> In choosing a topic for this series I was looking for something that's both
topical and relevant, and also something that opens up to a wide range of other issues.
And it seems to me that Black Lives Matter is something that does that.
It's something that students are talking about and it is in all
likelihood something that people are already having conversations about and
dealing with in everyday life so.
> I grew up in this so ever since I was little I always was enclosed in this racial war basically.
I wasn't supposed to make it to college basically.
You hear people say it, oh, you're never going to be anything.
You're never going to be able to do this. You're either gonna be in jail or dead.
So this conversation around Black Lives Matter
and the issues that go on today and how there are different tangents off
of Black Lives Matter in what it's doing to that movement basically speaks volumes
of my own experience and the struggles that we go through but still,
and all of our efforts, it's still somehow people are still trying to diminish it.
> It did surprise me to see how, how some of the challenges that I faced on
issues of race and racial inclusion and aligning with groups and the like,
that a lot of those issues look much the same,
actually look more the same to students today that then I would have thought.
The way that they are articulating their concerns,
the kinds of conversations that they're having in classes,
the challenges that they're having in being heard,
seemed much more similar than different from own college experience.
I think that surprised me a bit.
> Over my years at University at Buffalo I've experienced a number of things,
particularly around social justice.
I think the combination of my peers being here in discussing the topic with
me as well as professional staff and a a facilitator, really helped me realize
exactly how those experiences have affected me today and how I can use them going forward.
> There's like a contentious issue how diverse this university is, whether people say it is or it isn't.
And I think there are a lot of people that come from a lot of different places that go to this university.
I think the university can grow a lot from this because,
it's not only like, something that like I said, is important,
but it's something that can allow different people to grow together.
And I think that UB, which is a school that prides itself on diversity
would be proud to have something where, you know, people could come together for.
> Professor Young discussed how nobody's free unless black people are free,
and how black people go through a lot of things that
eventually other people of other races will go through.
I never thought about it that way. I thought that, you know,
black people, minority people go through the things they go through,
and usually white people will not go through that.
So that really, that honestly blew my mind a little bit.
> There are so many different lives matter movements that have come about
that I feel diminish the meaning of Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter doesn't mean all lives don't matter,
or doesn't mean your life is less important than my life because I'm black.
It just means that we have a problem that we're trying to get control over
and we're asking for help.
> Tonight when we talked about being an ally,
that really opened up some reflection for me on what groups
I'm an ally to or who I support, and what I've done that may actually be counter
productive and may not have even known it.
> One particular comment was said that discussed people who have privilege,
specifically white privilege, and they want to be an ally to the Black Lives Matter cause,
and they may overstep their boundaries because they haven't lived that experience.
You know. I'm helping. I want to shed light on to this.
And I've seen people overstep their boundary, that's what I saw it as.
But when a student commented on that and said her perspective,
it really opened my eyes to allowing myself to see something from someone else's perspective too.
> Well I think there are a lot of issues around race,
and there are a lot of issues around feelings of alienation among students,
not just related to race but related to a whole range of things.
But I also don't think that there are places, safe places where people can speak
candidly and openly about these issues, and provocatively about these issues.
And one of the things that DIFCON allows is a safe space for students to talk about these things
in a way that allows them to have open and honest conversations.
I don't know that that happens very much among students.
I think that the experience for a lot of students, maybe not all,
but the experience for a lot of students is an experience of
the university as a kind of silo, and they take their classes,
and they're with groups of people that they know, with whom they're familiar,
but that in fact they don't have a lot of conversations across groups.
And they certainly don't have them in ways that are productive and safe,
and generative as was the case in this conversation.
> You know it doesn't have to be 15 million people liking a tweet,
or 17 million people sharing something.
it can be 14, 15 people talking about what matters and having a serious in-depth discussion.
I feel like that rarely happens.
You know we're so wrapped up in, you know,
I have a three tests this week and I have to get to my work study and, you know,
we're college students we have a lot of stuff to do,
but this conversation really allowed me to discuss things I normally wouldn't be able to discuss.
To learn things I normally wouldn't be able to learn.
And you know, just learning is making an impact,
but sharing that knowledge that you did learn I think makes a bigger impact as well.
> I think that the next step is thinking about how to
not just have conversations about Black Lives Matter, about what it is and what its history is,
but also to think about ways to operationalize the things we talked about today.
So, how do you organize as students? What kind of plans? What kind of projects?
What kind of policies do you want to see in place at the university
that build off of these conversations.