Title
Chapter 07: Leadership Following The Death of George Floyd, Part 2
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In this chapter, Mr. Coffee talks about how he trains leaders to address racial and gender disparities. He talks about the diversity of MD Anderson's staff and several of the programs and courses offered by the institution. He stresses the importance of building awareness of societal contributions from BIPOC and women - including a chapter he wrote for a book Black Cowboys of Texas.
From:
Lee Coffee Jr., M. Ed., Oral History Interview, June 30, 2021
Transcript
Nina Nevill
And in terms of equity, now I’m thinking a little bit about some of the disparities that exist in healthcare and that have obviously existed before this past year, here I’m thinking specifically of some of the racial and gender disparities that have been talked about quite a bit. I’d like to know how have you or do you plan to train others in a leadership role to navigate these? Is it mostly conversational, is it mostly policy? What it what is your approach?
Lee Coffee Jr., M. Ed.
My approach is bi-directional, multi-directional, actually, because I’ve been working with law enforcement in Ohio since 2016. County commissioners, judges, police chief, prosecutors, after Tamir Rice was shot and killed by police officer, Tim Loehmann, in Cleveland, Ohio, and I got asked to come in and do some work with law enforcement which there are some people who say, “Well, I wouldn’t work with law enforcement,” somebody’s got to work with them. Somebody’s got to help show them, police have always been the slave catchers. That’s their original role. So, they say, “Mr. Coffee,” one of the police chiefs ask me, “How do we rebuild the trust with the Black community?” I said, “The police have never had the trust from the Black community. So, it’s not a rebuild. It’s, how do we build?” And to do that, you have to stop popping people upside the head, sometime, when they’ve got a cracked taillight where they end up as a victim on a chalk mark for some minor violation,” and then go through that process. And I say this to you because just last—on the 16th of June, an award was given in Ohio by a public defender’s office which is the first award that helps people transition out of prison back to the community and helps bridge the conversation between the community and the police to prevent
people from going to prison. And the public defender in Lake County, Ohio has said that there this is the first program like it in the country.
And so, that’s outside of the institution. Again, the programs I have done, whether it be a coaching school, or the Association of Coach Training, the international group and I’m talking about, in 2019, the presentation I delivered up in Victoria, Canada, was titled, “Coaching from a Position of Privilege,” to just talk about, what does privilege mean? What is white privilege? What is male privilege? What is American privilege? And then as a coach, how do you serve the community of people who could benefit from your skillset if from an economic and social economic standpoint they can’t get into your coaching program because you charged too much as a coach? So, how do you create a scholarship program in some sort? That’s external and just in two different dimensions. Of course, last year I taught programs to people in Guam, Japan, Hawaii, Alaska, and some other states around the country. But inside the institution, , gain through our Diversity Champion program, that’s the name of the program, being able to—once a person has gone through an eight-hour class on spirituality and healthcare, an eight-hour class on managing across differences, a four-hour class on LGBT diversity and inclusion, a four-hour class on unconscious bias at various levels, either for managers or for employees, and you’ve done project that’s been approved by a panel, you should have the tools in your toolkit to at least be able to have a 30 or 45-minute conversation with your team or a colleague or at home with a parent, significant other, child, neighbor, you’ve got the tools.
So, the question is, what’s holding you back from using those tools? So, that’s where at the institutional level the work that I have done and continue to do up to this point, will—tomorrow’s presentation is something about cultural humility. I think I titled it, “How do you develop cultural humility?” And so, I will start out by talking about a guy named Felix Okoye. The book comes from Lies My Teacher Told. You see that? Lies my teacher told. In the very beginning of it, Felix says, “It’s not what you know, it’s what you know that’s not so.” So, from a cultural humility standpoint, as a lifelong learner, what have you been taught? And who taught you? Was it the TV? If it was a TV, was it Fox? Was it CNN? Was it ABC? CBS? Because all of them, I’m looking over because one of my books is by a gentleman who was a CBS vice president, and he said that all seven of the national television channels are biased based on who sitting in the chair that allows what stories to get through that day and what stories won’t get through. So, what have you learned? What did your parents teach you? And if your parents were taught by their parents who were taught by their parents and they’ve never left that small community, maybe they don’t have the experience that we have at MD Anderson where we speak at our last count in 2017, we have—we know that our staff have the capability of speaking up to 65 languages.
Nina Nevill
That’s incredible, yeah.
Lee Coffee Jr., M. Ed.
Right. And so, we have people coming from across the globe and if you’ve never—as a matter of fact, at one of the diversity celebrations a couple years ago, I was asked to introduce a German band, and they were like the last act for the day. Well, I lived in Germany for three years so when I walked up, I said, “(German)?” And they all leaned back because they were like, “This Black guy is speaking German. What’s going on here?” So, I’m like, “(German) Lee, my name is Lee. (German), I welcome you to MD Anderson, (German) I worked as a hospital worker in Deutschland for three years,” and I just told them a little bit of my story, and I said, “(German),” which means, “I love you.” And actually, after that day, they invited me to their—they have a, I don’t know, a community club somewhere on the northside of Houston that they invited me to, and I went there that night, I went there later—I went there within the next couple weeks, and they were singing Christmas carols, preparing for the Christmas season. They handed me the sheet music, I got in the choir with them and here it was, we’re sing Christmas carol in German. Now, I left Germany in ’86, so I don’t know, I couldn’t read the language. But just the fact we had that experience because of our diversity celebration. So, the work that we’re doing is not just lip service.
Nina Nevill
Sure. It sounds like that connection between words and actions is obviously very important. A lot of what you were saying was reminding me of conversations that have taken place in so many spheres in the past year. The word unlearning gets used quite a bit, of unlearning and relearning, and I think that privilege has a big part in that as well as, “Well, when did I start to learn about this and who was teaching it? And why? What could the motives have been behind what I think I know?” And so, that sounds like it was a big part of this past year, as well.
Lee Coffee Jr., M. Ed.
It is. And the book I mentioned, Felix Okoye, he didn’t write the book. The person who wrote the book is named James Loewen. He’s a sociologist. And he wrote the book Lies My Teachers Told. And so, again, we think about, as a historian, which is what I am, I’ve lectured at the Smithsonian a couple times and around the globe, Italy, London, Hawaii, so on and so forth. But my point is when I was a soldier, I arrived at a place called Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma and I found out that there were Black soldiers in Oklahoma back in the 1860s that built Fort Sill as a military installation and they were fighting against the Indians. And today, we’re talking about the Ninth and Tenth United States Cavalry, which there were only 10 cavalry units, one through 10, ninth and tenth were Black, seventh cavalry most people know from George Armstrong Custer. So, the point was, as a young soldier who had been in the Army 10 years, I said to myself, “I didn’t know there were Black men that fought against the Indians.” When I started doing the research, I found out that there were 5,000 Blacks that fought for General George Washington in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.
I found out that we fought during the Battle of New Orleans, 2,000 fought for Andrew Jackson. In the Civil War, 168,000. And my point was, how would it have changed the narrative in America if schoolteachers would have said, “From the time the country was stolen from the Indians and battles were fought, Black men took up arms to defend the ideas of the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic?” We know that there was slavery. But how would it have changed the narrative if we knew there were also Black men that defended the country? And when I was doing research at one time, researching one of my books, and it was called The Colored Cadet at West Point, actually, and it talked about the first Black officer who graduated from West Point in 1877. Helped build Fort Sill. Helped put in ditches to drain waters off during the season when the mosquitoes came about. And the reason why this is relevant is because it’s a rare book that I happen to have, and I loaned it to this woman and then two years later she called me and said, she’s writing a book about Black cowboys. It’s going to be published by Texas A&M University Press, which gives you street credibility. And she asked me would I like to contribute a chapter to this book? I’m like, “There were Black cowboys?” And she said, “Yes.” And so, I wrote my story, contributed, this was in the new year 2000. The book sold 2,000 copies, sold out immediately, and received what they call a TR Fehrenbach Award by the Texas Historical Society as the most powerful nonfiction book in the year 2000.
Nina Nevill
Wow, congratulations.
Lee Coffee Jr., M. Ed.
Well, thank you. But what if teachers had just told, there were Black—they called them drovers, actually. Cowboys are actually ruffians, but drovers drove cattle up the trail. So, it’s like, what if teachers would have just told that story? So, what other lies have teachers omitted to tell about the history of—in this book Lies My Teacher Told, Dr. Loewen talks about Helen Keller was not just a blind—deaf woman all her life, once she learned to talk and to read and write, she became a feminist, and spoke out against a whole lot of stuff that was going wrong. So, why is it that women have not been taught about their rich history in so many different dimensions? So, I say to you, the work I have done and continue to do, it builds awareness. And I’ll say this and stop. At one of the Lean In presentations I did with Nyma Shah, we had probably 150 women in the room, eight men, I taught women how to KUS. Can I teach you how to KUS?
Nina Nevill
Please.
Lee Coffee Jr., M. Ed.
Thank you. The word K, the letter K stands for “Keep your power.” So, sometimes women give their power away to their husbands, to their boyfriends, to their bosses, to their dads, to their friends. They just give their power away. So, keep your power. Use your power is the U. Use your powers in ways by either sharing, modeling the way, telling people, if you can’t follow a trail create your own path. The last one is sharing your power by modeling the way and building that empowering community of women to tell little girls, “You can be a vice president now.” So, keep your power, use your power, share your power. Again, that’s how I try to plant seeds that will—you can’t eat the fruit the same day the seed is planted. So, that’s the work that I have continued to do since the early ’80s, and I’m continuing to do it. And so, I think that answers the question about how I will continue to do what I’ve done, formally or informally.
Nina Nevill
Both, it sounds like, in every aspect. I can’t say that everyone gets to show up to work and learn how to KUS, and so, it’s been a good day on my part. I think the intention behind that, those steps, and the same with the lies your teacher told, is, again, on such a broader level is that like okay, stepping away from the individual teacher, it’s like, what empowered them to exclude certain narratives from the history? Or what systems were in place for them to not be able to share certain truths? I think similarly with KUS, it’s like, what other structural elements are there that are not allowing women to keep their power or use or share? And so, it’s interesting to see how all of these pieces seem to fit together and connect, and especially on the level of such a massive institution that is so nuanced to see how it all plays into one another. And I’m, of course, just starting this project so I’m slowly starting to build the ideas, but I’m sure that that will come as well.
Lee Coffee Jr., M. Ed.
And I’m grateful to be able to add my little two cents to the process.
Nina Nevill
Yeah, that’s great. Absolutely. I think for the most part, we have covered a lot of what I, at least, have been curious about for the sake of this project. I guess I just have probably a few questions left not wanting to be too repetitive but this is just a question that I personally like. You’ve spoken a good amount about different initiatives and projects that you have worked on and led, but if you could point to one that you have that you can say that you’re the most proud of, or that you feel most successful in, could you tell me a little bit about that?
Lee Coffee Jr., M. Ed.
Is that related to my life, or is that related to MD Anderson?
Nina Nevill
To MD Anderson.
Lee Coffee Jr., M. Ed.
Okay. The program that I—one of the programs that I’m most of is, in 2012, because I’m a veteran I asked Dr. Harry Gibbs if I could start—we have various networks. We had our People First Network for people with disabilities, and at the time we had a Women’s Network. And I asked, could I start a Military Veterans Connection for veterans? And the answer was yes. And that was in the fall of 2012. And Larry Perkins had not quite arrived at the institution, but he was coming in from the Texas Medical Center one of the other sister units. And Larry had been in charge of coordinating the Military Veterans Connection within the TMC. So, when he came in, he brought in some connections and networks and stakeholders that helped to make this program, this Military Veterans Connection that we were just beginning to staff and put the rider’s rules of who’s going to be in charge and what president, chairperson, what have you. And so, Larry took the program and breathed life into it, and made it expand. And so, today, we know we have over 600 veterans, some of them from Vietnam, some of them from other wars within America, some of them from other wars from their own country. The military veterans is to support veterans and family members. And one of our staff members, Theresa Honey, as a person who—a couple things about Theresa. When she was on active duty, and I was on active duty, I was her senior drill sergeant.
She was also a drill sergeant who was working in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, getting ready to leave her job and looking for a job, a place to work. And I told her about great opportunities at MD Anderson, and because she was a veteran trying to get hired, she was one of the first veterans that we hired because we were doing a marketing campaign telling people, “When you apply for a job, there’s a radio button, make sure you click the radio button that says, ‘I am a veteran,’ so we can see,” we’re not giving the government a 10-point preference, but we are trying to hire veterans. So, she came in, she took on the job, she was in the role for a couple years as an employee. Then she took over the Military Veterans Connection, and we had one of our colleagues leaving the institution and going off to war as a lieutenant colonel, and Theresa organized a massive campaign to put together care packages to send them all to this colleague. And we did. And I was—they got a truck. I went over to the post office and got boxes, I want to say we sent 3,000 pounds worth of food and toys and candy and different things, because for soldiers, sitting in a foxhole somewhere and you get a care package with cookies and balloons and a couple other things in it, it was just, it was special.
So, the Military Veterans Connection, we know we have over 600 members at the institution. Not everybody raises their hand. There different events, like Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Fourth of July, where they do special Veterans Day, special events for the veterans. They also have a table at the diversity celebration. So, for me, being a part of the other things are relevant, but to also be able to say, “We want to take care of our vets,” is something that, it’s just one of those things that I can just say, “That was a good thing to be a part of.” Now, does anybody know that I started it? Doesn’t matter. But it’s here. That matters.
Nina Nevill
That sounds absolutely like something to be proud of.
Lee Coffee Jr., M. Ed.
Toni Glover is the name of the colonel that we—her name is Toni Glover, G-L-O-V-E-R, one of our leaders at MD Anderson Leadership, but also as a reservist and as a colonel, she was activated for a year. And so, while she was coming to the end of her year we put together a care package and right around Veterans Day, I want to stay in 2017, 2018, Dr. Pisters, he was fairly new to the institution but he came, he supported, and we had different people at different times coming in and boxing up, because we had—I think we had three drop-off points around the institution, and people would just drop off—we asked them to drop off packages, whatever you can drop off, bubblegum, and so, it was overwhelming. Overwhelming. And so, we were boxing stuff up for about a week, and taking it. And the post office would ship it for free but you’ve got to bring it all at once. So, we had to box everything up and take it over, and we had to go back and get more boxes because—and then you wanted it to be in a box of a size so when it got to the command, the command doesn’t have to go through a bunch of changes trying to get it distributed. So, it was a wonderful, wonderful experience. And I’m glad that has occurred.
Nina Nevill
It sounds like a great demonstration of, I don’t know what the term, like a community of care or a culture of care and how people all come together over something like that, absolutely.
Lee Coffee Jr., M. Ed.
Yes. And so, therefore, we’re not just—there are some people who, post-killing of—and I don’t call it George Floyd, I talk about Derek Chauvin, because he is the one who did what he did. And there are people that have begun to say, “I’m paying attention to this now,” but we’ve had over 20 murders since Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd. And it’s okay that some people are awake now, but MD Anderson has been doing something, not just talking about it. And that’s what my point is. There are some people that are talking about diversity equity and inclusion, but my question is—and at the last presentation I did last month on diversity, one of these “Racism is as American as Apple Pie” presentations, I asked people to go around the room, the Hollywood squares that we had, what have you done since May 25th, 2020, besides attending this session where I’m at, who have you talked to? Maybe who have you invited to dinner at your table that you’ve never had at your table? Or how have you talked to an uncle or an aunt about when they say something derogatory about somebody they’ve never met, but they’ve seen on TV and a Hollywood movie, and they’ve created this myth about this person being bad, what have you done?
Nina Nevill
I love the conversation about the different avenues of being able to help. I think there is sometimes an idea that it has to look like one thing, it has to be marching, or it has to be donating to some sort of a big fund, and it can really be whatever change you have to Mutual Aid or having those difficult conversations at the dinner table, or whatever it may be, just standing up for, basically not tolerating, like you said, the accountability that has been brought up multiple times. I think it’s so neat, and that that’s one of the things that I, when the younger generations get slammed for media and social media, that’s one of the places that I am happy to bring in the positive aspect of that, where obviously there are many drawbacks but one of them is just the ability to engage in solidarity, and be able to learn what else you can do in and that it doesn’t have to be all of your time or all of your money or all of your energy, and that it can be what you can give. And so, I think, again, that’s a really empowering part of this past year. Obviously, has been going on for a lot longer but I think it’s been elevated.
Lee Coffee Jr., M. Ed.
You’re right, there are many avenues. That’s the other thing. I tell a person, “I’m not going to march. That’s not what I do now.” I marched back in the ’60s, I did some stuff back in the ’80s. I’m not going out there marching right now for various reasons. But what I can do is build awareness in a session. I don’t have to be the sage on the stage. I can be the guide on the side to help facilitate the conversation and build awareness around some concepts. That’s what I do.
Nina Nevill
Absolutely. I think I have just about two questions left for you, and this first one is, I guess, somewhat of a two-part question, but we’ve been talking a lot about this past year and your career as a whole, but I’d like to think in a bit of a dreamland as I like to say, and thinking towards the future, what initiatives do you hope will be carried forward by the next generation and what results do you hope to come through their efforts in MD Anderson and in the Leadership Institute specifically?
Lee Coffee Jr., M. Ed.
An issue that I think is important is for us to understand the lies my teacher told and to be able to see people, see the humanity. There’s so many different ways that the identity has swung the pendulum to the point where if you don’t identify in a certain—put yourself in a certain bucket, then you can be marginalized. And I think it’s important for me to ask people, “Do you see the humanity of the person that’s in front of you and do you meet them on that plane where I see your humanity?” And I think Rumi said—this poem resonates with me—said, “Out beyond the ideas of right doing and wrongdoing, there is a field and I will meet you there. And in that place when the soul lies down, the world is too full. Language, ideas, and even the words each other have no meaning.” And so, let’s just meet in that field and not talk about what’s your religion, or what’s your gender, or what’s your ethnicity, but I see you as a human being and how can we mutually benefit each other and not just communicate but connect? And that’s what, when I’m talking with people, the initiative is, “See me, see me as a person.” And I think what—and one of the tools is if we could just understand that—one of books Dr. King wrote is called Strength to Love. We’re not going to like everybody. But the challenge is, can you love me enough to try to see my humanity? Wars are not going to solve it. So, those are the things that I try to, in my own philosophic away, get people to see the humanity in one another, and realize that each of us have a role to play with our family, because that’s where some of your toughest conversations will be.
Nina Nevill
Absolutely.
Lee Coffee Jr., M. Ed.
So, do your part.
Identifier
CoffeeL_01_20210603_C07
Publication Date
6-30-2021
Publisher
The Historical Resources Center, The Research Medical Library, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Recommended Citation
Coffee, Lee Jr., MEd and Nevill, Nina, "Chapter 07: Leadership Following The Death of George Floyd, Part 2" (2021). MD Anderson 2020 Interview Project. 18.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mda2020_interviewsessions/18
Conditions Governing Access
Open
