The Tammy G

When I had first started my position at my organization, my coworkers were thrilled to see a woman of color hired! One of my coworkers, who had already been with the organization for over 5 years, had told me that up until a year before I was hired, there was absolutely no diversity within the organization. That in every staff meeting, he would look around the room and be the only minority face at the table (he's Asian ). One day he spoke up at one of the staff meetings and asked the question of how can this organization fully support the youth they serve, the prominent majority being black and brown youth, when only one out of the twenty staff here is of color and actually lives in the city that we serve? After that, the directors really started on ponder on what my co worker had been saying. They hired two Latina staff shortly after and a year later, hired two African American women (myself included). But that was only half the battle. One challenge that I initially faced withi...

 While watching both of the TED talks assigned, the one word that instantly comes to mind when comparing the two videos is the word "silence". When most individuals think of the word silence they would typically think of the action of being silent which is not talking/speaking, and staying quiet. However, the silence used in both of these videos are describing silence as a way to ignore and not acknowledge certain cultures, silencing their value while using privilege as a way of taking control of this "silence".  If both videos were having a discussion about "silence" the Jamila Lyiscott video, "Why English Class is Silencing Students of Color", would start the conversation off with white privilege and how at a young age, minority students and their cultures are often silenced in their classrooms. This video would go on to speaking about how school systems are structured against African American culture and that "slang" is wrong in scho...