Ep 269: Let's Notice How Whiteness Shows Up in Us Too, Boo!

Have you ever wondered how grief and loss might pave a pathway toward spiritual growth? In this penultimate episode of Fare of the Free Child podcast, I share with you the fourth path in my care package to this community. Sharing Season 9 reflections, Chemay Morales-James, Vanessa Molano, Jasai Madden, Stori, and I bring to life our experiences in this liberation walk. Engaging in a candid exploration of spirituality, manifestation, magic, and money, we unravel the ways it has shaped our lives. We also dive into our origin stories and the leveling up it has brought us to.

Taking a step further, we tackle the often overlooked issue of pervasive whiteness ingrained in ourselves, our communities, and our learning or workspaces. Drawing from the wisdom condensed in the Developing a Disruptor's Ear workbook, we unearth the impacts of whiteness on various aspects of education and society. Pervasive Whiteness, as we articulate, "Is when a white person either unconsciously or deliberately asserts unsolicited opinions and ideas using their voice, bodies or a particular approach or mindset - like NVC- in ways that are dismissive of the voices, bodies, and experiences of those outside their 'in-group' or culture."

"Pervasive Whiteness is an embodiment of harmful structures deeply rooted in modernity and coloniality, transcending beyond white bodies." It's a significant thread that weaves through our conversation as we  share notes from pages 15 to 27 of the workbook.

In the final segment of our discussion, we challenge the traditional norms and tactics underpinned by pervasive whiteness. We delve into the intricate ways whiteness weaponizes communication and highlight the schoolishness that unknowingly seep into our daily lives.

As we wrap up, with our FINAL episode next week, I extend an invitation for you to continue this enlightening journey by accessing the five pathways I have gifted you on this departure. I remain deeply grateful for your unwavering support!

Links:
RFP Unschool
Developing a Disruptor's Ear
Eclectic Learning Network
RFP Book
Bayo Akomolafe
Rooted Global Village
Ep 120

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This week on Fair of the Free Child podcast. So many of us some of us a lot more than others got a ton of practice with grief and loss Practice. We didn't ask for Practice we might still be processing, but lots of practice with grief and loss. Grief and loss that is far deeper than a podcast ending, which is one of the forms of grief and loss that is present in my life. We are at the second to last episode of Fair of the Free Child and I know that I share that sense of grief and loss with some of you, as you have told me what the podcast has helped you work through, what it has brought into your orbit, what it has strengthened, what it has helped you to notice about yourself. That's been there, just needed to be conjured up, and either I or somebody else you listened to on this podcast was in a position to do that. Conjuring with our stories. Just all the ways that this podcast has lived and impacted are part of a small part of the variety of loss and grief that so many of us have experienced, particularly over the past few years since the pandemic the levels of grief and loss, the visibility of it through social media and other technology, the amplifying of more voices, as we hear, for example, from more indigenous people native indigenous people about the impact and continuation of grief and loss in the United States and beyond. Or it's just there's just so much unraveling as much as there is the building up, the evolution of, say, technology, which is exhilarating and frightening, there is also the slowing down to work with unraveling to savor life. On the other side of the fast-paced everything, when situations, relationships, climate change, when all of these things encourage or perhaps force us to slow down right. When this slow down happens, maybe without our consent, then we are in a different position to pay attention to it. Me personally, I have been feeling the effects of slowing down and a lot of them have been positive. Maybe on the other side of painful, positive, and some of that I did publicly with the good sis Damari in season eight, when we talked about pausing, which last episode I got into a little bit more and season nine, as I move into this recap of season nine, we talked about notes from the other side of the pause. I had recognized that that pause was not in service of going more fast or better. It was actually even more of an invitation to slow down and to savor, which is what I'm moving into beyond this podcast, and next week I will talk in more detail about the things that I'm moving on to, in addition to some of the ways that you can continue to get this work beyond the podcast. You can't keep using tools of oppression and expect to raise free people.

Speaker 1: 3:53

So, season nine last season, we talked about spirituality and intuition in self-directed education. Shout out to Chamei, morales, james and the MyReflectionMatters community that whole team of folks who, by the way, celebrated at the beginning of this month August in 2023. Their three year anniversary. It's been three years, as of the time that I'm recording this, that MyReflectionMatters has been moving and grooving, supporting, serving, connecting. They also have a fantastic village support system that you can also support through their Patreon, patreoncom forward slash MyReflectionMatters.

Speaker 1: 4:39

Chamei came through and we had a two part discussion on spirituality and intuition in self-directed education. How, for many of us, this journey as you heard Yolanda Coles Jones say last week is about our parenting, is about education and also is about us, our journeying with ourselves, our own unravelings, our own noticings, the ways that we have to sit with, what we got to stop doing and why, and not so much what we need to start doing or do more of All of it is in the mix, and so your personal leadership practices get named and refined through this process of raising free people, and we talked about that. We also had an origin story where Naz and I talked about how we met. We did a sort of remembering and releasing ritual out loud, and that in and of itself was and remains spiritual work. We continued that spiritual theme with Aliyah Waste Beads, where Jisai and Story the mother daughter team behind Aliyah Waste Beads joined us to talk about spiritual technology and more mad question asking and just affirming and doing a lot of reflection about how Jisai and I met another origin story and how some of the spiritual work that we were doing back then really worked and how it led us to where we found ourselves years later when she and I reconvened for that episode. That conversation is also what sparked my revisiting and up leveling of personal manifesto path, the course that is happening through our Make it Happen family on patreoncom forward slash akila.

Speaker 1: 6:37

Our very first class is August 22nd and we run weekly through November 7th from 6pm to 7.30pm Eastern every single week, shout it. So I'm excited about that we are going to talk about abundance, which we also talked about in season nine. We talked about abundance culture, abundance being a we thing, not a me thing, and that conversation was guided by Vanessa Milano, who came in as a project manager, bridget Bridging so many gaps that Naz and I needed to help get filled as the podcast grew into the network over the years, and we were just kind of holding on like whoa While all of that was happening. So shout out to Vanessa, you nailed it, bro. We're so appreciative. You are amazing. You are amazing.

Speaker 1: 7:31

When Chame was back on, we talked about manifestation, magic, money as a tool. Chame talked about the role of intuition in her life and her intuition led path to that updated business model that centers relationships and not dollars. Vanessa was a huge part of that because they updated to this star model and you can hear all about that star model. If you too are growing a relationship centered community, you might benefit from the knowledge, the exposure to that star model. So check that out.

Speaker 1: 8:07

Season nine was a dope and delicious because we talked about the spiritual things, and I know that perhaps some folks hear that and say what they got to do with unschooling, which is exactly why you would need to listen to season nine. What we are talking about now is the fourth of the five care packages that have been assembled specifically for you. This fourth one is called my Whiteness Centric Work Life Path. It is for folks who want to face the power over mindset that we are all steeped in, and want to do it through getting more and more familiar, more practiced with unschooling, the skills of unschooling not necessarily taking a child out of school, but really focusing on some of the skill sets and characteristics of the unschooling life. What I'm going to pull from here is a workbook called Developing a Disruptor's Ear. You have heard me talk about it because Malika digs of Speak and Be Easy and more widely known Eclectic Learning Network.

Speaker 1: 9:27

Malika and I created this workbook as a result of being two black women in the self-directed education space to whom people reached out because they were the black person at the Agile Learning Center or at the Sudbury School or at the co-op or whatever the thing was. They were one of, if not the only, and they were having the issues. That happen because pervasive whiteness is everywhere and it lives in a variety of bodies, not just in white bodies. They would reach out because they were not in a position to speak up about the issues they were experiencing because it was more layered for them than for me or Malika. For example, if they have a child at that same space and the child actually is fine there, by and large it is the safest space for their child, not necessarily the best space. Or if they work there, that's where their check comes from, so they can't really mess with that too tough and a lot of other things in between. But those are two of the main examples.

Speaker 1: 10:31

We got enough of those types of requests and also requests from white folks who were like we have this center, we've created this space and we don't know how to make it welcoming for non-white people and they're not coming to the things that we're hosting and what can we do? So we really took some months to sit with and gather this thing that became a workbook. It was initially a training that had this conversational workbook element and then we created a subsequent workbook so that people who weren't at the live training sessions could also get the work, and we've also created versions of that workbook for people outside of the self-directed education space. So if you are interested in a version of this especially when you check it out, and I will make sure the link is wherever you're listening to this podcast. If you are interested in creating a version of developing a Disruptors' Ear for your organization, you can reach out to me. You can go to raisingfreepeoplecom Give me up on that little voice memo button.

Speaker 1: 11:37

First I want to say a couple of the reasons why people took the course or did the workbook. It's actually online as a course, but it's a workbook because it feels important to this idea of this whiteness-centric path. So one person said my intention is to see and understand how schools and societies ingrained prejudices affect my thoughts, interactions and decisions within the context of home education of my children and others, and become a proactive disruptor working to eradicate systemic racism. So that's one person's why. Another person's was my intention is to learn how pervasive whiteness infiltrates education as I know it and to educate myself on and no longer use any practices that are harmful to my students. I loved those particular whys there were so many of them wanted to share those with you. So now what I want to do is I'm actually going to pull some things specifically from pages 15 through 27 of developing a Disruptors' Ear. The entire workbook is about 70 pages, maybe 68 pages, but I'm going to pull from this little segment right here.

Speaker 1: 12:51

What we said about pervasive whiteness is that on a personal level, as opposed to a systemic level, which I'm also going to talk about. But on a personal level, pervasive whiteness is when a white person, either unconsciously or deliberately, asserts unsolicited opinions and ideas using their voice, their body or a particular approach or mindset, like nonviolent communication, in ways that are dismissive of the voices, bodies and experiences of those outside of their in-group or culture, and I will have that written out on the show notes page as well. So on a personal level, that's what it is Okay. When a white person, whether they're doing it on purpose or not, is pushing their opinions, their ideas, they can do that verbally, they can do it non-verbally, they can do it through an approach that is sanctioned by many, many people like NVC, and they do it in ways that are dismissive of people outside of their in-group or culture. Now, coming from a systemic context, what we said is that because our dominant culture really only speaking in the context of the US, because that's what Malika and I know well as adults living in the United States so we are speaking from that limited context, because our dominant culture is white and our education and politics are rooted in lesser opinions of non-white peoples. Pervasive whiteness is our default in America, even among non-white people, because it has been a means of surviving for black folks, for Native Indigenous folks and for basically anybody not white for hundreds of years. Pervasive whiteness and proximity to whiteness has been how we've survived.

Speaker 1: 14:41

Another thing that I want to read to you before I move into some of the details of how pervasive whiteness is significantly influencing schoolishness I would say it's a derivative of it. It feels really helpful for me to share what my brother, bayo Okomalafi, who wrote the forward for raising free people book. Shout out to you, bayo. He says and it's a part of a longer thing. So this is just an excerpt recognizing that whiteness is not attached to white bodies but is the embodiment and enactment of ways of thinking, doing and being associated with harmful structures rooted in modernity and coloniality. And because of that we have different experiences of working with the internalization of whiteness as a cultural form, just as we are differently impacted by it. So I'm done with the quote, and the rest of that last sentence was a statement from rooted, the rooted global village.

Speaker 1: 15:40

So, in the context of moving away from this pervasive whiteness that we are all steeped in and that is deeply harmful for all of us, but specifically to people who are not white in particular ways, again it feels really important to name here that, just like the patriarchy, just like misogyny, like all these things, they also negatively impact the people, the bodies who perpetuate them. So it's not like it's only the job of white people to eliminate pervasive whiteness. We, as people who are not white, need to be aware of what it looks like and how it lives through. Our practices, our unquestioned practices, the ones we hold essentially are schoolishness, which is a huge part of that, and so in the workbook we really get into the details of schoolishness and we give examples which I'm going to share a few of them with you of some schoolish tactics and of pervasive whiteness.

Speaker 1: 16:39

Schoolish tactics a few characteristics of a schoolish tactics is that they demand work from the person being oppressed, essentially prove that you're worthy of being treated well. It calls for us to somehow stand out above white bias. That's an example of a schoolish tactic that is rooted in pervasive whiteness. Another one is that schoolish tactics subconsciously crave external validation for self and others. So it isn't coming from a rooted space of trusting the self and a level of self-validation, a level of confident autonomy. It doesn't have that, so it seeks it out there. That's another example. One other one I'll share is that you know it's a schoolish tactic. When it is seeking a super clear, super efficient path, it is resisting emergent structure. It is resisting the aspect of seeing hmm, how long might this take? I assumed this, but is the reality this? It resists that at all costs. It's all about efficiency and clarity, not in the ways that are healthy. I'm not saying efficiency is inherently problematic, nor is clarity, come on. But it seeks it in a way that it puts it above the benefits of emergent inclusive structure. And those are specifically schoolish tactics.

Speaker 1: 18:06

So let me touch on a few aspects of pervasive whiteness. One of them is pervasive whiteness weaponizes nonviolent communication. An example of this lives in episode 120 of this podcast, where my whole family, me, chris Marley Sage we got together to talk about and you hear all four of our voices on that episode the experience that we had when someone listened to I think it was episode 115, where we were talking about pervasive whiteness and proceeded to send a long ass detailed message of foolishness and the details of it live in episode 120, so go check that out. Another example of pervasive whiteness that Malika and I shared is that it prioritizes research over current reality. So the person tells them there's a problem and they respond to the problem with research about why there is no problem. You feel that I know that somebody listening has had that experience where you're in a space and somebody who is steeped in pervasive whiteness is telling you why your feelings are the problem and not your actual experience in a thing that they keep on trying to tell you as community. So you having a problem in the community is the problem, not the problem you're dealing with. You are the problem.

Speaker 1: 19:38

Another related aspect of pervasive whiteness is that it defends intention over the recipient's experience, as if well intentions stop us somehow from causing harm. Those aspects I want to share with you, as well as foolishness, which we've talked about in previous episodes. But I want to say here that it's a mindset foolishness. It has actions to it that come from that mindset and it shows up in various aspects of daily living, not just in a dedicated place like a classroom. And so in terms of what we do to challenge this norm, this insane norm of pervasive whiteness, is to do a lot of the things that we talk about doing to work on foolishness, including wound awareness, talking about how certain social wounds stop us from taking action, like fear of sounding wrong or bad or biased, and why that keeps us causing damage and accepting damage as normal.

Speaker 1: 20:42

So wound awareness, also person before process right, which talks about how folks try so hard to fit people into processes instead of seeing resistance as guidance. Resistance is the roadmap. Emergent structure fits in here when we figure out that it is not about trying to get the person to fit into our idea of a process, but to really allow a process to happen that may have predetermined pieces but has lots of room in it for what emerges with the specific people involved. A last one that I'll touch here is witnessing, which is about, in this case, checking your translations by not thinking that you know what's going to happen, but instead watching for what happens, watching for and assessing your expectations and naming all the ways that your expectations don't match what you ended up witnessing. Rewind this. If you need to Go over it, hit that little 10 second rewind button to really feel through this, because it's a lot.

Speaker 1: 21:51

But as you take it in, I really feel and we've seen, malika and me, from people working with this particular content how personal it is and how much you can pay attention to, as we say in the workbook, how it shows up and ways to shift the practice. So we talk about shifting the practice in community, in school, at work, at the playground, everywhere. We talk about in language, in actions, in cultural understandings that put your eccentric habits and accents and priorities above all else. These are some of the elements of it, and so once you have this sort of language around, like what it is and how it shows up and how it's tied to schoolishness, then you can become more aware of it in yourself and you can begin to do these practices that we talk about so many of them in detail in the workbook for shifting it.

Speaker 1: 22:43

And knowledge of something is not enough to shift it, but without the knowledge of it it can be kind of hard to shift it, wouldn't you agree? So, if you have this language, if you are thinking about these schoolish tactics that are seeking a clear path and demands work, they are subconsciously craving external validation when you recognize yourself being caught up in these things or somebody in your life, you have the naming for it and now you can start to look at yeah, but how do I want to feel. Yeah, but how do I want this person, who I'm saying is in community with me, to feel? What is it even about the naming of community the word community that actually might not be appropriate here. Are we more of a collective figuring out where community lives? Are we more of groupings of people figuring these things out together that are trying to get to some aspect of cohesiveness that each person has to consent to and believe in before we call the shit community?

Speaker 1: 23:49

This is my recommendation. This is my tiny little keer package around working with pervasive whiteness wherever it's showing up for you in your body at your job. Of course, I cannot tell you how to talk to the people at your job. I don't know them, I don't know you like that but what I can say is that when you have the language for what something is, it becomes easier to recognize it and to begin to put into practice your own reckoning with it. You might not be able to change the people at your fill in the blank, but if your perspective and your actions are different, you move that vibration, you move your choices, you move your actions in the direction that you want to go and away from the direction that you are now naming as harmful. So, of course, I do recommend that you grab the workbook. If you head over to RFP Unschool, like raisingfreepeopleunschoolcom, you'll see all of the different offerings there, including developing a disrupter's ear. And, of course, wherever you're listening to this podcast, the link to it, the direct link to it, lives there as well.

Speaker 1: 25:05

And the last thing that we will touch on in this episode, as promised, is one little snippet from Personal Manifesto Path. This is one aspect of the course that I recorded back in 2014. So a part of me cringes, as you might have heard me say before when I listened to my old audios. I'm like, oh my God, why am I talking like that? Oh my God, why are I saying it like that? So I want you to listen without my cringe factor in mind, because this is just a very clear example of the sort of things that we will be working through from August to November every week.

Speaker 1: 25:46

If you are part of the Make it Happen family and come to the invitations each week for Personal Manifesto Path class, live with me. No extra costs. Whatever level at which you come into Patreon whether it's a dollar, five dollars, five hundred dollars you will have full access to this path Personal Manifesto Path. So this is me talking about wailing. W-a-i-l-i-n-g. Wailing is a significant part of this route to the Personal Manifesto Creation process. I will talk a little bit about it here and, of course, wherever you are listening to this episode, there will be show notes and there will be a direct link for you to see a little bit more and hear a little bit more about Personal Manifesto Path. And if you want to come through and be part of it at any point, come over to patreoncom, forward slash akila. That is our Make it Happen family and you will have full access there.

Speaker 1: 26:45

Then there's the whaling stage. Whaling is where we present the wound to the world and yell at the top of our lungs that this is not okay. We are not okay. In this stage we say I am hurting, we proclaim it, we're acknowledging the hurt, just as we were in the wound licking stage, but this time we're also acknowledging that we and the hurt are separate. Perhaps in this stage, the licenseeim from our wound licking and our tears have weakened the walls that show up to protect us from the raw, nerve portion of our hurt. Here we begin to see ourselves as someone who has been hurt, meaning at some point we were not hurt and that hurt is not something we inherently are, but something that we are now experiencing.

Speaker 1: 27:30

This stage is also important, so much that many, if not most, of us get stuck right there. We're no longer in hiding with our pain points. We're actively engaged now in facing those wounds and creating experiences that replace those old wounds, not in the sense that we forget, but that we use the experience to be empowered by it to be better as a result of it, because we're facing these wounds by whaling. So of course, we want to be able to have this be as practical in our minds as possible, because we're creating our own personal manifesto. So in the next lecture we'll look at examples of how we will All right.

Speaker 1: 28:19

One more episode to go. So our chatty again in about a week where we will wrap things up with the fifth care package, the fifth and final care package and some other goodies that I have for you in our final time together in terms of episodes and I shouldn't say our final time together, our final time together through Fair of the Free Child podcast, because in this final episode coming up, I will also invite you to the myriad of other spaces and places and ways that we can continue this work. As always, thank you for listening and chatty next week. Music Audio by Raising Free People Network.