RECAP: Founder of CHANGE THE PERCEPTION Invited Colleagues to Have a Conversation About Race on STARS IN THE HOUSE

Stars in the House continued Thursday afternoon (2pm) Regional Theatre Spotlight On: CHANGE THE PERCEPTION with Denise Lee, Thomas Collier, Devon Miller, W. Jerome Stevenson, David Stewart and Brandon White. This episode was in support of Mother's Against Police Brutality.

Denise Lee began "I am the Founder and president of an organization called Change the Perception which started four years ago following the Dallas police shootings. It was meant to be a one-time meeting that we held here...I got tired of politicians talking at us and preachers preaching at us and panels who would talk at us but not allow us to talk back...we are in the process of becoming a non-profit organization so we can now encourage people nationally to hold these conversations."

One of the voices I felt we never get to hear in an intimate setting was the voices of African American Men...So we set up a forum last week through Zoom and we asked people to join us. I put out a call to as many of my African American Brothers as possible and we had people from all over the country. We had almost 240 people on the Zoom call...The first 20 minutes of that conversation was allowing them to talk. Unedited, unfiltered, uninterrupted."

Denise brought on five men who participated in the Zoom conversation, Devon Miller, David Stewart, Brandon White, W Jerome Stevenson, and Thomas Collier.

David Stewart talked about how he is responded to the death of George Floyd. "I took to social media and kind of tried to make my voice heard there and shared a lot of resources and tried to explain what white privilege is and how white folks move through this world and ask those folks to be self-reflective and take a look at themselves and what they're contributing to this."

Denise asked what kind of steps need to be taken to create a new normal.

Devon responded, "When you ask us how we feel or what our point of view is, listen. When I say listen, really actively listen because we can tell when you check out after a minute of us talking. We can tell when we start talking to give you our voice and you cut in and say this is what I've been doing, well the question wasn't what have you been doing, The question is how have I been feeling, what is my opinion."

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