LadyGang - White Fragility with The Stacks Part 1

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

This week is a special two-parter with Traci Thomas, host of The Stacks Podcast, to breakdown Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility.” In part one, The LadyGang is discussing the importance of the book, defining what white fragility actually means, and how they can strengthen their own understanding of white privilege to foster healthy conversations.   Thank you to this episode's sponsors! Klur - Get free shipping on orders of $40 or more at klur.co ! Best Fiends – Download Best Fiends free in the apple app store or on google play.  Stamps.com – Go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page, and type in LADYGANG to start your 4 week trial plus free postage and a digital scale.   Caldrea - Get free shipping on orders of $50 or more when you shop online at caldrea.com.  Talkspace – Use promo code LADY to get $100 off your first month when you sign up at talkspace.com or on their app. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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realized that books are books okay so here we go tracy is the host of the podcast on lady gang network called the stacks. And she has been an absolute force during this movement for all time that she's existed, but also during the past few weeks when the black lives matter movement has come to the forefront, gaining over 20,000 new Instagram followers, doubling her monthly downloads in the past 30 days, hitting 1 million downloads. She's been charting like crazy on iTunes and she's doing all of this, all of this while being the mama to pretty much newborn twin boys. No, almost six months. Well, I mean, that's still a newborn. I know, but I thought they were newborn to kid. There's still blobs. I've ever seen ever. And so this podcast is going to be

in two parts. The first part of the podcast is going to live right here. You're listening to it right now on lady gang. The second part, this is Tuesday, by the way, the second part is going to live over on the stacks feed tomorrow, Wednesday. So basically you're going to listen to part one here. You're going to go over to the stacks, listen to part two. If you're not already following stacks, I know a lot of you are, please make sure to subscribe to her show. And the first thing that when we said we were going to do white fragility, a lot of messages we got were, well, it's a great book, but why aren't you supporting black authors? So I want to let everyone know at the top of the show that over on bookshop.org, which

supports independent booksellers, this is not the first time you've heard me talk about this because we were trying to get you to buy Act Like a Lady from there. Tracy, if you search the stacks, Tracy has all these reading lists and she has a reading list right now with 78 anti-racist books. and I am committed to reading them in 2020. I started with number one, Men We Reaped by Jessam Ward, and I freaking love the book. And so we're just going to go down and read those all this year. And I think this is a good mission for 2020 for all of our reading lists. So Tracy, hi. Hi. That was quite an intro. Honestly, can you follow me everywhere and just tell people all

the things I've ever done in my life? Like, she just went to the bathroom. You're hired. She's like your hype man forever. Yes, I need this. And you're so cute too. So yay. And so sweet. That part I have to try real hard at. Well, I'm super excited to be here. I really am appreciative. Yes, if you're not already subscribed to the Stacks, follow us on Instagram. I do a ton of the work for the show on Instagram, including I review every single book that I read. So even if it's not something that's featured on the show, I take a picture of it. I write a review about it. I also do a lot of curated lists. So for example, I just put up a list of every single book. I took a picture of every single book that

we've had on the podcast by a Black author, and I posted a picture of them. And every single one of those books has an episode on the sacks that features that book. So if you're Kelty and you just read Men We Reaped, you can actually go back and listen to episode number four, where we did a whole hour-long conversation about Men We Reaped. So that's a resource if you're reading through my list, or if you're just reading books by Black authors in the next little bit. Before we start- better at her job than we are. Let's just put it like shocking to me that, you know, I, I kind of expected you to slow down when the boys came and you really haven't. How are you managing that?

You know what? Um, I have slowed down. I did a lot of work before, but I also, it's the only thing that I have right now that isn't the boys. So for me, like I used to teach fitness and my gym closed down right when I was about four months, five months pregnant. So I wasn't able to get another job. And then when COVID happened, I still wasn't able to get a job because all the gyms are still closed. So I don't have my other job. I don't really have another life besides the boys. And my husband is a doctor. And so I can't have help. People come over and help me because he's high risk. So when I'm not working on the show, I'm doing everything by myself with the boys unless my husband's home. So honestly, like I need this more than probably

it needs me. Like the sacks is probably like, can you leave me alone right now? You're annoying. I think one of the things that I just wanted to say before we started the episode is that, you know, Tracy has been such a wonderful listener, a wonderful educator, even though that is not her job in this space. And she's definitely someone that has changed my way of thinking many times, and we're going to talk about that, but I hope that all the listeners out there can grant us grace, um, and know that, you know, we, we really meant what we said. We are committed to changing the way we run lady gang and having these conversations, but we are not always going to get it right. And right now, what we see on social media is a lot of people

for the first time, maybe saying something and they're maybe not saying exactly the right thing. And then they're canceled and then you'll never want to say anything again. And so I want this to be a conversation where we all feel really comfortable to say it and then either be corrected or learn or educate. And hopefully all of our listeners can, um, learn and, and, and grow from that as well. So please grant us the grace that this is, um, you know, it, we are going to do our best. Yeah. I want to just piggyback off that really quickly. Cause I think that's a really important point about, you know, everyone's trying to do their best right now. And I know that for a lot of people, specifically white people, some of this is really new for you.

And I get that. And on the flip side of that, for people who are black and other people of color, this is not new for us at all. So part of it is understanding that if you think about it as like learning a new language, a lot of white people are getting their vocab words, like biblioteca and like black people are over here fluently speaking Spanish in both Mexican Spanish and Spanish and from Spain Spanish and in Argentina and like we're talking about the nuance of similes and metaphors and so sometimes for me and for other people the frustration comes that it's like I've been working on this speaking the language of racism my entire life as have all of my ancestors for 400 years or whenever they came to America which I don't know unfortunately

unlike a lot of white people who do have that luxury which it is a luxury to know where your ancestors came from. But the point being that if I jump ahead or I say something that you guys don't understand, please ask me because I'm speaking this language fluently and have been, and it's been inherited in me. And then the other part that I want to add is I am a Black woman, but I have a lot of privilege as I'm conventionally attractive. I'm heterosexual. I'm cisgender. My mother is white, so I have fair skin. So colorism comes into play. And so my opinions are my own and they don't reflect every single black person. And I would just like to ask in the asking for grace section of this, that my words aren't used against other black people or

people of color. I would hate to know that someone said, oh, I heard this black woman on the lady gang say X, Y, and Z. So your feelings are not validated because this is what she said is okay. So as we navigate these waters, remember that every single black person, like every single a white person, like every single Chinese person or Dominican person, we all have different experiences and we're not a monolith. And starting from that place, I think can be very powerful as we do this work. And as we have these conversations, um, so let's dive in. And I thought, I was going, sorry, I just want to say Tracy has full reign to correct us because right now so much of what we're trying to do is teach everybody when you fuck up. Cause you know, it happens how

to take the correction because that's, that's a huge part of this issue. So it's a learning, sorry, I know you hate the term learning cause it's like so overused, but it's like, it's a way for everybody to see us in action. And so hopefully you can take that and turn it into your own experience. And I do fuck up. Like I, you know, I mean, I guess that's probably a fair place to kind of get this conversation started is that, um, I know I've said this to Becca before in the past personally, because Beck is one of my dear friends, but the work of anti-racism is layered and nuanced. And just like a lot of other subjects in academia, it is, there's a lot of different opinions about it. One of the things that I always tell people is, I'm sure you've heard people say

black people can't be racist. And that is one brand of thinking about racism in America. But there is a race scholar who is probably the most like popular race scholar right now. His name is Ibram X. Kendi. He was on the Oprah thing that's been going on this week. His book is How to Be an Anti-Racist. His other book is Stamped from the Beginning. One of his big points is that anybody can be racist, including Black people. So when we talk about this stuff, there's a lot of variation and he's a major race scholar, but he goes up against other major formative race scholars in American race politics and all that stuff. So just know that some of this stuff, there isn't a right answer, which is why it gets sticky, right? Because if there was a right answer and you came to me

And you said, tell me about this. And if it was super easy to tell you how to fix racism, like, don't you think we would have fixed it? Well, we'd be taking a multiple choice test right now. Right. Exactly. Or getting a gold star and be over with our training. So.

It's true. Exactly. Exactly. Before we jump into the book, I wanted to just start this episode with an apology to Tracy, actually, and tell this story of how, and I think it's a really good example of how myself and white people in general sort of can be racist without maybe knowing they are. And so when Becca came to us and said, hey, Tracy has this amazing book podcast. She does these great interviews. Maybe we could add a book podcast to the Lady Gang. And I'm a book

lover. I freaking read nonstop. And I was like, absolutely. This is incredible. I listened to the episodes. The interviews you were doing, so incredible, so well thought out, so interesting. You know I'm a sucker for a format. So she has like a very distinct format, which she follows every week. And then we launched the show and I went into mode of how do I make this a success for her? How do I make this the biggest podcast in the world? Because that is like where my Kelty mind goes. And so I was after Tracy probably for a year. And I was like, hey, Tracy, don't you think you should do these popular books? Like what about the books on Reese's book club or the, you know, or this book or this book that I'm seeing everywhere. And she was very strong in

saying, yeah, I mean, we do that kind of book sometimes, but also very adamant in the kinds of books she wanted to cover and having this multi ethnic writers and promoting black writers and all kinds of writers, but she wasn't doing fluff. You know, she was doing fluff every six months. She was doing a book that was like a little more whatever. And so I wanted to apologize to you because, you know, in that time I was looking at it like, well, these are the popular books, but they're the popular books because there's so much, uh, white people, there's so much, there's so much privilege in the fact that then when I started to look at it and was like, oh, well, more white people are getting

book deals. More white people are selling books. people like the big places are, you know, I mean, it starts from the education to poverty, to all of these different things. Right. And then I started looking at your list and I was like, you know, what you're doing is so important. And then, wow, what a 360 moment this week, when you look at the New York times bestseller list and you see, um, how powerful these writers have been, if they're just given a shot and given a little bit of a push. And so I wanted to start this episode by saying, I'm really sorry, Tracy. And I, um, you know, I apologize to you because

that was something that I, it wasn't even in my mind, like a race thing. It was a, how do we come popular? And I walk into a Barnes and Noble and these are the books that I see. It's systemic. Um, and I appreciate you pushing back and I appreciate what you do on your podcast. Um, and I think it's really important. And I'm happy that you're having this moment where everyone is realizing how hard you work to do this. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I will not make you cover. That was a good apology. And I will make sure that you don't have to do the honey bus, even though it's a great story. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Less Kelty, more Tracy, please. This is not a honey bus podcast. No, thank God it's a honey bus podcast. The honey bus is a

cute book. Okay. It was cute. It's cute. Yeah. Whatever. Kelty told me it was like the greatest book she ever read. And I was concerned. She barely reads. We're going to find out now how much she reads. I know. I'm actually interested to see how much she read of this book. I'm actually impressed with her apology because she learned something from the book and we'll, we'll touch on that. And I thought that was a great place to start. It was very good. Now back to the lady gang. Okay. Now let's really dive into this book. So I think that the important thing for people who haven't read the book, the book is called White Fragility. It's by Robin D'Angelo. If you're not familiar with the term white fragility, I think that might be a great

place to start, which is I took just pulled kind of a definition together, which is basically that white fragility is the discomfort and defensiveness on the part of a white person when confronted by information about racial inequality and injustice. Let me say that again. White fragility is the discomfort and defensiveness on the part of a white person when they are confronted by information about racial inequality and injustice. So that's what we're talking about today, white fragility. We're going to pull on some things, I think, bigger systemic things, but we're going to try to zero in on this idea of white fragility because we don't have the time nor the bandwidth or the education or the ability to talk about racism as a whole. So we're going to focus in on this book

and this information and that sort of definition. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. Great. I'm glad you started with the definition because like many others, I myself wasn't quite sure when I picked this book up what that was. Right. Well, and I'll jump into that too, where I've seen this book before, like on Amazon and at bookstores and stuff and looking at the title of the book, uh, channeled white fragility within me, just looking at the book of defensiveness and this isn't about me and this is not my problem. So it's a very powerful title in itself. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a, I mean, it's a very, very, very, very, very common thing. And I think that most white people don't know that they're even doing it a lot of the time. So I think reading this book, I mean,

this is my second time reading the book. So I read it right after it came out and then I read it again, I finished it last night at about midnight, cramming for the exam. But I mean, as I was reading it, I'm thinking, you know, my mother is white and I'm thinking of times that even she has done this and she was married to my father for 30 plus years before he passed away. Like she has two black children. And so if you're reading this book and you're struggling with it, that's okay. that's okay you're okay you're not a bad person but doesn't mean you can walk away from it i think that like one of the things that robin d'angelo says that i think i would say is probably the most if you take one thing away from this book is that white people need to be building up their

stamina to have these conversations that even though they're uncomfortable you've got to build up your emotional stamina to be able to receive this information without letting your ego or your feelings get in the way. And I have some ideas of how you can do that. And so does she. And I think that they're easy tools because ultimately, while it's challenging to do this work, it's not actually hard stuff being asked of you. It might feel hard, but it's not. No one's asking you to run for political office and no one's asking you to write the next education bill. And no one's asking you to give up your job and go become a teacher in a school that is predominantly black and Latino kids. Like that's not the ask here. The ask is like, just be quiet.

Don't freak out. Take a deep breath. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Like that's really what's being asked. And then like, listen, you know, so, um, if you were challenged by this book in the reading of this book, you're not alone, but also it's not good enough just to acknowledge that and to say other people are frustrated in this book is bullshit. Um, do you guys swear? oh yes like yeah well i don't know do you i think you guys bleep it out i don't know i don't know about anything because i'm gonna do that um so do you guys have a place that you want to go from here as far as like where the conversation should go or questions maybe that came up like kind of in setting up the book like that maybe the history of race or like white privilege or kind of like

that background work i mean i'll jump in that one of the most interesting parts of the book that stuck out to me well there's two but one of them when you're talking about the history of race was there's a section about um thomas jefferson and where kind of race the concept of race began and it was in his justification of enslaving africans and i just thought that was so interesting because i mean all i really know about american history is what we were taught in high school which was wrong. And for me, it's a little embarrassing that this is the first time that I'm really learning any of these facts about that and where race actually came from. And it's the justification of enslavement. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, in this book,

she definitely talks about Thomas Jefferson. Like I mentioned earlier, and I'm sure you're going to hear me mention this name probably another hundred times, Ibram X. Kendi, he wrote the book Stamped from the Beginning. It's a masterful work. It won the National Book Award. It's huge. It's probably like 500 pages, but it's the definitive history of racist ideas in America. And he takes, it's a hard book to read. So I'm warning you, but it is worth every single second, every single word. It's a beautiful book. There's also a remix, stamped remix for young adult readers. It's a more simplified version of the book aimed at young people, but I read also this other book. It's by Jason Reynolds and Ibram Kendi. They work together on it, but it explains

racist ideas. And it even goes back, it predates Thomas Jefferson, this idea of race, but it is all in the justification of slavery. So what you'll hear people talk about a lot is a defense that we hear people talk about with slavery is, well, slavery existed before America, like the Greeks enslaved so-and-so and the Egyptians enslaved so-and-so. And that's true. Slavery did exist before America. However, American slavery or this non-American, I guess also in England and Portugal, but this slavery that we're talking about, that was founded on the idea of race and race was created to make that kind of slavery okay. So there were people who looked different and you might say like, oh, that person has fair skin and oh, that person has dark skin,

but there was never a connotation between good and bad with those skin colors until we get to this 1500s, 1600s invention of race. That being said, it's important to realize that all of this that's come after has come because of this invention of race and that whiteness does not exist without blackness, right? Like that these two things do not exist on their own. There is no such thing as white if there is no such thing as black. And unfortunately, because of the way that the chattel slavery worked in America, we were forced to become black. And like I said earlier, there is a privilege in knowing your ancestry that black Americans don't have. I can't tell you where my black family is from besides to say Louisiana. I can tell you my mom's side

for sure. I know they're from Latvia and they're from somewhere else. Oh, Ukraine. I know that information i know when they came to america i know my ancestry in that way but on my dad's side it's like i i'm black i'm slave black that's what i tell people um because you know so that invention of race created a race of people there were no different genetically but the experience of race is very real well and then i thought it was so interesting too when he like approached scientists and he was like you need to find out why black people are inferior to white people not if. So it's just justifying that like 10 times over. Exactly. It's saying we need this justification and you make this happen. Right. It's like, it's like when you backdate a check or something,

it's like, oh yeah, I know I paid you on the first and, but you didn't really actually write the check until the third. Right. So you're trying to get, get it over on people. And also part of that is, you know, America was founded by people who had money and property and things like that. And so they started from the beginning, creating a system that benefited them. Right. Right. So like, it wasn't like Thomas Jefferson was sitting down with a bunch of different people, like some of the indentured servants and some of the black people and some of the poor white people who didn't own property, but maybe like, you know, had their own little thing going. He was like, great. You and me and all my other rich friends, let's make this shit work for us. And so that's

how we get there. And then, um, I told, I don't know if I put it on the website or on my Instagram, but there's a podcast called Seeing White. It's hosted by John Bewin and his co-host is this amazing, amazing professor at Rutgers named Chendrai Kumanika. And they talk about seeing whiteness in America and it's 14 parts and it is incredible. And if you've never listened to it, it is a must listen. They do a way better job of breaking this down, the history of race in America. And they talk about the history part, but they also talk about affirmative action and all this stuff. So that's a great resource if you're intimidated by Kendi's book, for sure. But yeah, I mean, I think for me, what's frustrating is that there is not a willingness

to learn the history so that there's like some plausible deniability. Like, oh, I didn't know that. So how could I have known that what I'm doing or saying is bad, right? But there really isn't an excuse for not knowing it because the information, it's there, it exists. Like people have been doing this work, black people, white people, people of all different ethnicities from all different countries, but specifically in America, I mean, Kelty said, I have a 78 or 79 book list of anti-racist nonfiction. And that was just books off the top of my head. Like I didn't do a bunch of research. I wasn't like, oh, what's that great book about? Like that was just stuff I know. So it's there. You just have to actually want to read it. And starting at Stamped is,

I think that's a really great place to start. Also, I think that white fragility, it really manifests in a way that the reason for no one thinking that they need to educate themselves and read those books is because there's a refusal to take a look and acknowledge that it's even there. So it's kind of gaslighting in a way. And it's like, if we pretend that we're not those people and it's not there, then we aren't going to have to do the work and look in the mirror to see how we've f***ed this up for so long. Right. Or like, I'm sure you guys have heard people say, well, my family came over in the 1930s

and we didn't own slaves and we were Polish and we were considered not white or whatever. We were considered, you know, and like that also is a way that people kind of like remove themselves from from being culpable, right? Like, well, my family wasn't here in 1619. So therefore I have no role in this. And that is so, so dangerous and so, so wrong. By being white, you benefit from all of the racist white stuff that came before you, even if your family didn't own a slave. And also some of you people whose family have been here for a long time, I hate to break it to you. They might own slaves, right? Like some people own slaves and a lot of you aren't owning up to that. information right like if nobody's family owned slaves you need to tell me they're just slaves

that were being abused by nobody like all those people didn't have kids the families died off like no no well i think that another interesting thing that with this book and racism in general is it kind of takes the individualness of racism out a little bit and presents it in a way where like racism is a social construct that are built on our country that benefits white people to the disadvantage of black people and just acknowledging our presence in it and that we do benefit from it um i just think was such an interesting lesson because it's always there to benefit white people no matter what we're doing in every part of our lives correct i also i felt like when i was i listened to it on audio book, but I had felt like I liked reading this book because it almost gave

you permission to look at yourself in a way, because for me, I grew up in, in Northern Canada, there weren't black people. I didn't really even meet anyone that was black until I was in New York or had left the country. And so for me, I came into the United States and I thought this exactly Rebecca said, this is not my thing. I see no color. I was one of those people. I treat everyone the same. I'm on the Nick city dancers. And there's like a black girl every five steps. And like, I don't see color. And you felt like that was the right thing to do because admitting that you see color felt like you were a racist, right. You know? And so for me, reading this book shocked me into realizing how wrong I've been about so many things, but also gave the permission

to say, you're right. I absolutely see black people. Can I ask you this Kelty? When did you first realize that you did actually see race? Like how long was it before being in America that it dawned on you like, oh, there's a lot of racism here. Like, oh, some things don't seem quite right. Something's not fair. So there was racism in Canada, but it was mostly towards the first nations people. Right. You know, so it was like a different kind of racism. So I absolutely grew up with racism. I grew up with watching the Simpsons and having, I just remember like the guy, the, the very troublesome character that ran the quickie mart. Everyone was using the voice when we went and got slurpees. Like I remember that growing up and thinking that's

not right. That's not the way to treat a person. But I did not, we, we did not learn American history at all in school so we didn't learn the right american history right but like slavery like was like a 15 minute lesson it was like it happened and then and then abraham lincoln he fixed it and then the white people saved everything yeah of course so i think the first time i really really noticed that there was a really big difference um this is a crazy story and it's so sad that this happened, but when I was a Rockette, there was a Rockette. The Rockettes have a serious diversity problem, as everyone knows. It's been talked about a lot. And they had my first year of a Rockette. There was a Rockette. She was three down from me. Her name

was Nairine. She was a black woman. And they had put her in tan tights and white shoes because at that time they were so out of the loop. And I remember looking at her and being like, this is fucking cruel. Like her tights and shoes are not the color of her skin. Like who fucking cares if in the line of 36, you see a pair of black legs. Like that was the time where I was like, wow, this is like so not okay. And I realized for the first time that it would be so different for her and that she was terrified of saying anything and how she must've felt. So that was probably the first thing that I was like, oh, but this has been, you know, I've been so wrong in so many ways and very little, little ways. So I loved reading the book because I was like, wow,

this is my permission to be like, you're up and you're, you're not smart about this. And you have been micro aggressive to people for a long time and you have to get better. So. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. I was a dancer too. I wore, I wore tights that did not match my skin color and I'm, you know, relatively fair compared to many black people. So I can only imagine, um, you know, I'm kind of like, I think I'd probably like right in the middle of the, of the color spectrum for black people, if there was such a thing. Like growing up, you didn't have like, there was nothing that matched your skin, right? No. So sometimes I wore like tan, like some of the tights were like, so I'm like a mix. So I don't have white skin and I don't have

like that like stereotypical dark black skin either and so there was like a tan color but that was like tan for white people but there wasn't like a light black color right like there wasn't so I was either having to wear like very dark legs or like like 12 shades too light legs but you know and it's funny because I don't I didn't have any really thought about that in a long time but it's true well they mention in the book how it's so we're so programmed that the cut, like flesh colored is it's of the color of white people's skin and that whole idea of the dancers and, and we've never known as white women, I've never known what it's like to not feel like I belong. And we go through our life and we don't ever, we'll never understand that. And the thing

that really in the book, I it's like, you know that, but then you don't have these examples that kind of like slap you across the face and one of them was when Rihanna came out with her makeup line Fenty and all of these women all of these black women wrote tweeted finally finally there's makeup for me and for my skin and they're like and then I think Robin says as a white person have you ever had to tweet that have you ever had to say I finally feel like I belong and that was really poignant. That, and then also there was a quote from her saying something like my race has never been, or my race is unremarkable or my whiteness is unremarkable. I forget exactly what the quote is. And it goes along with that, where it's like, we've never had to go into a

room and think about our race, into a party, into a black tie event, into a concert. We don't have to think about our race ever. Right. Ever. Right. Right. And when we look at TV, we're always represented in textbooks. And she had the example of like Adam and Eve and Jesus. It's like every standard of beauty or anything that we look at, we're always represented. And we've never even had to think of an option where we're not. We're going to take a break. And when we come back more from tracy now back to the lady gang and we're back tracy so on your point that we left off on of like not having to see other beauty standards or having to even question those things when those things are questioned right when there is a black jesus or a black santa there's an outrage i mean

And Megyn Kelly is famous for her black Santa screed that she went on a few years back about how this is a made up character. So how could he possibly be black? Which of course the response is, this is a made up character. How could he possibly be anything specific? This is Santa Claus. Like, what do you mean? And you know, like there's the science of it, the science, I guess, in air quotes, but

the truth of Jesus is he was Middle Eastern. Like he certainly wasn't white. He certainly didn't have blue eyes and blonde hair. You could argue if he's white or black or what he is, but I guess maybe the truth of it would be that he's maybe Asian because he's Middle Eastern, right? Like, but he's certainly not fair skinned, you know, like he certainly did not have a cute like haircut. He probably had kinky ass hair that everyone would think, you know, kinky hair is so bad

or whatever, but like your Messiah, your savior, he looked a lot more like me than he looked like Becca, like a thousand percent. And so I think that part of it is like recognizing that a lot of the things that we take for granted or that white people take for granted are things that black people and other people of color notice instantly, which just goes back to my first point of like, I speak this language fluently. Right. Like I remember my dad saying when we were kids, he was, he was raised in the Baptist.

His mom was like big in the Baptist church. And he remembers saying, I don't want to be this religion because in my black Baptist church, there is a white Jesus on the crucifix. And he knew from a young age, something's not right here, right? And so like those kinds of aha moments that you guys are having reading this book and that a lot of people are having now in the wake of the murders of people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, these aha moments are moments that many of us Black people and other people of color have been having along the road our whole

lives, right? And like, I'm someone who's done a lot of the reading, the academic reading. And so I feel like I've been having a lot more of these aha moments in the last 10 years because I too am doing the work. I want people to hear me say that again. I too am doing the work actively. I don't just know all of this stuff. Yeah. Some of it, I know pretty easily off the top of my head from experience, but a lot of the history of it, like I too have to learn because I was also taught that there were good slave owners, such a thing. Imagine thinking that there could be a good person who owns another person, right? Like that owned another human being and, and that the level of goodness is that maybe they didn't sell your child away from you. Right. That that would make you good. Or maybe they didn't use a whip on you in the field that maybe that makes it okay.

Right. Or maybe they gave you slightly better food. So that makes it okay. But like the core thing is these people owned other people. they owned your whole life everything about you they owned and anything that you had they gave you and they could take away and anything that you were they could take away and anything that you ever wanted they could take away and there was nothing you could do except for maybe try to run away and hope you don't die or get caught right like I think that we are taught this really

sterilized version of what happened. And another thing that I think we really need to think about when we talk about the history of race is 400 years of slavery in America, 400 years is anywhere between probably by my crude math, 12 to 20 generations, right? So my grandmother would have turned 100 this past year or two years ago. So that's three generations, right? My grandmother, my mother and me, and that is my mom having me at 30 something. Right. And my mom was the youngest. So my grandmother had her old, but when we think back to people who are, who are being enslaved and bred to have children, we're talking about women who are having children at 13. Right. Right. So like some of the generations might be three, but in a hundred years and some times and some

families that could be five or six generations. So we're talking about generations, like 400 years, all of a sudden becomes a lot of people. And again, we're not taught that either. So like these things that you guys are noticing and realizing is general, like is being taught to us generation after generation. And it's okay that you didn't know it now, like you didn't know it until now, but now that you know it, the question is where do we go from here? Right. And I think that's what this book is about is like, now you see it, you can't unsee it now. Like we can't ever go back. The commitment's got to be that you see it and we go forward. And how does that work look, right? And so in the book, one of the things that she talks about that, I don't

remember what I said the first thing that was the most important thing, but the second thing that I think is the most important thing, because I'm not keeping a list. The second thing is that this idea of good and bad, right? This good, bad binary. She basically explains it that racist equals bad and not racist equals good. And I'm going to interject a little Kendi into this. So Kendi says there's no such thing as a not racist. You are either racist or you are anti-racist. You're either working towards racism or anti-racism, but there's no such thing as a not racist, right? So if you're using that phrase, I'm not racist, I challenge you to stop using that phrase, right? I challenge you to just take it out of your vocabulary because the people who say I'm

not racist, I pretty much can guarantee you you're functioning from a place of racism. Right. Well, and Robin D'Angelo actually says instead of the binary, it's a continuum is the way that she looks at it. And so there is no fixed position. There is no binary position. It's where you are in that moment is dictated or it dictates, you know, where you're at in that continuum, I guess. And I also think that the binary is why so many white people,

myself included, why it makes it so easy for us to perform microaggressions and then feel as if we don't need to apologize because we're not racist. And so I know that I have done and said things in the past that are racist. And I now know that coming back to Kelty's apology, I now know that the danger in rationalizing and defending is part of the major problem. And that if you don't acknowledge the hurt that you've caused, it's impact over intention is what Robin D'Angelo says. And so if you refuse to acknowledge the impact that you've made and instead defend your intentions, then that's not okay. So words like intention, following an apology for something that you've done completely negates and diminishes the reality of something very negative that you

caused. Right. I'm going to hop in and just correct you on one thing, Becca, which is that you said this good, bad binary is part of the problem. And I'm just going to push back and say it's not just part of the problem. It is part of the design of racism. That is the intent and the impact of racism that setting it up as good and bad means that people won't push back. So it's not just part of it. It's the whole purpose, right? You're functioning in a place of white solidarity, right? You're saying that whiteness is not to blame here. I have a good heart. That's not what's in my heart. I don't have a racist bone in my body. Turns out there is no racist bone in anybody's, spoiler alert, but that what you're saying is in fact reinforcing

the white supremacy, right? It's not just a piece of it. It is basically the whole thing. The whole system of white supremacy functions on white people banding together and denying that this thing exists. Yeah, I get that. So basically, so that I'm understanding, So the binary, it is what's protecting the white supremacy. Okay. That's exactly right. That is the protection, right? Because if anyone were to find out this top secret information that actually you can be

a good person and still do and say racist things, then people might actually try to get better at doing that work instead of just saying, I'm not going to touch it. I'm not racist. Let me shut it down. Right. We've all, I mean, as women, as women, we can speak, you know, we can find solidarity on certain topics like being women and the injustices that we faced in those situations. We can all remember a time where we brought something to a man in charge and they said, no, I'm not being sexist. And they shut it down. Right. I'm not sexist. I'm married to a woman. I have a daughter. You know, like we know how infuriating that is. Right. Like we can all relate to that. Um, or, or if you're queer and someone says something homophobic and I'm not homophobic, my aunt is a lesbian. Like we all know what it feels like to be gaslit in that way.

However, this particular system, this is what our whole country is founded on, right? This is the whole, this is a whole kit and caboodle, um, on that podcast, seeing white, there's a question that's brought up by Chandra Kumanika. And he says, when was whiteness good, right? Because whiteness was founded as a way to justify owning people. Right. And we just talked about all that entails. So, and I don't mean that there aren't nice white people. And I don't mean that there aren't white people who are trying to do good, but this idea of whiteness, the question is when was that ever good? And when you start to look at it in that way, that maybe you're not fighting against being white, but you're fighting against the system that has made it possible for

you to be white. Right. Does that kind of make sense? Very much. Yeah. It makes so much sense. And this actually is a great place for us to kind of wrap up the lady gang portion of this. And I wanted to have this conversation on, on our side. If you're listening to this and you don't listen to the stacks tomorrow, you failed, you failed one-on-one. Cause we're going to be talking about on the next part, we're going to be talking about some of the bad behavior we've seen and ways to combat it. So if you're worried that you've done bad things, I got a whole list of things that people have done to me in the last, I don't know, 14 days. Also in the meantime, Google microaggressions examples of, because you would be shocked to know how many you have

committed. Yeah. Amazing. Tracy, thank you for being here on late. If you haven't read the book, you should absolutely and be following Tracy. We'll be, we'll be posting all the ways you can follow her and head on over tomorrow and listen to part two on the stacks. And we'll see you next wednesday it's tomorrow because tomorrow there's no you on wednesday thanks for listening and make sure to rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcast we have new episodes of lady gang every tuesday and thursday follow us on social media at the lady gang uh follow us personally at kelty most importantly at becca and at jack bannock the lady gang network is produced by will sterling steve delamater kirsten woodward and elizabeth beckway thanks for rating and

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