Welcome to a special edition of People.Power.Perspectives. The podcast where we're talking to youth who are overcoming system inequities to achieve just outcomes.
Hi, and welcome to this episode of People.Power.Perspectives. I'm Sue Watson with CA4Health. And we're collaborating with the empowering black youth program on a special series of podcasts and excited to have Justin Boyle with us to lead the moderation of this session on the impacts of the empowering black youth program with some of the interns. Justin is a student at the University of San Francisco and also part of the EBY program. So Justin, it's all yours.
Thank you, Sue, yes I'm a first year business analytics student at the University of San Francisco. I'm also the host of my own personal podcast called Troof to Power available anywhere you can listen to podcasts, on Apple, Music, Spotify, all those things where you can find the podcast at. But I'm here with students at the EBY program as a part of Code Tenderloin, and we're just here to gain some of their perspective on the program that they're participating in. Yeah, I'm gonna give the students the opportunity to introduce themselves. So starting off with Elijah.
Hi, my name is Elijah. I'm a freshman. And I'm 15 years.
Now let's move on to Mar.
My name is Mar, I'm a junior.
And then finally we have Sicily joining us.
I'm Sicily I'm a senior and I'm 18.
Starting off with these questions, the first one is going to be for Elijah. And it is Do you feel as if participating in code tenderloin more specifically, the empowering black youth program has filled the gaps left by the public health and education system?
I feel like it has because the public like education systems don't educate us on these things. Really. It's like it's kind of rare. Even if we have something like health class or just any like anything other than that.
Yeah and Sicily, I asked the same question to you. Do you feel as if participating in Code Tenderloin more specifically, the EBY has filled like some of those gaps that are left by the public health education system?
Well, yes, because here we can talk about how we feel in certain questions that we wouldn't typically asks in school or around like public genres, we will access it and most of the time we get the answers or we learn stuff that we didn't know at the beginning that they don't teach in school.
Awesome. And then moving on to our next question. This is going to be from Mar, how will you specifically use your influence to spread the important knowledge that you've gained from the EBY program?
Well, I used to go to the school where it's like kids that like was being bad. And like other schools, they belong in a smaller setting. They don't know they don't get the like, the right education, so to speak, sexual health and all this stuff that we talk about an EBY program that they need in school. And sometimes I tell them, like they need to come to this program, maybe like try out this program, like next year, come try this out, blah, blah, blah. Because you know, you also get income, but you also learn things that you don't know about your body and about people.
Right? Important. You know, always, one thing about empowering black youth is that we also want to transform youth into leaders and other mentors and things for peers and other people in their area. So that's a great point that you made, we can move on to our next question, actually, what perspectives do you believe that youth have to offer the black community as a whole? And I'm going to ask this to Elijah.
Since like, the black youth is there's kind of like, like a power difference. And like, we see things different. I just think it's because of older people. They just see it different than how teens here like on how health is.
So working on reaching some of those generational gaps in there. I'm also curious to hear your response on their question, Sicily, what perspectives do you believe the youth has to offer the black community?
As the Youth, we learn a lot of things. We've all learned that you've learned something new every day. But we all have started to get in touch with our mental health. And we've started to get passed up old like traditions and stuff that used to happen back in the day like, yeah, there's still a lot of racist things that happen. But as the youth we can sit there and change the way we react to the racist things and comments, we can change the way we perceive ourselves and show that yeah, you can say that thing. But that doesn't mean it's true.
And that's a great point to start to talk about controlling narratives and things like that and starting to take control over our own images. I'm actually going to ask this next question. To you Siciliy, how is it being a black youth today, but more specifically, how is it being a black youth in the Bay Area?
Well, I can say that it comes with its difficulties. Some of my other youth people that are in the program have said that it's hard because you're not entirely sure if you can sit there and like the color of your skin because of how you know the clicks go and how people see you if you're too dark or too light, but it also affects your mental health, such as me, being a black young woman today, you get a lot of hate comments. Yeah, a handful of good comments. But there's a lot of hate comments, and it puts my competence at a different level, when people give certain comments.
I want to just thank you for sharing your perspective, specifically, as a black women, because we always need to do better with the community, making sure we're uplifting on young women, and make sure that they feel supported in these spaces as well. So I do appreciate you for sharing your perspective. But I also want to ask it same question about being a black youth today. But typically, in the Bay Area to Elijah/
There is like ups and down sides. One downside is there being like toxic masculinity and it like hurts the mental. So like a lot of young men out there, but being black in the Bay Area. It's like, I don't feel alone, because there's a large population of black people. I can like relate and kind of have like a family. And I can find family in them.
Yeah, and then me being out here in the Bay Area, I definitely have felt that sense of community here, definitely might not on paper and statistically feel like it's a lot of black people when you look at the individual cities. But when you start to look at it as like a collective area, it definitely does have a strong sense of black community. But moving on. So our last two questions I'm going to ask this one to Mar. The question is, how can you as an individual embrace fellow black youth?
Oh I think I can support them, like getting some people off the streets, you know, like black people off the streets and like, into shelters like good shelters, and stuff like that, like getting them like work, help getting given them help, so to speak, like, you know, the people that are doing drugs on the streets and all that stuff, like giving them real help. I think I can do that.
Right. And it's great that you say that to just even have a start. I know, we don't usually depend on the youth support our community, right, you know, you mean, getting youth ready for these type of conversations and seeing the type of impact that they can have is very encouraging. Also, you know, you just grow up thinking a little bit higher yourself, because you have this sense of accomplishment, that sense of purpose in your community. So for all you guys to keep thinking about that. Also, I'm going to ask that same question to Elijah, how can you as an individual embrace or support your fellow black youth?
One way I do that is I like it mostly happens throughout my friends. Because for us, there's not a lot of resources we can go to. So we kind of just help each other as I like a big family, we upheld each other, uphold other people to create like a positive space for all of us.
Great. I know we have asked two people per question. But I also do want to hear from Sicily on this question as well.
So there's many ways as an individual to embrace fellow Black youth, but you can also sit there and continue showing that we're not the stereotype of what most people think of black people how they say we're ignorant and stuff like that, we can show them that we're actually smart, and we set a lot of paths, we can sit there and uplift our fellow people that are around us, instead of trying to beat somebody down just to get ahead, we can encourage our fellow people that are around us and show that you don't have to sit there and worry about the future, take it day by day, and see what you get.
And I really like that point about just showing you you don't necessarily have to do something sometimes sometimes you just have to be present in the space and kinda don't even lead by example, but just be your authentic self and use that as kinda like a guideline for other people. But moving into this last question, and I'm going to ask it to all three of you guys again. So you all know, what do you feel that older generation should do to best empower black youth? And to start it I want to hear from Mar.
To be honest what older generations are we talking about?
Let's say anybody out of college in the workforce, just adults.
Feel like the older generations should start like I want to get out of college they should go to like high school. Start like a program about this. I it'll be kind of nice to like help more people the same help that you got, you know, since you've been a college and all this other stuff like start a program in high school about Black youth or just anything, period.
Definitely this sense of giving back and always reaching back and bringing others forward. You make it and then let's move on and hear from Elijah on this same question.
I feel like since older people have more knowledge, and they've kind of been through what other Black youth have been through. I feel like this should try to educate them more and like guide him in the right way. And kind of just be like a guardian and just like make sure they don't like drift off into a into like a bad lane, you know?
Yeah. When you talked about education, did you mean more? So in this like a general life sense, or more so about, like specific topics?
kind of like general life sense.
Okay. Yeah, definitely that sense of guidance and wisdom that we can get from older people. Definitely always use more of that. But to take it to our last panelist Cicely you can wrap it up for us, what do you feel older generation should do to best Empower black youth?
I feel as though older generation should understand that new things are coming into place. Yes, things do change. It may not be a change that you want. But it's a change that's going to happen. And I feel as though growing up as a young black youth that we shouldn't have learned what we did to repent or get back at what they did to us, or things that we didn't like, don't teach us the bad things that we did teach us the good that we did things that we created, not things that we destroyed. Because in high school, that's all I learned was about riots and the things that black Americans destroyed, being upset because they weren't being treated fairly. I feel as though they should teach us, we don't need to act angry about it, show that we deserve better. And if they're not going to give us better, we're not going to deal with what they're giving us.
That was a great point that you made at the end. And I just want to say that oh, that we're at the end of all our questions. I want to say thank you to you guys, for sitting on this panel and sharing some of your perspective. It's always important to have the younger generations perspective, as time goes on, and giving you guys prepared to you know, start thinking about ways that we want to see our community look better in the future. So with that I'm going to turn it back over to Sue.
Thanks, Justin. And again, thank you to Mar, Elijah and Sicily, it's been great hearing about your perspectives on what you're getting out of the empowering black youth internship. And really hearing what you all are learning and how you becoming leaders is inspiring. We are excited for this collaboration on these podcasts with EBY and a grateful that you all took the time to share your valuable insights. So thank you. And thank everyone for listening to another episode of CA4Health People.Power.Perspectives Podcast.
