White Homework

“As we recognize that humans are human, and worthy of human rights, conservative white america is dying this slow demographic death and rebelling.”

Why is it that the exact arguments used against trans people and DEI were being used in defense of slavery in pre emancipation America? I reached out to Andrew Seidel to discuss this patter because he wrote about and debunked all these arguments in his book The Founding Myth: How Christian Nationalism is Unamerican. (Linked at bookshop.org, not the rainforest oligarch's store.) We talk about how, despite the debunking, authoritarian thinkers keep clinging to biblical literalism to justify withholding human rights.

Andrew works for Americans United, and I strongly recommend you check out their incredible work.

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CW ⚠️: this episode contains references to suicide and diets. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis in the US or Canada you can dial 988 to get support.

Fan fave Andre Henry is back to talk about the practice of building resilience in the context of supremacist culture. Honestly, this conversation had me tearing up in places, and yet left me completely inspired and grounded. As you probably already know, I'm so grateful for Andre's work.

You can find Andre's book at Bookshop.org (and by doing so, support local bookstores instead of the jungle name corp)

You can find Andre's music on all the music players, here's a link to his Spotify.

The Greater Good Toolkit that Andre references can be found HERE.

The books Andre mentions in this episode are

Living While Black by Ajuan Mance

Black Fatigue by Mary-Frances Winters

Resilient by Rick Hanson

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Why is it that the same arguments used to defend slavery are being used to dehumanize trans people? Why is it that there's no way for most white evangelicals to separate their faith and their nationalism? Why is the Constitution conflated with the Bible? Corey and Tori try to disentangle Christianity from Americanism

You can find Corey on IG: @existentialpodcast

Existential Podcast

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Today we are taking a crack at ye olde Prager "University" meme about the first Black US representatives, which correctly points out that they were all Republicans and incorrectly implies that their party affiliation mattered for much, then or now. Turns out, they were woke too! Don't tell Dennis!

LINKS

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Robert Brown Elliott

Jefferson Franklin Long

Josiah Thomas Walls

I've been wanting to try a new format for the show for a while so I took a stab at it this week with Janice Lagata of God Has Not Given. We talk about the fascinating true story of Mary Richards Bowser, a Union spy who was also enslaved. I would LOVE to know what you think about this format, mainly because if you all hate it, I don't want to keep trying to make it happen! 😆 

Sign up for Janice's email list HERE. Go follow her on IG at @godhasnotgiven. Subscribe to her podcasts HERE and HERE.

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Episode sources:

https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/bowser-mary-richards-fl-1846-1867/ 

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/mary-jane-richards 

https://time.com/5609045/misremembering-mary-bowser/ 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/elizabeth-van-lew-an-unlikely-union-spy-158755584/ 

Benjamin Faye joins the show to talk about how grit and resilience mean different things depending on your position in society. Resilience isn't an unlimited resource. The science and experience tell us that is an impossible demand to make on people, doubly so for those who do not have their basic needs met.

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This episode I'm talking to Jessica Dulaney  who is the communications director for the Coalition for Responsible Home Education.

Being Black and homeschooled felt incredibly isolating to me. Growing up, I never once met another Black child who was being homeschooled that I wasn't biologically related to, so being able to connect with Jessica online has been amazing. Protecting kids is something I'm deeply passionate about. Given the huge rise in homeschooling during the pandemic, and the fact that children in this country do not have a right to an education, I wanted to discuss the (mostly racist) history of homeschooling, and the ways Black and queer families are taking up more space in 2022. You can check out the thread I wrote about that history HERE.

You can check out CRHE online HERE

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Personal and political violence are nothing new but examining who is allowed to engage in violence and who isn't is essential to understanding the power dynamics we've built the world on. "They do it so we should to" is colonizer logic and I think we can do better than that when it comes to race, racism, and understanding why people feel threatened by the prospect of losing power. 

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We spend a lot of time talking about the effects of whiteness on people of color but it's important to talk about the impact whiteness has on white people. As a construct, whiteness can only benefit some white people. And even the people who benefit materially are harmed in terms of connection, sympathy, and the demand that you reject your own culture for the monoculture of whiteness. 

Dr. Jonathan Metzl lays out the material ways white people are harmed by their commitment to an ideology that shortens their lives and shrinks their wallets. An association that doesn't serve them yet is somehow worth dying for.

This book gets into data and psychology and evolutionary biology and behavioral neuroscience and trying to figure out precisely what it is that drives people toward a construct that ends in harm. 

Buy Dying of Whiteness

What does it look like when we start dismantling systems of oppression that benefit a small number of people at the expense of everyone else? Black and Indigenous folks are regularly accused of reverse racism for things that are merely offenses, not systematic harm. But to your nervous system, the opposite of systemic racism is probably going to feel bad. In fact, it's probably going to feel like reverse racism. A lot of it. The opposite of white supremacy is going to feel like oppression when you choose to not account for what was taken. 

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