It’s About What You Say, Not How You Say It | James Mason Jr. | TEDxHunting Valley

On the first day of ninth grade, James Mason Jr. walked into English class with six months of memorized vocabulary, ready to prove that how you say something matters most. The praise never came, so he kept adjusting, building a different James for every room. Drawing on W.E.B. Du Bois, he draws the line between adaptation, which lets us connect, and conformity, which asks us to disappear. James Mason Jr. is a senior at University School, one of ten elected House Prefects, State Runner-Up in Poetry Out Loud, a Sherman Prize finalist, a state qualifier in the shot put, and a graduate of the inaugural Cleveland Cavaliers Social Impact Academy. His talk, “It's About What You Say, Not How You Say It,” begins on the first day of ninth grade, with six months of memorized vocabulary and a teacher's praise that never came. From there he traces code switching, the different James he built for every classroom, to W.E.B. Du Bois's 1903 idea of double consciousness, and draws a hard line between adaptation, which lets us connect, and conformity, which asks us to disappear. He ends by flipping the phrase he was raised on completely upside down. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx