Welcome to The Spillway.

If this is your first time here, we ask that you please start with this episode. We don't want to throw you into the deep end.

Join Loran as we go over the foundation of The Spillway and the best tips and tricks as to how to approach this series. Ultimately, this is a work that is more like a book than a conventional podcast and is constructed as a serial.

==========

In the episode Loran references research about White people's responses to race and racism which may be found here.

Martin Luther King's 1965 "The American Dream" Speech is here.

Sonya Renee Taylor's full speech is here.

James Baldwin's full speech and text of The Fire Next Time is here. (audiobook read by Jesse L. Martin)

Toni Morrison's interview with Charlie Rose is here.

RuPaul's iconic catchphrase is used in every episode of RuPaul's Drag Race. A selected montage on YouTube is here.

Rev. angel Kyodo williams and Jasmine Syedullah, PhD's full text from Radical Dharma: Talking Race. Love. and Liberation is here.

Resmaa Menakem's book My Grandmother's Hands is here. (audiobook read by Cary Hite)

==========

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

What does it mean to be White in the United States today?

There's not really a consensus.

I mean, across the board, the most consistent voices are full of

White supremacy and White shame.

So this right here, this is what

we're not gonna do on my page.

We're not gonna come in with White fragility and White guilt and all

don't blame, all White people.

The problem is White people.

That's the fucking problem.

This is gonna get me in a lot of hot water, but I'm gonna

say it unpopular opinion.

So assuming that there is a little White privilege, let's

just take that for granted.

People never done anything for me.

Didn't you hear White people only do shit when it's like for themselves.

That's you know, that's what White people do.

The dysregulation of White people is what produces violent.

The truth that the most racist, evil people in America are White liberals.

This is one of the many, 2 63 reasons that I hate my own life.

So, no, there's no such thing as White pride in part, because

there is no White culture.

I feel so attacked right now.

I dunno what to do, but, um, for you to make this about race,

this had nothing to do with race.

I'm definitely gonna get hate for sharing my opinion, but it has to be

said, so this guy's a professional race.

Baer.

The existence of a White American culture would make.

Complicated, right.

I mean, I, I think the country is fragmenting because at the end of

the day, racial differences cannot fundamentally be breached ever.

We're becoming the only virus that needs to be killed

And like any social identity being White isn't about one thing

or another this either, or identity.

What does it mean to be White in the us today without supremacy or shame or

Is that even possible?

Who are White people?

What are White people?

Where, when, why are White people?

So many of these questions have already been answered and in a really significant

way, White people aren't, or haven't been the ones answering these questions.

Data from pew shows that the majority of White people

don't like to talk about race.

Or racism.

And we especially don't like talking about race or racism with

people who aren't White, either.

We've White people we've even gone so far as to legislate how we

can or cannot talk about race or racism in our education settings.

And as of this recording, seven states have banned critical

race theory from its classrooms.

While 16 state legislatures have proposed bans to be debated and decided

in upcoming legislative session.

In total, though, more than three quarters of the country has gone

through this debate of critical race theory or CRT for short in its state

legislatures and all of this with the primary emotional argument, being that no

child should feel bad about their race.

And that's a really important argument and it's not the full

emotional experience required to build toward our collective liberation.

At least that's what the science is saying.

Research out of the university of Nashville in Maryland have

found that there's a sweet spot in talking, feeling, doing around race

and racism within White people.

That actually makes an important difference for the good there's a,

uh, this like spectrum of responses that White people have around race

and racism and researchers identified them as avoidance, guilt and shame.

Avoidance, they actually call it negation in the study.

Avoidance basically says that race and racism don't matter.

And then on the opposite side of the spectrum is shame, which boils down

to White people who hate themselves or other White people and wish that

they themselves were not always White.

Now researchers found that the more psychologically avoidant.

Or emotionally shaming White people are of themselves or others.

The more likely these two groups of people are to not do anything productive

for our collective liberation.

Let me say this a different way.

If you avoid, or you don't think about race or racism and how it

negatively impacts everyone, but especially people of Color, you are

likely to do more racist things.

And simultaneously if you hyper fixate on the emotional damage and wreckage that

racism has created in the us leading you to disassociate from your being White or

making you hate yourself or other White people because of their being White.

You too, are more likely to do racist things to people of Color.

Researchers found that along the political spectrum, more people who want to avoid

conversations, vote for Republicans and more people who have shame around there

being White vote for Democrats Q Malcolm X here talking about White liberals.

There are many Whites who are trying to solve the problem, but

you never see them going under the label of liberals that, that White

person that you see calling himself a liberal is the most dangerous thing

in the entire Western hemisphere.

He's the most deceitful.

He's like a Fox and a Fox is almost, is always more dangerous

in the forest than the Wolf.

You can see the Wolf coming, you know what he's up.

but the Fox will fool you.

He comes at you with his mouth shaped in such a way that even though you

see his teeth, you think he's smiling.

Interestingly, this third category though emerges from

the data empathetic behavior.

They call it built, but their descriptor sounds a lot more like

empathy to me than anything else.

Quote, I feel sad about the history of racism in the us and quote.

This empathy response had the highest rates to both happier and healthier

emotional, psychological states and the greater likelihood for action

towards our collective liberation.

People are thinking and feeling about race and racism, which is different

from those who avoid, but not to the point of making someone else's pain,

your pain, which is different from those who feel and perform shame.

So there's this like sweet spot that we're aiming for that requires

emotional intelligence of us and not avoidance or codependence.

But how do we get there in this current climate at The Spillway, we're creating

a space using critical race theory and not just critical race theory as

a pseudonym for talking about race and racism and the misnomers of CRT that

have flooded the mainstream discourse, but the actual legal framework of

critical race theory of interest conversions from CR T's found from CRTs

foundational texts by Derrick Bell, cuz here's a really hard pill to swallow.

The more we as White people, decenter White voices and White needs, the

less sustainable racial justice work will become the further away

our collective liberation is.

Yes, White people have had the mic for centuries.

I understand the impulse to pull the power cord.

And how do we get this current contingent of 231.9 million

weight people in the us on board.

Are we just supposed to replicate the tools of Whiteness and White supremacy?

Or can we at least try something else as interest convergence?

So eloquently theorizes, every step, every single step towards systemic

equity in this country has required that White straight says, men sign off on it.

I'm not saying it's right.

Interest.

Convergence just says that equity in this country has required very

specific people to sign off on.

You, and I both need that policymaker, that legislator, that CEO, that principal

pointed towards our liberation, mind you policymakers, legislators, CEOs, and

principals decision makers are starting to look and identify as something

different from White straits or men.

And that shift is terrifying the hell out of some.

Well, a lot of White people right now, and a core philosophy

of The Spillway is just this.

We're gonna get a lot farther in our liberation with honey than

with vinegar and Hey, I get it.

Shaming power holders can feel really good and can get some

really surprising short term gains.

But, but the energy of shame.

That we put into that person rots and it rots into an insurrection into another

teenager, led mass shooting into 31 White nationalists piling into a U-Haul

headed to an LGBTQ pride event in Idaho.

Hurt people can hurt people.

We know this data and more than a century of social science backs this up yet.

One of the many things currently building the White nationalist movement

is the ability for White people to hold and acknowledge other White people's

feelings and hurts that's space.

Doesn't exist outside of White nationalism.

That's an egregious mistake.

The more we trivialize or minimize these hurts.

The more we fuel that movement.

When in the history of ever has laughing at or telling someone

to get over it ever healed an emotional or psychological wound.

At The Spillway, a key distinction is that we see here and hold White pain

and rage with tenderness and movements towards our collective liberation,

actualizing our full humanity.

And you'll find that everything we talk about here, unless specifically labeled

as an exception to this rule is this.

We are White people talking to White people about White people, things.

And if you take that as anything that we say or do here as a critique complaint

or analysis of people of Color, you've grossly misunderstood our work and

perhaps the importance of how holding this type of healing space for White

people is so critical to our shared work.

There are safe spaces for White people to be in multiracial conversations.

There are braver spaces for White people to show up in multiracial

conversation and take a backseat.

There are even spaces for White people to show up and mobilize for people of Color.

And yet what we don't have are spaces for White people to collectively

or individually heal ourselves.

This space is important because it's this really critical work folks of Color

have asked White people to do for decades that we just haven't made space for,

or as Martin Luther king says in 1965,

maybe we've spent far too much of our money

establishing military bases around the world, rather than bases of

genuine concern and understanding.

All I'm saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated.

We are tied in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment

of destiny, whatever affects one directly affect all indirectly strange.

Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until

you are what you ought to be.

And you can never be what you ought to be until I am.

What I ought to be.

This is the interrelated structured of reality,

Dr.

King, Dr.

King, isn't the first or the last person of Color to talk about healing or holding

White people's hurts, arms and trauma.

White people have been asked repeatedly to listen center and create action

around the asks of people of Color.

And if we scratch the surface, just scratch.

A theme begins to emerge from academics to civil rights

leaders, to primetime television.

And this isn't from some fringe, civil rights or collective liberation movement.

This is.

Sonya Renee Taylor,

without taking care of your trauma.

It is the tool you'll always go to acting in violence, to the

people of Color in the world.

While you're proclaiming you wanna be a good White person, a woke White person.

You, you know, you disavow racism, but you're still using Whiteness as

the, the tool to reestablish power.

And it's cuz you haven't dealt with your trauma, go to therapy, deal

with your shit, deal with your shit.

So you can stop harming people of Color.

James Baldwin,

White people in

James Baldwin (read by Jesse L. Martin):

this country will have quite enough

James Baldwin (read by Jesse L. Martin):

to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other.

James Baldwin (read by Jesse L. Martin):

And when they have achieved this, which will not be tomorrow and may very well be

James Baldwin (read by Jesse L. Martin):

never, the Negro problem will no longer exist for it will no longer be needed.

Tony Morrison.

How do you feel?

Not you, Charlie rose, but don't you understand that the people who do

this thing who practice racism right?

Are bereft.

There is something distorted about the psyche.

It's a huge waste and it's a corruption and a distortion.

It's like, it's a profound neurosis that nobody examines for what it is.

It feels crazy.

It is crazy.

And it leaves, it has just as much of a deleterious effect

on White people and possibly.

Equal as it does Black people, my feeling is White.

People have a very, very serious problem and they should start thinking

about what they can do about it.

Take me out of it.

Ru Paul, if you can't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?

Reverend angel, Kyoto williams,

once you are aware of how you are being pleased,

you can begin the process of self Liber from the position of realizing the

mutuality of our liberation, rather than suffering under the delusion

that you are doing something for.

There is an intimacy in that realization.

Jasmine Syedullah,

we wonder how Whiteness could be both the

problem and the best exit strategy, the problem, and the final solution.

mind you, not every person of Color feels this way that White

people need to work on healing and loving ourselves, or to reframe

that, getting our shit together.

Folks of Color are not a monolith before, during, and after starting The Spillway.

I've heard in no uncertain terms that some folks of Color cringe at our mission

while others exhale a sigh of relief.

This is not the only path towards liberation.

This is merely one of them.

And if this doesn't work for you as a White person, that's okay.

Not everything in this world was made for you.

White people really struggle with this one.

One of the first lessons of The Spillway is that we have to make

our own informed decisions as White people, as Resmaa Menakem says, and

this is an excerpt from his book.

My grandmother's hands on audiobook.

Resmaa Menakem (audiobook by Cary Hite):

There are no shortcuts or workarounds.

Resmaa Menakem (audiobook by Cary Hite):

There is simply a choice.

Resmaa Menakem (audiobook by Cary Hite):

Clean pain and healing or dirty pain and more trauma.

Resmaa Menakem (audiobook by Cary Hite):

There is possibility.

Resmaa Menakem (audiobook by Cary Hite):

And there is peril to all my White countrymen.

Resmaa Menakem (audiobook by Cary Hite):

I say this not only is it not my business to lead you out of White

Resmaa Menakem (audiobook by Cary Hite):

body supremacy, but I would do you a profound, disservice by trying to do so.

Resmaa Menakem (audiobook by Cary Hite):

You need to develop, lift up and follow your own leaders in the work

Resmaa Menakem (audiobook by Cary Hite):

of dissolving White body supremacy

Resmaa Menakem (audiobook by Cary Hite):

if you don't, if you choose to follow a Black pied Piper, you will collectively

Resmaa Menakem (audiobook by Cary Hite):

reaffirm the myth of White fragility and helplessness in racialized contexts.

Resmaa Menakem (audiobook by Cary Hite):

You will also have no one to pass the Baton to when your Black savior

Resmaa Menakem (audiobook by Cary Hite):

retires dies or moves on, or turns out to be flawed, like all human beings.

So to do this work, we have to jump into some uncharted territory.

Because this isn't about replicating or appropriating the works of folks

of Color, which a lot of White people working in anti-racism do.

This is actually White people talking to White people about White people, things.

And before you get all flustered and unleash your unbridled shame culture at.

Which from White people usually sounds a lot like this.

I do not believe that White people should

ever position themselves as experts or leaders in this work.

We are to do our work, get our people and join in efforts in our local communities

to do the work, to dismantle all of the ways that structural racism manifests.

I believe that Black, Brown, Indigenous and non-Black people of Color are

the best qualified to lead us through the dismantling of White supremacist

violence, ideology, and delusion.

When White people set ourselves up as experts and earn money off

of the efforts of our anti-racism, we are causing violence.

We've got episodes and bonus materials for you.

If you wanna stick around and check out our frequently asked questions

on our website, or you're free to shame the book by its cover.

I'm joined on this journey with one of my favorite humans in the world.

Jenny, Jenny shares with me an unconditional love for our love together.

We've known each other for nearly 20 years and I'm only 73 days older than she is.

We've been around the sun, nearly the exact same amount of time as

each other and have loved each other for longer than before.

We never knew each other.

Importantly, Jenny comes to this work more from a place of avoidance

as I, from a place of shame.

Because this work is so relational, I thought it would be really

helpful to ask Jenny to be my co-pilot for this adventure.

So you can feel anchored in our love for each other.

And for you in showing up connection and relationship building

has to be our starting point.

If we see each other as someone that needs to be fixed, how

do we build trust from that?

We just don't.

We want you to feel part of this process and in digital and remote

format that requires creating familiar touch points or points of reference.

So Tiffany and I will open and close each episode with anecdotes, failures, stories,

or reflections around the specific topics.

But this first episode, this first episode is really special and important because

it's just about getting to know each other because that's truly how we start.

And don't be surprised if it's not going as fast as you want it to be.

We're building connective tissue here to support a sustainable ecosystem of change.

We're not rushing in with a bulldozer and some sticks of dynam.

That's not sustainable or altogether healthy when we're gonna repeat ourselves.

Some, we always hear things differently the second time around, and we're gonna

slow down to 17 miles an hour as Fred jealous likes to say so that we can

easily distinguish our surroundings and ourselves we'll speed up.

Sure.

But there's a method to this process.

Building our positive relationships towards our collective liberation is

another reason why this work is meant to be experienced sequentially and an order.

This is a cereal.

It's not episodic.

If you think about what makes a relationship, a huge part of

that is time spent together.

If you're absent from half of the conversation or you duck in and

out, when it's convenient for you, you're gonna get a relationship

that's half full and sporadic.

We're here for movement building and not momentary gains being in good

relation means showing up in the good and the bad, the fast and the slow.

And you'll notice throughout the evolution of the series, we're talking

about gender as it relates to race.

Race is one social identity and it's a huge social marker.

That means so many things to so many different people.

Collective liberation means that we're seeing hearing and valuing

all parts of our experience.

So in this first season, we're looking at the intersection of race and gender

to build on our multiple ways of being.

And ultimately the work of The Spillway is about choosing

the path of love and empathy.

But in order to choose this path, you have to understand yourself

as lovable and see, hear, and feel what love in practice is and can be.

And that can be so jarring to hear right now.

Because we're constantly hearing:

So White people, I am not extending grace

to you because I don't have to.

And nor do Black people, Black people don't owe you shit.

They don't owe you.

Shit.

I don't give a fuck.

I just do not care about other people's White feelings.

Like I just don't.

Hello.

I'm sorry, you can't stand White people.

I can't stand us either half the time.

And my job is to shut other White people down when they wanna interrupt.

My job is to shut other White people down when they wanna

say, oh no, I'm not prejudice.

I'm a Democrat.

I'm accepting my job is to make sure that they get that they have privilege.

Yes, exactly.

I am the oppressor.

I am racist.

Just for clarity.

These are all White people talking.

These narratives reverberate throughout large swaths of White culture and in some

part for good reason, historically and currently White people have literally

shifted mass occurred, decimated imprisoned, poisoned, lied, and

cheated nearly the whole of the world to force submission and extraction.

There are calls every day to shut White people down and shut White people up

because we have had the mic for too long.

But when that call comes from inside the house, And White people appropriate

the harm, violence and conditions that Asian, native Latina, Southeast Asian,

Black, and marginalized populations of Color have been subjected to.

That just creates more harm in the form of distracting from their real harm and

making their pain yours when we cannot hold each other, when we cannot make

space for each other as White people.

And I wanna be very clear.

White people are hurting too.

We have specific hurts that we experience as White people.

It's not normal or healthy to dehumanize, avoid shame or other

people at every waking moment.

There are shoot blocks.

You'll arrive out in this process, which go through intergenerational trauma and

perpetration induced, traumatic stress.

Because the data and science that structures, The Spillway, all points

to racism and its explicit or implicit or systemic forms is, and has always

been a trauma response of White people.

Long story short, Marshall Rosenberg said it best "violence is often the

tragic expression of unmet needs" and that violence can come in the form

of White nationalism or cancellation campaigns or White saviorism.

Your choice.

Last, but not least.

They just wanna say this before we start this journey together because

perhaps it's the most important, well, this is all important, but The Spillway

is not a one stop shop right now.

We're trying to build one thing and build that one thing.

Well, healing, affinity and caucus spaces for White people.

Well, we do more things in the future maybe, but we wanna

get this first thing done.

So I wanna say these two things in reference to that.

Number one, educating ourselves as White people about histories, cultures,

ways of being for Indigenous Black, Asian, Southeast Asian Latina, and

marginalized populations is critical.

There are thousands of books, movies, magazines, podcasts, and

organizations doing this work from the position of lived experience.

We cannot stop educating ourselves and we have to support authors, public scholars,

creatives, and academics of Color.

Two.

Being in good relation with people of Color is critical and there's a billion

dollar industry devoted to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging

in our communities, our workplaces, boardrooms, and shared spaces.

We cannot slink into our individual room and tend our wounds all day, every day.

Learning about what it means to be White, creating White community and White

culture towards our collective liberation.

This is the work of White people we can do and hold multiple things.

At the same time, we can chew gum and walk.

As my acting teachers used to say, we've gotta heal ourselves while we continue

educating ourselves and being in good cross-cultural and racial relation.

And it's not easy for many of us, this feels like so much work and

that can lead to avoidance or shame.

And a large part of that is because we're just not used to talking or thinking

about race and racism because our parents or the communities that raised

us just didn't help us develop this muscle or these tools in the way that

folks of Color have had to for survival.

So be gentle with yourself.

We're here to hold you and to see you as White people, as

a White person, let's start.

As you have probably seen already.

We talk with a lot of different people of varying backgrounds and specialties

from White people who have started organizations to support men or White

women to White people working in somatics, ancestry and restorative justice.

We talk with an Ivy league professor for anonymous White men, and even the

former president and CEO of the NAACP.

And that's not even all of the episodes.

All of this is given to you with the hope and the intention that you will

bring this and these conversations into your homes, your neighborhoods, and

your communities, because we are all in this collective liberation together.