Menakem: Just watching you say that, this is why I talk the way that I talk. So let me start with just a definition, first. So the premise of the work is predicated on the idea that there was a certain time where the white body became the supreme standard by which all bodies’ humanity shall be measured. If you don’t understand that, everything about America will confuse you. Everything about racialization will confuse you. Tippett: You’re also saying that it was actually a way of co-opting poor white people into their further traumatization. But, you see, that’s where you start — right there, not in this “let’s bring everyone in and make them all comfortable.”

And one of the things that I talk to people about is that there is this nerve that comes out of the brain stem, and it’s called the wandering nerve. And it hits in the face, it hits in the pharynx, it hits in the chest, it hits in the gut — it wanders the whole body. And it, I believe, is one of the things why we have “gut” reactions, because most of that nerve actually ends up in the gut. And when we’re stressed, that gut constricts or opens. And so one of the things that happens is that if I’m with you long enough, like if me and you become friends, over time I will start to hear things in your throat because the vagal nerve is either open or constricted. Menakem also challenges the myth of white body fragility and pain sensitivity that too often distracts attention from the problem of racism and elicits cautious caregiving from other white enablers and BIPOC bodies that have been conditioned to sooth and comfort white bodies.

The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society.

Tippett: It’s amazing. If I ask you, through this life you’ve led and this knowledge you’ve taken in and that you teach people, how would you start to answer the question about how your sense of — your sense of what it means to be human, how that is evolving, how you’d start to think that through right now?

A calm, settled body is the foundation for health, for healing, for helping others, and for changing the world." Menakem: Because when you say “diversity,” that means you start someplace first, and then you diversify from it. This adds such an important somatic lens for anti-racist conversations and work. I highly recommend this book for white people, as the exercises and suggestions helped me feel out the white supremacy my body holds and figure out regular practices that can help weaken or release it. Menakem: Hands start coming down, because we all know it, intrinsically. But if you don’t say it, then it’s not operational. And white comfort trumps my liberation. Even bodies of culture genuflect to white comfort, because we know, when white people get nervous, people lose their jobs. When white people get nervous, people get hung from trees. When white people get nervous, babies get put in cages.

white-body supremacy lives in our BODIES; it's in our blood, dna, flesh, and the pre-cognitive parts of our brains (aka the lizard brain). Tippett: Well, it’s also like the origin of that term “mansplaining.” It’s the same way that relations between men and women haven’t been grown up. My Grandmother's Hands was an interesting book about racialized trauma and its effects on our bodies. Paves the way for a new, body-centered understanding of white supremacy—how it is literally in our blood and our nervous system.Tippett: Well, you can’t drop that on people, either, because they won’t be ready to — they’ll also brace. An exceptionally thought-provoking and important account that looks at race in a radical new way. For all readers— Library Journal (starred review) Menakem Introduces a model he refers to as "somatic abolitionism," which focuses on feeling and healing the embodied trauma of racial injustice. Menakem: “… then that is in some way gonna make it so we can all sing kumbaya together.” And this is why I don’t — when I do my workshops and I do my experiences, I do not slam white bodies and bodies of culture together, because it is unsafe. And we all know it. Menakem: That’s right — “I’m gonna get rid of it. I’m gonna go do some yoga, I’m gonna eat a whole bunch of kale.” [ laughs] But “I’m gonna do this thing…”

And so what I’ve been talking to people about is, how do we begin to get the reps in with those pieces? So you’re gonna need time to condition your body to be able to deal with the aches, deal with the doubt, deal with all of that difficulty. You’re gonna have to get up against your own suffering’s edge, before the transformation happens. But you need to condition that. Why do we think that when we talk about race, that’s any different — for me to say, “We’re gonna have a white body supremacy talk; deal with the root of this stuff”? Kalliopeia Foundation, dedicated to reconnecting ecology, culture, and spirituality; supporting organizations and initiatives that uphold a sacred relationship with life on Earth. Learn more at kalliopeia.org. Therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem is working with old wisdom and very new science about our bodies and nervous systems, and all we condense into the word “race.” “Your body — all of our bodies — are where changing the status quo must begin.” Tippett: So this is all new. As you say, it’s new information that lands like “Oh, of course, we knew that all along.”Menakem discusses project zero. A call to reduce American death by police from the current average over 1000 (as of 2022) to zero (in the future).