several blemishes
on my transcript
this inclusive excellence ideology is
something that all
universities should be following so that
all who want to become scholars have the
opportunity to do so
number three community support this
is the glue that holds the whole thing
together
maybe you don’t have a job to offer you
can’t get someone into college
but there’s plenty you can do to help
first the language you use matters
you may have noticed my use of the
phrase formerly incarcerated
throughout this talk people with
criminal justice histories are often
labeled as
convicts prisoner
felons offenders
after completion of their sentence and
re-entry into society these labels
often stick terms like ex-convicts and
ex-felons and ex-offenders serve to
continue
stigmatizing those with these justice
histories
by using more humanizing language we
acknowledge their full identities that
aren’t just
defined by the criminal justice
histories
using humane labels helps to reduce bias
by not prompting our brains to rely on
the judgmental stereotypes that we hold
about a group of people
it’s a bit absurd to continue to label
someone based on something that happened
in their past
right i mean i’m a mother but you
wouldn’t call me an ex-pregnant
it’s kind of weird right
furthermore we need to rally around
people who are struggling
and help them navigate these
opportunities that they may be offered
when you hear someone using insensitive
language
say something when you see
a company hiring formerly incarcerated
support them when you meet someone
who was incarcerated get to know them
we should be championing their success
without expectations and when they
stumble
we should help them back up because at
the end of the day there is
no greater motivation than having
someone cheering for you on the sideline
our collective goal as a community
should be to reprogram the belief that
people can’t
change i did i was able to break the
cycle
and i believe that others can too
after hearing my story will you still
judge
the next person how will you define
their success or failure
attribution theory refers to the
attempts to understand the behavior of
someone else
by attributing feelings or
beliefs or intentions to them
if someone is similar to you then you
will attribute their success
to personal traits like intelligence
if someone is different from you you are
more likely to attribute their failures
to personal traits think of a homeless
person
you might be tempted to say they’re lazy
they made bad choices maybe they have an
undiagnosed mental illness or drug
addiction
but isn’t it possible that they had a
stroke of bad luck
that they lacked family support in their
time of need
or that they had factors actively
working against their success
the next time you see a homeless person
i urge you
to ask yourself could they be a scholar
because there very well could be someone
on skid row right now
with a cure to cancer in his mind
we simply can’t judge someone by how
they look
how they sound or how they’ve lived
their entire
moment until the moment that you meet
them in their entire life until the
moment that you meet them
because no one is so damaged as to be
incapable of redemption and success
i am not an anomaly
we are all capable of so much more
than we could ever believe but first
it takes systems and people
believing in us thank you