Speaker 1: Before you come out of the womb, before you even
Speaker 1: able to understand where you are, moving into a soup
Speaker 1: that has the idea that the white body hierarchically is
Speaker 1: the standard of humanists. Welcome to the one you feed.
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great tinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think, ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Resuma Menicum, a therapist with decades of experience
Speaker 1: and currently in private practice in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He specializes
Speaker 1: in trauma, body centered psychotherapy, and violence prevention. He has
Speaker 1: also appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and Dr phil
Speaker 1: as an expert on conflict and violence. Today, Resuma and
Speaker 1: Eric discuss his book My Grandmother's Hands, Racialized Trauma and
Speaker 1: the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Hi, Resuma,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Eric. I really appreciate being on
Speaker 1: a show with you. It's such a pleasure to have
Speaker 1: you on. Your book is called My Grandmother's Hands, Racialized
Speaker 1: Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.
Speaker 1: And we will get to the book and just a
Speaker 1: set it, but before we do, let's start like we
Speaker 1: always do, with the parable. There is a grandfather who's
Speaker 1: talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: She looks up at her grandfather. She says, grandfather, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandfather 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. So when I think about
Speaker 1: that parable I listened to it, I don't think about
Speaker 1: it as two wolves that are opposed to one another.
Speaker 1: I don't think about it as competition of versus. I
Speaker 1: have a tendency to think about it as energy and
Speaker 1: how the quote unquote constrictive energy, the quote unquote bad wolf,
Speaker 1: is an energy that we must learn to metabolize, an
Speaker 1: energy that actually brings us to a point to where
Speaker 1: we have to question who we are, what it is
Speaker 1: that we're doing, and how do we get to the
Speaker 1: next place, and and so often we couch these things
Speaker 1: as bad or good without understanding that sometimes what's being
Speaker 1: asked of us is to metabolize that energy, be curious
Speaker 1: about it, and work with it in a way that
Speaker 1: allows us to use that energy as feel for our freedom,
Speaker 1: as opposed to feel that incinerates us, a fuel that
Speaker 1: burns us. I think about it more as like a cooking.
Speaker 1: That constrictive or blocking energy can actually help us develop
Speaker 1: more discernment around things, if we're able to kind of
Speaker 1: sit with it, if we have condition and temperate ourselves
Speaker 1: in a way that can actually use that energy as
Speaker 1: opposed to that energy being used upon us. So that's
Speaker 1: the way I kind of think about those wolves. I
Speaker 1: think that's a great take. I've thought a lot about
Speaker 1: what's the best way for us to kind of find
Speaker 1: our way into your work, because it's really profound and
Speaker 1: there's a lot to cover in a pretty short time frame.
Speaker 1: But I think we probably should just start with trauma, right,
Speaker 1: this idea of racialized trauma. So when you're talking about
Speaker 1: racialized trauma, what do you mean by that? So at first,
Speaker 1: when I'm talking about just trauma in general, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I think about with regard to trauma
Speaker 1: is that it's anything that happens to you that happens
Speaker 1: too much, too fast, too soon, or too long, along
Speaker 1: with something that was not reparative. Right, And so it's
Speaker 1: not that bad things happened to people that is necessarily trauma.
Speaker 1: It is that bad things happened to people and then
Speaker 1: there was no reprieve. There was nothing that came in
Speaker 1: and was reparative. There was nothing that gave the person
Speaker 1: a sense that something was going to help them throw
Speaker 1: it out of it or around it. And so for me,
Speaker 1: trauma is this kind of sense of overwhelmed and stuckness.
Speaker 1: I can't quite get it going. I'm trying, and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do things, but I have these qualities of stuckness,
Speaker 1: either in vibes or quality of stuckness in my cognition,
Speaker 1: quality of stuckness in my meaning making. Right, there's this
Speaker 1: sense of stuckness. And so for me, when I'm talking
Speaker 1: about trauma, that's what I'm talking about now, when I'm
Speaker 1: talking about racialized trauma, that is a component, that's a
Speaker 1: part of it. But when I talk about racialized trauma,
Speaker 1: I start with an organizing rubric, And my organizing rubric
Speaker 1: is that the white body has deemed and deems itself
Speaker 1: the supreme standard by which all bodies humanity shall be
Speaker 1: measured structurally and philosophically. And to any body that is
Speaker 1: not born in a white body, born into that type
Speaker 1: of structure, it is traumatizing. Right to live and work
Speaker 1: and love in a structure that is predicated on the
Speaker 1: white body being the standard of humanness is off top
Speaker 1: traumatizing to any body that is not housed any white body.
Speaker 1: And so trauma is not just something bad that has
Speaker 1: happened to people. Trauma is something that shows up that
Speaker 1: is structural, that is not episodic. It is built into
Speaker 1: the structural makeup of things. So that's how I move
Speaker 1: with racialized trauma. One of the things that you talk
Speaker 1: about in the book that really got my attention right
Speaker 1: away was you talk very clearly about, sure, we can
Speaker 1: talk about the trauma of black people anybody's paying attention
Speaker 1: and see why, right, But you say that white people
Speaker 1: also have trauma that they both bring to the situation
Speaker 1: and in certain cases have been traumatized because of the
Speaker 1: racial culture that we have. So share a little bit
Speaker 1: about both those aspects, the trauma that the whites bring
Speaker 1: and the ways in which a racial structure has traumatized whites. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think about this, man. Think about that most of
Speaker 1: the people that are listening, most of the people that
Speaker 1: are classified as white folks or in white bodies that
Speaker 1: are listening to us right now, most of them are
Speaker 1: descended from white people that were fleeing something. Think about
Speaker 1: that for saying that they were fleeing some type of persecution,
Speaker 1: some type of death, some type of hell. Right. And
Speaker 1: what I tell people that where I started is after
Speaker 1: the fall of the Roman Empire. For a thousand years,
Speaker 1: it's what we call the Middle Ages of the dark ages. Right,
Speaker 1: for a thousand years, what you had were elite white
Speaker 1: bodies putting a boot to less powerful white bodies, either
Speaker 1: burning them, either stealing their land, brutalizing them, conquering them,
Speaker 1: all of that different type of stuff. And that level
Speaker 1: of brutality with regard to elite white bodies or powerful
Speaker 1: white bodies doing that to less elite and less powerful
Speaker 1: white bodies that lasted for a thousand years, just that
Speaker 1: level of brutality. Then that same body started to begin
Speaker 1: to move out around the world, that idea of brutality.
Speaker 1: When we are brutalized, right, we don't just pick up
Speaker 1: and learn the victim pieces. We also learned the perpetrator pieces.
Speaker 1: Right when we're brutalizing things are not resolved, we pick
Speaker 1: up on both the victim template and the perpetrator template.
Speaker 1: So when those bodies started to come into contact with
Speaker 1: bodies like mind or bodies that were brown, or bodies
Speaker 1: that were black or indigenous, those pieces didn't go anywhere,
Speaker 1: even though some of those people, the white people, the
Speaker 1: white bodies, were fleeing something. So now you fast forward
Speaker 1: to like the fifteen hundreds or the sixteen hundreds, and
Speaker 1: then those bodies come to America or come to this
Speaker 1: land right where there, or there's Cree and there's Dakota
Speaker 1: and there's Lakota, and all all these different types of people.
Speaker 1: And over time what begins to happen is that those
Speaker 1: same people start to begin to enact on those bodies
Speaker 1: the same way things were enacted on their bodies. Right now,
Speaker 1: fast forward a little bit, then once you hit the
Speaker 1: Bacon rebellion. The Bacon rebellion is a seminar. When I
Speaker 1: talk about this, this idea of racialization, the Bacon Rebellion
Speaker 1: is a seminal point. Bacon was an aristocrat from England.
Speaker 1: He came over to America, to the colonies, and he
Speaker 1: wanted land. But by the time he got here, all
Speaker 1: of the like waterfront land, all of that type of
Speaker 1: stuff had been taken already. So he was mad. They
Speaker 1: kind of like said, you know, you know, you got
Speaker 1: here too late, right, And and so he developed a
Speaker 1: rebellion of enslaved Africans and poor whites and almost took
Speaker 1: over Virginia. Right. The only thing that stopped him from
Speaker 1: succeeding was that he caught dysentery and died, and that
Speaker 1: disrupted but he was about to take over Virginia because
Speaker 1: the British troops wouldn't have been able to get here
Speaker 1: in time, because I remember it was still a colony.
Speaker 1: So when that happened about ten to twenty years after
Speaker 1: that is the first time you see in Virginia law
Speaker 1: the words white persons. It's the first time you see it,
Speaker 1: not indentured servant, not land on a lot merchant, but
Speaker 1: white persons. It was to create a cleave between those
Speaker 1: enslaved Africans and the poor whites, right, because the rich,
Speaker 1: elite white bodies knew that if they didn't do something,
Speaker 1: they would be overrun, right, because it wasn't enough of
Speaker 1: them to stop it from happening. And so I believe
Speaker 1: that the first time you see in Virginia law that
Speaker 1: no enslaved or indigenous savage shall raise a hand to
Speaker 1: any white persons, that is at the moment that the
Speaker 1: white body became the standard of humanists, the standard by
Speaker 1: which humanity shall be judged against. And I believe at
Speaker 1: that time what happened was is that the reason why
Speaker 1: poor white bodies took that on was because they understood
Speaker 1: what the brutality was like at the hands of elite
Speaker 1: white bodies. And so when the elite white body said
Speaker 1: you want to be white, poor white body said, you
Speaker 1: damn right. You mean there's a possibility that my children
Speaker 1: may not have. Yes, let let me, let me get
Speaker 1: some of that. So all I have to do is
Speaker 1: be over them and go along with this idea that
Speaker 1: they are not human because they are not white. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll do that. In order to do that, you have
Speaker 1: to give up part of your humanity. In order to
Speaker 1: take that bargain, you have to give a part of
Speaker 1: that humanity. That giving up part of their humanity. White
Speaker 1: bodies today do not even have any sense of how
Speaker 1: to lean into what was given up, what is causing
Speaker 1: the pain, and what white bodies are doing now and
Speaker 1: powerful white bodies are doing now is that they continue
Speaker 1: to feed. To talk about feeding the wolf, they can,
Speaker 1: they continue to feed poor white bodies that the problem
Speaker 1: in their lives is meant that the problem in their
Speaker 1: lives are brown people, that the problems in their lives
Speaker 1: are indigenous people, are Asian people. And uh in January
Speaker 1: six was an example of what that feeding looks like.
Speaker 1: And so this is why I say white bodies have
Speaker 1: to begin to develop culture living in bodied anti racist culture,
Speaker 1: not just strategy, not just declaring that they're allies, but
Speaker 1: literally developing a culture that can actually hold that level
Speaker 1: of charge. There are so many questions there that I
Speaker 1: would love to dive into. I have so many, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to try and keep this from getting to
Speaker 1: two side tracked. There's a few phrases you use there
Speaker 1: that I think are really important. And you use the
Speaker 1: phrase white body supremacy versus white supremacy. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to summarize a lot of things here in a pretty
Speaker 1: short time, and you tell me what I get wrong.
Speaker 1: But I think your point is that part of the
Speaker 1: reason that we have not made more progress in healing
Speaker 1: racism in this country is because these things are happening
Speaker 1: at a bodily somatic level. And so I, as a
Speaker 1: white person, might say, you know, I think Resume is
Speaker 1: a good guy. I don't think there's any reason for
Speaker 1: me to be afraid of people like him. I'm on
Speaker 1: the team, right, all the all the good stuff. But
Speaker 1: that at a deeper, more somatic I don't know if
Speaker 1: you'd use this word unconscious level that my body will respond.
Speaker 1: You give a great example that I think is really
Speaker 1: good where you talk about the murder of Tamir Rice
Speaker 1: and the white police officer, and you describe that regardless
Speaker 1: of what we think about justice, what we think about
Speaker 1: what should have happened there, you describe, let's look at
Speaker 1: this through the wordless, thoughtless viewpoint of the body of
Speaker 1: Timothy Lehman's body, and you say, a white body with
Speaker 1: centuries of traumatic dissonance in its DNA encountered a black body.
Speaker 1: The white body experienced reflexive fear. In a fraction of
Speaker 1: a second, this sphere activated the white bodies unmetabolized historical trauma,
Speaker 1: which in turn reflexively triggered a flight, flee or freeze response.
Speaker 1: The white body destroyed the black body, a body that
Speaker 1: it feared was dangerous. And the reason that I like
Speaker 1: that example is I think it sums up what fifty
Speaker 1: or sixty pages does very clearly, and it shows why
Speaker 1: some of these things keep happening, because they're happening at
Speaker 1: a semantic or pre conscious level there in the body.
Speaker 1: And you make the point, and you go through a
Speaker 1: lot of science on this how this is happening before
Speaker 1: it ever gets to the cognitive part of my brain
Speaker 1: that can say, wait, wait, I don't believe that. I
Speaker 1: don't believe that black people are dangerous, that there's something
Speaker 1: happening much more deeply. Again, I'm using the term pre conscious.
Speaker 1: If by pre conscious I just mean it's at a
Speaker 1: level that's lower than my conscious brain realizes is happening exactly. So,
Speaker 1: one of the things, especially when I'm talking to white audiences,
Speaker 1: that I really want to get across very clearly, is
Speaker 1: that your niceness and your kindness is appreciated. I don't
Speaker 1: want you to spit in my food. I don't want
Speaker 1: you to call me the in word, right, and it's
Speaker 1: nice that if you don't do that, But that niceness
Speaker 1: is not the same thing as a living, embodied anti
Speaker 1: racist culture and practices, right, It is not the same thing.
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes what happens is that white bodies
Speaker 1: have a tendency to believe that their niceness or their
Speaker 1: kindness is the same thing as uprooting a system that
Speaker 1: is brutal on other people, simply because they are in
Speaker 1: other bodies. The illustration that I was trying to make
Speaker 1: two mirr Rice piece was that this is one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why I don't say the words white privilege anymore,
Speaker 1: because privilege is something you can use or not use.
Speaker 1: What I say is white advantage, right, That is, operationally,
Speaker 1: what white people have in a system that's predicated on
Speaker 1: them being the standard of humanness. There is an advantage
Speaker 1: off top before you come out of the womb. But
Speaker 1: were you even able to understand where you are moving
Speaker 1: into a soup that has the idea that the white
Speaker 1: body hierarchically is the standard of humanists? The race question.
Speaker 1: When Europeans started to begin to talk about the term race,
Speaker 1: they used the term at the beginning to determine species, right,
Speaker 1: A race of bird, a race of cat, a race
Speaker 1: of dog. Right, That's the way that they talked about it.
Speaker 1: And that same idea of race was then applied to
Speaker 1: human beings and they began to talk about the idea
Speaker 1: of how other human beings are actually a race. But
Speaker 1: the underlying rubric of that is the idea of species nous. Right,
Speaker 1: Like when we talk about race, we have a tendency
Speaker 1: on one level to talk about race as oh, you know,
Speaker 1: that's culture or that's how people dress, or that's how
Speaker 1: people talk, and things like that. But the rubric or
Speaker 1: the foundation of race was really about species nous. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the piece that we miss when we're talking about race.
Speaker 1: As Eric and Resuma are sitting here talking, there is
Speaker 1: a piece around is resume in the philosophy, in the structure,
Speaker 1: in the institution, Is resume really human? Now we don't
Speaker 1: want to say that in a nice company, right, We
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about that piece. But that is
Speaker 1: the soup or the water that we all are born into.
Speaker 1: That if it is unexamined, if we don't take the
Speaker 1: time to interrogate it, if we don't take the time
Speaker 1: to actually look at what it is, we start using
Speaker 1: and saying things that really, in terms of black people,
Speaker 1: really has no use or efficacy, like just saying we
Speaker 1: live in the color blind society, or we should be
Speaker 1: color blind, or I don't see color or any of
Speaker 1: those types of things. Saying those types of things is
Speaker 1: not going to get us out of the mess that
Speaker 1: we're in. We have to begin to figure out how
Speaker 1: do we get in our bodies and begin to actually
Speaker 1: go through the process of examining, of interrogating what actually
Speaker 1: is showing up and doing it body the body. One
Speaker 1: of the things that keep getting asked is, well, what
Speaker 1: should white people do and one of the things I've
Speaker 1: been saying is that if white people don't begin to
Speaker 1: get together with each other's bodies and start to begin
Speaker 1: to work these pieces, it's going to be very, very
Speaker 1: difficult to unhook these pieces. If we just start talking
Speaker 1: about cognition. You say often that the most important thing
Speaker 1: that a white person can do to unravel white body
Speaker 1: supremacy is to notice what our body does in the
Speaker 1: presence of an unfamiliar black body, and then learn to
Speaker 1: settle our body in the midst of that presence. And
Speaker 1: I want to kind of spend the rest of our
Speaker 1: time there because I think if you say that's the
Speaker 1: most important thing that we as white people can do,
Speaker 1: I want to dive into that. But I have a
Speaker 1: question for you before that, and one that I'm slightly
Speaker 1: uncomfortable in asking, but I'm just curious your thought on it,
Speaker 1: because I really thought about this question. You have so
Speaker 1: many great practices in the book, but one of them
Speaker 1: is to take this piece of string and draw a
Speaker 1: circle around ourselves and imagine a comfortable presence at the
Speaker 1: edge of that circle a threatening presence, you know, a
Speaker 1: white body a black body. And I've noticed this about
Speaker 1: myself and I don't know if I'm noticing something that's correct.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I am deceiving myself. I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is true, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: might be causing it to be true. I am more
Speaker 1: frightened bodily by lots of white people than I am
Speaker 1: by black people. We drive back and forth from Columbus
Speaker 1: to Atlanta, so we go through the Deep South, and
Speaker 1: when we stop at certain places, my body is more
Speaker 1: anxious there then I would be in downtown Baltimore. Do
Speaker 1: you think I'm miss perceiving. Is there a cognitive thing
Speaker 1: there or is just I've had some different experiences. I'm
Speaker 1: just curious because I noticed it was different than what
Speaker 1: you describe most white people would have happened. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well here's what I would say. I would say that
Speaker 1: you're having an experience because of some of the things
Speaker 1: probably that you've been through. You're having an experience that
Speaker 1: I wish more white folks would have. In terms of consciousness,
Speaker 1: I think white people assume that they are not uncomfortable
Speaker 1: around other white people, and they actually are right. I
Speaker 1: think that that thing that I talked about earlier about
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages has taught white people to be uncomfortable
Speaker 1: around each other. But what ends up happening is is
Speaker 1: that the black body and indigenous body has been used
Speaker 1: as the conduit for blowing all of that stuff through,
Speaker 1: rather than white bodies actually slowing down long enough to
Speaker 1: be with other white bodies and say, what is this
Speaker 1: stuff that's coming up between us? What are these pieces
Speaker 1: that are showing up between us? Where are these terror
Speaker 1: responses coming from? Right? Where these horror responses coming from?
Speaker 1: And not just doing it individually? What you just said,
Speaker 1: I think is an individual experience that you're having that
Speaker 1: is not a communal experience. And I think that's where
Speaker 1: white people get this stuff kind of mix up, is
Speaker 1: that they think the way to work with this stuff
Speaker 1: is individually. Right, as if what happened to white bodies
Speaker 1: at the hands of other white bodies only happened individually,
Speaker 1: It did not happen individually, it happened communally. Happened with
Speaker 1: other people, right, And so white bodies have not even
Speaker 1: begun to lean into those pieces that when I do
Speaker 1: my work, I split bodies up, like if I'm just lecturing.
Speaker 1: If I'm just lecturing, I have mixed audiences. But when
Speaker 1: I'm doing this type of work, I do not have
Speaker 1: white bodies of culture in the same room because the
Speaker 1: stuff that is embedded is too fast to catch right
Speaker 1: and the wounding is too fast to at So what
Speaker 1: I do is is I have people that have trained
Speaker 1: white bodies, that have trained that work with those white bodies,
Speaker 1: and every time they go into a room by themselves,
Speaker 1: they start asking, when are we going to get back
Speaker 1: with the bodies of culture so we can begin to talk.
Speaker 1: The white body has been conditioned to see the black
Speaker 1: body as deferential, to see the black and indigenous body
Speaker 1: as where they do that dirt. So when you make
Speaker 1: white bodies stay in the room together and deal with
Speaker 1: white body supremacy and racialization, a curious thing begins to happen.
Speaker 1: They start to begin to turn on each other when
Speaker 1: the race question comes up. They start to begin to
Speaker 1: show all of those pieces that have never got dealt with.
Speaker 1: And part of the cooking and part of the work
Speaker 1: that I do with the white bodies or or the
Speaker 1: people that are trained, is to get white bodies to
Speaker 1: hold that piece, hold that charge long enough to see
Speaker 1: what else can emerge up, to see what else can
Speaker 1: come through. But if you have bodies of culture in
Speaker 1: the room with them. More often than not, though, pieces
Speaker 1: get blown through the bodies of culture as opposed to
Speaker 1: holding it and see what culture that can be transformed
Speaker 1: and developed. So I wouldn't say that you're weird. I
Speaker 1: would just say that because of some of the ship
Speaker 1: you'd have been through in your life, you have been
Speaker 1: able to examine some of these pieces in a way
Speaker 1: that says, mmm, I know the way that I've been acculturated,
Speaker 1: and I have a different sense of it. But I
Speaker 1: believe that's because of maybe some of the things personally
Speaker 1: that you've gone through that, however, is different than what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. I'm talking about is good that you're
Speaker 1: able to kind of sense in and see the difference
Speaker 1: in that, But that piece has to also be cultivated
Speaker 1: communally in order for it to become a culture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think your point you say over and over again,
Speaker 1: you're not alone in this, although I would say I
Speaker 1: felt it more emphasized in your work that white people
Speaker 1: need to get with other white people. And what I've
Speaker 1: realized a reason that I think that that's become clearer
Speaker 1: to me is that not only if I, as a
Speaker 1: white person around black people might I to use your term,
Speaker 1: you know, spread that dirty pain back through you. But
Speaker 1: I also will defer to you as the expert because
Speaker 1: I go, well, I'm not black, and so I will
Speaker 1: take a role of being more passive and saying, well,
Speaker 1: what's resume? Thinking that's right? Tell me what's the right
Speaker 1: thing to do resuma right? Versus what you're saying is
Speaker 1: when we as white people come together and we're forced
Speaker 1: into this, we don't have anywhere to turn but either
Speaker 1: to each other or on each other. Right, and and
Speaker 1: and see this is not to say, you know, you
Speaker 1: can't develop a relationship with me. And we develop a
Speaker 1: relationship and you called me to see a resume. Here's
Speaker 1: a piece, right, that's coming up for me, or here's
Speaker 1: a piece that's coming up, and if I have time,
Speaker 1: I can, you know, say well here's what I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about this. Right. That presupposes that there's a relationship that
Speaker 1: has been cultivated, not just I'm your damn black ass
Speaker 1: guru that has all the answers. And I came up,
Speaker 1: I came up from mountain, and now I'm sure right
Speaker 1: that those pieces around always deferring to black, brown and
Speaker 1: indigenous bodies asked to how to get through the race thing.
Speaker 1: Let you know that the white collective has really no
Speaker 1: racial acuity or agility collectively, they don't. That's why it's
Speaker 1: so easy to kind of throw up your hands and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's get a black person to come in here and
Speaker 1: tell us how to do this thing. Here's the trick, though.
Speaker 1: The trick is that even if black people do, or
Speaker 1: indigenous people do come in and tell you, haven't conditioned
Speaker 1: yourself to be able to hold and withstand what I'm
Speaker 1: saying and what the charges you, there has been been
Speaker 1: no reps, no conditioning. And when you defer, and when
Speaker 1: white bodies differ, what they undercut is their ability to
Speaker 1: know when to disrupt and when to yield, know when
Speaker 1: to lean into things and when to pull back on things.
Speaker 1: If you don't develop it body to body, you never
Speaker 1: are able to get a sense of new ones, a
Speaker 1: sense of constriction or discernment, a sense of resource that
Speaker 1: doesn't get developed when all you do is pay for
Speaker 1: a d I training and have me come in and
Speaker 1: tell you things about Martin Luther King or something like that.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I'm supposed because but but it's
Speaker 1: a set up so white folks can dodge and check off. Oh,
Speaker 1: I did that. I did that. I know that right.
Speaker 1: Not Oh, I have committed myself to these other white
Speaker 1: bodies in a way that will allow me to transform
Speaker 1: and grow and have some pain attached with it. I realized,
Speaker 1: going up against a system that is predicated on the
Speaker 1: white body being the supreme standard of humanity, that if
Speaker 1: I go against that, I will lose something. I will
Speaker 1: lose people, I will lose access, I will lose money,
Speaker 1: I may lose where I live, I may lose people
Speaker 1: that I love. And because I don't want to pass
Speaker 1: this down to my children or the children that I love,
Speaker 1: I must engage in this anyway. That is the commitment
Speaker 1: that must be made to uprooting this stuff, not just
Speaker 1: being nice or self declaring yourself an ally. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: in the book you talk about something that was a
Speaker 1: sort of side point that I thought, well, maybe if
Speaker 1: we have time, we'd bring it up, which is that
Speaker 1: healing is not buyinary. Either we're broken or we're healed
Speaker 1: from that brokenness, but that's not how healing operates, and
Speaker 1: it's almost not how human growth works. I think that's
Speaker 1: a true statement. I agree with. I want to reflect
Speaker 1: it back to you though a little bit in some
Speaker 1: of your prescription for what white people have to do
Speaker 1: to make any difference. And what I mean by that
Speaker 1: is you talk about, Okay, white people, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: make any difference, you've got to get together for five
Speaker 1: to seven years, commit deeply to this work, and not
Speaker 1: turn away from it. Not turn away from it when
Speaker 1: your schedule gets busy, Not turn away from it when
Speaker 1: you got to go to yoga class. Not turn away
Speaker 1: from it when your kids got a baseball game. Right.
Speaker 1: And I hear that, And while I go, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert. I'm gonna believe people tell me
Speaker 1: what's the right thing to do, I also look at
Speaker 1: that as a really high bar. And while I recognize
Speaker 1: that I have white advantage to even say, I know,
Speaker 1: just just father, what you just what you just said,
Speaker 1: Just let's just just for a minute, let's just pause
Speaker 1: on that. I recognize that I have white advantage, but
Speaker 1: I think I just just don't even go any further.
Speaker 1: Let's just pause in it. I have white advantage. But
Speaker 1: and notice in that, but what wants to move? What
Speaker 1: wants to yeah, what wants to lock down, what wants
Speaker 1: to push away? How what would it be like to
Speaker 1: not complete this question, this this thing that I'm getting
Speaker 1: ready to say, What would it be like just to
Speaker 1: hold that myself and have somebody holds, to have another
Speaker 1: white body hold it with me, but not complete it
Speaker 1: makes me feel sad. See and and see that's the
Speaker 1: piece I'm talking about that was there anyway, And if
Speaker 1: you hadn't a paused, you wouldn't have got at that
Speaker 1: that those are, that's the embodied pieces that I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: When we go to only intellect or cognition and we
Speaker 1: don't begin to pause on it, all of that stuff
Speaker 1: that's already in there swirling around gets kind of uh
Speaker 1: storied over or talked over. But that's why I needed
Speaker 1: you to pause with it for a minute, because when
Speaker 1: I was watching you, I was hearing, I was hearing
Speaker 1: some other things that was popping up. That's why I
Speaker 1: wanted you to pause with it. Those pieces and and
Speaker 1: and and those pieces among white bodies more often than
Speaker 1: not get get get just washed over among other white bodies.
Speaker 1: That's why the pause are so important. So let me
Speaker 1: ask that question from a more emotional, embodied perspective. Boom,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid I can't live up to that standard. Stay
Speaker 1: with that and come back to it again and get
Speaker 1: another rep band, come back to it again, subscribe and
Speaker 1: write on it, come back to again and share it
Speaker 1: with your partner, come back to it again and share
Speaker 1: it with your brother, and then subscribe on it some more.
Speaker 1: And then notice what shows up in terms of rocking,
Speaker 1: in terms of constriction in the throat. Inscribe on it
Speaker 1: some more, open up my grandmother's hands and read that
Speaker 1: and be like, I don't believe this ship and throw
Speaker 1: it in the corner, and then go back and grab
Speaker 1: it again and read it some more. Inscribe. That's the process,
Speaker 1: and then in the process of that, maybe something else
Speaker 1: and something new can emerge up out of it, as
Speaker 1: opposed to saying I'm afraid I can't live up to that,
Speaker 1: and therefore, because I'm white, nobody will ever call me
Speaker 1: to the carpet on it. So, and what I'm telling
Speaker 1: you is is that that is the work that white
Speaker 1: bodies have to do. That they've been trying to go around,
Speaker 1: and an embodied sense you can't go around it anymore,
Speaker 1: or you can and you won't suffer necessarily any reprisal,
Speaker 1: but in your heart of hearts, you will know you
Speaker 1: have not gone through what you needed to go through,
Speaker 1: and you're passing this down to your children's children. I
Speaker 1: don't get the opt out that heat that you were experiencing,
Speaker 1: that you said, I, I'm not sure I can live
Speaker 1: up to that. I don't get the opt out of that.
Speaker 1: I I can't. There's no way I can opt out
Speaker 1: of that. And it's nice that you get to opt
Speaker 1: out of it, but if we're about trying to make
Speaker 1: sure that white body supremacy gets uprooted and doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: you can't. This is why I say this is a
Speaker 1: life commitment. You can't do that. And this is why
Speaker 1: you have to do this in community, because when your
Speaker 1: own individual resources are tapped and you're like, man, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I could keep doing this. You now
Speaker 1: have built over the last three four or five, six, seven, eight,
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, twelve, fifteen years, other people that say, uh,
Speaker 1: you don't get to do that. Other white bodies that
Speaker 1: say you're gonna just eve. We've been raising babies together
Speaker 1: in terms of anti racism, in terms of anti racist culture.
Speaker 1: We've been naming each other. We've been bearing each other
Speaker 1: and now you think you're gonna leave. And see, that's
Speaker 1: what I talk about cultural cultivation. If you don't have that,
Speaker 1: when you get your own individual resources tapped, you don't
Speaker 1: have communal resources to tap into. That's why the individual
Speaker 1: stuff is not adequate. One of the things we say
Speaker 1: at the one You Feed a Lot is that there's
Speaker 1: no shortcut to lasting happiness. Right, We've got to do
Speaker 1: the work to improve our lives, but this can be
Speaker 1: really challenging to do without some support. Our lives are busy,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things clawing at our attention, and
Speaker 1: we might have ways of working with our thoughts, emotions,
Speaker 1: and behaviors that are not very good for our well being.
Speaker 1: So if you'd like help working on any or all
Speaker 1: of those things, I've got a couple of spots that
Speaker 1: have just opened up in my one on one coaching practice.
Speaker 1: You can book a free thirty minute call to talk
Speaker 1: with me, no pressure, and we get to know each
Speaker 1: other at one you Feed dot net slash coach. I'm
Speaker 1: noticing a thought of like, well, this is the middle
Speaker 1: of a podcast interview. Do I need to I need
Speaker 1: to do something with this? But I'm noticing that anything
Speaker 1: I want to say feels inadequate in this moment. You know,
Speaker 1: your point about opting in and opting out is so powerful,
Speaker 1: and I know that I opt in and out. Let
Speaker 1: me say something like quick so as I'm looking at
Speaker 1: your face and watching your chest not really move, holding
Speaker 1: your breath and all of that different times. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that's coming to me is this idea
Speaker 1: of this level of vulnerability is what is needed in
Speaker 1: the white community. So when this type of stuff shows up,
Speaker 1: you get held by a community that you're cultivating that
Speaker 1: has embodied anti racist ethos. So when you go through
Speaker 1: it and other white bodies see you go through it,
Speaker 1: when they start to go through it, they experience being
Speaker 1: held communally. So it is not that you need to
Speaker 1: come up with it answer. It is that you need
Speaker 1: to lean into this so you can begin to cultivate
Speaker 1: this with other bodies so that something new can actually emerge.
Speaker 1: As you guys are doing that together. You said over intellectualized.
Speaker 1: When I'm working with white bodies, one of the things
Speaker 1: that always pops up is this idea of intellectual capital
Speaker 1: that if I can think my way through this, if
Speaker 1: I can kind of think about how to get to
Speaker 1: this particular piece, then I should be all right without
Speaker 1: understanding that in terms of race and racism and white
Speaker 1: by the supremacy, it is not necessarily the cognition that's
Speaker 1: the most important. It is how do you be with
Speaker 1: each other? How do you be in this moment, in
Speaker 1: this time, with the vulnerability, with the rage, with the
Speaker 1: urges to pack it in and lay down, and even
Speaker 1: at times packing it in and laying down, and then
Speaker 1: noticing a week from there, two weeks from there, two
Speaker 1: months from there, that something is stirring you to get
Speaker 1: back into the game, and I get my repsending up.
Speaker 1: So that place that I'm noticing as I'm interacting with you,
Speaker 1: is this piece around vulnerability is a very important piece
Speaker 1: to not dissipate. It's an important piece to share. It's
Speaker 1: an important piece to write on, inscribe on. It's an
Speaker 1: important piece to explore, to give some curiosity to write
Speaker 1: because I would venture to say that what with showing
Speaker 1: up in you right now is happening personally in your body.
Speaker 1: But I would venture to say there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people that are listening to me and you talk
Speaker 1: right now that they recognize that piece they've been to
Speaker 1: that place a thousand times and they've opted out, and
Speaker 1: it's created a sense of moral injury in them, right
Speaker 1: because they know it. And then begin to think about, Okay,
Speaker 1: how do I have somebody hold this with me? Because
Speaker 1: I can't continue to try and deal with this communal
Speaker 1: weight in, this communal horror and terror. I can't figure
Speaker 1: out the key to unlock it individually because it has
Speaker 1: been communal terror and horror that has happened. So let
Speaker 1: me begin to find other white bodies that I can
Speaker 1: do that with. That's the piece. That's why I say
Speaker 1: it's not binary. It's not okay I opted out? Okay,
Speaker 1: yeah you did. Did you get your mass back up
Speaker 1: and opted back in? Did you go and get your
Speaker 1: community again? If you didn't, then you're right. You're going
Speaker 1: to continue to deal with the kind of as you say,
Speaker 1: the wolf that is the one that wants to eat
Speaker 1: you embarking at your door. You're gonna have to continue
Speaker 1: to deal with that one because you're not cultivating anything else.
Speaker 1: And I think what you're saying about community is so important,
Speaker 1: right because the world that I do, in addition to
Speaker 1: do in this podcast, is around helping people change their behaviors.
Speaker 1: And we know that to make any sort of behavior change,
Speaker 1: you can try and go it on your own, but
Speaker 1: it's a hard way to go and you're probably not
Speaker 1: going to succeed. But with community and support and help,
Speaker 1: you've given yourself a much better chance. And also, you
Speaker 1: know what you said they're about. When I was saying
Speaker 1: I don't think I can live up to this right,
Speaker 1: it was inhabiting a binary space, and the binary space
Speaker 1: was either I fully live up to it or I
Speaker 1: don't at all. And we know that sometimes I'm going
Speaker 1: to do better than other times. You know, when I
Speaker 1: talk to people about changing their behavior, sometimes you're going
Speaker 1: to do better than other times. Knowing that you're not
Speaker 1: going to be perfect, knowing that going in allows you
Speaker 1: every time you get off track, go oh yeah. Of course.
Speaker 1: I think in the process. When I talk about it
Speaker 1: as an embodied sense, I think the process. We think
Speaker 1: that it's a process of people getting better. But I
Speaker 1: also think that when you are getting your reps in,
Speaker 1: when you are confronting these pieces, when you are doing
Speaker 1: this stuff with other community people, the other thing that's
Speaker 1: being developed is a communal glue, a communal alignment and
Speaker 1: many times when people go it alone, they are never
Speaker 1: able to develop kind of those pieces around picking up
Speaker 1: on nuance, picking up on connection, picking up on how
Speaker 1: do I sense into fields? Um, how do I sense
Speaker 1: into it in a way that will bring about discernment
Speaker 1: as well as resource. When we talk about this parable
Speaker 1: of the good wolf and the bad wolf, right, there's
Speaker 1: this one uh white spoken word artist who talked about
Speaker 1: that white bodies are so busy looking for the shark
Speaker 1: that they forget that they're soaking in the water of
Speaker 1: white body supremacy. Right, that you're looking for the white
Speaker 1: supremacy shark, but you don't realize that you're actually soaking
Speaker 1: in the water of it. Right. And one of those
Speaker 1: things is it's like even the image that you have
Speaker 1: on and the one you feed, the black one is
Speaker 1: the bad one and the white one is the quote
Speaker 1: unquote good one. Like the wolves, right, those pieces are
Speaker 1: so much a part of it. Just like a second,
Speaker 1: I looked up at it and I was like, wow, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting how this stuff is already in the water,
Speaker 1: and then we just unexamined, we just move with it.
Speaker 1: And so I think my whole thing around white body
Speaker 1: is slowing down long enough and not slowing down to
Speaker 1: do yoga, not slowing down to cook sour dough bread
Speaker 1: or eat kale or whatever the hell is going to,
Speaker 1: not slowing down to do that, but actually slowing down
Speaker 1: to figure out how do we make a living embodied
Speaker 1: anti racist culture come up from the white community which
Speaker 1: does not exist. Yeah, and that wolf logo, as we're
Speaker 1: looking at it, it actually started out as a black
Speaker 1: and white image. It's now blue. The wolves are shades
Speaker 1: of blue. All right, Okay, there there are shades of blue.
Speaker 1: But but it started as a black and white image,
Speaker 1: and it took me years. Well, people pointed it out
Speaker 1: to me and I went, it's wolves. But then I
Speaker 1: eventually hit a point where I went, you know, if
Speaker 1: this is making anybody feel uncomfortable, it doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: my intention. I know what my intention is. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: my intention is like the Doo symbol, black and white.
Speaker 1: But I was like, but but to your point, So
Speaker 1: we've gone to blue, but even as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: there is still there's a shade too. Yeah. I want
Speaker 1: to say this to you. You've been very gracious to
Speaker 1: have me on, and so I don't want to leave
Speaker 1: what I was saying this that when it comes to
Speaker 1: white body supremacy, intentionality is really not the most important thing, right,
Speaker 1: even for me as a heterosexual black male. Right, there
Speaker 1: are pieces where black women can say something to me
Speaker 1: and I'll be like, you know, I'm just I'm just
Speaker 1: you know, you know, it's just dude stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not really meaning that. And then what I've learned
Speaker 1: how to do now is that when I first get
Speaker 1: ready to just to do those pieces, something in my
Speaker 1: throat catches now, right, and I'm able to now drop
Speaker 1: down into it a little bit more rather than ever
Speaker 1: kind of reflective suat away. Right. And so my intention
Speaker 1: on things I've learned is really shaped by some of
Speaker 1: the things that I have experienced, some of the things
Speaker 1: that have been passed down to me, and I need
Speaker 1: to challenge those pieces when they show up. It may
Speaker 1: be uncomfortable, it may not be necessarily advantageous for me
Speaker 1: to do it at that time, but when I look
Speaker 1: and this happened at a talk I was given where
Speaker 1: a young black woman came up to me and she
Speaker 1: said something to me, and my first move was to
Speaker 1: to kind of swat it away, And then I said
Speaker 1: I hear you, I said, I hear you. I said,
Speaker 1: I will promise you this that I will take some
Speaker 1: time and pause with this, inscribe on it. I can't
Speaker 1: tell you that I will agree with you when I
Speaker 1: come out on the other end, but what I will
Speaker 1: say is I will absolutely give this the attention that
Speaker 1: it deserves. And I did, and and I got to
Speaker 1: a place and I checked in with elders, and I
Speaker 1: checked in with people, and I got to a place
Speaker 1: where I said, she was right, and I need to
Speaker 1: do better. I love what you said there because I
Speaker 1: think that it was the I'm willing to go investigate
Speaker 1: this more deeply for myself. I may not arrive where
Speaker 1: you arrive, because we're not gonna all agree and see
Speaker 1: things the same way, but there was an inherent respect,
Speaker 1: I think. And for me at least, I think There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of lessons as I've been on what
Speaker 1: I hope is an anti racist journey, you know, and
Speaker 1: one of them was that very thing. My intention is
Speaker 1: to at least deeply consider the impact how things are landing,
Speaker 1: you know, what's the impact, and deeply consider and pause
Speaker 1: and do the work, do the and And for me,
Speaker 1: it really is an embodied work because I could very
Speaker 1: easily just change things and go, okay, I'll just you know,
Speaker 1: I won't have a logo, I'll have you know right.
Speaker 1: I can do all of that, right, but that is
Speaker 1: not the investigation that needs to happen for me. People
Speaker 1: give us an opportunity to investigate, to to work with,
Speaker 1: as I say, to interrogate, to examine these pieces, and
Speaker 1: we get those especially in terms of a racialized context.
Speaker 1: We get those opportunities all the time and many times.
Speaker 1: And I said this early, many times. White folks have
Speaker 1: the luxury and the advantage of not having to do
Speaker 1: that deep dive consistently. Yeah. Yea. Well, Resma, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your work, for agreeing to talk with us,
Speaker 1: for being willing to meet me and push me. I
Speaker 1: appreciate that. Well, hopefully it won't be the last time.
Speaker 1: And uh, I appreciate you having me on. If what
Speaker 1: you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making
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