Welcome!

Today I'm thinking a lot about Ben Okri's quote about being aware of the stories we tell and read and how they shape our world. I've recited this a few times to various groups, that I've often heard that CSA's were invented in New England. However, there is another story showing that CSA's are actually an innovation of African American communities in the South, and can also be traced to the work of Booker T. Whatley at Tuskegee. Dr. Whatley is also referenced as an innovator around u-pick operations. All of which raises questions for me about the stories we tell, why, and what their impacts are. Who are we privileging? Who are we overlooking? What are we reinforcing? A good resource on different kinds of stories can be found here - www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/stp_curriculum.pdf.

Or the story of G Washington who chopped down a cherry tree that my 5 year old brings home from Kindergarten during president's week, instead of G Washington the slave catcher

I've been talking to colleagues about the role of government in supporting racial equity. Most people agree there needs to be an "inside-outside" strategy. Inside means adopting things like equity impact policy assessments - www.raceforward.org/practice/tools/racial-equity-impact-assessment-toolkit. Outside is really movement building and broader culture change. There is a great set of interviews with Julie Nelson who led a lot of the noted work in Seattle on racial equity with this kind of inside-outside strategy - www.livingcities.org/blog/781-why-government-can-be-a-powerful-force-for-equity.

I read this article yesterday about Michael Twitty, an African American culinary historian: munchies.vice.com/articles/mouth-full-of-south?utm_source=munchiestwitterus. It opens with this quote: “Slaves in early America were forced to wear horse bits in their mouths because they were considered livestock,” Michael Twitty told me before taking a bite out of a slice of Edna Lewis’s sweet, lemony Tyler pie. “I usually don’t tell people that during my cooking demos because they don’t want to hear it.” A really disturbing and visceral image that reminds me how closely the food system, slavery, and institutional racism are connected. And the denial, the fact that people "don't want to hear it," is what continues to enable these systems. I'm hopeful to see many in the food movement starting to put these linkages at the center of their work. I hope we can spur more conversations and start wearing down the culture of denial that exists in this country.

These quotes from my reading have me thinking about the personal psychic costs of racism and the denial/suppression of this injustice/trauma among us:

"As a person of mixed heritage I know that racism has tangled roots: white privilege, internalized oppression, fear, guilt, grief. I also know that while it is structural, it is also visceral, bound up in our psyche and our emotions, hard to get at and painful to work through. This is why many people in the food movement choose not to address it. They are afraid that addressing racism is just too hard, too complicated and too messy." foodfirst.org/tangled-roots-and-bitter-fruit-what-ferguson-can-teach-the-food-movement/

and
". There is something powerful in the reconciliation, and in the hard work of accepting and speaking truth. Maybe something that can help all humanity, here where we live on the brink of biological collapse." - medium.com/message/whiteness-3ead03700322

My questions:
- How do we have conversations about that fear?
- What melts fear of "other"? How do we work together to make that fear conscious? To explore these shadowed corners of our own personal and collective psyches.
- Yes, it is uncomfortable – how can we create the forums, safe containers, places and experiences to go into this territory together? Non-judging, safe to make mistakes, delve into what is within us, our questions and fears.
- So much judgment and political correctness about talking about race – fear of offending or saying the wrong thing... It is easier to not talk about it.

- How does this denial and suppression of racism and its implications limit our experience of being fully human? I think of the image of elites living within walled enclaves – rather than engage with the “other” and invest in their well being and created a shared prosperity, they close themselves off into a barricaded life full of fear and ruthless focus on “getting mine.”
- I recall a friend talking about how avoiding or denying the pain that is happening to the planet comes at an ever increasing psychological cost.

- I am curious what we can discover on the other side of delving into this exploration and these conversations. I know the shift personally, when I bring to light an uncomfortable truth I have been avoiding. That feeling of relief that “as hard as this is, at least it is out there.” There is a freedom and opening of new potential and possibility that I discover was previously blocked. From the other side, I feel a sense of being more real, true and authentic and I can see the numbness, the addictive avoidant behaviors I had been putting up with. What might be the collective/societal version of this?

Sharing a couple of Racial Equity related stories heard on the radio on day 6 of the challenge:
on racial bias in Ferguson with guests Michael Kinman & Maria Chappelle-Nadal ow.ly/K1fQq and
on racial disparities in unemployment ow.ly/K1flg