Professor, writer Toby Jenkins-Henry to discuss a silent divide in our communities.

In the wake of the shooting Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood vigilante, the phrase “Black Lives Matter” became a rallying cry, a call for change.

Toby Jenkins-Henry, assistant professor at University of Hawaii at Manoa, is adding to that phrase: Brown lives matter. By saying this, she is showing that racism also affects Latino communities in a way that has been ignored by mainstream media. Jenkins addresses this and the issues of racism and power imbalances in Latino communities, especially how they impact young people, in a talk from 6pm-7:30pm tonight in the Monterey Peninsula College Lecture Forum.

She speaks from her book My Culture, My Color, My Self, which is a compilation of essays written by young people that Jenkins has interacted with in her academic career. The essays discuss their first-person accounts of racism and multiculturalism and how it shaped their lives. The lecture is the third installment in the four-part racial justice speaker series “Courageous Conversations” and sponsored by the YWCA of MontereyCounty.

Executive director of the YWCA Cheryl McCormick says, “[Racial inequality] is not an issue that is irrelevant to us. It certainly does happen and it flies under the radar. We feel as an organization that we can no longer tiptoe around the issue of racial inequality, especially in a community where people don’t acknowledge it.”

McCormick was inspired by an article written by Jenkins titled, “It’s Time to Put Down the Mochas and Moscatos,” which discusses racial inequality, activism and division within black communities and how to address these issues in the wake of the “black lives matter” movement. McCormick immediately saw the potential for applying her principles to Monterey County and the Latino community. 

“When I spoke to Dr. Jenkins, she was shocked that she had not heard about this issue. She was quite outraged that this was going on under the radar,” McCormick says.

Tonight, Jenkins drags the issue into the light and brings it in full-view, and discusses what can be done about it. McCormick hopes this speaker and this series starts a much needed-conversation.

McCormick adds that police can be part of the solution, but first the rift between the police and disenfranchised communities needs to be healed. She says, “We have a great relationship with our law enforcement. [Salinas Police Chief] Kelly McMillan is very involved in getting community involvement back. The question is: How do we do that when there is an undercurrent of racial tension?”

Toby Jenkins-Henry. 6-7:30pm, Thursday, July 9. Monterey Peninsula College Lecture Forum 103, 980 Fremont St., Monterey. Free. www.ywca.org.