‘In mixed company’

In a lively two-hour presentation on Wednesday, speaker Ty-Ron Douglas used examples from his life, his work with student-athletes and the Monopoly board game to address issues of race and space and how they impact college students.

More than 400 people registered for the webinar Headspace, Heart Space: Straight Talk about Navigating Race, Place and Complex Space, sponsored by the Campus Safety Commission, in coordination with the Chancellor’s Office, the School of Social Work, the University Office for Diversity and Inclusion and Carolina Athletics.

“This collaboration is an opportunity to learn, to engage and hopefully to elevate the level of understanding around student safety and belonging,” said DeVetta Holman-Copeland, co-chair of the Campus Safety Commission.

While the event has been in the works for two months, Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz pointed out the timeliness of its presentation just days after the conclusion of the trial of the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd and, closer to home, the April 21 killing of Andrew Brown Jr., a 42-year-old Black man, by sheriff’s deputies in Elizabeth City.

“It’s always the right time to talk about these issues,” Guskiewicz said, but these recent events have “forced us to, again, contemplate the unyielding pain and suffering faced by African American and Black people in our country.

“As a community, we share in the pain, frustration and outrage over the abhorrent violence against African American and Black people who have been tragically killed by law enforcement. We stand in solidarity with all our students, faculty and staff in working to end racial injustice,” he said.

‘Mixed company’

Using video clips, bringing in his mom for her perspective and even breaking into song, Bermuda-born Douglas emphasized that his remarks were meant to be the catalyst for further conversation.

“I don’t do drive-bys. We need to be having these conversations in mixed company. We need leaders who address student needs before they become demands,” said Douglas, associate athletic director for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging at the University of California, Berkeley.

He talked about the irony of people who cheer on Black student-athletes for their performance on the field but don’t want to ride in the same elevator with them out of uniform. Sometimes these same people tell the Black athletes to their faces, “You’re just here because you play football.”

But discrimination and rejection are often much more subtly expressed. Douglas pointed out how another university juxtaposed a poster of Black football players in uniform next to a framed display of Academic All-Americans who were all white. “These are what the images of opportunity can look like for certain students,” he said.

The subtleties can be nearly undetectable by those in the majority, unless they have been trained in diversity and inclusion. He encouraged people who have been working off-campus to do “feel work” when they returned to their workspaces.

“Spaces speak. I want to invite you to walk back into your spaces and to do an audit. Listen to what the space is saying,” Douglas said.

Ideally, white people should pair up with persons of color to hear their perspectives.

“Go two by two and ask, ‘When you stand by the (Old) Well, what do you see? How does it feel? What does it say to you?’ That’s what it looks like to not just be an ally but to be an accomplice.”

Lessons from Monopoly

Douglas has his own methods for enlightening students to institutional racism and discrimination. One is a variation on the board game Monopoly.

He starts by having the students most resistant to the idea that inequities exist play the game first. Then he brings in a second group of students who get to take away all the property the first players bought.

When the third group of students, also “resistant,” joins the game, there’s nothing left to buy. As the game progresses, Douglas gives houses, hotels and utilities to the people who already own the most property. As in the regular game, those with the property rake in rent money from the other players who land on their spaces.

The students brought in last complain that the game has been rigged. Douglas tells them that their final grade depends on how they finish the game and records their name on the board beside their grade.

To show the long-term effects of institutional inequity, he then asks them to imagine 20 years from now when their children are in his Monopoly-playing class. They see their family names are already on the board with a grade assigned. “What if they have to start with an F in my class because poor Daddy got an F in a Monopoly game that was rigged?” he asks them.

The exercise also makes the students examine how they see themselves, whether they have an internal sense of superiority and privilege or of inferiority and hopelessness. They begin to see how when the majority has that same sense of superiority and privilege, it defines the institution itself.

And that’s what this current time of reflection and emphasis on diversity and inclusion is about: redefining the University.

“What will UNC be now? How will we honor the voices and the histories and the blood and the tears and the pain of people who have made us who we are?” Douglas said. “Let’s come together and have these engaged conversations and choose to be the best university we can be, in mixed company.”