In this week’s episode, April and Tracie unpack the false assumption that some folks have expressed--that April “hates America” since she has chosen to relocate out of the States, and to West Africa, no less. This question leads April and Tracie to think about the hierarchies and racism built into conventional assessments of different cultures both within and outside of America.
Read MoreIn this week’s episode, April and Tracie discuss the dangers of making that “diversity hire” when the organization hasn’t done the necessary work of deconstructing dynamics of oppression, so that “diversity hire” needs to endure unhealthy and unsustainable microaggressions and worse. They discuss strategies for how to avoid this and set up new colleagues for success.
Read MoreIn this week’s episode, we talk about how we often forget that Jewish leaders in the civil rights movement who are lauded today were not universally supported in their time. We often pretend their detractors did not exist, and yet, they are in fact still here in our communities pushing back against our current reckoning with racial justice.
Read MoreIn this week’s episode, Tracie and April both react to recent experiences they have had which have deepened their consciousness or understanding around racial justice and healing. For Tracie it was a neighbor’s reaction to an activist campaign to Free Keith Davis, Jr., and for April, a weekend at a virtual Black liberation retreat. This leads them to a conversation on the need to balance the work of liberating individuals and communities from oppressive systems with also grieving the collective trauma that is caused from generations of being targeted by and struggling against these same systems. For it is only by grieving that we can become better change agents for our collective liberation.
Read MoreIn this week’s episode, we reflect on the meaning of Elul, the month in the Jewish calendar that leads up to Rosh HaShanah and the high holidays. This time of anticipation calls us to prepare ourselves spiritually for the new year. We talk about the symbolic meanings of the holiday and how the ritual of hearing the shofar can be a powerful call to being “awake.”
Read MoreIn this week's episode, part 2 of 2, we continue our discussion about the need for outside-the-box thinking by asking what gets in the way. Our conversation leads us to the realization that the resistance to facing and confronting fear and other difficult emotions can keep us in unjust and inequitable systems.
Read MoreI picked up We Do This ‘Til We Free Us because I wanted to better understand the principles of the Abolitionist movement (and because the good folks at Anti-Racism Daily recommended it!). The prison abolition movement, as envisioned and articulated by Mariame Kaba in this collection of essays and interviews, is as radical as it is beautiful. When I say “radical” I don’t mean “irrational” or “impossible.” I mean “profound,” “paradigm-shifting,” “mind-blowing.”
Read MoreIn this week’s episode, part 1 of 2, April and Tracie think about new paradigms for the future. Inspired by a song, we use the prison abolition movement & criminal legal system as well as Western medicine as points of reference, investigating the ways inherited systems, received as “natural,” are in fact human constructions which can be deconstructed (and reconstructed!) for a future that is more equitable, sustainable, and just.
Read MoreTracie brings up a recent NFL announcement that they will change a racist policy, just another example of the systematic, racist oppression that permeates US society. This leads to a discussion between April and Tracie about the racism found within the United States medical system and why developing an effective racial justice analysis is so important.
Read MoreIn this week's episode, April and Tracie discuss Eric Ward’s Skin in the Game point about the conditional whiteness of Ashkenazi Jews, unpacking (with both/and thinking) the reaction some Jews have regarding their whiteness. April uses her experiences as a United States citizen living in Senegal to explain how conditional privilege operates.
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