What does it mean to be a White person in the US today?

If you mention or see race, you're racist.

If you don't mention or see race, you're racist.

A few months ago, I (Loran) started an organization, The Spillway, around supporting White people to work through Perpetrator Induced Traumatic Stress (PITS) and interGenerational trauma. I offer the services within The Spillway with the acknowledgment that healing work is merely one mechanism within a larger network required to sustain our collective movement towards racial justice. I seek to grow the services available rather than redistribute where we put our efforts and funding. To get this message out there, I’ve asked one of the most compassionate, ferociously tender, hilarious, and incredibly smart humans I know, Jenny, to join me on this podcasting journey.

Jenny and I come from similar yet separate backgrounds. Importantly, we offer incredibly different perspectives, sometimes just by who we are as people and other times by the different identities we hold.

We are committed to building compassion, understanding, empathy, and patience into the present and future of Whiteness and White Culture. We cannot change the past. But, we can change the future through the actions we take today.

We seek to embody the work of James Baldwin, Sonya Renee Taylor, Kazu Haga, Resmaa Menekem, and Kai Cheng Thom and countless others asking for White people to (in so many words) get our shit together. Since starting The Spillway, there’s been consistent feedback—sometimes within the same space—that White people are engaging this work with closed hearts and minds

This work can be difficult and beautiful. It is an exercise in vulnerability, in unlearning perfectionism, with real-world consequences, in an age of 7-second judgments. We hope The Spillway and our living in it can give others the courage that is needed to join us in this work.

We know that attempting to be vulnerable and consenting to learn in public is incredibly terrifying work. And yet we have to start somewhere. Conversations of race and racism aren’t going away anytime soon. Given our incredibly different places in the world, we’re trying to create a middle ground where White people can get together to talk and create action around the paradox of being White in the US, where we are simultaneously the perpetrators and victims of the race and racism.

We seek to embody the work of countless activists of color who have been calling White folks to seek our own healing around race and racism. So here we are, two White people committing to the work of individual and collective healing around race and racism for white people. Healing ourselves is no one's responsibility but our own.

Let’s Heal together and Grow to stop the impacts of race and racism in the lives of People of Color, and our lives as well.

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Welcome to our podcast. We’re so glad you’re here refocusing on Whiteness without supremacy or shame. Listen. Like. Follow.

Instagram: @the.spillway | Facebook: @WithoutSupremacyorShame

For a transcript of this episode and more, please visit our website, www.thespillway.org

Mentioned in this episode:

The Spillway Community Guidelines

1. Engage sequentially. The show is a serial not episodic. We do this so we can build relation and find common ground and context. 2. We stay in our own lane. The Spillway is about White people talking to (predominately) White people about White people and White culture. We're not out here to critique anyone's actions but our own. 3. Our combined fabric of destiny. (3a) As Dr. King said, our humanities are deeply interconnected to each other. Racism negatively impacts me, too. (3b) The Spillway is one mechanism within a larger framework needed to sustain racial equity and justice. We're not a one-stop shop. 4. No one right way to liberation. We all share the same goals, but not every method works for every person. If this doesn't work for you. That's okay. Maybe it works for someone else.

I feel like,

I feel like we're.

Frodo and whoever

Oh my god stop.

I don't know any of their names where they, you know, me and names where

they drop their ring into the fire.

And that's, we're on like a Tolkien quest

that's

yes.

It's.

I mean, I'm not mad about it, but I.

Um, I worked so hard on those.

Not that I made it, but then like I worked with someone who worked so hard.

Okay.

What do I feel like we're in, um, uh, an episode of The Hours, not

an episode that was a movie perfect for our guests, the hours where.

Virginia Woolf doesn't end up at the bottom of the Creek

with rocks in her pocket.

And Ed Harris, doesn't throw himself out of the window.

And, you know,

if there were one year that they could have given out two Oscars,

It should have been the year that Nicole Kidman lost to Halle Berry.

Cause they both deserved that Oscar every time I think of Nicole Kidman,

I always just think, oh, you should have gotten it from Moulin Rouge

and then I remember that that's the year that Halle Berry one, I think.

Ah, yeah, if only we could have

Was she nominated for Moulin Rouge?

Little Loran was devastated that she lost to Halle Berry I mean,

she was so good.

Well, you know, me and my Nicole Kidman problem, um,

IRR regardless IRR regardless, regardless this.

Okay.

So I'm glad you brought up The Hours because it has Phillip

Glass who did the score for this

that's what I was.

That's why I was saying

perfect.

Okay.

So it was like thinking about music.

And I was like, what has this like incredibly repetitive theme?

And it's ostinato and that's like what Phillip Glass does of

*hums ostinato rhythm*

It works so

well

um, and I feel like that, cause it was like, what is Whiteness?

It's just like these themes that just keep repeating over and over and over again.

Um, and so that's how I like went to this.

Amazing artist and it was like, Hey, I'm looking for a theme song.

That's like built on ostinato because that is Whiteness the same thing for

repeating over and over and over again.

And this beautiful person, Brian Stevenson was like, oh, say less got it.

And he worked at this like really talented composer and he like came up

with all of this really amazing stuff.

Um, but now when I play it for people, they're like, whoa, the only

time I've ever heard ostinato is in these like really epic film scores.

So that's one

that's one, but then two also, like we're still, we're

talking about race and racism.

Like, we don't want this to be like, oh, Hey, this doesn't matter.

Right?

Like lo-fi hip hop, beat.

I mean, sorry.

I put a lot of thought.

Yeah, I see that.

I don't, so I don't,

I guess when I hear my voice, I don't think ostinato or

deep, you know what I mean?

I feel like I hear like, What's that thing on Instagram, that song like *sings

a jaunty circus-like carnival song.

Or maybe, like an ice-cream truck* whatever that that song is.

Um, but I think it's, it's beautiful.

It is

very lovely.

I think so, too.

Thank you.

I do.

I think we're just trying to in culture building, this is, it's a huge task.

It's not some little tiny thing that we're trying to shy away from it in some ways,

like, if we want to extend that metaphor.

Yes, we are trying to take this ring.

White supremacy and White shame and throw this into the fires of

release Gollum

from yeah.

And yeah, like race and racism is some serious work no that's serious.

Yeah.

And I think we're also two very silly people sometimes.

Gosh.

So yeah, I don't, I just didn't want to make light no,

no.

And it definitely doesn't do that.

Um, it's definitely.

Oh,

*cackles* *lots of

laughs* oh,

I am my mother's daughter.

Bless her heart.

It

speaks to exactly what's at the heart of the matter, which is something.

That, like you said is repeated over and over again.

And something.

That's going to take a lot of work and a lot of care and time

to rectify and it's a lofty goal.

And I don't think we're expecting ourselves to fix it all.

But we're reaching towards making a way so that others can join in the work and,

and together we can fix the problem.

Right.

A pretty huge

problem.

So I think it's perfect is what I'm trying to say.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Cause I worked really hard on it.

*both laugh*

You didin't make it.

I am a social worker by trade and by training and one of the very first

things that you learn on the ground running is you have to meet your clients

where they are not where you want them to be, not where they were, but where

they are walking through your door that day, and it's going to change constantly.

And so you have to always be mindful and always be present as to who and how.

Someone is showing up to, uh, become more happy, healthy, and productive

humans in this large co-created world.

And we're all defining that for ourselves.

We're defining that for our families, for our communities, for our neighborhoods

and the more clients were coming in, having conversations of race and racism.

I realized not only in.

The folks that I was serving, but also within myself that these were

actually trauma responses that we were having as White people talking

about race and racism, irritability, hostility, depression, anxiety,

shame, grief, reactions, feelings of vulnerability, emotional detachment

these are trauma responses.

These are delayed emotional reactions to trauma that we can get stuck in.

And yet the larger social narrative that we were having around race and

racism is that White people are the traumatizers not the traumatized.

So I was trying to figure out how we reconcile these two pieces

until I began to understand Perpetrator Induced Traumatic Stress.

Uh, but then also intergenerational trauma and how that shows up in our bodies.

And so while we were founded on the principle that hurt people

can hurt people, White people are hurting and our healing as possible.

We're really driven by the work of undoing traumas, uh, the traumas of White people

and the traumas of the White experience, uh, and holding that trauma informed work.

Can have radical implications for how we understand compassion, love,

empathy, understanding, and patience.

This work is not about creating excuses.

It's about better understanding where White people are coming from so that

we're meeting people where they're at and investing in healing as prevention work.

Our society has created a fairly solid single story narrative

about Whiteness and White people.

And it reinforces the desire to shame and isolate Whiteness

and White people and to that.

I simply ask is what we're doing, actually working?

More White people voted for president Trump's make America great again, campaign

in 2020, than in 2016, and CRT became the wedge issue of the 2021 elections.

I'd argue that it's not working and that new approaches are needed.

And when we say we, we mean White people here at The Spillway.

I am not trying to have this conversation with anyone other than White people as

a White person, I need to stay and want this stay in my lane I'm not trying

to do, nor do I intend to tell folks of Color how to act, think, or behave.

These conversations and actions are for White people.

And because White organizing has historically been about maintaining

dominance, White people talking with other White people has

happened behind closed doors in back rooms or in secret societies.

And The Spillway is not that.

All of our materials method and practice is freely available on our

social media channels and website.

And to break this theory down and this action down, we're going to

have many teach-ins to explore the underpinnings of The Spillway.

In the first season of The Spillway podcast, we're going to unpack

perpetration induced, traumatic stress, intergenerational trauma,

and the origins of The Spillway.

And we'll have longer episodes where we interview folks working through

their experiences of being White.

Sometimes that will look like thought leaders and scholars in the field.

And other times it will be in groups of everyday White folks.

Just trying to make sense of the changing world as White people, we

cannot fit the entire experience of Whiteness and White culture into a

single season of The Spillway podcast.

If there's a specific or even general topic that you'd like to see addressed.

Explored or unpacked in season two, don't hesitate to drop us

a line at info@thespillway.org I N F o@thespillway.org.

That's a little bit of our roadmap and where we're headed in season one.

For now let's return to our inaugural chat where I'm joined with my

copilot, Jenny, and you can get to know your crew for this journey.

I just got home from therapy and I was telling me therapist, uh, about the

podcast and they're super excited about.

Um, but they were wanting to know who we're talking to.

And so I was telling them some of our guests and I was telling them

what one of them were saying about preciousness and they stopped.

And they were like, Loran!

That is not the way that we talk about White people and racial justice at all.

White people are not precious.

Like that's the first thing you learn.

The very first thing that you.

Um, all of our work is about like un- doing it and un- learning that.

And so here I am, I'm trying to maybe push back on that a little bit.

Just a skoch um, I think we can get a little bit further with honey than

vinegar, and then I'm just trying to like genuinely figure out why we're

building, uh, anti-racists movements.

on shame.

Like I get it, like, I think at its core, like I think I understand it of like,

yes, awful atrocities have happened.

Yeah.

And what future, what culture are we actively trying to build?

And sometimes I think we get stuck in trying to address the hurts and

harms while also trying to address the infrastructure of our relationships.

And I think that that's where if we didn't like lose.

The humanity of each other.

If we lose each, each of our individual preciousness, not that one person is more

precious than the other, or one person has more humanity than, than the other.

But if we're able to access that and actually say, oh yeah, we're doing

this because we're human because we love each other because at the very

core of your being is lovability.

Ooh, I like imagine what we could build

I guess too, you know, it's how do we do that while still

paying homage to our pain, right?

Like you want to, right?

Like, you don't want to negate pain or suffering.

You want to honor it, which is something that one guest also said.

Then, if you're not truly honoring your pain, you're lying

and you can't move forward.

So it's like, how do we do

both?

The Resmaa Menakem quote that White people need to be doing this work

Black people need to be doing this work.

And we probably should not be doing this in the exact same space

because we have to heal and to heal.

We've got attended to wounds.

That's our business and that's no one else's business.

Um, part of the problem with White people is that we've

made it other people's business

And so one of the goals of The Spillway is to make sure that we are making

sure that it's our business and we're not making it other people's business,

that we're going to stay in our lane.

Right.

And we're going to do our healing work to make sure that we can support the

healing spaces for other folks too.

Yeah.

So in starting this podcast after probably what was this?

Four or five months of starting The Spillway on social media.

I realized very quickly that people need to hear these ideas

and conversations in person.

Like there needs to be an actual, like a doing of the thing.

Um, rather than this kind of passive, oh, I just scrolled past your thing or

I like kind of get it, or I don't know.

Uh, there's this, there's a lot of seeing that's happening now.

We've got to do a lot of talking and then we can go into the, do see hear

that kind of like learning model.

So I have asked one of my favorite people in the entire world.

She's ridiculously smart.

She is hilarious.

If you have an opinion about an author, She as well has

an opinion about that author.

She has probably read that author and could maybe quote, a couple of good book

titles, uh, that you should be reading.

She has the heart of like a whale that gets massive and she

cares a great deal about me.

And so she has been incredibly patient and compassionate in this

journey with me as I was like, Hey Jenny, I want to help White people.

You want to do what?

Uh, and so talking with her, uh, about race and racism

as two White people has been both super, um, educational for me.

Um, but it's also changed the way that I approach this work uh, especially

because they come from academia where everyone likes to talk in

14 syllable words and say, uh, you know, 20 words when they could have

said one, just to say yes or no.

And Jenny loves to cut through the bullshit.

And so, uh, I also felt like it was important to have Jenny here too,

because she's a bullshit cutter.

And we'll just say, I don't know that doesn't make sense.

I don't get that.

Don't do that.

Why are you doing that?

Uh, so it grounds me in this really lovely way and it also,

I think, elevates the work.

I think it elevates it because it makes it more accessible.

It makes it more approachable and it makes it more personable because of that.

So really I should be thanking

you.

Um, but thank you for joining me so much

Thanks for having me.

It's very, it's an honor.

Please tell me about this honor.

*both laugh* Tell me about the honor.

So essentially, so when you started this journey, I was like,

God dammit, like why this way?

Why?

But, um, the more that I, and I do care immensely about

you, so you could basically.

You know, anyway, we won't go there because it's inappropriate, but

I'm going to go there.

Where are you gonna say,

I was gonna say you could basically shit in my hand and I'd be

like, oh my God, it's so beautiful.

But this is what that kind of minimizes.

Why we're here.

Um, the more I spoke to you about this work and the more you taught me about

social justice, I became aware of.

This piece of my life that was missing, um, this piece of understanding

that I didn't have and my ability to be like, oh, I don't know.

I'm not saying I'm just now don't see that.

And, uh, I think it happened a lot too, when we were talking in terms

of your gender and gender in general, that's really where it started.

But then when you began on this path to help White people and you founded

The Spillway and I was, you know, engaged in your work and we were

talking about it as it was happening, sort of in real time, uh, Uh, realized

how much I avoid discussions about race and racism and real life.

You know, Instagram is one thing, but being an actual conversation about it,

because I had so much shame and self hate and, you know, ignorance about the history

of race and racism and, you know, my own, my own background as a White person.

And.

That I realized that, oh, I re I really need this work.

Cause originally I was just going to support you because

you're you and I love you.

Um, but then I was like, oh no, but I need help help me!

So, um, and I believe in the message, you know, I also think the most

important piece for me was to take the responsibility of White people healing

off of the doorstep of people, of Color

and into, into a space where it's, you know, like away from they've, they

don't need to be our healers, you know, they've had, they have enough and, and

are doing enough and it's our turn.

So to do our own work.

Right.

And that was the only reason that I felt that it was okay to start.

The Spillway was because of.

Folks of Color had said repeatedly and have said repeatedly for decades,

if not centuries White people, I need you to start loving yourself.

Because once you love yourself, this was James Baldwin.

Once you start loving yourself, the "Black problem" so to speak goes

away, the existence of Blackness goes away because all that, that

was was, you're not loving yourself.

Right.

And then that turns into like Bayard Rustin.

What is loved can be cured love for yourself, fix that, fix that um, and

so, yeah, this is White people work.

This is the work that White people have to do.

And I, and I think that that was the thing that I kept hearing in social justice

spaces well White people have to do the work, White people have to do the work.

Okay.

Well, what was the work like?

You keep saying that, but then like, what are we supposed to do?

What are we supposed to do?

Because White people and anti-racism work a White people.

Are just supposed to keep educating ourselves.

Education is supposed to be this like silver bullet.

That's supposed to change everything.

Um, but then like, as we saw in 2020, what happens after your book club ends or did

like, did people actually embody this?

Did people actually change their communities or their homes?

Their neighborhoods.

And I think in large part, no, because then look at what happened

a year later when we're looking at the elections, uh, of school

boards and the conversation of CRT.

I think people went back to this like, oh, Nope.

I need to go back to safety,

uh, on this podcast, Jenny and I are going to take us along on some

really, I think some fun interviews, some challenging interviews, um,

some sad interviews, um, but also some really, uh, engaging interviews.

And I think in order for you, the listener to.

To be on this journey with us and for you to feel like, yeah,

we exist between your ears.

We want, we want to exist between your heart to open within your heart too um,

so I thought I may be helpful for us to kind of locate ourselves, give a little

bit about like who we are, maybe share a little bit of our racial origin stories.

Um, Because we're two very different people.

We're very, very, very similar.

We're very, very different.

And that's what I think makes our relationship really lovely.

Um, so Jenny, I would love to hear kind of your racial origin story growing

up in Texas, and then moving to New York city in 2004, where we met each

other, um, that kind of gap between.

Uh, before 2004, who is that person?

Who are you?

Oh man.

from Drop Dead Gorgeous* "Who are you?

It's a little game we play".

Um, so first of all, I'm White, which just want to point that out.

I'm from Texas born and raised, spent my formative years there.

My parents were in their late thirties, mid forties when they had me.

One of them is hails from Europe and the other one came from the east coast.

From an Italian-American background.

So very, very different folks living under one roof, just,

just to smidge I'm an only child.

So, and we didn't live near family.

So it was definitely a sort of a.

Time capsule of, of hurts and stuff.

There was a lot going on.

Um, in my memory, at least it wasn't super happy, you know, childhood, but

in terms of, of what we're talking about though, I was raised to view

myself as, as an actual minority.

Hmm in the town that I lived in, I was raised to understand my place

in the world as a victim, not just racially, but in every aspect.

What do you mean by every

aspect?

So if something wasn't happening the way that I thought it should, or the way

that somebody around me thought it should in regards to my advancement in life,

then it was because of someone else.

So, um, it wasn't just something that happened or maybe I didn't put the

work in or whatever the case may be.

It was always because I wasn't seen as someone who needed help or assistance.

Right, right.

Um, so at the same time though, I was, I was taught to not expect handouts.

Handouts it's in quotes to not expect help, to not ask for help, to, to

keep everything close to the vest.

I think the phrase was don't air, our dirty laundry.

It was asked of me why I couldn't just shut up, you know, stuff like that.

So anyway, so you know, all of that sort of informed how I viewed the world.

So with that lens in mind, when I went into school, Race and

racism, uh, was presented in a way that placed them in the past.

So they were taught in history classes.

And so we were, it was, the framing was like, this happened a long time ago before

you were born for your parents were born.

So, you know, it's, uh, it was awful and, you know, things were bad, but

now it's over so we can move forward.

And even though all of this is sort of going on.

I had most of my friends were Hispanic or, or people of Color I

think I had the whole, like, I don't see color thing maybe going on.

My, my worldview was super narrow.

So not only was I sort of like prisoner to this house of three people

who didn't understand each other.

And there was a lot of turmoil, but I was also, you know, in a schooling

system that focused on race and racism.

As a past thing that happened.

And also, um, didn't really take a wider view of the world.

We had a lot of Texas history and so my, yeah, my view of life was super narrow.

It wasn't very nuanced.

That stuff didn't happen until I moved to New York city.

Yeah.

I definitely get better of feeling the colorblind lens.

Oh, my parents rocked that one so hard, so hard.

I I'm White.

I grew up in Colorado and one of the earliest stories that I ever

heard about race actually came from an incident with my grandpa.

My dad was a basketball coach and before the kids came in the

picture, they were bringing some of the, uh, the basketball troop.

What are they called?

Basketball.

Thank you as a team, the team,

I love that you turned it into

theater.

Troupe came over.

We're like, can we stay at your house, grandpa?

Uh, literally that's what happened?

Um, so my dad was bringing, uh, a basketball player over to.

Uh, their hometown, they lived like six hours away.

Um, and they were like coming in for a night or something and

they were like, oh, he just needs a place to stay for the night.

Cause we're here for this conference or whatever.

And my grandpa was like, no, he can't stay here.

And then like why, what are you talking about?

Oh, cause he's Black and I didn't really, like, I didn't know

that about my grandpa until.

Uh, like my parents told me the story.

I just thought he was like this really angry curmudgeonly human,

who just likes hated everybody,

everybody.

It didn't matter every, yeah.

Except for the dog.

Love for the dog.

Of tippy Joe tippy, Joe tippy, Joe.

Um, but just like hated people and specifically like, didn't want this

Black person saying under his roof.

Um, and so it was this like story that my parents told me to like, point

out that they were good White people.

What I was like, oh, I want to put this roof over the Black person's head or I

want to show you that I am not my grandpa, or I'm like, "I'm not my dad" to kind of

like, create this distance of me, not him.

Um, but also this like, "oh times have changed."

Cause I remember thinking like, why would grandpa say that?

Like that's just bad.

That's racist grandpa.

That that was always the response times are just different.

The times were just different than, uh, as if it was okay then right.

And with that, there was the really intense kind of political

charge that ran through our family.

And I think a lot of that happened to do with my dad having.

Fairly prominent public position with a local public school district.

And so our family was constantly under this microscope of what is

acceptable and what is not acceptable.

So we were, we were taught very early and very clearly you do not

see color, just don't see color.

Like that was just the, uh, the political thing to do was

to just see people as people.

But not as individuals if that makes sense.

There was, um, respect their blanket, humanity, but not

their individual differences.

It was like holding that, but also at the same time, I'm holding that,

uh, within our family photo albums, there are family members in blackface.

And there are people laughing because you know, because

"it's just a different time."

Right?

And so holding these multitudes at the same time left for this really kind

of confusing, but very clear, uh, kind of narrative that race and racism is

something you just don't talk about.

Um, or when you do you just say, oh, it doesn't happen anymore

because that's a different time.

It's like, oh, now that maybe it's now that we're in the, there, it's

just going to be completely different.

And I'm like having these conversations or not having these conversations,

uh, with family, both like immediate and extended and like,

uh, like intensely segregated area.

Like if you, there was a town and if you imagine a donut around the

town, Around the perimeter was where all of the White people lived.

Um, and then in inside the donut, the donut hole is where

all of the folks of Color lived.

It was interesting that you would like live in this like

predominantly White area.

And then when you were to go into town to go to Walmart, to go to Kmart,

go to the movies, that's where you actually saw people who looked different

from you or looked differently.

And yes, it wasn't like a completely like 50, 50 split.

Like the town that I, the neighborhood that I grew up in was like 60.

I looked at the demographics on this that's 65% White, 30% Hispanic, 5%

mixed race and 4% Native, Black or Asian, but then in the city was 44%

White, 49% Hispanic and 6% mixed race.

So it was almost like a switch.

So yeah, it was like we're having these conversations, but White

flight has also already occurred.

And so we now don't have to have these conversations because

we've made it to be that way.

That was kind of my upbringing up to 2004.

I'm moving to New York and then everything immediately and rapidly changed.

Once you go and just stand on the corner of 71st and Columbus for 30 seconds, you

see more and different people than you've ever seen before in your entire life.

And it's magical and important and transformative and educational.

And.

humbling to have about 18 year old going what?

The world looks like this,

there was this.

Really kind of peculiar moment that I've had on my life that I don't

know if a lot of other White people have shared, um, uh, for a very

long time, I worked at a nonprofit, uh, supporting LGBTQ young folks.

And for about, I want to say maybe half of the time that I worked there,

I was the only White direct service provider and the majority of our.

Clients and the young people that came through the doors, uh, we're

an, our youth of Color and so I had this really interesting and unique

experience of sometimes being the only White person in the space.

And this would go on for months, if not years, where I came to understand kind of.

But kind of preciousness that comes with being the only in

a space when it comes to race.

And there were times when.

I was asked to leave spaces because not because of who I am, but because of who

I represented or because who I reminded people of, or I would ask permission

to come into spaces because I knew that it wasn't about me, but it was about

the color of my skin for some folks that they just needed a healing space.

And actually just to not see a White person that day, because there had

been some pain that had happened.

Uh, there were also other times where I got to be the spokesperson

for all the White people.

And they would say Loran, "why do White people...?"

Or "Loran, what are White people doing with..."

"Loran?

What are..., why are..., who are...," and I would not trade that experience

for the world that it really White me.

Exist and live in my Whiteness in a way that I could not hide from it.

I could not say, oh, no, I'm not White I couldn't, I couldn't turn it off.

I couldn't live in this colorblind world that my parents had tried to raise me on.

I really had to lean into it.

And so it really uniquely situated me to see a race in this very different way.

Um, but in that, uh, there were some White people that were on staff and we

would talk a lot about what it meant to be White uh, and what it meant to

be White and showing up at that space.

And we would use these, that credentialing, these words, these actions,

this rigidity, and thinking, um, sometimes to make it safe, to have conversations

and safe and, and air quotes here.

Um, because we wanted to make sure that we weren't hurting people.

Um, and sometimes hurting people meant also like hurting ourselves.

Um, but we weren't naming that.

Yeah, we were just wanting to make sure that we were doing as much

work as we could on the outside to make sure that we weren't hurting

folks of Color on the inside.

Um, but to do that, we were completely burning ourselves at both ends, um,

to make sure that we were like being the good White as much as possible.

And it was fucking exhausting.

It was exhausting.

Um, because I didn't think about my own humanity in the process.

Right.

I was so wrapped up in another person's humanity, um, that I didn't care about me.

And so it wasn't sustainable.

And in that, if it's not sustainable, then it's actually not justice.

Right.

Right.

Also like, who is it serving?

Right.

Who was it actually serving?

And then is it, oh, are you just doing this out of guilt?

Right.

That that's really where The Spillway came in and that I kept hearing.

No, no, no, no, no White people will always be racist.

Always, always, always be racist.

And it didn't make sense to me because I didn't know what we're fighting for then.

Because I kept on this one side seeing, uh, me being this, this quest to be the

good White person where it wasn't causing any harm to any person of Color ever.

But I was completely negating myself and then thinking, oh, wow,

it's always going to be this way.

It will forever be this way.

And then I found out that White people are going to become a racial minority by 2045.

And then that really hit me twice of well, wait, then it can't be that way.

Because what happens when there are more folks of Color in the U.S.

Than there are White people than how we're like defining racism as power plus

discrimination, uh, racial discrimination equals racism and social power will shift.

Social power will inevitably shift, oh wait, racism and race

are also social constructs.

So how can they be these socially constructed things, but have these

inherently defined characteristics, like all of these pieces really

started to kind of zap Into my head throughout graduate school.

Um, and so bringing in my racial biography, bringing in, um, my work

history really helped kind of solidify the need for The Spillway and to see

White people as full complex nuanced human beings, uh, who also need to

take care of ourselves and themselves.

Uh, in order to be productive and loving, full rich, nuanced humans in the world.

So this work is different.

Uh, this work is different than what we're seeing in current social justice circles,

and that this focuses on preventative work and this focuses on harm reduction

in a way that focuses on healing rather than an education for White people.

This is a preventative method, uh, thinking about anti-racism,

um, for folks of Color, but then harm reduction for White people.

Because as the second tenant, I understand them as the second tenant

of critical race theory is interest convergence, uh, with Derrick Bell

and that is, uh, that nothing.

In terms of racial justice, racial equity is going to happen unless White people

sign on board, um, White people have to understand that racism also impacts us.

And part of it is by its ability to completely eviscerate

our own humanity completely.

Um, and so through that, that as harm reduction for us, This is a harm

reduction service for White people.

And that service looks like listening to this podcast, uh, communing with

the podcast, but also like sharing in the community and the online spaces.

Um, as much as we can start.

And then from here trying to figure out what we can then build, if there's

additional things that we need to build in order to start building a positive,

compassionate patient understanding and empathetic root not a branch,

not a tentacle, a root something.

That's going to stay within White culture because to me, White culture is already

incredibly textured and incredibly varied and massive, uh, and sometimes beautiful

and inspiring and sometimes terrifying.

Um, and.

And I just want to see a little bit more emotional connectivity with that.

Yep.

If you could say one thing to White people right now, what, what would it be?

What would be the most important thing at this moment that you

feel you need to say to them?

Shit, Jenny, um, One thing?So much of White history, uh, and of

White ancestry is about fleeing pain.

A majority of White people in the us pinpoint to their family lineages and

look to Europe and say, we fled soemthing.

We were running from a hurt and we landed here and we never fully acknowledged

that hurt and we kept running with that.

And what I want to say is come here,

just bring it there.

We'll just bring it right here.

You don't have to run anymore.

You don't have to flee anymore.

Bring it right here.

It's over.

You don't have.

You don't have to, the only reason that you would have to

as if you're not ready yet.

And when you're ready, we're going to be right here.

And maybe you're not ready today or tomorrow, but when you are, we're going

to greet you the exact same than we would have if we were to greet you today

but we don't have to hold on to that pain anymore.

That intergenerational trauma that hurt.

The historical trauma that we hold, we didn't choose that for ourselves.

And so let's stop choosing it as an identity.

Let's stop choosing it as a personality trait because it's not serving those

around us and it's not serving us.

Yeah, totally

that's

lovely

Thank

you.

You're

fucking lovely.

You're fucking lovely.

I'm so excited to do this with you, and now it's going to be on the fun.