Interview with Dr. Vershawn Young

Today is August 24th, 2023. This is an interview with Dr. Vershawn Young for the Oral History Project Phase 2. The interviewer is Jermal Jones. Welcome Vershawn. It's great to have you here. I’m Looking forward to having a conversation about the trajectory of your career, your life, and all the things that encompass it for Phase 2 of this Oral History Project. Thanks for being here today.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

We'll start off with an easy question. Tell me about yourself, your childhood, where you grew up? It's the easy beginning.

Well, easy is subjective, I guess, [laughter]. I don't know whether that's easy. I'm Vershawn Ashanti Young. I do go by Vay. For some reason, when I hear the name Vershawn, even though I think it's an excellent name that my mother gave me, it's not something I'm accustomed to hearing every day. I'll just continue with the name. As I said, my mother gave me the name Vershawn, which is a combination of her best friend's name, which was Verlina Shaw.

Ah. 00:01:39.000 --> 00:02:04.000 She didn't get an ultrasound to determine whether I was going to be male or female. So, she was going to name me Verlina, but when I came out male, she put the Ver from Verlina and Shaw together and came up with Vershawn. I also like to say that I am a descendant of the enslaved African peoples of America.

Uh huh.

I honour that history, but the unfortunate part of being a descendant of the enslaved African peoples of America is that we don't really know our lineage to our African ancestors and lands. One of the things that my mother did, because she was very interested in African history and black history overall, is she gifted me an African name. Ashanti is from a west African tribe from Ghana, and it has various meanings, but peaceful warrior is the one that I know. It also has traction in other Black and brown lands as well. That's why I go by Vay. It honours, the Vershawn and the Ashanti, and of course my last name is Young.

I'm from Chicago. I was born and raised there on the west side in the infamous Henry Horner housing projects. People often say the south side, and I often wonder, why the south side of Chicago has such a big impact on people's cultural imagination. I am from the west side, [laughter], and the west side has much more of a cultural imprint because the United Centre, where the Bulls and where the Blackhawks play is on the west side. It's across the street from where I grew up. Most of the infamous housing projects were on the west side. There were lots (housing projects) on the south side, like Cabrini-Green and Robert Taylor Homes. The Henry Horner (homes) has a book that was written about Henry Horner Housing Projects, and the people that lived. The book is called, There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz, which was an award-winning book that Oprah Winfrey turned into a TV miniseries when her studio was on the west side of Chicago. It was, it was about two Black boys whom I knew and went to school with. What it was about was what daily life was like in the projects. My daily life in the projects was not like theirs. Not to say that I didn't encounter the same kind of things that they did like, gang violence, seeing people shot and killed, drugs, and pimps and hoes. I'm just being real, because that's what was there. My mother shielded us from that. We were churchgoing people and schoolmates people and that's what we were focused on. The stereotypical narrative, while I observed it and in some ways was probably impacted by it, was not a regular part of my participatory existence there in the projects. Let's put it that way.

It sounds like education was valued in your home and has transpired throughout your life; an elementary principal, drama teacher in high school. You've done.

No, that.

Every faculty appointment. [Laughter].

Do the research, right? Various faculty appointments.

That's, why you wanted me to give the background. You wanted me to give, the traditional, go through the trajectory of school background.

We're going to do it a little bit differently. We're going to go all over the place here. From those experiences, what, what most resonates? Why choose all that (educational journey)? I guess it’s a large question. I'll make it philosophical.

Why choose education?

Yeah. Why choose education? What's important about that to you?

I don't know, what's not important about it? I was not a sports guy, I was much more of an intellectual. Not that sportsmen can't be intellectual, but I was much more intellectual. Very heady and very outspoken. I was a man of words or a boy of words, so words really appealed to me. I liked reading and writing, so school was quite attractive to me. I loved school. I used to go to school in the summer when kids were out playing and going on vacation, I was at the door like, let me into the summer school. I just wanted to be in school all the time, which is probably why I'm a professor. To be in school all the time, all year round. I found it something that I was good at; I was good at school. I also loved it, so that's why I chose it.

You’ve written a couple of books, and I think “code meshing” is probably the thing (term) that, you're known for, in your literature and what you've been able to write about. Can you maybe explain what code meshing is and how that has kind of weaved throughout, just not your [inaudible] career, but your personal life and also your acting performance life. That we'll get into in a little bit later.

Okay. Code meshing in short is my neologism to describe a linguistic or sociolinguistic practice that I argue, schools should take up and understand about minoritized people, but in my case, particularly Black people. In other words, code meshing, for me, was a way to say that Black people brought really powerful intellectual linguistic repertoires with them to school that may not sound like what teachers understand to be standard English, but that shouldn't be a case to ask them to give those up or to translate them into standard [laughter], English. Which is what they really wanted and have been trying to do, but to blend them together. My argument was that standard English is undergirded by many dialects and many languages. You can't have borrowings, like linguistics, what linguists called borrowing. Like rendezvous, that's not English, that's French, and German borrowings in a language? I was arguing that the same thing happens with African languages, and particularly African American or Black “Englishes” that standard English; they already inform standard English practices and people should be allowed to use those.

My first book, Your Average Nigga, is a demonstration of that because I was saying, people think I'm so smart. I have a PhD, I have two master's degrees, I've been a principal, an elementary school principal, I'm a professor, and I'm writing all this stuff, but really when you read it, it is really Black English. I don't know what people tripping about. I write in Black English all the time. I talk Black English. I found that the problem really is what some other linguists, not just me, but other linguists such as Rosina Lippi-Green would say, the problem that people have with Black English is that they really just don't want Black people in the public sphere. To the extent that when Black people are in public spaces and public spheres, they want them to act white or to be as white as possible so that they can manage, massage and downplay their cultural Blackness. You can have a black face and be a Black person, but as long as you act like white people think, that is what they understand to be, what they're accustomed to as white, you are probably A-okay to an extent.

I have had to expand the argument, because the argument came from that. People wanted to say “oh, this is a powerful argument, but let's get rid of all the gender and race stuff”. I mean, people actually said that to me. I would say to them, “look, you were attracted to the book and to the argument because of the gender and race stuff”. Let's be real because this is not novel argument.

Uh huh.

It is novel in the sense that I was being forceful about insisting on a Black cultural reference when it comes to life and school for all Black people in the public sphere.

Okay.

Does that make sense?

That, makes sense to me. What I'm taking away from that, or what I want to ask next is, how do you see that mirror in the social sphere of our lives, and what you do in that performance? You are a performer. How do you take elements of what happens in our social lives and construct it into an art space type of learning for folks?

I do two things. One is I am a solo performance artist. When I told you I was a man of words or a boy of words, that also meant, I was always doing oratory, speaking, and plays. I study theatre and I'm a professional actor. As an academic, I'm also in performance studies. Performance studies bridges the academy with art. I translate all of my academic work, my books, articles and so forth, into performances, like, one-man shows Sometimes, I do stage readings when I don't really want to do the whole-body thing and be all over the stage [laughter], just constructed into reading. In that way, people get to see and feel the argument.

I was making the argument about my cultural enactment in the public sphere, being a black person, particularly a black man. They get to see it, and they get to feel it, and they get to witness it. I think it's an amplification and a compliment of the research, right? They are actually immersed, and they can't ignore this argument that I'm making about how deeply connected this is to race and our understanding of race relations. How we use language with each other and in these spaces. I also get to point out something that I want to. I get to point out how white people don't use standard English and they think they do.

Oh, [laughter]

I get to perform it, and I'm like, I have a PhD in English, and I speak black English. I could speak the standard English y'all are saying, but it would make me take out so much stuff; even some things you'd think are not standard, are standard. It would make me take out all that stuff. Then I have to point out how white people have such a colloquial way of speaking and writing in schools and in academia. They just don't recognize it as non-standard because it's racialized when they read it. I perform that onstage so that they can actually hear it and witness it themselves. That's part of the fun part of it for me. The revelations of white [inaudible] going off.

The other way, my other stage work, I've only been with maybe one black theatre company that was all black, where I could perform Blackness. Most of them have been white theatre companies, and I was in a play. This past winter, as you know (speaking to Jermal), I had the lead, and it was Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, which was a Victorian, white English Victorian play. I mean, I would never have been that character ever, but I made it clear to the director (that I was going to be me). People were asking me, Vay, “what are you going to do about your hair”? Like actors (said asked this of him). First, in my mind, I was like, you're an actor, you have no business asking me what I'm going to do with my hair.

Uh huh.

Basically they were referring to my dreads, and sometimes I let them grow. The hair growth (length, “untidiness”, style) and they're looking (at the hair). I know they were feeling anxious about the Blackness. My Black hair.

I see.

I wouldn't respond to them. They don't understand how infuriating that is, and if I cuss them out, then they would be saying that I'm wrong. But they were wrong, for asking me. That's a question for the director to me. The director did ask me that himself. He said something though. He's a really nice guy, and he's really politically astute, and he put it in some other kind of way about my hair, and I made a reference. I was like, “well this is Black people's hair, and you hired a Black actor, so this is what is going to be there unless you make other arrangements with your stylist for me; because I'm not cutting my hair, [laughter]. And he did. He said, “we're going to pay for a stylist to put your hair in a period” and they did. To be honest with you, I was a little stunned.

In a good way.

I was stunned in a good way.

Okay.

I was stunned in a good way and then had to go to the stylist. A Black stylist, and she did it. I had to go twice, and I submitted both receipts, and they only paid me for one. I thought, I'm not going to bother with getting the other part of this (reimbursement) and a week later, he ensured that I got that other part (reimbursement). I didn't even say anything. Anyway, that's a sidestep, I was bringing my Blackness there.

In my performance, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't trying to be a stuffy English white man. I was going to be Black and using a British accent, and bring what I thought a Black person would be like there. So yeah, I try, I code mesh. I want to make sure that I'm not I'm not living the myth. I understand some people do live this (emphasis added) myth, a code-switching myth. Where they say, I can be Black at home but I'm not going to be Black here (anywhere outside the home). I can talk Black at home. I don't do that.

Yeah.

I don't do that. That's a code-switching model; in context I'm this way, (and in another space) I'm that way. I can't be my full self in a particular environment, I'm not going to be in that environment. I'm also not going to leave environments where I know I'm supposed to be in. I'm going to change that environment, because I'm going to bring my full self there. If people can't handle it, then they're going to have to leave the environment.

I see. [Laughter].

That brings it to my next question, which is about the Black Studies program. What is the aim and your desire for that program?

The Black Studies program at the University of Waterloo; my desire is to bring Blackness to the fore at the University of Waterloo in an academic way, just like people would study French, Italian, Spanish, German, or any other culture and language. That Black Studies would be [inaudible] study. In particular, I was interested in developing a program that was deliberately anti-racist, and that spread and taught anti-racist concepts to students, because people are all so fearful about what it means to be an anti-racist or encountering and dealing with racism as an academic topic that has practical applications. I wanted that because I knew it was possible. It doesn't exist anywhere that I know of. It doesn't exist in the U.S., although it could. I have a colleague in Communication Studies who's a part of the National Communication Association as well as I am, and he's said, this is something that they've been trying to do forever but haven't gotten off the ground.

No programs are doing it. I thought, we need a concept idea, people to say yes, and people to teach, [laughter], let's do it, because it's possible. I have found students that choose to take up the program and the classes they enjoy it and I think that is immensely valuable.

Our colleagues wanted a more general Black Studies program, Black Studies as a theoretical enterprise, not just as a practical antiracist enterprise and yeah of, course. We have two diplomas, the Black Studies diploma and the diploma in Anti-racist Communication, and I'm hoping that we can have two other diplomas. I think we can, in Black, Business Entrepreneurship and one in Black Consulting Practices.

Cool. I would love to see that come to fruition.

My next steps with this are to see what people want to do with the Black Studies program. Get faculty together and see where we want to take this and instructors in a program. I'm not, personally interested in a department.

Okay.

Some people may be. I'm not against a department, don't get me wrong. I will help support a department, grow a department, and lead a department if I have to. I don't necessarily have to be the leader but will do it. I think we could be successful with a series of diplomas where students take classes and elect those classes and they take that information and fold it into what they're studying. To me, that is very powerful. You have a department and people who could get a minor or a major in Black Studies, and that's their thing. To me, it's vey powerful for somebody in business or nanotechnology or in math to take Black Studies courses and bring that back over to their major in math. That is what I want. I want a proliferation, a spreading out of things. It is how I envision it; Black Studies everywhere, [laughter].

I like that vision. What I would ask you now is, if you were to think forward to the University's Waterloo at 100, 2057, what would you be hoping to see? You could answer this in a large way, or you can answer it very specifically, like the Black Studies program. What would you want to see?

I, I don't think like that, Jermal.

Okay.

I don't think like that and I'm going to tell you why. I'm a present day guy. I'm a today guy. I'm not a five, ten years from now guy, especially when it comes to Blackness. Black people have experienced so much trauma, drama, and oppression on a daily basis, that thinking ten years down the line is a luxury that I do not have. My thing is for today. Waterloo needs to get with it today and what I want to see today is more Black people in administrative roles without having to apologize for being Black. I want that proliferation, as I've said, of our Black Studies program across campus. We have a few black administrators, but we need some (more) Black administrators, period. I want a real (emphasis added) Black president. I want Black people on the Board of Governors. I would like to see, more black faculty today, not ten years from now. To me, when I think about it in that way, it creates a fire in the belly, as James Baldwin would say, to make these things happen now.

To me, participating in the vision of ten years from now when we haven't even made the progress from 100 years ago that should be there, that to me is participating in a project that has little value for me; for people that I see that need that right. That need interventions right now from a racialized, multicultural lens. I would hope that University of Waterloo would get it together. I think that they mishandled these hires and probably deliberately did for Black and Indigenous faculty. I don't know how but I think they’ve got one or two Indigenous faculty members [laughter], and maybe three black faculty members out of the 20 we were supposed to have, which is ridiculous. If you give me the money and tell me to hire, I know that I can find 50 or 60 or 70 or 100 Black people that are fully qualified, more qualified than probably anybody on our campus right now to come here and teach.

I don't know what they did and how they did it, but I know they did not do good enough, and that's why that strategy, the strategic plans that look ten years down the line are like buckets with bottomless buckets. Not that the well is deep, but that the water just goes straight through, and then you get some drippings on the side. The water that collects on the side, and that's what you get.

It's a great visual. I want to, as we're winding down, ask the last few questions I have for you, because I know that you have to leave. Is, there anything here that you didn't necessarily get a chance to talk about that you would like to talk about?

Let's see. I'd like to talk about, but I don't have enough time to talk about this. I know that I had reached out to you about some thoughts that I had about the difference in Blackness as it's constructed and performed in the U.S. versus Canada. I've been thinking a lot about that and have some hypotheses about it. One of the reasons why that's important to me to think about is because I'm African American. I'm, as I said at the beginning, I'm from the enslaved peoples. I'm a descendant of the slave peoples of America. We have a whole different way of orienting ourselves to nationhood and country than I see Black, Caribbean and island immigrants in Canada. Their orientation is extremely different. One of the differences, I'm hypothesizing, is in the U.S., Black descent is not-- I was going to use Barack Obama as an example, but I'll set him to the side for a moment. In the U.S., there is a real deep entitlement that Blacks have developed. An entitlement to rights, and entitlement to participating in all spheres. A right to be acknowledged that the foundation of that country is Black, and that entitlement comes out in ways of demanding justice, demanding recognition, and it is a constant struggle, but it is a struggle. Black struggle is one of recognition, gaining and acquiring rights. Rights that are constantly being withheld or forestalled or curtailed by a white majority in the U.S. It's not like that in Canada.

My thoughts about Black immigrants to Canada, whether they're first generation, second generation, or even third generation, is that they have an immigrant mentality. This immigrant mentality comes out like I'm going to integrate into this already existing space. I'll find a space for Blackness here, but it's not the same kind of demanding attitude that U.S. Blacks [laughter], overall have. It's not that it is an acquiescence either--I'm not saying that. It is something else and here's the interesting tension. While it is something else, there is still an appeal to U.S. Blackness.

Uh huh.

Canadian Blackness still appeals to U.S. Blackness, especially when it comes to struggles; of access and rights. They appeal to that, but they resist it at the same time. I think the resistance is appropriate because it is not the same context and the same situation.

Anyway, I am still thinking about that because I think it's important for Black solidarity across the board, and how those tensions get negotiated among Black peoples-- I should say, particularly African Americans, which there's not a lot of (consensus). I know three or four, maybe two (Black American faculty and staff), [laughter] at the university, but not many. I do think that it's real and interesting.

I appreciate that answer, and it's given me something to think about too. I'll probably walk away thinking about that once we're done here. The last question, before we say goodbye is, is there anyone else that you think I should be interviewing in this project around-- capturing Black voices here at the University of Waterloo?

Oh yeah. Absolutely, I think you should reach out to people who probably already on your --Crystena Parker [Crystena A. H. Parker-Sandal]. Do you know Crystena over in social development studies?

I do, yes.

Who’s her colleague over there? Johonna McCants-Turner? Do you know Johonna?

Yep.

Have you interviewed Johonna?

I have not interviewed Johonna, not yet no.

See, I know she's African American, so I want to hear what she has to say about some of these things, [laughter].

Okay.

Her partner too, Julian [ Julian McCants Turner]. I find him to be very fascinating and interesting person with a very different, not very different (perspective on Blackness). They are from the east, D.C. area (Washington D.C). I'm from Chicago, the Midwest, but it's very interesting to talk about these things with them. I think that would be very interesting.

Okay. Well, thank you so much, Vei, for your time. I really appreciate it.

You're welcome. You can call me back for a part two if you want.

Yeah, I think there might be an opportunity to do a part two here.

Alright. Thank you so much. Alright.

Alright. Thank you. Bye.