Yes, Reimagine! (If not during a pandemic when might we?)

Our fourteenth installment features two brilliant women Takiema Bunche Smith and Jody Drezner Alperin, with our host Courtney J. Boddie from the Teaching Artistry with Courtney J. Boddie Podcast, who are all fighting for equitable arts education. 

We tend to focus on institutions, but what about the individuals housed within? Just like the saying “You cannot love someone unless you love yourself”, similar logic applies to changing systems within institutions; it starts with the individual. 

Do White people know what a racially liberated world looks like? 

Alperin, a self identifying White woman, articulates that White people need to admit that they do not know. An unknown due to lack of experience as an BIPOC individual. When our White counterparts are prompted to explain their relationships with racism, often they deflect the question by referencing others who have committed racist acts. Yet, “everyone’s socialization has been racialized and many are clueless,” says Smith. 

Intention is up for debate as well, as we have Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) who are constructing Diversity/Equity/Accessibility/Inclusion plans from a White lens where Black, Indigenous and People of Color are not consulted. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and other countless victims at the hands of police, has invoked urgency among institutions (especially PWIs) in order to comfort the public of their anti-racism. It has become checking boxes instead of acknowledging a long lasting process. Alperin explains that this work is all about relationship building where BIPOC are brought in at the beginning instead of the very end (i.e. Tokenism), because without it there can be no trust. 

Anti-racist work requires White people to participate, therefore, for our White counterparts who are successfully doing the work, they need to gather other White people to practice because so often the work falls on BIPOC individuals. The reality is that we must do the work in our respective groups before coming together. It is like homework, if you do not do it then you cannot understand the frameworks involved; ignorance. 

This notion that Whiteness is the supreme is held strong throughout the globe, which forms an unawareness to other ways of life. Consequently, due to the trauma porn White individuals gravitate towards, many BIPOC experiences are classified with struggle causing indirectly psychological associations to weakness, often remedied in the form of White Savior Complex.  Bridging the gap between BIPOC and White individuals is the ultimate goal, but the relationship will continue to suffer unless individuals and communities are willing to learn about one another. Society has built respect for Whiteness while questioning any other identity. 

Instead of targeting institutions, we must hold accountable the individuals. The end of racism will only happen, as Michael J. Bobbitt has explained, when White people give up power. This means examining multiple experiences and asking oneself difficult questions. Smith recommends asking this: What does freedom mean? 

Join us next week when Courtney interviews Cardozie Jones who is deeply committed to supporting organizations, companies, and institutions in identifying and cultivating a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Cardozie believes that the heaviness of the work must not be experienced as insurmountable; he approaches each engagement as an opportunity for professional communities to engage in deep reflection and action to create change that is both necessary and possible.

Takiema Bunche Smith has worked as an executive leader, education professional, and parent activist, for over two decades. By providing culturally responsive leadership at the intersection of theory, policy and practice, she envisions and builds a culture of anti-oppression and racial equity for children, adults and communities at large. 

As a leader in early and middle childhood education, she has conducted professional development, program advisement and executive coaching to a variety of non-profit and corporate clients across the United States and Sweden, including Carnegie Hall, New York City’s Department of Health and Jonkoping University. In her staff role, she is currently Executive Director, Center on Culture, Race and Equity at Bank Street College and has worked at the executive level for a variety of organizations including Sesame Workshop, FirstStepNYC Early Education Leadership Institute and University Settlement Society.

In her role as president of Anahsa Educational Consulting, Takiema is a highly sought after speaker, panelist and lecturer on the topics of anti-racism, disrupting anti-Black racism in education, culturally responsive and sustaining practices, and parent and community empowerment, and has written numerous articles for outlets such as The Washington Post. 

Formally trained as a doula and Zumba instructor, Takiema is passionate about creating a culture of radical self-care, particularly as it relates to professional environments. She also co-leads weekly wellness meetings, called Humanity First Chats for working caregivers across the country to connect and reflect on dismantling white supremacy, patriarchy and anti-Black racism in their own lives, and the lives of their children and communities.

She holds three Master’s degrees in Early Childhood & Elementary Education from Bank Street College of Education, Urban Education Policy from the CUNY Graduate Center, and from NYU Wagner’s School for Public Service.

Takiema lives in Brooklyn, New York and is spending a lot of time figuring out how to support her teenager in self-directed learning projects, while she works remotely during a global pandemic.  She knows she is not alone in this!

Follow Takiema on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Jody Drezner Alperin is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Off The Page, an arts education and theatre company.  Off The Page works with young people in and outside of school, exploring issues they are most passionate about and creating new works of theatre with them and for them.

Off The Page collaborated with playwright Finnegan Kruckemeyer and youth artists, many of them immigrants themselves, to create A SONG TO BRING YOU HOME, a story of migrants from ten different places in the world through time, including a space alien from the future.

They are the adapters of ALL AMERICAN BOYS, based on the award-winning novel by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, which explores the violent arrest of a Black teenager, the white teenager who witnesses it, and how the arrest impacts their communities over the course of a week. Off The Page has staged ALL AMERICAN BOYS as an immersive, promenade production in a Brooklyn middle school, as a reading in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA, as a radio play at New York Public Radio, and as the opening performance of the TYA/USA National Festival & Conference, produced by The Alliance Theatre. Their script is now available for license through Playscripts.

They recently wrapped the first season of Missing From the Museum, an audience-driven family adventure series that combines interactive online performances with exploring art, artists, and museums in real life. This was an historic, cross-country collaboration between Off The Page, Brave Little Company (Houston, TX), Trike Theatre (NW Arkansas), and Dare to Dream Theatre (Manitowoc/Sheboygan, WI).

Currently, they are developing their adaptation of Kip Wilson’s WHITE ROSE, the true story of student resistance in 1940’s Germany when Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans, and their university friends wrote and distributed treasonous leaflets, urging their fellow Germans to resist the Nazi regime.

Off The Page is the recipient of multiple grants from the Brooklyn Arts Council, Brooklyn Community Foundation, Chipstone Foundation shatterCABINET, and are 2019-20 New Victory LabWorks Artists. 

Jody has been a guest lecturer at colleges and universities on using arts education methods in the classroom and a presenter at conferences across the country. She is also an organizer and activist, working on issues of education equity in NYC schools and racial justice within our systems,

Jody is a graduate of Northwestern University in theatre and has been seen as an actor on stages all over the US. Jody was a sign language interpreter for many years, working in the NYC public schools.  She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Brad and their two children, Dov and Zoe, all of whom have been in early table reads of these plays.

Follow Jody on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Follow Off the Page on Facebook and Twitter.