Sheldon Eakins:

Welcome advocates to another episode of the Leading Equity Podcast, a podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their school. I got one of my good friends, my buddy, Victor Small, Jr. here with me today of the RJ League. We're excited because we get to talk about a topic that I have not addressed, but it needs to be addressed. Almost want to say it goes without being said that if this is a time for us to really engage even deeper into doing this equity work. Without further ado, Victor, thank you so much for joining us today.

Victor Small:

Hey, what's up, man? How you doing? How's everybody doing?

Sheldon Eakins:

Well, I'm looking forward to this. But before we jump into this conversation, and we're going to be talking about the Executive Order, from number 45, on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping. But before we jump into that, Victor, want to share with folks who are unfamiliar with you and your work? Let us know a little bit about yourself.

Victor Small:

Yeah. I'm heavy advocate for Restorative Justice, do some training and some consulting in that area. I've been a doctoral candidate. I just live, breathe, and sleep these different topics, trying to examine these topics, at least the topics that we're going to talk about today. In my own life, in other people's ... the people that I train their lives on ... it's really deep, it's deep in that situation. I like long walks on the beach.

Sheldon Eakins:

No.

Victor Small:

I'm big on rom-coms.

Sheldon Eakins:

Okay. Okay.

Victor Small:

It really nice, man. What was that? I just watching one is called the Wedding Year is fire. It's got to do from ... you remember a little dude from Everybody Hates Chris?

Sheldon Eakins:

Yeah, my, man. [crosstalk 00:02:17] Oh, Chris. It was Chris, the actual Chris?

Victor Small:

Yeah. Everybody Hates Chris. Yeah, Chris was in it. He's grown now. It's not makes you feel old, watching the TV show. No, you watch the TV show. This dude was a kid and now he's grown. He's grown. He got tattoos. He's tall. He's a grown man. He's dating the oldest daughter from Modern Family.

Sheldon Eakins:

Okay.

Victor Small:

Okay. He dating her in the movie. It's fabulous, man. You got to catch it. I mean, the rom-coms, like [Brew Tea 00:03:00]. We're doing all that. Mind Games and doing some workout stuff, too. Yeah, I mean, trying to, and getting unflabby is really where I'm aiming at this point.

Sheldon Eakins:

You got to get unflabby first and then you can get to work ...

Victor Small:

You guess well. Yeah.

Sheldon Eakins:

Okay. Before that, there's a process.

Victor Small:

Absolutely.

Sheldon Eakins:

Okay. Got you. Got you.

Victor Small:

Yeah.

Sheldon Eakins:

All right.

Victor Small:

Just wake up, whoa, not [inaudible 00:03:29]. Swollen is a process.

Sheldon Eakins:

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. You are killing me right now. Folks, I told Victor before we even started request that I'm not going to edit this. We are recording this on a Sunday. Literally, this is coming out tomorrow. I'm not going to have time to edit, edit. This is a pretty raw conversation that we have. A little banter might pursue throughout this conversation, just because me and Victor just cool like that.

                Thank you for sharing a little bit about the life of Victor. I don't know if you shared ... because you're going to be Dr. Small soon. I don't know if you shared a little bit about that and what your study is on.

Victor Small:

Yeah. My study, in a nutshell, is looking at the interaction between kids of color and white teachers. The reason why I'm looking at it from that perspective is that over 80% of our educational system, that's the best word. Wow. I blanked on system. Over 80% of our educational system has white female educators. In certain areas of our country, you'll have schools that are mostly all black schools. Somehow we got resegregated. Somewhere in there, we got resegregated.

                Being that we look at different test scores throughout the country, blacks didn't seem to be struggling the most. I've always wanted to figure out why that is. Because I figured if we understand why that is, then we can start thinking about what the actual solution is. Otherwise, we're just throwing ideas up on the board, and hoping that something sticks. I want to interrogate that relationship, in classrooms. What does that look like? But what could that look like? If it doesn't look like something that's healthy for black students, and other students of color, what can we do to make that a much more healthy relationship, because at the end of the day, our jobs are to teach all of our students?

                If somehow, we're not able to teach all of our students, we got to change what we're doing. That's really where I'm coming. That's really where my research is based in looking at it through a hip-hop lens as much as possible. Is that ...

Sheldon Eakins:

Listen to your study, and how you are addressing the racial differences between our student force and our teacher force demographics. I think it really lines up with this executive order. Because your research discusses, well, there's a discrepancy. There are some things that are happening in our classrooms, which might require some training. It might require some training. It's not saying that white women teachers are bad, and none of those things. It's just, I'm looking at the relationship between students of color, and our white teachers, and seeing if there's some things that we can figure out together. But according to this executive order, you really should be ceasing and desisting. Maybe your institutions to tell you, "You need to switch to a different study, because this is un-American, and all nonsense."

                I wanted to jump into one of the parts within this executive order, where it talks about to promote unity in the federal workforce, and to combat offensive and anti-American race, and sex stereotyping, and scapegoating. I'm throwing that out there to you to get your idea because, again, you're obviously you're doing research on this topic. What were your initial thoughts when this executive order came out?

Victor Small:

It's weird. I've always taught in ... when I was an English teacher, that when we're looking at someone's argument, we're not supposed to be looking at who's making the argument. But it's hard to with this. Because to put it plainly, we have a sitting president that has a lot of trouble with denouncing white supremacist that's the issue at hand that he has. But looking at that argument, it's really troubling. Because what he's essentially saying is, what we're trying to do, in terms of helping folks is actually hurting, and that the status quo is what we need. The problem is the status quo isn't exactly working for everyone.

                That's the issue. We want the status quo to work for everyone. I'm not just saying that it needs to work for just black kids, but it needs to work for everyone that struggle with it. But our status quo isn't. It's hitting me in a very weird place, when I consider all of that. Now, I can imagine how folks might feel rubbed the wrong way when we talk about these different trainings, depending on the title of them, how folks go about them. I could understand certain people feel in a certain type of way about it. Hey, that sucks. Don't get me wrong, that sucks. I'm a man, and I really hate when my wife points out that I'm doing man stuff that I need to consider that there are non-man's walking around.

Sheldon Eakins:

Non-man's.

Victor Small:

Yeah. How difficult it could be to be a woman that, I don't have to deal with. I don't have to watch my back when I walk to my car at night from any alcoholic establishment. I don't have to do that. Because I know, I could go hands with whoever's go and trying hit me. But not everybody has that situation. That's just an example of what would we be trying to interrogate and point out within the trainings that he doesn't want to have happen. What he's doing is taking away federal funds from folks that in some cases might really need the training. May not realize they need to training but they need to train.

Sheldon Eakins:

I think it all boils down to the level of comfort, and also a level of upholding white supremacy. They're not saying, "We're going to uphold up white supremacy." They're subtly saying is in a way that says, "You know what?" Because even in this executive order, they talk about there was a training that was done by the Department of the Treasury. That arguments that virtually all white people, regardless of how woke "they are contribute to racism," and that rubbed people the wrong way, like what you said. Depending on the approach, and let's keep ... It's 2020.

                I mean, we try to sugarcoat our conversations to make you feel, well, just some things I want you to think about when it comes to how you ... if we're coming at it that way. I mean, how effective is it versus this is what's happening. Look at the statistics. Here's some things that we need to consider. I mean, we think about ... the book that's come out, How to be Anti-Racist, Dr. Kendi's work. How a lot of folks have done, book studies. It's sold out. You can't get your hands on a copy of the book these days, because it's selling out. How that ...

Victor Small:

I'm actually doing one of those right now with my podcast. I'm actually doing one.

Sheldon Eakins:

Those study?

Victor Small:

Yeah. With that same book. Yeah, because it's fire. It's fire. Yeah. It's fire.

Sheldon Eakins:

But it rubbed people the wrong way, right?

Victor Small:

Yeah, it does.

Sheldon Eakins:

... to have issue with that, and we need to cease and desist, but it is fire. That's the problem is it's ... people probably sat through a training. It came out the training, feeling attacked, feeling, "I'm not racist, I can't be racist. I've never." Then that whole conversation again, that goes back to Dr. Kendi's work where he says, "You can't be not racist. You have to be either racist or anti-racist. I mean, just because you didn't say that joke, or you didn't participate in this event, but you saw it, and you knew it's coming, and you didn't do anything about it."

                That's the piece that a lot of folks forget about it. They start feeling guilty. They got that white guilt, or fragility, and it just rubs people the wrong way. As a result, we need to make sure that we're not spending any federal funds to contribute to this training, because it's making a lot of white people feel uncomfortable.

Victor Small:

It is. It is. It's a difficult thing. What's really funny is when I think about how some of the trainings are, and how ... I don't want to say dumbed-down. That's not the word. How delicate is the way? How delicate it can be that we need to be in some cases. It actually reminds me, if your house is burning down. If your house is actively burning down, it's smoldering, all your stuff is gone, are you yelling for help? Are you like, hey ...

Sheldon Eakins:

Excuse me.

Victor Small:

The house, I mean, it's burning, can you see it's burned ... I mean, it's over there. It's burning. Could somebody do something, or you're just kind of meek-ish with it? No. You're, "Help, help, help." For whatever reason, it's really difficult for people to wrap their heads around not racist being a thing. Not racist isn't a thing. It's not, neither is reverse racism. What does that mean?

Sheldon Eakins:

Oh, don't get me started on reverse racism. I can't say the N word. I'm a white person and I don't get to say the N word. That's reverse racism against me. Why would you want to say? I don't even want to say. I'm a black man. I don't like to say the N word. But somehow, it needs to shift back to them. The emphasis go ... When you live in a world where everything where you feel everything belongs to you, you have the right to do whatever you want to do, because that's just the world that you live in. Anytime that seems to go away, it's always an issue.

Victor Small:

Let's be clear, because I know that there are folks listening to this that might be skeptical about the idea of folks that live in this country, that have the feeling of, "Well, I can't do this, or as hard as I work I can't get here." I know that that's hard for folks to wrap their head around without wanting to call them a victim or anything like that. But let's think about the politics and the laws and the power dynamics that go with this.

                If you really have to struggle for everything that you get, and you're still like roadblocks after roadblock after roadblock after roadblock. That's a hard thing to overcome. If you don't have to deal with that, it's an easier walk. Does that make sense?

Sheldon Eakins:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Victor Small:

There's some folks that just their parents have a job. They have a business. Their parents have a business. Their parents have the business and want to pass the business down to their kids. That's great. That's wonderful. But then there are folks that don't have that. There are some folks that have both parents in a household. They have two sources of income coming in. They're able to have everything that they want. That's great. That gives them a leg up that a lot of people don't have.

                Because there're really some people that you have one kid, maybe your significant other died, untimely, maybe they were killed in some unnecessary way that really needs to be sorted out, or maybe their partner's incarcerated. We have no idea. This stuff really happens. Maybe their partner just ran away, just don't want anything to do with the raising of their child. That in of itself is a level of trauma that person has to deal with.

                But now that person can't work on themselves. They have to keep going. Whatever mental strife that they're going through, has to get pushed down and pushed down and pushed down. There's only so much that a person could take. This is the world we live in. It's really hard for us to go, well, everyone can do this. Well, I mean, I guess to an extent. Theoretically, everyone can do it. But it's not that easy. It really isn't.

                It was something that I was watching ... I don't watch NFL very much, I [inaudible 00:18:56]. I was watching a game. One of the announcers was talking about a player. I forget which one. I'm sorry. I don't watch him super often. But I was watching. The announcer was talking about one of the players. He's talking about how hard this ... the hard situations this person had to grow up in where their grandma raised them. They came up in a really difficult situation. I wondered to myself, well, why do we allow this to happen? Yes. Yes, he had to go through a lot to get where he's at. Are we cool with that? Or can we do something about that? Should we do something about that? We don't.

                That's the thing that we should be interrogating. When we're having it strange, we should be asking these questions. Are we okay with that? If we're not okay with that, what can we do about that? How can we shift that power dynamic? Is there are power dynamic at play? What laws can we do for that? Maybe what ball do we have that we need to get rid of? What do we do about that? As educators, what do we do about that when we see kids walking in? Do we just say, "Well, they've really got a hard life. Good luck? Do we implement some strategies or tactics that we've learned about the situation?" We don't get to that place without asking these questions.

Sheldon Eakins:

Right.

Victor Small:

Right. We don't ...

Sheldon Eakins:

We don't get there. We don't get there without having the conversation. This executive order, again, is a way or a means to try to, again, keep folks down, keep oppression to continue to happen, to uphold white supremacy at the end of the day.

                Now, I want to shift gears, Victor, and let's talk about it because this is a question that I've gotten ... I've done several webinars and trainings this past week. Literally just about at some point, in each of those webinars and training, I got the same question. There's this executive order out there that says that we cannot talk about "un-American topics and trainings. We can't send federal dollars." However, I don't agree with this as a teacher or as a school leader. The question always is, what should I do?

                Now I have my thoughts on that, and we can talk about it. But I'd love to start with you and see what do we do? Those who are listening to this, I mean, if you're listening to this show, more than likely you're about that life, or you're at least trying to be about that life. I'm just assuming all the advocates out there that are listening are about this life?

Victor Small:

Or someone who's about that life sent it to you, and you live to do it.

Sheldon Eakins:

Yeah. Yeah. One of the two. Yeah. Somehow you came across this episode. Okay. Okay. The question is, what do we do? We're educators. We're school leaders, whatever position we have in our schools. What do we do? Because we see this executive order, we don't agree with it, and we know what needs to be done. What are your thoughts?

Victor Small:

There's a lot of different things that we can do. The work can start internally, of course. I mean, there's tons of books that really support that. There's how to be an anti-racist, as we talked about earlier. There's Want to Do More than Survive. Shout out to Dr. Love. That's fantastic book. Really, really, really dug deep. If you look for books, if you look into, if you do some research, you go down that rabbit hole of research, you'll find something. You'll be able to find something to help you out.

                There's book studies, of course. There's always book studies. You can lead a book study of The New Jim Crow, for example. You can hand it out and start a book study. That's a possible thing. There's also tons of resources out there for you to send folks to, so they can bring the knowledge back to your school site. You don't have to use federal funds. That's the thing. You say, "You can't use federal funds for this." Don't use federal funds then, use something else. Use money from another place.

                I know that school leaders can be crafty. All of your funding doesn't come from the federal government. I know that for a fact. There is no federal schools. You're funding can come from other places. Just being very careful, and considerate, and honest about what fund of money you're getting it from. That's the important thing.

                At least, if I was a principal, that's what I would consider thinking about. I'd considered thinking about doing all of that, or any individual one. School sites are different in every state, every city, every part of the country. School in Boston, Massachusetts, probably looks different than it does in Los Angeles, California, than it does in Seattle, Washington, than it does in Atlanta, Georgia. We can't sugarcoat this. We can't paint it a different way.

                Your school site, within your school site, you will be able, if you think hard enough about it. If you put mind into it, I'm sure you could find you're smart enough, creative enough. We're all teachers. That's what we have to be, we have to be creative. You can make it work. If you really want to, you can make it work if you want to. If you make that a priority, yeah, you can make it work.

Sheldon Eakins:

I love that you talked about how there's alternative forms of resource that you can allocate, local funding, a lot of our districts, a lot of our states have all type of funds that are available for these type of trainings to happen. One of the things that I find interesting is ... because as a result of George Floyd, the murder of George Floyd, and other events that are racially based, I created a series called Annihilating Racial Injustice in Schools. It's hardcore. We're digging into it.

                I've had district superintendents reach out to me and say, "I want this training for my staff. However, I'm a little concerned with maybe what type of language or what wording or verbiage you're going to utilize." I'd say, "You know what? Maybe this is not a good fit for you. Because if you want to try to censor, because you're again, concerned about the comfort level of your white teachers, I'm not your guy. You can go somewhere else. I could try to recommend some people."

                But my circle, we go hard. I don't have an alternative. I don't have that fluffy, Care Bears type of be kind person. I don't have it. I don't know who to send you to, because if you're working with me, we're digging in. That's what we do. I see you laughing, man. I'm dead serious. I don't have a Care Bear person. I don't have that person.

Victor Small:

I'm laughing because I'm trying to picture the Care Bear anti-racism training. That's what came into my mind. Since you said that I was like, how would the Care Bear's approached this?

Sheldon Eakins:

You know what I'm saying. I don't know. I don't know what to do about it. That's what I'm saying. In this day and age, I mean, we have to dig in, we have to talk about it. This shouldn't be a love everyone kumbaya situation. Like I said, I tell the superintendent, I'll tell the principal, I say, "You know what? I don't think I'm your guy. I don't think this is for you. Because if that's your concern, if you're so concerned with the comfort level, and the fragility level, maybe even your own fragility and comfort level, and you're passing it off, and teach, well, concerned about the teachers." Maybe you're concerned about yourself. This is just not for you, because we have to have these conversations.

                I love that you talked about there's local funding, there's other options. There's other ways around the federal dollars. Honestly, I know that there's school districts that are still using federal funds. They're Title One. They're not Title One and Title Two. They're utilizing these funds in order to get this work done. Not necessarily as a way of defiance, but just more of I don't agree with this executive order. I know this work needs to be done.

Victor Small:

Yeah. Yeah. Just one thing you're saying it was really making me think is, yeah, they're being fragility. When you really think about this as white folks, the thing I always hear white people say is that, "Well, I wasn't there. I wasn't a slave owner." I'm, "Well, I mean, if you're born after the 1900s, you inherited this place. You inherited what happened." We're really just a couple generations away from this. Slavery ended ... Wow, that was weird. Slavery ended in 1865. It's 2020.

Sheldon Eakins:

Technically, it ended in 1865. [crosstalk 00:29:30] is a another ...

Victor Small:

It's a completely different thing. Yeah. We've got the prison ...

Sheldon Eakins:

Technically.

Victor Small:

... industrial, we ... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sheldon Eakins:

We'll just call it 1865, but we know that ...

Victor Small:

Yeah. We're just going to go with 1865 just for the ... just for me talking about this. If you were born before 1865, you lived until you were 70, that would have put you somewhere in the 1900s. That means that it's possible that someone was born around the beginning of the 1900s, that their parent was from slave, was a slave. You're born around, I don't know, 1930, 1940, around World War. Your grandparent was probably a slave, was probably a slave, more than likely a slave, still dealing with Jim Crow. That's the other thing.

Sheldon Eakins:

Jim Crow's still a thing. Yeah.

Victor Small:

Jim Crow was still around. If you're born around then, you're born around 1940s, odds are you might have had a kid, you might have had a child during the civil rights era, around the civil rights era. What we're talking about is we're talking about possibly stories being passed down from your grandmother who was a slave to you, to then your child. If you're born after or around the civil rights era, you know about slavery. If you're black, you know about slavery. Well, actually, if you're anyone, you probably know about slavery. You might have some connection to slavery in some way, shape, or form. You was around, you heard about it.

                Your kids are probably adults right now. It's only a few generations that were removed from slavery. Slavery was one of the worst thing that's ever happened in the history of the United States. You could tell me about 9/11. Yes, that was terrible. I'm not going to sit there and poo-poo 9/11. Now I'm going to poo/poo Pearl Harbor. That was awful.

                However, slavery lasted for a couple of centuries, a couple of centuries. How do we not continue to think about that? How do we not continue to talk about the effects? There's not once slaves were left to ... It's not that once you are set free as a slave, you just got a nice job that didn't really happen. I mean, there's a little bit of time where black people do all right, but then that stopped. Jim Crow laws, good old fashioned racism happened again.

Sheldon Eakins:

Or continued.

Victor Small:

Continued. But when you really think about it, the civil rights era didn't really occur until about a century, after slaves were "released." You mean to tell me in about 100 years, black people had such a terrible time in 100 years that Martin Luther King came around, Baldwin came around. That's around when the NAACP started.

Sheldon Eakins:

Malcolm X.

Victor Small:

Malcolm X, Black Panthers, but you mean to tell me everything was good for 100 years? No, it wasn't. Now we have more protests for the same stuff that was being protested for in the 1960s. How could you imagine that things is good? Again, we have to interrogate that. If we just assume that everything was fine, we just have our own slights and different ways of looking at history, we're doomed to live it over and over again. Could you imagine if Germany doesn't teach about the Nazi era, they just ignore the Nazi era happened? It's likely that the Nazi eras will happen again. It's probably going to happen again, if you don't talk about it.

Sheldon Eakins:

With that my understanding and I had never been to Germany, but someone told me that you cannot find a Hitler statue anywhere. Yet, we're sitting here debating often especially in the south, all of these historic ... the Jefferson Davis and all these different statues from Confederate soldiers and generals and just the idea of those coming down and being demolished is an issue. Oh, heritage and history.

                You go to Germany, you're not going to find a Hitler statue anywhere. They got rid of all that stuff. You barely see the Germany flags flying because that nationalism and all that stuff has just the shame a lot of Germans have from that era of World War One and World War Two. You just won't be able to find those things. But still here in the United States, there's still buildings named after known slave owners and Confederate soldiers.

Victor Small:

There's schools.

Sheldon Eakins:

There's room, schools. I mean, I remember when I was in Alabama, and I was in college. There was Nathan B. Forrest Middle School, Nathan B. Forrest Middle School. He was the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Ironically, it was predominantly black school. It's crazy how these things are ... It just blows your mind how these things are still in the United States, and they're being fought. 2020 and we're fighting to, "Can we take these down now? Can we? Is that okay? You might. That's no history.

                To uphold white supremacy, that still up for debate. Like you said, Dr. King, and the work that he did ... and not just Dr. King. I don't like to just say, Dr. King, because there was other like Malcolm X, doesn't always get mentioned ...

Victor Small:

Yeah. There was a lot.

Sheldon Eakins:

... those conversations. It's normally Dr. King's work. We don't always talk about the impact that Malcolm X had, and other influential, James Baldwin, all those things.

Victor Small:

Fred Hampton, he was a big guy.

Sheldon Eakins:

Yeah. Yeah. All of those. We just ...

Victor Small:

We don't talk about him enough.

Sheldon Eakins:

We don't talk about them. They have Garvey. We don't talk about those because they were "radical" or all those. But reality is it wasn't just Dr. King. It wasn't him alone. They just like Dr. King, because he was nonviolent. That's a whole another podcast, Victor. But ...

Victor Small:

Yeah. That's part two of this discussion.

Sheldon Eakins:

I think it's part two. But the reality is things are still the wait ... we're still having this idea of whether or not we matter. That's to me, it's just crazy. Then even if we add it in, okay, you and I are blacks were naturally biased to our black community.

Victor Small:

How dare we be?

Sheldon Eakins:

How dare we be? But I work on a reservation. I mean, our indigenous folks have dealt with all kinds of stuff, and still dealing with all kinds of stuff are Latinx folks. I mean, just people in color are dealing with different challenges. When we think about all of that together, and we just aren't allowed to say anything, because it's un-American is crazy.

Victor Small:

Well, see, that's the thing. It's unfair to say that it's un-American. Because when we're talking about what is really American mean? If you're operating with the idea of American being, the love of being a patriot and you love your country. In order to criticize, in order to deeply think about what issues America has in an attempt to try to better America, doesn't make you a patriot as well?

                We should be thinking about this, that we should be asking questions. The Louisiana Purchase, why do we have the Louisiana Purchase? It's because of the Caribbean slave revolution. That's what happened. We don't talk about that. I learned up and down that the Louisiana Purchase was just what it was. They sold it. We bought it. We didn't hear the rest of that. I didn't learn the rest of that.

                I learned about Manifest Destiny, where sellers were founding areas of the United States is just completely ignore that there was already a country full of different indigenous folks, cultures, different folks that lived here. How do you find it? That it's if somebody walked into your house right now, you're, "Well, I found it. It's my house. This is Chad's house, everybody get out.

Sheldon Eakins:

I need somewhere to stay. You need to leave.

Victor Small:

Yeah.

Sheldon Eakins:

That's legit what happened.

Victor Small:

I founded this. This is mine. When you start thinking about our country in critical ways, you start to wonder to yourself, why do we say the same? Why is it that we say the same? Why is it that we're naming this? Who is this guy that we're naming this school after? Who are we naming the street after? Why is it such a big deal that Harriet Tubman not be on a dollar, on a $20 bill? Why is that a problem? Why is it that the guy on the $20 bill was a dude that used to pay folks to kill indigenous folks? That's a complete 180.

                Why are we fighting for this guy to still be on, but not fighting for the person who saved slaves. We help them run away. Did you know there's colleges in the northeast, around Boston, Rhode Island, there are colleges that are named after guys who sold slaves? I want you to think about that. Some of our most prestigious Ivy League schools are named after guys who sold slaves. Started from the money that was used to sell slaves. This is so ingrained into our country.

                It behooves us to not learn deeply how racism has impacted our society. I don't think that that's something that should make anyone feel uncomfortable because we inherited this.

Sheldon Eakins:

Right. It's definitely not un-American.

Victor Small:

No. If it's an American that we set slaves free, it should also be American for us to look at the country that we currently have, and how it impacts folks who descend from slavery, folks that descend from "Manifest Destiny," folks that descend from when California, the whole Colorado area, those folks that live there, that spoke Spanish, they used to be part of Mexico. They started being kicked out. Again, it's if somebody walked into your house and threw all your stuff out. Here's a bus. You're going to live in this other place now.

Sheldon Eakins:

The place where we don't want to live. We don't want that area. You can have that.

Victor Small:

Goodbye. It's all you. Goodbye. Take your stuff. Bye. I'm going to live in this house now. It's mine. We literally did that. We literally did that to people from Mexico because California was Mexican.

Sheldon Eakins:

Yeah.

Victor Small:

New Mexico, Arizona, all of that was Mexico, all that's Mexico. We took that. It's ours now.

Sheldon Eakins:

Ever trying to build a wall ... On top of all of that, we took this from you, and we're going to keep you out. We're going to build a wall, and you're going to pay for it. That was the rhetoric?

Victor Small:

Yeah. Yeah. We should ask these questions. We should be talking about this. I've just given you pieces of history. That's all I'm giving you. If we're engaging in these conversations critically, the next question is, okay, how does that affect now? What do we do about it? That's what you get from these trainings. What do we do now? That shouldn't affect you personally. Because we're not saying that, "Yo, you started racism white person. How dare you." What we're saying is that, "Yo, white people tended to have it little easier."

                Yeah. There was some Irish slaves. Don't get me wrong. There was some Irish slaves. That was bad. I'm not going to say that wasn't bearable.

Sheldon Eakins:

Indentured servants.

Victor Small:

Oh, my bad, my bad.

Sheldon Eakins:

Indentured servants.

Victor Small:

I'm not going to say that wasn't bad there. I'm not going to talk trash about that. But that's not your family and everyone you knew got slaughtered so that someone could live in that area. That's not you and your friends and your family was taken from an entirely different country in a boat in the worst possible conditions, and forced to be in this place you've never seen before, you've never been at before. You were whipped. Yeah. Your name changed most likely to the person who owned the plantation. Your sister and your wife received all kinds of terrible sexual harassment, if not like rape.

                You mixed in purposefully with folks that do not speak your language. You're forced into labor for generations. Don't try to compare anything else to that. We shouldn't forget that. We shouldn't forget any of this, because that's how our country was built. Now, what you're going to do?

Sheldon Eakins:

We just don't talk about it. Apparently, that was supposed to be.

Victor Small:

No. No.

Sheldon Eakins:

We'll forget about what happened. There's 9/11 never forget for some reason. We can't. We need to forget about slavery that happened years ago. That was a long time ago.

Victor Small:

My life sucked. It did. It was terrible on your own. It's one day though.

Sheldon Eakins:

Yeah.

Victor Small:

Slavery is ... 9/11 happened over a course of ... nine years since 9/11.

Sheldon Eakins:

Yeah. Okay. You know I love talking to you, man. We got to wrap this up. I consider you as a voice in Leading Equity. Why don't you take us away with your final thought?

Victor Small:

To be realistic. If you can't wrap your head around the fact that, objectively, to be white in this country, you have some advantage around ... above folks that are black, Latinx, whatever. If you were born into a certain amount of money, a decent amount of money, you have an advantage over folks that weren't, that struggled. You can't wrap your head around how difficult it might be for someone who's Latinx and poor versus white and poor. Two different existence.

                You can't wrap your head around being a man and what privileges that you get from being a man. What do you not have to worry about being a man versus what do you have to worry about being a woman? What do you not have to worry about if you're a Christian or Catholic versus what you have to worry about if you're Islamic or Sikh, or Jewish?

                How does that manifest itself in our school systems? If you can't wrap your head around this stuff, you need to strain. If you find yourself looking at statistics at your school, around test scores, and you disaggregate it between different walks of life, different cultures, different genders, and you notice that there are folks that do worse than others. You don't try to do something about that by trying to examine how we're teaching, what we're teaching. In the way that we're teaching, how are we treating them? How are we supporting them? How are we not supporting them?

                If you don't ask those questions, then what type of educator are you? Because I assume my assumption is that we all got into this for the same reason. We love children, and we want to see children succeed. No matter if you teach seniors or you teach kindergarteners. You want to see them succeed. Shouldn't you want to do everything you could to make sure that all of your students succeed, even if that means examining your place in the world, in this nation, and their place in this nation, and how you need to address and deal with that in a class-to-class, day-to-day basis?

                We all love children. We all want them to succeed. But it's not just enough for us to want. We need to actually go out and do what we need to do to be able to help that happen. That's my final thoughts.

Sheldon Eakins:

That's your final thoughts.

Victor Small:

There it is.

Sheldon Eakins:

We appreciate that. Victor, it's definitely a pleasure.

Victor Small:

I appreciate you.

Sheldon Eakins:

Man.

Victor Small:

I appreciate you.

Sheldon Eakins:

You know how it is. You know I got you. Let's do this.

Victor Small:

I'm going to be thinking about how Care Bears are going to approach these trainings all day.

Sheldon Eakins:

Yeah.

Victor Small:

All day, Sunshine Bear, and all of them.

Sheldon Eakins:

All of them. All of them. Hopefully, that's not ... I hope there aren't equity trainers on that lifestyle, that would make them very upset. But anyway, you're going to get my book? Okay. Deep breath, deep breath. Okay. You get me fired up. I know you do training and we might have some folks that want to reach out? What's the best way to connect with you? What training do you do? Tell us your social media so that we can get in touch if we have some folks that want to reach out.

Victor Small:

My website is the rjleague.com. Just got it up and running. Just finished it yesterday. Hopefully, it looks pretty to everybody. You could reach out to me on social media @MrSmall215. Shoot me a text, shoot me a tweet, something like that. Those are the best ways to get in contact with me. Another way to be at Voxer it's the same handle @MrSmall215. We do all of that.

                We talk about restorative justice. We talk about equity. What does that mean? What does that look like? We really try to take a critical lens into this. We read books to help us take a critical lens into this. If you really want to do this work, we can help you. We can learn together. Just hit me up. Just hit me up.

Sheldon Eakins:

All right, folks, and we'll leave some links into the show, notes as well, so that you can reach out to soon to be Dr. Small. We'll do that for you as well. Victor, it's been a pleasure. I appreciate your time.

Victor Small:

Oh, same with you, man.

 

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