Talking race, police, and media with DeRay McKesson

Even if you've been only a sporadic follower of the Black Lives Matter movement, you've probably read one of DeRay Mckesson's tweets.

The 30-year-old Minneapolis school administrator-turned protester is cofounder of We the Protesters and Campaign Zero, which work to improve community-police relations. He's become one of the faces at the movement's forefront.

After the shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014, Mckesson drove to Ferguson, Mo., and began tweeting updates. Soon he was doing it in New York for Eric Garner; Baltimore for Freddie Gray; McKinney, Texas, where black teens were harassed by police at a party; and other cities.

A little more than a year and 200,000 followers (including Beyoncé) later, he's in talks with Twitter to create a presidential town-hall debate via social media focused on race relations and policing.

On Oct. 21, Mckesson spoke at the University of Pennsylvania's Black Lives Matter in Education conversation to more than 100 students, activists, and educators. He began protesting, he says, because he wanted "to make a better world for the students I taught." Afterward, he spoke with The Inquirer.

You don't always get to focus on education. How was that for you?

I always enjoy being in spaces where we can have frank conversations about ideas. We should be talking about some tough issues. We should be talking about the role of public education and what does it mean to live up to our commitment that all kids deserve a great education.

What made you decide to become a teacher?

I wanted to be in [the] community differently. I did direct service work in high school, but I wanted to figure out ways a black man can give back to kids, and teaching was my way . . .. There were adults who cared about me and pushed me when they didn't have to, and a lot of them were teachers, and I wanted to do that for kids.

What are major issues in our education system?

One of the core issues is success at scale: How do we live up to our commitment that every kid gets a high-quality education every day and in every school? In education in general, what you find are pockets of success as opposed to systemic success.

There hasn't been much talk of Black Lives Matter during the debates.

[The] debates were disappointing in that there were no robust conversations about race or criminal justice, given that there have been national conversations about these topics for the last year. It seems like whoever sets up the debates is choosing to ignore these issues.

You've said part of the reason you became an activist was "the absence of the media" when it came to police brutality. What can the media do better?

The media is often slow to learn. If you think about even a year ago, the media wasn't questioning police. Now, they will report things as "the police have said," as opposed to "it is just true," and that matters. Coverage of police violence is much more expansive.

You post a tweet: "I love my blackness. And yours." You wear a hoodie with that slogan, and a few students at your talk were wearing the T-shirts. What birthed that statement?

I'm black. I don't have to apologize for it. It is a beautiful thing. It was an affirmation to me and an affirmation about the people with whom I stand, and it was just simple.

President Obama came out in defense of Black Lives Matter recently. What are your thoughts?

What made it important was truly the audience. We know the speech already, but he was saying it to a group of law enforcement officers, which is a community that we have often seen not embrace the movement. So his defense of it in that space and his articulation that policing itself needs to also change. . . . I hope that there's impact there.

There was a #PhillyIsBaltimore demonstration here in April. As a Baltimore native, do you see Philly as Baltimore?

The reality is that the institution of policing is broken. . . . [I]n cities across the country, we have to de-center the police as a core component of our understanding of safety, and that's true here and everywhere else.

You've said, "Twitter and the classroom are the last two radical spaces left in America." What did you mean by that?

Twitter is a reimagining of the public sphere digitally. The classroom is where ideas are in conflict. We are challenged about the way we think about the world, and we are exposed to new ways of thinking.

Your face lit up when a teacher was talking to you about his students. Do you want to teach again?

I would love to go back to the classroom. Middle school math, sixth grade.

Why that grade?

They still believe in magic. It was still a space of wonder, and I really appreciate that.

sballin@phillynews.com

215-854-5054 @sofiyaballin