what’s good how y’all doing what’s good
what’s good all right all right what if
I told you that the way that you use
language every day had the power to
either uphold or disrupt social
injustice –is what if I told you that
because language is saturated with
history and culture and memory the way
that is policed within our classrooms
and our communities is deeply connected
to racism and colonialism you see when I
was 19 years old I sat on a panel for a
roomful of high school students and a
woman in the room stopped me in the
middle of speaking and she said I’m
sorry to stop you but I just want you to
know that you are so articulate and in
that moment she meant it as a compliment
a friend of mine next to me was like boo
and I was offended and most people can
understand that most people say well you
are offended because you’re a young
black woman in the space and this woman
found it exceptional that you were
mastering standard English but there’s
another reason why I was offended I
imagined if this woman heard me speaking
with my family whose Trinidadian and
Caribbean creolized
English would she have determined
something else about my intellectual
capacity or if she heard me speaking
with my friends in Crown Heights
Brooklyn in African American English
what’d she have determined something
different about my worth and in that
moment I understood that the answer was
yes and that deeply disturbed me it
actually became
the impetus for my first TED talk three
ways to speak English it actually became
the impetus for my research as a social
scientists analyzing the intersections
of language race and power
you see I’ll share this story and you
got to work with me because it’s about a
man and a lion and they’re talking
alright we’re going to so the man and
the lion are walking through the jungle
together and and and they’re arguing
about who’s the strongest and the lion
says I’m the king of the jungle I’m
stronger than you and the man says I’m
the king of the world I’m stronger than
you and they’re having this fruitless
argument until they stumble upon a
picture still in the jungle keep working
with me right and the picture is of a
man to feeding a lion and the man says
you see I told you I’m stronger than you
and the lion says yes but who drew that
picture what has become important to my
work in working with historically
marginalized communities at the
intersections of language race and power
and education is interrogating whole
authors the dominant narratives and the
dominant framings in our societies in
our schools in our in our classrooms in
our world it’s important to know that in
exploring and doing this research on
language race and power stumbled upon
some really interesting contradictions
you see what I know of myself is that
the multiple literacies that I bring to
the table
my composite linguistic identity gives
me power
but when I enter into institutional
spaces into classroom spaces that power
is not valued and often stripped away in
these spaces that claim to celebrate
diversity that claim to want to
celebrate diverse culture what instead
happens is a perpetual invitation to
engage in cultural erasure but I found
some contradictions
in exploring these questions both
contextually and historically right so
in the social context of now one of the
contradictions I found was with the
McDonald’s slogan who knows that
McDonald slogan I’m loving it right I’m
loving it we know that what I found in
my research is that this slogan is
participating in a feature of African
American English called consonant
variation the dropping of the letter G
this very statement I’m loving it this
very feature this consonant variation is
something that would be corrected within
the classroom space if I were to write
it on my paper yet this billion-dollar
corporation is able to utilize this
linguistic practice for mass appeal and
to capitalize on this cultural form of
expression
I found another example in the show
modern family a you know I love that
show
and there’s this episode called she
crazy which is weird because like
there’s not a lot of people of color in
the show right and so I’m looking at the
episode and throughout the episode
everyone she crazy she crazy she crazy
and I’m like okay I do my research
brilliant scholars have shown us that
another feature of African American
English exists their call copula absence
the absence of the verb to be these
features that have been asserted and
designated and researched by linguists
for years have been established as
features of African American English
that directly connect to the West
African languages that they are
historically rooted in these language
practices are valued in particular
spaces but there’s a contradiction with
what happens in institutional spaces
right and there’s a history here I
trouble up this issue because it is
resonant with the history that is deeply
rooted in racism and colonialism there’s
a West African author his name is um
he was younger I speak of him often he
wrote this book called decolonizing the
mind he speaks about his time existing
in colonial Kenya he was there before
Kenya was colonized he said there was a
time when the language of the classroom
and the language of the community were
one but then came a colonial education
he said Berlin of 1884 was affected
through the sword and the bullet right
but the night of the sword and the
bullet was followed by the morning of
the chalk and the blackboard
he said the bullet was the means of
physical subjugation language was the
means of spiritual subjugation what
would happen is if you weren’t caught
speaking your mother tongue Kikuyu in
the classroom in colonial Kenya you
would either be physically beaten or you
would have to wear a sign around your
neck that said I am stupid or I am a
donkey it was very important to the
colonial subjugation process that the
language of the people who were being
oppressed was divorced from the
community those are some of the
practices that we reiterate today when I
talk about liberation literacies the
work that I do with educators across our
country it’s because that historical and
and contextual dissonance that I’m
bringing up plays out right now in our
world I work with members of
historically marginalized communities
young black people who say yes I engage
in blackness literacy practices but in
places where I feel safe a sense of
fugitivity exists there that has
historical resonance in American chattel
slavery a time when it was illegal for
black people in this country to be able
to read and write a lot of that
resonates with what’s happening today in
our classroom and in our world there are
so many ways to engage
racism there are so many ways to engage
in oppression there are wonderful
scholars who say language is a site of
cultural struggle right and if we think
about that if we think about what it
means in our institutional spaces to
continue participating in the erasure
and the oppression of people from
historically marginalized groups instead
of incorporating validate validating and
celebrating who they are in these
institutional spaces then we do a
so a lot of times when I bring up this
conversation that question of our
standard english is the language of
power comes about which is why I brought
up the McDonald’s example which is why I
brought up the spaces where this power
exists there’s a wonderful book called
articulate while black that speaks about
President Obama’s ability to navigate
multiple languages and literacies and
has took that centrality the centrality
of that was essential to the success of
his campaign you see a lot of times we
hear the word minority to refer to
people who look like me but I’m a member
of the global majority and it means that
the languages the literacies and the
power that comes from the marginalized
spaces that people of color navigate
have wonderful tools and power to
transform our world to give us access so
when I talk about liberation literacies
really what I’m talking about is a set
of principles that emerge out of the
work that I do the research that I’ve
done and the practice that I engage in
and actually a lot of what you saw today
it’s framed by these principles that I’m
going to share with you in a moment the
idea that the voices of these young
people cannot be constrained and limited
to that typical five paragraph essay the
power of what they have to say is so
much deeper than that and to silence
them and to continue
marginalizing the identities of students
in the service of a singular standard is
violence so there are five principles
I’ll call these paradigm principles
I call them paradigm principles because
often when I share these principles are
educators administrators people who are
working in educational contexts it just
sounds like more work to do that goal
you’re given us more work to do we got
enough to do right but these are
paradigm principles and I say their
paradigm principles because there are
principles that are centred on and
governed by a paradigm shift Stephen
Covey says that paradigms are Maps
low-key I want Stephen Covey to be my
white uncle like really like I love this
guy
right so he said like paradigms are maps
it’s the way that we approximate reality
and so what I’m saying is that once we
reconstruct and understand that
institutional spaces must reimagine
themselves to truly understand integrate
and accept the diversity that exists in
our world we need new paradigms in order
to enact that actually right now many of
the predominantly white institutions
that exist in our world still have the
infrastructure from slavery their
historical colleges right now that still
have the slave quarters built in if we
don’t reimagine our institutional spaces
beyond just the inclusion of having
someone of a different race in the space
then we are not truly integrating
anything right so so the first pack of
their five principles and the five
principles they’re five aids there are
aids because I’m a poet and I like
rhythm I like you know I like
alliteration it’s just who I am right so
there’s five Apes and the first a speaks
awareness the first a says Who am I
if we are thinking about nurturing youth
voice creating space for youth voice in
our classrooms in new and empower ‘full
ways that disrupt the historical racist
colonial perceptions that we’ve upheld
for too long it has to begin with
critical awareness
Who am I as a student Who am I as an
educator in the space and what does that
mean in our world and it’s not just a
random awareness but an awareness of the
social identities that we each navigate
including the language practices that we
bring to the table so that I get to say
well actually I speak african-american
English I speak Caribbean creolized
English there are multiple ways that I
understand and articulate and name the
world around me right the first a is
that awareness thinking about who you
are and what your linguistic repertoire
consists of the second a speaks to
agency and access you see once you
understand who you are once you
understand the privileges that are
associated with different aspects of who
you are or the way that who you are is
marginalized in different ways once you
get a full understanding of what that
means in our communities a lot of young
people I work with a lot of young people
who engage in African American English
practices but have no idea that it has
value because they’ve been taught that
it’s wrong that it’s bad that it’s
delinquent that it’s deficient once you
go through that awareness process and
you become aware that my language has
power right once you become aware of
that then you say well what kind of
agency and access exists for me in the
world because of the way that I speak
because of the tools that I bring to the
table with my linguistic repertoire
there are spaces that I can access in
the world it’s agency that I can have
that was the argument for for Barack
Obama’s ability to access and bond with
different communities because he could
speak in different ways the third a
speaks to actualization this principle
this paradigm principle says if we do
not create continuous opportunities to
actualize different ways of knowing and
being and expressing in institutional
spaces and we’re not doing this work and
that goes directly to the term
liberation right so the term liberation
when I say liberation
literacies the term liberation in this
framework is actually rooted in
liberation theology liberation theology
argues for the interpretation of
scripture from the perspective of the
oppressed understanding that the central
figure of Scripture was actually someone
who was poor and marginalized and it
reimagines the way that we can interpret
the world if we understand the power
that happens in the margins and so that
liberation piece speaks to the
disruption that happens in actualization
having a TEDTalk
at the center of your english curriculum
is disruptive this disrupts the
traditional notions of what it means to
read and write in our world right what
it means to inscribe yourself into the
narrative of history beyond the five
paragraph essay is that I’m gonna go up
and I’m gonna speak from the power of my
voice that’s actualization that’s
disruptive and that’s powerful the
fourth a speaks to achievement because a
lot of times when when I do this work
there folks are like well you know you
just want that you want the kids to be
lazy actually it takes a lot more work
to be fully invested in who you are what
you have to say then to perform school
for somebody who is imposing a structure
on you achievement means that we have
rigorous powerful standards not just for
our students but for our classrooms and
our institutions how are our
institutions and our classrooms
achieving the aims of true diversity and
equity when we think about achievement
we often think about assessing the
students and we never think about
assessing the institutions that are
meant to serve the students so
achievement is not unidirectional it
says we want to understand how engaging
in this process transforms the student
but how engaging in this process
transforms the space and transforms the
discipline I work with young people and
new
city and we teach them the qualitative
research process they do research
powerful research on their schools and
community but they learn it alongside
hip-hop literacies so when they’re
sharing with you their research data and
analysis process sometimes they spit in
bars it changes the way that we imagine
engaging in the exchanging of content it
actually transforms it when we engage in
in in the in hip-hop cultural practices
around freestyle extemporaneous
practices different cognitive abilities
come to the fore there’s valuing those
practices that challenge the discipline
so achievement speaks to that
achievement speaks to challenging the
standards that we hold for ourselves in
our institutions in our world and then
the last a speaks to alteration and
action it means that this is a principle
that says that we are invested in
understanding that our institutions must
be adaptable must be accommodating and
truly inclusive of diverse ways of
knowing so once we understand the way
that a different form of literacy then
the linguistic reference wha the history
the cultures the memories of the young
people that we work with once we
understand the way that that challenges
this institution we think about how we
reimagine the institutional space my
curriculum can’t stay the same my
pedagogical approaches cannot stay the
same this institution might need to
reimagine itself back to the hip-hop
example in hip-hop the cypher that we
participate in as a circle there is no
one person standing at the front bearing
all knowledge and imposing it on the
room it’s a democratic space so when I
teach in my classrooms as a professor we
got to sit in a circle we got a
challenge
the idea of what teaching and learning
looks like because I’m learning from
this cultural space that there are
different ways of imagining our world I
say to you this story of my father who
taught me how to ride a bike
when I was 10 years old and in Brooklyn
and I had a little pink bike and he uh
you know he just like right jump on it
go for it
I got on the bike and I felt right
cuz I didn’t know how to ride a bike so
over and over again he tried to get me
try to hold me it didn’t work out so he
said he said get off the bike he has a
thick 20 accident so he didn’t say like
get the bike right right he has like a
whole accent so he’s like get off the
bike I got off the bike he’s like do you
have balance no like you know ten oh no
he’s like do you have balance he said so
I want you to stand on one foot I stood
on one foot he said a couple of minutes
I’m like yo this guy’s tripping like I
don’t know what’s going on daddy today
but okay I’m just on this sidewalk
standing on one foot after a couple of
minutes I found my balance
he said now get back on the bike I got
back on the bike and I rode straight
down the block what my father taught me
in that moment was that if I did not
have balance in myself it would be
impossible for me to have balance on the
bike I introduced this framework this
notion of liberation literacies Anna
call to action for a paradigm shift that
begins with a critical awareness of
yourself in your world because if we do
not have socially just practices in
ourselves here in the silence then it is
impossible to have social justice in our
world thank you [Applause]
what’s good all right all right what if
I told you that the way that you use
language every day had the power to
either uphold or disrupt social
injustice –is what if I told you that
because language is saturated with
history and culture and memory the way
that is policed within our classrooms
and our communities is deeply connected
to racism and colonialism you see when I
was 19 years old I sat on a panel for a
roomful of high school students and a
woman in the room stopped me in the
middle of speaking and she said I’m
sorry to stop you but I just want you to
know that you are so articulate and in
that moment she meant it as a compliment
a friend of mine next to me was like boo
and I was offended and most people can
understand that most people say well you
are offended because you’re a young
black woman in the space and this woman
found it exceptional that you were
mastering standard English but there’s
another reason why I was offended I
imagined if this woman heard me speaking
with my family whose Trinidadian and
Caribbean creolized
English would she have determined
something else about my intellectual
capacity or if she heard me speaking
with my friends in Crown Heights
Brooklyn in African American English
what’d she have determined something
different about my worth and in that
moment I understood that the answer was
yes and that deeply disturbed me it
actually became
the impetus for my first TED talk three
ways to speak English it actually became
the impetus for my research as a social
scientists analyzing the intersections
of language race and power
you see I’ll share this story and you
got to work with me because it’s about a
man and a lion and they’re talking
alright we’re going to so the man and
the lion are walking through the jungle
together and and and they’re arguing
about who’s the strongest and the lion
says I’m the king of the jungle I’m
stronger than you and the man says I’m
the king of the world I’m stronger than
you and they’re having this fruitless
argument until they stumble upon a
picture still in the jungle keep working
with me right and the picture is of a
man to feeding a lion and the man says
you see I told you I’m stronger than you
and the lion says yes but who drew that
picture what has become important to my
work in working with historically
marginalized communities at the
intersections of language race and power
and education is interrogating whole
authors the dominant narratives and the
dominant framings in our societies in
our schools in our in our classrooms in
our world it’s important to know that in
exploring and doing this research on
language race and power stumbled upon
some really interesting contradictions
you see what I know of myself is that
the multiple literacies that I bring to
the table
my composite linguistic identity gives
me power
but when I enter into institutional
spaces into classroom spaces that power
is not valued and often stripped away in
these spaces that claim to celebrate
diversity that claim to want to
celebrate diverse culture what instead
happens is a perpetual invitation to
engage in cultural erasure but I found
some contradictions
in exploring these questions both
contextually and historically right so
in the social context of now one of the
contradictions I found was with the
McDonald’s slogan who knows that
McDonald slogan I’m loving it right I’m
loving it we know that what I found in
my research is that this slogan is
participating in a feature of African
American English called consonant
variation the dropping of the letter G
this very statement I’m loving it this
very feature this consonant variation is
something that would be corrected within
the classroom space if I were to write
it on my paper yet this billion-dollar
corporation is able to utilize this
linguistic practice for mass appeal and
to capitalize on this cultural form of
expression
I found another example in the show
modern family a you know I love that
show
and there’s this episode called she
crazy which is weird because like
there’s not a lot of people of color in
the show right and so I’m looking at the
episode and throughout the episode
everyone she crazy she crazy she crazy
and I’m like okay I do my research
brilliant scholars have shown us that
another feature of African American
English exists their call copula absence
the absence of the verb to be these
features that have been asserted and
designated and researched by linguists
for years have been established as
features of African American English
that directly connect to the West
African languages that they are
historically rooted in these language
practices are valued in particular
spaces but there’s a contradiction with
what happens in institutional spaces
right and there’s a history here I
trouble up this issue because it is
resonant with the history that is deeply
rooted in racism and colonialism there’s
a West African author his name is um
he was younger I speak of him often he
wrote this book called decolonizing the
mind he speaks about his time existing
in colonial Kenya he was there before
Kenya was colonized he said there was a
time when the language of the classroom
and the language of the community were
one but then came a colonial education
he said Berlin of 1884 was affected
through the sword and the bullet right
but the night of the sword and the
bullet was followed by the morning of
the chalk and the blackboard
he said the bullet was the means of
physical subjugation language was the
means of spiritual subjugation what
would happen is if you weren’t caught
speaking your mother tongue Kikuyu in
the classroom in colonial Kenya you
would either be physically beaten or you
would have to wear a sign around your
neck that said I am stupid or I am a
donkey it was very important to the
colonial subjugation process that the
language of the people who were being
oppressed was divorced from the
community those are some of the
practices that we reiterate today when I
talk about liberation literacies the
work that I do with educators across our
country it’s because that historical and
and contextual dissonance that I’m
bringing up plays out right now in our
world I work with members of
historically marginalized communities
young black people who say yes I engage
in blackness literacy practices but in
places where I feel safe a sense of
fugitivity exists there that has
historical resonance in American chattel
slavery a time when it was illegal for
black people in this country to be able
to read and write a lot of that
resonates with what’s happening today in
our classroom and in our world there are
so many ways to engage
racism there are so many ways to engage
in oppression there are wonderful
scholars who say language is a site of
cultural struggle right and if we think
about that if we think about what it
means in our institutional spaces to
continue participating in the erasure
and the oppression of people from
historically marginalized groups instead
of incorporating validate validating and
celebrating who they are in these
institutional spaces then we do a
so a lot of times when I bring up this
conversation that question of our
standard english is the language of
power comes about which is why I brought
up the McDonald’s example which is why I
brought up the spaces where this power
exists there’s a wonderful book called
articulate while black that speaks about
President Obama’s ability to navigate
multiple languages and literacies and
has took that centrality the centrality
of that was essential to the success of
his campaign you see a lot of times we
hear the word minority to refer to
people who look like me but I’m a member
of the global majority and it means that
the languages the literacies and the
power that comes from the marginalized
spaces that people of color navigate
have wonderful tools and power to
transform our world to give us access so
when I talk about liberation literacies
really what I’m talking about is a set
of principles that emerge out of the
work that I do the research that I’ve
done and the practice that I engage in
and actually a lot of what you saw today
it’s framed by these principles that I’m
going to share with you in a moment the
idea that the voices of these young
people cannot be constrained and limited
to that typical five paragraph essay the
power of what they have to say is so
much deeper than that and to silence
them and to continue
marginalizing the identities of students
in the service of a singular standard is
violence so there are five principles
I’ll call these paradigm principles
I call them paradigm principles because
often when I share these principles are
educators administrators people who are
working in educational contexts it just
sounds like more work to do that goal
you’re given us more work to do we got
enough to do right but these are
paradigm principles and I say their
paradigm principles because there are
principles that are centred on and
governed by a paradigm shift Stephen
Covey says that paradigms are Maps
low-key I want Stephen Covey to be my
white uncle like really like I love this
guy
right so he said like paradigms are maps
it’s the way that we approximate reality
and so what I’m saying is that once we
reconstruct and understand that
institutional spaces must reimagine
themselves to truly understand integrate
and accept the diversity that exists in
our world we need new paradigms in order
to enact that actually right now many of
the predominantly white institutions
that exist in our world still have the
infrastructure from slavery their
historical colleges right now that still
have the slave quarters built in if we
don’t reimagine our institutional spaces
beyond just the inclusion of having
someone of a different race in the space
then we are not truly integrating
anything right so so the first pack of
their five principles and the five
principles they’re five aids there are
aids because I’m a poet and I like
rhythm I like you know I like
alliteration it’s just who I am right so
there’s five Apes and the first a speaks
awareness the first a says Who am I
if we are thinking about nurturing youth
voice creating space for youth voice in
our classrooms in new and empower ‘full
ways that disrupt the historical racist
colonial perceptions that we’ve upheld
for too long it has to begin with
critical awareness
Who am I as a student Who am I as an
educator in the space and what does that
mean in our world and it’s not just a
random awareness but an awareness of the
social identities that we each navigate
including the language practices that we
bring to the table so that I get to say
well actually I speak african-american
English I speak Caribbean creolized
English there are multiple ways that I
understand and articulate and name the
world around me right the first a is
that awareness thinking about who you
are and what your linguistic repertoire
consists of the second a speaks to
agency and access you see once you
understand who you are once you
understand the privileges that are
associated with different aspects of who
you are or the way that who you are is
marginalized in different ways once you
get a full understanding of what that
means in our communities a lot of young
people I work with a lot of young people
who engage in African American English
practices but have no idea that it has
value because they’ve been taught that
it’s wrong that it’s bad that it’s
delinquent that it’s deficient once you
go through that awareness process and
you become aware that my language has
power right once you become aware of
that then you say well what kind of
agency and access exists for me in the
world because of the way that I speak
because of the tools that I bring to the
table with my linguistic repertoire
there are spaces that I can access in
the world it’s agency that I can have
that was the argument for for Barack
Obama’s ability to access and bond with
different communities because he could
speak in different ways the third a
speaks to actualization this principle
this paradigm principle says if we do
not create continuous opportunities to
actualize different ways of knowing and
being and expressing in institutional
spaces and we’re not doing this work and
that goes directly to the term
liberation right so the term liberation
when I say liberation
literacies the term liberation in this
framework is actually rooted in
liberation theology liberation theology
argues for the interpretation of
scripture from the perspective of the
oppressed understanding that the central
figure of Scripture was actually someone
who was poor and marginalized and it
reimagines the way that we can interpret
the world if we understand the power
that happens in the margins and so that
liberation piece speaks to the
disruption that happens in actualization
having a TEDTalk
at the center of your english curriculum
is disruptive this disrupts the
traditional notions of what it means to
read and write in our world right what
it means to inscribe yourself into the
narrative of history beyond the five
paragraph essay is that I’m gonna go up
and I’m gonna speak from the power of my
voice that’s actualization that’s
disruptive and that’s powerful the
fourth a speaks to achievement because a
lot of times when when I do this work
there folks are like well you know you
just want that you want the kids to be
lazy actually it takes a lot more work
to be fully invested in who you are what
you have to say then to perform school
for somebody who is imposing a structure
on you achievement means that we have
rigorous powerful standards not just for
our students but for our classrooms and
our institutions how are our
institutions and our classrooms
achieving the aims of true diversity and
equity when we think about achievement
we often think about assessing the
students and we never think about
assessing the institutions that are
meant to serve the students so
achievement is not unidirectional it
says we want to understand how engaging
in this process transforms the student
but how engaging in this process
transforms the space and transforms the
discipline I work with young people and
new
city and we teach them the qualitative
research process they do research
powerful research on their schools and
community but they learn it alongside
hip-hop literacies so when they’re
sharing with you their research data and
analysis process sometimes they spit in
bars it changes the way that we imagine
engaging in the exchanging of content it
actually transforms it when we engage in
in in the in hip-hop cultural practices
around freestyle extemporaneous
practices different cognitive abilities
come to the fore there’s valuing those
practices that challenge the discipline
so achievement speaks to that
achievement speaks to challenging the
standards that we hold for ourselves in
our institutions in our world and then
the last a speaks to alteration and
action it means that this is a principle
that says that we are invested in
understanding that our institutions must
be adaptable must be accommodating and
truly inclusive of diverse ways of
knowing so once we understand the way
that a different form of literacy then
the linguistic reference wha the history
the cultures the memories of the young
people that we work with once we
understand the way that that challenges
this institution we think about how we
reimagine the institutional space my
curriculum can’t stay the same my
pedagogical approaches cannot stay the
same this institution might need to
reimagine itself back to the hip-hop
example in hip-hop the cypher that we
participate in as a circle there is no
one person standing at the front bearing
all knowledge and imposing it on the
room it’s a democratic space so when I
teach in my classrooms as a professor we
got to sit in a circle we got a
challenge
the idea of what teaching and learning
looks like because I’m learning from
this cultural space that there are
different ways of imagining our world I
say to you this story of my father who
taught me how to ride a bike
when I was 10 years old and in Brooklyn
and I had a little pink bike and he uh
you know he just like right jump on it
go for it
I got on the bike and I felt right
cuz I didn’t know how to ride a bike so
over and over again he tried to get me
try to hold me it didn’t work out so he
said he said get off the bike he has a
thick 20 accident so he didn’t say like
get the bike right right he has like a
whole accent so he’s like get off the
bike I got off the bike he’s like do you
have balance no like you know ten oh no
he’s like do you have balance he said so
I want you to stand on one foot I stood
on one foot he said a couple of minutes
I’m like yo this guy’s tripping like I
don’t know what’s going on daddy today
but okay I’m just on this sidewalk
standing on one foot after a couple of
minutes I found my balance
he said now get back on the bike I got
back on the bike and I rode straight
down the block what my father taught me
in that moment was that if I did not
have balance in myself it would be
impossible for me to have balance on the
bike I introduced this framework this
notion of liberation literacies Anna
call to action for a paradigm shift that
begins with a critical awareness of
yourself in your world because if we do
not have socially just practices in
ourselves here in the silence then it is
impossible to have social justice in our
world thank you [Applause]
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