In this vital episode of the Inclusive Minds Podcast, Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross welcomes three leading Black academics and co-editors from the book, Anti-Blackness and the Stories of Authentic Allies. They dive deep into their chapter, “Systems Failure. Black Children Left Behind,” providing an unflinching look at how deeply embedded racial bias creates and sustains the devastating School-to-Prison Pipeline.
Our experts expose the institutional policies, like Zero Tolerance, and the subtle but destructive psychological bias—known as Adultification—that targets Black girls and boys, sometimes as early as preschool. They discuss the shocking statistics behind suspensions, the impact of implicit bias on teacher expectations, and the role of HBCUs and community solutions in breaking this perpetual cycle.
About our guests
Dr. Felicia Dix Richardson
Dr. Dix-Richardson is an Associate Professor of Criminology at Florida A&M University (FAMU). Holding a Ph.D. in Criminology from Florida State University, her extensive research focuses on corrections, racial disparities in the justice system, the educational system’s failures (specifically the School-to-Prison Pipeline), and the resultant effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). She is deeply involved in community engagement, serving as the liaison for FAMU’s Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice with Bond Elementary School.
Dr. Kideste Yusef
Dr. Yusef is a tenured Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Associate Dean for Research at Bethune-Cookman University (B-CU), where she also directs the Center for Law and Social Justice. With 20 years of collegiate teaching experience, her expertise includes community-police engagement, race and social justice, and performance management. Dr. Yusef has been featured in national outlets, works with law enforcement agencies, and is a recipient of numerous honors, including the White House Presidential Gold Volunteer Service Award and the NBA Orlando Magic Social Justice Game Changer Award.
Dr. Randy Nelson
Dr. Nelson is the former Director of the Criminal Justice Administration Graduate Program and Center for Law and Social Justice at Bethune-Cookman University. He holds a Ph.D. in Criminology and is a nationally recognized consultant in community policing and engagement strategies. He is the founder of the Situational Environmental Circumstances (SEC) Mentoring Model, which was specifically designed to support the educational, social, and emotional needs of high-risk Black males and has been implemented across several Florida universities, securing millions in funding for equity initiatives.
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Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Hi, this is Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross, bringing you the Inclusive Minds Podcast. This podcast was inspired by the book of which I’m a co-editor entitled Anti-Blackness and the Stories of Authentic Allies. Lived experiences in the fight against institutionalized racism. If you’re a psychologist, a social worker, an addiction professional, or a healthcare provider, or anyone who wants to broaden your horizons, then this podcast is for you.
The goal of the podcast is to help you understand some of the more complex issues facing our culture today. My guest. Are experts in their fields, and we’ll be talking about a wide array of topics including cross-cultural issues, the intersection of race and trauma, social justice and health inequities.
They will be sharing both their lived experiences and their expert opinions. The goal is to give you a felt experience and to let you know that you are not alone in being confused by these complex issues we want to provide. Provide nuanced information with context that will enable you to make your own decisions about these important topics.
Hi everybody, it’s Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross and welcome to Inclusive Minds Podcast. Today I have three amazing guests, and I’m gonna tell you about them in just a moment. These three guests are editors of a chapter in our book, Anti-Blackness. And the story of authentic allies lived experiences in the fight against institutionalized racism.
So the name of their chapter is Systems Failure. Black Children Left Behind, and let me just tell you a little bit about them, but their full bios will be in the show notes. So you can see how amazingly accomplished they are and their chapters incredibly interesting. I’ll start with Dr. Felicia Dix Richardson.
She is an associate professor at Florida a and m University with a PhD in criminology from Florida State University. Her research spans corrections, racial disparities in the justice system, educational system failure, sexual harassment, adverse childhood experiences. Suicide resilience and campus hazing.
My second guess is Dr. Kideste Yusef, who is a tenured associate professor of Criminal Justice and associate Dean for research at Bethune Cookman University, where she also directs the Center for Law and Social Justice with 20 years of collegiate teaching experience, her expertise includes. Community police engagement, race and social justice and performance management.
She has worked with police departments, government agencies and organizations to strengthen community relations and improve public safety. And her insights have been featured in outlets such as The Washington Post in PR and CBS News. Dr. Yusef has received numerous honors, including the White House.
Presidential Gold Volunteer Service Award and the NBA Orlando Magic Social Justice Game Changer Award. Very interesting. I wanna hear more about those. Uh, and then finally, last but not least, Dr. Randy Nelson is Director of the Criminal Justice Administration. Program and the Center for Law and Social Justice.
At Bethune-Cookman University, he holds degrees in sociology and criminology, including a PhD from Florida State University. His work centers on delinquency prevention, racial disparities in justice and education systems and community engagement strategies. Dr. Nelson founded the SEC mentoring model. To support high risk black males securing more than $6 million in funding to advance equity initiatives.
A nationally recognized consultant in community policing. He has authored over 50 publications and frequently presents on strategies to, uh, strengthen. Police community relations. So thank you all for being here, and I’ll go on now with the questions. Your chapter focuses on the impact of anti-black racism on the creation and continuation of the school to prison pipeline, and in the chapter you say, when racial and ethnic groups disproportionately fail to meet proficiency in the fundamental areas of reading and math.
At critical grade levels, they’re more likely to be overrepresented in negative outcomes such as school disciplinary sanctions and delinquency. So I’m wondering though, how or why does your book chapter resonate, or how does your book chapter resonate with the current social climate? And feel free for anyone to unmute themselves and answer that.
Dr. Randy Nelson: Well, I think it’s, it’s almost like this job was written for this time where we are now. It wasn’t like we knew this time would come, but uh, it’s almost like it’s written for this time because if you look at it from everything from. What’s been allowed in school schools now and what’s not being allowed, particularly in Florida.
You have public institutions in Florida now where they have to give their syllabus to the higher ups, and I think it goes all the way up to the governor’s office to to be approved, to be able to,
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: and to make sure that they don’t include critical race theory. Right.
Dr. Randy Nelson: Well, it, it is deeper than that. I mean, even for me, I didn’t think Michelle Alexander’s was critical race theory.
Her work wouldn’t be well received within the current environment here in Florida. The other part of that, uh, I think if you can hold down any group of people, whether it’s black, white, green, or yellow in terms of their education attainment, I think that you can, can do what you will. I mean, I think it’s no secret that if you look at the largest single population in our juvenile justice system or in our adult system are black males.
And if you go look at any social indicator in Florida nationally, look at whether it’s education or whether it’s unemployment, you’ll see black males at the bottom. So I, I think education for me is the cornerstone to control and you control the man’s thought, control, everything else.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: You really control the trajectory of their lives.
Dr. Randy Nelson: Absolutely.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: So what was surprising to me, and I, I guess it shouldn’t been, but one of the statistics you quoted was black preschoolers. So we’re talking about little children before, before the age of five even, are 3.6 times as likely to receive one or more suspensions relative to white preschoolers.
What’s going on in preschool that. Kids can be suspended. I didn’t even know that, you know, you could be that bad that you would get suspended in preschool. Yes.
Dr. Felicia Dix Richardson: Well, I think, you know, it’s even more than being suspended, believe it or not, in Florida, we’ve had cases where children, kindergartners have been removed from schools by the sheriff department, handcuffed and taken out.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah. Yeah. I was actually gonna ask you about, um, one of the, the cases you talked about of a little girl, uh, Isha Scott.. Can you tell us a little bit about that case and what that story and what happened specifically?
Dr. Felicia Dix Richardson: Okay. Well, unfortunately little Ms. Scott, her case is not by itself. We’ve had other situations where Little black boys and girls have been taken out and the situation with her, you know, when we have kindergartners that sometimes they are not adjusting well or they may be,”throwing a little tantrum”. But that’s things that kids sometimes do.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Normal and normal behavior.
Dr. Felicia Dix Richardson: Absolutely. Absolutely normal behavior.
And in her situation, they call, you know. Law enforcement to have her removed. And it was this back and forth about, you know, well, what approach should we take? Should we, you know, get law enforcement involved? But I’m sure this is a topic that we’ll get into a little bit later on as you begin to bring more resource officers into the school that’s supposed to make it safer that sometimes it has just the opposite effect, that when you have law enforcement there, they may be more inclined.
To take things to a different level than what a teacher may have been willing to do.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah. And I, I read in your chapter that she was handcuffed And taken into, uh, the back of a police cruiser while the police tried to get the stated terminate to approve her arrest. On charges of assault and battery on a school official disruption of school function and resisting a law enforcement officer.
I mean, she’s. Five. Five. How much could she be doing? She wasn’t six feet tall or weighed 200 pounds, I’m sure. So what, was this just an overreaching law enforcement response, or is this related to more of the biases in the school that you write about in your chapter?
Dr. Kideste Yusef: I would like to connect it. There are several things that have been said already.
Dr. Nelson mentioned the importance of education, the implications, and you also mentioned Dr. Ross, the implications of access to education, the lack of access, and where that takes us in life. I think that, and you mentioned critical race theory. I just wanna be clear because I think that we’ve had a lot of discussion about critical race theory in recent times in a way that, um, misrepresents the issue and it like denies the reality of how critical race theory was taught or was not being taught in education.
And so if we think about on the first point, the history of education and how historically education has never been equal. Blacks did not have the same access to education. We know that we were barred from schools and attendings, you know, barred from reading if we were thinking about the 16th and the 17th century.
But all the way to integration and having prior to integration, having separate facilities and access and subpar things, and some of those deficits just continuing on. You know, there are a continuation, but when we think about the idea that critical race theory was like now is not being taught in schools as if it ever was being taught in schools.
And I think that we have to always, in these conversations acknowledge that critical race theory came about in the sixties and seventies as a legal theory taught in law school. It was never taught through K through 12. And the notion that everything that is anything related to anyone’s culture now follows under the umbrella of critical race theory is just disingenuous.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: And so the things that are, yeah, it just a hot button, uh, phrase that people use to indicate something to do with race.
Dr. Kideste Yusef: Yes. And I think that you mentioned, we’ve kind of been talking about identification bias, but not using the the term yet, but the idea that the Yale study or some of the other studies that have talked about the discrimination even among preschool teachers.
When looking at negative behavior among. Children, not even five and under, we’re talking about 5-year-old that is arrested, but we’re talking about three and four year olds that are being looked at, particularly blacks and particularly black males in a way that there’s an expectation in our society that is connected to anti-black bias in general.
And so it’s not about whether these young people are doing anything, uh, particularly preschoolers, whether their behavior is actually harmful or challenging, but a lot of what we see with school discipline is the subjective nature of some of these things. So that teacher, uh, with Ms. Scott felt like she was being challenged and felt like she couldn’t handle her.
But in some cases we see other children behaving in the same way and they’re not treated in that way. And so we have to just be mindful of the broader connection to anti-black bias. In the education system and the history of that and how it, it’s connected to all, you know, that’s the kind of underlying theme in our book that throughout the all chapter.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah. I, I think what was interesting also is you, you notate a study where, where you talked about the gaze of preschool teachers. Can you say, one of you say some, something more about that, talk about that study and how meaningful it was.
Dr. Felicia Dix Richardson: Did you wanna do it Kideste? I don’t,
Dr. Kideste Yusef: I think it, you can do it if you want, Felicia. I can. Yeah.
Dr. Felicia Dix Richardson: Actually you wrote it, so, okay.
Dr. Kideste Yusef: Well, okay. So it was, it’s a, it was a study designed what they, they were assessing preschool teachers and they were, the pedagogy or the methodology was, um, to suggest that like different strategies and teaching. The teachers of course did not know that they were being observed, um, for what they were actually being observed for.
And so they were given video clips of children. Who were all engaging in non delinquent behavior. So there was no delinquent behavior at all featured in the videos. Yeah. Um, but they tracked the length of time that teachers spent looking at particular students. And so what they found was that preschool teachers were looking at black male students for potential negative behavior, although they weren’t demonstrating negative behavior at , at for longer periods of time and more frequently.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: And when they, so, so it showed that they were really expecting something bad to happen, even though nothing bad was happening?
Okay. All right. So the, uh, I’m, I’m wondering if adverse childhood experiences in terms of, uh, some of the issues you’re talking about have an influence here.
Dr. Felicia Dix Richardson: I think that it could, we didn’t specifically talk about adverse childhood experiences.
Directly within that, uh, within our chapter. But I have done research dealing with that particular topic. And certainly, you know, when we look at the emotions aspect, the psychological aspect of it, that those things can, you know, uh, create higher scores. Whether we’re talking about, you know, what is happening within the home and looking at it from that perspective, or if we’re looking at, you know, some of the things that are occurring within the school system that yes, those things can, you know, increase that score.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Two thirds of Americans have at least one adverse childhood experience, and the population of black people in any classroom is not gonna be two thirds. So I was just wondering if children who were black with ACEs. Where compared to children who were white with ACEs. I mean, we know that black children have more ACEs statistically more adverse childhood experiences, but have, do you know of any studies that show the performance at school is, is dramatically impacted by the ACEs?
Dr. Felicia Dix Richardson: I can’t think of any directly off the top of my head, but it would not surprise me at all to see that that would be an issue. It’s kinda like that old saying that the body keeps a score. And that things that you know that you just don’t automatically forget your pass. And those things have the tendency to trigger in, and especially when you look at black girls.
And looking at, you know, for, as you know, the emotional, sexual, uh, physical, and again, that goes back to what Kideste was talking about earlier, dealing with adultification and why that can go across the board for, you know, all kids. But when you start looking at black girls. The things that they have to endure. And like I say, adultification is nothing new.
This is something that we’ve been dealing with ever since enslavement.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Can you define it though for the listeners?
Dr. Felicia Dix Richardson: Sure, sure. When we talk about ification, it is this idea that when you look at a particular child, that that child is older. Than what their chronological age may be. So if I’m assuming let’s as if we’re talking about a 10-year-old girl, but in my mind I’m not seeing a 10-year-old girl.
I’m seeing someone that’s maybe 19. I’m gonna treat them differently. And so what often happens is that as you are looking at this view of people, assuming that you are older. If I’m assuming that you are older, I’m gonna hold you accountable in a way that’s different from your peers that are the same age that you should have known better you, the ringleader.
You are not, you know, deserving of leniency, you’re not deserving of empathy, that you deserve to be harshly punished because you know better. And, um, this is often what our children experience all the time like. Um, Dr. EF was saying earlier was that. When you was looking at the little girl that what she was doing, you know, probably wasn’t different from what you know any other kid was doing, but it’s just that perception that you already get that negative stereotypical label that you’re bad, you bad, you bad.
And that labeling, it just kind of continues from, so you can just imagine if this happened in kindergarten. And it’s already this expectation that this little girl, you know, she was taken, you know, by, you know, officers that it, it continues to first grade, second grade into middle school. And especially if you’re talking about a small community where everybody knows everybody, she’s been labeled for the rest of her life.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah. In your chapter you say that black girls are over five times more likely than white girls to be suspended at least once and seven times more likely to have multiple suspensions than white girls, three times more likely to receive referrals to law enforcement. So besides this, uh, concept of adultification, what are the other things that contribute to those statistics?
Dr. Randy Nelson: I think it’s a whole host of things. I, I think even, you know, we talk about white flight, I see black flight as well. When we typically get educated, we move away. From the communities and for, for me, I don’t have a problem. I don’t live well where I was raised, but I still go back there. I still do a lot of, so I think we still have a responsibility to those communities and we don’t.
So that, that’s one. I I think that, that we don’t go back and give back. We take our best and our brightest out and we leave everyone else there and say, we made it out. You make it out in addition to that, I, I think if you look in Florida, if you look at our schools, if you look at the, the low performing schools, 99.9% of them are in black and brown communities, in poor communities.
So you have that. The other aspect of that is teachers, you don’t put your best teachers there. Your best teachers aren’t there. So it is a, it is a repeating cycle, a perpetual cycle that’s on it. So all of that. To where we see black and brown kids in juvenile facilities and adult facilities. So it’s the, if you’re not educated and you don’t have a means to live, raise a family, same thing that cycle and, and, and it all starts from the beginning.
It starts the zip code. Your education is determined by your zip code, the type of job determined by your ZIP code. So. It is just a cycle on all sides and corners institutionalized racism. Yes, and I think it’s also, once again, those of us that know better and, and get out, not living up to our role and responsibility to go back and, and pull up and lift out.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Oh, that’s it sometimes just seems so overwhelming, you know to, because it is so deeply embedded, you know, in our society. What about the zero tolerance policies? How, how does that come into play, Dr. Yusef?
Dr. Kideste Yusef: Well, I think that we, you know, you think about New York and William Ratton and like the, the emergence or the beginning of those policies in terms of policing, social and physical disorder on the street.
And the idea was that if we handle these small cases, then the bigger crimes would be handled and it’s just kind of bled into our education system. And so sometimes like. In an attempt to eliminate disparities, then there’s idea that we’re gonna treat everybody the same, but then there’s still. You know, loopholes in all of those processes as well, that although we have zero tolerance, it’s not necessarily applied equally across the board.
And so we see a growth in some of those racial disparities with these policies. And I, I just think when we were just talking about black females, it’s kind of like a connection to what is subjective and the social distance. So if you’re talking about the development of girls’ bodies and people young girls getting dress coded, for example, people could have the same outfit on, but if it looks different on one body type compared to another, then.
There’s a lot of research. There’s a report sounding the alarm that talks about out of Florida, that talks about how girls are being sent, you know, to, um, the principal’s office and getting suspended and expelled for, for clothing violations when other people that look just like them are wearing very similar clothes, but either people perceive it fitting differently on their body type.
Um, so I think that even though we have these zero tolerance policies that not, they’re not applied equally in all spaces, and so it, it tends to increase the disparity or the detrimental effect on some groups rather than applying, um, to the whole.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: So part of what you talked about is also implicit bias, and that is so, I mean, the very name speaks to the fact that it is.
Unconscious often and is so deeply embedded in anti-blackness and racism and so on. Are there programs that are working in school systems to try to identify implicit bias? I know I’ve spoken on this topic to teachers in California here and there are movements, at least in the California school system, they have their own.
Organization, anti-racist organization. They’re trying to promote, you know, education on this topic. But I doubt that that’s the same in every state.
Dr. Kideste Yusef: I think like many things and Dr. Nelson and, um, Dr. Dix Richardson might wanna speak to this too, but I think we have ebbs and flows in our society. So.
In the summer of 2020 post George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, you had, you know, a lot of Kelly Ibrahim’s book like you have. You have a lot of people coming out speaking about anti-blackness and just implicit bias, and there is more of a willingness. In the temporary for our society to address racial harms and wrongdoing.
And so we were having a lot more open conversations. Churches were having conversations, community groups were hosting conversations, police, we were doing police training. Uh, in this, a lot of people were willing to say, okay, what can we do differently? And then two years passed and people were saying, are we still talking about this?
Like, I don’t, you know, they’re re-envisioning how they thought that those events happened and what they mean and whether they’re still going on and why they occurred. And so I, I wanna pass the mic to, um, my colleagues and co-authors, but I definitely think that there, there tends to be an ebb and flow in our society about willingness to address racial harm and reconciliation and what we wanna do about it.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: That’s a really nice way of phrasing it, what you’re saying. Ebb and flow. Um, I had many people ask me after the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, like, well, things are changing. They’re really changing. And having grown up through the sixties and, you know, all of that, I just felt like, well. Let’s see how long.
They were like, oh, you’re so pleasant. You’re like, Nope, just realistic here. So do you have anything to add, Dr
Dr. Felicia Dix Richardson: Well, I think, you know, part of the issue is in, given the climate in which we are living now, and especially for us Floridians, that the major issues. Acknowledging that it exists and sometimes some people are not even aware of what they’re doing when it comes to those implicit biases that they’ve lived with it their whole lives.
No one has ever called them out on it and they don’t, you know, they’re not aware what they were doing. Dr. Nelson, I think you may remember, you may too, also, Dr. Yusef, the study that they had done, I think it was Miami, a newspaper outta Miami where they went in and they were, trying to survey. Judges and prosecutors, and when they were surveying them, and it was, you know, this was to try to show the racial disparity that was coming out in their sentences and when it, they saw the data, they didn’t realize.
That they had been doing that I said, and, and I know one, that was a little video clip that had done with it as well. And I remember watching, I think it was a judge and uh, he was really upset about the outcome because he said, I just did not have any idea that this is what I was doing. So, I mean, if we are looking at this from the criminal justice perspective, just think about, you know, what is happening within our school system.
When you know, you’re talking about. From the bus driver to, you know, the teacher to, uh, the peril, you know, professionals that they have in there, and all of those, you know, ideas, uh, beliefs that they have. And it filter into the classroom. And then you gotta think about it too, when we look at our schools, who’s teaching our children?
And if we have people who are teaching our children that do not look, you know, like the children that they’re teaching, and then if we’re talking about not having your best teachers into some of those schools that need it the most, we are certain, you know, setting a situation up where children will fail and it’s not necessarily because of what they’re doing or their lack of intelligence.
There’s so many other factors that come into play.
Dr. Randy Nelson: Yeah. I, I think America is schizophrenic. I mean, to be honest, no, we we’re, I mean, we, we can go from Barack Obama to, to Donald Trump. That’s what we are,
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: that’s the definition of schizophrenia.
Dr. Randy Nelson: Oh, we, we, we can, and for, for me, I, I think it’s kind of, uh, it, everything to me is preservation.
So when Obama was elected, white folk was like, America is. We elected a black, but what what that came with was a realization that will there be others? Well, they, I mean, they can see the data too. They’re saying projected by 2030, 2035 that it’ll be majority minority. So all of those things I, I think are, are at play.
And if I was. A white person, I wouldn’t wanna willing to give up the privileges and everything that’s best stowed upon me. I, I talk to my kids the lifestyle that I lived poor and a double wire trailer on a dirt road. They don’t know that life. And if I were to take them from that life and try to put in the life.
They would, they wouldn’t want it either. So I think common humanity is if you treat everybody and give everybody the same opportunity, then you don’t have to worry about any of that. But we are not there. So they see the fact that an America, that they had privilege, that they can’t now pass down to their sons and their grandsons and everybody self-preservation.
And that’s the lens I look at this self-preservation, whatever they need to do to, to maintain power.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah, I get what you’re saying. So for for kids who struggle ac academically, what recommendations can be made for success? Dr. Yusef. And I as part of that. I also saw in your chapter that you talked about this program in Florida, which is the high risk delinquency dependency educational research project.
That’s a long name, but is, is that the purpose of that particular project?
Dr. Kideste Yusef: Well, Dr. Nelson is actually the creator of, um, the, a lot of those initiatives and the situational environmental circumstances mentoring model. So I’ll, I’ll let you, um, speak to that. We’ve done a lot of work in Florida’s, um, public schools.
I have three children in Florida’s public schools as well. So we do know that there are certain things, and I’ll let him talk about the model, but we do know not just because it’s not that your teacher has to look like you, right. But they have to understand the humanity of all people. And s,. If the teacher cares equally about all the children is gonna treat them, that has good, you know, that has a benefit.
It doesn’t. Obviously there are some benefits for, particularly if there are not males in the household to have male, black male teachers and things like that. I don’t wanna discount that, but also a, a good teacher of any ethnic group that cares about kids are gonna have positive benefits on their education process.
And so we know that having caring invested teachers and paying teachers a quality salary and maybe additional stipends to go in some of these schools that have to be turned around because it, it’s, it’s a lot to be in some of these spaces. Especially because there’s a, there’s compounded issues, so not just educational deficits, but it might also be that we have like differently able kids mixed in with, uh, various populations and the teachers are not having a professional.
So it’s, it’s just adding a lot of stress in the classroom. And so we have to be realistic about what we’re a, the same way that we ask police officers to do everything to fix our society from getting the cat out to mass shootings. We’re asking teachers to repair, be the counselor and you know, be the, like, provide them healthcare, you know, like in terms of helping them if there’s hygiene issues or if there’s other, we’re asking teachers to do so much and it’s a blessing when teachers can, but it’s, it’s way more than what society should expect of teachers.
Dr. Nelson.
Dr. Randy Nelson: I think it absolutely, and that’s why we came up with that as the mentoring model was we were taking young men that had come from communities that, that were poor school systems, the. Employment rate, the single parent, all of that was rampant in those communities, but they had made it to Bethune Cookman or Florida a and m or Edward Waters or Florida Memorial, and I, and I referred to ’em as they were Harriet Tubmans.
Now you gonna go and mentor these third through fifth graders and show them the breadcrumbs house. Oh, you made it out. How, how did you make it to have a seat at the table at Bethune Cookman?
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: So these are, these are college students who go college students and mentor?. Middle schoolers or elementary?
Elementary. Elementary schoolers. Okay.
Dr. Randy Nelson: We started with them mentoring young men that had. Been, uh, been sentenced to residential commitments in the juvenile justice system. Mm-hmm. And that, although I I say it was a failure, it, it wasn’t a failure because some, some of those, but it was a lot harder doing that than going to elementary school.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: It’s better to catch it early before the children internalize those biases.
Dr. Randy Nelson: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And then the other thing that, oh, go on. The other thing that, that, uh, doctor used to mention, I said, same thing with police. While I go around the country saying that we need to have more black and brown police officers, I’ll stay with that all day.
But I’ve also ran across. Non-black police officers that the community would call them before they call some the black officers. Yeah. So it, it’s whoever established a relationship in that community that I’m here for You come hell or high water, I’m with you. You’ll see, you’ll see some of that as well.
So although I still think that we have to have diverse populations and teaching, it’s waning a little bit on me. It’s more your heart. You, compassionate for folks? So I, I’m thinking I’ll, I’ll take that ahead. Uh, I go back and forth. I’m with you.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Do you know about the, the Harlem project, was it Eddie Canada or do I have his name on Jeffrey Canada?
Jeffrey Can, Jeffrey Canada. Yeah. Isn’t it Jeffrey Canada? Yeah. And uh, why did that never get. Promoted in other communities. ’cause it seems to be, what I love about it is that they’re even starting earlier, they’re starting with pregnant mothers and teaching them parenting skills and giving them support in the community and then going, getting the children involved.
So it seems like that would be the best case scenario,
Dr. Randy Nelson: but it takes a lot of work and a lot of money. So the money was, yeah. Yeah. And that was his life. That was his, his life’s work. I mean, that’s, he’s still still working. He still still does that. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s, it’s an amazing legacy to have because he really has shown that it is possible and that these kids can succeed, even though everybody says they couldn’t.
Dr. Kideste Yusef: Mm-hmm. Right. So it’s, and it’s those wraparound services, it wa, I mean, that’s what Harlem Children’s Zone like. It wasn’t just the education. Like he got all the community partners.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: They have a clinic, you know? Mm-hmm. They have so many. Yeah. All the things that people need to succeed. Absolutely. Yeah. White communities take for granted and yeah, he put them in place and so it was job training every, everything.
Dr. Kideste Yusef: Yeah. Yeah. Parenting classes.
Dr. Felicia Dix Richardson: Yeah. It was, it, it’s, it’s kinda like that approach. It takes a village and that’s the way, you know, that I look at it for, is looking at the question, dealing with struggling schools, is that we all have a role to play. You know, the parents definitely have a role to play the kids themselves.
The teachers and the community too. It’s kinda like, I just kind of think about it when I was growing up and the community in which I lived, that the church was very involved in what we did within school because. Most of the teachers that were at my elementary school attended the same church. Yeah. And so it was not uncommon, you know, to have, you know, your teacher, you know, Monday through Friday and then on, you know, Saturdays, you know, with youth, you know, events, same people.
And then on Sunday morning. You are seeing them for Sunday school as well. And so I think some of that, you know, is missing from it. A researcher that I really, he is not only a researcher, he’s certainly, you know, an, um, an educator is Dr. Pedro Negiya, I think is his last name. And he, you know. Points out about a lot of the things that we need to critically look at.
And I remember one of the things that he talked about, and it just kind of stuck in my head, is, was about that sorting system. And what the sorting system was, was that you do an evaluation on a kid. You determine, you know, okay, so this kid is, you know, kind of a range B range, C range. Now, I think today they may use colors and numbers or whatever, but when I was in the fifth grade, that was, they did it by alphabet.
The A group meant A, the B meant that you are a B student. The C meant that you were a C student. D meant that you were a D student. They didn’t have a e. What happens after, after G then they just went through a CD f just like, you know, the normal grad. And, you know, going back, thinking about it and looking at, you know, the racial disparity, what kids felt in which group.
Mm-hmm. And you can just imagine, you know, that the F group, they were all black. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The, A group was just two blacks in that group. And I admit I was in a B group. But the thing is, is that. While that label may stuck with some kids, it didn’t stick with all of them because I know, you know, kids that were in the F range and the D range, that they were very, very successful.
Yeah. But the thing is, is that you’re assuming that this is the best way, to teach, but all kids don’t learn the same. And what educators gotta learn to do is that to be a little bit more creative. Mm-hmm. You know, bring more things into the classroom because they don’t learn all the same. And I think, you know, Dr.
Yusef, Dr. Nelson, we can probably say, you know, we’ve been doing this for a while, the way that we taught 20 years ago, you can’t teach the same way today. And the same thing goes like that within, you know, with our babies and with our young kids. And so. It’s just, you know, having to have that different approach because when you do that, like I said, it creates that labeling effect, what you don’t want, you know, to have that that negative, you know, label for the kid to continue through with.
So, again, to think, you know, it, it, I don’t think I know, you know, that it takes a village and I know even with, uh, what we do at Florida a and m University within our criminal justice department, we do have what we call A DRS, our developmental school. But there’s another school that’s actually closer. On campus.
Then the developmental research school, the small school had been doing well at all. But what we do when we have juvenile justice courses, that’s part of the course is that they have to go down there and mentor that you have to go down there not to make it makes a big difference when the kids are not only seeing the college students coming down there on a constant basis.
And my thing is I don’t ask the students to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself. And so I go down there too. And they get attached to you, but you can see, you know, that it makes a big difference when they do see that the community is really involved in what they do. And again, the thing is dealing with leadership too, that you got to have the right administrators in place.
You can’t have principals, like you say, that do not have a genuine care and concern about the kids. You got to have someone to have that passion.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I, I understand also that. The HBCUs have been. Leading the charge in this effort. Dr. Yusef, can you say a little bit more about what you know about the other schools
Dr. Kideste Yusef: in the country that are HBCUs who are involved with, with this kind of effort in terms of, uh, increasing educational attainment or, so part of like what Dr.
Nelson was mentioning with situational environmental um, circumstances, it was through Annie Casey. So sometimes there’s private foundation grants. Yeah. That are given, um, to institutions to address, um, issues. And, you know, oftentimes the people closest to the problem are closest to the solution. So the, you know, individuals that have a familiarity and they understand either they came from negative schools that were, had different struggles or we have just are in neighborhoods and familiar, these are the individuals that we want to go back.
For the, for young people to see. Dr. Nelson and I have been, you know, in elementary schools, in Volusia County doing sessions on what does leadership look like or how to be test ready. And they see professionals coming in, you know, with college degrees saying, we teach at this institution that we’re doctors and, you know, high fiving them and saying, all right, I checked your score LA you know, last nine weeks.
I wanna see what you have this time. And while we were there. The sad thing is these programs are so needed, but it’s often based on funding and the funding isn’t continuous. And so we saw like good changes from maybe the first nine weeks to the second nine weeks, but by the time we got to the next year, you know, we didn’t have the same fundings for mentors or maybe like for, for us, some of the students were, you know, kind of getting into their higher level courses.
So some of our college students weren’t, uh, as responsive. But I do think that HBCUs have a, a unique responsibility for one, that’s our mission. Most of our HBCUs began with our founders wanting to provide opportunities with people who had historically been neglected or did not have opportunities in other spaces.
So it, it’s a. It’s a responsibility as a professor at a HBCU or as a student. I tell my students all the time at a HBCU that you are learning to give back. There is no benefit to our education or knowledge if you are not making social change and creating change in your society for the advancement of everybody.
And this isn’t just, uh, Dr. Nelson mentioned this early in terms of the census. It’s not about numerical majority or minor uh uh, in terms of who should have access. It’s just the idea that as. Individuals in this country who have contributed to this country, we should all have access to the rights privileges of what America has to offer.
And so when we try to hoard it among certain groups, or we don’t understand that it’s about access to opportunity, we’re not all gonna be in the same places. You know, we, our work ethic isn’t the same. Our abilities in different spaces and skills is not the same, but everyone should have the same opportunity.
Yeah. To get. To whatever, you know, our middle class measuring rods are. And so I think that just as HBCU students and faculty, we understand the challenges of the system. We understand the role of systemic bias and oppression and things that historically have made these situations less challenging to overcome.
So I think that we’re uniquely positioned to address them.
Dr. Randy Nelson: And I, I don’t think that Dr. Yusef. Myself going around the country to different HBCUs. It wasn’t done at Cookman before we were there doing it, go intentionally going in doing that, and I’m not seeing it done around the country. And I’m thinking we were paying those students like maybe $200 a month as a stipend.
I, I think that that could be done at every HBCU. But maybe ’cause they’re too busy trying to, you know, keep their head above water. But that work that we’re talking about, going into communities, doing what? Third graders going into school, that’s not being done. I mean, and since we left Cook, since we left Cookman, they’re, they’re not doing it.
And, and they’re saying because the funding left. I think some of that is investment. And once, once again, that was $200. We paid those kids, those 200, 225. It’s not a lot of money. Yeah. Not, not. And then for me, the other part of that is, once again, we talk about white flight, but that black flight left those schools, the school that, that Felicia’s talking about Bond elementary, that school used to be folk used to live, teachers and preachers used to live there and go support that community.
So now they’re going to, they’re not so they’re, they’re to fend for themself and then our HBCUs aren’t going in. To doing. So it’s a, it is a perpetual cycle. Now some of that is, like you said, a lot of it is institutional racism, discrimination, all that. But other parts of it is that, that we’ve come out and we’re doing better.
We have to spend just as much time in those communities that we came out of now as we did when we were struggling to get outta there and, and we’re not doing that. So that’s, that’s on us. Whether it’s black folk that go to a PWI or black folk that go to HBCU. We’re, we’re not doing right by those communities and those schools.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Well, I just, we need to wrap up now, but it’s been great talking to all of you. I just wanna ask, leave you with the final question. What gives you hope these days?
Dr. Kideste Yusef: So I have three children, 20, 17, and 15. And although everyone talks about this generation and their attention. I think that they are a generation who.
Calls it like they see it a little more. They’re more willing to, even if that’s not their lived experience, they’re willing to listen to someone else’s in a way that I think as adults, we’re in this political space of less civility. You know, we hate everything. That isn’t what we understand, but I think young people being around them and even in the classrooms like teaching, they don’t, it’s that same energy is not there.
And so I’m hopeful when I see young people speaking to each other. Looking beyond like the, immediately of some of the, like what’s challenging us politically and socially, but being willing, like we, you know, calling, calling all leaders on their stuff in a way that they’re not scared to say, you know, this isn’t right.
I would challenge this like. In a way that I think as different older generations, we were taught to be a little more respectful and to like find other ways to fight and it you, you know, so I think I’m hopeful in that young people just have a, they’re building a ability to speak the things that they don’t appreciate, and then they’re starting to develop the tenacity to try to change him and work across groups in a way that I’m I mean, I’m hoping that that is the case.
I, I feel like that’s where my hope lies with young people.
Dr. Felicia Dix Richardson: And I agree with you, Dr. Yusef, dealing with, you know, that what, what? Looking at students and I’m teaching a class this time, women in Crime, and unfortunately it’s online, but they have, you know, these discussion boards and just to read their comments, but not only their comments, the way that they engage with each other.
We have some phenomenal young folks. That, you know, a lot of times, you know, it was, oh, you know, they this, they that. I see something different. I do. And then also by being an advisor over several organizations, oh, I admit that it was at the end of this, well, during this fall semester, it was right after the elections.
And I have this group, um, students demand action, and they wanted to have a conversation about. Where do we go from here and after which? You know, we were all, I was kind of feeling a little, I don’t know, can’t put a word quite on it just yet, but after leaving that session with them, it was just, you know, you just, I felt really full on the inside, kind of like, you know, going to church and you heard, you know, the word and it was real good.
Yeah. Uplift it, but feel that I got that inspiration from young folks That’s Like 40 years younger than myself. And I remember, you know, even before I got home, I got on the phone and I start calling some of my colleagues and I was telling them about, you know, how inspired I was. I said, you know what I say, I feel optimistic.
I think there’s hope, from what I heard in that classroom Tonight I think there’s hope.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: That’s awesome.
Dr. Randy Nelson: Yeah. Uh, he’s not agreeing. Yeah. I, I, I guess since I, I’ve retired from teaching, uh, my hope is in that God would never leave us or forsake us because I don’t get to see that what, what they’re seeing now.
Most of my work is in the community and. You know, and it, I have two boys that I love more than life itself, and both of ’em are smart and, but if, if something shakes them, they fail on something, they’re on their knees. They, they, they don’t get up and fight like we did. The, there’s this, this younger generation don’t have to fight.
And what concerns me is the way we are society is today, I don’t see it getting any better. Th this is just straight fight. This isn’t, this isn’t, no, this isn’t for the weary, so I, I,
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: but, but maybe they’ll find a different way to fight.
Dr. Randy Nelson: I hope it, it, it is my hope. It is my hope. And maybe, like I said, when I was at this, when I was at Cookman and Fan u and i, I would meet students and, and there’s some to this day that are doing very well.
Mm-hmm. But, uh, I’m, I’m not seeing it. Maybe I gotta get back. I gotta surround myself with young folks.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Go visit your colleagues.
All right. Well, thank you, all three of you. It’s been a pleasure to have you on the podcast, and, uh, I wish you all the best in your career and your retirement, which I don’t, I’m not sure you’re gonna stay retired for long.
Dr. Kideste Yusef:Just different type of work now.
That’s, that’s it. That’s it. All right. Bye-bye.
Bless, bless you. Take, thank you. Thank you for having us, Dr. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross:Thanks for listening. Please subscribe to the Inclusive Minds Podcast so we can let you know when the next great guest comes on. The link to subscribe is in the caption below.
