The One You Feed - Sonia Roberts on Spirituality and Anti-Racism

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

Sonia Roberts is an educator, writer, creator, and activist. Sonia writes about racism, spirituality, parenting, and much more in her Spiritually Speaking blog. Her first book is White Ally: A Guide To Cultivating A Deeply Spiritual Anti-Racism Practice. In this episode, Eric and Sonia explore the intersection of transformational inner work within ourselves and transformational outer work in the world, specifically when it comes to practicing anti-racism.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!In This Interview, Sonia Roberts and I Discuss Spirituality and Anti-Racism and…Her book, White Ally: A Guide To Cultivating A Deeply Spiritual Anti-Racism PracticeThe intersection of transformational inner work within ourselves as well as transformational outer work in the worldTransforming suffering into something beautifulYogas ten guidelines, the Yamas and Niyamas Instances when it’s not necessarily beneficial for Black people to share their personal stories of experiences with racismThe way that yoga and meditation practices can be instrumental in facilitating social changeThe ethical components that underlie yogaThe practice of gratitude amidst privilegeIdentifying the places of your privilege and subsequently acting in service of those who are marginalizedThe idea of intent vs. impact in matters of race and racismThe difference between being shamed and being held accountableSonia Roberts Links:awakenedlovewarrior.comInstagramSkillshare is an online learning community that helps you get better on your creative journey. They have thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people. Be one of the first thousand to sign up via www.skillshare.com/wolf and you’ll get a FREE trial of Skillshare premium membership.Indeed: Helps you find high impact hires, faster, without any long term contracts and you pay only for what you need. Get started with a free $75 credit to boost your job post and get in front of more quality candidates by going to www.indeed.com/wolf BLUBlox offers high-quality lenses that filter blue light, reduce glare, and combat the unhealthy effects of our digital life. Visit BluBlox.com and get free shipping worldwide and also 15% off with Promo Code: WOLF15If you enjoyed this conversation with Sonia Roberts on Spirituality and Anti-Racism, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Racial Justin with Austin Channing BrownHealing Racism with Ruth KingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everyone, before we get started, I wanted to give a big shout out to our newest Patreon members. Miranda S, Emily P, Carla S, Jennifer H, Eileen M, Lisa J, Tasia F, Jenny S, Beth P, Scott T, and Emily. Thanks so much to all of you and thanks so much to all of our Patreon members. If you'd like to experience being a Patreon member and all the benefits that come with it, go to oneufeed.net slash join. I think for everybody, black, white, whatever, it's really powerful to take any pain or suffering that you've been through and take that suffering and transform it into something beautiful. 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 Know 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 reallyknowreally.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 iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Sonia Roberts, an educator, writer, creator, and activist. Sonia writes about racism, spirituality, parenting, and much more in her Spiritually Speaking blog blog her first book is white ally a guide to cultivating a deeply spiritual anti-racism practice hi sonia welcome to the show thank you thanks for having me it's a real pleasure to have you on we're going to discuss your book white ally a guide to cultivating a deeply spiritual anti-racism practice in just a moment but before that, we'll

start like we always do with a parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter, and she says, 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 granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second. She looks up at her grandmother. She says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.

So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I've heard this parable before, but told a little bit differently. So when I sat down to think about it and reflect on it, what came up for me was a James Baldwin quote. I'm going to paraphrase it or do my best to say it right, but to be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost all the time. And these words are so true. Even today, these words are just ringing so true for me personally and in the work that I do. So the work that I do, like my own personal work and what I shared in my book is how important it is to feel all of your emotions, even the good and even those that we might label as bad or negative. And actually the anger and the rage that sometimes

surface in our life or often surface, they have a lot of power to create change, inner change, outer change. And of course, it takes a lot of processing these feelings and doing a lot of healing around it. And recently, all of these things have been going on in the world. And I had a week of just a lot of anger, a lot of rage, and a lot of adrenaline. And I sat with those feelings. And after that week went by, it was a week of feeling that what came out for me, for me was a lot of pain, an intense amount of pain and, you know, sadness. And I cried like the whole day I was crying, everything was making me cry. And so, I mean, I think that's the process of our emotions is that when we sit with them, a lot of times something

else is underneath it. And then if we're deeply listening, they really can guide us and, you know, give us information about what's happening in our lives and how to use those emotions to, you know, actively do something, whatever you're called to do, perhaps, to create change. And I was in this really dark state and a friend of mine reached out to me or I reached out to her and she reminded me to connect or reconnect to Black joy. And I think that's part of feeding the wolf is for me remembering to reconnect to joy, to reconnect to laughter. I love comedy and to reconnect to love. And so really like processing those hard, intense emotions, but being able to then, you know, balance it with moving back into a joyous

place because it's really unhealthy, obviously, to stay in the rage part of it or to live, try and live in that space is not healthy. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think that's part of the underlying theme of what I really wanted to talk with you about was I found your work really interesting because you're bringing together these transformational yoga ideas that are really about doing a lot of work on the inside,

but you're marrying it very much to the work that we need to do on the outside, out into the world. And I'm always interested in, particularly for people of color, how processing the anger and the hurt and all that, how that gets balanced with doing inner work on yourself and how you navigate and negotiate that. Because it does seem like it's got to be a challenge in that regard. Oh, absolutely. I mean, what I think about is how much my ancestors have endured to still be alive. And so I think that Black people have an incredible way of overcoming a lot of pain and suffering and channeling that into creating the best life possible.

There is a lot of joy in our culture. There is a lot of laughter and a lot of music. There's a ton of artists and inventors. So I think for everybody, black, white, whatever, it's really powerful to take any pain or suffering that you've been through and take that suffering and transform it into something beautiful, which might sound a little cheesy, but it really is a process of transformation. The yamas are really guidelines that help you relate to people outside of yourself. And the niyamas are more of the guidelines that are more of the internal work. They're guidelines that aren't always talked about in the yoga world. So these simple principles are

actually really powerful, simple, but powerful. I agree. And if you'd be willing to, I'd like to touch in on your first experience of, maybe not your first, but your first really strong experience of facing racism, you described being seven years old. Would you be willing to tell that story? I will. I'll tell the story. But I do want to say that I made a choice to tell my stories and some of my stories in my book, and I'll share the story, but they're really painful to share. Even now, it's painful to share it. And I don't necessarily think that Black people sharing their stories of racism is beneficial. And the reason that I say that is because

the word gaslighting gets used all the time, but there's a lot of minimization. When you do share your stories, there's a lot of doubt about the existence of racism. So I've had a lot of experiences where I shared my story, even with family, like close family members, and they minimize my story and my pain. And I think of it similar to, you know, anytime that you share something that happened to you, that's painful, and someone minimizes it, it's like a re-traumatization type thing. And so I just want to caution people that I don't think that's necessarily a beneficial thing to hear the story, but some people might think it is. I don't know.

That's just my opinion. And I'm going to give you the opportunity to tell it or not tell it again, because I think this is a useful point that I think I'd like to discuss because from my perspective, what I see is that those sorts of stories help educate people who may be going, look, this isn't still happening. This still isn't that bad. Right. And so from my perspective, that's where I think they're useful. But I also totally recognize, and when you say it, I recognize it even more that I'm sort of asking you to do that hard work. Right. And it is just, like I said, it's just painful in general. But I think you're talking about the story about when I was walking home and I was called an Avia. So in my book, I write about

being the seven or I probably was around seven years old walking home. And right in front of my house, the paper boy who lived up the street rode his bike by and he said the N word to me. He just called me the N word. And at the time that he did that, I was obviously the first time anybody called me that name. I didn't know what it meant. And I was just in shock. I just, you know, I just froze standing there and I couldn't move and I couldn't talk or say anything. And so, you know, after standing there just in shock, I ran into the house and I told my dad, you know, what had happened. And then my dad went to the paper boy's house and, you know, tried to have a conversation with the parents about what had happened to me. And my dad was very, very upset, obviously. He's very angry. And they said

that their son would never say that. That was what they told him. And so, I just know that after that, my dad canceled the newspaper. I mean, it was like only thing that he had in his power to do. But just, I think for me, just that my father, you know, stood up for me and spoke up and went to their house. I mean, even him just going to their house was a big deal. Like I also wrote in my book that the neighbor across the street had talked about wanting to hang my father when we moved in to that house, or, you know, saying something about he's the N word, and I would hang him by that tree. And so it wasn't like a safe neighborhood to be in. I don't know what neighborhood is safe, honestly, but it was a big deal for him to do that. And it meant a lot, I think, as far as empowering, seeing the power that he

had or the bravery that he had. Yeah. And in the book, the part that I found so powerful was you really did a nice job of describing what that did to you. And I think from my perspective, what that did was make it really difficult. I hope I wouldn't be the person that would do this to minimize it because it suddenly was like, well, my goodness,'t be the person that would do this to minimize it because it suddenly was like, well, my goodness, look at the impact that that had on your worldview, on what that did to you inside was just so powerful. And so, yeah, it's just, it's heartbreaking. Yeah. And just now talking to you, I realized that the thing that happens often, I think, especially with children is that adults will say, oh,

they're just a child. Because I remember people said that to me, like to minimize it, they would say, oh, it's just a kid being a kid, you know, kind of like a boy being a boy. And that attitude is so awful. And I think that's why, you know, sexism is perpetuated, racism is perpetuated, because they are just children, but we have to talk to our children. We have to educate our children. We have to teach, you know, ourselves and others how to be in the world in the way that's not harmful. You know, we want to lift people up, not put them down. The other thing that you wrote in your book that again, was one of those things that just

every once in a while you hear something, I hear and i go ah it just reminds us how present and recent so much of this stuff is like so much of it's still present but that your parents were married eight years after interracial marriage was legalized like your parents who had you eight years before that they wouldn't have legally been allowed to get married like that's yesterday mind-boggling right it's like it was against the law for them to be together and that to me is another one of those things i love this is going to sound really messed up and i don't mean it that way i love those things because i think they're really good refutations to people who go all that that stuff happened so long ago. Why are we still

talking about it? I'm like, no, it did not. I mean, A, a lot of it's still happening, but even if you want to point to like legal, yeah, we talk about systematic racism and some of it you might have to look a little bit for, but not that, right? Like there's not a lot of dots to connect when you see some of that stuff. Yeah. There's a ton of microaggressions, but to actually be able to have examples of, you know, legislature is more, it's more powerful to look at that. I mean, more powerful in the way that you can connect the dots directly to systemic racism. Absolutely. Yep. Yep. So you say that yoga principles and meditation are transformative practices that can be instrumental in facilitating social change. So I'd just like to talk about that idea a little

bit more because it's an idea that I spend a lot of time thinking about, which is the balance of sort of inner life and outer life or contemplation and action. Because I think if we're not careful, a lot of this work of meditation, yoga, inner work, this sort of stuff think if we're not careful, a lot of this work of meditation, yoga, inner work, this sort of stuff, if we're not careful, it just can become another form of narcissism. It's a, how do I feel? It's all about my work, my journey. And not that that's not important, but we've got to be careful that we don't get stuck there. And if we look over history, some of the people we admire most as change makers are people who found a way to really facilitate their inner and their outer lives,

Gandhi or Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela. They had robust and deep inner practices and they had a transformative impact. So for you, help me connect those dots. Tell me about for you how yoga and meditation are practices that help you facilitate social change and how you see those practices can help other people to facilitate social change. Yeah. So first I just want to agree with you that the yoga and the meditation is a deeply personal and inner practice. And I think of spirituality that way too. The work is very individual. And I think that to really transform yourself, you need to be in relationship with people. I mean, you can look at it like you can do a lot of self-work on yourself, which I have, and then you feel good about where you are and how you've healed a lot of your traumas.

And then you feel good about where you are and how you've healed a lot of your traumas. And then you get into a partnership or a marriage and boom, right away, all this stuff you like that. Stuff can come up with your parents again as an adult. And I just think relationship can really reflect back to you where you need to do the work. But again, it's like you really have to be open to it. And I think sometimes people get stuck in this inner world where I'm good, I'm good on my mat, I'm good on my cushion. And, you know, they're not open to exploring, like, how do I now take these principles and these practices into my everyday life and into my relationships and continue to grow and to reach my full potential. And for me, I think the social justice and the activism is something that I really felt at a young age, just by being introduced to different writers and reading about slavery, reading about Black intellectuals and activists. And I just knew right away that I wanted to be a part of like creating, I saw that

there was suffering in the world and I wanted to do something to create change. And I think that going back to those individual practices, that it kind of puts the veil on people. It blinds people, some of these practices. And so I think people unfortunately use it as like spiritual bypassing is a good example where you're not being fully honest about what's happening in the world. You're not being fully honest about your feelings. And so one of the things that I think, obviously, is that really looking at these simple principles and practicing them

and applying them in real life can help to create an anti-racism practice. It can help create a connection to community, like real, true, authentic community, where you're involved in lifting up other people and people that are marginalized or people that are suffering in some way. Yeah. When you said that, it reminded me of one of my favorite quotes that Ram Dass says, which is, if you think you're enlightened, go home and visit your parents, right? Which is just- It's so true, though. Yeah. Like Thanksgiving, is, yeah, yeah. Totally. And I've had plenty of times where I like a relationship ends and I'm

like, I've got a lot of work to do on myself. And I do, you know, I think I've done all the work and then I get in a new relationship and I'm like, nope, it's still there. There's more to do. To do some of that work. It takes interaction with others. Absolutely. And it's a lifelong journey. There's never a finish line. 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.

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Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500 500 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 iheart radio app on apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts certain yogic practices and you meditation practices, spiritual practices point towards an underlying unity in the world and underlying perfection, or the perfection might be within us, or we're all good inside, you know? And so there's, there's that part of the practice, but then we look out into the world and we go, my goodness, that's not what I'm seeing out there. And sometimes I find those two views hard to hold

at the same time or hard to reconcile. And I'm just curious if you've had some of that as you've gone through your deeper yoga practices relating to what you see outside your door. Yeah, absolutely. I actually think that I'm still exploring more how spirituality, these spiritual practices or yogic principles and how anti-racism, how they connect and how they don't actually connect, right? And like how these practices that we're doing to make ourselves, make us more towards how we were born. I feel like we're all trying to get back to like, you're born this like pure being and over time, socialization and trauma, all these things happen to you. And so you're basically trying to peel back all that stuff to go back to your pure state.

And I think there's overlap, but I also think there's conflict in it as well. And I'm still trying to figure that out, to be honest. I'm still trying to juggle it. And like you said, how do you hold these two truths at the same time? And can you? I think you can. I definitely think you can. I don't know.

Maybe it's the pathway of wanting to achieve and wanting to reach perfection. That's not real. And so I think that if you're looking at the world like that, that's not going to be real as well. Like we're actually practicing more of letting go in our own personal lives instead of trying to attain more, buy more, be more, get more. And I think if we do that in our personal life, then what happens in the world is we're able to give more. Like we need to give ourselves less in a way, which is opposite of what some spiritual practices are teaching us, right? It's like give more outward into the world and less about me, me, me. It's more about what's happening. How can I be a servant even?

Yeah. I could not agree with you more. One of my least favorite spiritual phrases that seems to have gotten popular over the last years is let go of anything that doesn't serve you. And while I understand what's being said in that, I think it orients us towards this idea that the world is there to serve us. And I tend to try and flip that orientation and go, no, I'm here to serve the world. And I think that, you know, one of the criticisms of yoga and certainly of the mindfulness world, which I'm a little bit more immersed in than I am the yoga world, but a lot of the criticism of the westernization of those two is that we've lost the ethical components of those traditions. And that's really what you are bringing back in your book. You really bring back the ethical components that underlie yoga.

Yeah. I mean, it makes me sad. The reason why I stopped teaching yoga is because yoga became commodified and it's a brand and a business to sell people doing yoga poses, which I love doing yoga poses and I love yoga asana and I love teaching it. But the driving force of it is, can you get the nicest pair of yoga pants and look really good in them doing your yoga practice? It's very superficial. I mean, I feel like it didn't used to be like that when I first took my teacher training, my very first one, almost 20 years ago. The question would be, who did you study with? And whoever you studied with would be a direct link to a lineage. If it wasn't someone directly from India, it was somebody who had went to India and studied with Iyengar or whomever.

And now it's like, where did you study? Because there's a bunch of yoga studios and you can go get a yoga certification in a weekend or 200 hours and it's kind of been watered down and diluted and it's saturated with yoga asana. There are people, don't get me wrong, I know there's a lot of people, maybe not a lot, but a handful of people that talk about yoga philosophy and the yoga principles. But we somehow, I think the commodification of yoga and pushing yoga for profit really lost some of the authenticity of it. That makes sense. Yeah, it's pretty easy to see that. And I think the mindfulness world hasn't gone to the extent that yoga has, but the danger is there. The danger still exists. It may not be about how I look. Maybe that yoga

has been able to make it even more superficial. But in the mindfulness world, it can very much become all about how do I feel? I feel. And there's more to, in my mind, a robust spiritual practice than how I feel. That's part of it. Working with my thoughts and emotions skillfully is certainly part of it. But there's more to it. And that's what I liked about your book. So you have a line in your book that I want to explore because your book is really written for, it's called White Ally. It's written for white people for how we can be better allies. And so I want to explore that now. And there's something you said that I think is really powerful. And it is that you can have all the right beliefs about social equality

and still practice oppression. Tell me a little bit more about that. The thing about systemic racism and oppression in general and white supremacy is that it's so pervasive and it's very insidious. So some people might know, but it's very likely that you don't even know you are perpetuating a lot of these biases in your life. So you may not like outwardly hate black people, but you have somehow began to believe some of these anti-black sentiments. And so I know that's hard for some people to understand, but I look at my own life being having a black father and a non-black mother, and I had to undo and unlearn a lot of negative things that I had learned about black people, and I'm black.

And so if I had to do that, I know that white people have to do that too. My mom will probably hate me saying this, but even my mother, who is the most loving, forgiving person I know, she married a black man and she had three black children, but she still, I still talk to her about these things and explain to her, you know, okay, well, that is still like, you know, a biased thing to say, or what you're saying actually will perpetuate racism or, you know, she's so loving that. And this is what happens sometimes people are so loving and maybe naive that they just want to lead with love, you know, like, I just love everybody. And it's like, but it doesn't work like that, because people are really being hurt. And if we don't acknowledge it and sit down and look at it and figure out how to be different in the world, we continue to perpetuate it.

It does. And I think that one of the things that I've really been waking up to is this idea that being called out on your racism is not a bad thing. Right? And I think there's this sense, you say it so well, you say we have to let go of the notion that bad people are racist and good people are not. Because we think that if we're told that we did something that's racist, that that makes us a racist and thus we are a bad person. And if we feel that, we have to defend against it. If the chain of events in my mind is if I did something racist, then I'm a bad person. I can't allow that, right? If I can unhook all that and I can go, oh, good people can make mistakes. Good people can see the

world wrong. I love that idea of unhooking those things. And Ibram X. Kendi talks about this very well. Being a racist, you know, is sort of like a name tag you can peel on and off. Sometimes you are, sometimes you're not. And if we can take that approach, and I thought you did just such a nice job of talking about that in your book. You say most people want to be considered good moral people, which becomes the biggest obstacle to identifying your biases. Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't make you a bad person. But what I do want to say is when you are called out or when you do recognize that you have racial bias, it will make you uncomfortable. And that's why this work is uncomfortable. That's painful. And like even for myself, when I started to recognize the things that I had started to believe about my own self, it's very painful. It's very painful. it's very painful. It's very painful. It's uncomfortable, but I think it's when we're in the most uncomfortable places, the most painful places, oftentimes it's such a gift because even now, like in this pandemic, it's uncomfortable, but it's a gift in a way

because we have this opportunity to think about things differently, to live our lives differently, to start making different choices, to reflect, to reevaluate how we are in the world, how we want to be in the world. I think it's very important to let go of the good, bad scenario. It's not beneficial at all. And it doesn't mean anything, really. Yeah, yeah. As I've begun to see that layer of

it, I've seen just how prevalent that mindset is, which is essentially I'm a good person. Thus, I can't be racist in any way. Right. You know, I've started to see how prevalent that can be in me. You know, as I read your book and I read other books, like one of them is talking with your kids about race. Luckily, my son is 22 and he has been involved in social justice stuff for years, deeply and passionately. And he turned out fine. I didn't ruin him. But if to the extent that I discussed race with him, I probably would have discussed that all people are equal. You know, I would have given that we're all the same, which is true.

Yeah. Well, that's what we want to be true. Exactly. Which at a deeper level is true, but on a societal level is absolutely not true. And so to proceed, as I think a lot of white people do towards this colorblindness, which seems like a good thing, is ultimately not because it denies the very real reality that sits right in our midst. And so, you know, in order to transform racism, and this is something else you talk about so eloquently, in order to transform racism, we have to actually see it. We have to actually find it. And colorblindness is a way of trying to see past it. And that's just

not the reality that we all live in. And so, you know, like I said, I think my son founded himself maybe by taking him to some of the political events I did, at least oriented him in that direction. But I missed the ball on that one because I didn't say there's these big systematic problems. I probably said we should treat everybody the same. And the reality now is we shouldn't treat everybody the same because we haven't been treating everybody the same up till now. We can't just suddenly go, well, now we will. Yeah. I mean, I think that with white people realizing that racism exists and how you talk to your children, the thing that's really missing is in our education system, we don't talk about the realities of racism. We don't talk about

the reality of the history of it. A lot of stuff is left out of history. And so people are growing up and not getting the full story, the full understanding. And that's how you also perpetuate racism, right? Because people grow up thinking, oh, everything's fine. Everybody's equal. And it's not true. And we have to really work to try our best to make things more equal and more fair. And with Black and Brown people, you have to look at who you are as a race, what your nationality is, what your ethnicity is, and navigate that in a white society. And for white people, they never have to do that. Hopefully, now they will, they're waking up to it. But I think it would make a huge difference if white parents talk to their white children. And but before even that, it's like, as a white person, are you reflecting on what it means to be white? Like, what does that mean? And how did you learn

to be white? White is like, it's not even real. It's just an illusion. It's a social construct that was created. And so it's like wrapped up in your identity, but it means absolutely nothing. But it means you're, you know, as far as skin color being a hierarchy, you're at the top of the hierarchy, but it has no meaning really. It's just a made up concept. Yeah. And I think one of my early wake-ups was that the fact that I didn't have to think about what color I was, was a tremendous privilege that I could simply opt out of the whole thought process and discussion. That was part of what the privilege of being white was. I just didn't have to engage in it in any way. So it's a process of learning a lot about these different things. You talk in the book about the importance of gratitude

and I was reflecting on as a white person, how to be grateful and recognize privilege at the same time, because I'm not like, I'm grateful I'm white, you know, but, but there's, you might be, I mean, it would be wise to be, I mean, to be honest, I mean, it's like, well, yeah, because I think that's the other place that we can swing to as white people is feeling bad about everything. And how do we balance gratitude, which is a spiritual practice, which makes us more able to give to other people makes us more generous, you know, balancing that with the reality of the fact like, well, okay, I've got a lot of privilege. I just, as I was reading your book, those two sort of ideas, talking about ideas that are sort of hard to hold at the same time, that one kind of came up for me. Yeah. I mean, I think that you don't have to feel bad about being white. I think there's been people that have talked about

this and they explained it like there are white people who are attached to being the superior white person. Right. And there are white people that just happen to be white. It doesn't mean that they actually operate in the world or live in the world where they, you know, feel superior to others. They're aware of it and they and they live their life as fair and equitable as they can. So I don't think you should feel bad for being white. You should feel bad if you're a racist white person, but not just for being white. And I think gratitude is tricky. I think that I look at it as I have privileges as well. So it's not just white privilege. I have the privilege of, I think having a non-Black mother in a way was a privilege. It opened, like we got the house that

they wanted to rent because my mother went to rent it without my father. And people treated us a little bit differently if we were with my mother, who's not black. So I think in a way it is a privilege in a way it's not, but in a way it is. And I think that, you know, having an education is a privilege for me. I went to UC Berkeley and I got a degree there. That's a privilege. So we all have different privileges. And I think around being grateful, I can be grateful for all the things that I have and still practice my gratitude without feeling guilty about it. But I think what's important for me as a light-skinned person, I wrote this in my book, as a light-skinned, cisgendered, able-bodied person, those are all the places where I have privilege. And I feel it's important for me at that intersection to be an

ally for people that don't have that privilege, right? As a light-skinned person, I have more advantages than a dark-skinned woman would. And so I need to maybe speak up for, not speak up for, that's a bad way to say it, but, people are saying pass the mic for somebody or amplify someone else's voice is a better way to say it, or step out of the way and give someone else an opportunity. Those are the ways that I can be of service is like advocate for the people that are marginalized in the places that I have privilege. And that's how I look at it. And I think having gratitude for the life that you have doesn't book that I thought was really, really useful that I wanted

to make sure that I got out there before we run out of time was this idea of intent versus impact. A lot of times what we'll do as white people is we'll say, well, that wasn't my intention. That wasn't my intention. And you really my intention, you know, and, and you really talk about, well, if we're going to make progress, we have to look at what the impact of what we do is not what our intention is. And I think this is true in general, right? I think this principle applies beyond just race relations, but I think it's, it's really important here because it's presumptuous for me to assume how something I did lands on you. Yeah, you're right. It does apply to more things because I tell my kids all the time that even though you're sorry, you still did what you did.

So you have to pay the consequences of that. the consequences of that. I think that with intent versus impact in as far as, you know, race matters and calling out people for or not even calling out just talking to people like telling them directly about a racial experience or racial bias that you've experienced from them. People want to hang on to like, well, I didn't mean to do that. And what happens is you end up causing more harm by doing that. And also it makes it more difficult to take accountability. I think accountability is really important. If we want to change and be in relationship with people in a more healthy way, then we have to like look at what we did, take accountability for it, you know,

say you're sorry, or whatever it is that you need to say, and figure out how to move forward from there. Because hanging on to like, oh, I didn't mean to it was, you know, wasn't my intent, doesn't, it actually will probably harm the person further. And the accountability is really key. And that's not the same as I think sometimes people get confused between being shamed and then being accountable. So if someone calls you out and you say, well, I didn't intend to do that. And you feel like maybe they're shaming you. It's not the same thing. Like feeling shame and being shamed is completely different. And I think that oftentimes with the intent versus impact, it's like you don't want to feel the shame of what you did or what you said or take responsibility for it.

And so I think we just have to get better at making mistakes and figuring out how to do better next time. That's it. It's really simple, actually. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you're so right. I think it is that being comfortable with making a mistake. And I think a lot of it goes back to what we

talked about earlier and that you did such a nice job of describing, which is I can do something racist. That doesn't mean I'm a bad person. And that's where shame comes from. Shame comes from I'm a bad person. So if I equate those two things, oh, I did something racist means I'm a bad person. It's really hard to admit. Again, if I can sort of separate those things and I can go, I can make a mistake. We all make mistakes. Okay, I'll learn. I'll do better next time. I feel bad about doing it. I apologize. And I move on. It's not like I've now done something that marks me for life as this rotten person. Right. As long as I'm willing to learn from it and make it right and move on. That's the only way we begin to dismantle this is if people are willing to identify when they do something or say something racist, right? It's like being able to catch it in the moment and address it right away.

Boom. And then you can move on. Yeah. I think that's the work for a lot of us is being willing to get out there knowing that we might make a mistake and that we still need to get out there and do what we can do. It's funny because I think until not too long ago, I had more trepidation around that because again, I think I equated making that mistake as some fatal flaw. And now I see it's just about learning.

If we can trust that our heart's in the right place, then it's about educating, it's about learning, it's about getting other perspectives. And so to that end, I really appreciate you being willing to take the time to come on and spend some time with us. And I really enjoyed your book. I thought it was really helpful. And I really enjoyed this conversation. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast.

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