Social Justice and Family Well-being with Shawn Trenell O’Neal

Kalin Goble: Welcome to Practicing Connection in a Complex World, a podcast exploring the personal stories and collective practices that empower us to work together. To help each other, our families, and our communities, improve our resilience and readiness in a rapidly changing world. To start our conversation here’s Jessica Beckendorf and Bob Bertsch.

Bob: Hi, and welcome to the Practicing Connection in a Complex World podcast, I’m Bob Bertsch.

Jessica: I’m Jessica Beckendorf.

Bob: We’re so happy to have you along for season three of the podcasts, amazing that it’s already season three that we’ve been doing this for a couple of years. I’m really excited about this season, Jessica. I’m really excited about the next few episodes that we have coming up.

Jessica: Yes, so am I. We’re starting this season with a series of episodes centered on social justice and family health and wellbeing. These episodes are going to feature the authors of the upcoming military family readiness academy courses. You can learn more about these courses @oneop.org/mfra. For this episode, we talk to Ph.D. candidate, Shawn Trenell O’Neal about his work on social justice and intersectionality, including the course introduction to social justice lenses for family wellbeing.

Bob: Hey, Shawn, thanks so much for joining us in the Practicing Connection in a Complex World podcast. It’s great to have you along. Do you mind introducing yourself to our listeners and maybe just telling them a little bit about yourself?

Shawn: Absolutely. My name is Shawn Trenell O’Neal, I grew up in Illinois, in Chicago, surrounding area of Chicago. Born and raised in Waukegan, Illinois. I’m very familiar with Wisconsin, Jessica, spent a lot of time traversing back and forth from Illinois to Wisconsin. Sometimes I fly in there, Milwaukee Airport when I’m visiting family.

Jessica: Nice.

Shawn: Right now, I’m a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate at University of Colorado Boulder in the Department of Ethnic Studies. I’m what’s called ABD, which means All But Dissertation. I’m currently working on and writing my dissertation, applying for some new fellowships so I plan on finishing this. I was planning on finishing it in May, but I think I’m going to extend it and finish it in the fall. I’m going to give myself a few extra months I’d like to really polish things off.

It’s interesting I’m much older than probably most Ph.D. students. I just turned 50 in November 1st, and in my previous life I still am a DJ producer sound engineer. What I like to call a sound manipulator and innovator. I’m very, very into experimental sounds. Very, very indebted in hip hop, and the hip hop movement as a movement have been since I was a young boy since the late ’70s. I’m really, really into sound production. I’ve deejayed many, many places in the world. I realized late in life that something was very, very missing from what I was doing, and I made the decision that I needed to get back into school and back in academia.

It’s just led me to where I am now with the help of a lot of my intellectual mentors, if you will, that have pushed me to this point. I’m so happy I did it because I realized that this is my calling, one of my callings, and realizing how important it is for me to be doing the work that I’m doing. To be giving back to communities of African descent in this country, and developing theoretical foundations and philosophies for everyone for these frameworks of social justice. Which I think a lot of people have recently realized how important that is to our survival, particularly in this country. That’s just a little bit about myself and some of the work that I’m doing.

My dissertation project actually it’s a philosophy, and it’s a theoretical concept that I’ve developed. I’ve coined it’s copywritten into publications that I have, it’s called Audio Intersectionality self-Identification within the processes of interdisciplinary explorations and sound music and performance. What that means and what I’m doing is I’m taking intersectional context, such as race, gender, sexuality class, if you will. Developing autobiographical narratives and narratives of other performers of color to actually talk about how they express race, gender, sexuality, through sound, through performance, through music.

Now, I like to say this, I am not reinventing the wheel is I think subjugated, marginalized communities have been doing this for centuries. What I am doing is theorizing for the first time and coining something that we’ve never fully discussed and unpacked. That’s my dissertation project and some of the things that I’m working on right now. I’ve also co-developed series of anti-racism courses that are on Coursera. We just finished the third one. We have over 20,000 students in a dozen-plus countries taking these courses right now so really, really proud about that.

The fact that we were able to reach that many people in like a year and a half, but we just finished the third one, the third one’s going to come out. Well, probably early February at this point. Got a lot of things. My hand dipped in a lot of things and I think being in this Ethnic Studies Department at CU Boulder, has just opened up a world of opportunities and other systems of learning. It’s been really amazing and exciting, and it’s led me to you folks right here in developing this course, so really exciting.

Bob: Thanks, Shawn. I think I’m really interested in the trigger. I was an older and then average student too. I finished my master’s program at about the same age as you are now. Were there particular triggers that brought you back to academia and to your studies?

Shawn: Absolutely. I think for me, as I was traveling and playing a lot of music and really started developing again, a new language around the type of music I was playing with my artistic collaborators. I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico for I think 15 years. I was one of the co-founders of an organization called High Mayhem Emerging Arts. We were a group of audio and visual artists, and we were just very proficient, very prolific. The amount of work that this small group of like 10 people did in a period of 8 to 10 years is absolutely phenomenal.

As a matter of fact, I was on the phone with one of the co-founders last night because we’re about to embark on the cataloging of a lot of the work we did because we filmed and recorded everything practically. Working on that really started to it just, it opened my mind up again. I was very, I don’t want to say lost, but stuck for a while, like looking around and realizing the plethora of issues that have been going on in this country and globally that have always affected me as a person of African descent living in this country and being raised in this country. I always also reverted to my upbringing.

I was raised by all women, like four generations of women. I really started to notice some holes in my cognitive processing really is what it was. Not to sound too technical, but I realized that my thought process was much more linear than I wanted it to be. I really think that playing experimental music and really becoming a prominent DJ and doing things with records that I didn’t see a lot of other people doing. Started really opening my mind to other possibilities and other knowledges that I knew were there, but I hadn’t allowed myself to take in. You have to understand that education, that’s a self-fulfilling project.

Everyone can go to college and take classes and get master’s degrees and Ph.Ds., but none of that matters if you’re not engaged in your own education. I know a lot of people with master’s degrees and Ph.Ds., but they’re not educated. All that means is that they went through those parameters in that process to get that piece of paper. It’s been demonstrated over and over again so I came to terms with myself, like I need to really be properly educated in order to do that. I need to find a non-white intellectual community in which to that, which I knew I wasn’t really going to find in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I Moved up here to Denver, got involved in some things up here particularly taking classes again at University of Colorado, Denver, and then eventually moving up to Boulder. I think really it was art that brought the awareness to me that I don’t really know anything. [laughs] I know to be quite frank, I realized that wow, education and really, I think one of the foundations of education is realizing what you don’t know. I think playing music, the type of music I was playing with the people I was playing, it really made me realize that, “Wow, you really don’t know anything and you’re running out of time, brother. You better get busy here and get down to business.” That’s what did it for me.

Jessica: I think that a lot of people have had some experiences with art and music and other forms of expression. Where they have this kind of aha moment, and they realize like you said, “I don’t really know anything.” I had some experiences like that myself, it didn’t have my first experience like that until I was getting close to 40. I was at a museum. I had been to lots of museums. I finally saw a piece of art that just moved me to my core, and I was like, “I don’t know anything. I have to look at this.”

Looking at this might help me know a little more about something in the world. I say that to say that your experience and the description that I just had, those are really powerful, so art music, the arts, in general, are incredibly powerful. I wonder how you see art and music as ways for us all to connect. You mentioned that you needed to find a community, how does all of that play into the work that you do now, and what do you see in it?

Shawn: Wow. That’s a really amazing question, Jessica. One of the things I see and feel, and I’m embodying and have been embodying for a number of years, I just didn’t have the language behind it, is my dissertation project. I recognize the way that I have operated my identity completely through sound, music, and performance. The way that my socio-historical frameworks have operated through sound music and performance, and I think that’s the case for a lot of people. I think with myself, I wanted to take it steps further and really, really understand, and really try to develop a theoretical framework around the way I’ve been thinking, the way I’ve been feeling, basically my entire life. Just to have a better understanding of myself.

I think what’s interesting is that for a very long time, I really thought that maybe I was losing my mind and going crazy. That I didn’t talk to people about a lot of the things that I’m very open and willing to talk about now. I was around people that were definitely operating and what I like to think of as multiple dimensions simultaneously. You’re afraid to come forward with some of your thoughts and to be that vulnerable, because you start to think, “Well, who’s even going to understand what I’m talking about? I may be absolutely losing my mind.” It wasn’t until my life found its way into particular people, Professor Dennis Green for one, at University of Colorado, Denver.

Donna Martinez, who was the chair of the ethnic studies department, University, Denver, who really gave me that confidence of like, “No, you know exactly what you’re talking about.” I think that what they did is cultivated another level of confidence in myself that like, “Wow, if you actually start verbalizing these things and actually start writing these things down. Allowing people to listen to you and read what you’re saying, rather than just allowing people to listen to you musically. You’re going to have yet a whole another layer of nuance and complexity to who you are and what you’re trying to get through to people.”

I think as a DJ and as a musician, many people were very receptive to the types of things that I was doing. Not everyone, but enough people to where I was like, ‘Wow, if I can now actually theorize and talk about what I’m doing musically, and how that translates into what we’re all dealing with as people in very, very difficult societies. If I can be very frank, and White supremacists, heteropatriarchal societies, you might actually have something. An alternative way for people to think about how they’re actually moving through these worlds, because we’re all looking for answers. This is the way that I’ve been able to develop an answer really for myself in hopes that other people will get something out of it too. It seems that it’s resonating. I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s the best I could do to [crosstalk]. [laughs]

Jessica: I Know, it completely does. Shawn, what it brings to mind for me is, when you describe that you were a little afraid to be vulnerable and share at first. By you sharing now, you’re, hopefully, other people who are connecting with what you’re saying are feeling less alone?

Shawn: Yes.

Jessica: They may be in this similar situation that you were in and now they’re like, “Oh my gosh, there’s someone out there that knows me.” [laughs]

Shawn: Yes. I guess the whole point too is that if I was going to do art in music, there needed to be a purpose behind it beyond entertainment. I knew right away with a lot of the different experimentations I was doing with DJ’ing and with different ensembles and bands I was playing in was that, I’m referencing the ancestors. Sun Ra and the Miles Davis’s. The people who were really trying to communicate something through sound that weren’t always making music for that framework of entertainment. I’m going to play what I want to play whether you like it or not, because I have something else to say and hopefully you’ll get it. If you don’t get it well, that’s okay too.

Maybe eventually will. Maybe you never will, but I have always come from that school, but I owe a lot of it to moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is a place I would’ve never thought to live. Had I not, I wouldn’t have met the people that I met there that also put it in my head that, “No, what you’re doing is really, really interesting man.” There’s a lot of DJs out there, but I don’t know any that are playing turntables this way. These are from trained musicians which I’m not, so that made me feel really good like, “Okay, well maybe I have something that some people actually want to hear.”

Then it turned into, “Well, maybe I have something to say that people actually want to listen to as well,” because I think we all do. It’s just a matter of finding your voice. We’re at such a crossroads right now in the advancements of humanity that we have to speak out now or forever hold your peace. Not to be cliché, but that’s what time it is. Either you’re part of the solution or you’re part of the problem. There’s really no more wavering in these gray areas, and I want to be a part of solutions. That’s the path I’m on and that’s it for me. There’s really nothing else I can do. Like I said, I’m 50 years old, may not have that much time left. It’s time to say what you have to say now, and hopefully, others will get something out of it.

Bob: Shawn, you talked about bringing theory to what you were thinking and feeling and maybe hadn’t shared. It reminds me that this idea of practice I know is important to your work, this mixing of theory and practice. Could you talk a little bit about why that’s Important especially in your work? Educating others through your anti-racism course or the course that you are authoring for military families learning network on social justice lenses for family wellbeing. Why is practice just so key in that?

Shawn: Well, it’s quite simple, I guess, really. I think it’s because, and I’m guilty of this too time and time again, and again, particularly in this country. I’ll use the United States as the example that we’re all so good at sitting around and pointing out problems. Whether it’s the problem with the neighbors got across the street or the problem that your cousin has. You know what I mean, but what does that mean when you’re not offering solutions. The only way to offer solutions is through direct action, like, you got to show me something, you got to show people something. We see so much of that right now, through the media. Everybody’s so good at pointing out what’s wrong but what are we going to do about it?

I think time and time again, in this country, we have just seen laws and policies that suppress and oppress people, rather than taking positive action for institutional transformation.

Particularly in my department, at CU Boulder, we’re very adamant about community work and community service, working with people. You have to understand the frameworks of academia, the ivory towers, as they’re called. Yes, we’re very, very good at writing books and writing theory and writing these articles, and who’s reading this stuff? Most of the books that I read, sometimes I have to read those books twice, even understand what the heck people are talking about.

How is that productive for communities? How is that productive for the ghettos, the barrios, the trailer parks, the reservations, where people are in dire need of support and assistance? The only way to reach those folks, and I’ve been one of those folks, I’m from an African American working-class family in this country. Most of us in this country are working-class or underclass, and the nation-state has really never supported us. Most of us have never seen democracy, all this talk about democracy but it’s like, “Well, who’s actually seen democracy.”

In order to thwart some of these issues, you have to not just talk the talk, you got to walk it too, you need to see some action. You got to get out there and get your hands a little dirty, whether that’s in the classroom, talking to students, rather that volunteering in some way, all of those things. That was the other point too, to Jessica’s question a little bit earlier, I realized that playing music for people that’s just not good enough for me, it just wasn’t enough for me. The other thing I found is most of the people that were coming listen to my music, were White folk of European descent, which I have no problem with.

There again, then something’s not translating to Black communities, which is very important to me. It’s just very important at this moment to start taking action. Everybody, for instance, wants to claim that they’re not racist but there’s something very different, for instance, of saying that you’re not racist and being an anti-racist. Because that enacts a certain level of action. What are you doing in your daily practice, to not be racist, to not be sexist, to not be misogynist, to not be homophobic, transphobic, so on and so forth?

Bob: I wonder if you can talk a little bit about these lenses and as you’re talking, Shawn, I’m wondering, is it lenses, or are we like removing veils, like assumptions that we make? Especially, we talked about the context of families and family service providers. Assumptions that we make about our systems, democracy, capitalism, the nation, et cetera, and that we bring those assumptions to our work with families. Is it a process of removing some of those assumptions and accepting lenses of social justice, intersexuality that are important to be being able to do that practice and approach our work with families in a more open and effective way?

Shawn: Yes, wow. I really love what you said there, Robert. Is it more about removing the veils? Like now I’m like, “Wow, do I have to change this whole course.” I should have conferred with you. There is my first mistake because I really really liked that. Yes, and you’re absolutely right about removing the veils. When I think about the construction of this country and how it began first with the genocide of North Americans indigenous to then steal the lands, you construct the system of chattel slavery in this country. I think about the fact that, “Wow, we never even gave each other a chance.”

We’ve done all these amazing things in this country. In engineering and chemical engineering and health, and even though we’ve and most a lot of us don’t have proper health care, but you understand what I’m saying. We’ve, in a way, mastered some of these very, very difficult and technical foundations and different levels of intellectual and academic structures as well. The one thing we forgot how to do is, or the one thing we didn’t forget how to do, that we never properly did is, learn how to deal with each other as humans.

Oops, oopsie forgot about that. Yes. I look at that as like the most fundamental thing, as people, as communities, as neighbors, as societies, and we’ve never engaged with how to properly treat each other as people. Wow, unbelievable.

Jessica: I think we see lots of evidence of that. If you think about that question or that sentiment that we haven’t really learned to do that, or we haven’t ever, maybe we knew how to do it, and we just haven’t done it. We can see that everywhere, evidence of it everywhere. I even see it and we see that in the media, we see it in national headlines, and all of that. I think I see a lot of evidence of it, too, when groups of people who are really caring and have the best intentions in the world, and they want to create some change in their community come together.

A lot of times where I see it what you’re talking about happening is that they come together and the first thing they want to do is, “Okay, let’s get to tasks. Like, let’s lay out all the tests, let’s assign the tasks, let’s go do the tasks,” but they don’t spend any time with each other. Don’t spend any time really developing community and really committing to being in it together. The sentiment is there, and they want it but they don’t know what it is, and it’s because we’ve never dealt with it. That’s just what comes to mind when you said that.

Shawn: Yes, absolutely. We’ve very strategically have allowed all of these systems of hatred and discrimination to lead us into these holes that so many people now can’t seem to dig themselves out of. We have so many people in this country that claim and profess their love for this country. How do you love something that you’re not even willing to learn anything about? I just think that’s very bizarre to me. Just that the contradiction of that of people pounding their chests about being American, but you’re not willing to understand and absorb the histories and herstories of a person living across the street from you who doesn’t look like you.

Don’t you think that’s strange and tragic? Really, I mean strange. I don’t even know if tragic is a proper word for it but we just haven’t done good enough. This isn’t good enough. It just really isn’t. Like, this is the best that we are. Wow. Look at what we’ve been given. This earth and another interesting thing is people talk about, “Well, we’re destroying the earth,” and it’s like, “No, the earth is going to be fine. The Earth has been here long, long before humans were placed on it, and as soon as it gets rid of us, it’s going to repair itself.”

No, we’re destroying ourselves. Earth will be a’ight and any opportunity I have right now to engage in these in this type of work and developing a course. We got to do something. We can’t just sit here and just live our lives and not realize that we’re all completely and totally interconnected. Not to be morbid. I think what people don’t understand is when this ship goes down, no one’s surviving. I don’t care how many billions of dollars you have or what corporation you own. It’s all interconnected.

Jessica: We need each other.

Shawn: Absolutely. We depend on each other. Now you got people wanting to fly in the outer space as if, well, so you want to screw up things here and then now you want to take your business in the out and the outer space thinking that’s going to save you or safe people? Are you kidding me? Fix the mess that has been created here and wow, we’re already in space anyhow. I never really understood that whole concept. I’m already in space, so interesting. Wow. You all get me worked up. It’s not even nine o’clock yet over here in Denver.

Jessica: Good. Good. We’re doing our job then.

Bob: What are the key concepts here about, especially the course that you’re working with for military families, learning network is about family wellbeing and family wellness. The impact that socioeconomic issues, status, race, location, all the things that affect that being able to see that. As you’re asking people who maybe have not looked at the world that way or have not removed the veils. We talked about out before, however, we want to look at that. How do we start communicating that? How do you start looking at the world, maybe through a social justice or intersectional lens?

Shawn: Well, that’s a great question. Of course. I think first you have to understand those definitions, the definitions of those terms. I think social justice and intersectionality and all those things have become these catchphrases thrown around. I think a lot of people haven’t actually sat down to understand what those mean, what social justice means, what social justice is. How it operates and how, or how it has operated in this country particularly for people according to how they identify.

That’s when the intersectional part comes in. Understanding how you identify, how you are identified and characterized by race, by gender, by sexuality, by your social-economic status, your religion. All of those things, you mentioned location very important. Where do you live? What part of town do you live in? What type of town do you live in? All of those things operate in the framework of social justice. Who is allowed social justice, who has access to social justice? We have to think about that. First of all, you have to understand what social justice is. You have to understand the way in which we are categorized in this country, the way in which people are subjugated and discriminated against in this country.

The military is such an interesting platform in which to look at those things, I would’ve never had thought of it developing a course like this for the military. Why would I, I have no military background, no military experience. I’m not a military historian in any way. I know some things, but that’s really not my area of expertise. The one thing I recognize is that, well looking at this for framework for military families is really no different of looking at this framework for families in general, in this country. Now I know the military has some of its own set of rules and laws. I think in the bigger picture, the levels of discrimination that go on, particularly, is there really that much shift between whether you’re in a military family or not?

First, I think understanding social justice, understanding intersectionality, but most importantly, understanding wellbeing. What wellbeing means to people. Now, because this course it’s set up in an academic framework. There are these different frameworks and dimensions of wellbeing or what I like to call wellness. That there are these apparatus of wellbeing that need to be understood. Particularly in career, career wellbeing, community wellbeing, financial wellbeing, health wellbeing, and social wellbeing, which covers a lot of area in our day-to-day lives.

What does wellbeing mean to people? What do people need to consider themselves to be operating in a system of wellbeing? That’s very interesting. I bet you’re going to get a lot of different answers for everyone. I think a practitioner, someone who’s helping families, they have to understand these things. They have to understand that this family’s thoughts of wellbeing are going to be very different from this family’s thought of wellbeing. Why is that? Well, it could just be because, well, this family over here is of Mexican descent.

This military family over here are folk of white European descent, but come from maybe a lower economic status than a middle class or upper-middle class, White European status in this country. All of that needs to be thought through and understood. I think one of the first things with the course I develop is having people who plan on helping these families. The practitioners to really start looking at themselves, because I don’t know from what I’ve noticed and the research and work that I’m doing.

Again, to go back to what I was saying before, it seems like there’s a lot of people in this country who aren’t really willing to look at themselves and who they are and how their identity operates and affects other people in society. Society, that could be in your workplace that could just be in your home, that could be in your town or city. Do we really stop and think about that? What is my status as a CIS hetero identified man of African descent, how that affects other people? I still have levels of patriarchy, even though I’m considered within a subjugated marginalized community, but how does my patriarchy operate?

How have I used my patriarchy in a negative way? How has that affected other people? I have to think about that. What can I do to shift and change that? Really, I think the basis of this first course is for people to really start having conversations with themselves. How do you help someone else if you’re not willing to have a deeper understanding of who you are? Not who you are meaning, “Oh, well, my family came from Scotland and blood,” that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about where you live right now, your address, and what you do.

I’m talking about who you are looking at intersectional frameworks and how that affects other people within your society. Once you can start unpacking that, then you’re able to actually talk to some of these families to actually start looking at their arrangement. Maybe start coming up with solutions through conversation, through real conversation.

Bob: I love that you brought up reflection. I’ve seen that it’s present in the work and in the course that you have coming up. I think that is so important to take the time to reflect. We’ve talked about it on the podcast before, Jessica, like how critical that is to any relationship building, in any context, knows yourself first.

Shawn: That could be a very difficult and frightening thing, but it’s absolutely necessary. If we’re wanting to be the best we can be, we have to start unpacking who we are. I know I had to start doing that. It means to be very frank and very revealing. I feel like my life depended on it, that I have to start being better. Whatever that means doing better, having better understanding, have a different level of compassion and empathy, period. Just the realization of how crucial that is because realizing of how interconnected we all are and what I do affects others, Yes. Very, very important

Bob: Well, Shawn, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been a great conversation and we hope that maybe we can find an opportunity to talk with you on the podcast again, soon in the future.

Shawn: That would be wonderful. Yes, really appreciate the opportunity you all have given me. I hope the things I said come across in a way that makes sense to people. It’s difficult talking about these topics because even for someone who is a training scholar in this, because it is very convoluted and very complex, there is no linear approach. There is no A to B. There are many different perspectives but I think when all is said and done, what we’re talking about is humanity and being human to each other. Something that we have failed to do, and we have to get so much better at. Thank you, Robert, and thank you, Jessica. Appreciate you all.

Bob: Shawn Trenell O’Neal is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder, and he has developed the course Introduction to Social Justice Lenses for Family Wellbeing.

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Speaker 1: We typically end each episode with a practice you can try yourself. If this talk intrigued you check the show notes for links to some practices like taking the course and to some of our past episodes of this podcast that relate to the conversation we have with Shawn today. You can find the show notes @oneop.org/series/practicing connection.

Bob: Yes, and we’d like to thank our announcer Kalin Gable. Hannah Hyde and Terry Meisenbach for their marketing help. Nathan Grimm who composed and performed all the music that you hear on the podcast. We’d like to thank you as well for joining us today and our guest, Shawn Trenell O’Neal. I almost forgot Shawn. Thank you so much, Shawn. Thanks for joining the podcast and keep practicing.

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