Good morning,
First and foremost, I hope everyone reading this is taking great care of their body (rest, food, water, movement) and their heart (one-on-one dialogue, religion, spirituality, play, appreciation) right now.
This was another heavy, but already transformative, week. I’ll take you through it as it went for me. If you skip this entire thing, scroll down to the bold part and just consider that.
On Sunday (5/31), I deleted Instagram from my phone for 7 days because I realized I was not being intentional at all about what I was consuming and it paralyzed me. So I decided to practice what I preach: set my intentions, consume carefully and take action.
(Some context: As I get older, I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to doing anything short-term or reactive. Perhaps this is an effect of meditating so much on how I spend time. Or being in a generation of people who spend hours a day sinking and swimming alone in an ocean of aggressive, atomized waves of information. Or perhaps it’s the exposure I have to close friends of different ages. Or how much I’ve been reading about death lately.)
I decided my intentions and actions for the week would be as follows, in order to set myself up for a deeper, longer haul of both education and action.
*Form is based on how I need to care for my body (including mind and emotions) right now
*Content is a set of opening questions I set for myself at the beginning the week, before diving into research or reporting, which I consider to be lifelong self-education.
Form
Delete social media from your phone and check it on desktop once per day
Listen to or watch 1 or 2 long-form items per day: the kind that linger in your mind and heart long after you’ve finished
Skim 1 or 2 newspaper(s) every morning (I rarely do this anymore; but wanted to watch a week evolve in a consistent format)
Read mostly from books (no scrolling, short pieces, social media)
Write down notes on anything you observe, notice, wonder, fear, feel or realize
Do your job well; end every day feeling you did your best at what was in front of you
Engage in at least 1 dialogue per day in which you do at least 2 of the of the following:
Express appreciation to someone using your voice
Really listen to how they are doing without judgement or comment
Ask how you can be of support if appropriate
Share the things you’ve noticed, consumed or learned that are helpful
Listen to their perspective, experience or questions without judgement
Content
I want to understand how different tribes within one system operate: how do they use narratives, wealth, power (or lack of it) to protect (or fail to protect) themselves and their interests?
I want to begin to uncover my own personal unconscious biases or privileges I take for granted, and why I do so.
I want to understand what moves me (personally) to observe and react to injustice, and when I don’t react, I want to know why—what am I protecting or avoiding?
I want to understand how the world is observing America right now.
Here’s where I landed that’s worth sharing:
Jeffry Epstein: Filthy Rich (Netflix)
When They See Us (based on the story of the Central Park Five) (Netflix)
13th (Netflix)
The Economist Asks: Valerie Jarrett (Podcast)
It’s Time for White People to Stand Up for Black Colleagues (Financial Times)
How Things Could Go Very Wrong in America (Financial Times)
To Reach a Single A.T.M., a Line of Unemployed Stretches a Block (NYT)
How Police Unions Became Such Powerful Opponents to Reform Efforts (NYT)
Tucker Carlson: The Cultural Revolution has come to America (Fox News)
Rebuilding the House that Anti-Blackness Built in Our Covid Response (Economic Policy Institute)
Systems Theory (Wikipedia)
The Innocence Project (Website and affiliated links)
Books I’m working through: I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness (by Austin Channing Brown); Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? (by Beverly Daniel Tatum); A Baptist Preacher’s Buddhist Teacher (by Lawrence Carter); America Will Be! (dialogue between Vincent Harding and Daisaku Ikeda)
From My Notebook
The Epstein and Central Park Five series are an INCREDIBLE juxtaposition for anyone having a tough time wrapping their head around the scope of racial bias and its associated manipulations of privilege around wealth, power and communication. They are both gut-wrenching, but a combined of 625 minutes worth patiently working through, with breaks as needed, so you don’t shy away from the emotions.
My husband kept wondering why I was torturing myself with the Epstein series but I think it’s very important to understand how powerful people protect themselves (emotionally and legally) from negative consequences or we’re blindly fighting systems and power rather than the human tendency to manipulate them
13th should be required watching (at least once) for everyone who chooses to live (or continue living, if it wasn’t your choice) in America and utilize its public resources
I don’t watch Fox entertainment shows often, but at important crossroads like the one this country is currently facing, it’s impossible to dialogue with people across the divide with a truly open heart if you don’t know what they are consuming. The Tucker Carlson clip is actually fascinating. And unfortunately, anti-black racism is not something just one tribe of united people (no matter how big) is going to upend in America by themselves. Members of multiple, different tribes have to find a way to unite.
For people like me who think in systems (more on Systems Theory in a future issue, as I’m still digesting) but are moved to action by individuals, The Innocence Project (they also have a Netflix series) is an incredible effort to learn about, understand and support. They also share great recommendations.
I witnessed much exchange this week between members of the global feminist economics organization I work for as we developed our statement in solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter and also learned a lot from the process about global inequities and police violence across borders.
Heterodox economists are an incredibly undervalued resource in understanding and dismantling structural racism (and many other inequities).
People (I) need to be willing to make mistakes and look bad more often, and without fear or self-protection. It’s a prerequisite for true compassion.
I can’t capture all I’ve gained from dialoguing with friends, peers, colleagues and family this week. But I will say that every single individual person’s experience is and continues to be unique, and I am grateful to be able to learn and take different kinds of action with each of them.
Three forms of my own privilege I keep thinking about that I’m choosing to no longer take for granted and actively pay forward as much as I can from now on:
the people who unconditionally hold space for me
the people who challenge me but never make me feel unsafe
the people who have created and invited me into networks I have free access to when in need of knowledge, support or resources
More next week. And always open for a conversation with anyone reading this.
Jihii
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P.P.S. (Update) Now that I’m back on social media, I’ll end with some wisdom I’ve been deeply appreciating, again from Andréa Ranae:
Jihii, as always, your writing inspires and resonates with me. It also makes me want to grab a tea/coffee and have conversations for hours on end about all of these points and ideas you discuss. Thank you for the insight, resources and points of contemplation. Let's do a virtual tea and chat soon! -Katina