{"id":4699,"date":"2014-02-28T15:47:02","date_gmt":"2014-02-28T20:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/?p=4699"},"modified":"2014-02-28T15:47:02","modified_gmt":"2014-02-28T20:47:02","slug":"lets-talk-about-race-gender-and-education-please-opening-overdue-conversations-in-macaulays-own-living-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/2014\/02\/28\/lets-talk-about-race-gender-and-education-please-opening-overdue-conversations-in-macaulays-own-living-room\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s Talk About Race, Gender, and Education Please \u2014 Opening Overdue Conversations in Macaulay\u2019s Own Living Room"},"content":{"rendered":"

The countdown for the screening and discussion of the award-winning 2013 documentary American Promise<\/em> was quickly approaching 0:00.\u00a0 Students, alumni, teachers, and friends streamed through the Macaulay building\u2019s open doors, past a greeting sign that read, \u201cMacaulay Honors College at CUNY: Supporting Excellence\u201d and up the series of steps to the Screening Room on the evening of Friday, February 7.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw the event on Facebook,\u201d said Akeem Powell, 24, of Jamaica, NY and a guest of Macaulay. \u201cThe trailer made me think of my girlfriend\u2019s little brother, and it made me think of myself in a literal sense. That was me. So I had to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 6:15 p.m., the steady flow of guests was greeted by smiles, handshakes, and hugs courtesy of the Macaulay Diversity Initiative. Sign-in sheets\u201465 names long\u2014awaited visitors at a registration table manned by Cynthia Perez-Beltethon, Macaulay Hunter 2014, and Demelio Urbano, Macaulay Hunter 2015.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone came here and came together, ready to talk,\u201d said David Arteaga, 20, of Maspeth, NY and Macaulay Hunter 2015. \u201cI mean, just look at the number of people who showed up and look at the diversity of the crowd; age, ethnicity, careers, educational experiences. This is a conversation that needs to be had.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 6:40 p.m., finding an empty seat in the 72-seat Screening Room required great amounts of effort, sharp-shooting eye sight and impeccable strategic planning. The room\u2014 illuminated by a red, white, and blue projection of the words \u201cAMERICAN PROMISE\u201d against a slightly wrinkled sheet of loose-leaf paper\u2014was host to a number of mini family reunions sprinkled with loud laughter, “Over here!,” and rushed small talk between friends playing catch up.<\/p>\n

6:45 p.m.: SHOWTIME<\/p>\n

American Promise<\/em> was chosen in observance of Black Male Achievement Week\u2014heavily promoted by PBS this past month\u2014and in preparation for the third annual Supporting Excellence Conference on Friday, March 14. The film tells the story of two middle-class African American families whose sons attend a prestigious\u2014and historically white\u2014private school on the Upper East Side, The Dalton School.<\/p>\n

As the credits scrolled after an abridged 80 minutes of the full 142-minute film, everyone gathered their bags and winter coats, and shuffled back down the stairs to the Lecture Hall. Guests were ready to discuss the Pandora’s box of education, race, parenting, support system, gender, and social justice issues that filmmakers\u2014husband-and-wife-team Mich\u00e8le Stephenson and Joe Brewster, M.D.\u2014busted open in their documentary.<\/p>\n

Stephenson and Brewster turned their video cameras on their five-year-old son, Idris Brewster, and his five-year-old best friend, Oluwaseun (Seun) Summers, in 1999, documenting both children\u2019s 13-year journeys through Dalton as recruits of the school\u2019s newly introduced student diversity initiative.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe story really hits home with me and my 16-year old brother who is a black boy,\u201d said Samantha Riddell, 21, of Cambria Heights, NY and Macaulay Hunter 2014. \u201cMy parents did not do that whole private school Dalton experience and we\u2019re seeing the effects of it now on his education. This makes me want to drive harder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forty-nine people sat with plates of sandwiches and fruit in the audience of the Lecture Hall after watching the film. Five of the 49 audience members were black males. The remaining 44 attendees, allies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some ways, I\u2019d like to see more people who look like me at these conversations,\u201d said John Kunicki, 22, of Forest Hills, NY and Macaulay Hunter 2013. \u201cI think it\u2019s on them to come to these events because speaking from experience, when I\u2019m around other white men, a lot of them tend to have very limited perspectives on things like this because in part, they\u2019re insulated from a lot of these issues. They\u2019re insulated from feeling it themselves, and if they haven\u2019t been given some sort of framework for thinking about the world that allows them to empathize, empathizing is not going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 90-minute conversation that followed the screening was the first of its kind to directly address black male achievement in educational institutions at Macaulay, and will be one of many conversations to come through Macaulay Diversity Initiative\u2019s efforts to support diversity. Next up, Macaulay\u2019s third annual Supporting Excellence conference on the institutionalized “primary school to prison” pipeline in which so many boys and young men of color seem to be trapped.<\/p>\n

Countdown to Friday, March 14, 2014: BEGIN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The countdown for the screening and discussion of the award-winning 2013 documentary American Promise was quickly approaching 0:00.\u00a0 Students, alumni, teachers, and friends streamed through the Macaulay building\u2019s open doors, past a greeting sign that read, \u201cMacaulay Honors College at CUNY: Supporting Excellence\u201d and up the series of steps to the Screening Room on the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":703,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,20],"tags":[147,369,655,661,810,1129,1296,1404,1648,2136,2202],"class_list":["post-4699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-mhc-central","tag-american-promise","tag-campus-news","tag-diversity-initiative","tag-documentary","tag-film","tag-joe-brewster","tag-macaulay-honors-college","tag-michele-stephenson","tag-pbs","tag-supporting-excellence-conference","tag-the-dalton-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}