Tell Me a Story #12: Jalen Lee

“Tell Me a Story” is a series spotlighting individuals on the York College campus as well as in the wider community of York. They tell a story that’s unique to them — we publish it so that you can get a glimpse of their lives. Each piece includes an unedited transcription of their response.

“Yesterday [October 16th] I had the amazing opportunity of helping out with the YWCA’s Leadership Summit. They do a program every year where they have about 60 to 80 high school students come to the campus, and they wanted to discuss racism. It was a really, really interesting experience talking with students who seem to be more socially aware than I was at their age, you know. We talked about the movie Black Panther, and we had to break down what stereotypes that it broke about black women in the media and how Black Panther was really a groundbreaking movie showing black women in a different light than what they normally are shown. Nobody in our group had seen the movie, so we kind of had to readjust some of our programming and readjust the way that we were going to attack the topic, okay how are we going to talk about racism in the media with these students if they haven’t seen the movie that we’re using as our example. But nevertheless they had some very insightful things — we kind of had to shift the conversation to music, and I didn’t really realize the type of messaging that so many people, especially high school students, are receiving through music. I think back to when I was their age listening to different artists and the things they would be saying. To me, it was just lyrics, you know; I wasn’t thinking about it too deeply. But some of them were really affected by what some of these mainly hip-hop artists would say. There were a lot of students who felt that hip-hop artists glorified lighter skin over darker skin. And even in videos, they wouldn’t showcase darker skin — the video models, if you will.

“Yeah, it was really interesting getting to talk to high school students because when you’re talking to college students they kind of are in this habit of tests, school, class, and when am I going to get my next nap. High school students, they are a little bit more energized than we are, you know, and I don’t know if that’s because they haven’t had their dreams shattered by the reality of the world, but it’s motivational getting to talk to them. They’re very aware and knowledgeable about what’s going on, and I think that through the experience I kind of learned to appreciate, although I’m only about four years older, what people younger than I am have to say. Like, they were talking about the makeup industry, and most of the big-name makeup brands do not carry shades for their skin. I was like, what! What do you mean? It seems backwards, you know. I was an outsider looking in because I don’t wear makeup and there’s not a lot of brands out there that cater to a male audience, so I don’t have that firsthand experience, going into a store and not being able to find a shade that will apply to my skin. So it was helpful hearing from high schoolers how they were having this experience and how it made them feel like this other person.

“It really reminded me of the work that I’ve been trying to do, you know, trying to educate people on identities and on others who are different from each other because I don’t have experience with makeup and I wouldn’t have taken the time to ask, you know, what are your experiences. I would have never learned about that, and it just really reignited this flame inside of me that I didn’t know was gone until yesterday. I left feeling rewarded and just very good… warm and nice inside. Sometimes when you’re doing this activism work or this work to break the veil that we all have around us, it gets exhausting. People just don’t seem to understand, and when you’re faced with wall after wall after wall, it’s disheartening and you start to lose hope. But I’m learning that by talking to younger people, they can kind of reignite that hope and get me started again. A couple of them said, ‘If I come to York College I want to join your club!’ I was like, ‘Yes! I’m going to be gone in the next year, but please join the club!’ I would love to leave that legacy.”

Jalen Lee is the founding president of Allies Committed to Social Justice (ACTS), an organization at York College that “aims to empower students to become more active in their allyship and increase student awareness of various social injustices.” About ACTS he said, “I didn’t realize that it would end up being such a big part of the diversity and inclusion programming that we do on this campus. Even though the group is small itself, we still help out a lot with making sure the campus is doing more bystander intervention programming, also with working with organizations outside campus — that’s how we got invited to be at the Leadership Summit. Someone heard about the work that we were doing. It just… it makes me happy.”