how many of you know your ancestral
history by show of hands how many of you
know or are curious to know ok
I was recently joking with one of my
friends that I do not want to know my
ancestral heritage I have been a proud
black woman since I was about 14 years
old this is May of 14 and I realized
that what if I find out after all these
years of being pro black that I am
mostly Swedish right so in all
seriousness while at school that we can
now trace our DNA to a tiny village in
northern Italy or a tribe in central
Africa if all you know about your family
tree is the geographic and the ethnic
story I’d argue that you still don’t
know who you are as the diversity in a
social justice practitioner I’ve
discovered that there is an inextricable
link between our identities and our
traumas knowing where our roots come
from is more than just race and
ethnicity we really have to know the
ancestral hurts to get to the whole
story so what I know about my family
tree is that one side of it goes to
Germany and the other side of the tree
stops at a plantation in Virginia but I
knew there was something deeper than
that it goes deeper than that no more
going over and under and around the
issues I knew that if I needed to go
through my emotional baggage I also had
to go through the emotional traumas in
my family in preparation for this talk I
literally had to dig into some areas of
the family tree that we had avoided the
trauma roots what I realized in my
family tree redefined my journey in
becoming a social justice advocate from
just a mere coincidence to a destined
pathway this pathway will finally lead
to the breaking of burdens that have
been generationally passed on to be
inadvertently and that I might have
passed on to my children this is a story
about going over under
around and through trauma and some
important people are going to help me
share the story with you this is my
grandpa Jack now let me go ahead and
level sit here you may have noticed that
Jack is white and I am NOT right I’m
biracial and that is part of the story
my grandpa Jack had underlined damage
from his own hurts after the death of
his mother all five of his siblings were
sent to live with other relatives except
he by himself was sent to an orphanage
possibly because of a physical
disability he had limb reduction in a
malformed arm a couple years later he
was reunited with his family but he had
become tough hearted by that point so
Jack grows up but even before that was
back up growing up in the 20s and 30s
let’s be honest there was a pronounced
framework of racism in white America and
unfortunately my grandfather Jack fell
into the norm of that period so now I
imagine Jack growing up he goes to
college he gets a degree he becomes a
gym teacher a visual artist he marries
his sweetheart Alma they establish a
family he works two jobs to provide the
American dream for his household and of
these three kids one of them is going to
be his oldest son Tony my dad who you’re
going to meet momentarily next up is doc
doc is my maternal grandfather doc
didn’t have jacks underlying damage but
he had overwhelming pressure from being
a black doctor listen to this one a
black doctor in the 30s and the 40s in
the United States not many of those
right Jack came from nan track I’m sorry
doc doc came from rural Tennessee also
from a big family and because he was an
intellectual and this is during the Jim
Crow era because he was an intellectual
his family banded together pooled their
money in their resources and decided
he’s going to be the one kind of like
neo from the matrix except
lack and the Jim Crow era so doc that
goes to medical school he then goes to
the army becomes a medic in World War
two comes back relocates his family to a
well-to-do black community in Ohio
practices pharmacology in a drugstore
compounding his own medicines he marries
his sweetheart Louise and they have a
daughter Patricia my mom are you gonna
be in the next layer of the story so
just to get tabs on where we are here
we’ve got Jack who we started with and
his underlying damage we have Doc and
his overwhelming pressure now in this
story Jack and Doc have kids so let’s
meet Patricia and Tony this is my dad
this is Tony sometimes I call him tow he
doesn’t know that well he does now he
knows he’s here today this is Tony he’s
Jack’s son Tony was shy is shy and
reserved he came up in Jack’s household
this working-class American household
now he although this household gave
passive permission to segregation
passive permission to segregation there
was something in Tony that was still
open his experiences were a little bit
different he went to an integrated high
school black and white students and what
he found in his personal experience was
that the kids who befriended him were
the black kids his cross-country
teammates his lunch table allies so he’s
experiencing cognitive dissonance
because all the bad things he’s heard
about race-mixing aren’t true for him so
he doesn’t talk about it but he
internalizes it he doesn’t process it
out loud and he doesn’t fight it he
works around the race issue by
befriending the very people that
possibly his family didn’t want him to
interact with now we move on to my mom
this is Patricia Patricia’s Doc’s
daughter now Patricia experienced trauma
when she was 5 years old
doc
came home one day and he breaks up a
domestic violence dispute of a neighbor
later on that evening that neighbor that
abuser murdered him his dying wish was
for his daughter his only child to be
well educated so the family the
surviving members convert from Baptist
to Catholic so Patricia could go to
private school
she is classically trained as a scholar
a pianist a debutante an amateur ballet
dancer Patricia has money and all the
things that an upper middle class
lifestyle brings with the exception of
skin privilege she integrates a school
and the scars from integration leave her
with post-traumatic stress disorder so
this is battling with these race issues
but somehow she also still tries to stay
open so now Tony trudged through his own
and his dad Jack’s underlying damage
Patricia
Labor’s through her own and her dot her
dad Doc’s overwhelming pressure and
somehow working around race these two
cross paths fall in love and get married
that’s right so to be clear the son of
the dad who was against interracial
marriage goes into covenant with a black
woman the daughter of the dad who went
to segregated schools marries a white
so Tony and Patricia they don’t process
these things out loud through the
context in the lens of race they work
around the race issue hoping that love
is going to be enough but it wasn’t
I still inherited a complicated race
story I was the biracial child of a
couple who divorced only two years after
I was born
so Tony moves on he remarries but he’s
still a very present father in my life
my mom’s the primary custodial parent
and through the trajectory of my
childhood we live in predominantly black
lower-income communities so what ends up
happening with me isn’t growing up I’m
trying to process what my light-skinned
means what my fuzzy brown hair means why
my black friends don’t treat me the same
as everyone else but then when I visit
my white family I feel very different
there too I need to discover what this
race stimuli means too and for me Who am
I in the constructive race why aren’t my
parents talking about this why do the
family members look so different and why
is my family tree lopsided I was
struggling to figure this out but I knew
that this part of the pathway was mine
and mine alone I have to figure this out
for myself
so just like everyone else I grow up I
attend several different high schools
six to be exact in two different states
I work in lots of different environments
and different communities after college
and graduate school my life is hitting
in a trajectory that is dead ending into
social justice but then I realized after
I find my groove as a diversity
practitioner diversity and inclusion is
so much more than identity it’s more
than bigger again this inextricable link
and I’ve got to figure out how to get to
and through my story my story was a
lotus flower
and it’s pushing through that mud you
know how a lotus flowers grow they’ve
got to push through that mud in that
dirt and they only bloom on the top of
the water that was my story and I had to
figure out how to get through all that
mud to bloom at the time so even in this
pathway it also led me right here among
all those high schools one of the six
high schools I went to was Hilliard
Davidson when there was just one high
school in Hilliard but I was here as one
of very few black students during the
Rodney King trials 1992 this is
incredibly tough for me having been in
predominantly black environments to now
be in a suburban high school even being
half white I had never been around that
many white people before and it was very
uncomfortable this is just an example of
how complex this road and this pathway
has been for me but I tell you what it
hasn’t been easy and I’m still traveling
down it but I am so grateful for this
journey that I’ve been on because it has
allowed me to be a voice for other
people by addressing and surviving
things head-on everything that I
survived by addressing it head on
taught me how to be a better fighter for
myself and for other people this pathway
from Jack to Tony to me this pathway
from Doc to Patricia to me a convergence
of opposite sides of the spectrum that
led to a new paradigm so as I prepare to
close I ask that we just like Tony and
Patricia we need to stay open who is it
that you need to have a conversation
with that you’ve been avoiding where
there might be some healing that can
come from there what do you need to do
to push through your own mud so that you
can be that lotus flower that blooms who
have you made a foe in your minds that
you need to transform from being a
one-dimensional enemy to a complicated
three-dimensional human being so we have
met
and doc and Tony and Patricia I’d like
to share the meaning of my name with you
my mom is notorious notorious for
telling the story about how she was
pregnant with me for 10 months all the
women in here like god bless her she’s
here seeking your birth
my mom was pregnant with me for 10
months in the last trimester of the
pregnancy there was a period of time
where I stopped moving I was completely
inactive and she was worried that I
wasn’t going to survive the pregnancy so
my mother prayed to God that he would
deliver me from the womb safely like he
delivered Daniel from the Lions Den in
the Bible story in the 44th week of
gestation the placenta stopped working
but I was born healthy wrinkled but
strong in gratitude for me being born
healthy and for her believing that God
kept that promise
my parents named me after a survivor I
did not avoid the Lions did I had to go
all the way through it but on the other
end of it I found life I found life for
those of you out here who want to make
sure that someone you care about someone
you love inherits your resiliency
instead of your trauma I wish you
bravery and I wish you success in
trudging through your own mud in your
own rocks to get to where you need to go
sometimes we cannot go over
we cannot go under we cannot go around
we have to go all the way through and
what’s waiting for us on the other side
my name is Kimberly Danielle and I will
see you at the breakthrough thank you you
history by show of hands how many of you
know or are curious to know ok
I was recently joking with one of my
friends that I do not want to know my
ancestral heritage I have been a proud
black woman since I was about 14 years
old this is May of 14 and I realized
that what if I find out after all these
years of being pro black that I am
mostly Swedish right so in all
seriousness while at school that we can
now trace our DNA to a tiny village in
northern Italy or a tribe in central
Africa if all you know about your family
tree is the geographic and the ethnic
story I’d argue that you still don’t
know who you are as the diversity in a
social justice practitioner I’ve
discovered that there is an inextricable
link between our identities and our
traumas knowing where our roots come
from is more than just race and
ethnicity we really have to know the
ancestral hurts to get to the whole
story so what I know about my family
tree is that one side of it goes to
Germany and the other side of the tree
stops at a plantation in Virginia but I
knew there was something deeper than
that it goes deeper than that no more
going over and under and around the
issues I knew that if I needed to go
through my emotional baggage I also had
to go through the emotional traumas in
my family in preparation for this talk I
literally had to dig into some areas of
the family tree that we had avoided the
trauma roots what I realized in my
family tree redefined my journey in
becoming a social justice advocate from
just a mere coincidence to a destined
pathway this pathway will finally lead
to the breaking of burdens that have
been generationally passed on to be
inadvertently and that I might have
passed on to my children this is a story
about going over under
around and through trauma and some
important people are going to help me
share the story with you this is my
grandpa Jack now let me go ahead and
level sit here you may have noticed that
Jack is white and I am NOT right I’m
biracial and that is part of the story
my grandpa Jack had underlined damage
from his own hurts after the death of
his mother all five of his siblings were
sent to live with other relatives except
he by himself was sent to an orphanage
possibly because of a physical
disability he had limb reduction in a
malformed arm a couple years later he
was reunited with his family but he had
become tough hearted by that point so
Jack grows up but even before that was
back up growing up in the 20s and 30s
let’s be honest there was a pronounced
framework of racism in white America and
unfortunately my grandfather Jack fell
into the norm of that period so now I
imagine Jack growing up he goes to
college he gets a degree he becomes a
gym teacher a visual artist he marries
his sweetheart Alma they establish a
family he works two jobs to provide the
American dream for his household and of
these three kids one of them is going to
be his oldest son Tony my dad who you’re
going to meet momentarily next up is doc
doc is my maternal grandfather doc
didn’t have jacks underlying damage but
he had overwhelming pressure from being
a black doctor listen to this one a
black doctor in the 30s and the 40s in
the United States not many of those
right Jack came from nan track I’m sorry
doc doc came from rural Tennessee also
from a big family and because he was an
intellectual and this is during the Jim
Crow era because he was an intellectual
his family banded together pooled their
money in their resources and decided
he’s going to be the one kind of like
neo from the matrix except
lack and the Jim Crow era so doc that
goes to medical school he then goes to
the army becomes a medic in World War
two comes back relocates his family to a
well-to-do black community in Ohio
practices pharmacology in a drugstore
compounding his own medicines he marries
his sweetheart Louise and they have a
daughter Patricia my mom are you gonna
be in the next layer of the story so
just to get tabs on where we are here
we’ve got Jack who we started with and
his underlying damage we have Doc and
his overwhelming pressure now in this
story Jack and Doc have kids so let’s
meet Patricia and Tony this is my dad
this is Tony sometimes I call him tow he
doesn’t know that well he does now he
knows he’s here today this is Tony he’s
Jack’s son Tony was shy is shy and
reserved he came up in Jack’s household
this working-class American household
now he although this household gave
passive permission to segregation
passive permission to segregation there
was something in Tony that was still
open his experiences were a little bit
different he went to an integrated high
school black and white students and what
he found in his personal experience was
that the kids who befriended him were
the black kids his cross-country
teammates his lunch table allies so he’s
experiencing cognitive dissonance
because all the bad things he’s heard
about race-mixing aren’t true for him so
he doesn’t talk about it but he
internalizes it he doesn’t process it
out loud and he doesn’t fight it he
works around the race issue by
befriending the very people that
possibly his family didn’t want him to
interact with now we move on to my mom
this is Patricia Patricia’s Doc’s
daughter now Patricia experienced trauma
when she was 5 years old
doc
came home one day and he breaks up a
domestic violence dispute of a neighbor
later on that evening that neighbor that
abuser murdered him his dying wish was
for his daughter his only child to be
well educated so the family the
surviving members convert from Baptist
to Catholic so Patricia could go to
private school
she is classically trained as a scholar
a pianist a debutante an amateur ballet
dancer Patricia has money and all the
things that an upper middle class
lifestyle brings with the exception of
skin privilege she integrates a school
and the scars from integration leave her
with post-traumatic stress disorder so
this is battling with these race issues
but somehow she also still tries to stay
open so now Tony trudged through his own
and his dad Jack’s underlying damage
Patricia
Labor’s through her own and her dot her
dad Doc’s overwhelming pressure and
somehow working around race these two
cross paths fall in love and get married
that’s right so to be clear the son of
the dad who was against interracial
marriage goes into covenant with a black
woman the daughter of the dad who went
to segregated schools marries a white
so Tony and Patricia they don’t process
these things out loud through the
context in the lens of race they work
around the race issue hoping that love
is going to be enough but it wasn’t
I still inherited a complicated race
story I was the biracial child of a
couple who divorced only two years after
I was born
so Tony moves on he remarries but he’s
still a very present father in my life
my mom’s the primary custodial parent
and through the trajectory of my
childhood we live in predominantly black
lower-income communities so what ends up
happening with me isn’t growing up I’m
trying to process what my light-skinned
means what my fuzzy brown hair means why
my black friends don’t treat me the same
as everyone else but then when I visit
my white family I feel very different
there too I need to discover what this
race stimuli means too and for me Who am
I in the constructive race why aren’t my
parents talking about this why do the
family members look so different and why
is my family tree lopsided I was
struggling to figure this out but I knew
that this part of the pathway was mine
and mine alone I have to figure this out
for myself
so just like everyone else I grow up I
attend several different high schools
six to be exact in two different states
I work in lots of different environments
and different communities after college
and graduate school my life is hitting
in a trajectory that is dead ending into
social justice but then I realized after
I find my groove as a diversity
practitioner diversity and inclusion is
so much more than identity it’s more
than bigger again this inextricable link
and I’ve got to figure out how to get to
and through my story my story was a
lotus flower
and it’s pushing through that mud you
know how a lotus flowers grow they’ve
got to push through that mud in that
dirt and they only bloom on the top of
the water that was my story and I had to
figure out how to get through all that
mud to bloom at the time so even in this
pathway it also led me right here among
all those high schools one of the six
high schools I went to was Hilliard
Davidson when there was just one high
school in Hilliard but I was here as one
of very few black students during the
Rodney King trials 1992 this is
incredibly tough for me having been in
predominantly black environments to now
be in a suburban high school even being
half white I had never been around that
many white people before and it was very
uncomfortable this is just an example of
how complex this road and this pathway
has been for me but I tell you what it
hasn’t been easy and I’m still traveling
down it but I am so grateful for this
journey that I’ve been on because it has
allowed me to be a voice for other
people by addressing and surviving
things head-on everything that I
survived by addressing it head on
taught me how to be a better fighter for
myself and for other people this pathway
from Jack to Tony to me this pathway
from Doc to Patricia to me a convergence
of opposite sides of the spectrum that
led to a new paradigm so as I prepare to
close I ask that we just like Tony and
Patricia we need to stay open who is it
that you need to have a conversation
with that you’ve been avoiding where
there might be some healing that can
come from there what do you need to do
to push through your own mud so that you
can be that lotus flower that blooms who
have you made a foe in your minds that
you need to transform from being a
one-dimensional enemy to a complicated
three-dimensional human being so we have
met
and doc and Tony and Patricia I’d like
to share the meaning of my name with you
my mom is notorious notorious for
telling the story about how she was
pregnant with me for 10 months all the
women in here like god bless her she’s
here seeking your birth
my mom was pregnant with me for 10
months in the last trimester of the
pregnancy there was a period of time
where I stopped moving I was completely
inactive and she was worried that I
wasn’t going to survive the pregnancy so
my mother prayed to God that he would
deliver me from the womb safely like he
delivered Daniel from the Lions Den in
the Bible story in the 44th week of
gestation the placenta stopped working
but I was born healthy wrinkled but
strong in gratitude for me being born
healthy and for her believing that God
kept that promise
my parents named me after a survivor I
did not avoid the Lions did I had to go
all the way through it but on the other
end of it I found life I found life for
those of you out here who want to make
sure that someone you care about someone
you love inherits your resiliency
instead of your trauma I wish you
bravery and I wish you success in
trudging through your own mud in your
own rocks to get to where you need to go
sometimes we cannot go over
we cannot go under we cannot go around
we have to go all the way through and
what’s waiting for us on the other side
my name is Kimberly Danielle and I will
see you at the breakthrough thank you you
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