Kimberly Williams Crenshaw

That's my intent.

I was always encouraged to talk and was always encouraged to call out conditions, experiences that I thought were unfair or inexplicable.

The two came together when I was young, but as I moved into my career, moved into thinking about the things that still exist in this world that are not fair, that are reflections of hierarchies and exclusions of the past, those things exist.

So talking back to them

first of all, acknowledges that we're not living in a world in which we are all standing on equal footing.

And secondly, many of those moments in which we recognize that things are not equal expect us to simply fold our objections into it or

to silence how we're thinking or feeling or questioning, often as a condition for fitting in or for moving forward.

So we're basically being told to be seen and not heard in this moment.

And we have to muster the courage, the willingness, quite frankly, the righteous indignation to talk back against these expectations.

Well, my parents were not of the belief that dinner is just a ritual of nourishment and not family time and not educational time.

The first thing to recognize is my parents were both educators, my mom and my dad.

And that didn't stop when they left the schoolhouse.

They came home with the same kind of commitment to prepare their children for a world that we were trying to create, that we were hoping for.

So part of that preparation is to speak when you're spoken to, to have something to say, to have some thoughts about what you're seeing in the world.

And to be able to defend what it is that you are talking about.

So that started from a very early age.

And my friends did used to tease me when I had to stop playing a little bit before we were called in for dinner because I had to think about what am I going to talk about at the dinner table tonight.

And many times, you know, it was about things that kids think about.

So, you know, I used to—I press them all the time about, tell me about this Santa Claus thing.

I just—I really don't understand it.