racism — conscious + aligned podcast

05: Motherhood, Inclusion, Joy, and Urgency (Rebekah Borucki)

“It started with my oldest son who was born with a visual impairment. So both my boys have a genetic visual impairment that causes blindness, so they’re legally blind, but functioning. They can’t drive cars and they’ve lived with this their entire lives since they were babies. My oldest daughter has a genetic condition that affects her mobility so sometimes she uses a wheelchair, sometimes she uses a cane and it is very much an invisible illness on other days because she’s walking. But she does have to have a handicapped spot. And having these children, and let me specify, I’m not saying being transgender is a disability, but having these kids and seeing how they navigate the world and learn to advocate for themselves, and didn’t listen to people saying, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ They tried it on their own and discovered whether they could or could not do, allowed me when Sunny at a very young age, like from the time he could walk and talk and express himself and say what he wanted to wear and what he didn’t. And he started expressing that he wanted to be a boy. I let him lead. I didn’t project any of my fears, cause I had them. My confusion, cause I certainly was confused, right? I didn’t project any of that. It was a lot of asking questions. ‘What do you mean you want to be a boy? Or what does being a boy mean to you?’ Right and like, ‘All boys don’t have short hair. So do you think having short hair means that you’re a boy?’ There’s a lot of things I had to grapple with within myself, but I recognized the whole time that it was about me.”

podcastChidimma Ozor CommerAugust 30, 2019bipoc, biwoc, woc, poc, mindfulness, conversation, diversity, equity, inclusion, intentional, racism, self love, self careComment

04: Spiritual Activism and Overthrowing Systems of Oppression (Rachel Ricketts)

“Another one that continuously comes up is, white women who want to include me in their, ya know, online symposium, interviews, blah blah blah, whatever, because they’re trying to collect Black people and they one, want me to do it for free. So no. And two, don’t, again, it’s this lack of, care or thought and don’t read my responses even. I just had a woman ask me to speak on her online symposium for free. And she was like, ‘It’s a marketing opportunity.’ No, it’s not a marketing opportunity for me. I don’t need your marketing opportunity, I’m just, like if you want my offerings, service and education, then pay me for my time. Period.”

podcastChidimma Ozor CommerAugust 22, 2019conversation, equity, intentional, mindfulness, poc, woc, self care, racismComment

03: Resisting White Supremacy Right Where You Are (Kenrya Rankin)

“Understand that the most impact that you’ll be is right where you stand. So, where are you right now? And what can you do in your immediate environment to move the needle? And that there’s, everybody doesn’t have to be an organizer on the front line, everybody doesn’t have to be holding a picket sign and have their arms linked. And while that is a valuable form of resistance and that’s gotten us a lot of places. That there are a whole lot of other things that we can do, in the place that we are, that helps us all get there.”

Chidimma Ozor CommerAugust 15, 2019conversation, diversity, equity, inclusion, intentional, mindfulness, poc, racism, self love, self care, wocComment

02: Legit Feminism, Finances and Intersectionality (Kara Perez)

“And yet I was debt free by June 5, 2015 and in 2015 my taxable income, it was like $23,000, ya know, not very much money. So you could easily point to my story and say, ‘Well, she did it. She bootstrapped.’ Ya know, now I have a business; I make middle class income. I control my time and I can easily be seen as a success story. But the flip side of that is well, I’m white-passing, I’m able-bodied, I speak unaccented English. When people look at me, they trust me so it was easier for me to get a job. I was healthy enough that I could work five different part time jobs seven days a week, I didn’t have a child I needed to care for. I was able to take these risks and do this sort of scrappy (laughter) debt pay off journey because of the layers of privilege. So I like to say, ‘I call bullshit on my own bootstrap narrative.’”

podcastChidimma Ozor CommerAugust 8, 2019woc, ethical fashion, finances, conversation, inclusion, intentional, mindfulness, racism, sustainability, self careComment

10: Disrupting the Convenient Church Narrative (Andre Henry)

“Now look at how that translates to Black Lives Matter protests, right? They note Black people are angry. But they don’t think it’s a righteous anger, they think we shouldn’t be angry, we shouldn’t be displaying anger in that way. We’re so on and so forth. But the thing that we’re angry about, ya know? Cause there’s not really a strong concept in evangelical faith that God, that God gets angry at injustice. Even when we see Jesus do that. You know and evangelicals have a a very high view of who Jesus is. You know that Jesus is God. So, you know, Jesus is supposed to be telling us something about what God is like. And if, Jesus gets upset at the poor being exploited in a religious establishment then that means, you know, for those who claim to have evangelical faith, that you have to accept that God gets upset at the poor being exploited.”

podcastChidimma Ozor CommerApril 25, 2019racism, conversation, intentional, poc, self careComment