10,000 White Women: Doing the Work

Kelly: And if you haven’t heard of 10 Thousand White Women, you’re probably not alone.

Aurora: And that’s really because it is such a new project. We started it back in September 2018.

Kelly: How would you describe 10 Thousand White Women, Aurora?

Aurora: Well…10 Thousand White Women is a INTRODUCTORY workshop series that we facilitate with Lisa and Erica. Our intention is to bring awareness to the unconsciousness that white women have to their racism, and to see the ways white supremacy shapes our society. From there, white women may choose to make their own path into antiracism education and therapies.

Kelly: AKA wake them the hell up….And really Lisa and Erica are putting in the work. Because facilitating these workshops is so much more than just planning some group activities. It’s really about putting our own stories on the line.

Aurora: Well let’s get to it then…But before we jump in, there are some four letter words in this episode. So maybe spare the kids.

Kelly: Cue the tape.

Interview:

Aurora: So how about we start with everyone introducing each of them themselves and we’ll start with everyone introducing themselves and I think one of the great questions we love asking people is what’s the pronoun you use to describe yourself?

Erica: I’m Erica Taxin Bleznak, she/her/hers are the pronouns at this moment that I like to be referred by. I am the owner of Mainline Yoga Shala on the mainline in Philadelphia. I’m excited to be here.

Lisa: And I’m Lisa Lord. I go by she/her/hers. And I got recruited into this reluctantly at first and then drove in headfirst.

Kelly: As our illustrious facilitator.

Lisa: Correct. I run a consulting business. I worked in human resources for about 30 years and went out on my own and now I do executive coaching and leadership development and that’s my day job, my money job, but my passion now is in facilitating these workshops

Aurora: I reached a point in 2016 where something broke. Something broke with regards to what I continue to expect of myself of what I expected of my friendships and that is the beginning of I think this lovely union with these magnificent lovely friends that have committed themselves to do the work.

Kelly: Yeah sort of enter Robin DiAngelo’s book last year.

Aurora: Really that became at least the beginning of 10000 White Women: Doing the Work and the workshop that we’ve embarked on together in a co-creative effort. I was very clear on why I gave the book and bought many copies and gave them to many of my white girlfriends and colleagues and asked, “Please read the book. I’m giving you this book not to shame you not to berate you but to say. I love you and I would love for you to read this book because I need you to do better.” And the book was just for me a beautiful articulation of everything I had been feeling and knowing in the depths of my heart and soul but didn’t feel any one of you was hearing. And so that was for me how it landed. I’m really curious for each of you, how did it land when you received the book?

Erica: I think for me I thought I’d done a lot of this work. I went to a progressive Quaker school I you know enjoyed a very liberal education and so I felt on some level I had been living and doing the work. And what’s so interesting to me now having received the book and really reading it is to recognize how the work that I had done in the past was really about providing more about comfort for me and being able to sit more comfortably in my own life and to appease myself as opposed to completely dismantling some of the unconscious roots of my internalized racism and bias. So when I first received the book I felt like I’m gonna read this book and I already know what it’s going to be told to me. So I was a bit floored and really found myself moving through a lot of different emotions and resistance, anger, frustration and was surprised by that actually. And was surprised by my reaction and I felt like it’s interesting to notice my deep resistance to this and that means that something is being called forth for me to look at.

Lisa: For me it was really different because I can honestly say I’ve never done the work. I had this feeling from the time I was very young that I used to ask this weird question and Aurora knows this when I was growing up and even well into my thirties and having kids I would get treated some way and I would say, “I wonder if you’d treat me that way if I were Black?” And that was it. That was the only access to any kind of internalized racism and I wasn’t really connected with it. So when I got the book my reaction was completely different. First it his shame and embarrassment and humiliation that I’ve been walking around not knowing this. And then it was, wait a second I’ve been walking around not knowing this, I should learn more. And I started the book on audible and then I had to buy it. I was highlighting every other paragraph and I’d have to stop and sit with it and process it and I felt I didn’t even have language for it. I really want to understand why is this so frickin uncomfortable for me. And then I started digging deeper and found additional resources besides Robin DiAngelo’s book which to me is still a bible for every white woman.

Aurora: You know and I think each of you has already talked about it, is like what was your opt in moment. Because for you Erica it was very clear. You got the book and I remember coming to class and you literally were like, “We have to do something.” And it was crystal clear for you. And so that opting in to saying I just got slapped with something that I walked in thinking I got this.

Erica: Absolutely.

Aurora: And part of it is personality because I think there’s something very important to understand because that’s a journey that we as people of color are hoping every white person kind of gets. Like what has to happen for you to opt in to seeing this bigger matrix of white supremacy? That for us is so clear, it’s so obvious. We’re swimming in it daily.

Erica: And I think for me the big – and I love Oprah’s aha moment – for me was the idea that, I recognized that my own inherent freedom was bound up in the negation of other people’s freedom. Until I think we recognize that and understand that we can actually we are not actually sitting comfortably in our own lives which people may believe they are, but until we really accept the notion that other people’s imprisonment is our own imprisonment. Then I think that as soon as that realization happens for people as soon as they recognize that sort of gnawing discomfort at the root level even if they’re living an affluent life or comfortable in comfortable means there’s always something that feels a bit off. And we all feel it.

Aurora: Yeah. And so let’s let’s dig into that, Erica, because I think you can have everything so perfectly outlined the right school, the right neighborhood, the right zeros in your bank account. But we continue to be a society that is over-numbed, overmedicated, but yet that connection to the lack of connection is not clear for people. And I wonder if it’s clearer to you because of what you’ve chosen as your life’s work right.

Erica: I think though the consciousness is such an interesting thing because just by opening that book and reading it I always thought I had my eyes open and what I’ve noticed since reading the book is I see so much more than I was willing to see previously. It’s not that anything has changed it’s that there’s something inside of me a gate that is opened up to be able to actually see what’s actually happening. So for example I was at a very big fundraiser yesterday and they had gates put up so they were trying to divert runners from coming through to the art museum and I clearly saw a white man and a man of color come in together and they stopped the man of color and turned him around. And there’s a million of these instances that I now see all the time. There were the same things happening all of my whole life. But now that there’s a willingness inside of myself to actually see something has dropped away.

Lisa: Yeah. My goal is to see it before I act stupid.

Kelly: So you know so we’re I mean we’re going to piss off multiple young black women because our cluelessness is just harmful in and of itself. And that’s where I feel like when I read the book I feel like my pants were down as well. And I’m like I’ve been causing harm and harm and harm inadvertently, unconsciously causing harm all the time and I still cause harm unfortunately, but now I’m more aware of it. So it’s honestly just like double edged sword of you’re an asshole and then what are you going to do about it? And part of my thing when reading White Fragility was I found I was so afraid to be known as racist and I feel like that’s a big thing with white people – like god forbid you’re a racist. And when I read the book and my “aha moment” to answer your question of where I was – 1776 I thought was the land of the free the home of the brave and like we all were, you know, Yankee Doodle Dandeling down the street and I realized it was just a monumental time in which a bunch of male slave owners made it official that all the rules were going be made by them and everyone who had been suffering for a hundred fifty years would continue to suffer. And all of a sudden the whole matrix changed and if the matrix is that and our country was started as that, we are in our country then everything in the country is racist every single thing that’s been created is racist. Every rule, every cell phone product, every seed that’s planted – everything is racist. And if that’s the case then I’m racist and we’re all racist. So once my goal was if I could jump in here and say hey guys we’re all racist let me tell you why at least we can get to the point of not arguing as to whether we’re racist or not, like we don’t need to waste an hour on that let’s just cut to the chase we’re racist. I’m racist. Let’s own that. So now we can go. Now what are we gonna do about it. Because we’re causing harm if that’s the case.

Lisa: Robin D’Angelo gave us that revised definition because I don’t think anyone else in society is giving us that revised definition of recognizing if you were socialized white you were treated as normal and if you were not white then you were not normal. And she identifies the good/bad binary. That race somehow came to mean conscious mean, bully, evil. And if I’m good and I’m kind and I’m charitable then I couldn’t possibly be racist. But when you look at her definition of racism and when you realize if you’re a socialized white and made to feel everything you do as normal then you are racist against anyone who is not white you don’t know any other way of being because it’s how you were treated it’s how you were raised that definition I must have read over and over and over. And the the other piece while that may be really great and wide awakening for me it’s very hard to articulate to other white people who are still behind the veil or are not as conscious or aren’t seeking and to be perfectly honest I wasn’t seeking either. I had a really good friend who said would you please read this book. She didn’t say I recommend you read this book. She said as a favor to me would you read this book. And I want to wake up other white women in that way. I want them to get in touch with this you know recognition that Oh my God you’re a racist to. And we need to do something different about it.

Kelly: And yet in gathering a bunch of white women just what we want to do is center white women right, Aurora?

Aurora: Yes. (laughing)

Kelly: So it’s dodgy.

Aurora: It is dodgy. And this is where I come back to the place of awareness that’s very quickly followed up by accountability. Right, because when you can stand in the articulation – I’m not even going to say knowing – but when you can stand in the articulation of “I am racist.” Wow. Because then you now like you you let at least one of those guards down and I think it goes back to your point, Erica. Then you can open yourself up to start hearing and seeing what you actually weren’t.

Erica: And I think it becomes the subtleties. It’s less about the obvious. I did something so racist last week that I’ve just been sort of really mulling over and probably avoiding actually addressing with the person where it happened and it was such a subtle thing that I did and when I said it something felt off but I didn’t realize it until a few hours later, that was racist. And I think that really saying that as a white person we are just inherently racist is wonderful and affirming. I also think it’s really important to not get stuck in that place because that can be a spiritual bypassing sort of way to say I’m racist. I get I’m racist and then we can use that as a landing pad and we have to be really careful about that because I want to make sure that I myself really do the nitty gritty work beyond that place, beyond that acknowledgement because that acknowledgement is just a gateway into the more subtle work that we have to do.

Aurora: And so let’s talk about the beginnings of 10000 Thousand White Women. It began with Erica saying we have to do this. Here’s my location. How do we get this started a conversation with you Lisa. That said Oh my God. I know I’m a really good facilitator but what.

What is this 10000 White Women: Doing the Work. Why is it called that and what do we do there? And are any Black women there?

Lisa: And to answer your question how it got called 10000 White Women, we knew it was white women that needed to do this work, so that’s why we centered in on it. The 10000 came from a couple of places but predominantly Malcolm Gladwell’s research that it takes 10000 hours to become mastery of competence in something and as soon as you’ve spent 10000 hours doing it it’s relegated to the subconscious at least 70% of your knowledge. It’s why you can drive from here to there and not remember how you got there or wonder if you locked your front door when you know you did because it’s such a habit. And racism has become entirely subconscious for us. So if we could get 10000 women spending a couple hours making it conscious realizing the white supremacy that you’re participating and benefiting from – that would be remarkable.

Kelly: The fact that we can actually get people in a room with no idea as to kind of why they’re there except general interest and walk out like, holy shit I have work to do that is a great pre-pre start to your anti-racism work. Another belief that a lot of people of color that we talked to is like, are they going to think like they did their anti-racism work now and it’s their good to go and we’re like Nope. In fact they’re like oh man. We have so much work to do. And it’s not perfect but where we gonna start if we are if the if the groups of people are people on their anti-racism path or activism or whatever it may be and then everybody else will like how do we bridge the everybody else to the anti-racism path people. How do we how do we open the door?

Kelly: So enter yoga studios, right. And, Erica, the sanctity of a yoga studio and maybe you can touch on why that’s a good place to start.

Erica: I think a yoga studio is a great sort of place where people come because they’re searching to feel better in their own lives. And I think that that’s a great way in which I’ve been approaching encouraging people to read the book. I mean in a way it is self inquiry in in many ways it’s Self inquiry in many ways it has to do with our own inherent bondage. You know the ways in which there’s something deep within us that feels not okay because we feel separate from you know in the separation from who we are truly we separate others. And so everything manifests from that internalised place and so I think that yoga studios are a perfect venue to capture those people who are interested in. Reconciling those deep seated feelings of separation within themselves. And to see how that’s manifesting out in the world.

Aurora: So that gives us the context for why the yoga studio. There’s a definite persona a white woman persona that is going into a – white – into a studio. And I actually almost had white studio because they all are usually are. So let’s talk about why is it important that we get white women engaged because I know why. But I’d love for you for each of you to show why is it important for us to get white women engaged?

Kelly: I have a white dad, a white husband, and two white sons. So my direct connection to white male-ness is immediate. And if white males are in charge, I better be putting out ones that are aware of their own whiteness and their own privilege and how they’re going to challenge it.

Lisa: I agree with that 100% and I would add to it. White women spend a lot of time with each other never discussing racism. Like we’ll talk about sex and money. We’ll talk about private lives. The cheating adulterous husband. We’ll talk about the disability of our children. We’ll talk about anything. And we never get together and talk about racism unless it’s outside us like, “Oh can you believe what a racist that man is or I can’t stand this because it’s so racist.” But there is never any personal sharing around it. It’s never come up in a single conversation till I started doing this work. I think that’s way too many people who have a lot of power in this world not engaging in something that could is literally harming and hurting people real people. And we could be talking about it making it okay to start addressing, doing something about it. So that’s why I think white women.

Erica: Yeah I also think that when we think about feminism and how feminism has progressed that in many ways white feminism has created an amazing amount of harm and very unconsciously. And so although I think it’s a white women are a powerful force and can be a powerful force if they have their energy directed. In a way in which they’re conscious of their own inherent racism.

Kelly: So yeah I guess there’s just this this paradigm of of colonialized, consumerist, you know “I I need to get so that you don’t have” – like there’s just this lack mentality. And so people just go into white people just come into the area and it’s like why would white women think that helping women of color at the bottom of the ladder of all of this is – everybody’s anti black – why helping bring them up and pushing them forward would take away from themselves. To me is like, I don’t know what you think you’re giving up?

Aurora: Story of my life. I have equally suffered and been harmed at the end of what has been a relationship with a white woman as equally a white male. And I’m speaking in the context of when I traverse, you know, my work, particularly my work environment in corporate America. They’re on the same plane for me. And so it’s so interesting when I hear white women talk about feminism and I hear white women talk about this patriarchy and the oppression of it and I’m thinking well, Boo you’ve made out by it. Like you’re not in my camp. You’re in his camp and oh by the way any attempts that I make to have you sort of see my plight, you’re oblivious to it you don’t want to see it because there is a convenience and there is a winning factor to this. There’s this complicitness in what you gain and prosper by being attached to him.

Kelly: Collusion.

Erica: Yeah and we get pissed off when you’re not going to join our rally. I mean we get angry like what’s wrong with you. How come you’re not onboard with us?

Aurora: Because you’ve never been on board with me right. You’ve never come to any of my rallies you’ve never come to any of the things that are that are impacting me oh by the way also impact you.

Kelly: And I think we’ve been using the wrong words. We just we want to say “racism” and we want to say “patriarchy” and I just wish we would call it white supremacy. Just call it what it is. Because then we can at least turn towards the white supremacy of it. And when you say racism everyone turns to the person of color in the world like they have something that’s out of their control –

Aurora: Yeah. Well because it’s been our job to fix it. And it’s not my problem it’s actually yours. This is our work to do. Why white women. Because it’s our work to do.

Lisa: White supremacy that was a really hard one for me to get comfortable with. And remember, Erica, when we first started?

Erica: I’m not I’m like I’m not wearing a hood. I don’t have a burning cross on my hand.

Lisa: Exactly. I saw white supremacists is Klu Klux Klan. That’s what I saw. Or these horrible neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, right. But now I understand it and it’s not OK to just say “white majority.” In fact the term and all of its connotation is actually the better way to talk about it because we reigned supreme as normal. And no matter how many white people say they don’t feel that way the fact is that’s how we were socialized that’s what we see in media. That’s all we know. Like there are certain parts of our identity that people don’t have to know that we don’t have to share you can walk into a room and be gay and maybe people don’t know immediately and there may be bias conscious or unconscious but you show a person of color walking into a white room and you can’t hide that it’s involuntary and it’s

Aurora: And I think this speaks to whiteness, right, and it and it being to your point that norm. And it’s hard to wake up from that right because you don’t see it. I’ve spent my entire life walking into rooms that look nothing like me. My entire life. And you don’t know what that feels like.

Lisa: No we don’t.

Aurora: And so I think that that also becomes part of this challenge. Because when you see someone being neck choked on television and literally dying before our eyes. There is not one shred of me, there’s not one cell of me that doesn’t understand how someone else watching this – forget about color, forget about race, doesn’t see the magnitude of the inhumanity of it. The disgrace of it all.

Erica: Thank you for sharing that. And also I see how I have ranked racism like seeing something on the news like that, that person’s really racist. But me making a comment here or there. I’m a little racist. You know, like leveling out the ideas of what is racist and what is not racist. It’s all racist. I can speak for myself as a white woman. I’ve gotten a lot away with a lot because I’ve been able to sort of modulate how racist I am. Like OK, I’m a little bit racist. There’s not a little bit of racist or a lot racist you know. And so when you start to see that the white cop choking a black man as well as your small insidious comments here or there as being on a level playing field, which is hard for a lot of white people to swallow because we want to believe that there are people who are worse racists than other people. And that’s just not true. We’ve got to see them from an equal playing field.

Lisa: Robin D’Angelo said this. She said someone was complaining about Donald Trump and she said, Donald Trump is no more racist than I am. We are the same. We were both socialized white where white was normal. But his conditioning, he embraces and she is challenging it and that to me is another little way in. I want to challenge my social upbringing.

Kelly: The other night for whatever reason – I never have the TV on – and I never have it on a just network news and it was on channel 6 ABC Action News. When I say I grew up- was an action news on your house?Every single night 5:00 and 6:00 local and national. That local news is deplorable. When I say I saw it for the first time in 12 – 15 years and it sounded like the same soundtrack that had been playing since I was born in 1979. House fire north Philly. Shooting breaks out in Southwest Philly. Same red lined areas of the city categorizing the same black people of house fires, murder, drugs and then I’m like wait a minute we grew up with this picture being painted every single night with white announcers saying the same shit and it’s no wonder that I was scared to death of black men as an 8 9 10 year old girl just scared to death for no reason other. It all adds in this layering and then making black men seem like animals – fire lighting, drug taking, shooting animals – so when we do see a chokehold on TV or a video we’re like, oh yeah must be in Southwest Philly or North Philly. I mean it’s just we’ve been conditioned to see this animalistic treatment of black people.

Aurora: For millennia.

Kelly: Yes.

Aurora: And so he must have done something to deserve it, right. He what is happening to him is what is do him.

Erica: And I think that white women are scared of black women. That when they raise their voices that they’re out of control that they’re unhinged. I mean, you know, I’ve been recently doing this little experiment to notice the physical sensations in my body when someone of color walks near me. You will be shocked to recognize as a white woman because it’s even before the mind can process it, the habitual reaction that you have when someone of color walks into the room. It’s amazing a tightening in the stomach a tightening up of your fingers or your shoulders before even the thought of you know there’s a person of color coming in.

Aurora: And Erica I mean really I it’s like when you just said that about white women being inherently taught to be afraid of black women – And so, you know, we were talking about earlier about walking into white rooms as a person of color as a woman of color as a black woman as a Latina woman.

Lisa: I can’t imagine the amount of strength it takes to do that. Day after day after day. And yet the irony is that the white people who are predominating in the room are afraid.

Kelly: but then probably if you do have a good reception it’s like where are you from? Where’s that accent from. What’s your name. Oh who are you married to? Oh he’s white. Where’s he from? Then you get this exoticism of yourself.

Aurora: That provides people with the label. But the underlying feeling is still what Erica is talking about.

Kelly: Fear.

Aurora: It’s still fear and I think it is exactly what you’re talking about because there’s this ego

Erica: And I don’t know who I am as a white woman if I don’t have power over you. I mean let’s be really raw about it. My identity is very caught up in being better than in some way even if it’s hard to acknowledge and shameful. There’s something that I don’t know who I am if I’m not a little bit above you.

Aurora: Can I just tell you, Erica, I literally just found that out? I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that. I sat down with my co-founder and we were unpacking this and she articulated exactly what you just said. And we were talking about the difference of I’m walking down the street or I’m walking into a room and I see a woman of color there’s this inherent look where I would acknowledge her and say, I got you. It just happens. It’s an instinct. And I don’t care if I’m on the street or if I’m in a conference room. And she was like we don’t do that.

Erica: Oh no.

Aurora: And maybe it’s it’s it’s a camaraderie of understanding the struggle. It’s the camaraderie of understanding the common part. It’s a camaraderie that in this sea of whiteness where the only two people of color, but there is an instant level of support where what I came to understand is that with you – I know we’re overgeneralizing – there’s an instant level of competitiveness.

Erica: No question.

Aurora: And she walked me through when I encounter someone until I started to wake up. Here are the things I’m looking at. I’m looking at body I’m looking how skinny she is, I’m looking at if her hair looks better than mine, what handbag – Are you serious?!

Lisa: If that’s true when you’re looking at white people I mean every woman that walks in the room I feel I’m in competition.

Kelly: That’s what she’s saying.

Aurora: And I absolutely do not walk into a room with women of color and my instinct is to check out her shoes, her dress – like that is not where my head goes.

Kelly: Not only do we enter a room with a long list of privileges, but then we’re ranking our privileges against other people’s privileges.

Lisa: Well and get away with it. It’s self judgment. It’s not feeling good enough about ourselves. And so comparing and competing. It’s not always, I want to be better than or – but that’s absolutely my first reaction when I walk into a room of women.

Aurora: I don’t go there. Sisters don’t go there. We may go there you know at some point but that is not like that is so not the instinct that is top of mind.

Erica: I noticed my own inherent jealousy over the sisterhood of women of color and the connection that they have with one another. Yeah it’s pretty profound. And the more I see that the more I’ve seen inside of myself that I yearn for that

Kelly: Longing to belong.

Erica: Yeah. I think it was something I wanted to resist. And so you go to the other end of thinking people are less than in some way. But I see it. I see the sisterhood. I see the connection and I think a lot of it is what you’re saying, Aurora, it’s that acknowledgement of the struggle and the strife and just seeing someone of color you connect and you have that union in that space. I don’t feel that with other white women. And so there’s a part of me that feels. Like I’m missing that it’s beautiful when you say it.

Erica: Shame has so much to do with all this stuff for us.

Kelly: I think it has to do with the whole country.

Erica: It’s really the root of things. I do believe there’s functional shame. One of my teachers talks about functional shame.

Aurora: So what is that talk to us – what is functional shame?

Erica: Functional shame to me can help to bring awareness about things that need change. I understand the arena of shame as being something that can be berating or abusive or internally abusive. But I think there can be functional shame and I think like right now I’m experiencing what I would call functional shame and that is allowing me to have awareness because the shame that functional shame is a pointer to something inside of me to look at.

Kelly: Functional shame acts is like a little red blinking light.

Erica: Absolutely.

Aurora: What is this 10000 White Women: Doing the Work. Why is it called that and what do we do there? And are any Black women there?

Kelly: It can’t just be all white women. But it is all of our work. It’s not the women of color’s work. So I do think that there has to be some presence of Black indigenous women of color who feel healed and on their path to hold space and be present with people just opening their eyes for the first time.

Aurora: White people

Kelly: One of the questions that we’ve got before was is it ever contentious. And at the time we were like, No it’s not contentious we create a sacred space, not safe space, but a sacred space. But what we realized after the fact was the contention happens within each white woman. And that is actually the goal is to get there.

Lisa: And to answer your question how it got called 10000 White Women, we knew it was white women that needed to do this work, so that’s why we centered in on it. The 10000 came from a couple of places but predominantly Malcolm Gladwell’s research that it takes 10000 hours to become mastery of competence in something and as soon as you’ve spent 10000 hours doing it it’s relegated to the subconscious at least 70% of your knowledge. It’s why you can drive from here to there and not remember how you got there or wonder if you locked your front door when you know you did because it’s such a habit. And racism has become entirely subconscious for us. So if we could get 10000 women spending a couple hours making it conscious realizing the white supremacy that you’re participating and benefiting from – that would be remarkable. But I’ve said to you guys before we all have kind of different goals and mine because I was able to literally take off my glasses and put on a new pair and see things differently. And I have to keep switching lenses still. That’s my goal to give people time to put on a new pair of glasses and see the world in a way they may not have been looking at before.

Kelly: And there’s two disclaimers that we have to really share about this event. And one is that it is not perfect. It’s really not perfect. We evolve it and we edit it with each time. But this is not perfect. We are all white people still learning. It’s like the pre-pre start of your anti-racism work. I mean it’s only two and a half hours. The fact that we can actually get people in a room with no idea as to kind of why they’re there except general interest and walk out like, holy shit I have work to do that is a great pre-pre start. Another belief that a lot of people of color that we talked to is like, are they going to think like they did their anti-racism work now and it’s their good to go and we’re like Nope. In fact they’re like oh man. We have so much work to do. And it’s not perfect but where we gonna start if we are if the if the groups of people are people on their anti-racism path or activism or whatever it may be and then everybody else will like how do we bridge the everybody else to the anti-racism path people. How do we how do we open the door?

Erica: I think that after doing a few of these that we’ve done, if I could distill it down to the two things that I think that I see happening is that one we are helping white people to understand that you can be racist and still be a good person. And the other part is that to open people’s eyes to the aspect of vulnerability in our own sharing of the ways in which we have actually been racist in our own lives we open that door to them to entertain the possibility that, oh I’ve been racist too.

Kelly: And isn’t it funny that in the three that we’ve had. Our levels of vulnerability have only deepened yet and our levels of storytelling and I mean from when from when we came out of the gates you would think that we would get more used to it when instead it gets deeper and harder and more raw.

Aurora: Well and I think you know cause this is one of the questions I get is like and you stayed friends with them?

Kelly: Totally. Sometimes I’m like is she still going to be my friend?

Aurora: I think our conversations and our friendships have has gotten deeper because it has become a lot more vulnerable and a lot more authentic and real.

Aurora: I think we have to model this for people, for white people and I think white women are the start of it so that we can have these conversations. I think about least of the conversations that we have had for so many years and

Lisa: And race is just one level of it, right. That kind of intimacy and connection. The veil of racism and being part of a white supremacist society is something I never realized was prohibiting me from connecting with such a large group of people.

Aurora: Can I ask a couple of questions? What’s the opt in that you would like white women to do?

Lisa: I want white women to opt into their own internalized racism.

Kelly: I want qhite women to read White Fragility. I think they really have to hear it from a white woman first.

Erica: I want white women to have this discussion with their children more and then their families.

Kelly: Yeah and getting a parent to read white fragility helps too and your spouse. That’s your challenge of the day.

Aurora: Get those spouses in there. Why opt in is like I want the white women to opt in and stepping up. I need to show up. But you can’t show up for me if you can’t show up first for yourself. And that requires the work.My other question is, what would you like to say to Black women?

Lisa:Hang in there with me. I’m trying.

Kelly: Thank you. Forgive me. I’m sorry. I’ll do better.

Erica: I think for what I would want to say is that I’m so jealous of the connection you have with one another. It just it’s just so prevalent for me right now to feel that that bond that you have with one another and it’s something that I long for. It’s so inspirational for me.

Kelly: Yeah I think people are really jealous of you. So when I say that I think people women are really jealous. Not that I want them to be but just think you should know that.

Aurora: Well as your friend, as your sister, I want each of you to know that I can’t do this without you. We cannot do this without you. Humanity is counting on all of us. AndI love you. Let’s do this.

Kelly: I love you.

Erica: I love you, Aurora.

Outro:

Aurora: Can I just say, I love Lisa and Erica so much.

Kelly: I know! They were so vulnerable with us. Like, believe me, openly talking about the ways you enact racism… the way you feel racism in your body… that is not easy.

Aurora: And you know, their vulnerability is honestly a call to action.

Kelly: After listening to this episode you should definitely know by now to pick up Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. And to also start having these conversations with your friends and family.

Aurora: And if you want get involved with 10 Thousand White Women, find us www.abundanceprod.com for information on our next workshop.

Kelly: We want to hear from you — catch us on Twitter, IG and Facebook @theoptin and let us know your thoughts about today’s episode. What’s something you’re opting-in to this week?

Aurora: And make sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts… it really helps so much.

Kelly: Music for this episode is by Jordan McCree and The Opt-in is produced by Rachel Ishikawa.

Aurora: Talk next week.

Kelly: Peace.