Our beloved collective has made the difficult decision to sunset our organization this year (2023/2024), and to make space for other expressions of our work to continue to grow and iterate out in our movements in our lives. As a part of honoring our legacy, we are proud to share this conversation with close collaborator Rascal Roubos (they/them) and core members Toran Ailisheva (they/them) and Zara Zimbardo (she/her). Rascal shares about "Antidotes to White Fragility" an embodied inquiry exploring and transforming defensive moves associated with white fragility, inspired by Robin DiAngelo's work.
To learn more about Rascal and their offerings, check out:
https://www.tidepooltherapy.com/
To learn more about Toran and their offerings, check out:
http://dropsinthewaterfall.com/
To learn more about Zara and her offerings, check out:
https://www.zarazimbardo.com/
Our beloved collective has made the difficult decision to sunset our organization this year (2023/2024), and to make space for other expressions of our work to continue to grow and iterate out in our movements in our lives. As a part of honoring our legacy, we are proud to share this conversation with close collaborator Rascal Roubos (they/them) and core members Toran Ailisheva (they/them) and Zara Zimbardo (she/her). Rascal shares about "Antidotes to White Fragility" an embodied inquiry exploring and transforming defensive moves associated with white fragility, inspired by Robin DiAngelo's work.
To learn more about Rascal and their offerings, check out:
https://www.tidepooltherapy.com/
To learn more about Toran and their offerings, check out:
http://dropsinthewaterfall.com/
To learn more about Zara and her offerings, check out:
https://www.zarazimbardo.com/
Alright, so we have voicemails going. Are we ready to start? Start? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And, well...
And so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alright,
I'll start with Introduce. Okay. Hello,
listeners, and welcome to the White Noise Collective podcast. This is Jay sharing an update. Our beloved collective has made the difficult decision to sunset our organization this year and to make space for other expressions.
expressions of our work to continue to grow and iterate out in our movements and in our lives. As a part of honoring our legacy, we are proud to share this conversation,
part of an archival series featuring our core collective members, close friends, and comrades. Here we share our stories, history, and context for our work,
including our learnings and questions, knowing that some of us has emerged for us could also likely be of use for other movement organizations both now and in the future.
If you're interested in reading our full statement detailing more about our sun setting, please check out conspireforchange .org. We are grateful for all the ways you and so many have shaped and brought us together.
the vehicle of White Noise Collective to life. Hello,
here we are. My name is Zara Zimbardo. I use she /her pronouns and I'm here in Oakland, Ohlone Land. with two very dear,
close, long -time collaborators in the White Noise Collective. And we are taking time to reflect and record conversations as this 12 -year project of creating all different kinds of offerings and spaces and curriculum that have been created by the White Noise Collective.
has primarily, but not entirely, been addressing the intersection of whiteness, racial privilege, and forms of gendered marginalization or having that lens.
Today is September 11th, 2023. My name is Torrin Eilishava and I use they /them pronouns. And my name is Raskul Rubos and I also use they /them pronouns.
I'm so glad that we have this time together. So I know that we're going to dive in today looking at this body of work that we call antidotes to white fragility.
But before we do, maybe you could share a little bit more rascal just about how you came to know white noise. I know Zara and I have both shared a little bit about our origins in the work and other recordings.
So how did you arrive to this? - It must have been many ways in because I don't remember one specific pathway, right? But one of the core members have known since I was 18,
we were in college together. And then I know Tora and you and I have done some other movement work before. And so I think we had some connections prior. And then I believe...
it had gone very deep in a meditation retreat vibe, like exploration. And through that, it had really shifted how I wanted to be engaged politically.
And really it politicized me, I think. Like activated my ability to engage really like in the here and now. I was trying to sort out what communities were going to be a place that I could feel engaged.
I don't remember the exact. but I must have gone to have some workshops, et cetera. - Yeah, and I personally arrived into facilitating and working with the evolution of the antidote's material later in the process,
but I'm curious if the two of you want to just share a little bit more around that starting place and some of your coursework and school and how that kind of led in into this,
like, a larger... body of work. Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, maybe was that 2015 or so or 2016? Officially, I turned in the thesis in the summer of 2016.
So it must have been 2015 that we were mainly doing the work. And I had been part of White Noise before that. Yeah. So we had been involved in orbit. And then I remember distinctly when we were having the core collective was having our our debrief and planning meeting,
and it was like, "Ooh, there's this really shiny, exciting request invitation to collaborate on some experimental qualitative research to support this inquiry into looking at NNOs to white fragility," which I personally jumped at and was like,
"Therefore, at a thousand percent," and just to say that at this time, white white anti -racist educator Robin D 'Angelo, her at first paper, just with the title "White Fragility," struck a huge nerve,
resonated widely in terms of her naming that particular phenomenon, which is not her work alone. It's been the work of many, but there was something about how she articulated it in terms of looking at how effective patterns of of white fragility are for basically just undermining or sabotaging productive,
generative connections and conversations about race, which are all the different ways that white people leave. And so she very helpfully named these patterns of defensiveness, of arguing or checking out votes or avoiding and I remember at the end of that essay.
essay, which then later became a book because it was so popular and so many people were like, "This is so important. We need to look at it," etc. Her work goes through this whole analytic thing of like, "What is this phenomenon and we need to take this seriously?
It's pretty destructive." And then it ends with saying something like, "Knowing all this, let us design some interventions. What do we then do?" Which is where you're very insightful and visual.
master's work picks up. Yeah, that was the premise of the work. And I was in social work school at Smith College in Massachusetts at the time. And Smith has a stated anti -racism commitment and has all students go through some courses on racism.
And we did a lot of organizing in relation to the school around their engagement with all of that, etc. And the number of people that I could see out of the corner of my eye were like scrolling the web or went to the bathroom for a long time or,
you know, and I had trouble being present in the room. And I deeply practice being in these kinds of conversations. I was like, what is happening? And like, it doesn't, I don't think it has to be like this.
There's got to be some other way that it could feel different and how these kind of conversations. And so I felt, because I had also already been working with. white noise collective and it was it was part of the political moment as well.
It was happening then. And so I was doing trauma related reading because I was in therapy school doing clinical work. And so I was reading about fight -flight -freeze responses.
Fight -flight -freeze appease. So we're reading a lot about that and how you hold it in the room and what it means for relationships and what behaviors are associated with those neurophysiological states like your mind,
body. state when you're panicking or you're on alert. And then in reading Robin Andrews' work, I was like, "Wait a minute, she's describing fight -flight -freeze, literally.
Exactly. Right? There it is." And so then I happened to find an advisor, Melia Ortega, who was willing to work with me on that and was like, "Yes, 100 percent.
Let's go." And helped me think about what would be more participatory action research, sort of community, more bottom -up generative and qualitative way to explore that conceptual framing of it,
like, hey, these two pieces, they're like, this is kind of the same thing. And so then how do we do work that explores that? And I sent an email over to White Nights since the space with White Nights Collective,
it really left room for people to be in process. There's room to not know. or there's room to have nuance and there's room to wrestle with parts of oneself or one's mind that emerged that maybe one didn't like so much or wished weren't there or wrestled with.
There's room to name those and be in dialogue around it and be more nuanced and be present with each other. So I was really struck with the capacity for presence and nuance in our group and so wanting to be able to bring this in which was such a a generative coming together.
I just wanna say that personally, it was just tremendously exciting and a real honor to get to collaborate with you on this and then there's the different ways, like the different iterations that what became this curriculum Antidote White Fragility grew,
to be able to be holding that space like you said, where it's like people could truly think and feel out loud. It's not about landing on answers, but it's also like practical. different ways of showing up, thinking, being, being with,
being with highly charged racialized topics, being with the pain and grief of whiteness, with this extremely potent contribution from your graduate work,
which is like, oh, here's this very clear map between Robin de Angelo mapping out like these three response defensive moves that make white people just leave. the situation unable or unwilling to stay present,
whether that's being called out or in or whether that's just with something like complex and highly charged. And it's like we need white folks to be able to stay and to build that muscle and that capacity to just stay.
So what gets in the way of it and to look at how that maps on with trauma response is then opens up this whole landscape of practice. practice and inquiry, you know, and I think that,
like, with all respect that we all have for Robin de Angelo's work and contributions, which has been super influential, that one area of critique has been that it can be totally intellectual as if,
like, just knowing this is enough and then you can kind of think your way out of it and something that I've really learned from you and in the process of collaborating collaborating and creating these offerings to somatically explore and really explore how white fragility lives in our nervous systems is like you can't just think your way out of it just by recognizing intellectually because when our nervous systems are
activated, we need other inroads and other tools and ways to engage, which is a huge gift. Then one of the key differences or maybe places that this workshop and the work that's come out of it highlights is that the friending is not colluding,
right? So we can relate to a body -based response that we are morally not in agreement with, right? We can relate to it with kindness and with curiosity without validating that that is the response and reaction we want to.
feed and have continue. And that we can collectively, like when we're in a group and we can all name different ways that our bodies are acting against our moral compass, right?
It's actually somewhat horrifying to experience your body act, respond in contrast to one's moral compass. That's really disturbing. It's disturbing and it's hard to be with,
right? But when we're able to make us space in which an individual or a group can acknowledge, these are some of the different ways that that arises in each of us. And we don't collude with that.
We don't want to collude with it, but we also are not interested in exiling it and shedding it out and shaming it and making it bad because then we put it in a box and it comes and gets us, right, you know, then we're not in relationship.
We're not in relationship with parts of us. And so the idea that we can come into a curious the other groups, we're not in relationship with the other groups, we're not in relationship with the other groups, we're not in relationship with the other groups, we're not in relationship with the other groups, we're not in relationship with you know, individual or collective relationship with the internalized and inherited
consequences of white supremacy, that we are also perpetuating when we can come into a relationship without that is not based in shame and blame and loathing and trying to surgically remove it,
right? When we're actually just trying to look at what is and then become either individually or together about her, right? Larger than that, ground in something more than that.
Then that creates a very different environment for being able to acknowledge what's going on. You can't change what you don't know is there, right? Or what you're unwilling to acknowledge. And that's a premise of all kinds of different transformation approaches,
right? And so too with this, right? And so the deep goal of this way of working is to bring people into direct relationship with what's there. within their visceral mind and body being in a way that doesn't make them ostracized,
right, from themselves or from the other people in the room, because so many political spaces can have that potential depending on the moment or who's there, how it's expressed, et cetera. So how do we really hold space for what's actually true in our inherited situation?
Which feels like a meta antidote. You were telling me an antidote, so I'm sorry, I don't know what your name feels like, some of the antidote system of what we could, some people call it like dominant social justice culture, which can be like very unforgiving,
very flattening, very reductive, very shaming, very splitting of like, you are bad, so I am good. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit,
like in terms of talking about the wisdom of looking at trauma responses, do you bring in this racialized nuance, around that we would share in the workshops around perceived threats and why that's relevant for white folks to consider.
- Yes, yes. One of the ways that I think this work could get misunderstood is saying that all sort of mind, body responses that happen all, like all fear that happens is based in something that's actually threatening immediately,
right? And that would be a mistake. a misunderstanding of the work. Really what it's saying is there may be like a garden snake on the path, right? And if you're afraid of snakes and you're walking along the path and you see the snake,
probably your body, before your mind has any real thoughts about it is gonna go (gasps) and it's a garden snake. It is a friendly being. And there's something visceral that happens, you know? And that's not an exact parallel,
but it's an example of the way that one... one might have experienced one's body to have a response before the mind even gets there. When we're saying it's a response, we're looking at white fragility,
patterns of which fragility as body -based responses to perceived threats. And it may not be a physical threat. It might be a sheer sense of self. So for example,
as someone who's organizing, then I'm like a white activist organizer. Right? And so then I'm like a white activist organizer. threat could be any information or interaction I have that tells me that I'm not doing organizing,
right? That questions the identity, right? Because a lot of the perceived threat is not actually at the level of the physical being most of the time for white bodies, right?
So if dominantly, yeah, a threat to your sense of self or your narrative of where you came from or how... your family got to be where they are or who you are in the world that you're good and you mean well and those pieces or-- - Community,
right? I think a lot about the fear of losing community, like, oh, if what you were saying is true, then I am bad and no one's gonna wanna be around me and that shame that can take over all of those narratives of exile and exclusion,
right? So that can bring up a lot of those same fears. - Exactly, exactly. that belonging piece. Which we can then just hear when all of that gets inflamed, how that can then just shut down the possibility of learning from feedback,
of moving through something together, of being able to expand our vision to see something and take in new information that just feels like such transferable skills. And we're looking at it particularly within this white interracist educational realm.
Exactly, that's really the narrow lens that we're looking at this through. though I can think about like as we evolved the workshop more and more people as be they became curious about it or like can I come Can I come I'm not white.
I'm like, oh, yes, you can translate this to any kind of privilege, right? Any kind of thinking that like is triggering this response right this fragility response and really like opening up when I'm at Incentation,
yeah, yeah, we could have a gender fragility where I mean we could really go all the way in a lot of directions but that isn't the way we've deepened the work of ourselves. It's relevant because these reactions are not exclusively about race.
They get super charged around race. They can come up super fast around race, but likely those patterns are patterns that we are all embodying at other stressful points in our lives.
You might have a similar visceral response to like being late or there's a dog and you don't like dog. I mean, it's, it's, it's just, it's actually a pretty limited set of physical responses that we have to situations.
And they flare up in particular ways with particular narratives and stories and meanings. Like, am I gonna be excluded from this? Are they gonna judge me or like, I am bad. I thought it was good that all comes up with it.
The narrative comes with it, with the body -based stuff. And that makes it super intense to get through. And what happens then is that people, any of us, we're not actually able then to connect. connect. We become disconnected to parts of ourselves.
We lose the capacity to connect with each other. We lose the capacity to process language well. So part of the utility in lining these two up and saying, "Maybe these have something to do with each other,
these reactions to perceived threats and patterns of weight fragility," is that there's actually a ton of research about how to support people to be more grounded to come back into a more grounded state.
Be able to... to process better, be able to learn how to connect, be able to move through that and transform so that they're no longer in a state of collapse or disconnection under those same circumstances.
We can evolve, right? So the idea of naming it as a pattern is not to be like, "Oh, poor us, we're so fragile." Right? Or this is to identify with that. Exactly. This is a pattern. This is not who we are. You know,
this is not who you are. It's not who I am, but it is a pattern that happens. relentlessly with a lot of strength, right? And so how do we harness all of the tools and skills and collective capacities that we have to not perpetuate that?
And to be more resilient. Oh, yes. Repeat choice with him, agency. That's something that, yeah, I love is that the, through these different grounding practices, just that a range of choice can open up.
Or as well as just to have. tools to be like, "Wow, white fragility is up in me right now," or it's up in this other person and just to be able to name that and know that can then be like,
"I don't need to act from this place." And while I'm noticing these different sensations as messengers, etc., I could respond differently and write and that's one of the hopeful outcomes, which also I just loved in the context of the workshops.
There were so many different layers of very active compassion that got engendered in one way or another. of that wasn't just the self -focus, but it was like, "Oh, because I am now more intimate with what it feels like when white fragility is inhabiting me,
these different particular defensive moves /trauma responses, I can then recognize it in someone else. I can recognize it when it's up in the room and be like, "What can we now do differently?" And I'm wondering if we could spend a little time talking about some of the specific activities in the workshop itself,
just to illustrate what we are talking about, when we're talking about different kinds of body -based activities, exactly what I wanted to ask next. Yeah, like what did it look like in the room? What were the practices, the interventions, all of it?
Well, and I want to start just by saying one, which was often an opening one of just sending out, just to say this, if we didn't say it clearly earlier, but just that there was a pilot workshop, which was like people sign consent forms that you and I created and this was part of your qualitative research Right for the thesis projects and so for that and for subsequent workshops It would be sending out a prompt of
like think about a time when you experience white fragility you were called out or something like that happened and so one of the first exercises was people just talking in pairs Sharing that story and I remember so many times how just such a tremendous amount of energy would just get liberated in the room because so many people have been holding on to a certain story that they felt ashamed about.
It made them feel isolated and alienated. And to be like, oh, this could actually be turned into an object of inquiry and curiosity and connection and something that I could learn from just that in itself was wonderful just to like liberate a lot of energy around that and to be like,
yeah, I can turn towards this instead of of spend so much energy turning away from it. - Right, some of the workshop was in the how, right? It's a lot in the how of, you're going to spend three minutes sharing a story in which some aspect of white fragility was invoked in your body,
mind. As you're speaking, see if you can keep some amount of your attention on your own physical response to your storytelling so that you're not entirely out between you and the other person.
See if you can kind of keep some anchor in here. And as you're listening, see if you can also keep some anchor in your own just visceral response. See if you can keep a read. What's it like to receive this story?
What viscerally is coming up for you? Or emotionally, you know, are there impulses to respond or care take or validate or be like me too, you know, and see if you can just hold that, right?
And track it. And so in setting this frame. where we're just all agreeing to try to keep some portion of our awareness anchored, just the intention, you got to come back over and over anyway,
but just that intention changes the dynamic, then like, okay, go talk about these times is different, right? And so some of it was in the way we framed it and gave very specific instruction about how to hold presence and then provide.
some opportunity for shifting, right? So different various grounding strategies. So orienting to colors or shapes and therapists will be familiar with all of these things, right? Counting backwards by threes if you like that kind of thing.
There were lots of different prompts interspersed through the workshop that supported people to touch into something and then to orient at. And to also in that process get a sense of which orienting out strategies were most supportive for them.
What gave you space? Right, like in line with what is happening in your nervous system, do you need any physical, emotional, mental grounding? Like, what's happening? How can you be aware of that? Yeah,
in the workshop, the curriculum, yeah, has a lot of that alternation of touching in, going out, you know, and really, like, flexing those noticing skills the whole time. And, yeah,
I remember one of just the sequences that just felt so... creative and generative was then to have people let their bodies make a shape, maybe of that story, or some other experience of white fragility.
We're using the term somatic, which sometimes people can feel like, "Oh, do I need to have gone through some training to understand that?" These are very simple, direct, very powerful exercises that anyone can enter into. And so just decelerating,
like one of the luscious things about this curriculum is that it's slowing down so that those insects are coming. As you see from the bottom up, we're not racing to try to figure things out. We're slowing way down, letting our body make a shape of what did it feel like to be in that state and then to listen to it?
What does it have to teach us? What does it like to breathe in this shape? Can you notice other people in this space? Can you feel the ground? Does it take a lot of energy to maintain this shape and then shifting out to a grounding exercise?
What were all the streets you passed on the way here? and then to move into those three, right, of the like fight argumentative and then into grounding, avoidance,
flight, and then shift into grounding and then into checking out or freeze. And so all of that, there's just so much richness in terms of how much we actually know about what those states feel like and can get really curious.
curious about and then to feel like we don't need to be totally trapped in them but can be shifting out of them. And I often felt particularly fascinated by checking out. Like we would do a gallery walk where people would sculpt each other like clay and sculptors of different statues.
So you're like walking around a gallery of fragility or at times just asking people everyone to just kind of pause and look around. And I remember just the checking out shapes were particularly fascinating and because there's... it's so subtle, it's so familiar,
and it's so powerful. - And you can feel it in the room. - Yes, yes. - I think this is the other piece is when you have a group of people, and it can manifest online too because we've offered this online and we can tell, but when you're in a room and everyone's embodying,
we're spacing out, you can feel it. It's like the air is flat. It's hard to breathe. It's like this like a loud absence. And it starts to bookmark for ourselves.
what it might feel like if we're in a community moment or a relational moment, but that's happening, right? And so to start to be able to like go, "Oh, I see, I know, I know this feeling because I was both aware and checked out at the same time." And that back and forth is in the therapist's ego -pengilating.
So that's what you are working on if you're working with someone who has sort of an over a lot, like sort of more than is handleable in a given moment, over what of sensation or reaction.
Finding ways to be able to turn the volume down and then back up a bit can really help feel like there's a form of agency and choice in how we relate. We can't necessarily turn it all the way off per say,
per person. But if you just have even a little bit of a dimmer switch, it's really helpful. And so if we're able to within as a group and within a situation, be able to allow the volume to be up. and more loud and intense and then internally,
you know, like get a little bit quieter. So we have a moment to metabolize what happened and then go back into it. That's kind of what that was modeling to in terms of like therapist framing. One of the pieces that was most moving in the workshop for me every time we were speaking in past tense is if it will never happen again.
One of my desires going forward is that continues to live on is the pair share and then the gallery one. And so we would have often the people who told the stories to each other, pair up,
and then you pick whichever shape was the most alive, had the most juice in it, and your pair takes on your shape. And then you get to let it go and see someone else holding the shape that you've been in,
you know, to the closest that their physical approximation is, but the essence of it. And very often what I noticed, you were speaking of compassion, right, that's seeing what it's like. to try to relate to someone who's in that state,
or you can see the amount of suffering that's in that state, or how off -putting it is to be in that state. Witnessing it from the outside and the relational impact of your own behavior,
really, in your own state really often shifted something for people. So that was very often a really generative moment and exchange. And then to do it in a group, you then see the pattern, right? Because everyone's individually coming.
from sort of their own visceral sense and creating shapes. But then you see the pattern, how similar they are, the more reactive or perceived threat patterns, they hardly ever have eye contact.
They're not very open. They're like a shrunk or blustery, you know, there's very little connection of it. You can see the themes manifesting through our posture and our stature and our nonverbal communication, right?
And then when we shifted into resilience, which is a really important chapter. and the workshop is to also touch into that, you can just feel in the room the difference just from like nonverbal embodiment.
Yeah. And you talk a lot about feeling it in the room and also that we did offer this online, right? And I mean, the demand and the desire for the skills in these workshops didn't diminish as we moved into lockdown and COVID distancing.
And so we still could helpably, as we offered to produce like through the internet to all sorts of groups of people, still find ways to feel that connection and that like felt embodied sense,
right? Of marrying of presence. Yeah, is there anything either of you wanna say about that piece, the online? Yeah, how it felt to translate that into this mediated space.
'Cause I think there is still like work being done to figure out how do we do this work across distance and time. and internet. I know you did many events. I'm curious to what you observed.
One of the pieces that I continue to notice with this work is that I feel less depleted at the end than I do with pretty much any other curriculum and I think it is because of that quality of connection and not over intellectualizing like bringing the mind and body and tandem and that intention to stay connected and when we're in that.
soup, there's just, there's a lot more internal resource and I ended up feeling less depleted, including online, which I was surprised by. - Well, there were a lot of moments where we invited people to turn off their camera,
to move away from the computer, to like move around and walk around in their space, right? And so I think there was this opportunity to be in your body in a way that wasn't just being at a computer.
And I think we were able to translate the gallery walks and the sculptures and like feeling the... bodies and being able to still see and be mirrored by and connected to other people and their physical experiences of these same phenomenon.
So I think there were ways that it definitely translated and that we tried our best to not be like, "We're just sitting at our heads at a computer for a few hours." Yeah, I also want to acknowledge that this Ansidote's workshop was super popular.
And so we, in 2016, went Noise Collective, due to just a lot of increased demand, partnered with showing up for racial justice, Surge Bay Area. And so partnering with Surge and just their larger base,
they were offering antidotes for quite a long time. So we were offering them separately as well as joints. But just to say that like it really touched on this nerve of people being like, "I need this.
I want to practice it." Or like, "I'm aware of this phenomenon of white fragility." fragility," et cetera, you know, and then what? Where do you go? And so what you were both just saying, like, I remember my own experience as well as other participants' experience of just being like awash with insights and feeling so nourished and people feeling surprised by that.
Wow, I don't feel overwhelmed. I don't feel depleted or drained. I actually feel nourished by something that we're looking at like an inherently like very uncomfortable, tension -filled topic with our whole being.
and I think part of it was just that slowing down and getting fed by insights coming from the body and just to be able to look at things from a place of compassionate curiosity, which can also just be such a relief when people have just been holding so much like unkind self -judgment.
Well, this is an area of real tension for me as a sort of recently out of grad school, newer, professionally younger, or less academically published. person than Robin Angelo,
and I was basing my work on her work inspired by her work. And then as her work unfolded and I was able to attend some workshops and things, what I came to understand is that she had a very different relationship to working with emotion and working with the body than what I had developed in my work.
And it felt a little scary, actually, right? Because if she's like the big one, then everyone-- listening to, you're like, "Oh, I'm going a different way. Oh, is it okay?" It made me nervous for a little while.
And there's more than one useful layer to explore, right? Like that mental and intellectual layer and being able to sort of set something aside or move forward. It's a really important skill set.
And what I was worried about with the work is that it would mean that people kind of became sucked into the self. -absorbed whirlpool of self -reflective whiteness without it transforming relationship or behavior or action.
And reducing harmful reactivity. Exactly. With folks of color. Yes. Especially that. I think it built my trust actually over time and hearing what people have said and people who attended the workshops again.
This happened differently. I felt this way differently. This thing that always comes up didn't occur. It's gone. I don't know what happened, but it's better. Hearing real transformation, I think, has increased my trust that slowing down and working in a more curious,
emotional way with a sense of accountability and purpose does have a really important role to play in the movement, even though it is different than sort of how...
Like a lot of the direct action skills and trainings we might attend to... Exactly. Which is a major finding, right, of your... thesis is that like resilience looks like a lot of different joyful,
connected, and also like playful ways. Like play has a role in being an antidote to white fragility. - It does, and relationship, the importance of relationships, right? And so very often if you're a white person sitting with something and you're in a reactive state,
if you can tell that you're in a reactive state, like who do you call where you can be vulnerable? You need to have places where you can bring that piece and work it through so it doesn't come out unheld and unprocessed where it's gonna cause more harm,
undermine a movement, damage a relationship, create additional labor for the person of color on their CV end of that, et cetera. But first you have to be able to also be able to contact that vulnerability yourself.
- No, and it's so true. I know I learned this term in "Generative Matters," like for a sake of what, right? So it's like we're learning these skills because we want to be-- able to show up in movement spaces in our organizations and our workplaces and our relationships with like just a greater ability to be present in ourselves and moving towards the liberatory future that we're trying to create.
And in thinking about that liberatory future, curious if you want to say just any final thoughts about what you hope will be the legacy of this work, how you hope it's going to continue to move forward and ripple in the world.
- Yeah, it's still very much needed. You know, there's been all kinds of, yeah, huge like tidal wave of popularity and interest, and then also a lot of critique of D 'Angelo's work,
you know, et cetera, and this phenomenon remains. What would be your hopes for how this work would continue to change and take root and spread and? - Well, I think it's embodying a lot of different ways and a lot of different movements,
right? Not uniquely this work that has an idea that these pieces are connected. And so that brings me joy, right? right? That it's spontaneously creating itself in many different iterations and many different like wise groups and ways of working.
I would hope that the workshop is able to find new spaces and grounds for life and practice. I think in a therapist space, there's absolutely,
it's very important to me that white therapists are able to do this level of work. But I think in many many many many different subcategories of times, and I don't know if that's going to be more online or if we'll come back to in -person and who,
what the container will be to hold it. And you still live and evolve. As do I. Yeah, that's same. It's been, yeah, such a joy, such a joy to work on this and such a joy to,
yeah, reflect on, reflect on this arc. Thank you both. both Yeah, lovely to be in conversation. Yeah Thank you so much for listening To learn more check out can spy .org.
Sound and editing for this episode is by Dave Pickering and music by Blue Dot Sessions.