7. A White Woman's Mess: My Ongoing Process with Unpacking Racism - Special Episode

This episode is different. I don’t have a guest to talk with, it’s just me sharing my thoughts about racism. This episode is mostly for white folks or at least non-black people. Anyone is welcome to listen, but in this episode, I am a white woman speaking to other white people about racism. There are experts on the lived experience of being Black in the U.S. (pretty much all Black people living in the U.S.) and there are white people who specialize in talking to other white people about racism. I’m not either of these. I’m an imperfect white woman learning and growing along the messy path of becoming anti-racist and that’s exactly what I want to share with you in this episode.

“What we need to do is understand that internalized racism exists in each of us, it’s been cooked into the tissue of my being from the reality of living in a country BUILT on racism—and as a white woman, it’s my job to unpack what’s been put there while I may have been sleeping.”

Topics we cover include:

• The killing of Black people
  
• What my mom has to say about unpacking racism
  
• My own racism
  
• Being imperfect and messing up
  
• What I did at a midwifery conference
  
• Shame and fear around racism
  
• Public commitments to doing more unlearning and relearning
  

Episode Resources:

Favorite Chart of Resources for Anti-Racism Work.

Want to buy your books from Black owned bookstores? Here’s a list.

Books mentioned:

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad

Movie: 

13th Streaming on Netflix

Course on race and the nervous system with Sabia Wade and Kimberly Johnson

A Lifetime in Quarantine 

Episode Credits:

Produced by Aleksa Mara

Edited by Veronica Gruba

Hosted & Created by Britta Bushnell, PHD