Secrets in Plain Sight - McDaniel

country that were participating in an esteemed science program at the University.I witnessed the police department respond with urgency to the voices of themedia and the University. Their institutional voices were qualified to speak andthey used their voices to tell my story and the story of the others who wereattacked that night. The police later came to offer justice by taking a report andlaunching an investigation. Immediately after the attacks i sat in the dormitory hallway with the otherstudents who were numb, experiencing disbelief. We were a!! shaken by theviolence of the night and nearly everyone expressed their rage and generalfeelings of fear and insecurity. Within me stirred feelings that I could not name. Ilost a sense of self that night that I now trace back to that moment with thepolice. I needed to reconcile my confusion over why this trained officer who hadprofessionally committed to protecting and serving the public, didn't see me anddidn't hear me. Why was I unable to pursue justice with my voice that night?What was it about the media and university that made people care, where theyfound no need to before? I saw evidence that in the eyes of others I wasn't asvaluable as a human being as I had been raised to believe. I wasn't qualified tospeak. The following fall, I returned to high school for my senior year. The FortCollin's attacks left me feeling convicted to resolve the brokenness I felt inside.That feeling continued to agitate me amidst the pronounced racial divides withinmy academic environment. I had come back more spiritually sensitive than when 42

I left. I found myself awakened and connected to the pain of the injustices I sawaround me, Sn a moment of activism, I debated topics of social and racial injusticeat our school with friends in the hallways, I had no will to attend classes until Iwas able to settle the angst I felt in my body and the unrest and pain I felt in myspirit. Dialogue helped me put words and coherence to what I was feeling, tospeak what I lived. That led me to co-found a public forum where students couldexplore and engage different cultures. One of issues that came to light throughdialogue was the problem of school curriculum centering White people andculture, ignoring all else. The impact of this was that students of color felt thatthey were just there for the ride because of a legal mandate. This kind of schoolculture produced an accepted racial segregation, as whites and nonwhitessocialized to protect their own identities. All the Black and Brown kids sattogether in the cafeteria (Tatum, 1997). We slipped into the margins and becameinvisible to everyone except ourselves. I imagined possibilities for my peers and myself where the visibility ofdiverse identities as a part of everyday life could strengthen interculturalrelationships and increase marginalized student's engagement. Learning outsidethe margins meant hope for us beyond just hanging out for four years. I cravedlearning, growth, and wholeness. This forum was my attempt at making a waytoward that. It was my pain and yearning that pushed to open up spaces ofliberation where non-dominant identities could emerge. *TO

The financial support and good will from the principal allowed me to spendmy senior year organizing this series of community forums. Students' engageddifferent cultures and shared knowledge through learning circles. It was a de-centering of whiteness and foregrounding of other knowledges inaccessiblethrough the ciassroom or the school generally. There was an exciting energy anda genuine synergy amidst this new learning community. In this space I began tobe healed.Something else came out of the Fort Collins attacks; sixteen later,by accident I came across a website for a community group that was formed inresponse to the attacks. The citizens had read a quote I had given in a localnewspaper where I commented on my deep disappointment of the people of thecity who watched my peers and I get beat down as they sipped lattes. I accusedthem along with police of not caring and said that I would never come back to aplace like that.Following that story the community; including businesses, hospitals, theuniversity, and citizens rallied. Together they created a nonprofit organizationthat addressed local problems of race affecting economy, health, and education.I met the founding leaders for lunch one afternoon to hear their story. In thatmoment I recognized that things had come full circle for me as I came to learnmore about my Blackness and its relationship to social justice. 44

That Nigger Bitch [ had Seamed from the behavior of the Fort CoNins police that my Blackskin was of little value to them, not Important enough to protect. Only whenaccompanied by a person or an institution with dominant social capital, thematerial and inmaterial resources that are able to be accessed through social ties(Wiliink, 2009) could I expect to benefit from the privileges of dominant societylike access to equality and public safety. My Black skin marked me less valuablethan White skin. The reinforcement of this lesson came just two years later at myfirst place of employment. My first professional job was working as a customer service representativefor a small corporate life insurance company. I arrived there by crazyhappenstance. After I graduated from high school, I tried to go to college but quitdiscouraged from trying to get funding and failing in my attempts to navigate thecomplex institutional layers. I had very little resources or knowledge. Though Iwas suburban bred, mostly private schooled through my academic career, Ilacked the family support necessary to gain access to and navigate higheducation. Getting information about how to get to college was not easy. Access toknowledge in my high school was heavily guarded. What I did learn came frommy White friends who were considered the \"real students\" to be focused on. Myfriend Jory went to the college career center in my high school where she took ascientific test that would tell her what career she would most likely succeed at. 45

She took the test and found out that the profession she would most likely besuccessful at was a railroad conductor. The school counselors who took aninterest in her also told her about a program in the district where she could iearna trade. Students, who did this, graduated with a diploma and a vocation, likecosmetology or aviation mechanics as examples. ! never did find out about thoseprograms but after I graduated, ! found out that my classmate and friend Kristytook her cosmetology degree in high school and began working professionallyright away in salons. She now has owned and operated a couple of successfulsalons and is doing well for herself. Jory is also doing well. She decided againstbecoming a railroad conductor and instead asked the counselor to help herprepare her college applications and financial aid package. She graduated fromcollege and eventually opened up her own real estate firm. Today she is pursuinga career in forensic science. The road to success was much different for me. From an institutiona!perspective I was always an unwanted outsider. ! had to figure out ways to knowwhat everybody else seemed to know, either from their parents, family, or theschool itself. I also learned through Jory that our school had a college counselorin the college and career center. I tried a few times to meet her and introducemyself and let her know that! was interested in going to college and neededhelp. On my third attempt I made contact with her. But she was less interestedthan I had hoped in my college planning. She would say that she was very busyand had a lot of students attend to. After I was shown a chart on the wall which 46

correlated colleges to ACT scores and acceptance statistics and also a smallroom full of floor to near ceiling file cabinets that held scholarship information; Iwas told in very clear terms that this was all she had to offer and that I should beon my way. I was appreciative for her help, but walked away feelingoverwhelmed and confused. I started to open the first of 6, 4-drawerfile cabinetsto look for scholarships that I might qualify for, but after 5 minutes of having noidea what i was looking for I gave up. After graduation, with no real idea of what I was going to do with my life,on my own I filled out an application to go to the local state college. Once I wasaccepted I spent significant amounts of time there standing in lines, talking toother students, and moving from administrative office to administrative officetrying to chase down a solution for how I was going to pay for college. 1 had noclue how to play the college game and the tactics I had used earlier of trying tolearn through my insider friends, didn't work so well anymore. They were all overthe country doing their own thing. At my last administrative stop, I was told that I didn't qualify for anyfunding because my father's income exceeded the maximum thresholds. Otherfinancial aid was denied to me because my age meant that! could not beconsidered an independent and wouldn't be for at least four years. I pleaded mycase and asked for any options they could think of. As they sent me out of thedoor to get to the other students, they told me there was no appeals process (Ilater learned that there was), the only way I would be considered independent 47

was if I got pregnant. I iater did and that's how I got my first shot at going tocollege. Before i could start I had to get a job to survive. Having moved into anapartment with my boyfriend i was under the gun to get a job quickly. When fopened the classifieds to the help wanted section I quickly realized that 1 had noskills to do anything that would earn me enough money to live. I promised myboyfriend that I would have a job by the end of the week so that we could makerent. The only viable option read: no skills needed $500 a week. All I had to dowas go topless. Not really seeing another choice, I scheduled an interview. When I arrived for my job interview my friend who was going to do it withme got scared and decided to stay in the car. The Red Garter was located indowntown Denver. Burger King was next door, Woolworths across the street. Itwas just off a major bus line, which meant I would be able to get to work easily.There was a gentleman sleeping at the entryway, guarding the door in histattered green army jacket that looked black from the layers of street filth. He wasunshaven and had a foul stench of urine, alcohol, tobacco, filth and somethingelse... I stepped as far away from him as I could while still being able to getinside. After my body adjusted from the fresh air and bright sunlight to the staledarkness of the bar, to my right I saw a huge Black guy behind a long bar. In achurch mouse voice, just barely audible, I told him that I was there for the job. Hetold me to come in, have a seat and when I was ready, go on stage. He musthave noticed the terror on my face as he told me that I was going to have to take 48

my shirt off in front of the entire room, i looked around and saw that with theexception of naked women, about half of the room was filled with men stumpedover from their drunkenness. When he said I would be taking all of my clothes offfor them - I was frozen in disbelief. When I asked him about the ad that said thejob was advertised for a topless dancer - he responded with a wicked smile,\"that's just for the first night, until you're comfortable\". ! walked over and fell into the first chair I could find. I wondered what mymother - - who saw to it that I was classically trained in violin, ballet, and piano - -would say if she saw me now. 1 had attended some of the best private and publicschools around, lived in beautiful homes, was bi~lingual and supposedly smart. Iheld my bag close to me, feeling like it was a protective layer between me andthe room. ! tried hard to disappear. I was almost invisible when a naked womancame to sit next to me. She introduced herself and had come to give me comfort.I couldn't tell you what she looked like because I was still trying to disappear bystaring at the floor hard enough. Eventually she went away and when I thoughtnobody was looking I ran out the front door. What was I thinking? I had this fantasy of taking my prince tape, myleopard unitard and closing my eyes to dance in front of one person. It took mean entire afternoon to hype myself up for that. I couldn't believe the world I hadalmost fallen into. I was beginning to see in my life the material effects of mycommodified body in a racialized economy. Still needing a job, I opened up thepaper again and saw an ad that asked for an \"entry level\" worker, so I called. 49

I don't know why I got hired. It must have been a God thing. \ truly had noskills that could be useful for the job. But I was thankful for my job as a customerservice representative. The home office where I worked was responsible forproviding insurance products to consumers. They hired independent agents fromacross the country in order to produce business for them. Insurance is said to beone of the nation's oldest industries, second to banking. There was a lot ofcultural history that was particular to the company and the industry that washidden from me but relying on old skills, i did my best to learn. After experiencing difficulties getting into college and failing at a toplessdancing career, I felt that this job was my chance to be successful in life. I treatedthat job like the blessing that it was. I learned everything I could, met ail of theemployees and built relationships with most. I cross-trained in other departmentswhere possible and tried to make myself valuable. This job was everything to meand ! wanted to do well for them. While covering for the receptionist who was at lunch, I received a cali fromMr. Joe Kwasinskixv, a sales agent from Chicago. Joe wanted to speak with thepresident of the company. He gave me instructions to place him on hold and onlytransfer him after confirming contact. Mr. Andrews, the president of the companywas unavailable. His secretary asked me to transfer the call to voicemaii. Joerefused voicemaii, asking me instead to transfer him to several other executivesin the company. Unable to reach anyone, and with all of the phone lines lit upfrom other callers waiting for me to answer the phone, I presented Mr. Kwasinksi 50

with a choice between voicemail, a hand written message or calling back. Hewent from pushy to irate. He insisted that I walk throughout the office to locateMr. Andrews. When I told htm I could not do that, he showered with screamingprofanities. I disconnected his call Joe promptly called back and asked to be transferred to another person inthe company. And in the next hour, he was passed from person to personthroughout most of the executive and mid-level managers calling me a niggerbitch, slut - again and again and again. Joe and I had never met before but whenhe asked my co-workers for a description of who I was, they provided a physicaldescription profiling me as Black and a mother. All of the security, safety, senseof belonging, joy i had before this phone call was now gone. People respondeddifferent to me after that day. And in turn, I behaved differently, walking aroundembarrassed and ashamed. Joe shattered my sense of dignity that day and leftme less than whole. Desperate to return to where 1 was, to reclaim what I hadloss, I decided to seek the support of my employer. I went to three different levels of management to demand that Mr.Kwasinksi give me an apology for the way the public denigration I experienced inthe workplace resulting from his hateful actions. I also asked that we have a planin place to be sure that it never happened again. Each of the managers I spokewith sent me to their superior unable to do anything about it. They all believedthat since he was a contractor and not an employee, nothing could be done. Notwanting to give up, because of the continued costs to my personhood, I 51

persisted, I made an appointment with the company president because theconsensus was that he was the only person with enough power to help me. Mr. Andrews, a tali lean white man 30 plus years my senior, sat behind hislarge desk staring at me coldly while I made my case. He thanked me for my timeand said that he would take care of the matter. The following day, i was pulledinto the Human Resource office and told in clear and direct language that if 1couldn't accept what had happened and stop talking about it, then they would behappy to accept my resignation. The lines were drawn and I was effectivelyforced out. My spirit was crushed. It was painful to know that to them, myemployer, I was a nigger bitch slut, not worthy of the same rights and privilegesthat they enjoyed. Without will or cognition I began to believe them. Most qualified for the job .. .if only yo« weren't Black I felt trapped in an impossible environment where i risked losing myselfand my identity within the collective psyche of the racist mind. But given howhard it was to get this job, I was too scared to quit. I had just had my firstborn sonand leaving meant a loss of income and medical benefits that I needed to takecare of him. In my breath of desperation, I received an unexpected interview at alarge international firm. It turned out that behind the scenes 1 was being pushedfor hire by my old boss who had moved to this new company. She had provideda strong recommendation for me when an opening came up. She had used hercapital as a respected and educated white woman and manager in the companyto help me get in. i was grateful for her kindness and appreciated that she would 52

spend some of her capital on me. But I also felt like a slave who had just beenbought by a more compassionate slave owner. In the end, I was still in bondage,and i knew it. I was facing the realities of a racist logic, where the body could bescripted through psychological and spiritual enslavement achieved through racistdisruptions of identity and publicly paraded as reality, infantiiized bodies cannotsustain self-possession. And they do not possess sufficient amounts of sociallyrecognized forms of capital, ensuring the necessity of the targeted body to beattached to an owner, an authorized dominant body. In my case, a White body. Itwas a covert logic where I sensed its danger but could not conceive its form. After three levels of interviews ! landed a spot on one the company's mostprestigious teams. They called this team of 11 people the \"M\" team. M stood formillion-dollar round table. As home office staff we worked for the company's topproducers. It was so ironic that a month prior I was considered by my employernot valuable enough to deserve any dignity. Now riding on the goodwill andcache of another White person, I was good enough to get a promotion with asubstantial pay increase. But riding on the wings of someone else's self worth ateaway at my own. I knew that there would be costs to living in her shadow. Wanting to reclaim myself and my self-worth I worked doggedly to make aname for myself. I used my long trusted skills of reading and analyzing people togive me a competitive advantage. I put my family responsibilities as a new wifeand mother second to building my career. I watched like a hawk everything thatwas happening and adapted myself accordingly, learning everything I could. The 53

goal was to be the smartest person in the room. That was my plan towardearning enough social and political capital that might buy my psychological andspiritual freedom. It worked for a while, one year I got two promotions and a 17%increase. I joined every committee I could and volunteered for any extra thingthat needed to be done. Success continued to mount for me until my boss, mysympathetic White body left the company. The critical relationship that I had wasgone and I was again outside of the shadows of Whiteness. Sadly, I didn't realize that this was the case until it was too late. Now whenI first arrived to work for this company, out of a staff of about 500, nearlyeveryone of the company's 20 Blacks would meet in the lunch room. Theywarned me about the company's feelings toward Black people. Some of myBlack co-workers had lawsuits against the company, claiming race-baseddiscrimination. Their primary complaint was the lack of mobility for Black people.No matter where you where in the company, the mailroom, the copy center, andlegal etc. if you were Black they said, there would never be any upward mobilityfor you. Because of the covert nature of this discrimination and the way it was soeasily normalized as a part of the everyday culture it was difficult to call out. Theevidence of proving covert discrimination rested on proving overt actions, whichlived outside of the everyday. But i had a plan. ! would earn my freedom. In order to get the capital Ineeded to I had to give up my dreams of going to college. Only having completeda couple of classes, I found it impossible to do both. For me, college had no 54

direct route or guarantee of getting to economic, social and poiitical freedom. Butworking in a successful corporation gave me some hope. This was a tremendoussacrifice and a sad choice for me. Work now had separated me from my family,and now my dreams of higher education. When I met Reiko, f was immediately taken with her. She was a thinyoung woman with an athletic build. She wore her hair in large plaited braids andhad the sensibility of a street savvy person. As a suburban grown girl, hereveryday urban cultural performances were a breathe of fresh air to me. I would seek Reiko out often to see how she was doing. She had anhonest quality about her, a kind and loving spirit that was unguarded andaccessible. Separated from your family, your community and your self; working9-10 hours a day as if you had no soul and no spirit was not easy. I learned earlyon how to disembody. Resisting this way of life by choosing differently from thisdominant rule of engagement, risked being crushed. I had experienced it before. Like when a former boss pulled me into her office and told me that I wouldhave to stop using the special hair oil we black people used because its smellwas offensive to my co-workers and they had complained about it. I was crushedby the humiliation and degradation. As a solution, I was quarantined to aworkspace with the other Black person on the team and had to promise tochange my hair product. Thereafter I disembodied my spirit from my mind inorder to survive. To risky and painful to wholly be myself, I learned to mimicthose that had capital. Soon I became a predator like them, relying mostly on my 55

intellect, the dominant ways of knowing and on the social and political capital ofothers. In this system of individualism there was no ethic or desire for community.! devoured anyone who got in my way. I wasn't long into this game playing beforeI lost even more of myself, my community and my way of knowing. Reiko couldn't and wouldn't be a gamer. On some level I'm not even sureshe saw its operation. How do you know a game if you've never been invited towatch one? And if you are lucky enough to be invited to watch, how well can youknow it without playing? Reiko was a sharp, intelligent woman. But, she had notgrown up in private schools with White populations. Her interculturai experiencesin this way were limited. She was not a student of Whiteness and so her walk,her talk, her cadence, and her ways of knowing were explicitly Black and visiblychallenged the boundaries of Whiteness. She never even knew that. She neverrecognized that her body was scripted as untamed, because you don't knowwhat you don't know. A constant rub of being an outsider to Whiteness is thatyou still have to compete by their rules. Reiko just knew that she had to dowhatever they asked of her in order to become promoted to a job that would payenough money for her to properly take care of her child. She must have applied to 17 or more internal job postings during the fiveyears I was there. Each time they denied her a promotion she would ask whatwas it that she needed to do or know to earn a promotion. Each time, they wouldoffer her a new task; take communication classes, join toastmasters, changeyour hair to something more professional ... She earnestly did everything they 56

asked. When I ieft the company nothing had changed for her except she was nolonger the joyful spirit I had first met. 1 lost Reiko's spirit somewhere along theway. Her spirit went from wounded but determined, to absent. My day of reckoning came when I tried to appiy for a promotion that wouldmake me more visible in the organization. Even though ! was outside theshadows of White allies, ! felt prepared for this opportunity. Like a strongcompetitor - ! put my best game face on and went for it with everything I could.There was a background check, two rounds of interviews, a test on technicalknowledge, and a portfolio review of my work since being at the company. All mywork at the company had been exemplary. I made sure of it. 1 had built theproper relationships and was thrilled but not surprised when I learned that I hadadvanced as the front running candidate after the early rounds and first interview.The team that held the interview told me that I was the first choice. Beating theother candidates out, in the end 1 was up against one other woman who had juststarted at the company a few months prior. She was the wife of one of thecorporate attorneys. I knew through my own intelligence that she was unqualifiedfor the position because of her lack of experience in the industry and at thecompany, and her lack of technical knowledge. The morning I was called into the hiring manager's office I wasunprepared for what! would hear. She was \"sad to report\" that though I was themost qualified for the position and by far \"everyone's top choice, she was forcedby people far up the ladder to offer the job to the other candidate\". And just like 57

that I was reminded that on my own I was worth nothing in the game ofwhiteness. Today, I believe that i lost because I tried to compete on my ownagainst someone who had more social and political capital than i did. For a longtime afterward I wished that she would have lied to me and told me that I wasbeat out by serious competition. I told myself that I would have believed her. Thatit was better to have the illusion of equality like Reiko than to know for sure thatyour Blackness interpolated by Whites and returned to you said that you were \"anigger bitch\". This was a stark reality that I was unable to escape, something Ifelt powerless over. I learned that in the imagination of Whiteness - Black bodiesare worthless. And without attachment to White bodies they are dangerous. The Politics of Denial I remember sitting in that room around the table with my attorney Jim, aself assured, handsome, tall and slender white man. It was all so visibly civil withbusiness professionals exchanging polite conversations, adhering to a controlledconversational norm where tones remained low and speech was slowed so as todemonstrate care, caution and sensitivity. Through the rules of engagement asestablished by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission the dialogue wasforced around specific charges with carefully crafted language native to theirculture and foreign to mine. This ensured that affect, emotion, or non-linear, non-logic centered communication did not disrupt the proceedings. As I sat in my chair facing my former employer, their attorney and theFederal investigator assigned to my case, I could feel terror coursing through my 58

being. Sweat formed underneath my arms and I moved them closer to my bodyso that no one would notice the moisture on my clothing. I fought back the tearsweiied behind my eyes causing my nose sting and my breath to suspend. i wanted to abandon this struggle for justice that required me to constantlybe present with pain and oppression. I wanted so badiy to be in a psychologicallyand spiritually safe space, free from the interrogation of whiteness. When I hiredJim I did so not only because of his legal skill but also because he seemed toperfectly embody whiteness and privilege, something I did not have, i was surethat it would take someone like that to fight this battle. I had faced a regime ofinstitutional violence for some time and desperately needed to mitigate the lossof identity, family, community, self, and economy, i was experiencing spiritualand psychological warfare and couldn't name the enemy, their primary strategy,weapon of choice or my counter-strategy. Around that table I had no language, no voice, no narrative, no story. Iwas disembodied and stripped, void of emotion, spirit, and history. I was isolatedand disconnected from community forced to negotiate with these institutionalagents on my own. ! was merely a human commodity there employing twoattorneys and one government official. They were able to cut out pieces of me inorder to facilitate my industrial use. My body was sitting at the table but I was notthere. 1 felt as though their profession and their civility had made it possible tocommodity oppression. Somebody had figured out how to make money off of thesuffering of Black bodies. Industry has been created to represent the interests 59

and negotiations of the oppressed with other institutions (law, economy,education), because as they are constructed in Whiteness, their simple andinfantile minds are unable to speak for themselves. Their proper interests were toprotect their normative order and did not address the pain of those they claimedto represent. Nor do they contribute toward reclaiming wholeness, Most alarming,is that they in effect, alert beneficiaries of institutions that there is a possibleimpending threat and signal in institutiona! reinforcements to reorganize and forma protective line of defense or worse a line of offense. This continuesuninterrupted because at the tabie there is no place for me or other marginalizedidentities despite the sustained efforts of activists. We have no place at the tablebecause effective strategies are in place to ensure that it does not happen. I had joined a day shelter for women and children as the senior vice-president of volunteer resources. Among other forms of racialized covertdiscrimination I was subjected to racialized hazing. From the first week I arrived,on a daily basis I was the target of strategic tactics meant to usurp the politicalpower inherent in my position and the sociai power they feared I would earn.They feared my Black body, culture and positionaiity. They were comfortable withBlack people who would be dependent on them so that they could be in aposition of power. I've heard some people refer to this as the \"Great White hopesyndrome\". In their case it meant that as direct care workers for homelesswomen and children the Black people they engaged often were addicts,alcoholics, prostitutes, mental health clients, immigrants, or battered and abused 60

women. They could not commodity my body through making me the subject ofcare for the receipt of grant dollars. They did not get paid to take care of me. Mypresence in the organization challenged these women to engage me not from anuninvited maternalistic perspective but from a mutual space of reciprocity andrespect. They first had to believe I was their equal in order to begin. I found myself sucked into a sadistic game where they would dissect and probiematize my physical body and cultural performance and use that as the basis for acts of aggression. I allowed it and would try to appease their aggression in anyway I could. It was a year into this game before I realized what was happening. Each act of discrimination functioned as a small dose of poison to my spirit. Their strategy was to replace my identity with one of their own invention consistent with a larger national discourse of the deviance of Black bodies. For example, they would create and circulate stories about how I thought I was better than everyone else. It was an \"uppity nigger\" narrative that played on a racist belief that Whites were entitled to success, to the American dream. In this narrative, people of difference were social barriers to Whites unrealized ambitions/desires/material needs. This was particularly effective with people who resented upwardly mobile (educated, economically or socially privileged) Blacks, believing that they had pushed the boundaries of their social station in life and had violated God's natural order. 61

In a lecture I attended with key note speaker, social justice activistAngela Davis, she spoke to this phenomenon. During the question andanswer session, a young White male asked what her comment wouid befor the scarcity of college seats affluent White males were now facing as aresult of affirmative action policies, in University admissions process. Aproblem he saw as a crisis of White academic and class attrition. Dr.Davis replied, \"The question is why aren't you outraged that there are notenough college seats for all? The problem is that you haven't realized yetyour own (economic, social, political) poverty. If you were truly as affluentas you think you are, she said, you would have a seat.\" She wasunpacking for him his illusion of wealth and class, a fantasy of whitenessconstructed through the Black body, while dismantling his racedentitlement. My aggressors tactics were relentless in their execution andmerciless in its venom. They ranged from open hostility like sneak attackswhere they would privately create conflicts (outside of my presence) yell atme publicly at all staff meetings to force my engagement and give theappearance of an ongoing conflict where there was none, and sabotageworkplace projects. For the first year I did everything 1 could to bring an end to thesepuzzling and disruptive behaviors. I counseled these women. I helddialogues. I took them out for meals; breakfast and coffee at my expense. 62

I put the effort into getting to know them personally and sharing parts ofmyself with them. They complained that I was not vulnerable enough, thatI didn't cry publicly, that 1 walked too proud, spoke like ! was better thanthem, and was aloof. Ultimately, balancing the demands of a hugelearning curve for a demanding job, a pregnancy, a young child, marriageand this ongoing psychological and spiritual warfare became impossiblefor me. I consulted with my manager, the CEO, and my peer manager towhom the aggressors reported. They both coached me and i followedevery single suggestion they had. They expressed outrage to me privatelyadvancing their own theory that these women had a problem with mebecause I was a young Black woman in a position of authority. They toldme that my aggressors saw me as educated and privileged and having ahappy family. They theorized that this angered them because one hadbeen a homeless drug addict on the streets of New York and lost all of herchildren to the Department of Human Services. When I asked mymanager what I was to do about the fact that I was Black, had a family andeducated - they just stared at me blankly. They would just repeat theiranger and outrage in our private coaching sessions, giving me superficialempathy. But all of the daily fighting to keep my identity and spirit intactamidst the violence took a toll on my spirit, psyche, and body. Gamingitself is an unnatural state of being. As a result, I went into pre-term laborand delivered my second son five-weeks early. 63

As I iaid in my hospital bed, just after giving birth with my baby inthe neo-natal intensive care unit, the campaign of violence continued. Myboss calied me and told me that she was approached by my peer who hadconcerns and pitched for my termination. She assured me that I hadnothing to worry about. I had just undergone a performance review andwas getting an increase in pay because of my from my exemplaryperformance. I had confidence in my strong work performance. And inaddition to outstanding contributions to the agency, I had withstood all ofthe violence that had been thrown at me with incredible grace. Neveracting in hostility, anger, or aggression - like Martin Luther King Jr. I actedpeacefully. Toward the end, at home or in private with my manager orpeers I had episodes of nervous break downs. But publicly I allowed themto scream, yell, throw insults, and play psychological games at myexpense. I would pray most every night for release from this nightmare. Ireturned early from my maternity leave, fearful that I would lose my job if Iwasn't there to protect it. But 1 soon learned that there would be no end tothis constant state of terror until I took a stand. About a year a half into my employment, one of the women verballyassaulted me and physically threatened me after hours in my office. Hermanager just a few feet away just sat in her office and listened, choosingnot to come and help. Not immediately realizing that she knew what was 64

going on, I went into her office to share with her what had just transpiredand she ignored me, pretending as if i wasn't there. Believing that thisviolence was escalating now to the physical, and that the stakes ofviolence had increased by the imminent threat of more institutions such aslaw enforcement becoming involved, I immediately emailed my boss andpressed for intervention and protection. I had invested a substantialamount of effort and my own resources trying to resolve theseschizophrenic episodes with no success. With this new development Idemanded that the agency put a stop to what they knew was racialdiscrimination. Once I did that the violence toward me increased, with the CEOnow positioning me as having a personality conflict and asking me toattend mediation. What was once described as race based opposition wasnow being positioned as a normal conflict between two co-workers thathad gotten out hand. Once I saw them begin to deny the politics of whatwas happening I knew I had lost. I remembered the lessons I had learnedyears before. Black people were to remain invisible. They were niggerswho didn't deserve the rights and privileges of White citizens. Now fullyseeing the reverberation of race-based institutional discrimination, Isubmitted my letter of resignation and hired an attorney. After receivingmy letter of resignation, the CEO wrote back (Appendix A) and asked meto reconsider my resignation. She chose to ignore my primary concerns of 65

race based discrimination, instead inventing a narrative of individual- interpersonal conflict, to counter my own narrative of race based discrimination. The escalation of the violence, the organization's sanctions of the violence and the denial of protection resulted in my constructive termination, forcing my resignation. All that had been witnessed by myself, my manager and others were denied as having ever happened by the newly constructed knowledge created by this institution. The material stakes were high for me. i risked losing our household's only income. I was the sole breadwinner at that time, a loss of medical benefits and a damage to my professional reputation within the state's tight knit non-profit sector. In addition to that I had experienced profound trauma for the past nearly two years and i needed to recover. Everyday that passed without being whole increased my loss. Rewriting History I found myself at one point working at a highly competitive businesschamber that was considered to be Colorado's economic and political power hub.The state's biggest players (politicians, local government, small business owners,corporations, and various industries such as energy/airline/bio-tech/nano-techetc.) came together at the chamber to do deals that affected the larger businesscommunity, legislative law and public policy. Positioned in the center of theorganization's culture were White, heterosexual, economically privileged men.And though there were other kinds of people around, culturally they were 66

considered invisible. Through everyday disciplining, employees learned how tobehave, learned the unstated values of the organization, and who was important.For example, a couple of days out of the week, about mid-afternoon Beryl, Sean,Toya and I would gravitate toward a common meeting place for a chat break. Wefirst always checked in with each other quietly, never walking together so as notto bring attention to ourselves. We knew our actions would be frowned upon. Notbecause of the chatting - but because they were suspicious of Blacks gatheringtogether unsupervised. They didn't know what we were talking about and thatmade them feel uncomfortable. We all took responsibility for looking over ourshoulders when we talked, and when someone we couldn't trust walked by; weknew we needed to disperse. But until that happened we enjoyed stealingmoments of community together and being visible where we saw one another. Inbetween those moments we faded back into the background silently doing ourwork. At the chamber, storytelling was another way that disciplining was done.One afternoon an executive held a business rally intended to energize a selectgroup of business, non-profit and government leaders from across the metroarea, in it's closing, the executive through story instructed everyone to remembertheir roots, where they came from and where they should aspire to be. Hedramatically held up Ben Stapleton as a hero to be fashioned after. Encouragingpeople to be innovators and contributors to the state's economic development,this historian pointed to Stapleton's accomplishments; a successful military 67

career, postmaster, attorney, Denver police magistrate, and mayor of Denverspanning 20 years. In other words, it was a moment of White bonding where hepraised Stapleton's service to upholding the maintenance of Whiteness. Creditedwith oversight of the completion of projects such as Denver's municipal airport(Stapleton airport), civic center, and various mountain parks, his achievementswere received with cheers and thunderous applause. That story remixed, toldfrom a critical perspective would have acknowledged that Stapleton's rise topower came from his allegiance and political alliances to the Colorado Ku KluxKianXV] (KKK). He was a major investor into Whiteness As Property (Harris,1993), where the ideology of White privilege is institutionally (legally, politically)protected. Stapleton was the beneficiary of political and social power from hisinvolvement in the KKK, Though he laid economic infrastrucfural bricks acrossColorado institutions, he was a major contributor to the State's now normalizedcultural legacy of discrimination against Blacks, Mexicans, Catholics, and Jewishpeople. Non-critical storytelling allows us to strip naked for clear viewpsychological, material, and spiritual violence, confronting a contemporaryproblem in our cultural memory.Narrative: La Madre When God sun kissed me brown it was a gift of more than what meets theeye. You see, people whose bodies are not marked, White people, often conflatemy Blackness with the pigment of my skin, the texture of my hair, the shape ofmy nose - my fips - my thighs - and my hips. Black people have been studied as 68

curiosities by Western societies since the beginning of the nineteenth century(Thompson, 2008). Outsiders examine me in order to categorize the tone of myvoice, its pitch, cadence, or diaiect as they try to classify its Blackness. Studyingthe way I walk and the way I hold my head; they measure the strides that 1 take,wondering if 1 am too self-assured, too confident, or know my place. They dissectmy person, reducing my identity to phenotype or mis-interpreting my culturalperformances in order to \"promote notions of Western racial, economic,technoiogical ... superiority, infantilizing Blacks as needy recipients of Westerndiscipline, religion, civilization, and industry\" (Thompson, 2008, p.27). I havenever snapped my fingers in a dramatic sweep and said \"girlfriend\". Nor have 1ever twisted my neck in a circular motion with my hand on my hip. Yet countlesstimes I have had White people perform these movements for me in response tomy articulation of political ideas. i find it difficult to convince outsiders differently. Foolishly some say, Icontinue to look for opportunities to share my perspective of blackness as acultural identity of beauty that is about spirit, history, and family. My boys think I am the most beautiful woman who ever graced this earth.In the early mornings, my seven-year old crawls into bed with me and wakes meup by stroking the side of my hair and face and says \"i love you mama\". Myyoungest and I spend our days together. He attends preschool for a few hoursout of the week and for the remaining time he attends business meetings withme, goes to the gym, hold play dates with friends, or we study together at the 69

coffee shop where he brings his bright red and blue laptop to do his \"homework\"and drink chocolate milk while I do my research. I will mourn our togetherness,when he goes to school next year to begin his 6.5-hour daily schooling. There issomething very particular and special about the love affair between children andtheir mothers, especially Black boys. Ask anyone of them and they'll tell you so.This is the case for me and my boys. I spend my days washing their clothes,planning their home cooked meals, attending their field trips and peeking aroundcorners to be sure that they are where they said they would be. There is nomoment in which I ever feei childless. Since I felt their cailing from heaven ! havebeen spiritually connected to them. Our rhythms are joined and when they arepained, 1 am and when they are peaceful, I am. Everyday we spontaneously call out to each other. \"I love you mom\" they'llsay.\"! love you too baby,\" I respond. I take nearly every choice I have to makeon their behalf seriously. Where we live, what schools in what school district theyattend, what they eat, what they learn, how they live in the everyday... are justsome of these choices. Their father, grandfathers, grandmothers, aunts, uncles,cousins, and family friends also join me in their care and active love for mychildren. Family makes up my boy's world. We work hard to be there for them, toteach them, to love them, and to share in their becoming. All of this is not easy toaccomplish; finances, divorce, careers, graduate school and racial politics arejust a few of the things that threaten to interfere with our way of life, but wepersist. 70

My blackness is not merely locked into my body, more accurately it is thespiritual connection that I have to people of this earth, across time who haveexperienced that same kind of joy and pain that I have. I am a mother whobelongs to a community of oppressed people whose bodies are marked andterrorized. The specific markings and the ways in which oppression is performedis inconsequential to our sharing of space and belonging to each other. As amestiza i felt like my maternal Mexicaness and my paternal Africaness felt sounified to me. My abuela cooked tortillas, enchiladas, and chorizo and potatoesand my nana cooked fried chicken, biscuits, and okra. Those things were specialand distinct. The Spanish and English languages were differences. Even the artand family traditions were different, as were some of the ways in which theyexperienced the world. But the cultural tie that binds in me lives in the spiritualrealm. I come from a community of people who fearlessly pursue their humanityand have a tradition of laying their bodies on the line to do so. This is the history that i have with the constant tension between whatBlackness is for me and what White people want my Blackness to represent.Narrative: Et Nino Moreno My first-bom son, Dominique, was born on June 12th, 1995. At birth, heinherited legacies of love and Blackness. His dad and I never had a talk with himabout what it meant to be a Black man (as he got older we had regular talksabout how to negotiate a Black identity in a White dominated world). Much ofwhat he learned about his embodied racial identity came from his own 71

experiences in the world. Like the first time he was called nigger- or watchinghis dad worry from the constant surveillance and entrapment of law enforcementfor things like driving. He was an only child for 7 years before he had siblings, sowe spent a lot of time learning and loving each other. At 14 he is 6'1 with a leanmuscular frame, a brilliant smile, and a cool swag. He's a charmer, and peoplegenerally love to be around him. A child who has always set his own pace, he isunphased by most of modernity's demands, like time and materialism. He wearshis blackness as a crown of beauty. As parents, to the extent that we could, we have provided a safe andprotected space in the world for him where he could develop and live his identity.His way of being in the world is whole, united in his body, spirit, and mind. Hepublicly and privately celebrates life freely through joy, laughter, and music.Dominique is generous with his communication, uttering random noises,expressing his opinions, and emoting with his face and body. I love that abouthim. Stylistically, he performs blackness different than I do. We even have verydifferent cultural experiences, given his paternal family's southern roots and hismaternal family's Mexican roots. But we share a value system that is rooted in anAfrican cosmological perspective. I asked him, what does Blackness mean foryou? He wrote this poetic response for me: It seems like White people ask the same damn questions everytime. Did you have braids when you were a baby? Why can't I say the \"N\" word? Do 72

you play basketball? In other words, what does it mean to be Black? Well this is for confused White people and also for my brothers and sisters. Soak in these words: We take this shit We take their whips We rode their ship We took their dips We survive They made us bleed We gave them peace They used our body's, played for keeps We forgave them as our family's layed in permanent sleep We love They took our mothers sold them away We fell on our knees not to surrender, but to pray We should be in Africa, now we are slaves God told us to let go of anger so we can be saved We pray We shoot the ball from the three We race for gold win with glee I'm not gonna lie We are freakin athletic 73

We have been beaten we have been used But we don't take shit cause we don't lose We are Black White people don't be confused Think twice before trying to take out our fuse Through spoken word Dominique positions himself as a responder to anintruder of the self. He articulates an embodied frustration from living subjectivityunder a White gaze. His words reference a historical self within the Africandiasporic community and a spiritual hope that empowers him with authority,agency, and a faith that undergirds his resistance. Dominique's Blackness is a politic that is semiotically andphenomenologically mapped onto his body and his spirit. His continued risetoward a critical consciousness fills me with awe, thanks and Joy. I am watchinghim become a warrior, and I don't know where his path will take him. But Ibelieve that he will fight for freedom for humanity, for himself, and for others. Itmakes me sensitive to the fact that perhaps in the spiritual realm I was chosen tobe his mother, to help him prepare for his life's work - that the world reallyneeded him at this time. That deepens my desire to do my work of dismantlingthe barriers that are in the way of warriors walking their path. I am so thankful for Dominique and I am in awe that we are here in thisspace together. I am proud of who he is as a Black man. And if formalizededucation is a tool that will assist him in his work, as his advocate and his mother 74

1 will see to its avaiiability and access for him. At least for this leg, Dominique and! were paired to go on this journey together. In reflection, I recognize that now. Ina perfection of timing only the universe could plan, our counter narratives toequality and access in education started at the same time; he in kindergarten andI in college. A Method for IVSy Madness As a young researcher I came to my university graduate program wantingan education that would give me tools that could be effective in fighting the kindsof oppression I had known. I had over a decade of witnessing marginalizedpeople become crippled by institutional violence that left them economically,spiritually, and psychologically damaged. I knew from my own personaltransformative work that any study I designed about oppression had to not onlyobserve the body, but also the spirit. I wanted a holistic way of studying culturethat included, people, their mind-body-spirit, and their environmental world. After two foundational qualitative research courses I was still struggling tofind methodology that could serve my research interests. For example, an earlyclass project that I had done in my first qualitative research class was to sit in agrocery store coffee house and observe. I watched, and watched, and watchednot knowing what I was looking for. I was superficially writing what I saw down,because that's what the method called for. It felt so silly to me to pretend that Iwas an official knower of the world there to observe the peculiar through 75

surveillance. ! had no idea what I was looking for but waited for it because myprofessor told me that it would emerge. Well it never really did emerge, but I did meet a woman that I wanted tolearn more about. I interviewed Sandra, a deli cierk at the store who warmlygreeted me and shared her thoughts on her role as a fundraiser for breast cancerresearch at the request of her employer. We developed a rapport with each otherlearning that we were both from California and had family there. In seconds sheskipped from laughter to tears. As Sandra spoke about her sister she began tocry. Her sister had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Most of the women in herfamily had been. She feared that she too had a cancerous tumor and told meabout the lumps in her breast. The insurance coverage she had at work didn'tfully cover mammograms and she couldn't afford care. As a condition of hercorporate employment Sandra had to raise research and treatment dollars for acorporate organization, but she herself was too economically poor to accesshealth care. She was fluent in the Spanish language but had a limited commandof English, which she said, also prevented her from being able to find resources. The observation method I was using had no language or facilitation toattend to the pain that Sandra expressed. I was uncomfortable with the position Ihad placed myself in as a researcher who came to observe her and mine herinterview for information that would sculpt a narrative I wanted to create. Inadhering to the method I collected more data unrelated to her story throughadditional observation. Out of the dataset I was charged with drawing themes 76

that could produce interesting findings. What bothered me most was that thismethod couldn't address the poiitics of what was happening in Sandra's storyand couldn't care for her, and couldn't produce any action that would address themultiple problems I suspected were there. So I kept searching for a method with an ethic that took issue with thedissection of people into parts, instead treating people holisticaiiy; mind, body,and spirit. ! didn't want to be positioned as a researcher as the possessor of thegaze but one that placed me in community with other researcher participants,where research was one of my responsibilities as a community member, i alsosought a method that could politically interrogate structural systems and locatethe functioning of power relative to the lived experiences of marginalized andoppressed people. Finally, I wanted to know more about the human spirit andwanted a method that would allow me to do that. As I took other classes in my graduate coursework, I increasingly had aneed for a social justice tool that could get close to both oppressor andoppressed in the same conversations. I took seven method classes in ail overthree years and in each one 1 tried to locate methods that would get me closer tomy goals. 1 was surprised by the amount of pushback I received from my graduatecohort and faculty. I recall on the second day of a quantitative methods class ofeight students, we were put into small groups to discuss our ideas for individualprojects that would become our two-term research studies. When it was my turn 77

to speak, I told the group that I wondered how the spirit couid be understoodquantitatively. 1 was looking for thoughts and ideas that could help me think aboutthis. The group got quiet and then the first student spoke. They wondered why 1would bring trouble on myself by even thinking about something like this. Theytold me that I was intentionally trying to provoke and antagonize the professor.Even so, in their opinion, just my bringing up the idea was of low intelligencebecause such a thing was impossible and had no purpose anyhow. Theysuggested that I abandon my \"radicalness\" and step in line with where they wereat. Ultimately, it was my methods class in critical indigenous methodologiesthat helped lead me to develop a method for this study. 1 found inspiration inresearchers like Cynthia Dillard, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and Sandy Grande whoapproached their study's methods with creativity and ethics specific to indigenousand marginalized people. Their works, in and of themselves, were political actsthat were committed to advancing social justice. These researcher's approachwere grounded and in service of their raced, ethnic and cultural communities-where their political selves lie. I learned that methods could be developed out ofepistemes central to the researchers positionality, where non-western, female,non-White, and other non-dominant ways of knowing couid be fore-grounded.Patricia Hill Collin's work from Black Feminist epistemology (2000) which led toher significant contribution in the application of the sociological theory of thematrix of domination (2000) to critical cultural studies, which connects the logics 78

of race, gender, and class as intersecting and overlapping oppressions, is oneexample of what decolonizing methods can produce. To make visible the structural elements within organizations thatparticipate in discrimination as a logic within oppression, the method I designedfor this study selected five counter narratives of people whose bodies hadwitnessed institutional violence. Where institutional records would deny their ownactive and interested participation in injustice, as an act of politics, the embodiedstories of these five people in concert with my own, speak differently. The collection of knowledge through embodied witnessing to oppressionthat phenomenologically and empirically share a spiritual and psychologicalspace is what I calf the \"community of the oppressed\" method. The operation andnature of this method resists the forced isolation and individualism thatoppression imposes on the spirit, a decolonizing effort. For this study I am usingtheir testimony of institutional covert discrimination to: 1) develop a safe spacefor me to write my own counter narrative to be in conversation with the others inthis community; and 2) produces new knowledge that names and makes visiblethe phenomenon of institutional covert discrimination and makes familiar itsoperation, social effects, and implications for social justice leaders. The members of this community were selected based on sharedknowledge and shared social justice politics. These narratives together unearthknowledge that cannot be known individually and that establish the connectionsnecessary for macro analysis. 79

Finally, a note about healing in using \"community of the oppressed\" asmethod: Every person that is qualified to speak about discrimination knows pain.And the costs of that pain are heavy. You can't know it unti! you have been there.This method offers a healing for the researcher of their own pain as they sit withother people who have a deep knowing and can share the burden. Within all ofthe faculties that love requires is a profound internalization of the spirit of theother. As a researcher I sat with the haunting narratives of spiritual and corporealoppression of the others in my constructed community. In connecting to their painand suffering where 1 locate myself, I came to healing. I sat with each narrative and developed a careful listening (Minh-ha, 1989)that allowed me to analyze what I heard. After reading each narrative once, Ithen reread each narrative and piaced them in conversation with each otherthrough my imagination and writing. The emerging themes that rose betweenthem, that is the constant connections that were found, were the framingprinciples that guided the writing of my own journal and final counter narrative. This method asked and answered: what is knowledge? What knowledgecounts? How is it created and for what purpose? Counter narratives developedthrough the \"community of the oppressed\" can map onto bodies a fullyrecognizable system of oppression in order to make meaningful connections todraw from. 80

Chapter Three: Profile of an Institution (Mapping Institutional Identities) Today I woke up, got dressed, got the kids dressed and took each of themto their learning institutions; Micah's elementary and Cruz's pre-schooi. Friday,before I could get on with my day, I had to spend an hour in an institution, mybank, in the past week, I have spent approximately thirty-five hours in aninstitution, libraries. Our everyday life includes the negotiation of our needs anddesires, our relationships to and with institutions. They are in our modern lives, apredictable constant and the one relationship we cannot divorce ourselves from.But when it comes to institutions, how much do we know about who we areengaging In a relationship with? What are the identities of institutions?Successful intercultural relationships that promote care, trust, and reciprocity-require a working knowledge of each other; institutions are no exception.Knowing who we are in relationship with is an important part of successfulcommunication. Getting to know identity is dependent on the availability of information andthe transparency of cultural signification. In the United States, theories ofwhiteness and modernity formations are the historical and political of institutionalidentity. Not understanding the nuances of an institution's cultural identity can bea disadvantage to outsiders, as understanding can be an advantage. Mostpeople don't understand the genre of identities (cultural, political, raced, gender 81

etc.) to include institutions. I argue that they do. This chapter is a contribution to acritical mapping of institutional identity. Though locally contextualized andparticular to the institution of education I tease out a larger argument that morebroadly establishes institutions as a cultural identity. The site for exploration in this study is the Cherry Creek public schooldistrict and the University of Denver as local education institutions. I identify eachof these schools as institutions of economic, political, social, and raced privilege.Each has launched organizational efforts to reform their institutions of whitenessinto inclusive organizations. These conditions and the unique relationshipbetween the researcher/participant and the institutions make them a choicelocation for this study. Theoretical Framings The modern world is now structured as a power domain in which political, economic, and ideological processes interact directly, regardless of distance, and where historical agents in very different places are obliged to address aspects of identical problems. ...Social and cultural variety everywhere increasingly responds to, and is managed by, categories brought into play by modern forces (Asad, 1992, 333). Talal Asad provides a helpful frame for understanding the inventions ofpower in the modern state. One such invention are laws, which he argues areenacted as much to enable or disable its population than to enforce compliance.\"Law is an element in political strategies - especially strategies for destroying oldoptions and creating new ones\" (Asad, 1992, p.335). Institutions are both legallyand socially constructed and are mutually reinforcing. 82

If we consider institutions to include the social as \"complex social formsthat reproduce themselves such as governments, the family, human languages,universities, hospitals, business corporations, and legal systems\" (Giddens 1984:24) we can understand institutional orders to be modes of discourse, politicalinstitutions, economic institutions and legal institutions. Social institutions possess dimensions of structure, function and culture.They can also be institutions as systems of organizations, like marriage orpolitical parties (Republican/Democratic), institutions are dynamic and evolvingentities with histories and narratives. There is then, a historical and culturalmemory to institutions, internally and externally influenced, through environmentand the everyday activity of institutional life. Where the everyday includes actionsof violence and other kinds of human social phenomenon, these imprints arestamped onto institutional identity and shape its culture. It is the informal dimensions of institutions that largely constituteinstitutional culture. \"This notion comprises the informal attitudes, values, norms,and the ethos or \"spirit\" which pervades an institution. Culture in this sensedetermines much of the activity of the members of that institution, or at least themanner in which that activity is undertaken\" (Miller, 2008). The Personhood of institutional Identity Institutions that are organizations are most often in the United Stateslegally organized as corporations. Richard Grossman and Frank Adams discussthe hidden histories behind national corporate identities. \"Today's business 83

corporation is an artificial creation, shielding owners and managers whilepreserving corporate privilege and existence. Artificial or not, corporations havewon more rights than people have -...\" (Grossman & Adams, 1996). It was our legal institutions; judicial authority, courts, and legislative bodiesthat laid the infrastructure of power and privilege that comported a large part ofcorporate identity. In 1886, \"the Supreme court ruled in Santa Clara County v.Southern Pacific Railroad that a private corporation was a \"natural person\" underthe U.S. Constitution and thus sheltered by the Bill of Rights and the FourteenthAmendment\" (Grossman & Adams, 1996, p. 384). Shamelessly, corporationsused the fourteenth amendment, which had been added to the constitution toprotect freed slaves in order to establish themselves in the eyes of the law as aperson, to secure the rights and privileges of a person. \"Judges had positionedthe corporation to become \"America's representative social institution,\" \"aninstitutional expression of our way of life\" (p. 385). The establishment of personhood in institutions begs the question of theiridentity. What is nature of an institution's identity? What does it look like? How isit embodied? Often institutional identity is treated in business, marketing, andorganization literature as related to constructions of property that thecorporations/organizations own. For example, corporate branding, the packagedarticulation or expression of organization's image is often conflated with identity.The regular co modification of branding, a pseudo-identity is apolitical, 84

ahistoricai, and disembodied, it is advertised as the real deal when it fact it isoperating as a cover for the organizations real identity, which possesses itspersonhood that is tied to the organizational body, its culture. Institutional identity is embodied through its culture composed oflanguage, ritual, norms, and enacted values. Its identification can be located in itseveryday culture, where decisions, stones, values, and experiences are lived.From this point of view, mapping identity begins with reading what has beenscripted onto the organization's culture. Misreading image or branding as institutional identity can be costly forpeople of marginalized or non-dominant identities. The University of Denverwhich projects an image of Inclusive Excellence is one example of this. In theChancellor's diversity statement it is stated: We believe that one mark of a leading university is its commitment to diversity and the concomitant practice of recognizing and valuing the rich experiences and world views of individuals and groups. Diversity yields many benefits to institutions that successfully cultivate diversity within their educational, research and community service activities. By achieving and maintaining a multicultural constituency of administrators, faculty, students and staff, an institution successfully connects with the demographic reality of society. The institution gains an edge in educational and research opportunities and in preparing students for living and working in an increasingly diverse and global society. The University of Denver community is strongly committed to the pursuit of excellence by including and integrating individuals who represent different groups as defined by race, ethnicity, gender, sexuai orientation, socioeconomic background, age, disability, national origin and religion. The University's commitment to diversity in particular requires that we attract members of historically under-represented racial and ethnic groups. To create a rich academic, intellectual and cultural environment for everyone, our concern must extend beyond representation to genuine 85

participation. Our commitment must entail the creation of initiatives and programs designed to capitalize on the benefits of diversity in education, research and service, in sum, our actions must speak louder than our words. We also believe that in order to achieve our goals, we must create a campus climate with an ethos of respect, understanding and appreciation of individual and group differences. We must encourage the pursuit of social justice within and outside the institution. A positive campus climate requires the University's sincere willingness to include all its diverse stakeholders in the decision-making process. No individual or group can be marginalized or systematically excluded. We aim for change within the University and ultimately, beyond the University. We seek to be leaders in the creation of a more inclusive and just world. For more information about our efforts to ensure that the University of Denver continues to be an exceptional private institution that seeks to achieve excellence through diversity ...(Office of the Chancellor, University of Denver, 2010). Branding is the identity projection of the possessor. It may or may not beconsistent with the actual embodied institutional identity. And though you canmanipulate a brand, you cannot manipulate and control organizational culture.Culture is a living-breathing organism, which is continually being shaped byinternal and external environments. And institutional identity, a manifested andembodied knowing and its expression is shaped by culture and realized in theeveryday, conscious or unconscious and acts as a cultural force through itsclaims of rights and privilege. From a communication perspective, my interest in institutional identityconcerns itself with the corporations™\" who claim personhood and in doing soembody identity. How do these identities negotiate interculturally with other 86

identities that by their very nature politically challenge them? In educationa!institutions that have staked their identity in norms, values, culture and rituals ofwhiteness; how do they negotiate an intercultural space that embody identitieswith norms, values, culture, and rituals that stand in contestation? Within aneducation context the following section speaks toward the development ofunderstanding, in answering these questions.Education As Institution: Ways of Knowing The depth of America's education system's burrow into institutional privilegebecame visible when five year old Sarah Roberts and her father Benjaminbrought a legal suit against the city of Boston in 1849 for refusing to admit andeducate children of color in White schools. The Massachusetts Supreme JudicialCourt dismissed the case, finding no constitutional basis for the suit (Roberts v.City of Boston). This first legal challenge to segregation in schools was a strandof intergenerationa! and intercultural negotiated acts of resistance that movedacross histories, geographies, and time. While eruptions in a larger war fighting for and against racial equality couldbe witnessed across the country, the next public institutional battle in educationwould come when five cases from across the country; Delaware, Kansas, SouthCarolina, Virginia and Washington D.C. combined into one case, Brown v. Boardof Education, to be brought before the Supreme Court in 1954. Seeking equalityin education through integrated schools, Brown v. Board of Education citedcomplaints of inferior conditions of school buildings and classrooms, deficient 87

curriculum, pupil-teacher ratio, teacher training, lack of extra curricular activityprograms, denial of access to superior schools because of race, transportation,teacher's salaries, and lack of schools. In two cases, despite lower court orders,school officials ignored those orders to resolve issues of inequality, forcing theirmatters to be brought before the Supreme Court (Brown v. Board of Education). Effectively, the 1954 United States Supreme Court decisions: dismantled the legal basis for racial segregation in schools and other public facilities and laid the foundation for shaping future national and international policies regarding human rights. . . . The laws and policies struck down by this court decision were products of the human tendencies to prejudge, discriminate against, and stereotype other people by their ethnic, religious, physical, or cultural characteristics. Ending this behavior as a legal practice caused far reaching social and ideologica! impiications, which continue to be felt throughout our country. The Brown decision inspired and galvanized human rights struggles across the country and around the world (Brown v. Board.org). Every major geographic region (North, South, East, West, and the Mid-West) of the United States connected to the struggle for the basic human right toaccess excellence in education under conditions of equality as established by theFederal government. Colorado was also touched by the struggle. Uniquelypositioned within a story of White privilege in education, Colorado's stronghold inits institutional cultures of whiteness provide rich historical ground to understandthe complexities of covert institutional discrimination. Wild Wild West: Connecting Land, History, and Education The Colorado historical landscape is made up of various individuals andcultural groups who have across time imprinted the land, its institutions and itsinhabitants with their experiences, epistemologies, communication behaviors and 88

rituals. Embedded within them are truths, identities, and stones that haveinfluenced larger social trajectories, interior institutions are key didactic narrativesthat brightly illuminate Colorado's cultural story and provide insight intocontemporary institutional dilemmas such as their current state of education. A composite of select headlines that articulate this institutions currentchallenges might include; the achievement gap across state school districts,Denver Public School's ongoing education crisis™\", Cherry Creek school district'sfailed attempts at providing equity in education, and the University of Denver'spersistent domination of whiteness and its sustained participation in racedinstitutional discrimination. In a critical historical reveal, one can locate stories ofpeople who have contributed their spirits, lives, and strength from livedoppression into collective institutional culture. However these efforts must be intentionally pursued as they arecommonly thought of as marginal to the written public narratives of Colorado'shistory, which begin instep with a greater national grand narrative of the West(Hall, 1992). Those narratives often labor to reinforce white privilege andindividualism. They tell a story that begins when whites settle rough terrain andencounter strange peoples who threaten their existence. In these chroniclesWhites eventually and heroically overcome the evils of difference that stand inthe way of their purity, traditions, and vision, making it possible to lay thefoundation for future generations to prosper and uphold the American way of life. 89

My people are located outside of this narrative as the evil ones who stoodin the way or the wild ones who needed to be civilized. ! am a part of the AfricanDiaspora, In the western narrative, Africans were wild animals of the junglebrought over to the Americas by businessmen and sold into slavery where theycouid be domesticated by proper and earnest colonizers, then early Americans.This narrative and its iterations have been told again and again through mediumslike movies, textbooks, visual art, songs, literature, cultural rituals, and everydaytalk. Such representations and mythologies have circulated, becoming part ofeveryday culture where they are regarded as part of the natural world order. Inthis socio-historical transcript white people are in the center of a world that theycreated. in contrast to this epistemic center of knowing, I understand the world ascommunal and outside a modern notion of 'time' as material and as master. Timein a postmodern world is regarded as an essential technological tool functioningas a spirit of domination (Zerzan, 1999) that serves to move world centers fromcommunity to individual. When I form social and historical narratives they areshaped around spiritual, embodied, and relational ways of knowing. Theconsideration of time here is cyclical and nonlinear, absent of past, present orfuture orientations, in this space historical narratives run parallel, neitherprivileging an individual or group but considering them as part of one another.You could no more tell your story without connecting to other's stones in thecorporeal and the spiritual. With my home located in the Diaspora I acknowledge 90

that I am disconnected from the Sand, its people, the local histories, and traditionsof indigenous ancestry. The meaning of a cultural and spiritual identity ripe inconsciousness for me connects to life within community. Here, every individual issituated within a borderless community of people grounded in a struggle todevelop a world where the foci of life's work and its corresponding politics is inthe interest of building cosmic connections with meaning that reach beyond theself. From this perspective, narratives are more than just historical accountings,offering perspectives on what was and its influence on who one is. Narratives inthis sense are connections between people that labor to provide criticalmeanings for our continued work. Understanding cultural identity as theexpression of our spirits and humanity markers stories as a fertilizer toward ourunderstandings of what is and what must be done. This makes the move from agrand narrative as foundational to all cultural identities and their epistemoiogiesto collective narratives spanning time and space and drawing from morecommunal epistemoiogies, necessary. From this place I write about Colorado'sWild West, as a community troubled by its raced intercultural living, its influenceon our corporate landscape and participation in our present everyday. Colorado Sand Creek Massacre 1 shall begin characterizing Colorado's relationship to intercultural violencebetween institutions and raced cultural groups with the 1864 Sand CreekMassacre. In 2008, 89.7% of Colorado citizens were White and 1.2% of thepopulation American Indian (census.gov). However, prior to the arrival of white 91