On Being with Krista Tippett

Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa

Menakem
Towards a Framework for Repair
Last Updated
August 19, 2021

Original Air Date

July 9, 2020
Through the ruptures of the past year and more, we’ve been given so
much to learn, and callings to live differently. But how to do that, and
where to begin? Resmaa Menakem’s book, My Grandmother’s Hands,
and his original insights into racialized trauma in all kinds of bodies,
have offered new ways forward for us all. So we said yes when Resmaa
proposed that he join On Being together with Robin DiAngelo. She has
been a foremost white voice in our civilizational grappling with
whiteness. This conversation is not comfortable, but it is electric and
it opens possibility.

Image by Alleanna Harris/Alleanna harris, © All

Rights Reserved.

Guests
Resmaa Menakem (MSW, LICSW, SEP) teaches workshops on Cultural
Somatics for audiences of African Americans, European Americans, and
police officers. He is also a therapist in private practice, and a senior fellow at
The Meadows. His New York Times best-selling book is My Grandmother’s
Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.
 Robin DiAngelo has been a
consultant, educator, and
facilitator for over 20 years and is
an Affiliate Associate Professor of
Education at the University of
Washington in Seattle. She’s the
author of the influential book
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism. Her
new book is Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm.

Transcript
Krista Tippett, host: Through all the ruptures of the past year and
more, we have been given so much to learn, and callings to live
differently. But how to do that? And how to begin? Resmaa
Menakem’s book My Grandmother’s Hands, and his original insights
into racialized trauma in all kinds of bodies, has offered new ways
forward for us all. He’s become one of my most important teachers,
and I immediately said yes when he asked to join me in conversation
together with Robin DiAngelo. She has been a foremost white voice in
our civilizational grappling with whiteness. Separately and together,
these two clarify the important work that those of us in white bodies
need to do in ourselves and with each other, in service to everyone
else. This conversation is not comfortable, but it is electric, and it
opens possibility.
Resmaa Menakem:  White folks don’t even know that we’re not even
speaking the same embodied language. We don’t see the world in the
same way. And so white people coming up and just saying, this is
what I want to do, or this is what I think, you don’t even realize that
the language that you’re speaking is wounding.
Robin DiAngelo: At this point, anybody listening, anybody white
listening might be feeling, oh my God, I can’t get this right. And that
is true. You cannot get this right. Like, a piece of it is being in that
unsettling place of not knowing; that deep, deep humility.
[music: “Seven League Boots” by Zoe Keating]
Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being.

Resmaa Menakem is based in Minneapolis, where he is an esteemed

presence at the heart of this city’s grappling with pain and ways to
move forward. You’ll hear him speak of bodies of culture, rather than
bodies of color. Robin DiAngelo gave us the phrase white fragility. She
teaches, writes, and consults from Seattle. This conversation took
place by Zoom in the summer of 2020.
So I have some questions, and I have some observations I would like
to run by you. But really what I’m delighted to do is bring the two of
you into conversation with each other. You’re both doing lots of
speaking, in this virtual world, and being asked and invited to
participate in things. If there are — even in all of that — questions you
are not being asked that you would like to address, or conversations
you’d like to be having or hearing, then I would hope that maybe this
could be a space for that, as this next hour or so unfolds.
Robin, because we haven’t met before and you haven’t been on the
show, I am curious — the only thing that I saw, as I was looking
around, about the background of your life was, somewhere you said or
you wrote that you grew up poor and white in San Francisco. I’m
curious how you would trace, in the background of your childhood, in
your earliest life, the seeds of this clarity about white fragility that you
have really distinctly articulated for our world.
DiAngelo: Well, thank you for that question. I grew up poor and white
in the Bay Area. We moved frequently. I think, from a very early age, I
had a very deep sense of shame. I will never forget a moment in which
— two moments, in fact — one in which a teacher held my hand up in
front of the class as an example of poor hygiene and told me to go
home and tell my mother to wash me. My mom was a single mom, she
had three children, she was sick, and she literally couldn’t house, feed,
or clothe us. So I was dirty.
The other moment was visiting a friend of hers, some lady — you
know when you’re a kid and you get taken to somebody’s house, and
they have kids, so you’re playing. And on the way out, I was the last
one out the door, and I overheard one of their children ask her
mother, “What’s wrong with them?” That was her question, “What’s
wrong with them?” And I stopped, riveted. I wanted to hear. And her
mother put her finger to her lips and said, “Shh. They’re poor.” That
was a revelatory moment. It was a moment when I realized, there’s
something about us that everyone can see that’s shameful but that
should not be named.
At the same time, I also always knew I was white. And I knew that it
was better to be white. I can remember seeing food left out, uneaten.
And I was hungry. And I would reach for it, maybe out in a park, on a
picnic table or something, and I would be admonished by my mother,
“Don’t touch that. You don’t know who touched it. It could’ve been a
colored person,” which was the language of the time. And the
message was clear. If a colored person touched it, it would be dirty.
But I was actually dirty. But in those moments, in those moments, I
wasn’t poor anymore. In those moments, I was white. We used, if you
will, Black people to project our shame onto; to realign us with the
dominant white culture that our poverty separated us from. I don’t
have less racism because I grew up poor, and I don’t have less white
privilege, either. I just learned my place from a different class position
than I would have, had I been middle class and white. But I still
learned it, and it’s on me to take the rest of my life to unpack how I
learned it, how it’s manifesting.
And in some ways, it manifests in not feeling — there’s a kind of day
late and dollar short that people who grew up poor have. I didn’t go to
college until I was in my 30s. And sometimes I see racism happening,
but I don’t feel like I’m as smart as those people, especially in
academia. And so it may truly be a feeling of inferiority that’s keeping
me silent. But when I stepped out of myself and asked, yes, but how is
it functioning right now, in this room? Regardless of what is driving
your silence, how is it functioning? Well, it’s functioning to uphold
racism. I’ll get ahead by my silence.
And so that’s unacceptable to me. And when I use my white position
to break with silence and white solidarity and speak up, I am
simultaneously healing the lie that I am inherently inferior because I
grew up poor. So for me to center race — even though I experience
oppression and have experienced oppression in other aspects of my
life — for me to center race and feed every other identity or experience
through that lens has been the most profound tool, if you will.
Tippett: Resmaa, I’m thinking about how you speak about bodies of
culture. And I almost feel like what Robin described is another form of
being a body of culture; in a different way, right, but another part of
the same pathology, in some ways.
Menakem: A pathology is readily available for any type of identity. So
the pathology of racism or the pathology of classism or the pathology
of homophobia, those are always readily available to use. But I really
do — there are particular things that, what I’m talking about in terms
of the lens that I come from, it really is about, for me, having a real
understanding on how this thing about race comes up.
So yes, there are pieces in there, but for me, much like what Robin
said in terms of the lens that she uses, by which she is able to see and
judge and navigate the world, is really synonymous with what I’m
talking about — a living, embodied philosophy. Because what we
know is that white body supremacy and white supremacy is not just
structural, but it is also a philosophy. That’s why it can mutate. That’s
why it can adapt to every situation, and before you know it, whiteness
is once again centered, even though you started off with a liberation
mindset or trying to effect some type of change. And so for me, yes,
they’re similar, but they’re not the same.
DiAngelo: The key is, how do you use it as a way in and not a way out?
Again, I gotta repeat it: I always knew I was white. I knew it was
better to be white. Being white has helped me leave poverty. I can’t
talk about any other identity without talking about how race shapes
that identity. It’s so easy to see where we swim against the current and
so much harder to see where we move with the current. And for me,
that’s the richest place, because I’ve spent my life noticing the
injustices I’ve experienced, but I was very far in life until I started to
notice, what injustice have I perpetuated, and how have I benefited?
Tippett: And I think one thing that’s so insidious about this is —
Resmaa, when you use the word “philosophy,” I think when people
hear that word, it sounds like an idea system that one knows one
holds; an articulated clarity of thought and belief. But you’re coming
at this and how this is in our bodies whether we know it or not. And
Robin, well, your entire premise is how white people live and move
and not only don’t know this, but feel entitled if it is challenged.
DiAngelo: You know, Krista, I think what you were articulating is
what sociologist Joe Feagin calls the white racial frame, the
framework through which we make racial meaning. And it includes
everything — interpretations, perceptions, emotions, language. And
when you’re viewing through a frame, it’s so internalized, you don’t
know you’re viewing through a frame.
I would not have been able to tell you that I had a racial framework. I
was raised to just see myself as human. I’m just a person, looking out
through objective eyes. [laughs] No, I’m looking out through white
eyes. And that is really hard, for a lot of white people. It’s interesting
how defensive and angry white people get when you suggest that you
could know anything about them just because they’re white, and that
there’s a collective worldview that they have; they’re not all just
special and unique and different.
Tippett: There’s someplace that I’ve heard you observe that — and this
is a question I’ve asked, and it’s a question I hear asked a lot — white
people saying, which just confirms what you’re saying, how did I not
see this? And you’ve said we don’t see it, and we do see it, but we can’t
admit we see it, and that this creates an irrationality.
DiAngelo: We’re so invested in not seeing this, for so many reasons.
Yeah, it’s this really weird —I’m going to imagine — you tell me,
Krista, if you can relate. On the one hand, we really don’t know. We
really are just oblivious to this, and we’re shocked when we finally see
it. And, on the other hand, yeah, we know. We know. I know. You
know. Both those things are actually, simultaneously true or real. And
then you add that you can’t admit that you know, and it makes us
fairly irrational. You can add a lot of other things, too, like
internalized superiority that we can’t admit to, and etc.
Tippett: Or — right. I think, certainly, it penetrates in moments, and
then it gets filed away, or …
Menakem: That’s it.

Tippett: … or you talk yourself out of — I think for me, it would be, I
can’t do anything about this. I can’t let in the magnitude of this.
Menakem: So there’s a really interesting thing, a number of
experiences that I’ve had since brother George Floyd was murdered.
And one of them is having friends — white friends that I care for,
white friends that I love, and family members — one of the things
that’s kind of the thing that everybody’s starting to say now is, I’m an
ally. White folks love telling you that they’re an ally. And I had an
interesting conversation with a good friend of mine, this is somebody
that I’ve known for a very long time, and he told me, he said, “Man, I
did not understand how just oblivious to this stuff that I was.” He
said, “I’ve been your friend a long time.” And he said, “And I’m still
kind of not understanding.” He said, “One thing happened that just
crystallized this for me.” And he said that the neighborhood that he
belonged to is very liberal. They’re not the devout racists, they’re the
complicit racists. They’re very liberal. They have Black Lives Matters
in their yard. And he said, “One of the interesting things that
happened was that when all of this went down, all of a sudden, the
Black Lives Matter things that were on people’s lawns disappeared.”
And he said he found that strange, because if Black lives mattered
before all of this went down, what’s making you now pick them up?
And he said, “And the thing about it was, is that I immediately
thought about, Resmaa can’t remove his Black skin, that Resmaa can’t
remove the cops killing him. He can’t do that, but we can.” And so he’s
been working with that and struggling with that for a minute. And I
just let him struggle with it, because that’s an important struggle. It’s
an important question to begin to deal with.
DiAngelo: Can I add something to that?

Tippett: I’m just curious, would they take the signs down because they
were scared of how volatile things felt?
Menakem: What he said was, is that they got some report that —
because people were targeting those pieces.
Tippett: I see.
Menakem: And when he said that to me, I said — I can’t cuss on here,
but I said, dude, that is irrelevant. It is really irrelevant, whether or not
they thought that somebody would then target them. People target
me, every day. People target — so the moment you get uncomfortable,
you have escape hatches. You actually —
Tippett: It’s that easy.

Menakem: You actually are advantaged by being born in a white body,

in ways that I am not advantaged.
Tippett: Robin, you wanted to say something?

DiAngelo: Well, so two thoughts, because of course, that was so rich.

And one is that it’s not benign or innocent that he still doesn’t quite
see it. And I just really want to push back against any narrative that
white people are innocent of race. I think it takes energy not to see it.
It’s a kind of willful not-knowing or refusal to know.
And I offer that question. When white people ask me, what do I do?, I
ask them in return, how have you managed not to know, when the
information’s everywhere, they’ve been telling us forever? What does
it take for us to ask, and then to keep asking? And it just speaks to
how seductive the forces of comfort are. So what am I going to do to
keep myself uncomfortable, because that comfort is really seductive
and powerful?
Menakem: And has a cost. It is not a seductiveness without a cost. It’s
that most white people are willing for other people to pay that cost.
[music: “ypsilon” by Ólafur Arnalds]
Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Today, I’m with
therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem, together with
Robin DiAngelo, the author of White Fragility.
[music: “ypsilon” by Ólafur Arnalds]
I feel like in both of your work — and this is not enough. In some
ways, this isn’t even an answer to the question of how to begin. But
there is a necessity and virtue of white people — of me — letting
myself be uncomfortable.
DiAngelo: But at the same time, think about the language of violence
so many white people use to describe that discomfort. So we say
things like, well, I’m not going to have that conversation, because I
don’t want to be attacked. Attacked, right? That’s a — and we’re only
talking about some chosen moment of discomfort in a conversation.
And what a perversion of the true direction of violence that we’ve
been perpetrating, or in our name, for hundreds of years.
And that leads to this idea about allies. So I do not call myself an ally. I
do not even say I’m an antiracist. I will say I’m involved in antiracist
work, but it’s really for Resmaa to decide if, in any given moment, I’m
actually behaving in allied or antiracist ways. And notice that: in any
given moment. It’s not like a fixed status. And I’m the least qualified to
make that determination, because I have investments in the system
that I don’t even know I have. Like, I can’t really trust myself. So I
have to have accountability set up around me.
Tippett: I want to keep going with all of this. Before we go too much
farther, I want to ask each of you how you’re thinking about what has
just happened in 2020, the pandemic upon the pandemic, or the
awakening to the racial pandemic that had been with us. But I just
wonder how you — how you’ve understood what has happened that
may be significant, that may be new, from what you’ve already been
attending to in your lives and work.
Menakem: So I’ve been taking to calling it — a friend of mine had an
Instagram picture up, and he had a mask on, and on the mask it said,
“I’m still dealing with COVID 1619,” not just COVID-19. And that’s
true, for me. The weathering effects of white body supremacy has
affected my very skeletal structure, has affected my respiratory
system, has affected my cardiovascular system, has affected my
mama’s cardiovascular and her mother’s — the effects of racialization
and white body supremacy, and the weathering effects of it, is why
COVID-19 has run rampant through my communities and run
rampant through the East African community, is because one of the
things is that the systems have tenderized our physical systems to the
point to where COVID just set up shop and wrecked shop, because our
bodies were already weathered.
And so that, in addition to COVID, and then in addition to sister
Breonna Taylor getting murdered, brother Arbery getting murdered,
brother Floyd, and the countless before and the countless since then
— this is — I just have to say that this is brutal. This is brutality and
viciousness at a level that, when white folks and allies say that they’re
allies, and what can we do, and you think you’re being helpful; or
what should I do now?, and you think you’re being helpful, there is
such a brutality to your words that, many times, I can’t fool with
white folks. I can’t be around you. I need you to leave me alone. I need
you to not ask me what my opinion is of a Black man getting
murdered with no regard.
And so for me, this idea about allyship really does fall into the place of
whether or not white people have the capacity to stop what I call
declarations of independence, declarations of, I’m not racist,
declarations of, I’m an ally, declarations that I’m a good, individual
white person, and they’re going to have to start really beginning to
figure out how they build culture around abolishing white supremacy.
Anything other than that, for me, really is — and you’ve heard me say
this before — really is performance art. It is not real. If you’re not
going to be with other white bodies for three to 10 years, grinding on
specifically about race and specifically about the things that show up
when white bodies get together to build culture, then I can’t fool with
you. I’m not interested in your credentialing or your virtue signaling.
It means nothing to me, because I know that when I go home and my
son is getting ready to go and get in the car and drive off, that my
stomach feels like it’s going to fall out; that when I watch my wife
have to go interact with these organizations and these structures that
are brutalizing her, I know that that’s going to continue for me, even
when you tell me you’re an ally
DiAngelo: I just want to offer to white listeners, if you’re feeling
frustrated, just watch what’s coming up for you as you hear Resmaa’s
hopelessness and you start to have feelings. And some of them may be
anger — like, why are you not giving me hope? Why are you not
making me feel better? What am I supposed to do? — just notice all of
that. It’s a different way of breaking through the apathy of whiteness.
And it’s not going to be a kind of tie-it-up-in-a-bow, much less,
Resmaa, give me hope. It’s a kind of, let’s break through how deep the
apathy is and use your umbrage, if you’re feeling it, to motivate you to
prove him wrong. [laughs] Show him that you can be trusted, that we
can be trusted.
But hope is such a tool, in a way, of whiteness. And we’ve dangled
that tool in front of Black people for 400 years. And we keep not
showing up in the long term.
[music: “saman” by Ólafur Arnalds]
Tippett: After a short break, more with Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa
Menakem.
[music: “saman” by Ólafur Arnalds]
I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Today, an electric
conversation with Robin DiAngelo, a foremost white voice on
grappling with whiteness, together with Resmaa Menakem, the
therapist and trauma specialist who has clarified new insight into
racism and racial trauma as they lodge in our bodies. Robin is based in
Seattle. Resmaa is based in Minneapolis, where he is an esteemed
counselor and justice coach at the heart of this city’s grappling with
pain and ways to move forward. The three of us spoke in the summer
of 2020.
One of the things I’m aware of right now is that it’s stressful and
uncomfortable, for white people, to hear generalizations about white
people. And so — I’m going to continue in that vein — so both of you
have particularly called out — and this is also doubly uncomfortable —
white progressives. And I think one of the things you said to me,
Resmaa, when we spoke, not being able to imagine that we would be
in lockdown a month later, and on and on — but this feels like one of
the things, one of the realities that has surfaced: that there’s work for
white people that they have to do among themselves and that, in fact,
there has been re-wounding that has happened in these early years of
the invention of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and doing it often in
workplaces, getting everybody in a room and acting like we can talk
about this together. So I would like to talk a little bit about that, about
the work that white people need to do on themselves and with each
other.
Menakem: I’m going to let Robin take that. [laughs] Robin, please.
[laughs]
DiAngelo: I actually am getting to where I do think that we should not
be having these conversations together until we’ve done a fair amount
of our own personal work as white people, because we cause so much
wounding in these conversations. And our consciousness is — you can
get through graduate school in this country without ever discussing
systemic racism. And so we just have a pretty low critical awareness,
and we go into these dialogues, and we cause a lot of harm.
But when you suggest we’re going to separate by race, a really funny
thing happens. White people freak out. Like, what? What? Well, how
will I learn about race if Resmaa doesn’t tell me? What do you mean? I
thought … — all of that. And what I want to point out is that most
white people live their lives in segregation. Most white people will go
cradle to grave with few, if any, authentic relationships with Black
people, with no sense whatsoever that anything of value is missing
from their lives. And if we’re going to be really honest, we will
measure the absence of Black people as the criteria for the value of our
neighborhoods and our schools.
I was never meant to know or love Resmaa. I was meant to live my life
not knowing or loving him — tolerate him, smile at him, be nice to
him, yes, but know or love him, absolutely not. And yet, for a brief,
contrived exercise — explicitly, right? — the moment we say, now
we’re going to separate by race, in order to work on racism, white
people become unglued. So it’s like, as long as it just happens — it just
happens that I grew up in an all-white neighborhood, still live in an
all-white neighborhood, go to mostly-white schools, send my kids to
mostly-white schools, and talk about those neighborhoods and
schools in glowing terms, as good …
Tippett: I heard you say that somewhere, just that, that how can we
say that a neighborhood or school that is all white or almost-all white
is a good neighborhood or a good school?
DiAngelo: See, and I, as a good white progressive, I’m never going to
say the N-word. But that, for me, is the most powerful message of all.
The most powerful message of white superiority, white supremacy, is
that we could and do call white segregation good. That’s a really deep
message.
In February, we’re going to talk about the tragedy of segregation on
Blacks in the Jim Crow South. And then we’re going to talk in glowing
terms about how good our neighborhood is. So it’s those messages
that we have to look at. And as long as we define “racist” as the N-
word and the white hood and the meanness, we’re not going to see
what we contribute to it daily.
And let me just ask Resmaa, would you rather have a Richard Spencer
in your face or a white progressive?
Menakem: None of them.

DiAngelo: [laughs] Thank you. I shouldn’t have said “in your face,” but
“deal with.”
Menakem: I don’t have a space for either one of them fools. [laughs]
But what I would say is, I would rather have somebody that I know is
working for three years, three to 10 years, working with other white
people on their stuff. I can tolerate that. I can deal with that. I can
even support that. But your declarations don’t really mean anything.
The idea that people can come up to me and ask me, what should I
do?, when we have Google, is just crazy on its face.
And that’s one of the things that I really believe is why white folks
have got to do this work themselves, because white folks don’t even
know that we’re not even speaking the same embodied language.
We’re not even speaking the same verbal language. We don’t see the
world in the same way. So we are not saying the same things. We are
not vibing the same things. And so white people coming up and just
saying, this is what I want to do, or this is what I think, you don’t even
realize that the language that you’re speaking is wounding. It is
brutal. It always has been. And I don’t care who — I don’t care how
many babies you done had with a Black man or Black woman or how
many times you marched with Martin Luther King — none of that
matters. You have to develop culture.
DiAngelo: So, Resmaa, this is such a critical point. And I’m always
like, I want white people to hear this point. So when white people tell
you they’re not racist, that actually isn’t communicating to you that
they’re not racist?
Menakem: No, they’re actually saying the exact opposite. And the
other piece that they’re saying — so I’ve played with this idea of
devout racist and then complicit racist. There’s no such thing as a
nonracist. Either you are destroying this and looking to dismantle this
thing that currently exists, and you’re working towards it and you’re
working towards developing culture around it, or you’re either devout
or complicit. And so for me, when white people say these things that
they think are supportive, because they speak a different language
than I do, a different embodied language, a different verbal language,
what they’re actually telling me is, you are not safe.
DiAngelo: See, and I think a lot of white people listening are like, wait,
why? And so, if I may, Resmaa, and I know you will check me if I miss
this, when we say that, what we’re saying is, we don’t understand
what racism is; we don’t understand what it means to be white.
The other side of that is when we go to someone like Resmaa and we
say, tell me about racism, and then he — which is, basically: open your
chest, open your guts. Be vulnerable. Show yourself. I’m not going to
show myself. I’m just going to receive — it’s extractive — but I’m only
going to receive what I agree with. And so these are all the reasons
why Black people just don’t want to deal with us until we get a little
further along, so we don’t say things like, I’m not racist.
And let me just be really clear. As a result of being raised in this
society as a white person, I’m racist. I have a racist worldview. There’s
no way I don’t have a racist worldview, because it’s embedded in
everything. And that means I have racist assumptions and behaviors
and investments.
And it’s liberating to start from that premise and then just get to work
trying to figure out how it’s manifesting and interrupt that, rather
than the insistence that we could be untouched by the water we’re
swimming in. I mean, so many Black people have said to me, yes, give
me the upfront, in-your-face racist, because I know where they’re
coming from. I know how to protect myself. The white progressive is
smiling, but there’s a knife in my back.
Menakem: That all lands with great force on brother George Floyd’s
body. The thing I think about brother George that I’ve thought about
is that he was such an ordinary man. One of the things that I’ve been
doing is that I have not watched the video. I have not watched that
video all the way through, because I can’t.
But what I have done is I’ve taken the video, and I’ve pulled George
out of the frame and only focused on Chauvin, and looked at his face
for that whole eight, nine minutes, just look at his face. And when you
watch his face, you see such assuredness that the whole system is
behind him, that nothing is going to happen, that he is doing his job
and he’s not even doing it to a human being.
White people gotta work that out amongst themselves. They have to
work out that pus amongst themselves. They have to figure out, when
all of that stuff comes up when they’re in the room with each other,
they have to work that out. And that takes time, because it takes
people being intimate with each other — not intimacy like mother’s
milk, but intimacy like, I am being exposed to you, and we are going
to move through this to develop something and grow up. But white
people are not even willing to acknowledge that there is an infection.
Tippett: I think, also, this matter of white people, well, the work we
have to do together, this work has to happen for the world to change. I
worry about the culture we’ve created, the public discourse culture
we’ve created in recent years that got backgrounded during the
COVID early period and is kind of now back — that we don’t have
public space where it is reasonable to invite people to confess, to
change, to acknowledge shortcomings, or to let other people do that.
And I feel like that’s a space that we have to create. But I guess that’s
really the white people work among themselves that has to happen.
Menakem: You have to create it. You’re right, it doesn’t exist. An
embodied antiracist culture and practice doesn’t exist, and now you
have to create it — not for me, but so you don’t pass this infection
down to your children.
DiAngelo: And [laughs] a book group over a glass of wine — at this
point, anybody listening — anybody white listening might be feeling,
oh my God, I can’t get this right. And that is true. You cannot get this
right. A piece of it is being in that unsettling place of not knowing —
that deep, deep humility. And even the confession can be problematic.
It can range from just a form of masochism to a form of, well, I feel
bad enough that you can see that I’m actually good. And so that also
becomes performative —
Tippett: No, I’m talking about confession coupled with repentance,
which literally means you stop in your tracks and walk in a different
direction.
Menakem: And do something.

DiAngelo: Just had to put that out there, because we also have to figure
out how to do that work in accountable ways. I am a little nervous
about how many people now are like, oh, I read your book, and now I
want to start a book study, or, I want to start a workshop. And it takes
years of experience and study and struggle and mistake-making and
trust-building to hold a group around race and really hold that group
and push them and help them go where they need to go, in ways that
are constructive. It takes a lot of experience. So we just have to also
think — this isn’t the, maybe, format to give the answer to
accountability, but we need to be asking ourselves that.
Tippett: But somehow we need accountability that actually celebrates
change, because right now we just have yelling at each other and
putting other people down.
Menakem: Are you talking about white folk?

Tippett: Yeah, I’m talking about white folks, yeah. One thing — using
the word “we,” I’m really trying to actually stop myself [laughs] or
question it, every time I do it. And it’s hard. But you’re right, yes. I
mean white people.
DiAngelo: I usually just start out by saying, when I say we, I’m talking
to my fellow white people.
Tippett: So, years ago, I interviewed John Lewis in Montgomery,
Alabama, which was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.
And one of the things John Lewis talks about, about the Civil Rights
Movement in the 1950s and the 1960s, the kind of disciplines that they
brought, the spiritual and tactical discipline that they brought, was
that while you had to be strategic and tactical and fight the fights and
do the actions, you also had to know in your mind the world that you
wanted to create. And he said you had to live as if. So you were
working with what is, and you are applying your creativity and the
power of human imagination and courage to holding to that, that
world you want to be walking towards and walking with others
towards.
So I think maybe I’ll start with you, Robin. What is that as if, beyond
white fragility as the norm and as a determinant, a driving force, in
our culture, our society?
DiAngelo: Well, the word that keeps coming up to me is repair — that
we would have a framework that would allow us to repair. And the
framework that is causing white fragility is a refusal to repair, a
refusal to see or feel. Some defensiveness is a natural response, when
given direct feedback about something. It’s defensiveness that
functions to refuse to understand or stretch or go deeper, that is
absolutely certain that they know all they need to know. And I’m just
going to say it: many of your listeners right now are feeling that they
already have the answer, and they know all they need to know, and
here is the correct response. So it would be the fortitude to get to a
place of repair. What would it take?
I’ll never forget asking a group — I asked the Black people in the
group, what would it be like if you could just go there with us, give us
that feedback, tell us, talk to us, and we received it with grace, we
reflected, and we sought to change our behavior? And I’ll never forget,
a Black man raised his hand and said, “It would be revolutionary.”
Just notice that. That’s a revolution — we would receive that with
grace, reflect, and seek to repair?
But it’s actually not that tall an order. But it is a very tall order. I’d say
it’s too tall an order from the current paradigm that says it has to be
intentional to count.
Tippett: So, Resmaa, let’s say we’re walking along the long arc of the
moral universe. What is that as if that you want to be walking into
and you want your grandchildren to inherit?
Menakem: The first thing that comes to my mind is that Black women
can be in their beds, sleeping, and not have to worry about somebody
kicking a door in and putting eight bullets in them; that our schools
are such that they’re organized around the care of Black children’s
bodies and the need that they have, as opposed to trying to fit them
inside of something that is not working for them and that was never
designed for them. The system is not broken, it was designed this way.
It’s doing exactly what it should do. So for me, the opposite is what I
would need to see.
The opposite is, if something happens, that our people can be in a
situation where they can be redeemed. So if they go to do something
and they hurt somebody or something like that, and they are in prison
— which is not necessarily the case, because you don’t necessarily
have to do something, if you’re in a Black body and end up in prison.
That is not a prerequisite — but if you are, then that prison is actually
a school; that prison has things in it that will actually allow you to not
just sit and fester, but grow and prosper.
And so for me, if I’m thinking my children are living in a world that I
would design, it would be that they were not free of strife, or not free
of things happening, because difficult things can happen, and you can
be bettered through them. What I’m talking about is the structural
thing that makes it so that my life is not worthy. I would like for that
to be different and change. And so if I’m looking at, as you said the
ancestor said, if I’m looking at the world as I would like it, that’s
where it would start for me.
Tippett: I have to say, both of your answers are really modest. [laughs]
You know what I mean? And it says something, that it’s hard to
imagine that world you’d really, really want to live in, as opposed to a
world that’s just free of brutality that shouldn’t be there in the first
place.
Menakem: I just need that first.

Tippett: Is there anything that either one of you wants to add, or

something we didn’t talk about that feels really important to name
right now or that you want to get out?
Menakem: Nah. I think that’s it, for me. I’m worn out. [laughs]

Tippett: Well, then, that’s a good reason to stop. Thank you both, so
much.
Menakem: Thank you, Krista.

DiAngelo: Thank you, Krista. Thank you, Resmaa.

Tippett: Blessings.

Menakem: Yes, you too.

[music: “Freeze” by Manu Delago]

Tippett: Resmaa Menakem’s New York Times best-selling book is My
Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending
Our Hearts and Bodies.
Robin DiAngelo is the author of the bestselling White Fragility: Why
It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism. And her new book
is Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm.
[music: “Freeze” by Manu Delago]
The On Being Project is located on Dakota land. Our lovely theme
music is provided and composed by Zoë Keating. And the last voice
that you hear singing at the end of our show is Cameron Kinghorn.
On Being is an independent, nonprofit production of The On Being
Project. It is distributed to public radio stations by WNYC Studios. I
created this show at American Public Media.
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Books & Music

Recommended Reading

My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to

Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Author: Resmaa Menekam
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about
Racism
Author: Robin DiAngelo
Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial
Harm
Author: Robin DiAngelo
Music Played

Into The Trees

Artist: Zoë Keating & Zoë Keating
re:member
Artist: Ólafur Arnalds
Metromonk
Artist: Manu Delago
The On Being Project
— Copyright © 2021