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Immersed in Leadership
July 18, 2008
Airick Leonard West, camp co-director for Harmony’s Youth Leadership Institute (YLI), is a Kansas City area native who was raised primarily in foster care in southern Missouri and experienced racism from an early age. While living in a small town near the Arkansas border, he was the only African American in his entire school district.
At 16, West returned to the Kansas City area, then finished high school on his own and attended the University of Kansas briefly before joining a soon-to-fail dot-com firm. He then became an IT entrepreneur, later selling his firm to Computer Sciences Corp.
West bought a house in the Ivanhoe neighborhood of Kansas City, Mo., and later led the drafting of the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Plan. He is conscientious about dining, shopping and using services in the Third City Council District of Kansas City, Mo., (see viablethird.com), keeping his dollars near home to help support his community.
West recalls, “Several years ago, a friend of mine said, ‘Hey, I need you for a week this summer.’ ” This was his introduction to YLI.
Harmony’s Youth Leadership Institute deals with
“-isms”: classism, racism, sexism, heterosexism and more. As co-director, West works with existing curricula to teach youth about diversity and getting along with others. He also augments the curricula when necessary, with a goal of campers gaining a more nuanced sense of awareness and a clear experience of the world. West deals mostly with the YLI staff as the staff deals with the youth delegates.
YLI exposes the different experiences of those who are targeted for
oppression versus those who are not. Do non-targeted people know about the oppression of others? If they don’t, when they see it played out before them, will they gain
empathy? It is this sort of experiential revelation that builds allies. Allies are those in the non-targeted group who have looked inward and seen the societal stereotypes that they have internalized, and then choose to facilitate change by acting in the external world.
West often takes meetings at the Lucile H. Bluford Branch of the Kansas City Public Library, just blocks from his home, which he shares with Robyne Turner, UMKC professor of urban affairs and director of the Cookingham Institute of Urban Affairs. West and Turner live a Spartan existence, cooperating on several civic projects. West also has legal guardianship of his teenage cousin Damon, and he makes time for his “gentlemen” – neighborhood youth for whom he serves as mentor, role model and friend.
West has sat on more boards and task forces before he has reached age 30 than most people do in a lifetime. This year he was elected to the at-large seat on the Kansas City, Mo., School Board. He is board treasurer of the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council. He chairs both the University of Missouri Extension - Jackson County and the Blue Hills/Ivanhoe TIF Advisory Commission. He advocates for the practice of initiating community development through land-use planning, and he has pushed for the installation of light rail on Prospect Avenue. West is vice-chair of both the Black Archives of Mid-America and Simply Equine Assisted Therapy.
He says he plans to set foot in every school in the district early in his four-year tenure as a school board member.
West wants to add transgender-inclusive language to the school district’s nondiscrimination policy. He seeks to follow Kansas City Councilwoman Beth Gottstein’s lead and make discrimination based on gender identity/gender expression within the Kansas City, Mo., School District a thing of the past. The idea of broaching the gender identity/gender expression issue was brought to West by one of his YLI delegates, recent North Kansas City High School graduate Timothy Sallee. Another salient topic for West and his constituents is the return to community schools.
West would prefer his career as a politician be a short one. He’d like nothing better than to see the district return to full accreditation during his term so that he could focus on building up his community.
One project that he has spearheaded brings his concern for education and his desire for a healthy neighborhood together. West smiles more than slightly when he speaks of Ivanhoe House. He knows the “slightly larger soapbox” that he now stands atop will allow this project to grow.
Ivanhoe House puts college students into the Ivanhoe neighborhood in a residential situation. They live among the people of that community and serve as subtle examples for them – nothing bombastic, just some folks studying and living nearby. West explains that 75 percent of the Ivanhoe neighborhood residents don’t have college degrees, and young people growing up with that reality have their aspirations molded by it. The college students in residence do tutor school-aged children and youth, but West says that is just icing on the cake. The true purpose of Ivanhoe House is to set students’ aspirations higher while showing them that they don’t have to escape the neighborhood to better themselves.
Turner, West’s roommate, used her expertise to acquire and present data that showed the income-per-acre ratio for the Third District, which sits east of downtown. She found that the Third District’s ratio is second in the city only to that of the Fourth District, which includes the Country Club Plaza. She demonstrated the surprising buying power of the area. West hopes to use a similar approach to lift up the Kansas City School District, by telling an asset story rather than a woeful tale of deficits and disadvantages.
“Don’t just focus on what’s not working,” he says. “Also focus on what is working.”
To learn more about Airick Leonard West, visit his Web site, Airick.com.
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