CIIS Public Programs Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

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This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land.

Resmaa Menakem is a healer, therapist, and a licensed clinical social worker renowned for his bestseller My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Resmaa is the originator and key advocate of Somatic Abolitionism, an embodied antiracist practice of living and culture building. In this episode, CIIS Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Rachel Bryant has a transformative conversation with Resmaa about how we can heal the historical and racialized trauma we carry in our bodies and our souls. 

This episode was recorded during a live online event on February 10th, 2023. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

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Rachel Bryant: Hello and welcome everyone in the audience. We can't see you but we know you're there and thank you so much for joining me in this conversation today, Resmaa. I can't wait to get into it just in the free program. We're going to go there.

Resmaa Menakem: That's it. My pleasure, sis.

Rachel: Yes, I want to start with a little bit about you, because your background is so interesting in addition to the things we heard in your bio. You're a therapist, you've been a radio show host. I don't know, I heard in the bio that you also have been a counselor in Afghanistan. I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about how your personal and professional experiences have led you to have this focus on racialized trauma in the body like why is that important to you personally?

Resmaa: You know, the book My Grandmother's Hands actually, you know, it is a culmination, it is as much me, and my grandmother, and blackness, and navigating white bodies, all of that is in there and so what made, what kind of created the kind of critical mass, the energy that it took for that book to actually come out of me was both living in a black body, as well as, I think one of the things that kicked it to a zenith was some of my work over in Afghanistan. And, and in that that actually put me in a place where I had to contend with my own personal lived experience around trauma. And that came together with my historical experience with trauma, my intergenerational experience with trauma and my people's intergenerational experience with trauma, as well as my persistent and pervasive institutional experience with trauma. And so, all of my experiences actually helped to kind of facilitate from an energetic place, facilitate the emergence of that book because had it not been for that book I probably, you know, with my own trauma probably wouldn't be here.

Rachel: And prior to that turning point, you mentioned in Afghanistan when that became very alive for you did you have a background or training in somatic therapy.

Resmaa: Yeah, I had a training in that I also was a therapist before that. And, but it's one thing, you know, one of the reasons why I wanted to do the work in Afghanistan is because it gave me a chance to actually practice in a war zone and do things that I had never done before and figure this out and basically just, just kind of dove into deep in and had to figure out-my job was to put together all put together a risk, a traumatic response for all 53 bases in southern Afghanistan. And so, whenever they were- in it was primarily for civilian contractors, the military already had ways of addressing, you know, trauma and injury and moral injury, but the but the military contractors did not. Before I came on contract and so my job was to create the whole strategy for how to address when somebody's, you know, walked in or somebody who's suicide it over there's been, you know, a rocket barrage for 24 hours on a base or something like that. And so that but in the meantime, or while I was doing that I was also being impacted by the same trial.

Rachel: You know, you mentioned you wanted to go there so that you could obviously use your healing skills with the books you were charged with working with, but you call it a war zone it was a war zone. You just described that many American cities are war zones, I grew up in east Oakland during the great crack Holocaust and I won't call it anything else I don't know where you grow up.

Resmaa: Milwaukee Wisconsin, Milwaukee Wisconsin was the same thing.

Rachel: So, did you find any parallels?

Resmaa: Oh yeah-

Rachel: The experience in Afghanistan and the war zone that many Black and Indigenous bodies and other bodies experience right here at home. And what were those?

Resmaa: Yeah, so that's a great question. I've never- people, people who have interviewed- who have interviewed me before ask me questions, but they don’t get at really the- the depth of the question you just asked. And I think that there is a parallel right like what- what help me actually write the book was the parallels became so acute in terms of what Black bodies and Indigenous bodies experience on this land, right, and have experienced since we- since, some of us, since we- were, since our ancestors were born here and some of us were trafficked here, right. And, um, and I think, I think, I think, you know the parallels for me were things like the intensity of the experience made it so override is the first thing you go to in order to survive. Right. And that override can actually over time, time decontextualizes trauma. I tell people this all the time. And one of the first pieces you have to understand is that the march of time will decontextualize it. If there is number one no repair and no remembrance that the trauma happened. And what happens in people is that as time marches forward, as the decontextualization happen, as there is no remembrance for what the trauma or traumas are, what begins to happen is that people become organized around the survival of the trauma become organized around the override and the strategies to get through the trauma and trauma decontextualized over time in a person can look like personality. Trauma decontextualized in a family over time can look like family traits. Trauma decontextualized in a people can look like culture. If you don't examine and inquire and remember, you start to begin to place the defect in you, you start to be the, the, the reframe of the energy, the thwarting energy of trauma starts to look like mental health issues, starts to look like, or can look like lifestyle choices. And I mean the stuff like that, when in actuality it’s how people have, have organized themselves around the trauma, and then the march of time decontextualized it.

Rachel: So, would you say your work as a clinician and in your writing is to help us contextualize our trauma?

Resmaa: Absolutely.

Rachel: Okay-

Resmaa: That's most that's most of the work right most of the work is sitting with Black and Brown and Indigenous bodies and white bodies in from a particular vantage point, but working with them individually and communally, to help them not only identify the trauma, but also contextualize the resource that's available to them. Right. And because a lot of times, one of the primary tenets of trauma is really this idea that you can't move that if you move one way there's horror if you move the other way there's terror. Right. And so, people, people have a tendency to have this stuck quality energetic quality. That’s not just a cognition, but it's also an embodiment. Right. [Rachel: Mhm, mhm.] And so, and so a large part of my work is contextualizing the things that they see as defect. Contextualizing it as protection, as opposed to, as opposed to defect protect as opposed to defect.

Rachel: And, and I think you really did that in My Grandmother's Hands, [Resmaa: Oh, thank you so much.] and it felt like such an affirmation and almost a relief, I'm not crazy like there's a reason why I think and feel the way that I do in a Black and Indigenous body and it was affirming. I want to get to your new book, because that did something to me! [Resmaa laughs] And I want to, I want to just start with this because I think it takes a particular kind of badass to start a book like this. “To all Americans who hope to incite a civil war, we see you, we know your plans, we will be ready to defend ourselves and what this country could be against you.” This book activated for me and maybe many of your readers, who've had a, you know, audience members who've had a chance to look at it. It's almost like it just activated all the trauma that you had helped settle in the previous book it took several many chapters to settle into the body exercises and I can see now that it's not a one and done.

Resmaa: Yes.

Rachel: Why this book, why now?

Resmaa: Yeah.

Rachel: You know they're completely different in some ways.

Resmaa: So, when I finished the book, I gave it, there's a good friend of mine, a sister, I had sent her. I sent her the book and I said, before I send this to anybody, I want you to read it like just read it, and then you know hit me back just tell me what you think and stuff like that. It took her about, about two months, and she read, and I got a phone call and get on the call and I said, she said, “Hey brother.” I said, I said, “What do you think?” and she took a long time she's like, she said “Brother. First of all, I love the book.” She said, but here she goes. “Can I use an analogy,” I said “yeah,” she said. “My Grandmothers Hands felt like a warm blanket.

And this one, and this book feels like a dark alley.” And, and, and I could not have phrased that any better that was. That's exactly what I wanted it to be because I think when you watch-

so I had originally started instead of Quaking of America, that book came, came up. So, the first- I was writing another book before I started writing The Quaking of America. I actually was writing a book called Our Grandchildrens’ Souls, it was going to be talking about the legacy of creating a, a, a living embodied anti racist culture and infrastructure. Right.

And then January six happens. When January sixth happened, I'm sitting there reading, editing part of part of the first book, and I'm sitting there and I'm watching these fools um, go to the capital. Right? And I'm, and this is at the same time that I'm writing this book, and I'm sitting there and I'm watching I'm saying okay, couple, couple hundred showing up okay okay that's interesting you know blah blah blah, right, then a little while later they see the news coverage again and there's more there. And I'm like, Okay, all right. Then, a little while later you see, there's more there and not a walking around with AR15s. And now they got weapons. And I'm saying, okay, ain't nobody stopping nobody like nobody's even asking for ID. Nobody's like stopping the car and, and pulling them over said you know what do you, are you supposed to be carrying that weapon? And right, nobody's doing right. And I'm saying okay, then I start seeing what I call the symbols, the symbols of our feral past, right. Um, then I start seeing the nooses.

I was like, oh, okay, here we go. Then I start seeing them erecting the gallows. Right. Then I start seeing the Auschwitz signs, then I start seeing the swastikas, then I start seeing the 3% right I'm seeing all of this stuff. And I'm sitting here saying, ain't nobody stopped like nobody's know like nothing's happened. Then they start kicking out the windows and they start kicking out the doors and they start walking into the halls and pissing on stuff and and beating the hell out of over 100 police officers.

Here's the thing. As I'm watching this, I'm saying the way that white bodies have currency that they use showed up in that situation, and that you had people that, that beat the hell out of police officers. And most of those police officers never unholstered their weapon. That's when I said I can't write, I can't finish writing this book, I have to, I have to write on this because I know, America will watch this and, and, and not have any concept or context for how to see this. And so, I called my agent and call, my called my publisher I call my agent first and I said you're gonna be pissed at me. I said, I'm not, I'm, I can't write this, I can't write this other book, I said we have to write this book, and he goes, I would he says Resmaa, I'm so glad you're saying this. I'm so, he said whatever he said if the publisher don't want to continue on with this they don't have to but believe me we can get somebody else to publish it. And so that's how it happened. It was, just that, and I wanted to give context to the feralness of the white body and the currency of the white body, and I want to give people some, some ways of kind of mooring themselves as they watched what they were watching so that's how the book came about.

Rachel: Yeah, I can't help but think and listening to that and witnessing that live when it was happening, what a different response and would have been if it would have been you and I, and our family members and friends there. Like, even white bodies who would have been there with us. If the majority of folks have been bodies of culture, it would have been a much different story.

Resmaa: I said, I said, could you imagine if that had been 6000 Indigenous bodies.

6000 Black- see this is, and I and I'm saying bodies in particular because people sometimes when I'm talking, they think I'm saying identity. I'm not talking about identity. My organizing rubric sibling is that from my work and the way that I move is that we live in a structure, we live in a system by which the white body deems and has deemed itself the supreme standard by which all bodies, humanity shall be measured structurally and philosophically. If you don't understand that everything else will confuse you about what you're seeing, and what you're experiencing, what you're noticing right in front of your eye.

And so, and so, when I think about the white body in that pigmentocracy that got- that, that got set up. Right. That continues to be nurtured that the white body being the standard of human-ness and every other body being deviants from the standard. Is an operating structure anti-Blackness and Indigenous and visibility is part of the operation and operational structure. I couldn't imagine if 6000 Black bodies showed up anywhere in America with a AR15s. That- and refusing to allow anybody to question them about it. What we would have seen if that had been Black people. We already know because we understand the pigmentocracy, we understand the hierarchy, and we understand that the white body has, has currency that, that bodies of culture in general and, and in Black and Indigenous bodies specifically do not have.

Rachel: Mhm. And with that, you distinguish that our approach to healing and recognizing what's in our bodies is also drawn by some of those identities and, and embodiments. Could you say more about that. Because at the beginning I said, can we do some of your exercises you were like no that's not cool and explain why. Right.

Resmaa: Absolutely. [laughs] Yeah, similar. I'm very. I, my whole thing because, because I'm a social worker, because I've been a clinical therapist for a while, because I do consider myself somebody that is uh, I look at myself as rather than being an academic scholar, I really consider myself to be a communal scholar. And I wanna nurture communal scholarship, I believe communal scholarship actually impacts academic scholarship in a, in a, in a, in a way that people I don't believe give enough credit. I believe that there are people outside of the institution of academia that write and do and speak and say things that academia ends up quantifying and using to act like they're the ones that developed these pieces, right, especially when it comes to, like things will be where we want to talk about more inclusiveness or equitable treatment of people. Many times, the communal scholarship that's going out in the communities actually pushes into academia, my book is a classic example right. [Rachel: Yes.] But we don't we don't think about the outside/inside strategy we just say, well, you know Resmaa wrote this book and we can use it in our classrooms, and I'm simply I'm saying that that scholarship that's in my book came from elders that nurtured me along the way, came from people that, that love me, talking to me and chastising me and holding me and and saying no we can reclaim this and that it up, and now is being adapted, you know, in academia, and so. And so, for me, I forgot your question again say-

Rachel: You know, maybe we'll come back to that because I want to stay on the thread of the academy, and this gap between communal knowledge and the academy I think we are at a particular political time and attack on education in general and some of that is directed toward higher ed but some of it impacts all of education. And it seems like right now though, all of the critical anything considered critical race theory is trying, is being systematically dismantled. There's a particular focus on Black and transgender bodies in the most recent headlines. And I wonder if you have comments on that and how and any suggestions for how we interrupt that encounter that I have some ideas too.

Resmaa: So, so you know, there's this big uproar about CRT and, and, and, and, you know, we shouldn't be teaching our kids to hate each other and stuff like that. I think it's very interesting that it's even couched in that way, that, that, that, CRT it’s, CRT is an advanced, is advanced level work and scholarship at university the people don't get this in grade school, right. But even if that even if it was I think I think it really obscures the actual argument here, the real thing that I find more interesting rather than other than CRT is NCRT (non-critical race theory), right, non-critical race theory is the prevailing thought of this country, right, this, this country does not want to consider race or racialization as, as an impacting structure, by which we're operating in right, the whole push has always been about not being not having a critical lens by which we look at race. Right.

And, and, and so when, when, when Black, Brown, and Indigenous people say you know what, it is a particular gas lighting move when you say to a somebody housed in a Brown, Black, or Indigenous body that race doesn't matter and that it should not matter. Is it has always mattered because, because, because the engine of it and the development of it springs out of the notion of that the white body is the standard, and every other body is a deviance from the standard. And so, and, and that has been woven in and around and through academics through psychology through religiosity through all and all of the mechanisms and institutions that notion that the white body in the white standard is what should be the prevailing thought of whatever institution you're in that goes unquestioned, because it becomes the decontextualized as standard.

And so, for me, I think one of the things that academia has to begin to do, number one, is really begin to make more really clear choices around which side, it's on, right. Academia is so used to straddling the side of or pretending that they're straddling the side of liberation and straddling the side of not making people angry. Right. It's like, like, like my liberation. The liberation of Black people is going to make the majority of people in this country angry, because it means that there needs to be redress. And this country does not want to redress, you start like at the beginning we talked about, you know, there was a land acknowledgement, right, and I, there was a couple pieces. Notice that we talk about and we've become very comfortable in academia, talking about land acknowledgement and not land back, not, not who benefits from the land that was stolen through genocidal means and feral means. And that, and that there are still Indigenous people that are still being impacted. Let's, I have an Indigenous sister my name Jin Lee and she says, brother, you realize this less than 7% of what we're talking about America in Canada, less than 7% of the population of North America is Indigenous. Just think about what I just said. Listen, 7% of the populations of North America are Indigenous people. And we never and so when we do these land backs, or these land acknowledgments. We never talk about the feral impact of what it means to be genocided off the land that you have lived on for thousands of years. We never talk about how that how the notion of blood and in murder and brutalization actually impacts immigrants coming here, because there is an, there is an unrooting and a derooting that comes when you're an immigrant, plus you, your feet are on land that in which people have been genocided off of, which creates another layer of this equilibrium. In terms of energy and stuff like that.

And so for me, I think that the that that that if academic if academia says that we believe in ushering in a living embodied anti racist culture and infrastructure. That means that academia has to be about the business of creating container that can actually tolerate dealing with the 400 years, 500 years of charge that is associated with race and DEI is not going to get there. It simply isn't, it does not, it is not robust enough to be able to deal with that 400 years of charge.

Rachel: Mhm. Then how do we deal with it? In general.

Resmaa: You have to create a container first with, where bodies are beginning to condition with other bodies, other like bodies. So, the things that we've ingested about white body supremacy about misogynoir about sexism about transphobia about all of these different pieces can be can be inquired into without the white gaze. It has to be done where communities of culture, both intercultural/intracultural, can begin to work these pieces that we've ingested that vertically were, were, were, were brutalized into us, raped into us and religioused into us, right. We have to be able to do that and work with those pieces and white bodies have to have a different process that they have to go through white bodies collectively cannot conceive of a free Black woman. Because they haven’t had to, collectively. White bodies have very little racial agility or acuity collectively to deal with the collective brutalization that happened when whiteness became the standard order of the day.

Rachel: Mhm. There is so much I could say but I know that you have consistently loved on Black women in public, and all my sister friends are here supporting me today, and I want you to just lift that up some more right here and right now because I think there's a- what I've read and what I've heard you say, there's a particular power and role that Black women have in the liberation of the people, and there's a particular vulnerability that we have as well. And so just us I'll be loved on for a moment.

Resmaa: Absolutely. Yes. Yeah, so I got a friend of mine who has this thing that she does called the Nap Ministry.

Rachel: Yeah, that saved my life, I'm not gonna play with you. Rest and resistance is the mantra in my office now. Yes.

Resmaa: Listen, listen now. Yes, I love. I love the Nap Ministry, right, because what it says is, it's giving particularly Black women permission to nap. Right, the Black woman's body has been a has been the white, the white body for the last 400 years in this country has had now think about this. Think about this. The white body has had full and unfettered access to every orifice, understanding, and part of my body, think about that. For most of our history, the white body has had full and unfettered access to my body and my people's body. Now that's an obvious- that's, there's an obvious difficulty in that for Black, Brown, and Indigenous bodies, but it also creates a bottleneck for white bodies, because collectively white bodies expect my deference. They expect my, my allegiance. That has been what has been inculturated in them. Right. They expect me to move off of the sidewalk when they're walking, they expect me to not to, they expect Black women, not to have their own sense of who they are in the workplace. Because that's the way it has been inculturated within the white community, that expectation.

And so, and so I believe that, you know, there's a there's a show that I watch, I watch a lot of horror shows my wife doesn't understand how I do that and do this trauma work, but, but I watch it was like Stranger Things. In Stranger Things there's this, there's this thing called the upside down, right, the upside down is exactly the same way, the world is right now, but it's upside down, everything is turned upside down right. And I believe as I believe Black women are living in the upside down and have lived in the upside down, right, because I believe that when, when creation emerged forth, the first representation of human on this planet, it was a woman, a Black woman in Africa. First, and the mitochondria of that woman is in everybody that we know right now on this planet. Right. But you would if you look at the position of the Black woman on this planet, you would think that is exactly the opposite. Right, and that and that and that the Black woman is the, is the, is the, the Johnny come lately of the human experience.

And, and so for me, every chance I get, I want to say, we don't get better as a species by the Black woman being in a position in which she is not the basic conduit for human life on this planet, but that she is the last to be considered. And so, in my work that's why I always try and uplift and put Black women in a certain light. Right, in which I don't ask for permission, I don't, I don't, I don't need like somebody. I've had people come up to me. Well, what about white women, what about them. I'm not talking about them, they are not in consideration of the work in terms of liberation of Black people in particular, and the liberation of the human species in general. That's not that is not a consideration. White women and white men and anybody housed in any white body. Fine. But I get to say for me. What is most important and what is most salient and what's most important to people that have loved me that have nurtured me that have conditioned me that I learned the most from have been Black women, and I think Black women are the only way we're going to ever see ourselves to true liberation. And so that's why I started with Black women. I don't believe DEI is going to do it. I believe, I believe, I believe, just like you sis, you're the vice president, and I'm not asking you to answer this question but you're the vice president of DEI without you even telling me another word, I know you got less than five staff. I know that I know that, I know that, that, that, that, that you being in that position. The university or organizations have a tendency to put a Black, Brown, or Indigenous body in that position under fund them, and then run 400 years trauma through them to try to get them to rectify things that the organization continues to resist at every turn. And I believe that DEI is, is, is a way diversity equity inclusion. Is really centered around white culture. And I believe the operational piece of DEI needs that I believe those letters actually need to be reconfigured, and it should spell DIE, because it because it withers, and kills and attacks the spirit of the people that are trying to do that work without giving them, without helping them develop an understanding that really DEI is really about how do you get white people to come into a room long enough to learn some glossary terms, and really is not about the liberation of people. [Rachel: Mm.] That's my opinion that's not Rachel's opinion that's my opinion. OK.

Rachel: Well, you're right I'm at work right now, so. You know, going back to where you sort of started, it's why the Nap Ministry and Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hershey that book is so important. And like I said why it's become a mantra among my office and other Black women and women of culture, Indigenous bodies, within higher ed, it doesn't matter you could be at a tech company or whatever. It's so important for us to claim for ourselves. [Resmaa: That’s exactly right.] And that's a different kind of trouble word too because we enter, we have internalized all of that oppression. You know, I want to get back-

Resmaa: Can I say-

Rachel: Go ahead on.

Resmaa: Just one thing about the rest piece So, so, so the, the reason why rest for a Black, Indigenous, or Brown body is revolutionary is because the Black, Brown, and Indigenous body is where America has been trained to do its dirt. It is to put all of the, all of the work on the body of Black bodies and Brown bodies and Indigenous bodies right. And so, it is an act of resistance for a Black body a Black femme body, a Black female body to go I am going to nap, I am going to rest, I am going to do like the act of that is a revolutionary act because the, because the whole structure says that Black women should override rest should override centering themselves in their own health, their own not rest in order to do work. Rest to rest, because your people could not rest, because the fatigue that you feel that you experience is not tiredness, it is brutalization. It is violence, it is what has been, it is trauma, and the reason why you need to rest is to heal, not in order the reason why you need to rest is to heal. It is not so you can be more productive in the work for you.

Rachel: And like I said, that's something we also have to unlearn ourselves. I'll get the book, I want to go back to your book which you quote so many journalists and authors and you offer so many resources in that book so I highly recommend that folks get The Quaking of America. I've been wanting to talk to you about this and since I, you know, sort of worked my way through the book. On the one hand, you know you kind of slap folks awake that look, if you can read the signs, which many of us can and we have for generations for a mere survival of pretty imminent civil war or continuation of like the amount of violence that is erupting. I read the other day that some folks were arrested because they wanted to throw off the power grid in Baltimore to create chaos so it's, this guerrilla warfare. [Resmaa: Yeah, yep.] So as I read your book on the one hand, there's this non-violent approach, get in your body so you can discern, and you can act accordingly and it may save your life and your family's life, you know, just by being in your body in a healed body in a body that is the signals it gives it sends and receives are not distorted by trauma in a sense. [Resmaa: Exactly right.] But then I have to tell you [Resmaa laughs] as I, as I read the way that you pull together the headlines and all of these authors and resources. I'm wondering like do I need to go like learn some take some self-defense courses and be able to shoot a gun like. [Resmaa: Yes, yes, yes.] Can we have both non-violence and prepare for arms?

Resmaa: Yes! Non-violence does not mean non-protection. [Rachel: Mhm. Okay.] I want to be clear. Non-violence does not mean you don't understand that you are in a, you are in a structure by which people want to murder you simply because of your pigmentation. Right. And so, for me, I wrote that book as a very sober understanding of, of, of what it is that I see as what gets in the way of us protecting ourselves, and what gets in the way of us understanding that this is a feral structure to bodies of culture and Black bodies. 60% we have, we have between 55 and 60% of this population is white bodies, right. If, if, if racism, if we wanted to change racism, White bodies could change it overnight. If they didn't have a self-interest that was more in the currency of whiteness, but that is not what we have. White bodies understand that it is an advantage not a privilege I take that off. It is not a privilege in a structure by which the white body deems it has deemed itself the supreme standard by which all bodies humanity shall be measured in a philosophically and structurally in a system like that, it is not a, it is not a, a benefit, or it is not a privilege to be in a white body in a structure like that it is a distinct advantage to be in a white body.

And so, for me, as I'm watching people walk around in the loosening of gun laws in Florida, in Texas you could just put a gun on your you ain't got to say nothing to nobody right. To say that they're trying to blow up grids in Baltimore and all over the country, this is not the first time we're right. And in order to have chaos and we're watching this stuff, and we're, and we know that large swaths of police have white supremacists and three percenters and ku klux klans and people who align themselves with that. Police officers. Right. And we know that you know you could be a police officer with less than two years of degree in college and all that different stuff, but yet these people have dominion over people's lives.

Right. And so, and so, um, the reason why I talked about like some of the how do you do what's the what's the both the communal work and the individual work you can do to be able to hone your intelligence is so you can have more to your available to you, than just your cognition. Right. But I'm also practical, I mean there's a story that's out today about the Black farmer in Colorado, who's just minding his own business. And yet he's, he's got about 1000 acres, acres land and these white folks are killing his cattle. They, they have set, they have set cameras up around his house, filming him, and then he gets stuff he gets death threats simply for being a farmer with 1000 acres of land in Colo, in Colorado. Right, but the white body sees itself as dominion collectively over Black bodies, even, even, even if it's unvoiced, it sees itself as at any point being deputized to monitor the Black body.

And so, I wanted to be very sobering in this book and say, you may need to start thinking about how you work them hands if you have to work them hands, right, you may need that. I'm no longer at a place where I say, you know, Black people should know the Back people should, should, should, should responsibly know how to work a weapon responsibly. I'm not saying just throw them out and blah blah blah I'm saying we need to, we need to understand how to be safe with guns we need, but we need to. I come from a family that's had guns our whole life both illegally and legally. I had my grandfather hunted rabbits all, all of that different types of stuff. Right. And my grandfather's World War Two and all of this different types of stuff right. And so, my brother's a police officer, right, I was over and I know how to work with, I don't think there's anything wrong with the average Black person, understanding how they work right because it's gonna too late. You can see the winds of this country, moving more and more towards totalitarianism. So, you know, like, like having one strong man at the top, and then everybody else has got to get along, you know, get along to, you know, get along. So, in that type of situation. You don't want to not be able to take care of your family and your community and survive whatever's coming next. I would rather have the knowledge than not have the knowledge.

Rachel: But you raise a contradiction in that right because so many people use guns, irresponsibly, and they definitely want to get it out of the hands of like organized crime or, you know, just people using weapons irresponsibly. There's a huge push toward you know reducing guns, which is in contradiction to what's actually happening because I've read other articles and talk to people, where pretty much all the ammunition has been brought up by the white supremacy.

Resmaa: Absolutely.

Rachel: Right.

Resmaa: Absolutely.

Rachel: Is it too late? Why don't we get off guns.

Resmaa: No, no, no, let me just say this it’s not too late to make yourself more knowledgeable. Never to-

Rachel: That’s what I'm talking about, should I learn how to operate a weapon? I haven't decided if I want to own one- but it wouldn't hurt-

Resmaa: But it doesn't hurt to know what to do. And when so many of the people that are listening to me, and you talk like they're probably screaming at the top of their lungs like no. But I but, but, but I would have, I would say just like what you said, militias are buying up the ammunition, what do you think they're doing that for? People are trying to blow up the electrical grid, what do you, what do you think they’re doing that for. I'm not I'm not landing on any philosophy that's going to put me or my family in more danger than they should be, had we had knowledge.

Rachel: I think we need to take a breath, maybe the audience does, on that and everybody can decide for themselves you know, there's a- there's so many things and- there are white people in the audience right now listening saying that's not me. I'm not that. And in your book, this is getting back to the question before we started talking about Black women. You describe like the levels of the pigmentation overlaid by other types of identity so it's for example. If you are in a white body and you happen to be Muslim or Jewish, you're down at the bottom with the Black and Indigenous folks. If you are in a gender non-conforming or transgender body that happens to also be a white body. So, could you talk more about identity? And, and like, and body.

Resmaa: Yes, yes. Well, so, so I'm very clear. So, so I've been doing this work now, you know, work in terms of race and things like that, for at least 30 years right this is recently that people know who the hell I am, but I've been doing this work a long time right. And one of the things that I see keep happening when we talk about liberation and creating an infrastructure living embodied anti racist infrastructure. Is, take the white body. We, the white bodies when we're doing this work, having created enough, or any collective stamina or agility. When it comes to race specifically right I'm not talking about anything else about race specifically. And so, what they do a lot of times is good meaning white bodies. What they end up doing is thinking that niceness and kindness is the same thing as liberation. And it is not. I don't want you to spit in my food. I don't want you to call me the N word I don't want you right I don't want you to do any of that stuff. But if you think that, that, that you not doing that is a proper redress for the level of brutality and weathering and withering that happens on my body on a daily basis you're sadly mistaken. That is inadequate it’s nice, and it's inadequate. Right. And so, and so, really for me, when I'm talking about these pieces.

I'm saying look, Black-, the march towards Black people moving towards liberation. Right. There has been a certain configuration that has been a miss-, a mass miseducation to white bodies that my liberation means your means your downfall. Right. And what I'm saying is you have to actually create what liberation means for you and your people and white people in order so, so that stuff can be dealt with so when we do begin to talk about what liberation means for all of us we're actually speaking the same language because if you're not doing that work with other white with 55 to 60% of the population. If you're continuing to push the same miss mass education into white kids and white bodies. This is never going to work itself out. And so, so that's the way I think.

Rachel: You know, we're talking about an anti-racist culture. There's some very specific language around anti racism in the, in the institution that I work in and higher ed in general there's this talking to Ibram Kendi talked about it being you know like addressing the system.

Is it a utopia will we ever get there? [Resmaa: No, no, no.] In our lifetime or ever like how is it realistic that we actually can undo all of this white body supremacy and live happily ever after and if not, what should we be striving for?

Resmaa: Yeah, I don't believe if we're looking for Shangri La. And we're looking for like Nirvana or something like that when it comes to race, put it this way. What took us four and 500 years to get into this mess. What makes you think it's not going to take four or 500 years to get us out of this mess this stuff. This like, even, even, even calling, even talking about what happened to Indigenous people and people doing what they did on having a more of an ownership mentality as opposed to when we talk about Indigenous people more of a stewardship mentality. Calling white body settlers is a frame is a softer frame in order to get white bodies in the room and talking about, talking about what actually is in a way that won't leave- that won't make them run out of the room. Right. Because to the Indigenous body, white bodies were not settlers to the African- to the Black body white bodies were not settlers, there was nothing to settle. Right. What they were were people who benefited and got given land that was in which people and animals and ancestors were genocided off of. But, and this is, this is why I don't. When I talk about DEI, when you're talking about diversity, equity and inclusion diversity. The first question I asked when people talk to me about that is I asked diverse from what? And if you don’t ask that question, then what ends up happening is that diversity can mean collard green Tuesday fried bread Wednesday, you know chop suey Thursday where it can, it can mean very aesthetic types of things. If you don't say- what we're saying when we say diversity is that we are diversifying from the concept and from the idea that the white body is the standard of humans, if you don't say that, then it can mean anything. Right. And that, and that we're saying that we're diversifying from that idea, you have never been to a DEI training when they said that you know.

Rachel: I have now. I am still with you, yes.

Resmaa: That's why we have to be clear as, as Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, we may not- we still may need to send our babies to school, we still may need to pay these bills and all that stuff, but understand that that piece that you're moored in that says that that diversity that diversity for me means of diversifying and want it both internally and, and externally and organizationally from the idea that the white body is the standard, and that, and that I'm with diversify from that notion at all levels. If, if you're moored in that you have to stay moored in than that, and realize that your organization is not moored inthat, that is not, that is not their vantage point, their vantage point is not your liberation, but they will say that their vantage point is your

liberation. And so, we have to be, we have to be clear in ourselves that I'm a get this check. And then I'm a build with people outside of this organization to put pressure on, on, on the institutions to change and be more responsive to the communal ways of being and cultivating the communal ways of being. Not transactional, but community development and communal development.

Rachel: I have one last question that I want to ask you just to bring it all together. This is using your imagination. If you had a giant billboard or as many as you wanted that you could place anywhere or everywhere. You know, reaching millions, billions, United States, globally, what would that billboard say, what would you put on that billboard?

[silence]

Resmaa: Black women were the first representation of humaneness on this planet.

Rachel: What impact do you think that would have on people driving with their Black daughters, taking them to school or-?

Resmaa: Just what you did, just what you did, what you did on this call. You said, “brother, can you talk?” You center Black women a lot, and then you took your hands and you went back and you said,”I need some loving on,” right. That's what it would do. Everything else Black women will take care of everything else in terms of, in terms of Black women, having a sense that they are tied to creation itself. And if Black women believe that, and, and, and take naps and put right that will. I believe that's where the healing starts.

Rachel: Yes, thank you for your tenderness brother, you know? it takes a special human being to be a warrior, which you are in your writing and literally, and also be tender with vulnerable populations with Black women. And I just appreciate you, you just got my heart right there.

Resmaa: Mm, love you sis, [Rachel: Love you back.] we're doing this together. We aren’t doing this by ourselves we're doing this together, so I appreciate you.

Rachel: And it's messy and imperfect. [Resmaa: That's exactly right.] And we may not see the promised land we probably won't, but- [Resmaa: We keep going, we keep going.] Yeah, we still keep going. All right, Resmaa Menakem I'm so grateful for the way that the ancestors have worked through you using your body, your voice, your power to bring light to this world to bring light to our hearts and minds that things we need to pay attention to for our survival and for envisioning a future that is healed and whole for Black and Indigenous bodies. Thank you so much. I just send you protection, [Resmaa: Thank you.] because how you started that book that I read you know like I imagined you could be a target as well, [Resmaa: I am a target.] so you know how when Obama was elected and they all of the church folks. I'm laying hands on you for your protection so that you continue this work and just thank you again to your ancestors I honor them and their strength and their courage for working through you in the way that they have and for bringing us together today. And I honor everyone who's present, their ancestors because they brought us together. However you're responding to this conversation. No matter what your body or identity, our ancestors brought us together for our healing. And so, I thank and honor everyone else's ancestors as well and my own. [Resmaa: Mm.] Ashe.Thank you so much.

Resmaa: Ashe. Thank you so much.

Rachel: Yes, thank you so much.

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live.

Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Izzy Angus, Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Patty Pforte, and Nikki Roda. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

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