Do you ever feel disconnected from who yourself? Or yearn for an elusive, something that you can't quite put your finger on?
In this episode of Radical Remembering, I sit down with Dr. Ken Hardy for a deep and thought-provoking conversation about racial trauma and the concept of psychological homelessness. This episode explores the experience of disconnection felt by those of us from diasporic backgrounds, as we navigate feelings of uprootedness and the absence of rootedness in our lives.
Dr. Hardy shares his powerful insights into how chronic psychological homelessness, especially for marginalized people, manifests through an absence of belonging and a yearning for something intangible.
Listen to Radical Remembering: Season 2 Episode 5 and find inspiration on your journey towards liberation!
Or watch the full episode on my YouTube channel.
Relevant Links
Radical Remembering Podcast
Website: https://radicalremembering.com/
Connect with Dr. ken hardy
Connect with Dr. Norissa
Living Liberated app: https://livingliberated.passion.io
Radical Remembering is a podcast that covers personal growth, self-awareness and awareness of topics at the intersection of mental health, spirituality and self-help. Each episode will leave you with intimate knowledge of the liberation process, sprinkle a little healing magic, and leave you with wisdom for your journey into living out your purpose. Stay tuned for the next episode. Thank you for listening to the Radical Remembering podcast! Listen to our next podcast and tell a friend about us.
TRANSCRIPT
(Automatically generated)
Welcome to Radical Remembering with psychologist Dr. Norissa Williams. This is a weekly conversation where we explore ways we've internalized oppression and consider what it really means to live liberated. Each episode would leave you with intimate knowledge of the liberation process, sprinkle a little healing magic, and leave you with wisdom for your journey. As you get settled in for today's episode, please make sure to like and subscribe. And if you've liked what you heard at the end, please share.
So welcome to another episode of Radical Remembering. We have here with us doctor Kenneth Hardy of the Eikenberry Institute. Welcome, Ken. Thank you. Glad to be here with you.
Good. So that's already most of your work right now is in racial trauma. So I think that that is really important, a topic for us to continue to explore as we think about liberation. Can you tell us a little bit more how you even came to this part in your professional career to talk as much about racial trauma as you do? Yeah.
I mean, I think it really has been a twin path. I mean, I I think and not necessarily in this order. 1st and foremost, there's the issues that continue to come up with clients that I began to see a pattern. And that, you know, the kind of suffering that was expressed, you know, didn't always neatly fall into a DSM category. And I noticed just disproportionately these people of color were bringing these issues to the fore, whether it's, struggling with, you know, calibrating what they consider to be referred to as anger, which, you know, I later began to conceptualize, think about it, write about as rage, which I think is unique to people of color.
I I think it's in part to live your life and along the margins of society and not have those experiences. And so, I felt really at a real disadvantage as a clinician trying to help folks navigate the experiences of their lives that didn't have the tools to do that, or even a way of conceptualizing, you know, their pain and suffering. And so the more I began to sort of track these patterns, the more I began to affix names to them and and and would see them. And I just think our society that we're a society that places premium value on the physical over the metaphysical and that which we name as opposed to that which is not named. So I thought it was really important to begin naming some of these issues.
And then this has to do with the second piece of this, which is just, it wasn't like I was a bystander watching the lives of my clients, but it was also I was also experiencing these things personally. And thinking back at times in my life where I just where I never thought of myself as a violent person, but having all sorts of violent thoughts about, just the kind of indignities and injustices that those constantly confronted with, some really up close front and personal, you know, like some of this would date back to even in graduate school and trying to make sense out of of all that would would come up. And at that point, you know, had no forget about Black mentors, but just even folks of color, you know, no exposure, and, you know, living life at home, so to speak, you know, where I was exposed to certain things, and suddenly those issues in the workplace or in graduate school would be sort of deemed pathological dysfunctional. And so that was a head spinning kind of experience. And so I, you know, I just my own personal journey was really just thinking more about experiences.
I I had the fortune, to go up with a great grandmother who was a granddaughter of a slave and spent an enormous amount of time talking with me about what she referred to as man's and humanity to man, but essentially humans and humanity to humans and thinking about her experiences. And so I was captivated by these discussions as a young child. And so I always had a curiosity about, just race and what I felt to be white people's capacity to inflict pain on Black people without what appeared to be without any modicum of remorse, or empathy or compassion. But most of these things were kind of disconnected for me, like the conversations I had with my grandmother and my parents, my extension in graduate school and then subsequently working, they weren't they were somewhat disconnected. Like, they were almost like isolated experiences.
At some point, it occurred to me, you know, that they were in fact connected. And so as I started connecting with my own life, that led me to then start looking for those connections in my clients' lives. And I think that radically shifted, you know, the way I began to think about the world, about human suffering, about the experience of marginalized people and then my own work as a clinician. So, and so at that point, I don't think I've looked back. It's been hard for me to look at any area of psychology or mental health or any aspect in life, in fact, and not see that through a racial lens because I think it's there for the picking, if you will, if we dare see it.
But I think for the most part, we've been so incredibly socialized to not see it. Yeah. And I jumped the gun. I didn't even start with, like, an introduction for you to tell us who you are and what you do. But can you share a little bit more about that?
Because I'm you can and then I'll ask the question that I have. Yeah. So I'm, I'm, I'm actually the founder of the Eichenberg Institute, and Eichenberg is actually my grandmother's and my mother's maiden name. So I chose it for that reason. And I often say, and you've probably heard me say this before, that I recognize it's a very complicated name with an even more complicated history.
And that was all the reason why I wanted it to sort of be the namesake of my, you know, my institute because I dishonor my mother's name, but also to be reminded of the past and the path that that I and we collectively have taken to get to where we are. And so I pretty much now work as a clinical and organizational consultant, doing a lot of work with organizations helping them navigate the issues of race and social justice and also, practice as a clinician. Before doing this full time, I served on the faculty at Syracuse University for about 17 years, actually, and, training clinicians and then, held similar positions of professor and clinical trainer at Drexel University down in Philadelphia. Mhmm. And some of the books that you've published, can you name some for us?
Yeah. So the most recent, it's called Racial Trauma, Treating Invisible Wounds, that came out, I guess, March of 23. And, then the year before that, I published an anthology called centrality: the enduring invisible centrality of whiteness. And also have a couple books on cultural sense of supervision, one on teens hurt, which looks at adolescents and violence, and, where I was looking at really putting forth a model for engaging marginalized, poor, and youth of color in the therapy process. And then I've done, with Monica McGold, revisioning family therapy where we're looking at what we're basically calling for is a redesign of the clinical paradigm.
So, we're looking at issues of power and privilege and race and class and gender and all the other dimensions of diversity that provide important texture and context for our lives. And because I think for the most part, traditional mental health approaches have really stripped us of our complexity and think that we're reducible to, our id ego and superegos, and that's all we are. And I think we're so much more than that. Mhmm. Thank you.
So when I think back to my clinical training, so in my undergrad degree, late nineties to early 2000, and my master's degree early 2000, then my doctorate degree mid 2000 to at least 10 years ago. I didn't have any as a matter of fact, in my doctoral program, I was like, how are we studying developmental psychology? And we don't talk about race at all. We don't talk about ethnicity at all. This is madness for me.
Like, and so I know my experience. If you know, I think now I can see the difference in the students that I teach now. Like I saw the marked difference after 2016 after Trump and people really began to because it was such an opposing cultural stance and viewpoint, people really began to define and think about, you know, who they are, you know, different ways. And so they came to the class with preformed ideas that made the discussion so much different. Right?
Because before then, when I said microaggressions in class, that was the first time that they heard it. After they came to the class with, like, micro and and different racial trauma is a term that they have heard of now. Mhmm. And so I think about that, and I know what I experienced in my schooling. And I'm thinking about what your training must have been like.
Mhmm. How did you, like, move away from you know? Because that was I imagine there would have been a lot more resistance to you then than it would have been when I was trained. And since then, even though I know that there's still resistance in terms of, like, what gets published, what's you know? Mhmm.
Yeah. I mean, it's it's interesting you raised that issue because every step along I mean, well, first of all, I just think that it's hard to lean in and have conversations about race, raise issues of race, and not have it be contentious and and, engendering, you know, instead of the defensiveness and all of that. So every step along the way, whether it was back in graduate school in terms of what I wanted to do my dissertation on and being discouraged from looking at that. And, you know, if I expressed an interest in Black families and the pushback was, well, why do you wanna make it about race? And, so that every step along the way, there was this sort of denial about the significance of race.
And then I think just professionally, I mean, I could, which I'm sure they would never ever confess to, but I've actually submitted articles to journals and the reviewers. And I could tell from the tenor of the comments in the review that that the reviewer was reactive to something I said in the article and totally oblivious to that. And I've had that experience as recently as a few months ago, with the article coming out. And, you know, it was, you know, these seemingly innocent questions about, well, how do you know that was racist? Or what scientific proof do you have?
Or Or, you know, that, that this last piece was, you know, something I'd done on whiteness. And, one of the reviewers said, no, she didn't have very many references, and so that it's not really a scholarly piece with so few references. And so which to me was illustrating the very point I was writing about, about the dominance of white ideology, but totally oblivious to that. And so to me, that's just part of the territory. Now I've had students of color who've been dismayed by this and feel metaphorically weak in the knees when they develop their voices, which I'm always encouraged to do, and speak up rather vociferously about race.
And then there's a tsunami of pushback. And and I've been saying to them, you know, like, that can't be a reason to not do it because that when anytime you raise the issue of the specter of race, regardless of context, that you are attempting to disrupt the prevailing order, and you don't disrupt the prevailing order without there being pushed back. And so this one person in particular, I know it was a deeper religious person, said, you know, Jesus Christ was persecuted, so why do you think you should be excused from it? So that was meaningful to her to hear that. But I yeah.
It is and so it's gotten better. It's less of it now, but it's still there. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely.
When we think about how we've internalized racism, what are some ways that we do internalized racism? How does it manifest in our any context in our at work, in our friendships, in our romantic partnerships, in our peer groups? You know, it it would be easier to answer the question in reverse. Like, what are the ways in which we failed to to internalize it? Because I think it is pervasive.
And I'm not talking about someone over there. I'm talking about just the ways in which I've been aware of it in my own being. You know, that in terms of periods of my life, how I've appraised my own physical appearance. You know, that to think unfavorably of my lips, for example, because that was the lips of Black people is always caricatures and criticized. And I grew up with a father who was born in the South, well meaning, well intentioned, giving me what he thought was sage, fatherly advice and saying, Kenny, you know, if you want your car done, right, take it to the white man.
And so there's a way in which, you know, this notion that white is better. And, you know, I grew up with that as a backdrop, not just in terms of getting the car fixed, but most things. I mean, it was a message that was promulgated through books in school, through television programs in my household in some way, shape, or form. And it wasn't it was an unquestionable truth that, you know, it just that there was this deeply held belief that, you know, that this jingle my sister used to jump rope to, if you're white, you're right. If you're Black, step back.
If you're brown, stick around. That it's just so seamlessly integrated into the everyday lives of people of color into our psyches. And so I think it's that and we don't get rid of that unless it's a conscious effort to exercise that from our psyches and our souls. And so I've been actively engaged in that process now for the you know, for decades just going back and and weeding that out. I mean, this idea that somehow that what we do has to garner white approval in order to be acceptable is just not a part of my playbook anymore.
And yet, I'm sad to say at some point in my life, it was. Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. Because I remember hearing people say, like and white people were looking, and and and they did that in front of white people.
And Yeah. If you enjoy listening to Radical Remembering and would love to get the season dropped before everyone else. If you want exclusive invites to live and virtual events and could benefit from daily liberation inspiration, like affirmations, thought provoking questions, and daily guidance, then download our free app Living Liberated in the App Store or on Google Play. You can also find the link below in the description box. Yeah.
I don't not want to be a part of my playbook either. Like, I don't I don't care about the white gaze. You know? And so you said we have to exercise it. Right?
So what are some of the things that we do? Right? So I think of liberation as a process, as a journey. You know, it's rather than a destination. It's something because we live and in in your words, I've heard you say this, because we live under white occupation, it it it we we don't have the luxury of not moving in such a way that we don't have to think about how we might be internalizing societal messages or to be passive about our social environment, and we have to be actively engaging.
What are some ways that you think about and talk about, like, how we exercise that? Well, I I think that this excision really is about challenging these dominant narratives. And so like it could be something as seemingly benign as, the point you just raised, that us having a conscious awareness about what we say or fail to say in the presence of white people. So I'm challenging inviting clients, supervisees, and family members. It's fine to give it a thought and then say one thing more than you're comfortable saying.
To put it out there, it's important. And you've heard me say this before, and I'm constantly saying that what you say is not about what support or favor it invites from the other person. It's about your ears hearing your mouth speak on behalf of the liberation of your soul. And so I think that's important. And so I think this starts with little this process of exercising whiteness from the soul starts with actually very small steps, but nonetheless very significant steps because they helped to sustain it.
So things like being able to name whiteness in the presence of white people, because, you know, we do have this rather bizarre thing that we do as people of color, at least I've experienced this, that when white people are present, it's almost like we're forbidden from saying white. So we say, you know, cultural groups and all these other code words we use, and I'm saying, no, let's say white. And if white people are uncomfortable hearing themselves referred to as white, then let them sit with that discomfort. Let us not own it. Which brings up the third point is that I do believe that we have been very effective, highly skilled caretakers for white people and that we work rather assiduously to ensure that white people don't experience any racialized pain or discomfort on our watches, even if it means we sacrifice pieces of ourselves.
And that simply has to stop. And so what I'm suggesting to all of us is that, you know, that it's time for us. We've had our run as nannies and butlers and caregivers and care and it's time for us now to channel that energy toward ourselves. And so that at the very least, have your observing eye watch you remain quiet when you should be speaking because a white person's present or acting in ways that are designed to promote comfort for white people, whether it's downplaying the significance of your own thoughts or feelings or more importantly coming after rather aggressively another person of color, which is again how we internalize this stuff, that somehow you're strong, the person next to you is fragile, so I have to come at you because you're making the person white person next to you uncomfortable. And, no, I I want us to be able to to hold the capacity to allow that white person to experience the discomfort and not have to engage in self genocide in in the process because I think that that's something historically that we've been sort of socialized to do.
Mhmm. And I don't think none of this I. I don't think we can just will our way out of it. I think it requires active resistance. And when you talk about liberation, I think that that requires action. It's not just an ideology.
Yeah. I agree. And you said I can't remember what you just said. That reminded me of something that I I thought of when you spoke earlier. When you say metaphysical, do you see this?
I definitely see this. I see liberation as a spiritual path. Right? Is it aligning with your power and everyday choosing to align with that power and power source? When you say metaphysical, are you thinking spiritual as well?
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Can you speak to me? Because it could be or just because I think in our society I mean, I mean, I think the reason why we value physicians more than we value therapists is because physicians, you can go in with a concrete definable pain, And then there's something concrete they can offer.
Even if that concrete thing they offer is what they're recommending for 50 other elements. We find solace in that. Nonetheless, our work is a little bit more abstract. It's a little bit more metaphysical. And so you get all the science questions.
Well, how do you know it's effective? And is this evidence based? And all that stuff. And so I think that the work around liberation is what I often write about and refer to as soul work. Mhmm.
It's work, it's work that starts inside out. Mhmm. And so I get a little bit dismayed when I do trainings, and within the first 10 to 15 minutes, someone is asking me, well, what do I do when I get back to my job? And it's about and you're concerned about what you do, and I'm concerned about how you be. Right.
Because I think if we focus on our being, it will actually pave a pathway to the doing. But, you know, that's less measurable. I mean, there's no statistical tool to measure that. But I do think it's important to be able to look within and do the work around the regions of one's soul, get one's soul intact. And, I think that empowers us to do the kind of external work that we wish to do.
Mhmm. Mhmm. It was you when you said direct that energy back to us, that was what I heard and sounded metaphysical to me too. Right? We're directing all this energy outward to placating, securing, comforting whiteness when it would be so much more strengthening for ourselves to be able to direct that energy towards us.
And when I think about that too, it's like it's not that when we take these liberatory actions or, you know, the actions that you suggest that they'll be without consequence Right. At least we have the opportunity to act in our agency, activate voice, and all those things. And so the consequences are yeah. There are still potential consequences. But for me, I would choose that than the consequences of continuing to deny myself and to, you know, and to hurt.
I'm not, I've left jobs for this reason, and people have asked, like, wow. Like, thinking, like, wow. That's so courageous of you for you to leave that kind of job, that kind of position. And, you know, and in my head, okay, yes, it is courageous, but, really, it was a life or death choice to me. I could stay there and die and continue to impact my physical health, or I can leave and find my way but be better off and extend my life because I'm not having, like, the same kinds of stressors and different things like that.
Yeah. Absolutely. Because I think that what happens is that and and that's why I think it's important to talk about the physical and metaphysical because what you're talking about is physically doing what's necessary to keep your job and surrendering to a kind of soul slaughter, which is what happens. And at least you leave, and your soul is intact. And I think that our soul is our GPS.
I know that it is hard for us to find our way when our soul is not intact. And I think that so often our participation in white dominated systems requires us to compromise our soul. And so that it's always one more thing we're trying to achieve. If I just go along to get along, then I'll get that promotion. I'll keep my job.
I'll get tenure. I'll get a promotion. It's always a dangling carrot. And yet at the end of it, when, you know, we get close to achieving those markers, we have, like, really important questions about who we are and what have we become in the process of getting that. And so I do think that that kind of spiritual yearning and the absence of concrete questions to those answers I mean, answers to those questions actually then contribute to this condition I really refer to psychological homelessness.
It's like I have a roof over my head, literally speaking, but there's a sense of yearning for an elusive something else that I can't quite put my finger on. There's no, I don't know what the language is. I just know that it's hard to fulfill. And the ways I go about fulfilling it, in some ways, usually end up exacerbating the condition rather than ameliorating it. So because it's you know, I'm looking for something external Mhmm.
And physically that is internal and spiritual. Mhmm. Mhmm. So it speaks to psychological homelessness. Does it speak to not feeling rooted in oneself, or or is that like not feeling rooted in and out?
It can be any it can be any and all those things. I mean, I think that you just use a keyword, which is rootedness. There's an absence of rootedness. Mhmm. And so, like I made a brief reference earlier to, Teens Who Hurt, which is a book I wrote about adolescents and this found the research we did found that that there were 3 levels of, in that book we refer to as community, 3 levels of community that adolescents had to participate in that that really were life altering in some ways.
And so one was primary community, which referred to the family, extended community, which was not just extended family, but all the systems that youth of color participate in, school, church, Temple mosque, synagogue, police athletically, sports, all those things. And then the third level is the cultural community, which is about, where is it that I get a sense of rootedness about who I am and what I am and what it means to be who I am. And so the adolescents that I think have the most difficulty, and I think this extends in adulthood, are those for whom each level of community has been disrupted. Because I think then you're looking at a case of psychological homelessness. So rootedness is key.
And, you know, I've talked about that there's some element of psychological homelessness that Black people, we have to make amends with, that we just have to live with, that we call we are a people of a diaspora. We have been uprooted in ways that it's hard to reconnect those roots, at least substantively and significantly. So there's some degree of home homelessness that we have to grapple with, and yet it can be exacerbated by other manifestations of disconnection that we have in our lives as well. And so I think that there's homelessness and then there's chronic psychological homelessness. But what's in common is there's an absence of rootedness.
There's where the temple of one's familiar has been, destroyed. And it's hard for Black people to frequent white dominated spaces and not suffer psychological homelessness. Mhmm. Mhmm. Even when we can master code switching and developing a critical institutional self that shows up at work.
But the very existence of that means that I'm constantly trapped in a revolving door where I'm moving through identities and spaces and not feeling totally grounded and rooted anywhere. -Mm -Because when I'm making those accommodations at work, to be white approximate, or to be the gem, the good effective mainstream minority, I am forsaking pieces of who I am. Mhmm. And just having just the fact of having to do that, to not have a single place where you can be your entire whole authentic self, I think, perpetuates a state of psychological homelessness. Mhmm.
Mhmm. A lot of people I know, you know, the great resignation since 2020, how a lot of people have left the workforce, started their own businesses. Black women lead that. I was one of them. And then there have even been research that looked at who wanted to go back to the office.
Black people were likely to wanna stay home and not have to go to the office and to talk about how like, it's so much less cognitive load having to navigate spaces and meet up with people in at the water cooler and have conversations that don't feel authentic to you Right. Those kinds of things. So I can definitely see and recall even in my own life that experience of Mhmm. You know, alright. I'm walking through the door.
I gotta put down you know, put all some of me on that hook right there. All of me is not seen. Right. It's always at an expense. I've I've I've also been places where you've worked with somebody for 5 years, and each year at the beginning of the semester and who are you?
And I'm like, I've been sitting next to you for 5 a year. Oh, well, your hair is different. My hair is the face is not the same. You know? So also being invisibilized often even though your labor is, you know, very instrumental in the success of, you know, the particular organization and just how those things, like, silently kill.
You know? Like, seek to annihilate the full fullness of who you are. Yeah. I've had those experiences where I've actually, on more than one occasion, given a keynote address and have, as I'm leaving the podium, headed to the door, just white folks stopping me and hugging me and telling me how moving the speech was, and they feel totally transformed by it. I go to my room, change clothes, head to the airport, run to the same people in the elevator, don't see me.
They don't even recognize me. And it could be like within 30 minutes, you know? Totally, you know, because I'm out of a suit and I'm out of context and and basically, it's just most Black people, they probably don't see. You know? That's happened on more than one occasion, more than 10 times.
I mean, I could write a book about that experience just alone. I mean. Yeah. Liberation is 100% about being in right relationship with our power. It's so easy from day to day to disconnect from our source and forget who we really are.
On our app, Living Liberated, we have the tools to keep you plugged in. You'll find a library of affirmations, guided meditations, guided journeys, and tapping sequences to keep you in a state of alignment with who you really are. Topics range from self love, healthy relationships, activating our DNA, to guided journeys with your ancestors. Download our free app, living liberated, and start your free 7 day trial now in the app store or Google play. You can also find the link for Plugged In in the description box below.
It's amazing. Yeah. How do you feel when so Saturday, I was out. I was celebrating my anniversary, me and my husband, and then we invited 2 other couples with us. Mhmm.
We ate in the restaurant, then we were going up to the bar area, sit down, continue talking. We walk in. So this question is, how do you feel when it's a person of color, you know, enacting whiteness? Right? So, we walk in, a whole group of white people standing right here.
The security is a Black man. He doesn't say anything to these people. Right? Mhmm. And I we literally 2 steps in, and he just started yelling.
He was like, no. No. No. And he's and, like, I was completely caught off guard because I'm like, wait. What happened?
Like, I can't even hear him because he's there's so much that he can right now, but he's physically even coming over to us when there were at least 20 people, you know, standing in that space. Right? Part that was part 1. Part 2 is I'm looking for a place to sit because there's no place to sit. I see it says nightclub, and someone had one of the people in the restaurant say, oh, maybe you can go over to the nightclub.
It's early 10, 10:30. My thinking is that there are seats there. It won't be a full nightclub. It will still feel like a bar. And the door is right there.
There's nothing saying don't go in there. So I opened the door to see, like, oh, is this a place for us to go? 2 people come rushing at me. 1 of them both of them people of color. 1 of them, the same Black man.
And he's like, the way he is yelling, you would think that he caught us with something that we were stealing and different things like that. I was angry, and I was yelling back at him too. Because first of all, you don't even know you've assumed the lesser of me because I'm Black. Right? Because my group is Black.
You didn't feel empowered enough to talk to the white people. So now this is displaced, you know, where you are shouting at us and all these things. For me, it's like a greater hurt when it's like I expect it. Like, my guard is already up when it's white people. And I do also know that not all skin folk are kinfolk.
Right? Mhmm. So I do know that it's gonna come, but it hurts me in a different way. I don't know how you think about that, how you feel about that. Well, it's profoundly disappointing.
I mean, it's definitely disappointing. And on good days when I'm centered, I like, I try to, I try to understand and remind myself of the dynamics of it. That, like, that person you're describing is responding to something even much bigger than him or the 2 of you. Mhmm. You know?
And so I try to keep that because I think that allows me to stay regulated in those moments when I'm thinking about I mean, it's like often probably I probably don't give a talk where I don't mention Clarence Thomas because he's been a rather obsession of mine over the years. And, you know, I there's a piece of me and this that has empathy for those of us who are still trapped in the system because, like, I I mean, I I'm I'm worried and thinking that maybe at some point in my life, I could have been some version of that guard, you know, because, I sure as hell hope not, but but I can't I can't I can't rule it out. Like, I can't say to you on the one hand that the indoctrination is pervasive and then say, oh, but it didn't affect me. You know? And so at those moments, I try to go from micro to macro because it just helps me understand.
It gives me a moment to then make sense about what's happening and to not personalize it as much. But there are times it's hard to get there. You know? It's because it is personal, and it feels personal. And yet it's like I have the same experience with, like, these hyper gestapo, just at the airport.
I can't think it meant that. But at the security, it's the same type of thing. Like, I've had more than one encounter with, like, a person of color who just, like, to me, overreaches and has to be the super, you know, colored person there and say, okay. Well, you know, I gotta try to understand that you're in a system where you probably get some kudos for doing this and this piece of your powerlessness. And so, that's where I try to go.
I don't. I can't say to you I always go there, but that's where I try to go most often is to understand that we're all like, you know, the dogs or mice have been trained in a maze to to run to do certain things. And, so sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. Yeah. Sometimes I'm able to. I was all the way dysregulated on Saturday. Sometimes I'm able to be calm enough.
I mean, I also think of it sometimes as, well, this might be my only opportunity or their only opportunity to hear. And I might ask, would you have responded the same way to a white person? Yeah. And I didn't have that didn't happen on Saturday. Saturday, I was yeah.
Well, and he sounds pretty dysregulated too. So, you know, like, he probably wouldn't receive that very well. And Right. You know? Well, I well, I did say that, though.
I was like, what did I say to him? I was like, you don't even know who I well, I said, you don't know who I am. You don't know who I know. And in this circumstance because I did unconscious bias training for that organization for a couple years at that restaurant for a couple years. I did know people there, and so the general did give us you know, greet us, make sure we had seats and whatever.
Mhmm. And so but it's stupid for you to you don't even you're thinking the less of me by default, but you don't even know who I am. You know? That and that is true. I mean and the less of you and the white folks get the benefit of doubt as being somewhat important that he shouldn't do that too.
Exactly. And also knows that the system will respond differently to your being aggrieved by that than it would a white person being aggrieved by that. Mhmm. Exactly. Exactly.
And I told him I was like, take the same energy to the white people. If you come to me like this, take the same energy as the white people. Right. So it was you know, he did he he I don't know if he was listening. I was when I was saying I was enraged, I didn't even get quiet then.
I don't know if it was you don't know who I know or it's Right. Right. No. I totally understand the rage because, I mean, like, I'm I always said, I don't care what people say to me or about me, but I do care what you do. When you start when you start, you know, denying access or opportunity, that's where I get dialed in.
You can call me any name you wanna call me in the alphabet. I could care less. It doesn't affect my blood pressure at all. But what does affect my blood pressure is when you start, when there's differential treatment. Now that is where I draw a line.
Yeah. And so you're getting treatment there. So that makes it, you know, that's hard to stay regulated when the face when you see it so clearly, and then you and then it's your own per your own folks, and then you're seeing that they're not seeing it. Exactly. Exactly.
Exactly. And I was probably personally invested too. I'm like, I've done this work here with you. Like, I don't know. Right.
Right. Because it was, you know, whatever. But I you know? Well, he needed a little bit more training and implicit bias. That's what that's what I said.
Exactly. So what do you think is important really, really important as far as we know, like, in terms of we these people listen to this conversation. They leave this conversation. What is the next thing to do to be able to be closer to I guess, I would use my word liberation. Yeah.
Well, I mean, I just think the first premise I operate from is that neither you nor I can move to liberate someone else unless we've experienced some degree of self liberation. So Mhmm. So I just have, like, this well formulated unshakable bias that the work starts with us and it moves inside out. Yeah. And so I do think that there's work that we have to do with ourselves.
And there's no one of us that's been excused from this that we all, as I often say, we all drink our water from the same well and the well we drink our water from is a well of white supremacy. And so it's not about whether it's in me, but rather the question is, how is it in me and what parts of it remain in me? And because I think we have to make a conscious effort to, as I said earlier, to really weed our souls a bit, to exercise it from our bodies. And so I think that's important. I think we also didn't have to give ourselves a list of petite tasks that we can start with.
Because what happens is when we go for the colossal change, because that's, you know, we all want revolutionary change, want things to happen very quickly, but that's not how change some most change happens. Right. And then when we get discouraged, then we threw our hands up and say, we'll see nothing will ever change. And so we're not in a place where we can appreciate small change. And I'm not saying we should be satisfied with small change, but I think we should appreciate it because I think that small change invariably can lead to larger change.
So if it's nothing more than my making sure, having a talk with myself in my space about the importance of my voice. And that's why I sort of crystallized a ton of these things in little crystallized portions so that I'm saying to myself, my goal here is to say one thing more than I'm comfortable saying and then hold myself accountable to that. Like that's a small change that can lead to a larger change. I think, as I said earlier, being able to, our ears need to hear our mouths speak. Yeah.
Because that's what moves our soul. Mhmm. And then I just like the Black people in particular, I mean, like, these are things I do every single training I spend time on this. And it's it's it it seems trivial, but I wish we would stop apologizing for over-explaining, making excuses, and denying our anger. That has been so heavily criticized and weaponized by white people that we take a piece of affect for us that is legitimate, that's tied, that has historical roots in our bodies, and then we deny the significance of it because white people say we're too angry.
And so, I'm wanting us to own that narrative and say it's not anger, it's rage, and rage is what we have and what one has when something has happened to you. And racially, I've had a lot happen to me. And then to recognize that not all the rage we have is connected. We definitely have race related rage, but it's also possible that not all the rage we have is connected to rage. It's not connected to race.
I think, but rage is always connected to the experience of domination. So if we've experienced any aspects of our lives where we've experienced domination and marginalization, we're gonna have rage. And so some of us have complex rage. We have lay rage that's multilayered. And if we deny that, then, we can never have a relationship with it.
Mhmm. And then the final thing, I'm always asking us to, I think it's important for us to, deshame our suffering. Mhmm. Because shame is, as you all know, a very powerful, paralyzing emotion. Mhmm.
And it is shameful to acknowledge you have shame. Mhmm. And Black people in particular, we have been a people that have been so chronically devalued that we have lots of shame. And the shame that we have doesn't allow us to talk about the types of things we should be talking about, to seek help and assistance for guidance for things that we should seek help for assistance and guidance for. Mhmm.
And so what happens is our shame gets stuffed, and in so doing, that all of the pain that's attached to it gets stuffed. And to me, that is what propels us to look for unhealthy ways, to manage ourselves, whether it's drugs and alcohol, whether it's the things that happen in families around domestic violence. I mean, it's a whole list of self destructive behaviors that I really would love for us to have a deeper understanding about so that we could circumvent falling prey to some of those things. And so I always think it's important for us to ask ourselves, like, what is what is the piece of suffering in my life that's helped shape who I am? Mhmm.
And if I can allow myself to be in relationship with my suffering, in all of this ugliness in all of its shame, it then propels me to be in a position to touch the depths of my greatness. Mhmm. And when I can transform that shame, and that suffering into action, like, to me, that's a principal part of the liberatory process now I'm allowing my soul to be liberated. Yeah. But that takes time.
It takes commitment. And, you know, I think it's the type of thing that happens most powerfully when it can in relationships. And so I believe that because we are psychologically homeless, then to partake and find experience that allows us to have what you've heard me talk about as a homettes, which are these moments of home. I think therapy can offer that. I think support groups can offer.
I think, afternoon in a nail salon or at a barbershop or a multitude of other places where we are congregating and where we can tell our own unique stories about ain't it awful and know that it's falling on empathic accommodating ears. I think it's a place where healing takes place. I think it's a place where liberation takes place. And so it doesn't have to be in a formal therapy office. It just has to be where you can tell your version of the story unedited in your own words uninterruptedly and know that it's falling on empathic ears.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. Important stuff. So something that I've I've I a philosophy I share and something that I've watched you do both as a participant in your training and with you as the co facilitator is re template social engagement.
Right? And when I say that, I mean, you know, I think of Martin Luther King in, one of his last speeches, and he talks about the classroom. Right? Mhmm. It talks about the socially healing context of a classroom.
And here, we see that there are still so many missed rooms. And here we see that there are still so many missed opportunities because it's school and it's work that we come together in the US cross racially for the most part. Right? If there is a you know, if it is diverse enough to even have much of a cross racial interaction. And so I've watched you, retemplate society by breaking down some of those norms in terms of whiteness, in terms of not expressing yourself, not being not allowing emotion, and like you said, you know, shame and how that is engaged in processes.
How important to you do you see how important is that to you, and is that a way forward for our collective liberation? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I I think the ways in which, and I appreciate you mentioning this, I think the way that whiteness is so seamlessly integrated in all aspects of our lives that even when we are consciously committed to dismantling it, we can tacitly reinforce it. And I think this sort of characterization of people of color as a collective and Black people more specifically as being too emotional, and too loud, all those things that we're too much of that we have equated with, being professional or being even keel or acceptable.
And I think it's problematic. And so I, like, I do think it's important that we reclaim our emotions, to be present with the emotions that we have, to be able to express those unapologetically, and to know that when we doing that, it's an act of both resistance and liberation. And when we fail to do it, it's a kind of personal incarceration that we do that. And we're reinforcing the very thing that we say that we that we're against. And none of this happens easily.
I mean, you're gonna be criticized. I mean, there's gonna be pushback. I and so that this work is not for the weak. And so if that sort of destabilized you to be criticized because you're advocating people have their emotions, then you're in the wrong business. I mean, you're in the wrong work.
You can't do this work. So I think that's really important. And I think it's just one of the multitude of ways that people of color and Black people have been systematically shamed. And you have what is a legitimate emotion, whether it's despair and sadness or despondency or anger and rage, and somehow it's always subject to criticism and scorn in some way, some other way is better. And to get back to your earlier question, this is just another way in which it's important for us to resist and repel those internalized messages, because we believe that as well.
We raise our children to believe some of this stuff, and it gets reinforced in the families. And so I think there has to be a massive disruption of it because I think it is highly detrimental to our well-being. Yeah. I love that. And I'm thinking the whole time we were talking about some of the most profound moments that we had when we co facilitated together most recently.
And, I keep thinking about the man, the white man who a Black woman had shared that, you know, because of whiteness, she's had to be smaller, a lesser version of herself. She doesn't wanna be the loud Black woman, the angry Black woman. She doesn't even get to make you know, she's a funny person, but she doesn't even get to make she doesn't make jokes as much because of how so she's self policing so that she is not policed and in some way punished. And then a white man was able to, he said that he was thinking about just, like, how much he has also lost by not, you know, being able to see her in her fullness. Right?
That's right. And so nobody is winning. Nobody is gaining Right. The way that it is. And in this kind of retemplating, you don't have to tell them that they get to, you know, you know, you don't have to say, okay.
Well, I'm doctor Hardy, and I'm the lecturer, and this is what you should know about these things. They get to experience it. So much like you were saying, the being, they get to experience it in their body, and they get to birth these new insights within themselves in a way that changes them. So I do I. I agree, and I employ that in my practice too in the sense that, you know, we have to experience each other in different ways. We have to experience ourselves racially in different ways in order for us to do so because there are many of us that cognitively, oh, I'm not racist.
Or Right. I wanna you know? But we haven't moved to the affected and Right. Right. The impact is limited.
Yeah. I think it's such an excellent point you're raising. And I do, I think that's so important because, I think it makes zombies out of all of us. You know? We don't have authentic relationships.
We don't have authentic conversations. We have this mythical notion about how we all should be that's based on some fabricated, unattainable goal. And so, like, we're I find it so exhausting and so intolerable that we still log on to those things. And so you're so you're right in that, like, that example that you described. In the absence of that, they don't get to experience each other authentically, which I think is true of how we navigate relationships in our society.
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. So as we close well, I would like to know how people can hear more from you?
Like, how do they learn about your events, and do you have events often? I do. And, you know, I had someone introduce me at a conference the other day and said it's absolutely impossible to find Ken Hardy on social media, which it is. Because I because I don't have even the smallest fingerprint, and that's, you know, all deliberate, but we'll that's for another time. But anyone's interested, we keep an active mailing list.
You could email, me at teir, which is the eikenberg and superrelationships 311 atgmail.com. So t e I Yeah. I never picked up. That's why it was t e I r. I was like, tier Yeah.
The eikenberg and superrelationships 311@gmail. We'll put that in the description box below so that people can stay abreast, learn about the events that you have, and continue to do this work. Absolutely. Yeah. Any final words?
I just appreciate you having me. I enjoyed the conversation. I feel like I'm taking more away than I'm leaving, but that's I guess that's all good too. Good. Good.
I appreciate you doing this. I think it's a great medium to connect with our folks. Thank you. Thank you. I love it also.
Hopefully, someone will play this for that security person. So true. Alright. Have a good one. Take care.
K. Have a great Thanks for listening. If you've loved what we've had to share and wanna be the first to get releases of our new episodes and learn about events, download our free app, Living Liberated, in the Apple or Google Play Store.
Comments