- And you can see the Double ID exhibit through October 20th at the Wright Museum.

For the first time in its 83 year history, the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion has an African American leader, Yusef Bunche Shakur is the new co-executive director of the organization, which is also changing its name to Michigan Roundtable For Just Communities.

Here's my conversation with Shakur about his new title and the new name of the nonprofit he now leads.

Yusef Shakur, it's great to see you here on American Black Journal, thanks for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

- Yeah.

So let's talk about this new role, Michigan Roundtable for Diversity, which becomes Michigan Roundtable For Just Communities.

And you're gonna be the co-executive director, isn't that right?

- Yes, yes.

I'm Co-Executive Director with Steve, talking about an 83-year-old organization who looks to cultivating and building beloved communities with organization neighborhoods to eradicate systematic racism, but also in bridging the gap between a lot of dynamics.

I think everybody wants to live in a just community, but reality, not everybody lives in a just community.

- Yeah.

- So we're taking that name as addressing the elephant in the room to build beloved communities.

- Yeah, let's talk about what that means to you.

What is a just community and what are the challenges that we have to making sure that everybody lives in one?

- I think I like to quote Brian Stevenson, the lawyer, just, I mean, Just Mercy, the book, and the movie, and he says there's power in proximity.

So when we, when we are shifting the name to just communities, we're shifting and reconnecting and saying that we want to be closest to the problem.

We wanna be closer to those who, who don't have, and being closer to those don't even think as a child when you're, when you're sick and your mother come and hugs you and it makes you, makes you feel all that better, right.

No matter where you at.

And, that we wanna hug those, those individuals, and we, and so when we think about a just community.

We're recognizing that we don't live in a post, a post-racial society.

We don't live in a post sexist society.

And we want to address those things by creating better opportunities, by uplifting those who are suffering, but also recognizing despite their suffering, they're making the best out of it.

And, by loving on them and by engaging them, they can be be even better.

- Yeah, so how does the work at the Michigan Roundtable change with this new leadership from you and with the name change?

What will people notice is different?

- One is we're looking to, we always, we've had a house in the neighborhood years ago, and we're looking to relocate back in the, in the neighborhood where our house, you know, our business will be in the neighborhood in terms of our Day-to-Day operation.

It's just of how we approach the work.

You know, having a paradigm shift, you know, power, the power dynamics of seeing regular folks, whether they're white, black, Asian, green, who are, who are marginalized, oppress as the stakeholders, seeing that their personal experience as the expert in the room, and engaging that and being able to leverage our, our organization to be able to move and influence others.

We think that's our niche.

- Yeah, when you think about the work that the Roundtable has done so far, what inspired you about what they've been able to do?

- What inspires me again, like we, we do criminal justice work and looking at data and being able to create some, some level of accountability and how data has been utilized as a weapon against people.

And our goal is to de weaponize that data.

You know, speaking from those who are the most impacted, like that, that inspires me.

When you, when you could talk to a mother or father or children and saying, you know, despite where you at, you matter, your life is worth something.

You're, and you're the reason why we exist, why we do what we do.

- Yeah, so if you think about the things that are going on right now and the conversations that we're having, it seems like a crazy time for issues like justice, right?

It's harder, it's harder to fight for it.

It's harder to articulate it without that pushback.

Give me a sense from your chair of how that looks in Detroit and Michigan.

- Well, it looks like it's still fresh off the plate.

The young brother that was just recently murdered by the state police officers that literally ran, ran, ran him over.

- Run over by a car, right?

- Yeah, right, you know, I think we all, all wrestling with it.

I don't think it's really has hit the news and hit people in our communities the way it should have.

But, you know, but when you think about, you know, when you ask that question, what do you wanna be?

And a lot of us, you know, we say easily, I wanna be a police officer.

I want to be a fireman, you know, or a fire woman.

You are like, why?

Because I wanna make a difference.

And those are noble things.

And those are things to aspire.

But then when you grow up and you lose that sight, you lose that reality because we've lost touch of what justice looks like.

Here was an individual, his crime was running.

His crime wasn't that he had a weapon in his hand and you literally like ran, they ran him over.

Like, how do you justify that?

And, and how we, how we alleviate that type of situation.

It's by seeing the good in that person, by recognizing that the fact that their life, life still matters, even though you came there to rest or detain this person, you still can do it in a manner that's respectful and engaging and being willing to talk about those things.

Willing to confront that.

Because if not, we know that these things happen too often to black bodies and go unrecognizable.

- Yeah, so does the round table have a chance to, to kind of bring the community closer to those who police us or to bring those who police us around the table to talk about, Hey, this is not the way to do it and we can't have the things that are going on continuing.

- That's something we do, we've been doing over 20 years through the AKPAC community, community and policing.

There's still a lot, lot of work.

We just had a recent meeting this past Friday where we had Dr. Rubin Miller, author of the book Halfway Home, who's also, he was the, our featured speaker at our tribute dinner.

And he said some, he said a lot of powerful things.

I think the most powerful is the fact that those individuals who made mistakes, they're still our neighbors.

They're still in our community, but also in reality, we've all made mistakes.

Some of our mistakes are not as public as others.

And as John Paul reminded us, we have to stop, continue to other others.

And, and we do that by again.

But, and this is, these are basic things of building a just community.

These are basic things of building above community.

Because reality, we are taught discrimination, we are taught racism.

It's not born in us.

And, so we have the ability to reteach people to how to be better human beings, to propagate a just community, a just society.

- Yeah, so I also wanna talk about some personal news for you.

You recently received a PhD, is that right?

- Yes, yes, thank you, yes.

- That's a big deal, tell me about that.

- Oh, yeah, this is the last, the last time I seen you.

Yeah, I defended last, last November.

Everything is finalized in January.

You know, my topic was looking at the social phenomenon of single black motherhood and the stigmas that come with it.

And so I challenged myself to look at this society through the lens of my mother, a black woman.

- Wow.

- So to over stand my oppression, I, I must over stand her oppression.

But also within that I over stand how through my mother's sacrifice and through her love that I, it positioned me to be able to achieve a PhD.

- Wow, wow.

No, that's really, that's really great.

And I'm sure that'll give you a big lift in the new work.

- Yes.

- All right.

So Yusef Shakur, it's always great to talk with you.

Congratulations again on the new role and we'll look forward to seeing what you do next.