>> All right. Hi everyone. We're hoping you're feeling full from lunch and full from the sessions. Is that how you're feeling? All right. This morning, we thank the volunteers, but I also want to thank Chris and Jennifer who are up here signing.

[ Applause ]

Yeah, this is the way we say applause in sign language. It's really a lot of dense language. Some of us-- not me, but some of us speak very quickly and so we're very grateful to them for their work. It's tough work. So, we're all coming back from the sessions and I'll tell you having attended one of them, so much of what came up when I attended White Privilege last year has come up for me. So, things like how do I reconcile how great it feels to be an immigrant in this country while at the same time know that my country has a history of oppression against the indigenous people of this land. Right? How do I celebrate the beauty of this place while at the same time owning the fact that I'm an oppressor as a citizen by being on this land? How do I understand-- this came up in our keynote-- what it is to be white and poor in this country or white and marginalized, a white disabled person, a white trans person in this country and how those identities play out? What are my privileges as a brown woman in this country with a Canadian accent? What does that afford me? Right? What did it mean to grow up as a model citizen? What does it mean that my own brown community is very guilty of antiblackness in the way we live and how we work? What does it mean to be a Jewish person in this audience and identify as white, but know what it has felt to experience antisemitism and not know which voice or which caucus group to go or where you fit? What does it feel to talk about antiblackness in a community that's open to it, but sometimes you say a certain word and the room changes? You can feel the room change. What does that mean, being Canadian and knowing that our whole lives? Right? What does it mean to have had six Muslim Canadians killed in our country last year and so little done this year to acknowledge and honour those lives? Is it because we don't see Muslims as Canadians? What has it meant to honour them? So, the sessions brought those things up for me and hopefully they're coming up in you. And one of the things Darrell Bowden always talks to us about is trying to get away from safe spaces and to move into what we're doing here, which is brave spaces. Right? And he always talks to me about if you're feeling discomfort-- which I think we all feel at times-- to first before you respond ask yourself where that discomfort's coming from and what it's about. And I had it happen to me in the last session and I thought Darrell would say just sit with your discomfort. Right? Don't respond; just hear. So, hopefully those are the things that are coming out for all of you folks. That's the purpose of this entire conference. We're very excited about the following keynote by Dr. Adrien King-- Adrien Wing, sorry-- who will be introduced very shortly. Before we do that, I will do a little bit more housekeeping and a reminder that the session today from 3:00 to 4:30 titled Black on Campus: Student Organizing, Mobilizing, and Action's been cancelled. We also want to let you know once again that that walking tour we were talking about, the aboriginal historical walking tour, it's at 4:30. And we've put sign up sheets. There was such an excitement about it-- do not leave this session, you can sign up after-- but there was so much excitement there's going to be a sign up sheet to make sure that it's something we can manage and then shortly after that at 5:00 there will be-- outside the desks as well, a walking tour of indigenous art on campus. So, that's also available for folks. We also want to make sure you know about the great films happening

tonight. I know several folks in here-- I can see them-- were here last night. There were three short films. They were incredible. It's a wonderful way to release and also to hear from filmmakers and people in the films. Tonight, at 5:30 we have a free screening, so if you have friends that aren't registered in the conference, they're more than welcome to join. It's in the building night-- right next door to us, it's called RCC and it's in room 204. There's going to be a feature called The Central Park Five and it's about five black and Latino men that were falsely accused of the crime of rape and it talks a little bit about what happened to them, what happened to their lives. Very powerful. And then, here in ENG 103, there's a double screening and it's the movie Jesus' Name-- In Jesus' Name, which I saw last week. Incredibly important and very, very difficult film, so we do want to warn folks that it is a very graphic and challenging film and it is about the role of the church in residential schools and abuse and the stories of abuse that folks experience. And it's coupled with a film called Winnetou, which is a film about cultural appropriation and an amazing Canadian artist putting that on. So, if you have any questions, it's in your programs, but you can also ask any of our volunteers. I also once again want to announce the caucuses. Now you've been to the sessions, you've had those feelings of discomfort, enlightenment, opening, sadness, movement, inspiration-- sorry-- so, we invite you to come to the caucuses at the end of the day, that's at 4:30 and they're all downstairs, here, and the black caucus is in ENG 12 if you identify as black and ENG 13 is the white caucus. ENG 21, indigenous caucus. ENG 24, racialized caucus and for those of who weren't there tomorrow, we recognize that race is socially constructed, that's what so much of this is about, but it exists, those-- socially we created them and we are living in them. And so to be able to talk to folks about what you're experiencing because this conference is centred on talking about race and what skin you walk in, right? We also want to take a quick second to remind you that we want to hear your thoughts. So, once again, please share your thoughts. It's #WPCRyerson and or #WPCGlobalToronto. And that information is also in your programs and it'll flash on the screen as well for you. The other thing we want to ask-- and it really helps the people giving workshops-- is please fill out your surveys. I know we're running around a lot and folks want to make sure they get lunch or need to run out to the bathroom, but just make sure you get them in. It really helps us hear from you what's working or what you'd like to see different for when this runs another time and it helps the workshop presenters get a sense of what resonated and maybe some room that they have to make some changes in the program. So, one of the most important things that we come together to do is these small rooms where we grapple and struggle and grow and listen and share. But another goal of the conference is to have great keynotes that can come and bring us all together as a huge caucus and give us ways to engage creatively in this work. We'd like to have an artist come and open for us this afternoon. Her name is Keosha Dwyer. She's many things, but amongst those things she's a creative visionary, in our mind. She's a spoken art-- word artist. She's a humanitarian. She uses poetry to discuss her identity as a black woman. Being both black and a woman as always been a conflicting pair of identities for her and this has come with great struggle; however, she also explores the beauty of these identities and celebrates them and I think that's a huge part of this conference, to celebrate the fact that we love each other not in spite of our identities but because of them. So, please welcome Keosha to the stage.

[ Applause ]

Do you want this?

>> Yeah, sure. No problem. Thank you. Thank you for having me, everyone. I'm really honoured to be here. Thank you for the beautiful introduction. So, my name is Keosha. I'm actually a student here at Ryerson University and I'm also a spoken word artist, as she mentioned. I'm also an artist educator and I've been doing poetry for a really long time. Poetry basically saved my life. It's one way that I use to express myself and express many of the struggles that I go through as a black woman. And, as she mentioned, this conference is really to open up different conversations like what colorism is, what it means to be a black woman, what it means to be a black woman who was actually born in Canada. What it means to be a black woman who can speak English. Those are a lot of important discussions to talk about as we're discussing privilege and what that means and what it looks like. So, I'll be performing two pieces today. I hope you guys will receive them. This isn't really meant for anyone, but I want as you're listening to me speak to really think about the words, think about what it means, as well as-- it's OK if you don't identify with these themes. It's OK if you don't identify with what I'm saying, but it's important that you grasp onto it and also learn from it as well. When I walk into a store-- sorry, one second. When I walk into a store, I often feel eyes on me. As if cameras were incapable of doing their job. There are human eyes keeping me under surveillance. And not only me, but the brother over there with darker skin and my little sister in the fourth aisle with skin just a little lighter than mine. They are watching. They are watching us. And when I leave the store, I have to convince myself that I am not guilty. I know I'm innocent, but society did a good job of teaching me differently. As if my skin colour is the real crime being committed and that that is where the problem lies. My brothers are seen as a criminal in a white man's eyes. I am seen as the treat in the black and white fight. I am the problem. My lips are too big and my hair isn't straight enough. I am not light enough. In these streets, I am a target. In the halls, I am a target, with or without my hoodie on. Because you can't hide skin colour. I am Trayvon Martin. I am Sandra Bland seeking justice for every black woman and every black man. Go ahead and call me the angry black girl, because I sure am. Because 50 years later and the black man is still punished for being black. Martin Luther King, I also have a dream that one day my skin colour will not affect my job opportunities. That one day my character will be more important than my race. That my kids will not feel ugly in their skin and I will not have to teach them the dangers of being black. Instead, we will rebirth a generation that is proud of their colour and when I enter a store I'll be viewed with a smile and not suspicion. I no longer want to be penalized because my skin colour is different and when my mother says we're going to be all right, I want to believe her. When I tell my sons and daughters we're going to be all right, I want them to believe me. I want them to believe that there will come a day where we will truly be free. Thank you. That was my first piece.

[ Applause ]

Thank you. The second piece is actually one of my favourites. I've read it many, many times and it means a lot to me because it talks a lot about of my struggle and my personal experiences as being a black woman and it doesn't just generalize being black. It's really talking about myself and what that journey looks like for me. So, I hope you guys like it. I was born with colour. Skin similar to wet sand. Not just a little dark tan. I was black. I must admit, the sun fell in love with me. So summers got darker. And to some, that was a little

too much. It was darky or black attack. I just wasn't fair, light, or white enough. Being this dark wasn't pretty. It wasn't worthy and I was dirty. My skin associated with stereotypes and whack notions. My blackness being attacked more than sharks in an ocean and they say things like all black people will ever know is poverty, drugs, and hustling streets, forgetting that my hope stems from my history. That my ancestors have fought way too hard for me to remain in these chains. That heroes aren't the Trumps and the Jeff Sessions. They are Maya Angelou, MLK, and Luke Cage. This is for all the black girls who want to bleach their skin in sixth grade. Me too. I remember perm after perm damaging my black roots. Imagine being in a school or job where no one looked like you. Where beauty met a certain standard that you could never meet. In middle school, people were surprised I could speak so fluently, as if English wasn't fit for my tongue. As if my skin screamed I am not good enough. But I am not sorry that your stereotypes don't fit and that I'm more than you think. I will not be less-- anything less than unapologetically black and full of greatness. I am proud of this rich, dark skin, the same skin the sun fell in love with. Doesn't it suck being a little jealous? You thought ivory was the only thing beautiful until you saw me. Intelligent, divine, and full of beauty, and carefree. The sun had already declared my beauty. It does not see what you see. And I will no longer apologize for doing better. I will not apologize for excelling or following my dreams. You thought you'd keep us slaves forever, but I'm not what you expected me to be. The underestimates you have are none of my business; proving you wrong is. Being me is. Being black is. So, you don't have to love my skin because I already think it's all that. And if you disagree, you can kiss my black-- thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> That was amazing. Thank you so much. So, this event is actually not possible without incredible support across the university, our community, and support from sponsors. And I have the privilege of introducing the next person that's going to introduce our keynote. I don't know if he knew I got to introduce him. I have a very special relationship with this dean. He is the dean of the faculty of communications and design. He's infamous and famous on campus. He has incredible passion, very strong opinions, vision, ability, and my most recent experience with him is an ability to learn from each other and try to understand and grapple with the way in which our university has to come to terms with some of the systemic stuff we're dealing with. Right? Because a three-day conference is wonderful, but if we do not embed this stuff into all of our courses and to our faculties and to the faces of our professors, if the doubling of aboriginal professors means we go from three to six, then we get nowhere very slowly. Right? And we have had a lot of very frank, honest discussions and I can tell you as recently as last week one of the things that moved me about this dean was when he looked at me and he said I'm willing to admit that I may be wrong in this and I know I've got a lot of unconscious bias stuff I'm working through as a dean, but I want to work. And that's where I think we are. With people-- all of us have this stuff in it-- in us, right? When we're giving these sessions it isn't here to teach white people what they're doing wrong. We all carry privilege and we all carry biases and the only way we will move forward is to acknowledge that we may be wrong and to know that we have to do the work. So, I'm going to thank him for being one of the conference's biggest sponsors, the faculty of communication and design has been one of our biggest sponsors for supporting this conference and I'm going to introduce you to Dean Charles Falzon.

[ Applause ]

>> Wow, I didn't see that coming. Thank you so much, Toni, that's really nice. So, you're in for a treat and I know you're waiting for the keynote speech and you are going to not be disappointed. But I just want to respond to the question that I was asked why-- why is FCAD-- you're seeing these letters up there, FCAD, that's the faculty communication and design. They keep popping up at different times because we're all about branding in a sense and stuff, but why are we-- why are we interested in supporting this. Thank you. We're obviously not good communicators. So, we're interested in-- this is really important at the heart of a big part of what we're about right now. FCAD is the home of Canada's leading schools. Sorry to those of you who are coming from other places, but we really are. You know, facts are facts. The leading schools in media, journalism, communications-- we have the oldest schools, so we better be the leading schools and so I'm really privileged to be the dean of a group of 5842 students who have made their calling to be the-- involved in communicating and designing and creating in the future. And we're in this-- we're really committed to this for two reasons. One is that the questions that we're being asked-- by the way, amazing poetry-- and-- amazing. Let's just have-- we're--

[ Applause ]

Oh, she's gone? Yeah, she's gone, but amazing. And that to me is an example of change through art, through communicating, through creativity. This-- these questions as to what does it mean-- all of those what does it mean that Toni was asking-- they're not going to be answered in textbooks. They're not going to be answered just in political documentary positions. They're going to be answered through the back-- through the culture of every day life and the culture of every day life is about communicating, designing, media. Think about it. I mean we all-- media-- think about the discourse that is happening. And so these people that we're training to be the next level of this really, really, really have a lot of responsibility. So, that's why this has been an integral part of it, but the other part which is equally important is it's about walking the talk. It's about understanding that we in education-- look at me, I'm a white guy-- and I'm surrounded by a lot of people who want to shift things, but don't fully, fully, fully, fully know how to do it. So, by investing in it and partnering and having an institution like Ryerson who's trying to figure out saying how can I be the person who's helping cultural change without really having walked the walk. And yet I want to. And so, for me, it's an honour to be a little bit of a supporter of this and to say that this is just a work in progress, that we're all in it together and hopefully our students, as they become the next storytellers and cultural shapers of the 21st century, are going to be a little bit better than my generation was when we were doing it. So, I now have the privilege-- the moment, finally-- of introducing you to our keynote speaker who is Dr. Adrien K. Wing, Associate Dean of the University of Iowa, author, editor of the Critical Race and Global Critical Race Feminism. So, I am-- I wasn't going to read this, but I am because I just wouldn't know what to edit out. And I think it's really-- Adrien was saying to me, well, they could read about it later. I don't want to. I want you to hear this. It's my privilege to do that right now. Dr. King-- Dr. Wing-- that's a good start. Dr. Wing's US-oriented scholarship-- that was Freudian at some level-- has focussed on race and gender discrimination, including topics such as the impact of Hurricane Katrina, gangs, mothering, affirmative action, the war on terrorism, and polygamy in black America. Her international

scholarship has emphasized two regions. Africa, especially South Africa, and the Middle East, in particular, the Palestinian legal system. Dr. Wing is the author of over 130 publications that delve into such things-- just listen to this list. Constitutionalism. Women's rights. Rape in Bosnia. Muslim headscarves in France. Tunisian secularism. Turkish democracy. And the Arab spring, among other topics. Now, that breadth of knowledge of what it means to be, you know, looking at a topic like today, global white supremacy, past, present, and future, could not be-- we could not have a better speaker for you than Dr. Wing. So, please help me welcome Dr. Adrien K. Wing to the stage.

[ Applause ]

>> Thank you, dean, very much. Because my name is Adrien K. Wing, I'm often called Adrien King and so whether it's Freudian or not, it does happen. And also the name Adrien can be a male name and the name Wing can be a Chinese name and so people come to my office looking for a Chinese man and say can you tell me where he is and I says it's me [laughter]. So, I would like to thank the university and all of the sponsors and all of you all for attending this very important conference. In the white privilege conference community, I hold the record-- other than Dr. Eddie Moore himself-- for attending the most conferences. I have only missed one of the 19.

[ Applause ]

And I hope some of you will come down to Iowa because we're going to have the 20th anniversary conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Iowa was the state where the white privilege conferences started back when Dr. Moore was working at a little tiny college called Cornell College and so he's bringing it back home to Iowa. And these conferences started out with just a few hundred people in Cornell and I think they got up as high as, what, 3000? In Philadelphia, was it? Three thousand people. So, usually what happens, if you come to a white privilege conference-- how many of you this is your first conference-- white privilege conference? See, almost everybody. You get hooked. And so, next year, we're going to see you in Iowa. And you say Iowa? Isn't that just like some pigs and some farms and-- that's what I thought to, but I'll tell you down in the states, there's people that think Canada is, you know, some vast wasteland of who knows what and when I said I'm going to Toronto and they're like oh, my goodness, are there buildings there? Are there-- it's like what? Anyway. It's wonderful to be with all of you all. Tomorrow at my university, we're having the law school graduation, so I must unfortunately leave right after my keynote. So, I'm sure I won't be able to engage with you all over the course of the whole conference as I would have liked to do. And so, if I don't get to chat with you briefly in the, you know, afterwards, please feel free to-- you know, you can Google my name and it will pop up the University of Iowa website and you will be able to email me and I often then have phone calls and all of that. So, the subject that I'm going to be speaking about clearly could be an entire lifetime. Certainly it could be an entire course and I only have now about a half hour to address it. I want to tell you a little bit more about myself as how I came to get into this kind of work. I'm originally from California, born at Camp Pendleton Marine Base when my father was in the Korean conflict. That's how old I am. I'm 62 years old. Sixty-two years old.

[ Applause ]

And I grew up mainly in New York, New Jersey. People say my accent is still Jersey, New Jersey, and I went to Princeton where I majored in political science, minored in what was then called Afro-American studies. Right? Don't use that now, afro-- no. No. We call it-- at least in the states-- African American studies. Right? Then I went to UCLA, got a master's in African politics-- that's where my dad went to school-- and then from there I went to Stanford where I went to law school, specialized in international law, spent five years on Wall Street in New York, predominantly doing international law as part of global white supremacy and its legal functionaries. Then-- people say how did you end up in Iowa? Nothing about that says Iowa. I ended up in Iowa for reasons many of you go a lot of places. For love.

[ Laughter and Cheering ]

It wasn't love of Iowa, because I didn't know Iowa. I used to have this husband-- he's now an ex-husband-- and Rico-- Rico is a doctor and he was assigned by the US government as part of payback for them paying for him to go to med school to an Indian reservation in Iowa. The Meskwaki Indian tribe in Tama, Iowa. So, we had to leave the Bronx, New York where we were living and go to the middle of nowhere. We thought we're going two years. He'll be done. We'll go back to civilization-- which we defined as either New York or California. Right? So, the ex-husband, he became an ex-husband after he had to keep moving and he's had 20 jobs in this time period and I have stayed at the University of Iowa faculty for 31 years.

[ Applause ]

So, I'm the senior black faculty member-- not black woman, but black faculty member-- out of 3000 faculty. So, I've been on every committee, every organization, every diversity initiative-- OK, we don't have three to six. Maybe we have 20 to 30, but the issues are still there and no matter the numbers, everywhere the numbers are small. I also-- because of my own privileging in terms of the universities, et cetera, that I went to, I was able to go to school with the men who run the world. They run the corporations, the businesses, the governments. the international organizations, and they were trained and raised that way to do that. And I was usually the first black, the first woman, who was with them and it started from when I was in a private school in seventh grade. So, I grew up next to the people who engage in a system-- not as individuals, but as a system of global white supremacy. And in this brief time, we can only do little highlights about some of the aspects of this system. So, I will-- I don't know if we're going to have time for questions with it being so brief, but I'm going to have a few slides that will talk about the past, some about the present, and speculate about the future. OK. Now we're going to talk a little tiny bit about colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism. Right? So, we are still-- even though very few countries in the world are actual legal colonies of a former superpower, like the UK or France or Spain or Portugal-- nevertheless, most countries still are maintained under a system of neocolonialism. Right? So, you can go anywhere in Africa and even though the countries are independent, when you look at how are they linked to France and French corporations and it's easier to fly from France-- from that country to Paris than it is to go from that country

to the country next door that speaks English. That everything is set up geopolitically to maintain those differences. And that system of neocolonialism is still going on. That system that we know as imperialism is still going on-- if you don't understand that, you can't understand-- nobody can understand what's happening in the Middle East, but if you don't understand how part of what's happening goes back to the colonial and neocolonial relationships and how they manifest today-- so, we say, OK, well, we're not in favour of the Iran agreement. Well, who does that benefit? And whose friend are they? And what's going to happen to the businesses, et cetera? All of this is all very well set out in more detail than we can do here, but nothing is happening just out of the blue for no reason. There is a method. No matter how mad some of the messengers may seem, there is a method to the madness. We cannot forget that and get sidetracked by looking at dog and pony shows that may distract us from what is actually happening. So, we'll just use this example. The western democracies, right, all had founding fathers that set them up. These were white men with privilege who set up a system for their own benefit. I mean what's so weird about that? That's what their purpose was. Their purpose when they're saying we the people had nothing to do with all of what we today would call people. We know they were setting up for white men with privilege to maintain a system over the centuries. And, at least in the US, we are still grappling over hundreds of years in trying to make a system set up that way apply to the majority of the people in the country. It certainly didn't apply to the white women. It didn't apply to the black people who were mainly slaves. It didn't apply to the indigenous people. Certainly, nothing was going to be said about LGBTQ, people with disabilities, any of the groups that today we all take for granted are part of the richness of our country. That was not their intention, so we shouldn't be surprised that a system set up to benefit that group is still benefitting their great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandsons. And also it may be benefiting their great, great, great, great granddaughters too. It can benefit males and females. And often women may be the biggest supporters of this global white supremacy, whether they know it that way or not. And the system they set up-- justice, mercy, all of this-- was based for many centuries on slavery. On the slave system. Today, there are still some countries with slavery, legal slavery, but now, even though we don't have legal slavery in most of the world, the subsequent subjugation that we continue to have all over the world is based on that. Now, what about that slavery? It takes all of the resources of that person's body and uses it for the benefit of a few people. Actually, today-- at least in the states-- some of the disproportions, the disparities, are greater now than they were 50 and 60 years ago. Greater now. How can that be when we have so many people who become doctors and lawyers and we've even had a black president that we have more racial disparities and class disparities in the US now than we did at the time of Martin Luther King? All right. Anybody ever heard of this guy? Samuel Huntington. He wrote a very famous article in Foreign Affairs magazine which then became a book called the Clash of Civilizations. Now we're talking about the modern era. Right? So, you saw the map with the colonialism and the neocolonialism. Well, you-- those colours can be used to talk about the whole world today and he did this by saying there's several different civilizations that are out there and he decided, lo and behold, the civilizations that white men dominated would be the ones that are superior and progressive and wondrous compared to the civilizations where you have people of colour who are not Christian, who are not following, perhaps, the same kind of governments, and so you would have a clash. So, ta-da! He thinks of his map and comes up with the western civilization that the US and

Canada are a central part and then divides up other places. OK. So, these identities cause us to face a clash that is inevitable and can explain the post-Cold War era. All right? At least that was his thesis. That's what he became the most famous for. So, the civilizations include the Slavic orthodox, i.e., Russia area, Islamic, Japanese, Chinese, Latin American, Hindu-- and he said maybe African. So, what, you mean like maybe Africa has a civilization? What did you mean by that? I'm sure he was worried about, well, I don't know if they are civilized at all. Right? So, he called it maybe African is a civilization. Right? Not only must they collide, but we know the western civilization is the one that is superior, is the one that should be in charge of the global economy and when 9/11 happened, right, 2001, he view-- people who supported him viewed that as that's an example of the clash. You have the Islamic civilization clashing with the west and my theory is supported and, you know, boom, I'm even more rich and famous because my theory is right. And, of course, who is at the bottom? The so-called Orient, which can include people who are Muslim and non-Christian and, by definition, they are terroristic. So, you say the word Muslim, it's like Muslim-terrorist. That's one word. Muslim-terrorist. It's not, OK, there are over a billion Muslims and a few of them are terrorists. It's Muslim-terrorist. OK? So, many people criticized the clash of civilizations idea, one of the preeminent critiques came from the late Edward Said-- anybody ever hear of him? A number of you. He was a Palestinian-American professor at Columbia. He wrote a very famous book called Orientalism. And he was in literature, so he was looking at all of the different books that would talk about how the Orient or the other is feminized, is inferior, is weak, compared to the hyper-masculine west. So, he said it well, I think, when he said what Huntington was saying was the clash of ignorance. Because there's many clashes around the world within so-called civilizations, so how are you going to deal with that? Or many things that just will not fit into this sort of a framework which essentializes-- i.e. acts like all Arabs are like this or all Buddhists are like this-- and it doesn't work. So, here we have white privilege, the idea of the white privilege conferences, we have Peggy McIntosh's famous article. I hope you've all read her short article, The Knapsack of Privilege. It's a wonderful thing to send to all your friends who say there's no privilege. I am where I am because I had merit and if you had merit you would be where I am. Send them that list. Ask them would they like to trade where they are with a black man on any of that list. We've got to add to her list, you know, we've always got to add to it. Now we've got Starbucks while black. Right? Did you hear at Yale yesterday or the day before there was a student sleeping in the dorm in like the common room and one of the other students called the police on her? So we have dozing at Yale while black. Every single day another one of these episodes happen and for some of you it can be like oh, wow, that's sad, but for those of us subjected to that potentially every day, this is no joke. This is part of what I call our spirit injuries that add up to spirit murder and that lead to homicide, suicide, depression, and all kinds of things that are affecting entire groups of people. Right? So, look at what she's written if you haven't. There are other authors that have written about heterosexual privilege. Male privilege. You can do it with different groups and then you can intersect them as well to show how, as we saw our young student who is a poet, she's black and a woman, well she's actually every day a black woman, not black or a woman, and so looking at the complexity of the privileging is really, really important. So, all of this is part of the system of global white supremacy that we have. So, as part of that system, we have to fit people into it. So, a few years ago, some of you may remember there was a bombing in Boston when they were doing the Boston Marathon. The people

responsible were like Chechnyans. They were from somewhere that didn't fit under the civilizations very well. It's like, well, they look like just some white people. Well, no, but they had to end up being racialized and stereotyped and darkened and put into a box so that they could fit into the global jihad Muslim-terrorist dynamic. And so, that had to be done even though their-- the particulars of what they were doing may or may not at all have fit well into the discussion. But you can see these kinds of things almost every day in the media when they will try to put people into boxes to suit certain narratives. So, if a certain kind of person does something, that's their personal problem, they have mental problems. Somebody else does it, it's part of the global jihad. Right? So, part of the system of the privileging and supremacy is an issue we call globalization. I hope everybody here has heard of globalization. Right? Globalization-- and here, this is a good picture because you got all of the multinationals. The non-answerable multinationals that control the world. Right? This is part of globalization. Is it good or is it bad? Some people say, well, it's good because it's bringing growth. It could have growth in Canada or growth in Sierra Leone. It's spreading western-style democracy. So, that's one view. Another view is that globalization is detrimental to the whole globe. Globalization is supporting the colonial, neocolonial, imperialistic, hegemonic, ethnocentrism of the world. Globalization helps escalate militarization. Globalization is fostering cultural assimilation and appropriation. So, I advise you, read some of the articles that are coming out to show that, yes, while to-- for some people in certain types of situations, globalization may help, but in other cases and with other people it hurts. Once again, who will be most benefitted? Elite privileged white men, right, who own these companies, who own the stock, who are part of the 0.0001% of the world, who destroy their own corporation and get a package of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. You make a mistake on your job and you might be terminated the next day, just walked out the door. They make mistakes that affect the globe and they can be given tens of millions of dollars. We see the continuation of xenophobia and the rise of xenophobia. Down in the states, the-- if you say the word NAFTA, it's like saying the word communist, which in the US you just better not say that kind of a word, right? And so, all of it is looked at as, you know, what we're going to have these alien hordes from the south and the north and all this is coming in and they want to invade us-- well, US unemployment right now is down to like 4%. They're going to like wake up like oh, you know, we have a labour shortage. There's a reason why people come into countries and work there and stay there. And it's like oh, Mar-a-Lago, which is called the southern White House, they had to ask for a waiver for 70 workers to come in to work in Mar-a-Lago. So how come he can get a waiver for 70 workers and we're going to need millions of additional workers, right, to handle the booming economy, yet here we're being xenophobic? Here we're saying we've got to save Syria while we bomb it, and yet we let in, like, I don't know, 20 Syrians last year-- or 11-- I mean something like that that we really, really care and so that's why we let so many of them in. The Islamophobia, which is continuing globally to grow, and so you can never just have an individual situation and in the US this whole intersection. My-- I have-- of my seven children that I have, two are young ladies I adopted from Ethiopia. One of them is Muslim and she wears a hijab. And she's in med school and she has problems every day in the med school from her own classmates, much less when she walks out of the door. So, what can I tell her? There's nothing I can tell her. We couldn't go anywhere at Christmas holiday because we were afraid of what kind of attack. She said, well, you'll be with me, Mommy. I said you think because I don't have on a headscarf that I'm somehow going to be

able to protect us, you know, and she was hoping, right? She's hoping saying Mommy, you'll protect me, when I know that I can't protect her from the xenophobes, racists, Islamophobes, et cetera, that are all around us. The whole neoliberalism trend that we're in, which is a resurgence of the 19th century associated with laissez-faire capitalism. Laissez-faire; just do what you want. We don't need to regulate. Earn your billions. Pay lower taxes. Sounds familiar. That's the system we're in. I need lower and lower taxes, oh, but then we have to have budget cuts because we don't have enough money because we let the 1% have the tax benefits. So, what are we in now? Another term you will hear in the literature is global heteropatriarchy. Right? So, it's patriarchal, male-dominated, and it's also very homophobic. It's a heteropatriarchy. Right? So, here's one definition where you have heterosexual males, right, who are over the whole system and none of them want to be seen as gay men because that would put them in another category and so the system operates as a global heteropatriarchy. And this is true no matter who the faces are in the system, so do not confuse the fact that there can be a female let's say head of the UK with anything to do with is there more global heteropatriarchy. You're still part of the system that is out there. Don't be confused by the colour of the skin of the leader either. You're still operating in a system. That's how it was set up. So, I love this. All I want is abolition of the imperialist white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy. Well, that would be a very big Christmas present, wouldn't it? Not coming any time soon, right? OK. We have so many examples now of this heteropatriarchy. I don't know all your Canadian examples, but I did hear about certain incidences that have happened here recently that are all-- can be-- are part of this heteropatriarchy that extends to levels that some of us weren't even familiar with. On the other hand, people who are benefitting from the system are privileged. So, of the many racial killings that we had-- I just mentioning one where a young man killed nine black people at a Bible study class. He came in there for an hour. They welcomed this young white guy in there, prayed with him, talked about him, he took out a gun and shot nine people point blank. Point blank. What does it take to even be able to do that? And in, you know, in our country we have-- everybody can have however many guns they want and, you know, and this was not one of these automatic weapons where you can be up in the Las Vegas tower shooting 500 casualties in 10 minutes and 50 people dead. This was up close and personal. So, they were searching for him. They found him. He didn't die in any shoot out with the police. He wasn't manhandled. Instead, they bought him some Burger King for his meal before they were taking him in. A black person may not even be able to eat at a Burger King without getting arrested or attacked and here this mass murderer was given, oh, what you give to a teenager when he says I'm hungry. So, the perspective that I'm offering you today is from a movement that I've been involved in for over 20 years that's called critical race theory. So, critical race-- critical race theory comes from critical legal studies and critical legal studies are-- were started by progressive white men in the '60s and '70s and '80s who had a progressive analysis on what's going on in society. There were some people of colour and some women who said, yeah, this class analysis is interesting, but there's no race in it. We need to talk not just about class but race. And so there's a lot of anthologies you can read that have to do with critical race theory and then critical race theory was looked at as being all black and so other movements have come out, part of which is the critical white studies, but we have Latino studies, we have Asian studies, we have what's called Indian crit, we have queer crit, there's a new one called dis crit, people with disabilities. So, in other words, as each group becomes empowered and gets a voice,

they say we need to specialize on issues relating to us, whether they're in education or employment or wherever they are. So, you get women, as I said, who are well, this class thing is nice, the race thing is OK, but where are the women. So, I'm the editor of a couple of readers there, Critical Race Feminism and Global Critical Race Feminism and I was so delighted that on the third floor where they have the global marketplace they have the publications of all of the keynoters and they had these two books for sale there and they were edited some time ago, but everything in them is as accurate today as when they came out. We have solved none of these problems. And in the middle there is-- you all know her, right? Who is that? Angela Davis. So, some of the things we do in Critical Race Feminism is we look at much more complex identity than just race and gender. Because you have not only a race and a gender, you have all of those categories. Are you pregnant? What's your marital status? What's your ethnic origin? What's your sexual orientation, age, disability, et cetera? You say well that's too many categories, well, those categories are all in the South African constitution and I was privileged to help the founding mothers and fathers of that constitution write that. And they did that to learn from the US what not to do. So, they did this and it's intersectional. Their legal system recognizes you could be the intersection of many of those categories facing discrimination while also having simultaneous privileging. So, I'm a professor, I'm going to go on Sunday to France and I'm flying business class and I'm so happy, but when I want to go into that airport, I know I could be, you know, attacked at any minute by the police or anything before I get on the plane. And, oh, when I get on the plane, I might get dragged off the plane as they did to an Asian doctor and lots of other people. So, here I can have a privileging that I can do an upgrade, but meanwhile I can still have the discrimination. So, that's the level we need to get at to really complicate our analysis of things that are affected by white global supremacy. So, for the future, what do you need to do? We all need sheroes and heroes. Not just heroes, but sheroes. You need to educate yourself, you need to educate your children. Start with your children. What do you say to them when they're two years old? To my boys-- I have five boys-- I said oh, only you men like that football. They said, mom, you're sexist. They were right! So, when your own children call you out, you acknowledge I've raised them well. Right? I raised them well, right?

[ Applause ]

When you go to Thanksgiving dinner-- you all have a Thanksgiving, we have it-- and at Thanksgiving, you can have all kind of relatives and friends. That's when the hardest work is. Talking to them. We can sit here and talk about the global heteropatriarchy all we want, but you're not talking that with uncle and auntie so-and-so. You have to have another approach and they might listen because they love you. They might. You don't give them the jargon. Invite somebody to come to dinner. There have been movies about that, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Acknowledge your own privileging. Everyone in here, the fact you can sit in here today means you have a privilege. Work to demarginalize the struggles of the disadvantaged. Work for global equity, equality, and justice. Work because of women like this. I know you know one of these women. I found out about her when I was doing my speech that you're going to have a black woman on the money. You're going to have a black woman on the money.

[ Applause ]

But what's that going to mean? I've read some people saying yeah, so then she's the front face of the system. I read about that too. Some people say and this is great and some people say but that's the system, and so very interesting. Now, we were going to have Harriet Tubman on a bill and somehow that's now been dropped. So, you all will certainly beat us in having a black woman on your money. And anybody know the other people there? Yes, the notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the middle on the Supreme Court. Nawal Saadawi, medical doctor and poet from Egypt. Also there-- you don't probably know-- Tammy Duckworth, she's in our US Senate. She was in the Army, got her legs blown off while she was flying a helicopter and she's in the Senate, just had a baby-- had to get the Senate to write a rule to let her bring her baby in to the Senate. Right? We have here the first Arab-- the first Muslim woman lawyer, Shirin Ebadi, to get the Nobel Prize. So, these are some of my sheroes and heroes. So, don't just tell a different version of the story, change the story. Right? Equality; you see everybody's on a box. Some people can't see. Equity; give the one who gives a bigger boost, right, to see over the fence, but liberation is tear down the wall.

[ Applause ]

Don't build the wall. Don't build the wall. Engage in what we call praxis, that's the intersection of theory and practice. Sister Kim Crenshaw who invented the term intersectionality in the US, she's not only writing books that nobody reads but five people; she started an organization. This organization is on the front line with groups like Me Too, with helping young women of colour going to summer camps, going to writer's camps, helping on legal cases. So, take it-- no matter what degree you're getting or what your job is, take it out of the ivory tower to also have it in the community. We can all do it. As Martin Luther King said, until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream. I'm going to end with a poem as well. I've been a poet since I was a young person, but I'm going to read you a poem that's by somebody much more prominent than I will ever be. And some of you may know this poem, but I read-- this poem is my mantra and I'm going to end with it. And this is by Maya Angelou called Still I Rise. You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? Because I walk like I've got oil wells pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, with the certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high, still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops weakened by my soulful cries? Does my heartiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard because I laugh like I've got gold mines digging in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise that I dance like I've got diamonds at the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history shame I rise. Up from a past that's rooted in pain, I rise. I am a black ocean leaping and wide. Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind the nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear, I rise. Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise. Thank you.

[ Applause ]

I don't think we have time for any questions. I tried to stay as tight as I could, but please come up. Thank you so much.

>> We're so honoured to have you here. Thank you for your words. If Iowa is anything like Canada, we're coming.

>> Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You've got to come.

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you all very much and after you have some more announcements I'll stay down in this area for a while, but I hope now you're going to come to Iowa because we were just getting revved up here.

[ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]

>> Yeah?

>> Oh, it's going to be at the [inaudible] Iowa in the spring. March 20 to 23rd 2019, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. You can just google--

>> It's just like Canada. I swear. Three. Dr. Wing, we're so grateful for your words, for your courage, for your passion, for closing with Maya Angelou. You've talked to us a lot about power and how power entrenches and how power subsists and the legacies of power that we live in. I think when you talk about founding fathers getting together to a table to write about themselves, what is our call and who do we bring to the table so that when we write our current policies, programs, plans, and future that those voices are heard, not just for the few elite, but for all of that-- all of us. You talked so much about systems and systems of power and how we see them, live in them, and become them. I think of how proud I am that Viola Desmond's going to be on a bill, but that the Queen of England is still on all of my money. On all of my money. Right? I think about this concept of a clash of civilization and what's that meant in terms of our identities and how our multiple identities are sometimes conflicting. They're sometimes harmonious, but they're sometimes conflicting. I think of the van attack that happened in our city in Toronto a few weeks ago and the immediate reaction I had was deep pain for the death of the lives, but as a racialized person who is thinking about black people and Muslims, the first thing you think is my god, I hope it's not a Muslim or a black person or a-- because then we're-- there's a rage that comes from tragedy now that you can't even grieve anymore for the loss of people you love because there is a fear of what that backlash is going to bring. And that, to me, is the clash that we've come to as humanity that I think you raise for us. But for me, you closed on something that I think was so important which is this notion that when you-- your own children call you out, hear them, because you raised them right. So, let us as educators and citizens know that if somebody comes to us and tells us the way you spoke or acted or behaved had an impact on me that we don't think-- but I'm not a-- I'm not a-- I'm a good-- if you only knew about what I do-- but that the first thing we think is if you're able to call me out, it's because you feel like I'll hear you. And if you're able to call me out as a student, it's because we're teaching you right. Right? So, our next session is at 3:00. Do not be late, they're going to be

awesome. We're very grateful we'll have many more keynotes coming, so don't miss those. And we'll have time now, Dr. Wing is able to talk to folks who want to come down. I think it's going to be a mad rush. Have a great rest of the day.