Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa Menakem In Conversation
Image by Alleanna Harris/Alleanna harris, © All Rights Reserved.
Interview by Kista Tippett with Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa Menakem, The On Being Project
Krista Tippett begins - “The show we released with Minneapolis trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem in the weeks after George Floyd’s killing has touched listeners, and galvanized searching, with an extraordinary reach. So I said yes when he proposed that he join me in conversation again, this time together with Robin DiAngelo. She is perhaps the foremost voice in our civilizational grappling with whiteness; her book, White Fragility, is one of the most widely read books in the world right now. Hearing the two of them together is electric — the deepest of dives into the calling of our lifetimes.”
Resmaa Menakem offers therapy and coaching in Minneapolis and teaches across the U.S. He’s worked with U.S. military contractors in Afghanistan as well as American communities and police forces. His latest book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies is part narrative, part workbook. Robin DiAngelo is an Affiliate Associate Professor of Education at the University of Washington in Seattle and has been a consultant, educator, and facilitator for over 20 years on issues of racial and social justice. She’s the author of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism.
“A key factor in the perpetuation of white-body supremacy is many people’s refusal to experience clean pain around the myth of race. Instead, usually out of fear, they choose the dirty pain of silence and avoidance and, invariably, prolong the pain.”
“For those of us who work to raise the racial consciousness of whites, simply getting whites to acknowledge that our race gives us advantages is a major effort. The defensiveness, denial, and resistance are deep.”