Mindful Anti-Racism with Faitth Brooks
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, mindfulness, life, feel, anti racism, activism, book, black, black woman, diversity, find, race, work, cultivate, golden doodle, space, slow, authentic, questions, bit
SPEAKERS
Bethaney Wilkinson, Faitth Brooks
Bethaney Wilkinson 00:12
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Diversity Gap podcast. My name is Bethaney Wilkinson, I am the host of the show. I'm also an author, my book is called The Diversity Gap where good intentions meet true cultural change. And I am a facilitator and a coach. And my work is really in supporting organizations as they seek to embody their values for racial justice, racial equity, and cultures that support all kinds of people through action and care and creativity and innovation. I really love my work. And that's a part of why I've been slow to release new episodes of The Diversity Gap podcast, I'm super thankful for the work that I've been able to do with clients across the country who, again, are doing their absolute best to embody their values for racial justice in ways that are real. And so I know it's been a while I've missed you, too. And I'm really excited to be back in your ears with today's conversation. Now, if you have been around for the past few months, I would say because I know it's been a minute since I've shared an episode, you may have heard me talk about race, conscious leadership, and race conscious leadership is about many, many things. But the ultimate vision for race conscious leadership is for us as individuals in our organizational lives in our leadership, it's really an invitation for us to bring mindfulness and curiosity to our racial narratives, so that we can be intentional about how we move through the world as beings who have been racialized in society. And so I'm always asking how do we slow down? How do we ask more questions? How do we get curious about who we are and what we believe so that we can again, bring awareness to our racial narratives, so that over time, we are able to change them? This is what it means to be a race conscious leader. And so for today's conversation, I have the absolute pleasure of interviewing Faitth Brooks, who is an anti racism educator and activist who is also the author of the brand new book, The Anti-Racism Journal, questions and practices to move beyond performative allyship. Such a bold title. And what is excellent about this book is that it is filled with tons of questions to help each of us on our race conscious leadership journeys. She has an entire section on mindfulness and activism again, asking how can we slow down enough to get really curious and really clear about what's happening in our internal worlds, as it relates to creating these racially just racially equitable cultures, and ultimately, a more racially equitable future. And so Faitth is brilliant, she is just so clear and authentic. And I just, I love learning from her. She's just incredibly wise, and I love learning from her. And so without further ado, here's my conversation with Faitth about The Anti-Racism Journal, and about what it looks like to bring mindfulness to our racial justice work. So that the changes we are advocating for can last All right, Faitth, I am thrilled to have you on The Diversity Gap podcast, I'm, I mean, for so many reasons. I've admired you for years. Your voice, your perspective, your honesty, your authenticity, I just have love following you. And I feel really honored to have access to you and your brilliance and your wisdom right now. But I would love for you to orient the audience of The Diversity Gap podcast to who you are as a human. And I'll ask you some more questions from there.
Faitth Brooks 04:02
Yeah. Okay. So it's so interesting lately, when people ask me about myself, I just, you know, I tried to be really succinct and brief. And then they're like, No, you're being modest. And in my head, it's like, I'm just trying to wrap this up quick, you know, make it a quick summary. But who I am, my name is Faitth, and I'm a writer, and I am just a I'm a Black woman that wants to live in this world and feel peace and not feel stressed out by all of the things going on around me. So I am doing my best to take in the joy of the life that I've been given and not put too much energy and the stress and trauma that can come upon you with being a black woman in this world. So I mean, all of the that being said that just helped me evolve. As a woman, I'm a social worker. And I just really believe in the community and the power that we have in community. And I'm a newlywed, I live in the DMV area now. And I, we recently got a puppy like seven months ago. So that's been a, an adventure, a little golden doodle named Kobe, he's actually not little, because he's a standard golden doodle. So he's quite big. But yeah, so I've just spent time over the years just writing writing about my life writing about race, and so many things that just mean something. To me, it's just been a way of like creativity for me to share myself and open myself up to the world in the ways that I feel like are authentic to me. So I would say that's like, a summary, a quick summary of who I am.
Bethaney Wilkinson 05:50
Beautiful, beautiful, I would love for you to take me into your journey over the last couple of years related to anti racism education, activism, I'm imagining that the way you're thinking about this work today is different than how you were thinking about it two years ago, or even four years ago. And so tell me a little bit about that. What's your trajectory then as it relates to anti racism education, and activism?
Faitth Brooks 06:22
Yeah, so when I graduated college, I went to a small, private Christian University. And that's what I experienced the most, like overt racism was in that environment. And that was interesting. And in some ways, like, I still find myself like unpacking those bits of trauma from those spaces where I was one of the only, and it took me a while to be okay with speaking out about my feelings and my experience. And much of that happened afterwards, which led me into wanting to have these dialogues and discussions about race. And it also led me to honing in on my voice, like, what is how am I going to communicate about race and racism, everybody talks in their own way. And I don't think there's anything wrong with anybody else's approach, I just had to find the one that felt authentic to me. And once I did that, it just really opened doors for me to talk to more people. Eventually, I ended up working for a nonprofit, and that did racial literacy, but mostly faith based racial literacy. And I kind of came to this like crisis around 2019, leading into 2020, where I was like, am I talking to the wrong people about this? Because it's getting harder and harder to engage. And it's also like, damaging the faith that I have at this point. And what I didn't want was for my faith, that I felt like I could still cling to to be even further in jeopardy than I already felt like it was. Before you know, and I say that because in the in the industries that I had worked in, and foster care and other places, I had worked for a Christian agency. And that was like the point where my faith had really been shaken because the people that I worked with, that were foster parents, a lot of them were just not what I expected other people who said that they were like people of faith. And I came out of that with like, a crisis of like, wait a minute, like, I don't even identify with that. And I don't even see myself in that type of belief system. And so doing anti racism education, with a similar group of people began to be really tough for me. So then leading into 2020. It's this, you know, surge of people wanting to learn and grow and it's overwhelming. And it what it also was a surge of people that I just could not keep up with in my DMs, who were either people that I knew from long ago, or, you know, I didn't know it all. But they wanted to argue with me about like, why I believe what I believe like, you know, what, is what I'm saying valid and questioning me like sending me articles from other black people who thought the way that they did it, just the list goes on. And it was so overwhelming. And I began to see afterwards, though, that it was a trend to speak up, it became a trend. And whether black people in this country have the ability to like live or die or be in an environment where they thrive or not, is not a trend. It is life or death. And that's what we're advocating for. We're advocating for us to have whole and full lives to live equally here. And it became increasingly more difficult to engage online because I began to feel more like an encyclopedia and a resource for people, even in trying to educate, but it just felt like people kind of just had this liberty to expect you didn't just teach me teach me everything. And I had to get to the point where asked myself the question, How can I teach people in the way that feels authentic to me, without jeopardizing my own mental and emotional health, which meant I stepped back from teaching a lot. And I focus a little bit more on my life, the things that were bringing me joy, I solicited a medium of which I wanted to communicate with people I preferred, like smaller groups, join me on Patreon. Let's talk there, instead of the sole of my work, just being forward facing online, anybody can interact and do whatever. So now I, I post as I feel I need to on anti racism. But it's not like the core of everything that I do, because it's not the core of who I am as a person. You know, it's just it's a part of what I do, but it's not all of me.
Bethaney Wilkinson 11:15
Mm hmm. Thank you for sharing that it really ties into I think what a lot of black women and black folks who find themselves are found themselves in this education space, like, looking back on the last two 5, 10 years, even in my own journey. I'm like, Yeah, I understand. I know what you mean. And, and I really am really having to have a moment of reckoning where you're like, if I'm out here advocating for black wholeness, wellness, freedom and liberation, then I need to prioritize creating a life for myself that is whole and liberated, and free and life giving to me. And anything that flows from that empowered, free place, the world is welcome to have. But I have to start with the liberation I can cultivate for my own body in this moment. And it's incredibly empowering. One of the things you touched on or wrote about in your new book, you talk about mindfulness and activism. I think that's that first section, or maybe the the second section, I can't remember exactly. And I love that mindfulness, this idea of presence and attentiveness to the present moment, even share with me why that was a good starting point for this journal that you've created for the people.
Faitth Brooks 12:28
Yeah. So I feel like oftentimes, especially online, there is such an absence of mindfulness. And I really try to practice mindfulness in my life, the reason why I wrote the journal, the way that I did is because like, I love reflection, self reflection, looking at looking at my life, evaluating things, like all of that means something to me. And one thing and doing this work, I realized is that a lot of people actually don't slow down enough to reflect and to be mindful and to ask themselves, when so and so said that when they said, you know, that was a, you know, racist incident, or whatever? Why did my body do what it did? Why did I immediately feel defensive? Or, like, where did those feelings come from? I feel like if you're not able to begin to slow down enough to investigate why you feel the way that you feel, then you really won't be able to go much further in your journey towards being somebody who wants to be an ally of sorts, you know, I use that word, because it's easy for people to understand. But I also carry it very loosely, because I think there's a lot that goes with that. But I think if you really are a person that wants to be for justice, and for equality, you have to self evaluate, because you can easily devolve into this, you know, kind of just like this emotional temper tantrum of like nananana No, no, no, you don't get it. Like, I wasn't a part of that. I didn't do that. I didn't contribute to that. And it's more so saying, if you could slow down and actually listen, if you could slow down, look at your life, evaluate what's being said, you might actually find what the trigger is, that makes you think what you're thinking right in that moment that makes your body do what it's doing. And it's really asking people, not just when it comes to race, but just life like to be in tune with themselves. If you can be in tune with your, your body, your mind, your heart, your soul, everything if you can be in tune. It will help you to be able to find the answers that you need in your life to the conflicts you're experiencing emotionally. And it will also help you to show up differently, rather than from a place of defense. And so I was hopeful that if I added that at the beginning, maybe people would be able to sit with themselves a little bit Take down the defensiveness, just, you know, just a little bit or a lot, who knows everybody's different. And it would help to open up hearts and minds to what I was trying to say. And I think that's what I hoped people would get from it in the beginning.
Bethaney Wilkinson 15:17
When it comes to the mindfulness piece for white folks, I get, I get what you're saying, like slow down, interrogate things, I want to hear a little bit more about how mindfulness can support black folks who are also navigating this cultural moment, being black in America, like speak to black folks who are also trying to find their way, as DEI practitioners or whatever, whatever their role is, and advocating for change.
Faitth Brooks 15:47
Man, I feel like, if we don't practice mindfulness, if we're not able to find a way to be in tune, and in sync with our own bodies, we won't last in this work. It's just we don't have we don't have a long shelf life. And that is just because it is such hard, emotionally taxing and brutal work to do the work of advocacy and activism. And I say that, because you're having to deal with pushback constantly, even from people who feel like I'm for you, like I am on your side, but really in action. And the words that they say you're seeing a different narrative, like you're like, actually are you because like the words that you're saying don't match up. And so that is emotionally taxing. And then for those who might not be in the activism space, they're just existing as black folks, you have to interact with white folks and other people who might not even have a cultural understanding of black culture all day, every day. Like, that is something that you just don't get away from. And I think more people are actually in tune with how though those things make them feel, and have become more in tune in the last two to three years than they might have been before where they might have just ignored it. You know, whatever, like, I'm just trying to carry on, I'm just gonna do my job, I'm just gonna go home, those mindsets and options are just not, people aren't thinking about that anymore. Like, you know, I want to be respected. And I shouldn't be like, I want equal pay on my job. And I should have that I want to as a black woman to be able to wear my hair, and locks like my hair is right now like and yours is as well. Like, I want to be able to go to work and not be discriminated against like things that people might have given a pass for the not giving a password anymore, because it's been too long of the same the same thing and not being heard. And in order for us to carry forward. We have to practice mindfulness for ourselves. So that means slowing down, catching our breath, asking ourselves, what is it that my body needs right now? Do I need to eat? Do I need to sleep? Do we need to go on a walk? Do I need to journal or read a book or talk to my therapist? How can I show up for myself? If we cannot show up for ourselves, we will not show up for anyone else. And I think that us as black women specifically need this message the most. Because culturally, people just look at us like we are just going to be the ones to save everything. And everyone. And that is just not okay. And we don't have to buy into the belief that we have to save everything. And everyone and mindfulness helps us to stay with ourselves. So we don't over commit to things that just really are beyond our control.
Bethaney Wilkinson 18:46
What does it look like for you and this season of your life to prioritize self?
Faitth Brooks 18:51
Oh, my goodness, I feel like it evolves weekly, in terms of like the ways that I prioritize myself. But one thing I will say simply is probably the past three years or four years, I have not committed to any extracurricular volunteer type activities. Like yeah, in the last four years, so nothing extra has been added to my life other than the work that I need to do my family interactions, or personal leisure, travel friendships.That hasn't really fallen in one of those buckets. I haven't done it. It had I had to cut something out because I was doing far too many things. And even now with just those simple things, I'm still doing a lot. And so one thing that I like to do is evaluate what I need. So I remember it was maybe last week or the week before. I just really needed time alone. I'm a newlywed, we have our apartment and sometimes it feels like we're just like jumping on top of each other. Like I need space you need space. And I just went out I got to I ran some errands. And I just remember coming back home, and I just told my husband like, I need to make more time for myself, like, I need to find space to make more time for me because I'm trying to focus on different household stuff, focus on this puppy that needs our attention right now. And I'm in focus on my marriage, you know, and all these other things. But I still have to focus on me, because I cannot show up for anyone else if I can't show up for myself. So it's really like a weekly evaluating, like, what do I need? And what does that look like. And so every week, it looks a little bit different, but it might mean more of a nap. For me, it might mean, some journaling, it might mean that I just need to go to a coffee shop just because because I need to have a different pace of environment because I work from home. So all of those different things are questions I have to ask myself constantly in order to stay present.
Bethaney Wilkinson 20:59
Beautiful. So I'm curious to hear what you're dreaming about. So I know that it's been a whirlwind of a couple of years, everything from your antiracism work, getting this book out into the world, getting married, getting a puppy moving your whole life, taking care of yourself. What are you looking forward to, as you think about what's what's next was on the horizon?
Faitth Brooks 21:26
Yeah, I am looking forward to creating more like peaceful spaces for black women. That's just something that I'm really excited about. It's something that I've been dipping my toes in, and starting here in DC, hosting different gatherings for black women, which has been fun. And really just wanting to like, open up that space more. And just to see us live like in our wholeness and our peace. And all of that just means so much to me right now. I have a different book coming out in 2023 called Remember Me Now. And I'm so excited about it, because it's a book for black woman. And I was really intentional about who I wanted to talk to who I wanted to write this book for, and why. And I think that has been something that has really helped me narrow in my focus. As I think about what's next. For me, it's more writing more creativity, more life, but more leaning into the beauty of black sisterhood. Our rest, like the reason why we get to be who we are. And thrive is when we have that community. And that's something I've been living in my real everyday day to day life cultivating those friendships with my sisters. And that's just life changing. It's it's been everything that I have needed in this season of change and transition. And so it's something that I want to continue to cultivate and to cultivate more. So educating is great, uh, cultivating and motivating and empowering my black sisters is really what is on the forefront of my mind.
Bethaney Wilkinson 23:19
Love it. us so lovely. Such a beautiful vision. And I feel like that's in the zeitgeist as well. It's it's a it's a thing that's happening for us over and I just feel just a lot of alignment with what you're sharing as a closing question for those who are engaged in this work in organizational life. So they're leading nonprofits or corporations or they're in their communities. And my by this work, I do mean, like diversity work, racial equity work. What do you think the focus should be for them right now?
Faitth Brooks 23:52
Yeah, I think that the focus should be revamping, and changing what has always been the way that race and equity and diversity is talked about in these corporate spaces in these nonprofit spaces. A lot of things are just outdated. And they haven't caught up yet. So I think what needs to be focused on is how are we going to change what has always been, and it takes risk takers, and people who really want to see like genuine, authentic change, okay, I'm not talking about just like, by the book, we have the EI at this organization like no, like, do you really have changed that is reflected because of these policies that you have implemented? If you just have policies on the books with no actionable change, then it's just really there for decorations and for fluff and to say that you did it, you did it quote, unquote. And so um, I just think that it's like a really great time for Diversity and Equity professionals to push the boundaries a little bit and to say, let's read this Is it what we've been teaching? Let's revisit what we have as policies. And let's start changing things because things need to match where we are. Right now. It's 2022. We're behind in so many ways. And we need to catch up. So that's what I would say.
Bethaney Wilkinson 25:18
Yes, yes and amen. Where can people find you keep up with you get to know Kobe?
Faitth Brooks 25:24
Yes. You can find me on all social media platforms, any major one you can think of at FaitthB. And I spell my name was two T's, so F A I T T H B, and my website is faitthbrooks.com. You can find me there as well. And yeah, that's just where you can find me on the internet. I'm all around and my name is simple for you. Fine.
Bethaney Wilkinson 25:47
So thanks so much for being here, Faitth. I appreciate you.
Faitth Brooks 25:50
Thanks for having me.