The Heart of Racism with Therapist April Harter

Kelly: Look who we have with us. April, can you please introduce yourself and give us your pronouns to everyone, please?

April: Yes. My name is April Harder. I’m a licensed clinical social worker. And I go by she and her.

Kelly: So, April. For those who don’t know, how would you describe what you do and and do you want to start back at the beginning? Like what your upbringing was or what your privileges are? 

April: Well, basically, I am an anti-racism therapist and an anti-racism coach. And I think that I have a unique perspective because in the work that I do, I really focus on helping white people hold space for their racism as opposed to repressing their feelings. So I also help in that sense help them connect unhealed unexplored trauma and how this is displaced via racism.

Kelly: Oh, April, you just said so many things that we need to unpack.

Aurora: We sure do.
Kelly: But go back a little bit for us and tell us a little bit about yourself and how you help. Maybe just briefly, how you grew up and what privileges you may have hold or didn’t didn’t hold, may have held or didn’t hold. And how you got here?

Aurora: How did you get to focusing on anti-racism?

Kelly: For white people with trauma?

April: Absolutely. Absolutely. So I identify as a black woman, but I’m also biracial. So I have a white mom. I have a black dad. I don’t have a relationship with my dad. I just don’t. So it’s very much estranged. I grew up in Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. And that background – that environment is predominantly Mexican-American. And so for one, how did let’s just start with how did racism come in my life and then also my family. I actually experienced racism for the first time when I was in kindergarten by Mexican Americans, which would be colorism. And I was called the N-word multiple times. In fact, K through 12, I was probably called the N-word every single day. That’s a long time to experience that colorism. And that’s really the racial trauma that I experience via colorism for a very, very long time. I was the only B lack student K through 12, you know, growing up. So that was extremely traumatic for me. I was very much socially rejected in Mexican-American culture growing up back home. And then I was raised by a white family. So I was both the victim of racism, but also I was raised by a white family whom I love deeply. But they were ironically acting out racism towards the Mexican Americans in the community. So I would have discussions with my family where I was just sitting at the table and my grandmother would say very derogatory things about Mexican Americans. It was very racist. And I would confront her on this and it was very difficult. So racism was very much something that was in my face all the time. There was no way for me to escape it. And as far as the privileges that I held, first of all, my white family, they tried their best to instill white privilege in me in the sense of they really tried to raise me, I think sort of like a white person. But that didn’t work because I’m Black. So it’s like they couldn’t really give me the support that I needed growing up because they didn’t know what it was like to be the victim of racism. They certainly had their own personal experiences in life, but they didn’t really know how to hold space for the racism that I had endured growing up. And so what they did was, is that they tried to teach me – in so many ways – believe it or not, that I was better than other Black people, that I was older than the Hispanics that I was around. Even though I’m a Black person. So they tried to instill that racism in me. And actually I did internalize that and they taught me colorism as well. So now only was I the recipient of colorism, I then learned how to be colorist and racist towards other people of color. And that was a lot of the negativity. There was talk to me growing up. 

Aurora: Wow. The victim becomes the perpetrator.

April: That’s right.

Aurora: At what point do you begin to examined and sort of really look at the conditioning, the programing?

April: That is a beautiful question, and I can tell you precisely when that all went down. Being the both the victim and the perpetrator gives me a very unique perspective. In a way, I’m embodying those two sides. And there was this part of me that, for one, wanted to go to college in a racially diverse you know, environment. And so the part of me that was the victim thought, “I want to be around other Black people. I want to no longer be the only Black person around,” you know. And so I wanted to know what that felt like to be Black, because really I was not taught Black culture. I was I mean, it was just – I wasn’t around very many black people grown up because I’m very much estranged from my Black side of the family. All right. So there was this yearning for me to know what it means to be Black, because the only thing I knew is that being Black meant I was going to be the recipient of racism. You know, that is the only way that I knew I was black. And then looking in the mirror and seeing my hair, seeing my curls, seeing the color of my skin. That was the only thing I knew about being Black and of course, watching television. I mean, that’s all I knew. I was completely racially isolated. So I no longer wanted to be isolated. So I thought, “Where is a place in Texas where black people exist?” And it was Houston. I mean, I did the research and I was like, “You know what? I’m going to go to the University of Houston.” So then I moved to Houston when I was 19 years old and I went to the University of Houston. And it was a wonderful experience. And the moment that I started to realize that I was acting in racist ways, which of course, is when I started to make friends with Black people, and that’s when I started acting out my own micro aggressions. And I got call on called out on that racism, on the internalized racism. And it it was important for me to connect to my fellow Black people. So that’s when I say that’s when it started to become noticeable. And that’s actually when I started, of course, also begin to learn critical race theory, because I thought, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve internalized this and this is not good.”

Kelly: What is critical race theory, April?

April: There is a lot of black intellectuals that do critical race theory, but many people of color. Right? Critical race theory such as Cornel West, bell hooks, etc. James Baldwin. It’s when you’re looking at the topic of racism and you’re looking at it sociologically within a critical lens. It means that you’re examining the interpersonal dynamics between people of color and white folks in society. You’re really looking at the ideological underpinnings of racism. So what critical race theory will do for people when you learn this, it helps you examine where racism exists throughout society. It really educates one on seeing. What does racism look like on a systemic level? What does it begin to look like on an individual level? And it’s just. It’s very, very interesting work.

Aurora: At this moment, what I think you’re also articulating is that you began the end packing up self.

April: Absolutely. Absolutely, with my racial identity development really strongly started there. I feel as far as recognizing my own Blackness and that’s what I went there for. You know, I was like, I need to know a part of who I am that has not been talked to me.

Aurora: And then the journey segue ways you from college, unpacking, finding yourself, knowing yourself to then where?

April: So what really was the catalyst, I think, for me to become a social worker was when I shifted my political values.

Kelly: What does that mean?

April: What I didn’t mention about my upbringing is that I was raised by a not only by a white family, but they were Christian and they were very conservative, conservative Midwest. And so I was very much taught those values. And up until that point, actually, when I entered graduate school, I still considered myself a Republican. There was a lot of cognitive dissonance that I experienced when I learned about feminism. About a year before I started social work school and it was really feminism. Especially Black feminism. Well it was intersectionalism because in critical race theory, a lot of Black males have written bodies of work. And I didn’t I wasn’t able to quite put a word to it before I started learning about feminism. But essentially I saw sexism in the writing. But inside of me, I thought, “Well, this isn’t this isn’t I don’t really see myself.”

Kelly: Right.

April: I only see the Blackness in here. But I’m not really seeing the womanhood in here. Yeah. And so feminism really spoke to both of those parts of my identity, being a woman, being Black. And it was really empowering. So essentially, I held two really opposite beliefs. There was this one part of me that felt really liberated and amazing learning about feminism, Black feminism. And then there was this other part of me that was my upbringing was white Christian conservatism. And it was very difficult to go through the grieving process of letting go of those particular values in order to find myself, to find myself. That part of me was always in there. But I it’s like they say, “sometimes you can have a family that nurtures you a certain way, but it’s contrary to your very nature.” And so that’s essentially how I was raised. And then going the going to college and learning about feminism – well, quite frankly, it saved me. It saved me. And when I learned all of these things going into social work, school. And essentially I had to unlearn everything that I was taught because it just wasn’t factual. In other words, I got a real education and social work school about – well, heck, about all of a poverty, about economics, how race, you know, intersects with financial oppression, etc. And so I really got such an excellent education. And I’m going to tell you this. This is what broke me in half, but in a really, really good way. I had a wonderful, wonderful white lesbian professor and her name was Patty. And I just adored her. She was so compassionate. I learned so much from her. I just. She was amazing. She still is amazing. And there was this part of me that just sat there and thought, “How could someone as amazing as her – How could she burn in hell because she’s a lesbian?” And that just really was some major cognitive dissonance for me. And so essentially, after several weeks of reckoning with that cognitive dissonance, I honestly broke down crying and I said, “I don’t believe in this anymore.” And that’s that was the major break. And that’s that’s when I changed my political affiliation from being a conservative to a liberal. And that just felt right. I cried a lot. It was hard to say goodbye to my upbringing because I felt such an emotional connection to my family. But that’s when I essentially became – and to this day – the black sheep of the family.

Kelly: Well, April, I just recently learned what cognitive dissonance meant. Actually, right before I learned with you, I was reading the naked mind about alcohol in the brain. But for those who don’t know, can you give a brief description of cognitive dissonance, please?

April: Sure. So cognitive dissonance, the easiest way to to describe it is when what you think about yourself is different than what you really do or what you really are. So there is a disconnect there. In other words, someone could tell you what you’re doing this X, Y, Z, but you don’t see yourself like that. So there’s a there’s a dissonance. There is a there is an incongruity with how you see yourself versus how other people see you. So in other words, for me, for example, I thought that – going back to race – I thought basically that I wasn’t a racist, that I hadn’t, you know, internalized those colorist thoughts. But then guess what? When I’m confronted by other Black people and they tell me when I first moved to Houston, “What you said that was racist.” And when they told me that, well, I valued what they had to say, especially as a fellow Black person. So then that was a priority for me. And that was a dissonance that I had to sit with. The way I saw myself was different than I actually than I actually treated people. And does the decent it was I rang up. It was deeply unconscious. Yeah.

Kelly: Does this distort cognitive dissonance, then bring up ugly feelings?

April: Oh, absolutely, shame, fear. Fear of social rejection. That’s probably the biggest one, fear of social rejection and shame. Shame for her harming somebody else.

Aurora: I think you just hit on the nugget of what gives you such a unique perspective around the work that you do, April. Because I think that the cognitive dissonance that you experience in your identity and in your upbringing is literally the parallel to what white people are experiencing as a cognitive dissonance when they behave in a way that is racist and they are called out for that behavior or let’s just call it micro aggression and it is so contrary to how they view and see themselves.

April: Mm hmm. And I think what a lot of people of color don’t experience unless they’re mixed race or raised by a white family, is that love. I feel that I have a lot of compassion for white people because truly I know that many of them truly, truly don’t mean what they do as much as I didn’t mean what I did at the time. But I was taught that. Exactly, if I can come around, I know that these people can come around to. I know that they can.

Kelly: That’s beautiful. Can you help describe micro aggressions?

April: A micro aggression is whenever a person of color is is the recipient of racism and it is in a way that is very subtle and not overt. Hence, the term micro and aggression is an aggression because there is a level of emotional violence that occurs, but it’s on a very, very subtle level again. So the violence, you know, racism as a form of violence and it varies by degrees. So to kind of compare, we have racial discrimination and there are varying forms of this all the way to. Let’s say that somebody gets fired for their job because they’re a person of color. Right. And that’s racial discrimination is against the law. But the unfortunate with micro aggressions, of course, a very popular example of that is, “But where do you come from?” Yeah. That is an example of a micro aggression.

Kelly: I’ve done yes, I’ve done that thinking that’s what that person wanted to talk about.

April: Yeah. Or if you’re like me, mixed race they may ask,well, you know, “What are you?” You know, that is a micro aggression. It it basically essentially causes the person to have to defend their racial identity, for example, in that particular micro aggression. And it’s not respecting the person of color’s autonomy and kind of makes the other person feel foreign, for example. Causing a person to feel foreign in their own country. Well, that’s a form of social rejection and that’s a form of emotional. It really actually is a form of emotional abuse. So it’s that rejection that’s not even warranted. The person is innocent. They didn’t do anything. It’s an injustice. It’s it’s just it’s a form of violence.

Kelly: So if I unknowingly am and, you know, in words, presence, or I can think of another friend that I’ve definitely been like I love in the past. I love your hair. I love when you do it different ways or how do you do it like that or what’s it like? What’s it feel like? That I think I’m drawing positive attention to something potentially. That’s what I think. That’s the kind of dissonance in me is is reacting to that and saying and saying that I think that’s a good thing. And that person instead is like, first of all, let’s talk about my hair all the time to people like you. Second of all, my hair is none of your business, you know?

Aurora: And please don’t touch it. Yes.

April: And that’s not a very reductionist. That’s an example of what a white person learns you know, with with touching hair, that’s an example of racial stereotyping. And it’s reducing, for example, a Black person to the shape of their hair, reducing the attention to their physical features, which actually goes all the way back to slavery. Because Black people’s bodies were completely reductive. They were reduced and objectified. So there is a deep unconscious parallel there. And I like to call that specific example, you know, intergenerational racist perpetration, that particular form of racism. That’s the reason why I think that a lot of white people will do things like this and then they think it’s perfectly OK. That’s because they’ve learned vicariously this type of micro aggression, intergenerational. And it has been normalized and accepted in a white racist society.

Aurora: Well, there is so much there to unpack. Even, you know, the harm of micro aggressions and the unconscious level by which they get executed or shot or delivered, I mean, literally by the second by the minute, every day to people of color with such in love, with such a level of unawareness by white people. And it’s very interesting because it’s almost much easier for me to deal with someone who is overtly aggressive about their perception of me and my race and my value than the what I call the “drip irrigation harm” of micro aggressions, because it is so there is a cognitive dissonance between how I perceive someone or how they articulate themselves to be open and liberal and I love everybody. Yet there is this constant or continuous flood of very unconscious, micro aggressive behavior.

April: So I think the reason why micro aggressions are so particularly painful for people of color is because of the fact that when you talk about it’s easier in a way to deal with overt racism versus these micro aggressions. The reason for that, I believe, is because when people of color are the recipient of micro aggressions, it is more difficult to set boundaries with these people because it’s so, you know, if it’s overt. “Well, gosh, this person saying something racist, let me set a boundary.” But when you have this, as you said, that “steady drip of micro aggression” as it permeates through a white racist society in America, for example, and that is normalized a steady drip, it is very difficult to set boundaries with perpetrators. It’s much easier. What like, for example, Donald Trump is clearly acting very racist. It’s extremely overt. Much easier to protect your feelings. Much easier to protect yourself when someone is overtly perpetrating racism. It is so much more difficult to protect yourself when it is subtle. It is so much more difficult and also so much more difficult when it is socially accepted. So it’s hard to protect yourself emotionally from that violence when it’s so subtle and when, of course, white people and of course, I don’t want to get too far into this, but we get into racist intellectualizing these racist defense mechanisms so that, of course, you know, that’s that’s why it makes it even all the more difficult.

Kelly: Well, and that’s what I do want to dig into, because I am a white woman. April, obviously, and I’ve done your program and it took me a while into your program to realize that I have trauma. It took me a while to realize that I’m allowed to acknowledge that I have trauma because I think part of me thought my trauma wasn’t important or it was I should minimize it because obviously a person of color trauma is going to be exponentially worse than mine. But in learning that I had trauma. I learned all the ways that I played it out to people of color. Mm hmm. Because now when I see people, I see them saying or doing something, you know, what’s the saying? Hurt people hurt. I mean, it’s it’s the hurt in them. That is. And it may not look like her. It may not sound like her, but it is actually the pain of something that’s unhealed in them that’s manifesting itself in the form of silence, total denial or I’m going to learn everything about being the best anti-racist white person I can be, the perfect anti-racist. I have done all of these things. And you help me understand what these traumatic responses are in how to trace them deeper.

April: It’s always a it’s always a pleasure and an honor to work with my clients is such a It’s – as much as you feel like it’s a gift for you, I feel like it’s to be there and hold that space for you in that situation . Because that is incredibly vulnerable and tender to really look at your racism square in the eye, especially those micro aggressions, those very subtle forms of racism. And so it’s a very intimate experience, and I thank you for trusting me to work with you.

Kelly: Let’s just jump back a half a step, because at one point you were teaching Performative Allyship, and I did when define what I was listening.

April: Yes. Yes. I was teaching performative allyship.

Kelly: Just to call right out and laugh.

April: And I just think, “Oh, God, what was I was doing that?”

Kelly: I was doing that, too.

Aurora: And I think it’s very important for us to also define what is performative allyship, because we you know, we are spending a lot of time, which is partially good talking about what is an ally and that we need. You know, certainly as a Black woman, Latina women, I don’t expect to traverse my life without allies ship. I think it’s important to define what is an ally? What is a good ally and what is performative allyship?

April: Beautiful, beautiful. Love it. So there are actually so many definitions out there in a way of performative ship, and I could see why you’d want to kind of pick my brain as to how I do performative allyship. So so my way of looking at performative allyship is whenever a white person uses kind of what I call the rules of anti-racism. So one of those rules would be no white fragility and no white centering.

Kelly: I definitely learned that. Yes.

April: That’s probably the most quintessential rule that I break in what I teach. I absolutely break that rule again and again. But actually, it’s taught in mainstream anti-racism that that is actually true allyship. It is to essentially not center your feelings. To not even center yourself at all, not even think about yourself. Only focus on the feelings of the person of color, but do not think about your own feelings within the context of that interracial relationship. That’s an example of, in my view, performative allyship. And the reason why I call it performative allyship is because then you’re just following a set of rules. And there’s really no heart in it. If you’re not if you’re just following a set of rules and your feelings are repressed or really discredited or really not looked at, then it all just becomes intellectual. Strictly intellectual and a total disconnect to the heart. And I truly believe that to do true anti-racism, we need to connect both the mind and the heart.

Aurora: And I think, you know, part of what you are articulating or positioning out there for us, April, is that so much of the anti-racism work that you were doing and that many are doing right now isn’t centered on those tenets, right. It’s centered a bit more on shame.

April: Like if, for example, I used to shame white people, if they were confronted on their racism and then let’s say that their body started shaking with fear, I said, “Oh, what a bad white person for having those. What are you shaking about? What’s your problem? You’re the one that’s a racist. You’re the one that’s the problem.” And I just didn’t hold space for that white person’s feelings. And I just really gaslight them. I abused them. I emotionally abused them. And I and I and I truly believe that that was anti-racism, because that’s what is taught in the mainstream anti-racism discourse is to shame white people for all of the racism that they perpetrated. And I essentially became another layer of perpetrator. I now became the abusive perpetrator towards white people. And that was not healthy for me or for them. It was just not healthy.

Aurora: And so you defined a different way.
April: I did.

Kelly: What was that moment?

April: I used to follow a really famous – and I’m not going to name names – so I used to follow a fairly famous anti-racism influencer and I used to think that their work was amazing. I thought this person’s got the guts to confront these white people, you know, like confront them and jump them. And but then one day, because I was friends with them on Facebook, I saw them actually cursing out a white woman. Like actually cursing them out. And there was something in my stomach that hurt when I saw that. Okay. And I fell like, OK. At first I kind of had this initial blood lust, like, “Yeah, get the white person, they deserve it.” And then there was this other part of me that started to have mixed feelings. And I thought, you know, “I really don’t think this is right. I don’t think it’s right to hurt this person.”

Like I was like I was not realizing at that very moment that it was abusive. Then I had to kind of sit with that. So I kind of internally process that for a few days. And then it hit me and I thought, “Oh, my gosh. This person who is so famous within the field of anti-racism. This person is normalising the emotional abuse of white people,” and it just it just really messed with me that another layer of cognitive dissonance because guess what? That’s the moment I realized that I was perpetrating.

And that ran contrary to my values and ethics as a licensed social worker, because we as medical professionals are to do no harm. This other individual is also a licensed therapist. And so that really concerned me. And this was, in other words, and contrary to my ethics and I held those ethics of social work very seriously. And so that’s when it really hit me, when I watched that type of abuse. And I said, I don’t want to be that abusive person to white people and teaching them whatever it is that I do, I don’t want to do that because it’s not helping them.

Kelly: And I’m even using your words against you, but at that time you were rejecting your own whiteness, too.

April: Yes! I was just like, “let me distance myself from whiteness as much as possible – with a part of myself.” And also the shame. Because I felt like I have to choose sides. I’ve got to choose sides. Now I’m either going to choose the side of people of color and, you know, I’m not a POC, by the way don’t exist in a monolith. I want to make that clear. But there but within the field, a mainstream anti-racism this is a very normal, socially accepted thing to do, which is to really project one’s anger and aggression while teaching. It’s one thing to speak truth to power as a person of color. That, yes, you know, I’m angry because I’ve been the victim of racism. Yes. You know, like share that anger. Let it out. It’s it’s good and healthy. But when you’re in a position of teaching a white person how to hold space for their racism or how to face that racism, abuse is not going to help, and I guess one missing part of this that I want to tell you is I thought about my old professor, Brene Brown.

Aurora: Yeah.

April:Because that is also hit home for me. I knew Brene Brown long before she. She got on Super Bowl Sunday. She was one of my social work professors. I’ve taken about five classes with her. And I remember she always used to say, you know, “You can’t shame someone to change.” We got to learn to sit with vulnerability. And that’s how we increase intimacy. And I was like, “Oh, my gosh” I just felt Brene’s presence just like permeating in my mind because it was such an important lesson I’ll never forget. We can’t shame white people to change. We can’t shame them. It’s not going to work.

Kelly: It’s not gonna work.

April: Yeah.

Kelly: So right now you have a method. And what do you want to tell? Tell us more about it.

April:Yeah. So. I coached white people for about six months and you know, for those that follow me, they know, as you have, I’m very transparent about my mistakes. I think that’s part of good leadership You show when you’re wrong. Yeah. Yes, I own it. I basically coached white people for six months. And truth is, I really didn’t help them. I have some clients that would have told me, “Yeah you did -” “No, I didn’t help you. I didn’t help you stop your racism.” And I needed those six months off for six months. I taught performative ship. I taught them the rules of anti-racism, essentially their anti-racism etiquette. You know, don’t send to your feelings. You’re acting out in white fragility. That’s just an example. You said this, don’t do this. So it’s telling them and pointing out this is the right way. This is the wrong way. Act like this. Don’t do this. And where I knew that I wasn’t really helping them is because every time they came back to coaching with me. So at that time I was working on our hourly basis one-on-one. I was only working with white psychotherapist because these white psychotherapists were perpetrating unconscious racism in to their clients.

Kelly:So this was just therapists coming to you and they had people of color as clients and they felt that they were, quote, unconsciously their racism was coming through in their practice.

April: Correct. Correct. And so they came to me to try to stop. Learn how to stop their racism so that they were not harming their client’s unconsciously. So that’s called counter counter transference. Whenever a person, a therapist, projects their unhealed trauma onto one of their clients. So that was occurring and harm was being done. And they want to take responsibility for their racist behavior because they knew that that was the right thing to do. So I didn’t have a whole heck of a lot of clients in Denver that worked with me. Most of my clients were actually out of Denver, outside of Denver. But that’s an example, right? And so this was all online work. And they came to me one on one and they would tell me about situations. And this is how I knew I wasn’t helping them, because every single coach, they came back, they repeated the same behavior.

And I thought, “I’m not being effective, because if what I was doing was effective, why are they literally repeating the same behavior that I told them that was racist?” Such, I would you’ll see the thing I had racism really wasn’t helping them.

Kelly: Would you see the same patterns happen with different therapists?

April: I did. I saw them essentially intellectualizing. I saw them in the things that I teach, those racist defense mechanisms.

Kelly: So intellectualizing from what I’ve learned with you is, “I’m going to explain away using all the citing all the documentation and the readings of why this is true or untrue. And I’m going to basically like academia ize it or something.” Is that right?

April: Like, yeah, I guess you are correct. And if you don’t mind I’m going to give you an example of what I’m talking about.
In a psychotherapy session some of these white therapist, what they would do is, let’s say a person of color. You know, that person gave an outcry that they were the victim of racism on the job. And these white therapists – and there was more than one of these white therapists that would do this – they actually would say, “Well, are you sure that that happened to you? Are you sure that that happened to you? Because I think you’re overreacting. I think that that isn’t racism.” So the white therapist would gaslight effectively emotionally abuse and gaslight their their clients and patients right in the session. Like maybe they were trying to save their client and or patient would then call them out on their own racism. And that’s when they realized that they were acting out in a racist way. In their sessions.
Aurora: Oh, my God. April, you just literally I was saying when you were where you were describing this, white people love intellectualizing racism. It’s it’s -and maybe it’s because I’ve spent most of my life in a corporate environment. But I think, you know, this example that you just articulated, story of my life. And it just – it is so deflating when I mean, I’ve had that conversation with H.R. leaders and managers and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I can’t even imagine having that conversation with a therapist because, A) I never actually went to a white therapist. I always chose to go to a person of color therapist precisely for this reason. Right. This this inability to actually see me and see the situation versus continuing to perpetuate and intellectualize the racism in a way that leaves me feeling like I’m really the one crazy.

April: So you know and the thing is, Aurora, is that the white person, in fact, let’s say that you were seeing a white therapist and they did that to you. Right. For all those listeners who have had white therapists that have done that to them. That white therapist was incapable of holding space for your racial trauma because they themselves don’t want to hold space for their own racism.

Aurora: Bingo. And that’s it.

April: They can’t hold space for someone if they haven’t sat with those feelings themselves.

Aurora: That’s it.Right, April? Because this is what Kelly was talking about, and I think that this is the fundamental core of what key continues to keep us separated. And it continues because fundamentally you cannot give to another what you are unwilling to give to yourself. And whether it’s because we have been oppressed or whether we’ve had to face a lot of our feelings, our emotions, our highs, our lows as people of color. You know, whether it’s been through historically our chants, our songs, our music, our conversations, our faith, write, our hymns. And this is the part where, you know, honestly, I look at I look at white people sometimes and I’m like, oh, my God, you really have never spent time with yourself. You don’t know you – you don’t have any idea how you’re feeling. So how can I possibly expect you to even have a micro idea about how I’m feeling?

April:Mm mm mm mm mm. Exactly. And and it’s exactly that. And you see white people have been conditioned to dismiss anything uncomfortable just saying anything.

Kelly: Yeah, they’ve been anything uncomfortable and physically, emotionally, spiritually, anything uncomfortable.

April: Well they don’t realize how much it actually hurts themselves. You see, with white supremacy, the power to dismiss is actually a very twisted corruption. It’s like saying that what is powerful is to gaslight somebody, but that’s a very narcissistic perspective, that’s not actual real power. There’s real power in holding space for one’s feelings. There’s a lot of emotional conviction that’s involved with that. It’s just a very unifying, holistic viewpoint of one’s self.

Kelly: Culturally for intellectualizing, April, what is that core trauma emotion that’s playing out? Is it “I was dismissed as a child by my parent? And so I’m dismissing this other.” Is it, “I’m not smart enough. This person might be smarter than me, but I’m going to exert my power to make sure I’m smarter.” Like, what is that?

April: Well, you know, it’s the perfectionism. So with perfectionism and shame, they go hand in hand.

April: When a white person is confronted on their racism before that occurs they really can’t. Many of them kind of see them as a upstanding, good, law abiding American citizen. They really see themselves in a really good way. It’s not really questioned. But then when they act out unconsciously in a racist way and they’re called out on it, it questions their morality. It questions their ethics and they want to essentially appear as perfectly law abiding and righteous and moral as possible. So what that does is it causes cognitive dissonance, which is, “You know, I’m really not as fair and ethical and law abiding as I think I am,” and that causes a lot of internalized shame. And so the way the very quick way to dismiss that is to go into emotional abuse and go into intellectualizing, which is that defense mechanism, because the defense it’s called a defense mechanism for a reason, because you’re defending that emotional pain that is, you know, “I am not that person I thought I was.”

Aurora: Crystal clear.

Kelly: You can see how that culturally gets patterned over and over again. Hmm. Say more about.

April: That’s why I call intergenerational racist perpetrators. Because this this this tactic of intellectualizing, for example, it literally gets passed on like from white family to white family. I mean it gets taught over and over again.

Kelly: Yeah.

April: And it gets normalized even in society in the media we’ve seen. I mean just as an example, we’ve seen Joe Biden do that with Cory Booker.

Aurora: Yes.

April: I mean Cory Booker was completely gas lit. And, you know, Joe Biden reacted in a racist defense mechanism of intellectualizing.

Kelly: So we are taught to be the good, fair, nice white person. And when we’re confronted –

Aurora: You freak out.

Kelly: Your muscle it.

Aurora: You freak out.
Kelly: Yeah.

Aurora: And you make it my problem. Versus owning it as your opportunity to learn. Your opportunity as a white person to sit with your emotion and to sit with your discomfort.

April: You know, and that’s the social injustice right there. I think under many other circumstances, white people would take responsibility for their emotions and their interracial relationships. But unfortunately, you know, systemic racism is to get a little get out of jail card. “Well, I don’t have to actually be responsible and mature about this because this person is a person of color. And I’m just gonna dismiss what they think and what they feel because this this can’t be right.” So this is this is where we get into the grandiosity that is a symptom of narcissism.

Aurora: Yes.

April: It’s a delusional state of mind, essentially.

Kelly: When you told me that all of these traumatic responses are narcissistic, that made me stop in my tracks. Can you say more words about that?
Aurora: Well, I want to know all the people. Why did it stop you in your tracks, Kelly?

Kelly: Because I for a while had been observing narcissistic tendencies in certain people and family members that caused a lot of trauma around me. And then when I realized that all of these traumatic responses that I did all the time in different ways were all narcissistic. I was like, “Oh, wow.”

Aurora: “I got it, too.”

Kelly: We white people are very narcissistic. Period. Put us in a time where we’re uncomfortable and they get blown up. Well, what’s more uncomfortable to a white person than being in a situation where it’s racialized and all of a sudden race is pointed out?

April: Well, it’s out of one’s control. See, that’s the big that’s a big one, too. It’s out of one’s control and white people have been in control of their the way that they’re seen in America for a very long time whether it be legit or not.

Aurora: But what Kelly just articulated, you then start to see the connecting thread and dot with patriarchy, misogyny. Me, me, me. Consumption of the I culture, capitalism. Consumer is consumerism. Capitalism at the cost and expense of everyone except for me as a white person.

April: And so I have to thank bell hooks for that.
Before it became an anti-racism therapist, I was a feminist therapist. And so you could see how much feminism affected me on both a personal and naturally professional resume professional level, because, you know, the personal is the political right. And so, you know, it was from bell hooks that I learned that racism is a product of the patriarchy. So I started to see because she always says “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” And I was like, well, I always saw it from that lens thanks to bell hooks.

Aurora: But you’re exactly right. And so we’re all swimming in this soup.

April: You know, I think we are I think we’re trying to evolve as a species. We’re trying our best. I really think that in so many ways we are all trying our best. But but unfortunately. Yeah. We got to have the right tools. We got to have the right resources. Otherwise, we’ll just be kind of thrown from the south. We’d be spinning our wheels. Otherwise, we’re just spinning our wheels. And I think that’s what we. We do a lot of when it comes to anti-racism, when it comes to combating bigotry in our country, is we just end up spinning our wheels because we stay strictly within that intellectual realm. Because when we talk about intellectualizing, it’s not just it’s not just white people to start to intellectualize. It’s even people of color that intellectualized white people when they act out and racism, that then becomes a disconnect of the heart as well.

Aurora: Oh, I’ve done that for sure.
So how do we stop spinning our wheels? Because you have gone through this journey and all of it has led you to this moment, this place and an approach that you are hoping to inform white people with. You certainly have done an incredible job in working with Kelly and him and obviously many others. So so talk to us about what do you see now? How do you see us moving forward and how are you hoping to contribute to the evolution of us as a species?

April: You know, I always love your questions because they really reflect a larger issue, right? I like to think of myself as a visionary. I really believe in kind of taking this work and really kind of integrating it exactly like this evolution of the species, right? My work is about helping white people have compassion actually for themselves. And it’s very hard for mainstream anti-racism to sit with this. But the logic is we can’t have a disconnect from the heart. You know, a lack of empathy means we’re having a disconnect from the heart. And when white people react in racist defense mechanisms, they really are disassociated from their heart. And so the way that I see this really helping us evolve as a species i s because if white people can learn to hold space for their racism, there is a big part of them that will become more humanitarian because then they then they will hold space for their own trauma. That’s the underlying current of their racism as they displace those unhealed trauma as those wounds onto people of color. If they address those things. Then essentially they can heal from their narcissism and if they can heal from their narcissism, as it is expressed in racism, if they can do that, then we can also address homophobia. We can address all over all the forms of bigotry. And we can effectively, in our hearts and minds, change policy, change the way that we live. Change our lifestyle, changed the way we view each other as human beings in a much more compassionate and loving way, which will evolve our species and ground ourselves in love instead of a lack of love for ourselves and in this case, why people not loving themselves enough to where they start acting out in racist ways, they just don’t know that they’re kind of missing out because they’ve had all this money and all this white privilege. They think, “oh, I’m good, I don’t need any help, I’m fine.” So, you know, actually, you could be a better human being. There’s actually you could live in much more connection in union with other human beings. Because, Kelly, I’m sure you have already experienced this and working with me. In working with me, you learn about the ways that you are in humanitarian to yourself. It actually in holding space for your racism and holding space for that history of trauma in your life and healing. Going through the process of healing. You’re then able to hold space with not just people of color better, everybody, every everybody, because then you’ve just upgraded your humanity. And so that’s how I believe it will really help people evolve. We all need to heal from trauma. All of us. Wow.

Kelly: Snaps.

Aurora: Have we just opened up a ripple – April, you just opened up a ripple in the universe. Yes, that’s it.

April: So now you know what I’m thinking about at night. Yeah. You know what keeps me up at night: changing the world one person at a time.

Kelly: So what is that? What is the option that you would like for white people who haven’t yet begun or are just beginning their own anti-racism work?

April: I would really like for them to opt in to being willing to hold space for their trauma as it is connected to their racism. Start to slow down and think when I am acting unconsciously racist to another human being am I actually disconnecting from myself? In what ways am I disconnecting from myself, therefore disconnecting from another human being’s experience and their feelings? That’s what I would really encourage every single white person to do because to this day, I have and I mean this, even my own husband, there has not been a single white person that I’ve ever met who has not been vicariously affected by a white racist society, it is affected the psychology of every white person I’ve ever met in my life.

Kelly: For sure. So I am late to the game in understanding what trauma is. So if I’m listening now and I’m like, what is the trauma in my life?

Aurora: I got no trauma.

Kelly: Yeah. Because that’s part of the problem.

Kelly: White people don’t understand that they have trauma a lot of the times because I was one of those people. And yet it’s showing up everywhere. So what’s examples of trauma? I mean, we just want to be blunt.

April: Mm hmm. Mm mm mm mm mm mm.
So I’ve coached with over 70 people. And what I can tell you is that the this varies the very specific trauma that I have seen almost completely across the board is actually childhood trauma. And so what I have learned working with all these white folks is that they actually have a lot of unresolved childhood trauma that they have not processed and they end up discharging this onto people of color. And what happens is, is that a person of color, for example, let’s say that they call them out on their racism. Well, what gets triggered is that that person of color actually, in their eyes unconsciously is an authority on racism. So this person of color is now, whether they admit it or not, an authority figure. And so this messes with perfectionism because what’s happening with a lot of my clients is that they’ve had they’ve had parents that really expect them to be perfect.

And so when a person of color tells them you’ve said and done something racist, this really damages their their sense of what they think is perfect. And – because a white person can’t be quote supreme if they’re not perfect.

Kelly: And so. So when I hear you say that, I also hear silence. Right. Like where they don’t say something or they don’t. Yes. Look in the direction of. They don’t live around. It’s right. They don’t.

April: And that’s the corruption as well. The silences, the corruption. Because if if it’s either I’m gonna dismiss the POC or I’m going to be silent. And all of it is driven by shame.

Kelly: Wow.

April: So why people on the whole operate on a very inauthentic level with people of color. We do. We go and it is when they go into these racist. They keep it very superficial lest they be triggered and that shame crop up. It’s just it’s just very complicated. It’s happened intergenerational. I mean, it’s just it’s kind of like. Burying the hatchet. It’s like you’re burying and burying and burying and burying and maybe on the surface it appears like a good thing because you don’t want people to know you’re making all these mistakes. But the reality is, is that there’s such a freeing and liberating thing when you admit your mistakes and you grow from it and you mature. So white people on the whole are very immature about race because they’ve been burying the hatchet for hundreds of years. And like to maintain power and control over people of color, financially and otherwise, socially, politically etc.

Kelly: How can I be real to a person of color when I’m just being fake to my friends and family anyway?

April: Mm hmm, mm hmm.

There’s a parallel processing here for so much as people of color have had and have been the victims of interracial and of racial trauma, white people have actually, strangely enough been learning how to be perpetrators for a long time, but it’s actually hasn’t been in their benefit, actually. But they think it is because with capitalism, if you have a nice car, you have a nice house, you have your 2.5 kids, you the picket fence, you have all this stuff, you think you have it all. But what about your soul? What about your spirit?

Aurora: That’s it.

April: What does what kind of emotional damage does that do generation to generation and. Well. All we gotta do is look at the present United States. And that’s what happens when you have in an America that buries racism. You know, under the floor.

But but one more thing I want to say is that. But on the other side of the coin, and these are the typical white people that work with me, white people that have here’s how it does affect them. It may not seem on the outside like it will affect a purely white environment but if you are a white person and you are in a serious interracial relationship and I’m not just talking about a partnership, a marriage, I’m talking about like, let’s say you’re white and you have adopted some Black kids. What is that going to do to the relationship? How? How much is that going to affect intimacy in that interracial relationship? That is going to severely, severely affect that and, you know, negatively affect that interracial relationship, because then racism becomes the elephant in the room and that’s going to prevent bonding to two human beings. That’s going to the racism is actually going to prevent people from bonding who actually love each other. So, yes, a white person can act in a racist way and also simultaneously love that person of color. But it will always hold them back in their maturity of love. So what racism does is it actually keeps white people immature in their love, not just people of color. But to all people, it affects all of their relationships.

Aurora: Preach, truth!

Kelly: So, April, this has been. An awesome time with you.

Aurora: It always is soul riveting. Soul. S-o-u-l riveting.

Kelly: Fantastic. You’re a rebel and a champion for love and fun and we love you so much.

Aurora: Shine, light worker, shine light worker, sprinkle your pixie dust everywhere.

April: Thank you all so much.

———–

Kelly: So much love for April.

Aurora: Serious light-worker.

Kelly: I cannot praise her work enough. If you are at all moved, intrigued, excited about what April is doing, I recommend checking her out. You can find more information on scheduling individual or group sessions with her in our show notes.

Aurora: You can support your own journey while also supporting supporting the work of an incredible woman of color.

Kelly: We want to hear from you. What’s been your experience operating in mainstream anti-racism spaces? How has our conversation today reframed that? Find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @the opt in.

Aurora: Kelly: Music for this episode is by Jordan McCree. And the Opt-In is produced by Rachel Ishikawa.

Kelly: Talk next week.

Aurora: Bye.