On each session. That, psychology professor and author david rice discusses the slogan black lives matter by discussing meaning and origin. Refreeze became pop the phrase became popular in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown. It is an hour and a half. Doctor rice is faculty representative of Morehouse College board of trustees. Practical application of his work is found in his service to the board and commission on the future of education and as assistant provost at the college. He is founding codirector of the cinema television, and media studies program. There he has helped to develop curriculums for the film studies major and minor and advises students across disciplines. On the utility and application of modern media. He now serves as faculty to the program with a special focus on emeritus studies. Dr. Rice graduated with a bachelor of arts and earned a doctorate personality study. In a personality psychology from howard university. With a masters degree in journalism he frequently applies his research to cultural criticism. He serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for the journal of Legal Education and previously served on the Editorial Advisory Board for the journal of popular culture. He has previously provided commentary for npr pri, cbs news msnbc and his writings and opinions have appeared in the washington post, los angeles times, dallas morning news, huffington post, five vibe magazine, ebony. Com among other media outlets. I personally met him several years ago and have the opportunity to enroll in his psychology of the africanamerican experience class at Morehouse College. His class changed my life. It is our hope this we will cause you to think about question and reflect the world around you. It is with great pleasure and honor that we introduce to you doctor david rice. [applause] thank you very much. Good evening to all of you. Of course, i want to thank president barnsley and Wellesley College for having me this evening. It is a big deal to be here. Specifically i want to thank doctor cameron and black Womens Ministry, a Group Responsible for bringing me here. You took some of what i was going to say. I want to thank Alexis Griffin also specifically because of the dedication that she had in the class and in making sure i was able to come here. She said almost immediately after she took my class that she wanted me to come to wellesley to be able to have a conversation with you all. She beat me up significantly around a great she earned in the around integrated around a grade she earned in the class which was a strong grade. [laughter] nonetheless she made sure i was here. My new, dear friend, ms. Harris who made sure i arrived safely and unscathed from the airport. Perfect me up in a car with the window washer fluid they picked me up in a car with no window washer fluid. [laughter] and so we were all a bit anxious. Thank you for saving my life on several different occasions. So tonight i want to unpack a few ideas working in support of the title which is in front of us which is make it matter. It is essential to my conversation with you is honesty, intellectual, academic, and practical honesty. Psychological agency and the exercise of democratic space and the comprehension and negotiation of narratives all of this presented and assembled hopefully in a way to make us more aware of how it is that we can practically make black lives matter. As has been said in his frequently understood, and is frequently understood, i am a Research Psychologist at base who looks at narratives in search of expressions and development. I am an asset driven individual that leads bleeds over into my research which means i am looking for the best in all of us. I am also trained as a journalist. With the narrative and the journalism stuff i like to tell stories. I hope you dont mind and will indulge me a little bit as i workout ideas by telling stories that incorporate observed experiences of others and observable behaviors i have felt personally. All of this in service of theory and thinking toward praxis that is reasonable in framing behaviors toward social justice and fundamental, democratic freedoms. So is that cool with everybody . I will tell stories tonight . Ok. That is what is up. Honestly, i guess i will start with this this came up first. But me say this. Honestly, make it matter, i have maintained a history of having some kind of remove or being when i see anything. It probably shows my age. It can present as trite. And too effortless considering the states. Life, physical freedom equality. The commercialism of it all loses me often. Having a slogan for the revolution is not cool if theyre is no theyre there. I could not see the attached depth attached to social media spaces lately. To be sure, i can be critical but i do not swear myself a cynic. I took a picture of myself and a in a holding in a hoodie after Trayvon Martin was murdered, but it felt a little cynic to me. It felt a little too much for me when spike lees film came out. It felt a little much for me kind of like when che guvera tshirts and medallions felt a little much. Everybody has these things, and there is a high degree of commercialism associated, but is there any there there . As an aside, this is where this comes up as a brick for us, as a break for us. It should be noted that i never thought the leather or wooden african medallion was work could be played out and was pleased to see that marshall and Lynch Marshawn lynch donned a few in his forced appearances before the super bowl. That was awesome. So go seahawks. That is for my sevenyearold son who was a tremendous seahawks fan. I told him i was coming to the new england area. He said if you see tom brady tell him hello tell him i was rooting for the seahawks tell him i was rooting for the seahawks. [laughter] i think he is not incidentally put in hear. We we will get into the theater of disobedience a little later when we talk about public narratives. Back to the matter my , characterization of social media and its relationship to calls for social justice included my distance from black lives matter. The black lives Matter Movement that emerged in 2012 after the state sanctioned killing of Trayvon Martin. At first my response was a bit like this, well, of course they matter and of course these lives are relegated margins on a regular. I know this. I am a black man who grew up in georgia. Who grew up in the south, texas in particular. I was and am frequently understood as invisible, object immaterial. And i have a little black boy. I understand that, as the kids might say, that the struggle is real. So black lives matter. Candidate i wanted more, someone to feel the pain of growing into one with proverbial and literal crosshairs trained on them as it is for us. To me it was real. After trayvon was shot through the hearts. The system said that it was all good. That was doubly so. Eric garner getting choked to death by the cops and Michael Brown being blown away without so much as an indictment of the officer killed him. Barbara and her four children mistakenly pulled over for a felony in Kaufman County texas, they were pulled out at gunpoint. Shot and killed, but we would much prefer to have him alive. 12yearold tamir rice is shot and killed and so on and so on. In the face of these flashpoints , because certainly this is not exhaustive or representative of the death of extrajudicial killings that we experience as black people in the americas, but again with these flashpoints there seems to be the need for more than protests and my black president s black president s admonishment. The admonishment of the communities to respect the law. Keeping in mind, of course, that this is a law and order that is killing us because we are black. I fashioned the need for a different type of solidarity , in some sense a revolution i had spun in my minds eye. I was vibing with the burning and the looting, i remember the release i felt being theyre after rodney kings verdict. Perhaps irresponsible, but to be honest, also honest is the distance was the result of looking through an academic, distant, patriarchal, entitled elitist. In defense of myself, that is ok. Both perspectives are important. They are part and parcel of figurings one way through the elegant goo of white supremacy, hegemony, and patriarchy. Also, we have to include in that this baseline of heteronormativity which enslaves even the most wellmeaning of us. But we cannot stay in those spaces lest we render ourselves ineffective in working toward systemic and endemic change and rationalize ourselves. The contrast between burning this joint down and the social media revolutionaries need to do something more real is of course illustrative of the concept of double consciousness outlined by w. E. B. Dubois in his seminal work, the souls of black folks and it has me recalling my initial cast of identity orchestration. Identity orchestration was a theoretical framework that privileges multiple narrative identities toward the end of unity within the self and with the self relative to society. This theoretical exercise was originally done with young black men in an attempt to complicate us beyond stereotypes and beyond invisibility and towards humanity. After this work here and the work of many others, here we are with this absurd need to articulate that black lives matter. To be clear, black rage and resistance is a healthy psychological response to the history of white cultural terrorism and the acute spikes in the legal snuffing out a black lives within a pretense democracy. Some of what i have written about black rage is, it must be noted the malaise of cognitive dissonance that envelops those who are respectable and even the peaceable is bound in a national lie. The lie is that we value black lives. The rage becomes the smiles and platitudes and a corpse. The protest, the anger, the rage, that is the truth. It is healthy unjustifiable but and justifiable but we are told to muffle it, conflating there is never an excuse for violence against police or for those who would use this as a cover for vandalism and looting. The statement wrong on its face misrepresents the people and the core need for rebellious resistance against a society government, city, and a motorized police force the funding and activist as the aggressor when terrorism has been visited on him or her. Rage is the real, cathartic and common sense, a hammer, a tool that can be situated to effectively confront violent racism that is pushed on to the black community. It is a truth we are told to tuck into a perverted sense of democracy. Rages rage is a psychological defense and truth telling and attachment to hegemonic norms is a psychological defense. Explaining that while of course black lives matter is dismissive in a way that allows for alignment with the dominant group. To realize you could be arrested for breaking into your own home , no matter that you are an esteemed University Professor or killed for getting skittles and iced tea, for asking for help after your car stalls out that is a lot to process, a lot for me to realize that my son, the 21yearold and a innocence the innocencets i work with everyday, i could be killed. That is a lot. Protective thinking might have me to resist being in that group. Define myself as exceptional in some way. But, no. My name is david rice and i belong to an Exceptional Group in so much as we have employed agency in the face of a society that hands and shoots us lead. But we continue to float and rise as the great maya angelou echoes. So the rage and reticence are bound in truth telling. For us i suggest in being intellectually honest, set aside the respectability we occupied by default of being in this room right now with one another area one of other. Because we lose sight and touch with not who we are like but rather lose sight and touch with the fact that we are the brother or the sister on the corner even if and when it be a virtual corner. Tagged as in graffitied with the slogan black lives matter. It can present as ever so nuanced, this distancing of ourselves. Communities that our parents have come from or grandparents. The willy wonka that is the formal academy makes distancing even easier and my contention is that privileging respectability is colluding with a singular oppressive culture which is opposite the type of education that we need from and for those who comprise the 21st century democracy. And in my case, my students helped me from my episode of infirmed picks up inferred exceptionalism, from the fog. Body on the hot asphalt. Intentional or not, of course, the statement made by police and the state that black parties are black bodies are disposable and worth less. Earlier this Academic Year on the instruction of my students i got live on twitter. Alexis says she does not even use twitter anymore. Whatever. They did not say get live. They said, dr. Rice, use twitter. So please lets have a conversation. I have had an account since before this year. In the Facebook Page and instagram account. But tweeting seemed problematic for a couple of reasons, chiefly because theyre is so much information and i never know quite what to say. All this pressure and i am often at a loss of words. At least in terms of 140 characters. That said, on the evening of november 24, 2014, i was drafting an exam for my black site class likeblack psych class to be taken the next day. That is the same day theyre was an announcement a grand jury would reveal its decision whether or not to indict the officer who shot mike brown. I compartmentalized my feelings. I will claim psychological selfdefense. I knew i wanted the exam for these students in particular to be applied and not be basic. I was pushed with a tweet from a student in class. There it is. How are you feeling as we await the verdict . I replied, focusing on now. Exam relevant. This we will be there. There was a link to a news piece following cops as they riffed on black rage, but that was not enough. Another student followed, if this man is not indicted i feel as if our class needs to be spent thinking of what we can do to help ferguson. True that, i thought. I did not write that. [laughter] i wrote, that should be an agenda item either way. Based on what you have learned, not feelings only. Then i finished the exam and we did it so we could be done we did it so it could be we did it tweeted it so it could be done in realtime. Then the decision to not indict was announced and i had to go downstairs so that i could put some physicality on the ball i was watching on television and got a phone call from yet another student asking for direction as she and two other students, a Domestic Exchange student from stanford and one from duke were holed up in the kings chapel trying to figure what to do to demonstrate solidarity with ferguson. They took to heart the title of the exam which was make it matter, and they did with a significant 1 step they organized a walk of solidarity for ferguson before and beyond that went from morehouse to the cnn center in northwest atlanta. Though many of them did not finish the exam on time, and i had a heated discussion with them about that. Nevertheless, these students made me proud to be a part of their community, and they showed and shared that we matter because we are here. They continue to employ activism these many months later. Dont they look great . I love them so much. They continue to employ activism these few months later and a lot of it has to do with defining the problem, asking the right questions, and applying the appropriate action accordingly. Of course that has a lot to do with research and psychology. Right . Come on, yall. It is interesting to look at the growth and commitment, and it is worth noting they found the process of activism does not necessitate being on front street. So that they see that the real work and struggle comes in the strategy behind and including the commercial for the struggle, at the grammys, the oscars , the sporting event is your du jour, die ins or what have you. This is the strength and articulation of patrice colors and alicia guises black lives matter which is more than a slogan or commercial. It is deeper than that. V3 these three explain the movement, a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of black people by police and vigilantes, beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within some communities which merely call on black people to love black, live black and buy black while our sisters take up roles in the background or not at all. Like lives matter of firms the lives of black black lives matter of firms the lives of black queer folks and all lies along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been all lives along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been marginalized within black liberation movements, a tactic to build or to rebuild the black liberation movement. An ideological and political intervention in a world where black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted. So it is more than just a hash tag slogan. And i hang my hat on all of that, but i want to focus a bit more on the ideological or ontological aspect of black lives mattering which then assumes action and the implicit call to make black lives matter. Or to make it matter. We go. There we go. So i have been an admirer for a really long time. She is super dope. And in my classes i often play a recording of her talking about the importance of utilizing your democratic space, amplifying and or demonstrating your voice is of value. And significant in a for the people government. So leveraging your democratic them space and realization and execution of ones agency is bound one to the other. Agency is a social cognitive theory that defines the construct as intentionally influencing a life circumstance. In this world or and this view personal influence is part of a causal structure. They are not simply onlookers to their own behavior. They are contributors to thei r life circumstances and not just products of them. The exercise of your democratic space is consequence of how you influence psychological functioning and life circumstances. So if we consider the folks in this room we can note there is an amount of privilege we possess. We have the luxury of pulling and pushing and stretching ideas together in an effort to shift paradigms rather than only having to deal with the real as it comes to us. It is a privilege to be at Morehouse