CHANDRA: One of the best parts about the post-show conversations is when people feel compelled to share their own stories. In this clip, Ashley shares what it’s like for her as a Black female traveling through the Dominican Republic.
ASHLEY: One of the things that really resonated with me was the dynamic with race in other cultures. As a Black individual I’ve had the experience to go live in the Dominican Republic and there’s this racial dynamic between Haitians and Dominicans and oftentimes I was cussed out in four languages, by Haitians – they were telling me I’m denying my Haitian roots. The Dominican family I lived with, they had problems with my braids because those were identified as Haitian. Especially as a Black American you go on these journeys to really figure out who you are because you DO have so many people trying to tell you who you are – or what it means to be Black, or what it means to be this and, you think – well I had the perception that if I go overseas, I’ll be able to connect more, and I’ll be able to just be me, and it won’t have to be about race or how dark I am or how I sound and, just hearing that my experience wasn’t the only experience like that. That it really didn’t matter, like I didn’t find that oneness, that wholeness that I was expecting to find. I found more divisions. And hearing that in the story, it was sad.
Because I’m actually a Youth Pastor at an all-White church (laughs). At an all-White church. I never share that story. I always kind of tread on light water because I always have this feeling that…I know that my being here is a great thing, but it ruffles some feathers as well. And it’s like you never know when you’re put in these environments how you’re supposed to be. What’s uncomfortable? What’s not comfortable enough? What’s too, what’s saying too much? How bold can I be? Our congregation is older, white individuals, it’s a highly conservative church and things that are just uncomfortable? We don’t really do.
PATTI: And that’s the show. Like, if it’s uncomfortable…
ASHLEY: You just gotta deal with it yourself. You’re uncomfortable within yourself because you can’t find any comfort talking about it. But, with this show I appreciate it because you realize how many people have similar stories. Even if it’s just a little part of her story resonates with someone else, you realize that, OK. I’m not uncomfortable by myself. People ARE talking about this. And…one story DOES make a difference. The stories are never the same but the themes are always recurring. It’s human nature.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey…What’s up, Artivists? How’s it going? What’s going on with your goals? Have you reached any of them? I didn’t get the goal of getting a new show booking last week, but that’s OK. But some amazing things happened this week – really wonderful, positive stuff, good stuff for storytelling, good stuff for Artivism, for the stories I want to tell so I’ll fill you in a little bit on those things.
OK. Beyonce’s #Formation video came out last week just before the Superbowl and that song in the Superbowl and there was a lot of conversation about LOTS of things in the video, but something that was really important to me was the conversations about #colorism and #shadeism, especially in Louisiana, there are people called Creoles and what I didn’t know is that Creole does not mean ‘light-skinned’ and that was the idea that I had, but a woman named Yaba Blay wrote an article about living in Louisiana and having some really painful moments around shadeism and colorism and I was really moved by her piece and so I posted about it, and then some other folks from the Mixed and Creole community came on a were like, “Wait a minute – her analysis is lacking the fact that there are lots of Creole people who are ‘dark-skinned’ and it has to do with the geographical area you’re in and so it was really a great conversation – so shout out to Carolyn Battle Cochran, Joahana Workman, to Senta Burke for sharing your very personal story on our thread and I thank you so much. I just want to keep talking about things and I know I’m going to get things wrong, especially when it’s something I have zero context on – so I just appreciate the conversation and let’s keep that going.
On Tuesday I went to #KPCC, which is our local #NPR station – one of our local NPR stations here in LA and had an interview with Leslie Berestein Rojas – she’s doing a story about #multiracial identity in Los Angeles and so that’s coming out on Monday. It was a wonderful opportunity to talk a little bit about One Drop and talk about my experiences being a Mixed person growing up and how I’ve evolved around that and how my focus more is on justice – so we had a great conversation and I’ll put a link once that comes out and I’ll talk about it more next week.
While I was at KPCC, I met Liz Garbus, so anyway I hugged her and said thank you for her documentary – What Happened, Miss Simone if you didn’t see it, I believe it’s still on Netflix. It’s really powerful – speaking of shadeism and colorism – it is very, very clear in this movie, so check out that documentary.
OK so, I have been an ESLTeacher for the majority of my life at this point – I started teaching ESL after I joined the…when I joined the Peace Corps right after college. I lived in West Africa and I taught ESL and I coordinated the English Department in the Cape Verdean Islands, West Africa and I’ve been teaching ESL pretty steadily ever since then everywhere. In New York City, in a high school in the South Bronx, I taught 5th grade for one year – a bilingual 5th grade class. I then taught in a few schools in Los Angeles including CalAmerica, where I met my husband Diego and…oh my gosh, maybe I’m going to cry. After that I taught at East LA College for a long time and then for the last 8 years or so I’ve been teaching at Glendale Community College, where the majority of the students are Armenian, we’ve recently had a lot of Syrian students come in and still there are also Latin American students mostly Guatemalan and Mexican and Salvadorian and Thursday was my last day teaching. And so I’m – whooo – I’m making a transition I can talk about the transition probably in next week’s video, but teaching ESL has been such a wonderful, wonderful, part of my life for the last 20 years and I will miss it so much. I’ll miss my students. I will certainly infuse my new job with everything. All the incredible tools that I learned and I’ll also maintain my relationships with the communities that motivated me to be grateful for everything that I have and to be grounded and to really understand what things are important in life – and that those are not material things – and they are not about money and power, they are about community, they are about family, they are about LOVE. And so I’m saying goodbye to ESL teaching, but not to my life as an Educator and to my life as a person who’s committed to justice and equity for everyone. So I want to say thank you – if you’re one of my students – I will miss you so much and you have made my life wonderful and THANK YOU for that. And you have my email address, so email me any time, and I’ll remind you how to use ‘Be’ verb correctly and ‘what is a noun’ and ‘what is a subject pronoun’ – I’ll remind you of all of that, so I am still your friend forever.
I am so proud, I have to say, of the students at CalState LA. So I went to CalState LA for my MFA and the students there have made a list of demands to the President of CalState LA. I’m going to put the link so that you can read. And they got it! They got the things that they were asking for – including divesting from private prisons, money to support their work – it’s so exciting. I’m so proud. And congratulations, keep up the amazing work you’re doing.
And shoutouts to everybody who’s been watching these videos! Thank you for watching them, thank you for your ‘likes’ on the videos. Please subscribe if you haven’t and also interact with me. I’m sorry I know this is a lot of just talking at you, but I don’t mean it to be, what I mean it to be is to hear from you your thoughts and questions. Let’s talk about Shadeism, ESL students if you’re watching you can ask me questions about grammar, and Artivists – what’s going on for you this week? What are your goals? What are you planning on getting done? What did you get done last week? Let me know. Let’s talk about it. What do you need support on? Have you got projects going that you need support on? Alright everybody have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful week. I’ll have great, amazing news for you that I can share next week. And until then: Bye Bye!
