Ep. 4 – Local Problems, Global Solutions – Racial Justice, Social Impact, and Higher Education: A Conversation with Dr. Devin Walker

[0:00:07 Peniel] welcome to race and democracy, a podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, social justice, and citizenship.

[0:00:21 Peniel] We’re pleased to have Dr. Devin Walker with us today who’s at UT’s Division of Diversity and community engagement as a director of social

[0:00:30 Devin] global leadership in social impact

[0:00:32 Peniel] and director of global leadership and social impact. Um, and this is a real thrill to have Devon here because Devin has been a graduate student and really a student leader here at UT Austin on is really one of the brightest minds that we have on campus and one of most engaged, thoughtful speakers on issues of race and democracy and justice and citizenship inequality. And not just that, the local in the regional and national level, but really the global level. So I want to have a conversation today with you, Really? About student leadership, student empowerment, you know, we talk about black lives matter. We talk about march for our lives. We talk about DACA and immigration. We talk about domestic violence and young people organizing around all these issues, the environment, racism. We’re here in Texas and Beto O Rourke, just galvanize this whole state lost the Senate race by 200,000 votes. But over eight million people voted and we saw this sort of BlueWave. So I want to talk about young people. That’s what we do here. I’m a professor here. We teach your scholar teacher practitioner. So first of all, what do you do here? And what does that title mean? You know, the leadership in social impact.

[0:01:45 Devin] Yeah. So, uh, when the Division of Diversity had a new leader earlier, they shared Dr Linda more. He created six big ideas, and one of them was to create an office of global leadership and social impact, which he wanted me to direct and head up. So what that currently entails is we have three different study abroad. Service learning programs one in Cape Town, South Africa, when in Beijing, China, and in our most recent one in San Joaquin, Costa Rica. So I did those I do the recruitment for those. I plan out some of the curriculum for those, and then I’ll also be the faculty leading the trip to China. But I kind of organized, helped organize all three of the programs. Just this year, we started our first fellowship program. So we have 20 DDC global student fellows, so basically trying to take their study abroad experiences and really amplify it, trying to get them connected to the international world. So a few weeks ago, we had a conversation with a couple of diplomats that they got the opportunity to engage with them network with them, and we’re also having them help to build out what we’re trying to do. So we have. Ah, they’re on different teams. One of them is on ah, recruitment team. When is on a research team and then a few of them are helping me with my Austin Future Global Leaders program. Now that’s a program. I was just in the schools today. So we’re trying to provide 100 passports to students on the east side of Austin eighth graders to help them start to think about their own identities within a globalized world, not just Austin not just may know Adele Valley, but what does it mean to be little old me as a global citizen? T

[0:03:22 Peniel] That’s great. And I want to dovetail what you just talked about into black students here at UT. Black students and students of color. How can they use this UT education cause we all have it. I mean, I teach classes on the civil rights movement on black protests, Black social movements. How can black students, both at UT but in higher education in general impact the struggle for social justice for black citizenship? Racial justice, racial equality?

[0:03:50 Devin] Yeah. I mean, that’s ah question. I wish we had the answer to. But what I will say here is first and foremost on this campus, I think, and any campus I’ve been to, I think we’ve gotten to the place where black students do feel like into an extent they belong on campus, right? Like they have access to the campus. But I’m not so sure that they believe that the resource is available on campus. The opportunities available on campus are built for them, are made for them.

[0:04:17 Peniel] And what do you mean by that?

[0:04:18 Devin] I just don’t see has taken advantage of as many opportunities as we could be right, finding a reason not to apply for something not necessarily thinking about what you’re doing with your summers. Not necessarily critically thinking about what’s happening when you propel out of UT, right? I think For many of us first generation college students like myself, getting the college was the goal, right? Like, Oh, I’m get to college. And if your first generation costume you likely grew up around other people whose families don’t have that collegiate experience, So you’re doing better than them right now. I’m in college. I went to University, Wisconsin myself. Every time I came back in the summer time, people were looking at me like out. This is, you know, this is a great leader in our community, but I’m back in the summer time working at my mom’s job, not really taking advantage of my platform as the University of Wisconsin student, not getting internships, not fully pushing myself, just taking the easy road out.

[0:05:12 Peniel] And Devin, why do you think that is? Is it is it a matter of institutional and structural racism? Is it a lack of African American students, especially first Gen students, even first in students of color, not having the depth of social networks that teach them about fellowships that teach them about Hey, here, these networks that you can be a part of through these four years that aren’t only gonna bolster you during this summer’s but are actually going to be building blocks for your career and professionalization.

[0:05:41 Devin] It’s all of that right? It’s all of those things called lesson together. So, yeah, we have to have people often times who know how to connect to these students who are offering these opportunities right so they could spell it out to them in a way that actually makes sense. Many of our students, although there at the University of Texas, they don’t understand what research is. They’ve never thought through those lenses. So when we offer him a summer research opportunity, um, you know my fiancee? She’s at Northwestern. She came out here. She’s running a ah program Summer Research Opportunity program. Students get paid $4500 free housing free networking with Northwestern faculty. I’m talking of the students trying to get them sitting it out. They’re not biting, right? So part of that is this institutional. Have they thought about these opportunities before? Has anyone help them make sense of how this could help them propel into a graduate assistant ship with these other things? But part of it, I also think, is a bit of fear, right? And I don’t think we’ve ever outlasted this bit of inferiority complex and thinking that certain opportunities air still not for me now.

[0:06:45 Peniel] Is that an inferiority complex? Or is it that, um, because I see that in the profession in terms of just even as a professor, or is it just not having those opportunities? And those networks extended for you? Because I can see that with African Americans, whether it comes toe book prizes or elite positions. Resource is, I don’t know if students feel inferior or if they feel that clearly there’s a line of demarcation that the institution is telling you. Look, you might be in this institution, but there’s only so much access we’re gonna provide. And even some of your peers who might not look like you they’re giving you and conveying the same message to you.

[0:07:22 Devin] So So yes and right. Like I I’m a firm believer in, like, agency, right and we got to continue. You know, it depends on who your audience is. If I’m talking to a wide audience and yes, structural this and that right and then those are the issues systemic issues that we need to talk about because Those are the things that that audience needs to think critically about how those systems are impacting students of color on any underrepresented students. But when I’m talking to these students, it’s been like that. That’s the history of this country, and it’s with our current. It doesn’t look like things were going to drastically change. So do we constantly let this systemic racism and systemic racial structures limit us? Or do we find ways to We find agency and ways to navigate thes things right? There’s so many dynamic dope motivational leaders on this campus of color yourself, doctor, more doctor bump fists, you know, incredible people. And we’re providing so many rich opportunities to these students. How do we get them to take advantage of them? How do we push him? And a lot of times it’s that one on one combat. And that’s where I found in my own practice that I’m really ableto motivate students cause you got to get into where are these fears coming from? Why are you hesitant to apply for this? Why are you hesitant to be denied to things and even thinking of my own experience? A lot of what I’m saying now is even thinking through my own lens and let the lens of my friends. Although I do have a PhD now, I was always hesitant to apply for things because I didn’t want to get denied. I didn’t wanna have that feeling of failure, right? And I think a lot of students specifically here these u T students, they’re always topped 6% top 7%. There used to be in on the top of their game, and I think they come here and they have to navigate students who were similar to them. And I think it’s challenging. Emit from that point. I don’t man is confidence, you know, It’s

[0:09:12 Peniel] so this dovetails into my next question. In terms of what do you think the the most? The biggest challenge facing black students here at UT is. Is it a lack of confidence? Is it? Resource is,

[0:09:29 Devin] um, good to have some of the students in their ass, and he’s answering these questions.

[0:09:33 Peniel] Will. You were working for undergrad and grad

[0:09:37 Devin] for young, for young black students. Right now, I think it’s this idea of how do you navigate your individual successes knowing that you’re up against systemic oppression. Right? So how do you take advantage of these? Resource is yet at the same time, you know that people in your community are being oppressed, right? How do you How do you navigate those those differences specifically And it like an increasingly individualized society and culture. How do we come together across difference. How do you come to some sort of collective understanding or collective mission of what we’re trying to do here? And I think that’s their challenge. I think you want to be individually successful, but what you don’t want to see necessarily is like a seller, right? So how do you stay connected to the community within? Still take advantage of these individualized opportunities, The’s professional development opportunities? Yeah, and that might mean missing a party. That might mean missing being a member of a club because you want to take unpaid internship or one of these other things. So that’s one of the struggles that I see the students trying to navigate here, and I think specific on Utd’s camp is you have a lot of different. The black population is quite diverse. We have a lot of first and second generation immigrant families, and you see a lot of them really taken advantage of These resource is. So I think that creates another divide within the black community and another challenge of what does it mean to be, you know, a black student on this campus? What does it mean to be a black, an emerging professional? What does it mean to be community oriented?

[0:11:09 Peniel] Well, especially since the division of diversity and community engagement is really charged with in some ways repairing longstanding chasms between the University of Texas and the African American community, Latino community, communities of color who are really marginalized even in the building and developing of University of Texas at Austin. Because of the city’s master plan, which promoted racial segregation and embedded racial segregation into the city, UT Austin did not have a black student till 1950 with human sweat. What are we to make of this university and how we can either help build thes bridges? Or how, in some ways, it’s still really not concerned with this kind of engagement in this racial inclusion?

[0:11:58 Devin] Yeah, I mean, UT Austin is the hub. It is the center of Austin. It always has been. We’re bringing a lot more in tech companies and now that are also big pillars. But UT Austin is the pillar of this city, and I think the way it goes, the city goes and I don’t think we’ve invested nearly enough into the East Side. And we’ve really thought about historically what Roe et Austin has had in displacing all these people. Historically and as recently is 15 years ago, 10 years ago, right? We’re still building on the East Side of Boston, where all these local residents are being pushed out. We don’t have a program that used to as far as I’m concerned, and I used to work with that missions. We don’t have a program at UT Austin that directly targets Austin area natives to get them into the school. Right. We have UT charters. We have those things, but we don’t have any specific admissions policy that helps thes students get into the program. We have a neighborhood long hearts program out of the division of Diversity, and that’s where my initiative is kind of being partnered with. But I think we need to continue to find opportunities that leverage the resource is of the university and spread them into the community. And that’s ultimately what I’m trying to do with our office of Global Leadership. And I wanted to add the social impact into my title because I think it’s important that when we think about global leadership, what are we doing locally? Right? Global leadership starts with What are you doing locally? What is the local impact? And we have all these students going abroad and taking advantage of all these interesting international opportunities. Well, how do we create those same opportunities for the local students here so that we create a culture where the students are able to look beyond their current circumstances and redefine possibilities for themselves for their communities? So I’m hoping that’s what you know the passports program can do. And then we’re gonna take some of those tunes to China in their ninth grade year. So again, it’s an opportunity for me to look. What the university is doing we’re getting for internationalization is huge. So how do I take some of those resource is and spin them off into the community? But that needs to happen, Ah, lot more than it currently is happening. I think students in the Austin area need to know that they can come here. And when I’m in the middle schools when I’m in the high schools, I don’t necessarily feel that I don’t necessarily

[0:14:13 Peniel] The campus doesn’t seem like a welcoming environment.

[0:14:15 Devin] Yeah, I don’t necessarily feel like it’s a place where they see themselves that because off like, as you mentioned their parents, their grandparents didn’t have the best interactions with UT Austin Now know if we’ve done enough to repair those relationships

[0:14:27 Peniel] now you talked about taking students to China, and I know you’ve taken students to South Africa. And what does that do in your in your experience to their experience? Their perspective? How does that shape them? As as intellectuals is critical thinkers? Is community engage in civic minded activists, their understanding of democracy?

[0:14:47 Devin] All of that, right? All of that? And I think one of the challenges I have when I’m conducting my research on these students is to really try to nail down. How do you empirically right, identify the impact that something that’s so spiritually right? But the number one thing I keep coming back to, at least in my research, is this idea of confidence. Students come back so confident, confident in their ability to switch their major and actually go for something that they want a major confident in their ability. Oh, apply for an internship on the other side of the country. One of the recent students. We just take justice. He he was filming the whole time when we’re out there, right? So then I created Where did you go in South African south, everywhere in Cape Town. And then we spent a lot of time of the University of Cape Town. And then we spent more time in the local townships. So they were engaged about 13 hours a week in their township placements in about nine hours in the classroom.

[0:15:40 Peniel] And how long were you inside?

[0:15:42 Devin] Were about there? About a month.

[0:15:43 Peniel] Okay. And we say townships, I’ve been to South Africa. I stayed there for about a month to Can you explain to our listeners what is a township in contrast to Cape Town or Jo Burg?

[0:15:51 Devin] So the history of that city, right? Apartheid is still very, very riel there, right? Just because you in the legal system, doesn’t mean that all of a sudden people have the economic fortunes to pick up and move to the other side of the city. Of course, it’s the opposite, right? So people are still stuck in the areas in which often times their grandparents grew up due to the apartheid system. So some townships are a bit more run down, I would say than others. Ah, lot of shanty towns, a lot of shacks and then also in those communities, you have a lot of the immigrant population coming in from other parts of southern Africa or western Africa, Eastern Africa. And where do they settle? They settle in these places, similar to what we see that’s going on right now in our own country, right in Tijuana, and it creates a lot of challenges for those communities. So it’s really interesting working there. This summer, there was a water crisis going on. There’s a whole land reform issue, so the students really got to dig in deep and learn. What is it like to be in another country? What is it like toe? And how are these people resisting? How are they thriving? How are they surviving? And that ties me back into the confidence piece people come here and are a lot more willing to take advantage of. The resource is be assertive. Teoh. I can go back to this kid named Justice. He filmed this whole thing. He won award when he came back for the best documentary, gave him $500 then he reached out to me and he said, Hey, I want you to pay me to do the next China trip He would talk to Dr Morning, got that authorized right, so confident in their abilities, you know, come back and just like, let me ask for what I need, because I think when you go into a place like, um, the townships of Cape Town, the numerous different ones we worked in and you see people thriving still, despite all the structural challenges that they face, despite the fact that there’s lack of running water. But you still see them persisting getting after it, students come back here and there like I have ah, world of a plethora of resource is at this university. How do I take advantage of them and create better opportunities for myself, but also the community’s I’m a part of?

[0:17:53 Peniel] I think that’s great. I wanna delve into this idea of being a thought leader and how the work you do trust toe really cultivate that. And I thought, Leader, I mean, really anybody who’s in any kind of field, whether you’re in medicine, technology, higher education, you could be a preacher. Um, you could be somebody who’s a chef, but but really somebody who is going to be not only at the leading cutting edge of the field, but somebody also has a sense of community engagement, empowerment but also who’s an entrepreneur, somebody who wants to leverage themselves into a connector socially, politically, intellectually. Sometimes I think we mistaking conflict thought leadership with people who have brands and sometimes thought leaders do have brands. But I’m thinking of something else that thought Leaders is bigger than that because they’re also thinking of what are the moral and political and social implications of the work they did. So they think of their their work as a vocation. So how do we and I sense what you’re talking about in terms of what you’re trying to do? As as director of global leadership is, social impact is really create a whole community of future thought leaders, and that is so powerful. And I think about my love for popular culture and not just somebody like Oprah Winfrey, but somebody like Ava Duvernay, who is a thought leader and is doing so much for creating a more diverse community in Hollywood, people who are filmmakers. But she started out just directing very small films, eventually directed Selma, and she keeps going and going and going. But you can sense that she wants her work to have real impact and and open up other doors and opportunities for others. So how do we do that as DDC and the work you’ve done discovered a blueprint, and we just need more resource is both private and public to just amplify that. Or what do we do to create a new generation of thought leaders?

[0:19:43 Devin] You know, that’s a great question, I think. Resource is, I don’t think you can never have enough resource is when you have a good mission, right when you when you are confident, what you stand in and what you’re trying to do, Hopefully that as many resource is, is you can get coming your way. Then that’s the better for us all in terms of creating new thought leaders, at least in the work that I do. It’s important for me to help students start to think about community across difference. And

[0:20:10 Peniel] what do you mean by that?

[0:20:11 Devin] How are you in community with people who you don’t necessarily see yourself in community with? And then hopefully, by creating greater understandings of community of wider, larger, greater understanding of community, then we can kind of organize together and try to really disrupt some of this systemic social stuff, right? So I think about in the international world on the trip. When the students come back from these different trips, where there’s China kills to Rico, South Africa, they no longer allow themselves to be called minorities. Minority. Who?

[0:20:42 Peniel] I’m so glad because one of my irks, I mean and I’m 46 for decades now is when people of color call themselves a minority. And I think in Texas are young people have really been brainwashed in a big way to call themselves minorities, where somebody was a native New Yorker. We knew from jump that we weren’t because you know you are listening to the Malcolm X tapes and even Dr King said, we weren’t in the 19 fifties and sixties. So when we think about this idea of minority, I think that’s some of that lack of confidence that you talk about.

[0:21:14 Devin] And yeah plays into what I was saying earlier. This inferiority company, it’s not like we ourselves are just walking around feeling inferior. No, it’s everything. It’s all the words that we use to describe ourselves. It’s it’s it’s everything it’s not. I don’t mean that as like a and negative thing to say Oh, you you think you’re inferior like you’re not as strong as you could be like No, it’s so hard to resist that in this country it’s a constant struggle. The society

[0:21:39 Peniel] The society other rises you. And even when we had a black president, they made the claim. He wasn’t born here and he wasn’t American he was born in Kenya.

[0:21:46 Devin] and he was kids get it right and often times I think we think that kids don’t get it. We want to start having these conversations around race, culture, oppression, power, privilege. When you get to college like no, we need to have these conversations in elementary school. When I was in the middle school today, as soon as I start talking about how is your cultural identity represented in in mass media? They immediately get quiet who feels their cultures represented positively and in the media propaganda. Three kids put their hand up my car. Who feels that gets represented negatively, who hears negative things about their culture and their families and the people every soon raise a hand up. I go around, start talking, and they’re excited about this opportunity to finally get to name it. But they’re also very nervous. A few weeks ago, when I was in a different school, one that teachers had toe let them know, Hey, he’s gonna ask you questions about race and culture. You can answer them. I was giving them permission to talk about their lived experience, right? And I think that’s part of the challenge with education. Is today’s such this. Open your head and we’re going to teach you what you need to learn this teaching for test not to think about culture, identity, power, relationships, community, how we relate to the other. How do we make the other how do we come into community with the other right? And I think most students who do this international work right is study abroad at Lisa’s White Women, right? So how do we create more equity? More accessibility toe all these other students? And when we do do that, what roles do they start filling in these companies? What roles do they start filling in the State Department? What businesses and entrepreneurship ideas can made themselves developed to create community within the African diaspora and really start to build things up for ourselves and create a new way of thinking about the world? Right And not, as in America, the dominant empire. And we have our way with the rest of the world. But how do we create community and create equitable relationships with these other parts of the world as a new way forward?

[0:23:43 Peniel] All right, that was terrific. I want to just ah, close and ask you where do you see both yourself? But this this this movement to try to create this next generation of students both in higher ed, but thinking a I s d you know, citywide. But also state of Texas, just nationally and of course, globally. Where do you see it going in the next decade and sort of trying to leverage all that you’re talking about into, um, just building greater capacity, because in a lot of ways this sounds like something that one the federal government and state government should be doing, but certainly with some private partnerships and foundations as well. But there’s there’s something entrepreneurial about this to where this kind of thinking is big thinking that can produce greater resource is that can then in turn, be injected back into communities of color.

[0:24:35 Devin] Yeah. Ah, I’m glad you brought that were entrepreneurship because I think what’s important for me is to get young people to start to think about social entrepreneurship, right? How do you create businesses that soft, community oriented problems, right? And global citizenship? What does it actually mean to do that in a way that pays respects to maybe the people who are producing some of these things in India, right? Or intends a near on the other side of the world? What does it mean to develop a solution, a local solution that also speaks to a solution or a challenge on the other side of the world? And how can we learn from them and How can they learn from us? That’s ultimately what I want my work to do. I have a vision. You know how Israel has that birthright trip. Yes, I have a vision that I think it would be extremely powerful for students who identify as members of the African diaspora to have the opportunity to travel abroad before they’re 25 to a country within the African diaspora. So I would like to set up about eight different sites, different programs, And I would love to have enough money toe fund students who apply for the program to go on a 10 day trip to one of these different locations. Learn about the history there, the cultural connections to America, and then also, what do we need? How can we support each other in terms of moving forward and creating new community partnerships? A new understanding of a Pan African identity? Um, yeah,

[0:25:59 Peniel] That’s great. That’s great. local solutions for global problems.

[0:26:03 Devin] Exactly, exactly.

[0:26:05 Peniel] It’s been great to have this conversation. Devon Walker, who’s director of

[0:26:10 Devin] global leadership and social impact for the Division of Diversity and Community engagement at UT Austin

[0:26:16 Peniel] Thank you so much for joining

[0:26:18 Devin] Appreciate you back.

[0:26:19 Peniel] Thanks for listening to this episode and you can check out related content on Twitter at Peniel Joseph. That’s P E N I E L J O S E P H and our website csrd.lbj.utexas.edu and the Center for Study of Race and Democracy is on Facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the Liberal Arts Development Studio at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you