Highline hosted its 13th annual Black and Brown Summit, where young men of color could attend to be empowered.

The Black and Brown Male Summit is hosted annually, this year it happened on November 19, with the goal “to empower and motivate our Black and Brown young men to excel in academics and to accept nothing less than excellence from self,” as said on their website.

The event was attended by almost 200 people, primarily high school students of color. The event started with an opening segment, where Loyal Allen Jr., Highline’s associate dean for student funding services, introduced what the event was going to cover.

The theme this year was “unlocKING the truYOU,” for young men to look further inside than what society says they are, and how to work against it.

“That’s what today is about, recognizing who you are as a Black man, as a Latino, as an African. As a mixed child,” said Allen Jr. 

Allen Jr. even brought up how there are still forms of oppression in play.

“There’s a plan to keep y’all where you’re at,” he said.

After setting the tone of the event, Allen Jr. introduced the keynote speaker, Rashad Norris, founder and president of Relevant Engagement LLC. 

Norris has been working with the summit since its beginnings, making sure it happened even with the restrictions of the pandemic during the last two years.

The keynote address started off with Norris having all of the audience members stand up and give the people at their tables handshakes and hugs.

“You need to know how worthy you are,” said Norris.

Self-worth is hard to come by, and Norris wants young men to be able to see how unfair it is that they can’t see themselves the way they should.

“I’m going to drop a little bit of game on you,” he said.

“You can like everyone’s posts, but your own.”

Norris repeated this twice to emphasize it, it’s harder to look inward than it is outward.

Norris covered topics that many young people may have problems with, like family, self discovery, addiction, and racism, interspersed with some personal stories related to them. 

In the journey of figuring out who they are, many people can lose sight of what matters, Norris said.

“Be careful who you pretend to be. You might forget who you are.”

Norris then had the audience members participate in an event where they take a popsicle stick and write down the names of three people that they were willing to share their energy with.

For the next step, Norris had the students reveal who among them put their own name down, of which surprisingly few did.

“You can’t save nobody else if you can’t save yourself first,” said Norris, adding that one should, “Always make time for yourself.”

“I just really want you to understand what it really means to choose yourself,” he said. Norris also added that the environment that young people of color are in isn’t what it should be. “Your schools are not healthy right now, they’re pretty toxic,” he said.

This toxicity can come from many places, but Norris decided to focus on what students can change with what power they have.

“Some of y’all, not all of us, but some of y’all are playing with fire.”

There are some cultural issues at play, especially surrounding the use of the “N” word. “We talk about the word, the N word, that everybody is quoting out there right now,” he said.

It’s one of the things people are trying to get youth to stop saying, said Norris.

Language can be hurtful, traumatizing, and doesn’t necessarily have to be restricted to issues of race. It can be degrading to people with mental illness, the LGBTQ+ community, women, and racial minorities, according to Norris.

People are limited to their own scope of understanding.

“You don’t know what you don’t know, and you don’t even know that you don’t know,” said Norris.

To end his keynote address, Norris left the audience with a word. “It’s called discernment,” he said. “This is the ability to judge well. The ability to judge ‘this may be a good path for me.’ This may not be a good group of people to be around. This may not be a good place to use certain words.”

It’s up to the individual to use their best judgment, from any community.

After the keynote address, the audience was split into several groups, where they could talk to different presenters about different subjects. The presentations included Louis David Jr., owner of OnSight253Fittness; Kendrick Glover, the executive director of GloverEmpowerMentoring-GEM; Josias Jean-Pierre, a speaker, coach, and author; Javen Pitt, a man working on changing the lives of Seattle youth; Neaners Garciam, founder and executive director of Hope for Homies; George “Conscious” Lee, a professor of diversity, equity, and inclusion and a social media presence; Malaelupe Samifua, a pastor with a presence in education and community service; Michael Tuncap, co founder of the UW Leaders program; and Ismail Yusuf, the summit DJ.

After the workshops, the audience returned to be addressed by internet personality The Conscious Lee, George Lee, in a leadership event focused on debate.

“Argument is defined as rhetorical conversation intended to influence or persuade,” said Lee. 

“Can you say what you mean, and mean what you say?” he said.

Lee broke down the main elements of a debate to pathos, logos, and ethos, or emotions, logic, and ethics.

He said that strong arguments have a balance of all three, though logic is essential for a strong, valid argument.

However, that’s not to say that men should be detached from their emotions.

“As men, we should always think of ourselves as emotional beings,” said Lee. “You can’t see some emotions as feminine and others as masculine. That goes against emotional intelligence.”

Ethos, pathos, and logos change how Black masculinity is presented as Black men being monsters, according to Lee.

You have to be able to acknowledge your pain, your hurt, your feelings, he added.

All arguments are emotional. Some people are not afforded the luxury of showing emotions, the same way others may, said Lee.

“Emotional intelligence is about having that compass. Read the room,” he said.

Lee ended his activity by reiterating that debates aren’t just arguments for the sake of arguments, they’re about “saying what you mean and meaning what you say using the art of persuasion.”

“It’s not about what you say, but what can be justified with your words.”

The debate presentation was the last big event of the day, afterwards the students were sent off to get food.

However, before that, Lee did leave the crowd with some words of wisdom: “There are two types of people in this world, those who define the world around them and those who are defined by the world around them.”