Speaker 1: Hey everyone. Before we get started, I wanted to give
Speaker 1: a big shout out to our newest Patreon members Marla C, Alan,
Speaker 1: l Assi, A, K, Seth, S, Spencer B, Jenny H,
Speaker 1: Lauren R. Thomas B, Susie N, Susan C, Melissa E,
Speaker 1: Miranda S, Emily P, Carla S, Jennifer H, Eileen M,
Speaker 1: Lisa J. Tassia F, Jenny S, Beth P, Scott T
Speaker 1: and Emily. Thanks so much to all of you, and
Speaker 1: thanks so much to all of our Patreon members. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to experience being a Patreon member and all
Speaker 1: the benefits that come with it, go to one you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash join. I think for everybody, black, white, whatever,
Speaker 1: it's really powerful to take any pain or suffering that
Speaker 1: you've been through and take that suffering and transform it
Speaker 1: into something beautiful. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. M
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Sonya Roberts, and educator, writer, creator, and activist. Sonya writes
Speaker 1: about racism, spirituality, parenting, and much more in her Spiritually
Speaker 1: Speaking blog. Her first book is White Ally, a Guide
Speaker 1: to Cultivating a deeply spiritual Anti Racism Practice. Hi, Sony,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: It's a real pleasure to have you on. We're going
Speaker 1: to discuss your book, White Ally, a Guide to Cultivating
Speaker 1: a deeply spiritual Anti Racism Practice in just a moment.
Speaker 1: But before that, we'll start, like we always do, with
Speaker 1: a parable There's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter
Speaker 1: and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 1: of us that are always a battle. One is a
Speaker 1: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops
Speaker 1: and she thinks about it for a second, and she
Speaker 1: looks up at her grandmother and she says, mother, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. I've heard this parable before,
Speaker 1: told a little bit differently. So when I sat down
Speaker 1: to think about it and reflect on it, what came
Speaker 1: up for me was James Baldwin quote. I'm going to
Speaker 1: paraphrase it or do my best to say it right,
Speaker 1: but to be a Negro in this country and to
Speaker 1: be relatively conscious is to be in a state of
Speaker 1: rage almost all the time. And these words are so true,
Speaker 1: you know, even today, these words are just ringing, so
Speaker 1: true for me personally and in the work that I do.
Speaker 1: So the work that I do, like my own personal work,
Speaker 1: and what I shared in my book is how important
Speaker 1: it is to feel all of your emotions, even the
Speaker 1: good and even those that we might label as bad
Speaker 1: or negative. And actually the anger and the rage that
Speaker 1: sometimes surface in our life are often surface. They have
Speaker 1: a lot of power to create change, interchange, outer change,
Speaker 1: and um, of course, it takes a lot of processing
Speaker 1: these feelings and doing a lot of healing around it.
Speaker 1: And recently, you know, all of this things have been
Speaker 1: going on in the world and I and I had
Speaker 1: a week of just a lot of anger, a lot
Speaker 1: of rage, and a lot of adrenaline. And I sat
Speaker 1: with those feelings and after that week went by, it
Speaker 1: was a week of feeling that what came out for me,
Speaker 1: for me was a lot of pain, an intense amount
Speaker 1: of pain and you know, sadness. And I cried, like
Speaker 1: the whole day, I was crying. Everything was making me cry.
Speaker 1: And so I mean, I think that's the process of
Speaker 1: our emotions, is that when we sit with them a
Speaker 1: lot of times something else is underneath it. And then
Speaker 1: if we're deeply listening, they really can guide us and
Speaker 1: you know, give us information about what's happening in our
Speaker 1: lives and how to use those those emotions to you know,
Speaker 1: actively do something whatever you're called to do, perhaps um
Speaker 1: to create change. And I was in this really dark
Speaker 1: state and a friend of mine reached out to me,
Speaker 1: or I reached out to her and she reminded me
Speaker 1: to connect or reconnect to black joy, and I think
Speaker 1: that's part of feeding the wolf is for me remembering
Speaker 1: to reconnect to joy, to reconnect to laughter. I love comedy,
Speaker 1: and to reconnect to love, and so really like processing
Speaker 1: those those hard, intense emotions, but being able to then
Speaker 1: you know, balance it with moving back into a joyous place.
Speaker 1: Um because it's it's really unhealthy obviously to stay in
Speaker 1: the rage part of it, or to live try and
Speaker 1: live in that space is not healthy. That makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense, and I think that's part of you know,
Speaker 1: the underlying theme of what I really wanted to talk
Speaker 1: with you about is I found your work really interesting
Speaker 1: because you're bringing together these transformational yoga ideas that are
Speaker 1: really about doing a lot of work on the inside,
Speaker 1: but you're marrying it very much to the work that
Speaker 1: we need to do on the outside out into the world.
Speaker 1: And I'm always interested in, particularly for people of color,
Speaker 1: how processing the anger and the hurt and all that,
Speaker 1: how that gets balanced with doing inner work on yourself
Speaker 1: and how you navigate and negotiate that, because it does
Speaker 1: seem like it's got to be a challenge in that regard.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely. I mean what I think about is how
Speaker 1: much my ancestors have endured to still be alive. And
Speaker 1: so I think that Black people have an incredible way
Speaker 1: of overcoming a lot of pain and suffering and channeling
Speaker 1: that into creating, you know, the best life possible. There
Speaker 1: is a lot of joy in our culture. There is
Speaker 1: a lot of laughter and um, a lot of like music.
Speaker 1: There's a ton of artists and inventors. So I think
Speaker 1: for everybody, black, white, whatever, it's really powerful to take
Speaker 1: any pain or suffering that you've been through and take
Speaker 1: that suffering and transform it into something beautiful, which might
Speaker 1: sound a little cheesy, but it really is the process
Speaker 1: of transformation. The yamas are really guidelines that help you
Speaker 1: relate to people outside of yourself, and the nie yamas
Speaker 1: are more of the guidelines that are more of the
Speaker 1: internal work, their guidelines that aren't always talked about in
Speaker 1: the yoga world. So these simple principles are actually really powerful,
Speaker 1: simple but powerful. I agree, And if you'd be willing to,
Speaker 1: I'd like to touch in on your first experience of
Speaker 1: maybe not your first, but your first really strong experience
Speaker 1: of facing racism. You describe being seven years old. Would
Speaker 1: you be willing to tell that story. I will, I'll
Speaker 1: tell the story. But I do want to say that
Speaker 1: I made a choice to tell my stories and some
Speaker 1: of my stories in my book, and I'll share this story,
Speaker 1: but they're they're really painful to share. Even now, it's
Speaker 1: painful to share it. And I don't necessarily think that
Speaker 1: black people sharing their stories of racism is beneficial. And
Speaker 1: the reason that I say that is because the word
Speaker 1: gas lighting gets used all the time. But there's a
Speaker 1: lot of minimization when you do share your stories. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of doubt about the existence of racism. So
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of experiences where I shared my
Speaker 1: story even with family, like close family members, and they
Speaker 1: minimize my story and my pain. And I think of
Speaker 1: it similar to you know, any time that you share
Speaker 1: something that happened to you that's painful and someone minimizes it,
Speaker 1: it's like a re traumatization type thing. And so I
Speaker 1: just want to caution people that I don't think that's
Speaker 1: necessarily a beneficial thing to hear the story, but some
Speaker 1: people might think it is. I don't know. That's just
Speaker 1: my opinion, and I'm going to give you the opportunity
Speaker 1: to tell it or not tell it again, because I
Speaker 1: think this is a useful point that I think i'd
Speaker 1: like to discuss because from my perspective, what I see
Speaker 1: is that those sort of stories help educate people who
Speaker 1: may be going, look, this isn't still happening. This still
Speaker 1: isn't that bad, right, And so from my perspective, that's
Speaker 1: where I think they're useful. But I also totally recognize,
Speaker 1: and when you say it, I recognize it even more
Speaker 1: that I'm sort of asking you to do that hard work, right,
Speaker 1: and it is just like I said, it's just painful
Speaker 1: in general. But I think you're talking about the story
Speaker 1: about when I was walking home, and so in my book,
Speaker 1: I write about being the seven or I probably was
Speaker 1: around seven years old walking home and right in front
Speaker 1: of my house, the paper boy who lived up the
Speaker 1: street wrote his bike by, and he said the N
Speaker 1: word to me. He just called me the N word.
Speaker 1: And at the time that he did that, I was
Speaker 1: obviously the first time anybody called me that name. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what it meant, and I was just in shock.
Speaker 1: I just you know, I just froze standing there and
Speaker 1: I couldn't move and I couldn't talk. Or say anything.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, after standing there, just in shock,
Speaker 1: I ran into the house and I told my dad,
Speaker 1: you know, what had happened. And then my dad went
Speaker 1: to the paper boy's house, and you know, I tried
Speaker 1: to have a conversation with the parents about what had
Speaker 1: happened to me, and my dad was very very upset.
Speaker 1: Obviously he's very angry, and they said that their son
Speaker 1: would never say that. That was what they told him.
Speaker 1: And so I just know that after that, my dad
Speaker 1: canceled the newspaper. I mean, it was like the only
Speaker 1: thing that he had in his power to do. But
Speaker 1: just I think for me, just that my father, you know,
Speaker 1: stood up for me and spoke up and went to
Speaker 1: their house. I mean, even him just going to their
Speaker 1: house was a big deal. Like I also wrote in
Speaker 1: my book that the neighbor across the street had talked
Speaker 1: about wanting to hang my father when we moved into
Speaker 1: that house, or you know, saying something about he's the
Speaker 1: N word and I would hang him by that tree.
Speaker 1: And so it wasn't like a safe neighborhood to be in.
Speaker 1: I don't know what neighborhood is safe, honestly, but it
Speaker 1: was a big deal for him to do that, and
Speaker 1: it meant a lot, I think as far as empowering
Speaker 1: seeing the power that he had or the bravery that
Speaker 1: he had. And in the book, the part that I
Speaker 1: found so powerful was you really did a nice job
Speaker 1: of describing what that did to you. And and I
Speaker 1: think from my perspective, what that did was make it
Speaker 1: really difficult. I hope I wouldn't be the person that
Speaker 1: would do this to minimize it, because it suddenly was like, well,
Speaker 1: my goodness, look at the impact that that had in
Speaker 1: your world view on what that did do you inside
Speaker 1: was just so powerful and so yeah, it's just it's heartbreaking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And just now talking to you, I realized that the
Speaker 1: thing that happens often, I think, especially with children, is
Speaker 1: that adults will say, oh, they're just a child, because
Speaker 1: I remember people said that to me, like to minimize it.
Speaker 1: They would say, oh, it's just a kid being a kid,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like a boy being a boy.
Speaker 1: And that attitude is so awful, and I think that's why,
Speaker 1: you know, sexism is perpetuated, racism is perpetuating because they
Speaker 1: are just children. But we have to talk to our children,
Speaker 1: we have to educate our children. We have to teach
Speaker 1: you know, ourselves and others how to be in the
Speaker 1: world and the way that's not harmful. You know. We
Speaker 1: want to lift people up, not put them down. The
Speaker 1: other thing that you wrote in your book, that again
Speaker 1: was one of those things that just every once in
Speaker 1: a while you hear something, I hear something, and I
Speaker 1: go just reminds us how present and recent so much
Speaker 1: of this stuff is, like so much of it's still present.
Speaker 1: But that your parents were married eight years after interracial
Speaker 1: marriage was legalized, Like your parents who had you eight
Speaker 1: years before that, they wouldn't have legally been allowed to
Speaker 1: get married, Like that's yesterday. Mind boggling. Right, It's like
Speaker 1: it was against the law for them to be together.
Speaker 1: And that, to me is another one of those things
Speaker 1: I love. This is going to sound really messed up,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean it that way. I love those
Speaker 1: things because I think they're really good refutations to people
Speaker 1: who go, all that stuff happened so long ago, why
Speaker 1: are we still talking about I'm like, no, it did not.
Speaker 1: I mean a a lot of it's still happening. But
Speaker 1: even if you want to point to like legal yeah,
Speaker 1: we talk about systematic racism and some of it you
Speaker 1: might have to look a little bit for but not that, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of dots to connect when you
Speaker 1: see some of that stuff. Yeah, there's a ton of microaggressions,
Speaker 1: but to actually be able to have examples of you know,
Speaker 1: legislatures is more. It's more powerful to look at that,
Speaker 1: I mean, more powerful in the way that you can
Speaker 1: connect the dots directly to systemic racism. Absolutely, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: So you say that yoga principles and meditation or transformative
Speaker 1: practices that can be instrumental and facilitating social change. So
Speaker 1: I'd just like to talk about that idea a little
Speaker 1: bit more because it's an idea that I spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time thinking about, which is the balance of
Speaker 1: sort of inner life and outer life or contemplation and action,
Speaker 1: you know, because I think if we're not careful a
Speaker 1: lot of this work of meditation, yoga, inner work, this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff, if we're not careful, it just can
Speaker 1: become another form of narcissism. Right. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: how do I feel it's all about my work, my journey,
Speaker 1: and not that that's not important, but we've got to
Speaker 1: be careful that we don't get stuck there. And if
Speaker 1: we look over history, you know, some of the people
Speaker 1: we admire most as change makers are people who found
Speaker 1: a way to really facilitate their inner their outer lives.
Speaker 1: Gandhi or Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela. They had
Speaker 1: robust and deep inner practices and they had a transformative impact.
Speaker 1: So for you, help me connect those dots. Tell me
Speaker 1: about for you, how yoga and meditation are practices that
Speaker 1: help you facilitate social change, and how you see those
Speaker 1: practices can help other people to facilitate social change. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So first I just want to agree with you that
Speaker 1: the yoga and the meditation is a deeply personal and
Speaker 1: inner practice. And I think of spirituality that way to
Speaker 1: the work is very individual. And I think that to
Speaker 1: really transform yourself you need to be in relationship with people.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can look at it like you can
Speaker 1: do a lot of self work on yourself, which I
Speaker 1: have right, and then you feel good about where you
Speaker 1: are and how you've healed a lot of your traumas.
Speaker 1: And then you get into a partnership or a marriage
Speaker 1: and boom, right away all this stuff you thought was
Speaker 1: healed or transformed, it's triggered and it comes up again.
Speaker 1: So it's so important to be not not just with
Speaker 1: the intimate partner, but just even with parenting your children.
Speaker 1: Stuff can come up like that stuff can come up
Speaker 1: with your parents again as an adult, and I just
Speaker 1: think relationship can really reflect back to you where you
Speaker 1: need to do the work. But again, it's like you
Speaker 1: really have to be open to it. And I think
Speaker 1: sometimes people get stuck in this inner world where I'm good,
Speaker 1: I'm good on my mat, I'm good on my cushion,
Speaker 1: and you know, they're not open to exploring, like, how
Speaker 1: do I now take these principles and these practices into
Speaker 1: my everyday life and into my relationships and continue to
Speaker 1: grow and to reach my full potential. And for me,
Speaker 1: I think the social justice and the activism is something
Speaker 1: that I really felt at a young age, just by
Speaker 1: being introduced to different writers and reading about slavery, reading
Speaker 1: about black intellectuals and activists, and I just knew right
Speaker 1: away that I wanted to be a part of like creating.
Speaker 1: I saw that there was a suffering in the world,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to do something to create change. And
Speaker 1: I think that going back to those individual practices that
Speaker 1: it kind of puts the veil on people. It blinds
Speaker 1: people some of these practices, and so I think people
Speaker 1: unfortunately use it as like spiritual bypassing is a good
Speaker 1: example where you're not being fully honest about what's happening
Speaker 1: in the world. You're not being fully honest about your feelings.
Speaker 1: And so one of the things that I think, obviously
Speaker 1: is that really looking at these simple principles and practicing
Speaker 1: them and applying them in real life can help to
Speaker 1: create an anti racism practice. It can help create a
Speaker 1: connection to community, um like real, true authentic community where
Speaker 1: you're involved in lifting up a people and people that
Speaker 1: are marginalized or people that are suffering in some way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you said that, it reminded me of one of
Speaker 1: my favorite quotes that ram Das says, which is, if
Speaker 1: you think you're enlightened, go home and visit your parents. Right. Yeah, thanks,
Speaker 1: like totally. And I've had plenty of times where I, like,
Speaker 1: a relationship ends and I'm like, I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of work to do it myself, and I do you know,
Speaker 1: I think I've done all the work, and then I
Speaker 1: get in a new relationship and I'm like, no, it's
Speaker 1: still there, there's more to do some of that work.
Speaker 1: It takes interaction with others, absolutely, and it's a lifelong journey.
Speaker 1: There's never a finish line. H certain yoga practices and
Speaker 1: you know, meditation practices, spiritual practices point towards an underlying
Speaker 1: unity in the world, an underlying perfection, or the perfection
Speaker 1: might be within us, or we're all good inside, you know,
Speaker 1: And so there's there's that part of the practice. But
Speaker 1: then we look out into the world and we go,
Speaker 1: my goodness, that's not what I'm seeing out there. And
Speaker 1: sometimes I find those two views hard to hold at
Speaker 1: the same time or hard to reconcile. And I'm just
Speaker 1: curious if you've had some of that as you've gone
Speaker 1: through your deeper yoga practices relating to what you see
Speaker 1: outside your door. Yeah. Absolutely. I actually think that I'm
Speaker 1: still exploring more how spirituality, the spiritual practices or yoga principles,
Speaker 1: and how anti racism, how they connect and how they
Speaker 1: don't actually connect, right, and like how these practices that
Speaker 1: we're doing to make oursel else make us more towards
Speaker 1: how we were born. I feel like we're all trying
Speaker 1: to get back to like you're born this like pure
Speaker 1: being and over time socialization and you know, trauma, all
Speaker 1: these things happen to you, and so you're basically trying
Speaker 1: to like peel back all that stuff to go back
Speaker 1: to your pure estate. And um, I think there's overlap,
Speaker 1: but I also think there's conflict in it as well,
Speaker 1: and I'm still trying to figure that out, to be honest,
Speaker 1: I'm sure trying to juggle it. And like you said, like,
Speaker 1: how do you hold these two truths at the same time?
Speaker 1: And can you? And I think you can. I definitely
Speaker 1: think you can. I don't know. Maybe it's the pathway
Speaker 1: of like wanting to achieve and wanting to reach perfection
Speaker 1: that's not real, and so I think that if you're
Speaker 1: looking at the world like that, that's not going to
Speaker 1: be real as well. Like we're actually practicing more of
Speaker 1: letting go in our own personalised instead of trying to
Speaker 1: attain more, buy more, be more, get more. And I
Speaker 1: think if we do that in our personal life, then
Speaker 1: what happens in the world is we're able to give more,
Speaker 1: like we need to give ourselves less in a way,
Speaker 1: which is opposite of what some spiritual practices are teaching us.
Speaker 1: Right as I give give more outward into the world
Speaker 1: and less about me, me, me, It's more about like,
Speaker 1: what's happening? How can I be a servant? Even yeah,
Speaker 1: I could not agree with you more. One of my
Speaker 1: least favorite spiritual phrases that seems to have gotten popular
Speaker 1: over the last years is let go of anything that
Speaker 1: doesn't serve you. And while I understand what's being said
Speaker 1: in that, I think it orients us towards this idea
Speaker 1: that the world is there to serve us, and I
Speaker 1: tend to try and flip that orientation and go, no,
Speaker 1: I'm here to serve the world. And I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the criticisms of yoga and certainly
Speaker 1: of the mindfulness world, which I'm a little bit more
Speaker 1: immersed in than I am the yoga world. But a
Speaker 1: lot of the criticism of the westernization of those two
Speaker 1: is that we've lost the ethical components of those traditions.
Speaker 1: And that's really what you are bringing back in your book.
Speaker 1: You really bring back the ethical components that underlie yoga. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes me sad that the reason why
Speaker 1: I stopped teaching yoga is because yoga became commodified and
Speaker 1: it's a brand and a business to sell people make
Speaker 1: doing yoga poses, which I love doing yoga poses, and
Speaker 1: I love yoga asana and I love teaching it. But
Speaker 1: isn't the driving force of it is can you get
Speaker 1: the nicest pair of yoga pans and look really good
Speaker 1: in them doing your yoga practice? Very superficial? I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like it didn't used to be like that.
Speaker 1: When I first took my teacher training, my very first one,
Speaker 1: most twenty years ago, the question would be who did
Speaker 1: you study with? And whoever you studied with would be
Speaker 1: a direct link to a lineage. If it wasn't someone
Speaker 1: directly from India, it was somebody who had went to
Speaker 1: India and study with I Anger or whomever. And now
Speaker 1: it's like where did you study? Because there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of yoga studios and you can go get a yoga
Speaker 1: certification in a weekend or two hours, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of been watered down and diluted, and it's staturated with yogas.
Speaker 1: And there are people, don't get me wrong. I know
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people, maybe not a lot, but
Speaker 1: a handful of people that talk about yoga philosophy and
Speaker 1: the yoga principles, but we somehow. I think the commodification
Speaker 1: of yoga and pushing yoga for profit really lost some
Speaker 1: of the authenticity of it. That makes sense, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty easy to see that. And and I think the
Speaker 1: mindfulness world hasn't gone to the extent that yoga has,
Speaker 1: but the danger is there. The danger still exists. It
Speaker 1: may not be about how I look. Maybe the yoga
Speaker 1: has been able to make it even more superficial, but
Speaker 1: in the mindfulness world, it can very much become all
Speaker 1: about how do I feel? I feel? And there's more
Speaker 1: to my mind a robust spiritual practice than how I feel.
Speaker 1: That's part of it. Working with my thoughts and emotions
Speaker 1: skillfully is certainly part of it, but there's more to it.
Speaker 1: And that's what I liked about your book. So you
Speaker 1: have a line in your book that I want to
Speaker 1: explore because your book is really written for it's called
Speaker 1: white ally, it's written for white people, for how we
Speaker 1: can be better allies. And so I want to explore
Speaker 1: that now. And there's something you said that I think
Speaker 1: is really powerful, and it is that you can have
Speaker 1: all the right beliefs about social equality and still practice oppression.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit more about that. The thing
Speaker 1: about systemic racism and oppression in general and white supremacy
Speaker 1: is that is so pervasive and it's very insidious. So
Speaker 1: some people might know, but it's very likely that you
Speaker 1: don't even know. You are perpetuating a lot of these
Speaker 1: biases in your life. So you may not, like howardly
Speaker 1: hate black people, but you have somehow began to believe
Speaker 1: some of these anti black sentiments. And so I know
Speaker 1: that's hard for some people to understand, but I look
Speaker 1: at my own life being having a black father and
Speaker 1: a non black mother, and I had to undo and
Speaker 1: unlearned a lot of negative things that I had learned
Speaker 1: about black people. And I'm black, and so if I
Speaker 1: had to do that, I know that white people have
Speaker 1: to do that too. You know, my mom will probably
Speaker 1: hate me saying this, But even my mother, who is
Speaker 1: the most loving for giving in a person, I know,
Speaker 1: she married a black man and she had three black children,
Speaker 1: but she still I still talk to her about these
Speaker 1: things and explained to her, you know, okay, well that
Speaker 1: is still like, you know, a biased thing to say,
Speaker 1: or what you're saying actually will perpetuate racism or or
Speaker 1: you know, she's so loving that, and this is what happens.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people are so loving and maybe naive that they
Speaker 1: just want to lead love, you know, like I just
Speaker 1: love everybody, and it's like, but it doesn't work like that,
Speaker 1: because people are really being hurt. And if we don't
Speaker 1: acknowledge it and sit down and look at it and
Speaker 1: figure out how to be different in the world, we
Speaker 1: continue to perpetuate it. It does. And I think that
Speaker 1: one of the things that I've really been waking up
Speaker 1: to is this idea that being called out on your
Speaker 1: racism is not a bad thing, right, And I think
Speaker 1: there's this sense you say it so well, you say
Speaker 1: we have to let go of the notion that bad
Speaker 1: people are racist and good people are not, because we
Speaker 1: think that if we're told that we did something that's racist,
Speaker 1: that that makes us a racist, and thus we are
Speaker 1: a bad person, and if we feel that we have
Speaker 1: to defend against it. If the chain of events in
Speaker 1: my mind is if I did something racist, then I'm
Speaker 1: a bad person. I can't allow that. Right if I
Speaker 1: can unhook all that and I can go, oh, good
Speaker 1: people can make mistakes, good people can see the world wrong.
Speaker 1: I love that idea of a hooking those things. And
Speaker 1: Ebramex Kendy talks about this very well. Being a racist,
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of like a name tag you
Speaker 1: can peel on and off. Sometimes you are, sometimes you're not.
Speaker 1: And if we can take that approach, and I thought
Speaker 1: you did just such a nice job of talking about
Speaker 1: that in your book when you say most people want
Speaker 1: to be considered good moral people, which becomes the biggest
Speaker 1: obstacle to identifying your biases. Yeah, absolutely, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: you a bad person. But what I do want to
Speaker 1: say is when you are called out or when you
Speaker 1: do recognize that you have racial bias, it will make
Speaker 1: you uncomfortable. And that's why this work is uncomfortable. That's painful,
Speaker 1: and and like even for myself when I started to
Speaker 1: recognize the things that I had started to believe about
Speaker 1: my own self, it's very painful. It's very painful, it's uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: But I think it's when we're in the most uncomfortable places,
Speaker 1: the most painful places, oftentimes it's such a gift because
Speaker 1: you know, even now, like in this pandemic, it's uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: but it's a gift in a way because we have
Speaker 1: this opportunity to think about things differently, to live our
Speaker 1: lives differently, to start making different choices, to reflect, to
Speaker 1: reevaluate how we are in the world, how we want
Speaker 1: to be in the world. I think it's very important
Speaker 1: to let go of the good bad scenario. It's not
Speaker 1: beneficial at all, and it doesn't mean anything really. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as I've begun to see that layer of it, I've
Speaker 1: seen just how prevalent that mindset is, which is essentially,
Speaker 1: I'm a good person, thus I can't be racist in
Speaker 1: any way. You know. I've started to see how prevalent
Speaker 1: that can be in me, you know, as I read
Speaker 1: your book, and I read other books, like one of
Speaker 1: them is talking with your kids about race. Luckily, my
Speaker 1: son is twenty two and he has been involved in
Speaker 1: social justice stuff for years, deeply and passionately, and he
Speaker 1: turned out fine. I didn't ruin him. But if to
Speaker 1: the extent that I discussed race with him, I probably
Speaker 1: would have discussed that all people are equal, you know,
Speaker 1: I would have given that we're all the same, right,
Speaker 1: which is true. Yeah, well that's what we want to
Speaker 1: be true exactly, which at a deeper level is true.
Speaker 1: But on a societal level is absolutely not true, right,
Speaker 1: And so to proceed as I think a lot of
Speaker 1: white people do towards this color blindness, which seems like
Speaker 1: a good thing, is ultimately not because it denies the
Speaker 1: very real reality that sits right in our midst And so,
Speaker 1: you know, in order to transform racism, and this is
Speaker 1: something else you talk about so eloquently, in order to
Speaker 1: transform racism, we have to actually see it, we have
Speaker 1: to actually find it. And color blindness is a way
Speaker 1: of trying to see past it. And that's just not
Speaker 1: the reality that we all live in. And so you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, I think my son found it himself.
Speaker 1: Maybe by taking him to some of the political events
Speaker 1: I did at least oriented him in that direction. But
Speaker 1: I missed the ball on that one because I didn't
Speaker 1: say there's these big systematic problems. I probably said we
Speaker 1: should treat everybody the same. And the reality now is
Speaker 1: we shouldn't treat everybody the same because we haven't been
Speaker 1: treating everybody the same up till now. We can't just
Speaker 1: suddenly go, well now we will. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: think that with white people realizing that racism exists, and
Speaker 1: how you talk to your children, the thing that's really
Speaker 1: missing is in our education system. We don't talk about
Speaker 1: the realities of racism. We don't talk about the reality
Speaker 1: of the history of it. Um a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: is left out of history, and so people are growing
Speaker 1: up and not getting the full story, the full understanding.
Speaker 1: And that's how you also perpetuate racism, right because people
Speaker 1: grow up thinking, oh, everything's fine, everybody's equal, and it's
Speaker 1: not true, and we we have to really work to
Speaker 1: try our best to make things more equal and more fair.
Speaker 1: And with black and brown people, you have to look
Speaker 1: at who you are as a race, what your nationality is,
Speaker 1: what your ethnicity is, and navigate that in a white society,
Speaker 1: and for white people they never have to do that.
Speaker 1: Hopefully now they will, they're waking up to it. But
Speaker 1: I think it would make a huge difference if white
Speaker 1: parents talk to their white children. And but before even that,
Speaker 1: it's like, as a white person, are you reflecting on
Speaker 1: what it means to be white? Like what does that mean?
Speaker 1: And how did you learn to be white? White is
Speaker 1: like it's not even real, It's just an illusion. It's
Speaker 1: a social construct that was created, and so it's like
Speaker 1: wrapped up in your identity. But it means absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1: But it means you're you know, as far as skin
Speaker 1: color being a hierarchy, you're at the top of the hierarchy.
Speaker 1: But it has no meaning. Really, it's just a made
Speaker 1: up concept. Yeah, And I think one of my early
Speaker 1: wake ups was that the fact that I didn't have
Speaker 1: to think about what color I was was a tremendous
Speaker 1: privilege that I could simply opped out of the whole
Speaker 1: thought process and discussion that was part of what the
Speaker 1: privilege of being white was. I just didn't have to
Speaker 1: engage in it in any way, you know. So it's
Speaker 1: it's a process of learning a lot about these different things.
Speaker 1: You talk in the book about the importance of gratitude,
Speaker 1: and I was reflecting on as a white person how
Speaker 1: to be grateful and recognize privilege at the same time,
Speaker 1: because I'm not like, like, I'm grateful I'm white, you know,
Speaker 1: but but there's there you might be. I mean, it
Speaker 1: would be wise to be I mean, to be honest.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like, well, yeah, because I think that's
Speaker 1: the other place that we can swing to as white people,
Speaker 1: is feeling bad about everything, and how do we balance gratitude,
Speaker 1: which is a spiritual practice, which makes us more able
Speaker 1: to give to other people, makes us more generous, you know,
Speaker 1: balancing that with the reality of the fact, like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I've got a lot of privilege. I just as I
Speaker 1: was reading your book those two sort of ideas talking
Speaker 1: about ideas that are sort of hard to hold at
Speaker 1: the same time, that one kind of came up for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that you don't have to feel
Speaker 1: bad about being white. I think there's been people that
Speaker 1: have talked about this and they explained it, like, there
Speaker 1: are white people who are attached to being the superior
Speaker 1: white person, right, and there are white people that just
Speaker 1: happened to be white. It doesn't mean that they actually
Speaker 1: operate in the world or live in the world where they,
Speaker 1: you know, feel superior to others. They're aware of it,
Speaker 1: and they and they live their life as fair and
Speaker 1: equitable as they can. So I don't think you should
Speaker 1: feel bad for being white. You should feel bad if
Speaker 1: you're a racist white person, but not just for being white.
Speaker 1: And I think gratitude is tricky. I think that I
Speaker 1: look at it as I have privileges as well, So
Speaker 1: it's not just white privilege, you know, I have the
Speaker 1: privilege of I think having a non black mother in
Speaker 1: a way was a privilege. It opened like we got
Speaker 1: the house that they wanted to rent because my mother
Speaker 1: went to rent it without my father, and you know,
Speaker 1: people treated us a little bit differently if we were
Speaker 1: with my mother who's not black. So I think in
Speaker 1: a way it is a privilege. In a way it's not,
Speaker 1: but in a way it is. And I think that
Speaker 1: you know, having an education is a privilege for me.
Speaker 1: I went to UC Berkeley and I got a degree there.
Speaker 1: That's a privilege. So we all have different privileges. And
Speaker 1: I think around being grateful. I can be grateful for
Speaker 1: all the things that I have and still practice my
Speaker 1: gratitude without feeling guilty about it. But I think what's
Speaker 1: important for me as a light skinned person I wrote
Speaker 1: this in my book, as a light skinned cis gendered,
Speaker 1: able bodied person, those are all the places where I
Speaker 1: have privilege, and I feel it's important for me at
Speaker 1: that intersection to be an ally for for people that
Speaker 1: that don't have that privilege. Right, as a light skinned person,
Speaker 1: I have more advantages than a dark skinned woman would
Speaker 1: and so I need to maybe you know, speak up
Speaker 1: for not speak up for that's a bad word the
Speaker 1: way to say it, But like you know, people are
Speaker 1: saying past the mic for somebody, or amplify someone else's
Speaker 1: voice is a better way to say it, or step
Speaker 1: out of the way and give someone else an opportunity.
Speaker 1: Those are the ways that I can be of services
Speaker 1: like advocate for the people that are marginalized in the
Speaker 1: places that I have privileged. And that's how I look
Speaker 1: at it. And I think having gratitude for the life
Speaker 1: that you have doesn't make you a bad person. One
Speaker 1: other point that you made in the book that I
Speaker 1: thought was really really useful that I wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure that that I got out there before we run
Speaker 1: out of time, was this idea of intent versus impact.
Speaker 1: A lot of times what we'll do as white peoples.
Speaker 1: So that wasn't my intention. That wasn't my intention, you know,
Speaker 1: And you really talk about, well, if we're gonna make progress,
Speaker 1: we have to look at what the impact of what
Speaker 1: we do is, not what our intention is. And I
Speaker 1: think this is true in general. Right, I think that
Speaker 1: this principle applies beyond just race relations, but I think
Speaker 1: it's it's really important here because it's presumptuous for me
Speaker 1: to assume how something I did lands on you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. It has applied to more things because I
Speaker 1: tell my kids all the time that even though you're sorry,
Speaker 1: you still did what you did, so you have to
Speaker 1: pay the consequences of that. I think that with the
Speaker 1: intent versus impact, as as far as you know, race matters,
Speaker 1: and and calling out people for or not even calling out,
Speaker 1: just talking to people, like telling them directly about a
Speaker 1: racial experience, our racial bias that you you experienced from them.
Speaker 1: People want to hang onto like why didn't mean to
Speaker 1: do that? And what happens is you end up causing
Speaker 1: more harm by doing that, And also it makes it
Speaker 1: more difficult to take accountability. I think accountability is really important.
Speaker 1: If we want to change and be in relationship with
Speaker 1: people in a more healthy way, then we have to
Speaker 1: like look at what we did, take accountability for it,
Speaker 1: you know, say you're sorry or whatever it is that
Speaker 1: you need to say, and figure out how to move
Speaker 1: forward from there. Because hanging onto like oh I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to it wasn't you know, it wasn't my intent
Speaker 1: doesn't it actually will probably harm the person further, and
Speaker 1: the accountability is really key, and that's not the same
Speaker 1: as I think sometimes people get confused between being shamed
Speaker 1: and then being accountable. So if someone calls you out anything,
Speaker 1: well I didn't tend to do that, and you feel
Speaker 1: like maybe they're shaming you, it's not the same thing.
Speaker 1: Like feeling shame and being shamed is completely different. And
Speaker 1: I think that oftentimes with the intent versus impact, like
Speaker 1: you don't want to feel the shame of what you
Speaker 1: did or what you said or take responsibility for it.
Speaker 1: And so I think we just have to get better
Speaker 1: and making mistakes and figuring out how to do better
Speaker 1: next time. That's it. It's really simple. Actually, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think you're so right. I think it is
Speaker 1: that being comfortable with making a mistake. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it goes back to what we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier and that you did such a nice job
Speaker 1: of describing, which is I can do something racist, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean I'm a bad person. And that's where shame
Speaker 1: comes from. Shame comes from I'm a bad person. So
Speaker 1: if I equate those two things, oh, I did something
Speaker 1: racist means I'm a bad person, it's really hard to admit. Again,
Speaker 1: if I can sort of separate those things that I
Speaker 1: can go. I can make a mistake. We all make mistakes, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll learn, I'll do better next time I feel bad
Speaker 1: about doing it, I apologize and I move on. It's
Speaker 1: not like I've now done something that marks me for life?
Speaker 1: Is this rotten person? As long as I'm willing to
Speaker 1: learn from it and and make it right and move on,
Speaker 1: That's the only way we begin to dismantle this is
Speaker 1: if people are willing to identify when they do something
Speaker 1: or say something racist. Right, It's like being able to
Speaker 1: catch it in the moment and address it right away, boom,
Speaker 1: and then you can move on. Yeah. I think that's
Speaker 1: the work for a lot of us, is being willing
Speaker 1: to get out there knowing that we might make a
Speaker 1: mistake and that we still need to get out there
Speaker 1: and do what we can do. It's funny because I
Speaker 1: think until not too long ago, I had more trepidation
Speaker 1: around that, because again I think I equated making that
Speaker 1: mistake as some like fatal flaw, And and now I
Speaker 1: see it's just it's about learning. If we can trust
Speaker 1: that our hearts in the right place, then it's about educating.
Speaker 1: It's about learning about getting other perspectives and so to
Speaker 1: that end, I really appreciate you being willing to take
Speaker 1: the time to come on and spend some time with us.
Speaker 1: And I really enjoyed your book. I thought it was
Speaker 1: really helpful and I really enjoyed this conversation. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Thank you so much, thanks for having me.
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