“January 6th was what I call the shimmering and the shaking. It showed people the white ferality that has been the undercurrent of things. What we don’t do is then take that shaking and turn it into something that can evolve into culture. A living, embodied, antiracist culture.”
-Resmaa Menakem, episode 282 of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
This week we’re joined by author and body healer, Resmaa Menakem. With the release of his new book, The Quaking of America, we discuss Black liberation (5:09), the ‘white-body supremacy’ of January 6th (7:41), the implications of America’s conservatism (20:08), why there’s a failure to communicate across the aisle (25:03), the pernicious paradigm that ‘white guilt’ creates (32:44), and what it will take for us to have an embodied, anti-racist culture (39:25).
On the back half, Resmaa explains a few of the body practices from his new book (47:26), how to prepare the nervous system for somatic abolitionism (52:32) and a potential Civil War (55:32). To close, ahead of the midterms, we unpack the blurred lines between Democrats and the GOP (1:01:06), the potential consequences of our conversation (1:03:34), and, ultimately, Resmaa’s hope for liberation (1:07:10).
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Show-notes:
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- Order Resmaa’s latest book, The Quaking of America.
Learn more about Resmaa and his previous works on his website. - Listen to our first conversation from 2020.
- Follow Resmaa on Instagram and Twitter.
- For more, hear our conversations with Malcom Gladwell, Michael Lewis, Claudia Rankine, Noam Chomsky, Gloria Steinem, Dolores Huerta, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and Janaya Future Khan.
- Order Resmaa’s latest book, The Quaking of America.
- Order your Talk Easy mug in cream and navy or our vinyl record with Fran Lebowitz.
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Illustrations by: Krishna Shenoi.
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