Black Lives Matter: Readings, Research and what I’m learning so far.

Let’s say you broke your arm.

It was a really nasty break and the doctor has put your left arm into plaster cast for 3 months. Dang 3 months. That’s a long-ass time.

Because you are #badassfitnesslady, you decide that it is not going to deter you from doing your workouts to get #RIPPED. It’s not that your left arm CAN’T do any movement – it’s just that some things are exceptionally more difficult or actually impossible in a plaster cast.

You continue on with your workouts and with your left arm in the cast your right arm just gets STRONGER and STRONGER.
SHEW! Even without the cast on your arm – it takes a lot of hard work in the right arm, early mornings, sweat and tears to get so #RIPPED. No one is denying that!

Eventually, it’s time for your cast to come off and hooray –

You now have a #SUPERRIPPED right arm and a spindly-looking left arm. You feel like this is not quite right, so you consult your personal trainer physio –

Your physio takes one look at you and declares –

THE LEFT ARM IS WHAT NEEDS ATTENTION!

The left arm matters.
The left arm is important.
The left arm needs your help.

Then someone else looking on declares in shock –

“…BUT BOTH ARMS ARE IMPORTANT!”

So the question is –

If you were looking to restore balance to your system, would you work both arms or would you focus your attention and energy on rebuilding the left arm?

OBVIOUSLY,

The left arm would need your attention, energy and focus.

Of course the right arm is important too, just as the toes, the hair, the knees, the hips, the mouth, the digestive system, the legs are important too – they are ALL part of the SAME system. But right now – where the urgent attention is needed – is the left arm.

If we use this analogy to explain things currently – we can think of the right arm as white people, the left arm as black people. The plaster cast as a history of oppression, immobility, sanctions, lack of availability to resources and the “3 months” is actually more like generations and centuries. (Just think how crazy the imbalance would be if you worked out one arm only [strengthening whiteness] for several hundred generations?)

Your body “the system” would literally not be able to hold itself upright with this kind of imbalance. The whole thing would collapse on itself.
Again and again.

And this is where we are right now.

Sometimes, unfortunately, we need this kind of systemic collapse – an all-fall-down moment, for us to stop, take a pause and think –

Many of us are in a place now where we are ready to actually do something about this massive imbalance. An imbalance which, if you are white and not yet actively speaking up against it, you have been complicit in it’s creation and quietly benefitting from it’s institutional imbalances.

And it really does start with our own uncomfortable inner work – because, speaking from a white-woman perspective, it is really COMFORTABLE being “the strong arm”. For many of us white people, the systemic collapse – the all-fall-down, does not affect us in the same way it affects black people and people of colour. (I mean, look at the highly scientific drawing above, to see which parts of the system get crushed.)

For white people, ONE of our starting points is in recognising that we are part of the whole and that we are part of the ENTIRE system. This is for me, where spirituality and racism have a huge intersection. The right arm does not function independently from the body. When the body collapses, the ENTIRE body collapses. All systems in the body, although they are different, MUST work as an integrated balanced whole. As one. Union. To Yoke. Yoga.

Reflecting on my journey and learning in this area up to now, I can definitely say I have made many mistakes in the past. Several years ago, I was shamefully, firmly in the “…but all lives matter!” camp. I did not know any better and I am sorry. I did not have the understanding and insight that I have now (and I still have a long way to go). To quote Maya Angelou,

“Do the best you can until you know better.
When you know better, you do better.”

I wanted to take this blog post to thank some of the people that I have been learning from over the last while, some books I’m planning on getting, useful podcasts and hopefully share other useful resources for anyone else who is also ready to do this important inner work of dismantling white privilege and supremacy. Speaking to white people – it is up to US, to educate ourselves.

If you know of any other useful tools or resources please feel free to leave a comment and I will add it to the list.

“Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race” – Reni Eddo Lodge.
“I need to talk to spiritual white women about white supremacy” – Layla Saad.
Me and White Supremacy – Layla Saad.
White Tears, Brown Scars – Ruby Hamad

Anti-racism resource google doc.

Good Ancestor Podcast
CTZN podcast
Rachel Cargle

*Special thanks to Yvonne and Katie for sharing some of these with me.

I’ll be sharing soon some of the main learnings and take aways that I’ve gathered from what I have read and learnt so far – hopefully they will inspire you to do your own unpacking too.