Our Moment

SEAN POWER

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

TOP: Angelique Power in

Black life in America and Jewish life in America are both Angelique Power’s life. Raised on Chicago’s south side by a white Jewish mother who was a schoolteacher and a Black father who was a police officer, Angelique developed a perspective that fuels her passion for racial equity and social justice to this day.

Who she is and how she moves through the world have uniquely positioned her for her role as president and CEO of The Skillman Foundation. The diversity-driven and inclusion-minded private Detroit youth philanthropy works to strengthen K-12 education, afterschool learning opportunities, and college and career pathways in Detroit.

“My job is to move obstacles away and let young people lead us to where they need to go,” she says.

Over the years, Angelique has spent a lot of time studying and reflecting on her family history. While much has been written about her parents, Vernon B. Williams III and Mikie Williams, she says a little-known fact is that her paternal grandfather, Vernon B. Williams Jr., was one of the first African American scholars to earn a master’s degree in education from the University of Chicago in the 1930s. At the time, he also researched and wrote about how Judaism was the main religion for many Black people in different parts of Africa and an important part of Black history.

“My grandfather learned Hebrew in the 1940s and ’50s,” Power says. “When my father was young, they would

Power, a graduate of the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree in English and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, recommends the book Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.

“[Wilkerson] compares Nazi Germany to America and to India and the caste system there,” Power says. “I don’t think I knew the Nazis studied America to figure out how to build a Nazi regime. And they studied racism in America.”

Wilkerson won a Pulitzer Prize for her debut work, The Warmth of Other Suns. Her second book, Caste, has been a No. 1 New York Times bestseller.

“Through telling these stories of how caste systems are built on this false hierarchy of human value, I think it enlightens and awakens us all,” Power says.

celebrate Pesach, they would have Shabbat. That’s the precursor for when my father met my mother and they fell in love. [My father] converted to Judaism, and they got married.”

Growing up, Angelique describes being Black and Jewish as being “a part of communities and being apart from communities at the very same time.” While she was embraced by both sides of her family, she was keenly aware of feeling different.

“We were still the lightskinned kids at the backyard barbecue,” she says. “We were still the brown-skinned kids inside of the Beit Knesset.”

Power attended Hebrew school twice a week, was confirmed and celebrated her bat mitzvah, all while being deeply embedded in Black culture. Today, she’s a member of Detroit Jews for Justice, and she and her husband, Sean, are raising their 12-year-old daughter as part of Metro Detroit’s Jewish community.

“I think [being Black and Jewish] allowed us to learn how to code switch,” she says. “It felt like a passport to be able to view not just life inside of those communities, but the similarities that many people don’t see.”

Power joined The Skillman Foundation in September 2021, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic — a time that’s been equal parts revealing, nerve-racking and an opportunity for reflection.

“The great pause is the moment we’re living through,” she says. “What we’ve been able to witness, because we’ve slowed down enough, is the role that structural racism plays in terms of systems that govern us, whether they are criminal justice, housing, healthcare, education … and we see it viscerally.

“At the same time, we’re seeing a rise in hate crimes against Jewish people,” Power continues. “It’s such an incredible opportunity to realize how racism and antisemitism are always linked, are always walking lock step, because they fall under the white supremacist notions.” She believes the pandemic is asking us all what our role is on the planet.

“How do we tie our soul to our role?” she says.

For Power, the answer is leading the way toward wholesale systems change that will make education equitable and just. What that ultimately looks like is something she and her team are actively studying.

“In Michigan and nationally, a big part of systems change for education is how it’s funded in perpetuity,” she explains. “The simplest concept of systems change is that those who need the most get more. That’s it. If you need more, you get more. Teachers need to be paid twice what they’re making. It can’t be a short-term fix. We need an equitable funding formula and we’re going to study that.”

Power’s life journey, her upbringing, childhood experiences and observations have all led her to this pivotal place and time. Her deeprooted beliefs are the lens through which she views every challenge.

“Judaism, for me, is very personal. It’s a moral compass and it’s a way of asking questions and being in service to other people,” she says. “A part of what I feel is our worship and our opportunity is to show up in [the] community for each other and for our neighbors. That’s really our moment. And I think that’s what we want for ourselves.”

SEAN POWER To learn more about The Skillman Foundation, visit: skillman.org.