(This is a transcript of the video)
I’m bringing up a pretty intense topic, but obviously, it’s very relevant for what’s going on right now. And I was thinking,
“Do I talk about this?”
“Is this really in line with Wildly Alive?”
“Is this really on topic with Wildly Alive?”
And after I really sat with it, I was like, “Yeah, it is!”
My whole job is to be the epitome of a Wildly Alive woman; a woman who is Wildly Alive in her body, in her heart and in her spirit. And a part of being a Wildly Alive woman is believing in equality, no matter what color you are, no matter who you love, that there’s equality amongst ALL people; transgender, gay, Black, White, Purple, ALL people!
And honestly, I have had a very interesting journey with my anti-racism work.
I‘m just going to be really honest with you — at one point did not think racism was a problem. I was totally ignorant.
I often said, “Oh, well, 2 of my best friends are Black. I’m not racist,” Which, BTW is an extremely racist thing to say.
I didn’t think we had a problem here. I didn’t. I thought, “Why are we talking about it? We need to stop talking about it. The more we talk about it, the more it becomes a problem.”
And then I woke up. And I think like a lot of people are waking up too right now.
I started this journey about 3 years ago and it felt like a slap in the face.
I was speechless and thought, “Oh, wow, this is much bigger than I ever imagined.”
And the only way that we can really start eradicating racism from our society is by looking in the mirror. As hard as that is, we ALL need to look at how we’re contributing to the problem.
As much as you want to say, “I don’t see color,” which is again, a very racist thing to say, because it’s saying like you don’t see Black people.
Even if you want to believe that you’re not racist, so this isn’t your problem, it’s your problem. It’s all of our problems.
The only way we’re going to eradicate this problem from our society is if we look at ourselves.
Everybody needs to be doing this work!
Where did I start? It was with Layla Saad’s ‘Me and White Supremacy’ challenge on Instagram.
I knew that I wanted to start looking at this.
I knew it was going to be triggering.
I knew I was going to be uncomfortable.
But I knew I needed to do it.
The defensiveness is the first feeling that came up. This is probably what’s going to happen to you when you start diving into anti-racism work. Your white fragility is going to come up. Your defensiveness will come out.
So Layla Saad now book may be a great place to start.
Again, I thought that I didn’t have a problem here so the first 10 challenges, I was like, “No, I’m not resonating with this. I don’t have a problem with it. I just… I’m trying to find the problem so I can fix it, but I’m not seeing it. I’m not seeing it!”
And then there was one day, challenge 11 is when it cracked everything open for me. The challenge labeled you and black children. And WHOA it broke me wide open.
(to continue listening to the rest of this video click play and forward to minute 5)