The One You Feed - Carlin Quinn on Education for Racial Equity

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

Carlin Quinn is the founder and current director of Education For Racial Equity. She is also a coach, facilitator, therapist, equity consultant to organizations, communities, and individuals interested in dismantling systems of oppression and co-creating cultures of equity, mutual liberation and rooted in compassion and non-violence. In this episode, Eric and Carlin discuss her important work in bringing awareness to and helping others to engage in racial equity work.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!Carlin Quinn and I Discuss Education for Racial Equity and…Understanding internalized and unconscious racismMoving out of our good/bad binary into curiosity keeps us open to learningHow our ignorance of systemic racism is incredibly harmfulThe importance of white people tending to their own trauma and also staying present in racial equity workBecoming aware of what we are triggered by and asking who we become when triggeredHer program with Resmaa Menaken, “Foundations in Somatic Abolitionism“Defining “bodies of culture” as identified by ResmaaThe fear and ambivalence in engaging in racial equity workChoosing to engage in equity practices in your life, with your children, and with your friendsThe need for educating ourselves both individually and communallyCarlin Quinn links:Carlin’s WebsiteFoundations in Somatic Abolitionism ProgramInstagramWhen you purchase products and/or services from the sponsors of this episode, you help support The One You Feed. Your support is greatly appreciated, thank you!If you enjoyed this conversation with Carlin Quinn, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Racialized Trauma with Resmaa MenakemDeep Transformation with Spring WashamSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When white people start to behave less dangerous without internalizing the true meaning behind the behavioral change, we become a wolf in sheep's clothing. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast

is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor what's in the museum of failure and does your dog truly love you we have the answer go to really know really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed jason bobblehead the really know really podcast follow us on the iheart radio app apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Karlyn Quinn, the founder and current director of Education for Racial Equity. She's also a coach and consultant to organizations, communities, and individuals interested in dismantling systems of oppression and co-creating cultures of equity,

mutual liberation rooted in compassion compassion and nonviolence. Hi, Karlyn. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to talk with you about your work as the founder and current director of Education for Racial Equity and all the topics that spring from there, but we'll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred

and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at their grandparent and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd love to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, thank you for renaming it over and over again at the beginning and at the start. It's helpful to hear it. And the first time I heard this parable was probably maybe 10 or 15 years ago. And I can say that it's changed meaning and it's gained dimensionality over time for me. Because one of the things that I realized was that there's consciously feeding things and there's unconsciously feeding things. And as I became more of a conscious adult, And as I became more of a conscious adult, I realized that I was unconsciously feeding patterns of separation, patterns of fear, patterns of contraction, patterns of, for lack of a better term, like a kind of fight mentality that causes more closure, more rigidity, but it wasn't an intentional thing. It was a product of my family, a product of culture, a product of what I was socialized into.

And I started to learn in the last few years that what I intentionally feed, there's a dual responsibility. One is what am I intentionally feeding? And the other is, am I doing my work to illuminate that which I don't understand yet about myself, that which is unconscious? And so for me, this parable is always a, it's a twofold path of digging, digging and digging and illuminating, and then also consciously choosing a way that takes that insight and creates a new story. And I can say that one of the rules that I live by

in my professional life, but also in my personal life, is that I'm always tracking if I'm making a decision out of fear or scarcity. I have like a visceral tracking in my system that if I'm making a decision out of fear or scarcity, that I pause and I don't make the decision. I actually investigate. And I've found that to be a very helpful practice in life. I love that idea. There's the discernment about what it means to feed the good wolf that is ideally ongoing, right?

What it was five or 10 years ago, hopefully, at least for me, it seems hopefully is different because I'm growing, I'm changing, I'm learning, I'm deepening, I'm making more of the unconscious more conscious, right? And I think your work and the work that Resmaa does and the work that so many people are doing has really shown a light on an area that I know I can say I was deeply unconscious of for a long time, which is what's happening racially. And the ability to say, well, you know, I'm not a racist and go, see, I'm a good person and leave it at that. And if there's been any sort of, for me, thing that has been probably most coming up for me that I've realized that, boy, there's some things that need to be different. It's kind of been in that area for me,

particularly over the last few years, which I think it has been for a lot of people. Yes, absolutely. And, you know, you use the word good twice in this last section, and the good wolf or a good bad person. And I think that this is also a really easy, where white people, but human beings in general can get really caught up in what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong. And even in that, so when I look at this parable and I look at which wolf do I feed, there's a value underneath where I want to put my life energy. And I also try, I do my best to not associate that with goodness because goodness immediately, if you have goodness, then if you're not doing that, you have badness. And when we as human

beings feel bad, we tend to collapse. We tend to lose curiosity. We tend to close. And this also happens a lot as white people start to learn about internalized racism. Dr. Robin DiAngelo talks a lot about this, that moving out of the good-bad binary into more curiosity of not if, but how am I racist or am I being racially problematic or is my ignorance causing harm, there's a genuine curiosity there that keeps us open to learning as opposed to upholding the identity of goodness. Yeah, I think that's really well said. And I think that was one of the things that reading Iram X. Kendi really got me was the idea of saying like, of course I do racist things, right? Doesn't make me quote unquote a racist as a label I have to avoid. It means that I do these behaviors. And like you said, when we can move away from a label of I'm good or I'm bad, we can actually really investigate more deeply the nature of our actions, knowing that none of us are good or bad. It's not that simple.

Yeah. And what I've learned is the more that I can be curious with myself after many, many, many, many years of doing this work and living the practice of this work, which it really is a life practice, I still witness my socialization, my racist socialization by growing up in a white supremacist culture, I still know that my psyche was formed in an anti-Black society. That is still a part of the way I see the world. Now, I have enough ability now to track it as it's coming in or coming up and to go, wow, that's not me, but that's there. And if I wasn't aware of it, I would be acting from this. So there's a huge slowdown that's possible now that wasn't before.

But just because we start to wake up to this doesn't mean that we become any less socialized by the racist waters. Yep. Yep. We just become more skilled at swimming in them, causing less harm and hopefully finding our place in our pocket where we can try to turn the tide a bit. There was a video that was posted on ERE's Facebook page, and there was a quote from it that I wanted to say.

Sure. And you said, a lot of us walk in, talking about white people, walk into work around racial awareness and become really submissive and, I love this phrase, eggshell walkie. And we give up our authentic personality when we're trying to be all woke. And I wanted to dive in deeper there because when I heard that, I went, oh my goodness, does that ever feel like my experience when I'm in conversations about this topic? I feel very submissive. I feel very like I'm walking on eggshells. I want to be very careful. And I recognize, you know, some of that is coming from a good place, but I don't know that giving up our authentic personality is ever really a useful tool. So talk about how we start to work with that in a more skillful way.

I mean, this is a ever unfolding answer as I live as a white female in this world. And I have more and more long-term intimate relationships with bodies of culture, people of color. And yeah, it's a constant practice. So what I can share with you is that in my experience personally, and also in working with a lot of white people who are not so much in the stage of fighting whether or not they are or are not socialized by racism or are or are not racist, but people who are actually not interested, you know, in the work. I noticed that there's a early developmental trajectory where we start to realize how harmful our ignorance is. When you actually wake up to systemic racism, you start to see the world and see the inequities and see how one little life, my life life is complicit with so many layers of the system. And it's shocking. Most people, after they take a three day with us, or they get into the work with us at ERE, go through a very challenging process of what it

means to not be able to fall back asleep. And in that process, there's a shock of how ignorant we are or how ignorant we have been. And then there's usually kind of a dual process. there's a shock of how ignorant we are or how ignorant we have been. And then there's usually kind of a dual process. There's either a process where our hearts become so engaged that we get overwhelmed emotionally and we go into grief or rage or anxiety or over fixing. Like there's all these tendencies to fix. Even in that moment, we become inauthentic with the process because we can't tolerate how much we feel about how complicit

and harmful our life and our people's lives have been. And the other is that we can wake up, be overwhelmed and go into apathy. In the apathy and in the numbness, we can get very intellectual and we can do certain things that might support the cause, but we don't become more emotionally engaged, relationally engaged, emotionally intelligent. So this is a common first step and stage. And then white people stay with the work. We then start to go into, okay, well, what does it actually mean to engage as a white person aware of what's happening, becoming committed to not being as harmful or not being harmful? How do I engage across race and across culture? And then we start to step in those waters and realize how ill-equipped we are actually to hold the true experience

of bodies of culture that's so different from our racialized experience in the world. It's almost like our ignorance and the ignorance we're socialized into takes so long for us to understand and to educate. We have so much catching up to do that in that catching up process, it's impossible for us to engage authentically with people who've been living this reality their entire lives. So there's this gap. I don't know if this makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. There's this gap that we're asked to stay in. That is one of the biggest invitations that I have to myself and to my people and that

Resmaa and I really work with when we're working with groups of white bodies. When you really start to engage with this work, you're talking about a three to 10 year commitment of active engagement on an emotional, relational, physical, somatic level and intellectual level. It's multifaceted and multilayered. And as we start to learn one and then not the other, it's like we're this disjointed, we're very disjointed for a while. And it can be hard to then relate authentically. So that's also a process of learning. The other thing that you talk about in that same video, you talk a little bit about the parallels between early childhood trauma.

And I don't know if this is the phrase you use, cultures of dominance. You might have used a different phrase, but that there's a relationship between early childhood trauma and these systems of dominance. Can you say more about that? Yeah, this is one of my favorite things to talk about. Well, first, in my own journey, what I started to recognize was that as I started to wake up to whiteness and white supremacy, I immediately started to compare it with patriarchy and what it was to be a woman who grew up in, you know, a culture of patriarchy, and then also a family that

had a lot of patriarchal patterns. And I got called in on that pretty quickly, which I was very grateful for. And in most, if not all of the cross-racial, cross-cultural and white spaces that I've been in since, it's very common that in order for white people to grasp any sort of understanding of racialized oppression, we kind of have to look for the closest thing that we can identify with. So oftentimes we'll bring forward our trauma card, whatever it was in our personal history, our familial history, lineages, ancestral history that has trauma attached to it. We will tend to first go there to access the pain of that, to somehow identify with the pain that bodies of culture experience in the world.

And this is really problematic because, first of all, there are no systems that equate to systemic racism and racial harm, especially in the United States, in my opinion. And secondly, typically when we're contending with traumatized selves, parts of ourselves that are traumatized, those parts tend to be younger. They tend to be less emotionally and relationally nuanced. They tend to be very reflexive and they tend to kind of respond with extremes, intensities. And so if we're in a cross cultural space and a white person is going into their trauma, when the purpose of the group is to speak about equity and specifically focus on racial equity, it within about two minutes can absolutely hijack a space. It can suck all the oxygen out of

the room. And if it's a white woman, actually also if it's a white male, like there's different, there's a different energy that comes. If it's a white woman, there's often a rush to soothe. And if it's a white male, it usually completely collapses. It usually completely closes the space. And there's a rush for all resources in the room to go and make sure that the white male is comfortable. What's interesting is that we are all socialized by patriarchy, no matter what our gender is, what our race, we are all socialized by patriarchy. And in a white supremacist patriarchal culture, if the white man crumbles, there is a visceral socialized response to make sure that he's okay. Because if he's not okay, who's going to lead? Who's going to drive things forward? Because we've all been socialized to

believe that supporting white men to lead is supporting our culture. These are things that I needed to really tease out over time. They're not obvious things that come to mind, but I started to read the phenomena in the room and go, what's happening here? was like, I thought about my mother and my father, actually. And I thought about how, like with my dad, it was like, I needed to make sure he was okay, because he was scary when he was not okay. And my mom, I had to go make sure she was okay to soothe her, because I was afraid in a completely different way of her not being okay. And so does that play into it also? Or is each person going to bring their own dynamic to this situation? And you're sort of reporting what happens, broadly speaking, as a whole room. Yeah. I mean, the tricky thing is, is that it's multi-layered. So each person brings their own family history into any interaction they have. I mean, I'm speaking right now in large sweeping statements, and I want to be careful about that because there are people that have done a lot of work around this. So I'm speaking about people in a, regardless of their gender, into a space.

And then we're also all bringing in our relationship to the social dynamics and the different systems and how we've been socialized by those systems. So there's many layers. It's incredibly complex to watch what white people do to maintain a certain kind of equilibrium, but also what bodies of culture and white people do. We're all also indoctrinated into white supremacy. So there's also a piece of, I think you named it when you spoke about your father, there are definitely elements of fear. You know, Resmaa said once, as he was reflecting on history in accurate terms, he said, you know, white women's tears have the power to move a nation.

And when Resmaa spoke this, I felt the truth of those words in my body. And I felt the power and responsibility that I carry to heal and learn how to be regulated when I'm triggered, no matter what I'm triggered by. And if I haven't cleaned up the trauma of my family history, and I haven't cleaned up my relationship to domination, being dominated and also learning how to dominate, if I haven't done a tremendous amount of work around my triggers, I will not be in good shape when there's a cross-racial situation and it gets heated. White people's white bodies, nervous systems tend to short circuit, tend to collapse, tend to go into fear and rescue and fix. And in that, in that reflexive response,

we lose so much of the nuance of what's actually happening to bodies of culture. So even in this conversation, the minute we start talking about white people's trauma, there's a whole universe that opens that we can dive into. And what I notice is how easy it is to start to center the white experience in focusing on white trauma and then how white trauma is used. And then suddenly we're not even remembering that bodies of culture are in the space because we become so fixated. Does that make sense? It does. As you say that, my first reaction is that anybody, when they are recalling their trauma, the world shrinks very quickly to them and their trauma. And so as you're saying all this, I can totally see to your point how if you're in a session where the goal is to work on racial equity and you've got white trauma, then that's where all the attention goes.

all the attention goes. My question to that is, and this is what really interested me about Resmaa's work when I first saw it, was what's the relationship with a white person healing their trauma and being able to engage in racial justice work? And again, I'm not sure if that's the phrase that you would use, but here I am being eggshell walkie. But what's the relationship of white people healing their trauma? And I think we might be able to divide it into different types of trauma because Resmaa talks about the trauma of the white body as a whole. But let's just stay with normal developmental run of the mill, your parents damaged you kind of trauma. How important is it to heal that either in conjunction with or before diving deeply into this kind of work? Or is that sort of, as you said, taking our eye off the target?

So it's a both and. It is essential that white bodies learn how to tend to both our own experience, our own trauma, our own escalation, our own triggers, and at the same time, stay very much present to the whole. I'm a psychotherapist. I specialized in PTSD. I know a lot about complex PTSD and the traumatic reflexive response. And sometimes when I'm doing racial equity work, white people will get really upset with me because I'm not playing a therapeutic function with their trauma. I'm challenging them in a way where I'm asking them to hold both their activation and presence, humility, and some equanimity as it relates to race and power in the space. And asking white people to forge both pathways simultaneously, which is what my invitation is, is often an invitation into your own personal therapy and an invitation into actively engaging with equity work on a

regular basis communally. Usually it's both of those things. Personally, for me, that was absolutely my journey. I would not be able to hold what I hold in a field alone or with Resmaa in my own body and in a group had I not engaged for years in deep psychotherapy and tending to my nervous system and my reactions, my traumatic reactions. All were legitimate, but there's a muscle in having enough observing ego. And this takes takes time this isn't just like snap your fingers and you can do it this takes time and i have a lot of compassion for that that we become aware of what is activating us and what part of us is going into a trigger we become aware of who we become so i often ask questions of white people that I work with, who do you become when you're stressed? Who do

you become when something is taken away from you? Who do you become when you're triggered? Because there's who you become. And then if you're becoming that person in a cross-racial relationship, there's going to be an extra element that you are a white body becoming that person. Oftentimes we'll say, but I'm like that with everyone. That's just how I am, or that's just how I am when I'm triggered. What we don't have in our understanding is that there's a racial impact that runs through bodies of culture that we know nothing about. So we need to learn how to temper and yeah, be self-responsible in holding both. I have so many questions from that. You know, I'm in the Buddhist mindful space a little bit,

and there's a lot of discussion about, do you need to transform first before you do good work in the world? Or like you, I've come to the conclusion, it's really both, right? Both those journeys ideally would be happening at the same time, which is why certain religions, despite many of their shortcomings, the one thing that they did in their best forms tend to say is like, there is a system of caring about the world simultaneously with caring about your own spiritual development. Those two things happen together, ideally, in the best circumstances. I wanted to ask you a question about your program that's called Foundations in Somatic Abolitionism that you do with RESMA. And it's a two-day program for a white person in that there's a first day that you go to before you can enter what I'll call the main group, which is bodies of, I got to ask you to clarify something. And I'm going to ask a question in the middle of a question.

You've used a phrase a number of times, and it's one that I don't know well, which is bodies of culture. Can you say what that is? I'm really tempted to go back to the question that the statement you just made about religions, though, because there's a whole thing there as well. There's a whole piece that we could go into. Let's do bodies of culture. We'll go back and then we'll come back to your workshop. How about that? Okay, great. Perfect. So the term bodies of culture was coined by Res Momenicum, author of My Grandmother's Hands, who you've had on the show, and who's a dear friend and colleague of mine. So I'm going to do my best to define it as I know it

through his definition. And I would say, for more information on this, please check out Resmaa's work. So bodies of culture, I think Resmaa brought it into being to reclaim something, the truth of history, that during the time of colonization, the strategy of white supremacy was to remove certain people from their culture, from their languages, from their rituals, from their traditions, bringing them over on ships and the systematic erasure and punishment that was tied to them reclaiming any of or keeping alive their language or their rituals. Also, when we look at indigenous people, peoples on Turtle Island, the genocide, on Turtle Island, the genocide, the very conscious act of the white US government, Canadian governments to remove Indigenous children from their families and place them in residential schools was very specifically to interrupt culture. And so what Resmaa is doing with this term is to not just make it about melatonin and skin color.

There's an element that looks at the racial hierarchy. There is for sure an element of the darker your skin is in this country, the more of a type of oppression you'll experience. But then there is also, there are indigenous people who might move through the world with lighter skin. Also, there are indigenous people who might move through the world with lighter skin. And yet white supremacy has had an equal impact on their culture and on their generations, backwards and forwards. And so that term is to really reclaim the culture that different peoples are tied to. So is that term replace bodies of color?

Would it be safe to say it's a broader term that incorporates more elements of harm in it and it's a more inclusive term? I wouldn't say more or less. This is actually a conversation that is ongoing. And I would say there's no right answer. I'm sure that I could receive a ton of critique on whatever answer I bring forward. People of color is a very general term. And in that generalization, we're talking about Black, Indigenous, Asian, Indian, we're talking about so many cultures that have so much context, so much richness. I think that in using the term people of color color it was getting used in a way that was functioning to erase so the purpose was to include but it was functioning to somehow erase nuance then got turned into black indigenous and other people of color and all other people of color

which was some effort to identify the most impacted in the United States, most impacted communities. I think that each person needs to sense what actually feels true for them. I really identify with the term bodies of culture now. At the beginning, it took me a minute to let it really land. But when I started to really take in the meaning behind the phrase, it started to gain dimensionality so that when I say bodies of culture, I am feeling, remembering, sensing, and I am connected to black culture. I am connected to indigenous cultures, multiple cultures. I'm connected to the complexity that white supremacy tries to reduce. But that might not be where you're at with it. So one thing I would always say to people is don't just do it because it's like the thing you're supposed to do, because then it becomes eggshell walkie, right? It becomes something that we're just trying to

behave well. It's actually what is the substance? Where's the substance in you? If you really take in that new term and you internalize it, when you speak it, does it have a sense of connection to it? And if that's the truth, then I would say, yeah, Eric, sounds like you get that and it feels right to say it. But if you were just doing it to like get the right thing, I would say use the terms that you feel connected to. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us tonight. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel

might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition sign Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app

on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't want to lose your thread about wanting to go back to religion, but I have to ask about what you just said there, which is don't just behave your way into this, right? Yeah. However, given the nature of oftentimes the harm that we can do without even really realizing what we're doing, is there not an initial place of just at least saying, I may not fully understand yet. This makes me think about impact and intent, right? Just say like, well, I didn't intend to hurt you, but I did. The thing I said did hurt you. And I may not fully understand even why yet. My journey, I may not even be far enough along on my journey yet. Do we still not want to try and behave in

the way that people are suggesting is the less harmful way, even when we're not fully along and understanding? Yeah. I mean, this is a great question. I don't know. Are we allowed to swear on the show? Swear away. It's not a big swear, but I often say when I'm working with white groups, like, it all boils down to like being less of an asshole. Really. It's like, I'm learning how not to be an asshole. And white supremacist culture has really taught me how to be an asshole in ways that I don't even know. So that's a baseline. In my entire life, that would be a value that I have in all my relations, right? Yeah, yeah. is that when white people start to behave less dangerous without internalizing the true meaning

behind the behavior of change, we become a wolf in sheep's clothing. And I have seen that and experienced in myself, I have seen and experienced so much harm by white people learning how to do the thing and then getting a pass because they're acting the right way. But it's not tied to a true value and a depth of understanding and the heart, our hearts. Our hearts often get really put on the shelf and we're not emotionally engaged. So of course, don't behave like an asshole. Of course, ask what people use for their pronouns and ask how they identify and how they like to be referred to. And these are all forms of etiquette that are actually more about decency,

like human decency, that we're socialized to not have to tend to. Yeah. When we're in the dominant groups, we don't actually have to tend to identities that aren't in the dominant. Like we can just function in the dominant groups and sail along. And I think my most recent invitation has been for white people to slow down and notice why am I doing what I'm doing? If I'm given a correction or a reorientation, or if I'm called in and I'm just fixing the act, but I'm actually not doing the inner work that's tied to the harmful act, what's happening there? Like to actually ask ourselves those harder questions rather than just getting a pass and learning how to behave.

So does that answer your question? Because it's a really important question. And I think a lot of white people have this question. Yeah. Where I am stammering around is the, well, I'm not even quite sure where I want to take that. So let's move on because I'm not. Yeah, you sure? Because it seems like there's something there and we can take a minute. Yeah, I think what's there is that sense of not being sure how deeply committed to the work maybe I am. And can I just reflect to you? I mean, I have the ability to see you right now, but I also want to reflect to you the change in the tone of your voice and the change in your vibe

when you just dared to drop down into a layer of transparency and vulnerability. And in doing that, this is just my experience, but in doing that, you became so much more accessible, even though what you were saying could be incredibly harmful to some people. You know, hurtful, let's say, to hear a white man say, honestly, I don't know how committed to this. I don't know how deep I'm willing to go. And someone's going, you're talking about my life and my baby's lives. You're talking about my family's lives and you don't know how far you're willing to go. And you're sitting there going, yeah, that is trustworthy. It sucks and it hurts and it's painful and it's ugly at times to look at. But that level of honesty and embodied truth telling, that is the place that I wish white people to be able and willing to go to.

Because that's where we can start to have real conversations and stay connected. I don't want to leave you when you say that. I want to lean into that moment. I want to go have a cup of coffee and actually open that as another white person in your community. Did you feel the textual change? Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I've had that textual change happen one other time to that level. It was also with Resmaa and it was, uh, uh, and he stopped me like you did said, Hey, let's stay here for a second. So, so let's pretend we're not pretending. Let's,

let's not pretend. Let's, let's not pretend. Um, let's not pretend at all. Where do you go with that? Where do I go with that? Let's not pretend at all. Where do you go with that? Where do I go with that? and teachers and I would say someone who rocked my world with holding cross-racial spaces, cross-cultural spaces where truth was spoken. And I would watch Ken, who's an older black man, he's a therapist. I would watch him speak with the most challenging, problematic white person in the room who was just left, right, and center, just causing harm with every word that came out of their mouth. I watched him speak not only clear truth, but I watched him hold that person's dignity and humanity at the exact same time. So my goal, my job with you as a white-bodied person to another white-bodied person, we are of the same community, would be to stay connected

to my own heart and believe in your humanity to connect to your dignity and my own dignity and to hold you lovingly and fiercely accountable to the impact and the reality of that statement and to do so in a way where I'm not shaming or blaming or, you know, making you feel like shit, because that's not going to do anything. And I'm also not going to protect you and lift you up because you had a moment of vulnerability, which is also the other thing that happens. Like, oh, the white man was vulnerable. And then suddenly, it's like, we don't hold you accountable. And that doesn't work either. So it would be that combination to lean in and to stay with fierce accountability and to stay in it with you.

We stay in the conversation. If we were moving into having more time, it would be to pull on that thread and to say, great, what happens in your system when you sense into what it means to go deeper? What arises for you? What images, what fears, what impulses? And often it leads to white people needing to give something up. If I do this, I won't be able to have my job. And if I don't have my job, I won't be able to put a roof over my family's heads and I won't be able to afford my child's private school and I won't be able to put food on the table. And oftentimes our fears are linked to our personal protection and our personal security. 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

Physically or psychically. And so then it would be, okay, let's talk about that. Let's reality test that. okay, let's talk about that. Let's reality test that. Can we actually imagine a world where you can have and your family can have, and it's not at the cost of other people not having? Do you have to have as much as you have? I'm now speaking, I don't know what your relationship to economy is, but that would be the question. Do we need to have as much security as we hoard as white people? the question, do we need to have as much security as we hoard as white people? What would it mean to give some of that up? What happens? And then our bodies start to go through such a visceral response when we're actually asked to release, to let go, to not have so much power and security. It's deep. The question that comes up, and I don't know, it's very possibly a defense question, so I will let you tell me if it is.

I'll give you my best guess. When I look at injustice in the world, it seems essentially infinite. And some of it's racial, some of it's economic. There's so many different areas. And this is something as a person I've often thought about is I know people who are so concerned about so many causes of injustice and singularly ineffective in making any impact in any of them. And again, we have a tendency to judge where people land, but somebody might say, my thing is animal cruelty. That's where I'm all in. Yeah. Very important topic. I'm actually not giving myself, I'm not letting myself off the hook like, well,

my thing is I'm all in on X because I frequently question the degree to which my morals and ethics live up to where I want them to be. But what about somebody who did say, I get what's happening racial justice wise, but my thing is sex trafficking. I want to eliminate sex trafficking. And that's where I put all my energy and my attention and my resources. Talk to me about that, because that's kind of one of the things where I think it's easy to get distracted by the amount of problem and where to focus attention and energy. You've clearly chosen this as your lane. I guess, what does that bring up in you? And feel free to say that's a defensive question. Let's get back on topic.

I don't. I think it's a great question. I don't know if it's defensive away from the moment we were just talking about. You can decide that as you track yourself. I could have a theory about that, but it's also about you to track. You're also asking a good question. So let's say this. I hope before I answer your question, I hope that after we get off this interview, that you will find yourself in a moment where you can reflect on the statement that you made and go a few levels deeper into why that fear is there or why that statement is there and what's underneath it. And I'm available if you want to talk more about that. Okay.

So that's what I'll say around that piece. So we don't totally drop. Okay. And the question that you're asking comes up a lot. And, you know, I would say, actually, I would not say that I've picked race as racial equity as my lane. I speak about, and I give my life to intersectional equity. I just find that as a white woman and as a therapist and as someone who grew up on Turtle Island, that the work with structural systemic institutional racism rocks, rocks me in a way that makes me available to tend to a lot of other systems of oppression. So yeah, it is my road into a rehumanization process that makes all other systems impactful to me. Like I care about all of them actually. Now, if you were to bring sex trafficking in as the topic or as the issue or as the thing you wanted to give your life to, I would say thank you. It's incredibly important. It's an atrocity that is underrepresented in our society.

that are trafficked across the world, a high majority would be women of color. And when we talk about why that topic of sex trafficking is so underreported and so underfeatured and so under examined and untended to by multiple countries in the world, I would offer that it's probably because women of color are the victims, predominantly majority victims of that industry. And that white supremacist culture, very conveniently, doesn't care so much to address industries where bodies of culture are the primary victims. So you can't get away from the racial topic. And that's why I actually don't even like to talk about racism in the context of American culture anymore, because it is global. Global white supremacy is, it is so ever present. And we tend to locate it in America, because we tend to be a little bit more intense and exaggerated in all of our behaviors.

But that industry is a global issue. And then if you look at the primary victims, there will be a racial component. So I would invite you into great, that's your topic. Here's a racial lens. Here's a capitalist lens. Here's a, you know, and then you would be invited into, again, this rehumanization process that requires us to check any points where our heart goes into apathy, where we turn away from atrocity and we numb out. If you go into any system of oppression fully, hopefully you will be going through a deep rehumanization process where then all of the other systems will land as relevant and important to tend to. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why

they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer we talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus does tom cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's gonna drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead.

It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Naming a fear here is getting swallowed alive by it yeah well let's talk about it the fear of being swallowed alive by it yeah that everything that you see feel do think about opening your heart let's talk about that yeah you know there's a movie called Last Chance for Eden by Lee Mun Wah. I recommend anybody watch it if you can. It's actually going to be on the ERE resources page. There's a moment where a woman in the middle of a group process, she's a black woman, and a very similar question is asked by a white woman, I believe.

And this woman looks with tears rolling down her face and she says, welcome to the pain. Welcome to the pain. We've been here a long time and we've been waiting for you. Welcome to the pain. And when I saw that and I realized and felt what she was conveying, our fear of being swallowed whole, that was my fear. I got swallowed by grief and rage for five years. I was in grief and rage when I started to really see what was happening in the world. I couldn't be effective. I had so much rage moving through me when I saw how much disparity there was, how much atrocity, and then the grief would be overwhelming. There is a process that I needed to open to and get support around.

And it is absolutely nothing. It is not a drop in the bucket of what bodies of culture have to experience from the moment they're born or their child is born. And so when I look at how much there's a genuine fear of being swallowed whole, I think it comes from an authentic place. And I say, okay, let's give a few minutes to that fear and then let's get to work. We need to actually dig in and go, it's going to be rough. It's going to be tough. It's going to be hard. We need to actually dig in and go, it's going to be rough. It's going to be tough. It's going to be hard. We need to do it together.

We can't do this work as individuals. We have to do this work communally, which is why I'm so grateful for the work with Resmaa. Before working with Resmaa, I was working with groups of white people, but in a very individual way. And what we've been working with in the last few years is how do we build fields of solidarity and fields, communal fields, where we are holding these processes together. And when we hold things together communally, we can't really get swallowed whole. And I don't think white people really know how to live and act and be communal. We lost our ties. We lost our connection. I mean, we've lost our

connection. Also, I want to say, you know, I was about 10 years into the work before I found earth-based practices and rituals that allowed me to anchor and gifted me with the possibility of resource. Before that, I was getting overwhelmed, you know, because my people and my people's people were cut from rituals and disconnected from earth, the resource of mother earth, the relationship of mother earth. And in all of that, our resource becomes so limited that we think it's just up to me and my little body and my psyche and my understanding of the world to metabolize thousands of years of oppression, 400 years of atrocity related to race. You know, it's so crazy when we think about it. So I would say it's a very logical thing. It's a very common thing. And then there are steps past that. So you see, like Eric, when you ask a

lot of these questions, these are really common and really important questions that I think a lot of white people get stuck by. They get stuck on and then don't move forward. And in all of my responses, it's like there's an invitation into both, yes, that's going to come up. And no, you don't get to use that as a ticket out. And here are five different ways that we can move forward. Pick one. And then that does kind of challenge you to then go, well, okay. You know, but it still has to come from a place in you where you are saying yes to the next step. where you are saying yes to the next step.

So for people who are hearing this and are relating to what I'm saying, what's happening, what are some of these five different ways to take that next step? Related to feeling swallowed whole or overwhelmed, overcome? Well, just, I mean, for lack of a better word, there's an ambivalence about moving deeper. There's an ambivalence about, like I said earlier, how committed am I really? And so I think in general, and maybe this is a chance for you to talk about some of the work that you do at ERE, but people who say, okay, I'm ready to immerse myself a little bit deeper to go beyond just, all right, I'm sending, you know, $50 to whatever the charity is, right?

Or I'm learning to use my words right. But I actually want to learn more and not just learn more, but learn more in service of doing more. The living practice. That's usually when things get easier in terms of working with white people. Before that big step into, okay, I want to learn how to live this as a life practice. When people get to that place, it's like, great, hallelujah, let's go. You know, and there's so many things, there's so many ways to do that. And to do that well, getting folks to actually stop just writing

the quick check, or not even writing the check, but getting to the place where they might be ticking the boxes, but not entering into the work. That is usually the hardest. That is the hardest work. And that can take decades. That can take a lifetime. Do you want me to speak about the people before or the people that are really ready to live the work? Let's talk about the people before. I'm going to just add a little flavor to the question, right? Because I do behavioral coaching with people, right? So I have people who show up, pay me a certain amount of money,

because there's a change that they profess they really want in their life. And while I think I'm a pretty good coach, right? We have a tendency as people to say, I want to do X, I want to do Y, I care about Z. And then life just carries on, just carries on. And so maybe that's the place I'm coming more and more people, all of the people in my life and beyond in very compromised emotionally, psychologically, stress tolerance, economically, just a level of stress that's unprecedented. I've never seen in a collective before as we're coming back into a world without masks, I get your question. And I also want to be sensitive to how much loss, how much death and how much anxiety and tightness the world has been under. And also understanding that disproportionately that has impacted people of

color more than white communities. And I say that because, you know, sometimes life does sweep us away. So, you know, your values to live a life that is about you and your own, taking care of you and your own? For some people, they're gonna say, yeah. I don't spend a lot of time convincing those people that they need to change some of their core values to become more like me. I found that that is a waste of a lot of energy. There's a middle population of people that go,

I care about the world, I'm overwhelmed by life and I need to make sure that me and my own are taken care of and I'll do what I can when I can. And I think that's the group that you're speaking about, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. That can get swept away by life. I think that I would say that's, that's largely the group. Yeah. People who go, yeah, I do. Yeah. You know, I recognize that life is about more than just taking care of me and my own. I want to contribute to a better, more equitable, fair world. I want to do that. Yeah.

And I find between by the time I go to work and take care of the kids and pay the bills and do all that, that all I can do is collapse on the couch. And my actions are not aligning with what I think my values are. Yeah. And I feel like we're living in a time where equity practices are not just about taking a workshop and being a social justice warrior and going to the streets. You know, equity practices have become very nuanced and there are so many ways to live equity practice. So I would say something like, how are you raising your kids? What books are you reading to your children? How are you talking to your children about race? Where are you spending your money? When you need to go to the grocery store, when you need to go to a bookstore, you know, these are ways that life

is still happening. You still have to do life. And you're making informed choices to push the needle in any area where you have contact. So I would say to people, first of all, you need to become educated on what it means to engage with children related to racial awareness or engage financially, even if you're not a wealthy person. And then how do you share with your friends that you prefer to go to a black owned bookstore than Amazon? Well, that's going to be a great conversation. Do you dare to have that conversation at dinner? That's not going to take extra time from you. You're already having dinner with your friends, but are you choosing to have that conversation? Are you

choosing to open those moments of insights or because're exhausted, and we can all use that as some form of an excuse, you know, not really getting around to looking at the books that your children are reading, which are 99.999% white. Are you not talking with your teacher, your children's teachers about how they are defining gender norms or racial inequities in the classroom, those kinds of things. So I don't find that it's actually about the thing itself. I find that most people in the situation you're talking about haven't made a core decision that this is something that they want to put their life energy into. And that's a much deeper commitment. It's a deeper value system shift. And I will invite people into their heart. I will often say, you know, if you have children, just for a moment, consider if someone didn't have the time or the energy to work towards something that threatened your child's life every day. I invite white bodies to think about really what it would be like to live in a world where people chose, white bodies chose their convenience over

the life of children that are being killed. Think about that. There's a depth to it. Again, it's not about a right or wrong. It's literally like when I feel into that, there's a pit in my stomach. It's like, we do, we do that. Why do we do that? What's happening there? And that often brings people into very uncomfortable experiences that they want to get away from and then tend to get more busy and more excuses come. There's no easy answer for that question. So just to perceive like the shift, right? The shift that we talked about earlier, the shift that just happened in you. There is a thing that Resmaa speaks about around vibe, around vibe, like the vibe of white people,

the kind of vibe that we send off. And in working with a lot of white folks, I realized that it's something that we don't understand. Most white people are like, what do you mean by vibe? And I noticed that bodies of culture and specifically black bodies read vibe before anything else, before our behavior and our words, they're reading our vibe. And one of the reasons why I could track kind of that you went off a little bit, or when you dropped into more vulnerability is there was a vibe change. And I just think that that's something that we tend to be really ignorant about what our vibe is. And, you know, I know for a really long time, I was engaged in this work

intellectually. And I would say there was a certain part of my value, like righteous value that was really committed to equity, but my vibe was still running really dominant. And my vibe was still harmful. I had not learned how to drop in to presence, vulnerability, availability. And it was very hard for me to have and maintain relationships with bodies of culture in my life because I hadn't really learned that part yet. So I just wanted to name that because I think it's something that white people are often very confused by. white bodies. What's happening in that first day? Is some of it learning to pick up on things like vibe? I mean, what I find interesting is you mentioned you were doing this work for years before you could figure that out. Are there times where you just after that first day, like you're sort of screening certain people out where you're like, look, you're not even in the neighborhood of being able to go into a cross-cultural space on this. Because the amount of work to be done is so great.

Well, for sure. The foundations in somatic abolitionism that Resmaa and I do, they're structured in a very particular way where I would say regardless of where white people are on their journey, there's little ability for them to be able to cause direct harm. So we've structured it in a way where white bodies are with me first. And I spend, you know, six hours speaking about a lot of the things that we just talked about, trying to get the white bodies in better shape to at least be able to sit back and take in the next day that's with Resmaa and in a cross-racial, cross-cultural space. But in that eight hours with Resmaa, he's mostly doing, you know, it's a lot of presentation. And if he works with people, he tends to prioritize working with bodies of culture. So white bodies are asked to sit back.

And we also don't have the chat open all the time because white people can cause a lot of harm in the chat. And so some people would say they feel monitored or controlled. And we're really okay with that because the evidence shows that white bodies, we don't know when we're causing harm. And we would like people to receive the information. And then the next week we have retention spaces.

And I'm with the white bodies and Resmaa's with bodies of culture in retention spaces where people can bring their questions or their challenges. And then it's not in a cross-cultural space. We don't actually hold mixed spaces until people are, you know, a few years into the work and have shown that they, especially white bodies have shown that they can work with what comes up for them and not just immediately dump their dirty pain into a space. As a therapist, is the best work done as a white body to become more, I'll just use the word educated, but I don't think that's the right word, intuitive, more ready to do the work? I don't think that's the right word. Intuitive, more ready to do the work. Is it best done in community or is some of it often usefully done one-on-one with like someone like you? I definitely think both. I really do. I think we have to do this work communally. We have to, because the issue is too large. Too many people are dying. It's too big for us to do in silos, to do as islands. We have to come

together communally. And there's a struggle for a lot of white bodies in being in communal space around these topics. We trigger each other. We want to cancel each other and kick each other out and shame each other. There's a whole bunch of stuff that happens in white community when we learn how do we stay together. When we go through that process, all of that grappling communally, we are tending to our inner muscles of being able to hold more together. That is a beautiful process that is needed. And at the same time, we have to work on educating ourselves, having accountability partners, which might be a friend, it might be a coach, it might be people that want to be accountability partners that aren't a coach or a friend. They

just want to be your accountability partner where you're actually talking through like the more specific nuances of your experience. We're all needed on all levels, truly. I find that the people that are just doing this work individually really struggle, actually. Really, really struggle with feelings of alienation and struggle with how to bring this work into their workplace or their family because they feel like they're doing it alone. They're holding it alone. It makes a lot of sense. So this is one of our longest interviews ever. Wow.

Yeah. One of our longest ever. I hope it's not because I'm long-winded. No, no, no. We could have done it for another hour and a half probably and be just still scratching the surface. Your website is educationforracialequity.com. We'll have links in the show notes to that where people can find the offerings that you have. And thank you so much for your time. Thank you for the skill in which you were gentle and yet sort of hemmed off the exits, which, you know, I mean, genuinely, like, I appreciate that. Thank you so much, Eric, for your questions and also for the invitation and yeah, for your engagement with the work. May it continue. If what you just heard was helpful to you,

please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level,

and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.