Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Hey everyone, thank you for joining us. I
Speaker 1: hope you're doing all right. Let's not even waste space today.
Speaker 1: Speaking of the man child in the White House, he
Speaker 1: has lost. They will do a recount in certain states.
Speaker 1: He will lose again. He will not admit defeat. We
Speaker 1: knew this already. We will remove him ourselves if necessary.
Speaker 1: But until then, let's focus on a path forward. And
Speaker 1: to do that, we must continue to reckon with the
Speaker 1: white supremacy that permeates every facet of our society. That's
Speaker 1: where Resmamnacum comes in. Resma is a healer, trauma specialist,
Speaker 1: and New York Times best selling author. For his latest book,
Speaker 1: My Grandmother's Hands. The book explores white body supremacy in
Speaker 1: America from the perspective of trauma and bodied center psychology.
Speaker 1: His focus, as I understand it, is to set a
Speaker 1: course for healing historical and racialized trauma carried in the
Speaker 1: body and the soul, to deal with the inherited trauma
Speaker 1: we hold within ourselves and that we inevitably pass down
Speaker 1: through our physical bodies from one generation to the next.
Speaker 1: Resma's work does not exist in opposition to diversity training
Speaker 1: or policy designed to combat systemic racism. But I think
Speaker 1: it's clear, given the state of this country, that the
Speaker 1: training and policies are insufficient. They have not rectified the
Speaker 1: problems at hand. As a body healer and licensed clinical
Speaker 1: social worker, Resma is focused on changing the conversation around
Speaker 1: race using new science about our bodies and nervous systems.
Speaker 1: His goal is to make the invisible visible. I think
Speaker 1: he does a fair bit of that in this conversation.
Speaker 1: So here is Resma, Manekum Resma, thank you for being here.
Speaker 1: My pleasure, man, my pleasure. How are you feeling right now?
Speaker 1: I am sleeping, kind of weird, got some aches and
Speaker 1: pains coming up. Not sure what's going to happen next.
Speaker 1: In terms of like the kind of national and global sense,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of constriction, terms of emotional stuff, just
Speaker 1: trying to express the stuff that I need to express.
Speaker 1: If it is wailing, if it's anger, I just try
Speaker 1: not to express it without hurting people. Well, I wanted
Speaker 1: to sit with you this week because you've called your
Speaker 1: book My Grandmother's Hands, Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to
Speaker 1: Mending Our Hearts. And bodies. You've called it a book
Speaker 1: of healing, and we're in a period of transition in
Speaker 1: this country, especially with the victory of President Alec Biden
Speaker 1: and a constant refrain throughout the Biden campaign and now
Speaker 1: the aftermath of this election has been about healing that
Speaker 1: we can now come together and begin to repair the
Speaker 1: damage done over the past four years. You're laughing as
Speaker 1: I'm saying, that is in fact why you're here. But
Speaker 1: before we do this healing, I think it's imperative to
Speaker 1: better understand what we're trying to heal. So to you,
Speaker 1: what does healing look like after the year we've had. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we got to start before we look at
Speaker 1: after the year or the four years we've had. That
Speaker 1: whenever I hear politicians or white folks or anybody outside
Speaker 1: of the black community try and talk to the black
Speaker 1: community about healing, I always have a cock eye view
Speaker 1: of it. It doesn't sit right with me. Just like
Speaker 1: in my body, something feels or I experienced this sense
Speaker 1: of awfulness and that's why you laughed. Yeah, That's why
Speaker 1: I laugh because usually when people are saying we need
Speaker 1: to hell and we need to come back together, they're
Speaker 1: making the assumption that we were together as a people.
Speaker 1: They're making the assumption that before Trump came into play,
Speaker 1: black folks was just killing the game. We had our
Speaker 1: home ownership was killing the game. We had wealth that
Speaker 1: we was passing down that was killing the game. We
Speaker 1: had more jobs than we knew what to deal with.
Speaker 1: Our babies weren't getting shot to death, they weren't being
Speaker 1: put in prisons, they weren't being thrown down in the
Speaker 1: schools by police officers. Like all of that was not happening.
Speaker 1: And so we need to just all come back together
Speaker 1: and sing Kumbaya and keep it moving. And so for me,
Speaker 1: the reason why I laughed, man, is because I'd know
Speaker 1: that the coming together really does when people say that
Speaker 1: that really is servicing white comfort. White comfort, Trump's black liberation,
Speaker 1: it Trump's black pain, It Trump's indigenous land theft, it,
Speaker 1: Trump's all that. But what I know when Biden says that,
Speaker 1: or when people say that, they're not taking me into account,
Speaker 1: they're taking white comfort into account. And so for me,
Speaker 1: healing doesn't start with Biden winning, because here the reality
Speaker 1: is this, So Trump is not going to be in
Speaker 1: there so far, I mean across my fingers when I
Speaker 1: say that, because what you have is a strong man dictator,
Speaker 1: an authoritarian dictator. And if you know anything about history,
Speaker 1: they don't leave, they get put out, they get forced out.
Speaker 1: And that's what this dude is. That's how he's configured,
Speaker 1: is to stay, whether you want him to or not.
Speaker 1: And so for me, the reality about Trump leaving does
Speaker 1: not mean that trump Ism is gone. And Trump is
Speaker 1: M is white body supremacy. It's just a personalized white
Speaker 1: body supremacy, right, And so Trump is M is seventy
Speaker 1: one million people who voted for putting babies in cages,
Speaker 1: man saying I'm checked. Seventy one million people voted for
Speaker 1: continuing to call Mexican people criminals and rapists. Seventy one
Speaker 1: million people voted for grabbing women by the genitals. Seventy
Speaker 1: one million people voted for this, seventy one million people
Speaker 1: for disparaging gold Star families, for disparaging veterans, seventy one
Speaker 1: million people. That's not gonna leave when he gets put
Speaker 1: out of office. So when I hear Biden people talk
Speaker 1: about we need to just start healing, I don't know
Speaker 1: what they're talking about. As you write, you're not the
Speaker 1: first man or woman to recognize the key role of destruction, restriction,
Speaker 1: and the abuse of black body in American history. You say,
Speaker 1: James Baldwin, Bell Hooks, Richard Wright, that has the Coats,
Speaker 1: all people who've explored this subject. But you are coming
Speaker 1: at this subject from a different perspective. What are you
Speaker 1: offering that you feel those folks could not or have not?
Speaker 1: First off, I don't feel that I'm offering anything that
Speaker 1: they have not or could not. I really believe that
Speaker 1: my book is a testimony to the breadcrumbs that they left.
Speaker 1: And so for me, Tyna Haisty Coats, Baldwin, Maya, Angelou,
Speaker 1: Tony Moore all talked about the body, and they talked
Speaker 1: about the vistualness of white body supremacy on the black
Speaker 1: body and the brutality of it, and how it's a
Speaker 1: structural setup and a philosophical setup, not an episodic setup.
Speaker 1: I think where I come in differently than them is
Speaker 1: that I am a body worker. And what I mean
Speaker 1: by body worker is that I am a clinical a
Speaker 1: licensed clinical social worker, and I'm focused on trauma. When
Speaker 1: I'm working with trauma, I'm working with the body literally,
Speaker 1: how this traumatic stuff shows up in the body, how
Speaker 1: the energy of it shows up in the body as protection,
Speaker 1: and how that energy can be transferred and transmitted to
Speaker 1: subsequent generations. And so my angle is to begin to
Speaker 1: lean into the body first literally how does it show up,
Speaker 1: and then help people begin to develop context around the trauma,
Speaker 1: the stuckness, and the constriction the material creates kind of
Speaker 1: a constriction and not being able to admit that you're wrong.
Speaker 1: I hear that all the time from white bodies, Like
Speaker 1: all of the art, all of the interviews that I've had,
Speaker 1: is why some white bodies having difficulty with the embodiment
Speaker 1: pieces of this work, not necessarily the intellectual pieces, right,
Speaker 1: not necessarily being able to say, well, in my ethnicity
Speaker 1: this happened, and in my nationality this happens. Stuff like that,
Speaker 1: not those pieces, but the real embodiment pieces. What are
Speaker 1: the struggles. So one of my organizing kind of rubrics
Speaker 1: is that the white body is the supreme standard by
Speaker 1: which all bodies humanity shall be measured, and that there
Speaker 1: was a real concerted effort to make the white body
Speaker 1: the standard of humanness, not just race. Remember, the race
Speaker 1: question in this country comes from a designation of when
Speaker 1: you're talking about race or when the idea of race
Speaker 1: began to kind of percolate. The idea of race started
Speaker 1: with the idea of specieseness, a race of dog, a
Speaker 1: race of bird, a race of cat. Those the term
Speaker 1: race was used to denote specieseness, and so when race
Speaker 1: was then used to make the turn towards to denote
Speaker 1: people right, and that idea was woven in and around
Speaker 1: through every institutions, through philosophical institutions, through educational institutions, through
Speaker 1: scientific institutions, through economic institutions, through religious institutions. The idea
Speaker 1: of the white body being the standard had great utility,
Speaker 1: and the moment that that idea began to develop resonance
Speaker 1: and people began to gorge off of that idea. You
Speaker 1: also showed in the idea of if the white body
Speaker 1: is the standard of humans, then the black body must
Speaker 1: be the antithesis of that, and the indigenous body must
Speaker 1: be the antithesis of that. So indigenous and visibility got
Speaker 1: woven in at the same time that philosophical construct and
Speaker 1: structural constructor got developed, and anti blackness got woven in
Speaker 1: at the same time. So the race question really is
Speaker 1: not a race the way that we think about it.
Speaker 1: The race question at its root is a species question.
Speaker 1: Is Resma a monkey? And the answer to that question
Speaker 1: in terms of the American philosophy, and then having that
Speaker 1: transported all over the world, absolutely yes, absolutely yes, he
Speaker 1: is not human. That's why I believe that a lot
Speaker 1: of white folks, when we start to begin to talk
Speaker 1: about race, have this kind of ancient stuff boiling up
Speaker 1: in their body that has so much charge that really
Speaker 1: has not been dealt with since elite white bodies were
Speaker 1: destroying poor white bodies. Can you make that distinction for people? Remember,
Speaker 1: most white folks that are listening to me and you
Speaker 1: talk right now are descended from white people who were
Speaker 1: fleeing something. Let's think about that for a minute. That
Speaker 1: fleeing energy to leave someplace where your ancestors were, leave
Speaker 1: that land and go someplace else. That fleeing energy in
Speaker 1: America never got dealt with. They're fleeing energy from elite
Speaker 1: white bodies, genociding poor white bodies, elite white bodies stealing
Speaker 1: land from poor white bodies. Right, So you have all
Speaker 1: all of that energy coming here, unresolved, unmediated, unrepaired. Then
Speaker 1: that energy you have poor whites, and then you have
Speaker 1: enslaved Africans and on indigenous unseated indigenous land. And then
Speaker 1: at one point after the Baker's rebellion, is what the
Speaker 1: first time you start to begin to see white persons
Speaker 1: in law to term white persons. Before that, you saw landowners,
Speaker 1: you saw merchants. That's up. But now you start to
Speaker 1: see white persons. At that moment, the white persons, the
Speaker 1: white idea, the white body became the standard rubric by
Speaker 1: which you determine who should get what, and who should
Speaker 1: be in servitude and who should not be in servitude,
Speaker 1: simply by elite white bodies saying to poor white bodies,
Speaker 1: check this out. You are now white, and white bodies.
Speaker 1: Poor white bodies said, you mean, if I'm white, my
Speaker 1: children may not have to go through everything that I
Speaker 1: went through and everything that my people's people's people's went through.
Speaker 1: Coming here. Yeah, we'll take some of that. And so
Speaker 1: that's why you see such an investment in whiteness right now.
Speaker 1: I know it's couching patriotism and Confederate flags and Jerryman,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's couching all of these different types of things,
Speaker 1: right but the seed of it is protection of whiteness,
Speaker 1: protection of whatever that means, because people see their sense
Speaker 1: of how they keep their children safe and how they
Speaker 1: keep themselves safe tied to that piece, when did you
Speaker 1: resuma begin to make that distinction in your life. So
Speaker 1: from twenty eleven to twenty thirteen, I did two years
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan working with trauma and working with people who
Speaker 1: were traumatized. I was a military contractor over there. I
Speaker 1: was what was called a community care counselor. Where a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't realize is that a lot of
Speaker 1: military contractors, they don't I have an infrastructure to deal
Speaker 1: with mental health stuff and the infrastructure to deal with
Speaker 1: specifically trauma stuff. So they're here in gunshots, they're dealing
Speaker 1: with one hundred and seventeen hundred and eighteen hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty degree heat, They're dealing with the smell of feces
Speaker 1: all over the place. They're dealing with hangings, they're dealing
Speaker 1: with suicide. They're dealing with all that in a very
Speaker 1: concentrated area. And so my job was to help people
Speaker 1: kind of deal with that or have them go home
Speaker 1: and deal with it and come back later. And during
Speaker 1: that time I ended up getting really traumatized during that time,
Speaker 1: But didn't wasn't able to deal with it until I
Speaker 1: got back here in twenty thirteen, and then right around
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen, I didn't actually land until twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: That's when I kind of like landed here. During that time,
Speaker 1: I started writing, and in twenty fifteen sixteen started writing
Speaker 1: My Grandmother's Hands and the trauma that I had experienced,
Speaker 1: trying to get through, trying to uncover we're trying to
Speaker 1: get better at and then the traumas some stories and
Speaker 1: rememberings that I had between me my grandmother. It all
Speaker 1: came together, my own personal trauma and then the historical
Speaker 1: trauma in the generational trauma, and how that stuff shows up.
Speaker 1: You're describing a kind of mosaic of your trauma and
Speaker 1: pinpointing the pieces of it. I wonder where your upbringing
Speaker 1: plays a role in this, because you've said that I
Speaker 1: was raised in a family that was sometimes stable, sometimes chaotic.
Speaker 1: My father struggled with chemical dependency and was violent at times.
Speaker 1: And I was curious about how those years as a
Speaker 1: child watching your father be violent at times, how that
Speaker 1: shaped where you are right now well, the way that
Speaker 1: I understand it now, the cultural container that I understand
Speaker 1: it from the cultural lens. The moorings that I have
Speaker 1: is that in terms of black people specifically, we have
Speaker 1: learned things from a wounded people. So white folks are
Speaker 1: a wounded people, and we learned all of those things
Speaker 1: around whiteness, the value of blackness, the value of the
Speaker 1: black body, all those things we have ingested that I
Speaker 1: remember listening to this white dude who's a poet, and
Speaker 1: he said that white body supremacy isn't the shark, it's
Speaker 1: the water. And we're so busy looking for the shark
Speaker 1: that we forget that we're ingesting and breathing in in
Speaker 1: the literal water, in the antic fluid of my mother's
Speaker 1: mother's mother's mother who had to deal with the rape.
Speaker 1: The amlac fluid is, cortisol is, adrenaline is nor up
Speaker 1: and nefferent, all of those types of hormones that are
Speaker 1: designed to protect but over time can be corrosive. Those
Speaker 1: things impact me. So when I think about my dad,
Speaker 1: I think about all of the things that got passed
Speaker 1: down to him, that became decontextualized, the all of the
Speaker 1: recoiling and the leaning into from the nervous systems that
Speaker 1: he came from, and how that organized around him, to
Speaker 1: look like personality, to look like culture, to look like
Speaker 1: family traits. And so when I think about my dad
Speaker 1: and then the things that I ingested from him, and
Speaker 1: then also the joy that I ingested from him, the
Speaker 1: joy watching my dad play Congress, watching him play and
Speaker 1: watching him zone is one of the most joyful things
Speaker 1: that I can watch right, that I can experience. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't just the traumatic stuff that happened, It was awful,
Speaker 1: the joyful stuff you know that elders and adults in
Speaker 1: my family also displayed. You're bringing up so many sort
Speaker 1: of larger philosophical questions about what is a life and
Speaker 1: can we really create our own path? You know, we
Speaker 1: talk about individual freedoms in this country. Yeah, are we
Speaker 1: really able to do that without being overwhelmed by our past? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Not when you're talking about race if you don't develop
Speaker 1: a cultural container by which you can hold that charge
Speaker 1: and use that energy to transform as opposed to burn.
Speaker 1: And so, yes, this idea of rugged individualism that we
Speaker 1: have in this country, which is a lie. I mean,
Speaker 1: the people who said go west, young man also had
Speaker 1: an army behind them, you know what I mean. Nobody
Speaker 1: does this stuff by themselves. But but my whole thinking
Speaker 1: about this, you know, revolves around the idea of rugged
Speaker 1: individualism is out of balance. Community and communalness is a
Speaker 1: resource if you've nurtured it, right, right, So when I'm
Speaker 1: tapped with my own individual resource and my own individual
Speaker 1: connection in my own tying back into creation, if I
Speaker 1: don't have a communal resource when that gets tapped, then
Speaker 1: I'm left with this sense of loss and constriction. Well,
Speaker 1: if I don't have enough, then I need to just override,
Speaker 1: pick myself up, and just move through it without realizing
Speaker 1: that there may have been things that need to be
Speaker 1: attended to that could only be attended to through community.
Speaker 1: And what happened to me and my people, to black
Speaker 1: people descendants of enslaved Africans here in America did not
Speaker 1: happen to us individually. It happened to us communally. So
Speaker 1: developing only individual responses to a communal horror is woefully inadequate.
Speaker 1: You talk so much about this term white body supremacy.
Speaker 1: You have defined it and redefined it over and over
Speaker 1: again in every conversation you've had. Yeah, you say, for
Speaker 1: most Americans, including most of us with dark skin, white
Speaker 1: body supremacy has become part of our bodies. How could
Speaker 1: it not. It's the equivalent of a toxic chemical we
Speaker 1: ingest on a daily basis. Eventually it changes our brains
Speaker 1: and the chemistry of our bodies. Which is why and
Speaker 1: looking at white body supremacy, we need to begin not
Speaker 1: with guilt or blame, but with our bodies. I have
Speaker 1: an honest question for you, as a man and as
Speaker 1: a person in the world. You say not to begin
Speaker 1: with guilt or blame, but how do you not look
Speaker 1: to guilt or blame. Yeah, I'm not saying you shouldn't
Speaker 1: be angry about this crap. I'm not saying you shouldn't
Speaker 1: do everything you can do to dismantle this crap because
Speaker 1: it is brutal and it is killing people. It is
Speaker 1: literally putting babies in cages. Literally is putting babies in cages.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, man. I am people who have experienced this
Speaker 1: brutality from these five superpowers that started this stuff Spain, Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal.
Speaker 1: These superpowers exported the idea of the white body being
Speaker 1: the standard all across the world through indigenous people. People
Speaker 1: from Mexico did not always speak Spanish. Something happened in
Speaker 1: continues to happen, and we never want to look at that.
Speaker 1: And so for me, the idea of white body supremacy
Speaker 1: in looking at it and beginning to figure out what
Speaker 1: we're going to do and how we're going to dismantle it.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean you should not be angry, but don't turn
Speaker 1: that anger on to yourself. It has to be metabolized.
Speaker 1: Don't turn it onto your people. Don't take the vertical
Speaker 1: access off in terms of the vertical power structure. Don't
Speaker 1: take that off of the table as you're trying to
Speaker 1: manage what's happening between you and others of your people,
Speaker 1: because the moment you remove that, the moment you remove
Speaker 1: that vertical structure, you start now attacking people that look
Speaker 1: like you or other bodies of culture, because that's the
Speaker 1: function of it. I'm not saying we shouldn't be angry.
Speaker 1: I am angry and mad as hell. I'm fine ways
Speaker 1: both communally and individually to metabolize it, not assuay shit,
Speaker 1: not stop it, but but tabolize it so I can
Speaker 1: use that energy as fuel for ripping this damn thing apart.
Speaker 1: Can we go back to that moment just there sure
Speaker 1: you were quiet. We looked around at other things, because
Speaker 1: to look out a computer trying to make eye contact
Speaker 1: is not natural. Yeah, you then said, I'm sorry. I
Speaker 1: was wondering as you were sitting with it all, what
Speaker 1: were you thinking about? So I saw a clip day
Speaker 1: before yesterday of a little Mexican girl who was coming
Speaker 1: out of one of these camps after I think it's
Speaker 1: like a year or two years of n seeing her mom.
Speaker 1: And as she comes out and she sees her mom,
Speaker 1: she runs over to her mom, but and the mom
Speaker 1: is wailing and crying. But I'm looking at the little
Speaker 1: girl's body and as I'm watching her, you see this,
Speaker 1: oh this is my mom, and I want to lean in,
Speaker 1: But then you see this almost this pulling back right
Speaker 1: like can I trust this? Like what what is this?
Speaker 1: And when you ask that question, what popped into my
Speaker 1: head was how much we're sowing into our babies through
Speaker 1: this experience, this sense of they can't trust anything, They
Speaker 1: can't trust anybody, including their mama, including a dad, including
Speaker 1: their community. That's what this crap does. That's it white
Speaker 1: supremacy and white by the supremacy does. It makes you
Speaker 1: doubt the very nature of your existence, and that's why
Speaker 1: I was pausing, because it just it like it was
Speaker 1: a lot. It was it just all of a sudden
Speaker 1: here because that image came in, came in, and my
Speaker 1: stomach did this thing. Then I started getting mad as
Speaker 1: like all of this is all at the same time.
Speaker 1: That that's why I talk about the body, that this,
Speaker 1: this charge, just wait, this texture all happens at the
Speaker 1: same time. It does not just one thing. It happened.
Speaker 1: So I'm experiencing the vibration of it. I'm experiencing the
Speaker 1: images and the thoughts, the meaning making your behavior to
Speaker 1: affect the sensation of it, all at the same time
Speaker 1: along with the charge and texture. And so that's why
Speaker 1: I paused, putting a pause on the conversation for a second.
Speaker 1: Since the pandemic took control of our lives back in March,
Speaker 1: we have continued to make this podcast just about every week,
Speaker 1: sometimes even twice a week. We've done over forty five
Speaker 1: episodes with fifty different guests, from Noam Chomsky to doctor
Speaker 1: Cornell West to representative ill han Omar and Miranda July.
Speaker 1: We've sat with Carol Burnett and Dolores Whetha Run the Jewels,
Speaker 1: doctor Ashish jah Hassan Minaj, Ted Danson, Franz Leebowitz. The
Speaker 1: list goes on. Perhaps you remember some of those episodes,
Speaker 1: perhaps you're new here. No matter the case. As an
Speaker 1: independently operated podcast, I have to tell you our future
Speaker 1: really does depend on our listeners. Without you, we have
Speaker 1: no show. So while many listeners supported programs ask for
Speaker 1: donations this time of year, my ask is more simple.
Speaker 1: Share the show. Share it with a friend, a loved one,
Speaker 1: a family member, your partner, someone you just started dating.
Speaker 1: It's really simple. If what we do matters to you,
Speaker 1: if it's helped you in your life, on a long drive,
Speaker 1: on your ride to work, in the kitchen while you cook,
Speaker 1: while you folded laundry, or walked around aimlessly by yourself.
Speaker 1: If it's helped you in any of these places, the
Speaker 1: best thing you could do for us is to share
Speaker 1: your enthusiasm on social media, online or off. Now, before
Speaker 1: we get back to Resma, you'll notice a change in
Speaker 1: his audio quality. We had some technical difficulties in the
Speaker 1: recording session, which of course we did not notice until
Speaker 1: we finished talking. I'd like to think we didn't notice
Speaker 1: because we were so wrapped up in the final stretch
Speaker 1: of this back and forth. That's my glass half full
Speaker 1: reading of it. I hope you feel the same. And
Speaker 1: now back to Resthma Manikum. How much of what you're
Speaker 1: describing relates to this idea of traumatic retention. Traumatic retention
Speaker 1: is this idea that there are things that we retain
Speaker 1: from subsequent generations and from other nervous systems that look
Speaker 1: maladaptive but really are designed to protect us. So let
Speaker 1: me give you an example. So I believe that the
Speaker 1: idea of whoopings is to try and correct the behavior
Speaker 1: in a brutal system that if that behavior isn't corrected,
Speaker 1: you could be murdered. But the idea of whoopings comes
Speaker 1: out of the term whippings. It is one of these
Speaker 1: things that are retained from the trauma that we've experienced
Speaker 1: and then passed that down right, the in word, I
Speaker 1: think is a traumatic retention. It's one of these things
Speaker 1: that the idea of the in word did not exist.
Speaker 1: There is no inWORD right on the continent of Africa.
Speaker 1: That is a construct from our interactions with a wounded
Speaker 1: people and their designation of what and who we are.
Speaker 1: Black people were never slaves. We were enslaved, which means
Speaker 1: something happened, somebody did something, someone benefited and where it
Speaker 1: was advantaged by it, and some people got rich off
Speaker 1: of it. And so for me, the idea of traumatic retention,
Speaker 1: and this is why we have to excavate and look
Speaker 1: at this stuff is because many times, trauma in a
Speaker 1: person contextualize over time can look like personality. Trauma in
Speaker 1: a family decontextualized over time can look like family traits.
Speaker 1: Trauma decontextualize any people over time can look like culture.
Speaker 1: And it takes time to slow it down so you
Speaker 1: can begin to discern what's what. Eric Achidi, who describes
Speaker 1: herself as your number one fan for those listenings, she
Speaker 1: came on the show two years ago. She is formerly
Speaker 1: a duela but works as a health educator through her
Speaker 1: company Loom, which is focused on sexual and reproductive health.
Speaker 1: She writes for male identifying people who struggle with being embodied,
Speaker 1: who are not exertion oriented or not athletic oriented, how
Speaker 1: do we encourage them to take this more bodied approach
Speaker 1: to white supremacy, especially knowing that white men are helming
Speaker 1: the movement. So one of the things that I've been
Speaker 1: seeing lately is black, Indigenous, other bodies of culture are
Speaker 1: not giving any more rumor deference to white comfort without challenge.
Speaker 1: And I think when it comes to men specifically, like
Speaker 1: one of the things that I've been conscious about in
Speaker 1: terms of somatic abolitionism, in terms of the work that
Speaker 1: I'm doing, the work that I'm trying to put out,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I've been very very conscious
Speaker 1: about is that just about everybody that I've trained so
Speaker 1: far have all been black women. In terms of people
Speaker 1: that are around me is mostly women around me. And
Speaker 1: the reason why is I believe that if something happens
Speaker 1: to me, I'm not going to have to worry about
Speaker 1: it being in the hands of somebody who's going to
Speaker 1: exploit it if black women are working this in an
Speaker 1: embodied sense, right, And so for me, I think my
Speaker 1: call to black men is really, let's begin to settle
Speaker 1: and get back into our bodies. But we don't have
Speaker 1: to be in the front of this. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be groomed into being a google. That's not my thing.
Speaker 1: And that's why when Sis is saying this, I am
Speaker 1: saying I appreciate her loving me, and I will do
Speaker 1: whatever I can to try and create room so her
Speaker 1: work is unburdened by my stupidity, unburdened by my need
Speaker 1: to be as centered as a man. And that's a
Speaker 1: hard one for me. I want to, you know, be
Speaker 1: the dude, right. But I know, having black women around
Speaker 1: me and training them in the seeing body pieces, I
Speaker 1: know that the culture will spring from them, not just
Speaker 1: because resume is the hottest new thing or the latest
Speaker 1: Google on the scene or something like that. A lot
Speaker 1: of my work is really spreading this out to black
Speaker 1: women and helping them work it in an embodied sense,
Speaker 1: so black men are not necessarily centered as the leaders
Speaker 1: of this thing. This idea of you being a guru,
Speaker 1: I can't help but shake. How on page one ninety
Speaker 1: four of your book, you have this paragraph that I
Speaker 1: think is important. You say, here is the truth about
Speaker 1: white bodies. They are resilient, just like yours and mine.
Speaker 1: They can heal just as you and I can. All
Speaker 1: adults need to learn how to soothe and anchor themselves
Speaker 1: rather than expect or demand that others soothe them. All
Speaker 1: adults need to heal and grow up. But the last
Speaker 1: part of this paragraph is what I'm particularly fascinated by,
Speaker 1: where you say, nevertheless, many African Americans have become so
Speaker 1: habituated to soothing white bodies that it has become reflexive
Speaker 1: for us. We need to unlearn this reflex. I want
Speaker 1: to think about that for a moment. Habituated to soothing
Speaker 1: white bodies has become a reflex. Those words, as I've
Speaker 1: been preparing for this conversation, every played in my head.
Speaker 1: You say, we, as in black men and women, need
Speaker 1: to unlearn this reflex to soothe white people. But when
Speaker 1: I read your work, when we speak even now, it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to shake this feeling that your teachings
Speaker 1: and practices are inextricably linked to this reflex to soothe
Speaker 1: white bodies. The very reflects you wish people of color
Speaker 1: would unlearn. I think that's interesting because there's a part
Speaker 1: of me that has worked very hard recently checking my
Speaker 1: own reflective response to white comfort, moving out of the
Speaker 1: way when nobody's asking, right out the way, when just
Speaker 1: just kind of positioning to give deference. You know. I
Speaker 1: think about this idea that though for most of our history,
Speaker 1: the white body has had full and unfettered access to
Speaker 1: the black body, has had full and unfettered access to
Speaker 1: every part of my body, every orifice of my body,
Speaker 1: every idea contained in my body, every atom in my body.
Speaker 1: The white body has had full and unfettered access to
Speaker 1: my body, to black women's bodies, to black men's bodies,
Speaker 1: black trans bodies, right wherever bodies has had full enough
Speaker 1: of an accent. I believe my work is really about
Speaker 1: giving words and context to black people, to bodies of culture,
Speaker 1: and some white people to those things that we know
Speaker 1: to be stirring in our stomachs and our chests and
Speaker 1: their throats and our bodies, but haven't been able to
Speaker 1: articulate and embody language. For my work is not about comfort.
Speaker 1: The whole book is about giving context to what our
Speaker 1: experience is and actually pushing back against the idea of
Speaker 1: white comfort. I guess my question is about the personal
Speaker 1: toll that it takes on you. So let me answer
Speaker 1: a question you're not really asking, but I'm sitting in it.
Speaker 1: The idea that a white body, I'm not genuflecting to
Speaker 1: healing as the healing in this sense, that there is
Speaker 1: this place of comfort that you can reach by going
Speaker 1: through my work. That's not my positive. My thing and
Speaker 1: operationally is that people who start to begin to lean
Speaker 1: into somatic abolition, or begin to lean into this work
Speaker 1: will find their sufferings edges, and you will be asked
Speaker 1: to do it cleanly or dirty. Right, you will be
Speaker 1: asked to either go through this cleanly and individually and
Speaker 1: with other people in your community. You're going to be
Speaker 1: asked to do that, or in a white body, you
Speaker 1: can just stop and not have any repercussions because the
Speaker 1: whole structure is built around your comfort. The clean way, however,
Speaker 1: is to keep going through this. As you're leaning into
Speaker 1: your suffering's edge. You may at any given point lean
Speaker 1: into some resource. You may at any given point lean
Speaker 1: into something that you experience as settling for you. Fine,
Speaker 1: that's not the end of the work, though, just because
Speaker 1: you found that place, that's not the work. The work
Speaker 1: is continue to go through so you can hit some
Speaker 1: of these other constructions and bottlenecks as it relates to
Speaker 1: race specifically, and begin to work that so you can
Speaker 1: continue to usher in what I call a living embody,
Speaker 1: anti racist practice and culture. People may find some soils,
Speaker 1: they may find some resource, but if that's where they stop,
Speaker 1: they're not doing the work. They're not doing my work.
Speaker 1: I think as we're thinking about how to proceed forward
Speaker 1: in this conversation. There is a kind of collective goal
Speaker 1: I do think amongst people who are left leaning to
Speaker 1: graduate to a place of ally ship. Yeah, bullshit, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: You're allowed to curse on here. Okay, No, I'm fine.
Speaker 1: I'm fine. I'm trying to do better. Why bullshit? Because
Speaker 1: don't by the way, don't make me just say bullshit.
Speaker 1: You have to say bullshit too. Okay, it's bullshit, man.
Speaker 1: Because ally ship is a verb. It is not a
Speaker 1: place right. It is not a moniker. It is not
Speaker 1: a cub Scout or a girl scout badge you put
Speaker 1: on right. It is a life long pursuit of getting
Speaker 1: better in terms of race, How are you raising your children?
Speaker 1: How are you naming your children? What ancestors do you
Speaker 1: commune with? Who are your heroes? As it relates to
Speaker 1: anti racist practices and culture, That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about performative ally ship. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: being a dog and realizing that you're seeing the ground
Speaker 1: and you're probably not going to see the fruit, but
Speaker 1: you're seating the ground for a white brand. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about white allies for a culture to be built by
Speaker 1: which the charge of race can be contained and then
Speaker 1: something a new can emerge up out of it. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. You can tell me you're an ally,
Speaker 1: and the first thing I'm going to ask you is
Speaker 1: who are your people? And you're gonna look at me
Speaker 1: like what, who are your people? I'm not interested in
Speaker 1: your individual leanings. I'm interested in who are the people
Speaker 1: that are going to hold you accountable? Who are the
Speaker 1: people that are going to admonishy? And then you come
Speaker 1: back and you get more of it because you realize
Speaker 1: that your transformation into being a person who can literally
Speaker 1: begin to undermine white by the supremacy in your white body,
Speaker 1: that you keep coming back for that because you don't
Speaker 1: want to pass this sickness down to your children's children's
Speaker 1: children's children's lightship. To me, that's why I said bullshit,
Speaker 1: Because let me say one quick thing. After brother George
Speaker 1: Floyd got murdered and sister Brianna got murder and brother Alberry.
Speaker 1: Right after that those murders happened, I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how many white folks was calling me, blowing up my phone,
Speaker 1: trying to get me to fly here, trying to get
Speaker 1: me to go there, can you do this workshop? Can
Speaker 1: we do this? Right? I mean it was buff Nana's Okay.
Speaker 1: Do you know how many of those same people I'm
Speaker 1: getting calls from that? None? Because it was all performative,
Speaker 1: it was all emotional, it was all reflective. That's not
Speaker 1: culture building. That's not peoplehood building. That's not building a
Speaker 1: living embodied anti racist practice and culture. When I say that,
Speaker 1: I'm saying you're in this for life. But see, when
Speaker 1: white folks get tired, all they gotta do is stop,
Speaker 1: and they will have no repercussions. That's why I said bullshit,
Speaker 1: and that's why I brought it up. It's a lifetime commitment,
Speaker 1: not just your lifetime either, it's your children's lifetime commitment.
Speaker 1: And so you need to set the container for that
Speaker 1: to occur. And unfortunately, many people, irrespective of race or class,
Speaker 1: are interested in instant results, instant gratification. So before we go,
Speaker 1: what do you say to those who are hearing this
Speaker 1: and are thinking, oh my god, this seems insurmountable, this
Speaker 1: seems impossible to overcome. If they're in their white body,
Speaker 1: get two other white bodies and go through it together.
Speaker 1: Commit to the next one or three years that No
Speaker 1: matter what, We're gonna keep coming back to this specifically
Speaker 1: around race. Don't try and make it into a yoga practice.
Speaker 1: Don't try and turn it into a book club. Just
Speaker 1: only on race. Just deal with it on race, because
Speaker 1: the race has the charge. It's ancients so old. The
Speaker 1: charge will transform you. But if you find all ramps
Speaker 1: to it, you won't get it. You'll keep trying to
Speaker 1: stop it, you'll keep trying to assuage the energy. If
Speaker 1: I'm talking to bodies of culture, the one of the
Speaker 1: first thing that I want to say to bodies of
Speaker 1: culture that are listening, and I want to pause in
Speaker 1: this lie minute, and I want you to hear me.
Speaker 1: And you're probably not even going to know you needed
Speaker 1: to hear this until you hear it. I want you
Speaker 1: to know that you are not defective. You are not
Speaker 1: a fraud. In a society that's predicated on the white
Speaker 1: body being the supreme standard by which all bodies humanity
Speaker 1: shall be measured structurally and fell as woven in that
Speaker 1: is the fact that you don't quite measure up. That's structural,
Speaker 1: that's not intrinsic, that's not innate. You are innately beautiful.
Speaker 1: You are not defective start there you wrote in regards
Speaker 1: to the future of this country, one of two things
Speaker 1: will happen. Ideally, America will grow up and out of
Speaker 1: white body supremacy. Americans will begin healing their long held
Speaker 1: trauma around race and whiteness will begin to evolve from
Speaker 1: race to culture and then to community. The other possibility
Speaker 1: is that white body supremacy will continue to be reinforced
Speaker 1: as the dominant structured form of energy in American culture,
Speaker 1: in much the same way aryan supremacy dominated German culture
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties and early forties. I hate to
Speaker 1: turn you into a prognosticator, but where do you think
Speaker 1: we stand on those two possibilities. I think when it
Speaker 1: comes to bodies of culture, we're not giving deference and
Speaker 1: room like we were, so I think that's creating a
Speaker 1: constriction for white bodies. I think white bodies, seventy one
Speaker 1: million of them ain't going for it. So I can't
Speaker 1: really answer that question. I'm just setting up the equation.
Speaker 1: Seventy one million voted for ripping babies out of mother's arms,
Speaker 1: and that's where we're at. And if you think that,
Speaker 1: all you gotta do is reach across the aisle and
Speaker 1: talk to those people and figure out a way to
Speaker 1: bring them along and bring them back into the human family.
Speaker 1: You go right ahead and waste your life for Sunday.
Speaker 1: I'd rather build something for the people who at least
Speaker 1: have some leanings in that direction. Well, I thank you
Speaker 1: for what you've built. And it's clear to me and
Speaker 1: I'm sure everyone listening that no matter who you are,
Speaker 1: where you are, we had a lot of work to do. Resuma,
Speaker 1: thank you very much, Thank you man, Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. I really appreciate this. Thank you anytime. And
Speaker 1: that's our show. Special thanks this week to Sam Mattingly
Speaker 1: and Resuma Manacum. Resuma's latest book, My Grandmother's Hands, is
Speaker 1: available where where you do your reading. To learn more
Speaker 1: about him and his work, be sure to visit Resma
Speaker 1: dot com. That's r E. Smaa dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also check out our show notes at www dot com,
Speaker 1: easypod dot com. There you'll find a back catalog of
Speaker 1: episodes with folks like doctor Cornell West, Noam Chomsky, Representative
Speaker 1: Ilhan Omar, Ted Danson, Dolores Fuertha, and many many more.
Speaker 1: You can listen and subscribe to this podcast on Spotify Apple, Google, Stitcher, Amazon,
Speaker 1: wherever you do your listening. If you'd like to join
Speaker 1: our mailing list, drop me a line at Sam at
Speaker 1: talk easypod dot com. You can also follow us on Twitter,
Speaker 1: Facebook and Instagram at talk Easypod. As always, this show
Speaker 1: is made possible by our incredible team. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Jenny Soubravo, illustrations by Christian Chanoy. Our associate producer
Speaker 1: is Nicky Spina. Our lead editor is Andre Lynn. Our
Speaker 1: assistant editors are Joshua Siegel, David Harding, Kevin Core and
Speaker 1: Rina Young. Our music is by Dylan Peck, Marketing by
Speaker 1: Patrice Lee. Interns are Julian Erector, Grace Perkins, and Ian Simmons.
Speaker 1: Graphics by Derek Gabrazach and Ethan Seneca. And the show
Speaker 1: is produced by Caroline Reebok. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to Talk Easy. We'll be back next week
Speaker 1: with Matthew McConaughey. Until then, stay safe and so long
Speaker 1: it is