Eyes On Whiteness with guest Sonya Renee Taylor

Eyes On Whiteness

Diedra and Maureen talk with Sonya early on in the pandemic. We come right out the gate talking about how ancestors are encouraging Sonya to shower more frequently and how white people not regularly washing their legs surfaces as a confession for Maureen.

Sonya joins us from New Zealand and talks about introversion in the time of quarantine, what New Zealand's sustainable and equity centered COVID plan looked like and Diedra yells at Sonya to stop talking this logical nonsense! We talk front line workers and how perspective has shifted, the amount of hours of labor it takes to avoid Amazon’s global control, how capitalism is the devil and COVID is the universe trying to have us stop worshipping the devil, how whiteness makes up "rights" and entitlement from thin air while they protest not being allowed in the playground, what happens when you tell the structures of whiteness “no”, the genocidal impact of “keeping America open” on black and brown people, the trauma of letting in the truth of white supremacy and why people choose to sit in the illusion of comfort and the gift of avoidance. We dig into white people’s trauma that must be healed, and ask how we acknowledge our complicity without it being an indictment on our humanity…and how holding hope and compassion for white people is a mind fuck for black people, how the reckoning white people fear is actually an internal reckoning and the counter-intuitive ease that comes with being allowed to be fallible.

Diedra wraps with reflecting in how transmuting White Supremacy we get to a place of asking “How do we really see that when I’m looking at you, I’m looking at me?” and the freedom and space that come with starting within instead of always fighting externally.

Special bonus story about how someone erased Sonya’s name from her quote and put Brené Brown’s name on it and how whiteness played out in that process and the lesson Sonya took away about release and trust. *Spoiler alert, it played out....Sonya was just featured on Brené's podcast!

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