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Explore how the social construct of race and racial oppression operates at multiple levels with a rotating focus on different social systems. Connect with Austin-area justice movement organizers and everyday people with relevant lived experience to lay out historical context, current affairs, and creative possibilities for a liberated future.
I got a love song. I got a hit song. In this world, you only need one song. To live your life like you visualize it for a land purpose. I take it not to.
Soyinka Rahim:Never giving up on the love to, and let your light shine like the sunshine. A celebration, no separation. You got a love song, I got a love song.
Stacie Freasier:Hey. Hey. Hey. This is Stacey Fraser, pronouns she, they. Welcome to this month's episode of Racism on the Levels, a monthly show in the Austin Cooperative Radio Hour Collective that explores how the human design constructive race operates at the internal, interpersonal, cultural, institutional, and systemic levels with a steadfast focus on creative possibilities for liberation now and beyond.
Stacie Freasier:The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the coop board of directors, staff, volunteers, or underwriters. I am a justice movement weaver, a kinky and nonviolence conflict reconciliation trainer, a racial healing facilitator. I'm also a mother to a radiant, unstoppable, magnificent, and illuminating 6 year old named Rumi, and I have such a pleasure of sitting here with, my new and immediate friend, Sabrina Phillips. And I think, Sabrina, actually, you reached out to me first, which I am curious about, and I don't think I ever asked you that. But you're certainly a co liberator.
Stacie Freasier:You're on the path, and our common overlap is racial justice and equity work and art. So that's what we're gonna focus, our conversation on today. So welcome to CO OP.
Sabrina Phillips:Thank you. I'm so glad to be here.
Stacie Freasier:Yeah. So, tell us a little bit about you.
Sabrina Phillips:Well, my name is Sabrina Phillips, as Stacy said. I am an arts educator. I work with arts in museums, in classrooms. I actually am a professor at Austin Community College right now teaching art history to some amazing, amazing students and they inspire me every day. So that's a little bit about what I do and what my, my focus is on.
Sabrina Phillips:I like to look at works of art that deal with not necessarily racism, but to do with identity and culture. So all the things that come with that and yeah, it's, it's a beautiful process watching, folks really engage deeply with works of art.
Stacie Freasier:Yeah. And I appreciate you, focusing on identity and culture. And one of, one of the in my preparation for day today's show, I had started this and included it initially in my early shows. I've been doing this for a couple of years now. So, I I dropped it out, but I'm gonna put it back in today because I think it's relevant to our conversation.
Stacie Freasier:So that is my social location. Right? So I am white bodied. I am queer. I am midlife.
Stacie Freasier:I'm middle class. I'm graduate school educated. I'm a 5th generation Texan. I'm disabled. I'm culturally Lutheran and Buddhist practicing agnostic woman.
Stacie Freasier:And, all of those identities are the characteristics that make me who I am, and some of those identities are re reinforced and and rewarded by dominant culture. And some of those identities are subjugated. And to have a conversation about equity and racial equity, it's important to be in touch with all of those social locations because those differences are really important to be aware of, and empathy is also very important in particularly cross racial solidarity and healing work. And so, yeah. So, shout out to Kimberly Crenshaw who coined the term intersectionality to describe how these characteristics overlap and exacerbate each other rather than being separate.
Sabrina Phillips:Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's I mean, thank you for saying that and sort of, you know, giving us a container of who you are and, you know, all your different identity markers that's, you know, for me, it's really important to ground yourself in who you are. Some of my academic work is really important in terms of educators and people showing up in spaces grounded exactly in their culture and knowing exactly who they are. And the purpose of that is so that they, you know, when they move into different spaces, we don't run into traps of othering people.
Sabrina Phillips:That's really not what we're trying to do. It's certainly not what educators are trying to do when they walk into their classrooms. So thank you for, you know, being clear about your identity markers.
Stacie Freasier:Yeah. And thank you for lifting it up. We hold space for each other. Absolutely. The you mentioned a couple of of activities, and and I happen to have mapped your circles with you recently.
Stacie Freasier:So, I just wanted to lay them out a little bit further out of, admiration and also to to show as a model, like, your concentric circles. And so you mentioned, you're a teacher at ACC. You also are a trainer, right, to other teachers. Can you Yes. Talk about that for
Sabrina Phillips:a second? Absolutely. I, I work as a trainer for other teachers and, again, this is part of my academic work. So I teach I teach teachers or educators to really think about their culture and to think about how they show up in the classroom and to think about how they can teach with a social justice lens, specifically in terms of race. And, I think the reason why that is important is to really think about representation in the in classrooms and in different spaces.
Sabrina Phillips:Because if we don't do that, students are not going to access the information and the content that you're saying. And that may sound like, well, of course they will, but actually they won't. They really need to see representation. I have never had, a teacher of color in my entire life and I I identify as a brown woman from the UK and I have never had representation in my academic circles and that has really affected me.
Stacie Freasier:Yeah. Certainly. Thank you for giving voice to your own journey. I find it that that is some of those powerful substance of the show. It's to make this real.
Stacie Freasier:We, especially academic circles, tend to intellectualize Mhmm. These topics. They're so real, and they're so embodied, and they're so visceral. So anytime we can bring it into, you know, flesh and blood reality, I welcome that. I think we're really getting somewhere.
Sabrina Phillips:Yeah. I mean, that's why I do this work because I felt that way, because I felt unseen and not and misunderstood. And even now I see it with my children too. So that's why I pursue this academic route. Another reason why is because I feel like, people of color, women of color are not taken seriously until they have those academic credentials.
Sabrina Phillips:So that's part of a reason why I've had to really push myself to get those those identity markers as well as an academic. But really what pushes me is my own story and the story of my children.
Stacie Freasier:Yes. So tell tell tell us tell us a little bit more about your your path in in parenthood and how that influences what you do purpose wise.
Sabrina Phillips:My my children I have 3 children, Azaria, Blaze and Laith. They are the most beautiful things I have ever created. They are flourishing in everything that they do and it is an absolute joy to watch them become their own people. It's just the most being a mother, being a parent is, is so important to me and it's my number one value. It's absolutely what grounds me.
Soyinka Rahim:And, you
Sabrina Phillips:know, I came to parenthood in a, in a really sort of roundabout way in terms of, where I was living, where I was, I lived in many different countries and taught in different spaces, the UK and Egypt and Qatar and Thailand. And my first child was born in Thailand. So it's sort of this beautiful, just thing that sort of created up that experience that ended in sort of that space.
Stacie Freasier:Yeah. What is the role of art in, in conversations about racial equity?
Sabrina Phillips:Yeah. I mean, art plays a huge part in thinking. It's almost like thinking in images, right? So when, when you look at a work of art, you can see yourself, you can see others. It immediately makes you feel like there's self compassion with yourself and empathy.
Sabrina Phillips:These are the things that need to happen. If we're thinking about racism, there has to be that heart moment. There has to be something transformational in what you're thinking and what you're doing and what you're being like who you are. If you don't have that space of transformation, no kind of, you know, corporate workshop with slides, none of that is going to make a difference. And art is a space that can access that.
Sabrina Phillips:That can really access your heart because you're seeing something and listening to those around you in your group, listening to yourself, creating journal entries and poetry around what you're seeing, those parts of you that perhaps you didn't access before or you weren't invited to access before really is, makes a huge difference, makes a huge difference in the way that you think about racism and the way that you think about yourself as an ally and the way that you think of yourself as an activist.
Stacie Freasier:Do you create art?
Sabrina Phillips:I do. I do. When I have time, I do when I have time. I am an oil painter. I love to paint abstracts.
Sabrina Phillips:I used to do portraits. I used to do a lot of portraits of myself in a very Frida Kahlo kind of way. Just because I was trying to find my identity. I was trying to explore who I am. As I said before, I didn't ever feel like I had representation.
Sabrina Phillips:And for a lot of reasons, I felt like I had internalized racism. I had internalized this sense of oppression that I really didn't know that I was doing so until I came to Austin, until I came to the United States, that's really when, racism really started to impact me or that I could see it as if a veil had been lifted when I got here. And I realized, wow, there are things that, you know, perhaps I can't access, that I thought I could because of the way that I grew up. And so when I was when I've been painting, I've been trying to explore all those different sides of myself that perhaps I hadn't really thought about before.
Stacie Freasier:Thank you for sharing that. Were there was there a formative moment that you experienced or that that that experience of racism in the context of the United States? Like, is there something that's clear in your mind, core memory that has happened?
Sabrina Phillips:Yeah. I mean, I think it's more of a collection of things. When I think about my internalized racism, for example, I grew up in a in a very white English space. I mean, imagine Jane Austen country, like, very, very beautiful, but not a space necessarily for me. And, you know, I had lots of white friends and I and I still do and I love them so much, but because they had other ways of thinking, other things that they wanted to pursue, I also thought that I could do that.
Sabrina Phillips:And it wasn't until I got to university, that I really realized that there were some doors shutting for me. And I didn't know why that was because I had internalized sort of white aspirations in a way that I didn't realize wasn't really for me or couldn't be for me. So when I came to the US and I started teaching in museum spaces, I realized that the museum spaces or, culture in the arts really is not a space for everyone. It makes you feel uncomfortable. And when I started feeling that way too, that's when I realized that perhaps there aren't spaces for people that look like me, even if I'm invited to.
Sabrina Phillips:There is a sense that I'm really not.
Stacie Freasier:The I mentioned cultural racism as one of the levels in which racism operates. And, what are some examples that you have found literal examples of cultural racism taking place in some of those settings.
Soyinka Rahim:Mhmm.
Sabrina Phillips:Yeah. You know, one of the things that I thought about recently, even today, actually, when I was visiting a museum here in Austin, that some of the most important works to speak to racism had been taken down. And I don't know for sure what the reasons are for that, but it certainly felt like there was an erasure happening. Some sort of way of cutting out voices that really needs to be there. And again, that's about representation.
Sabrina Phillips:One of the things that I saw at the museum, and I've written about this because it really affected me. I used to work as a director of education for school programs and I had this beautiful group of students. It was a whole year group, in fact, a whole year group, so lots of students and most of which were Spanish speakers. And, they were outside the museum having great conversations, laughing with each other, all in Spanish. And when they came into the museum space, they stopped speaking Spanish and they started speaking English.
Sabrina Phillips:And it occurred to me, you know, who told them that that's, that's what's that should be happening, that in a museum space, you only speak English and not Spanish. Where is that messaging coming from? And it started to make me think about code switching and the way that even young, young students are internalizing that sense of racism, internalizing that, that fact that their language, their home language isn't welcome in certain spaces and that it makes you feel immediately uncomfortable, like the space isn't for you. And so, yeah, I really thought about these students and the way that their linguistic identity was being taken away.
Stacie Freasier:That is such a poignant example. I really appreciate that.
Sabrina Phillips:Yeah. Yeah. Yep.
Stacie Freasier:Yeah. I build space in for breathing into this radio show, which is not an easy thing to achieve because, you know, dead airspace is. But, but it's true. I can't think of a more important way to engage in conversations about race and racism without metabolizing it. And the breath and pausing and centering is essential in order to have the stamina to stay in it, to stay in the heaviness, to stay in the discomfort.
Stacie Freasier:And that discomfort is where we get the breakthroughs.
Sabrina Phillips:Yeah. That's what I mean about the heart changes. That's exactly what I'm what I mean about that. It just needs to happen. Mhmm.
Sabrina Phillips:That uncomfortable feeling as difficult as that might feel. And for sure you won't wanna be in that space. For sure you'll try to get out of it straight away because it feels like it feels extremely uncomfortable to look at yourself, to look at others and to realize how you're complicit in the ways that in society and culture, the way that you access, systemic issues, systemic institutes or entities like the education system, the healthcare system, the carceral system, all these spaces that how are we complicit in that? And it feels, it does feel uncomfortable. It is an uncomfortable space, But if we sit in it, if we sit in it long enough and if we sit in it with other people, we don't have to do it by ourselves.
Sabrina Phillips:If we listen to other people, and our allies, we learn so much about ourselves and maybe then it
Stacie Freasier:doesn't feel so uncomfortable. That's right. I invite you to come back with us after this break at the at the midpoint, and, we're gonna turn the corner together. Where have you seen art activations and experiences outside the walls of major museums that have inspired you?
Sabrina Phillips:Yeah. That's that's an interesting question because oftentimes I find, these spaces where, black and brown voices are welcomed and not just black and brown, but you know, also those with various different identity markers that is outside of whiteness. I find them to be in smaller spaces, much, much smaller spaces. Intimate. Yes.
Sabrina Phillips:You're welcoming. Yes. But smaller. And that's not to say that that's a bad thing. It means though that it's not accessible to everyone.
Sabrina Phillips:And I don't find, many white people in those spaces. So I question whether for them, they feel like it's even for white people. Can they go and see art by black and brown people? Do they want to see art by black and brown people? Because I'm not seeing that around, and it does make me question whether there is a sense of keeping whiteness white.
Stacie Freasier:Yeah. I appreciate that and, you know, we're we're 2 humans humaning here, with each other. And, you know, as a white bodied person, I, I have built community with black and brown folks that, and particularly as I deepened my analysis and thus my praxis around, racial consciousness and dismantling racism, I think that, there is I can speak from my whiteness that there is an element of, there are lots of emotions around race. Right? There's there's the guilt and the shame are 2 that I can just rattle off as I see all the time when I'm facilitating and coaching white bodied people.
Stacie Freasier:And and then those are barriers from engagement. And because there has been no probably no necessity, no need to address that guilt and shame because it's possible not only possible, it's the norm to avoid spaces of color to not address those feelings of guilt and shame as a white bodied person. And that's certainly not gonna get us to that liberated place where we need to all be collectively. I also think that and I've heard, you know, in my journey that since there is such a dominant space of whiteness everywhere, that the spaces of for folks of color, and you can tell me if this has been true to your experience or counter to your experience, deserve spaces that are safer. Right?
Stacie Freasier:And also free of unchecked whiteness, spewing that toxicity out onto them. And so, sometimes, if it's a if it's a space, an artistic, you know, activation, for example, that is for people of color, by people of color, I approach that with a respect and even a reverence of, you know, this is a space where it is not appropriate for whiteness to even unintentionally co opt. Mhmm. So that's something I'm mindful of as I make those decisions, as I am in community with, BIPOC folks is you know, I do that gut check, and I try to also think, is this a space where white folks are are invited, or is this a space where it's inappropriate for me to attend? So that's a calculate calculation I make.
Sabrina Phillips:Yeah. And, you know, I'm curious to how you make that calculation. I recently met some absolutely beautiful people that have invited me into their community and to their art spaces, And that's something that I will forever be thankful for. 1 of these, folks that I, spoke to recently is a beautiful woman called Aspen Nobles. And she is creating an event called art and affirmation, cultivating your inner light.
Sabrina Phillips:And this is an event that's, from 5 to 9 at the Dower Space in Springdale. And this is a space where artists are coming together to showcase what they can do and what they mean, what they want to say, to give their voice, to amplify the ways that we are thinking about art in different spaces. And I will be there facilitating different conversations. One of the things that I'm going to ask the group is to look at the art around them and question which one of these feels like a mirror to me? What am I seeing in the artwork that I can see myself in?
Sabrina Phillips:Where is the representation there? I'm also gonna ask, what is the window for you? Which one of these arts feel like a window? So now we're starting to talk about empathy. Now we're talking about different people in different spaces.
Sabrina Phillips:And I think, I think what Aspen is doing is a great way of inviting different folks to come together and to really explore artwork of black and brown people in a much deeper way than perhaps it wouldn't be before. And this is something that I'm trying to do with equity through art, which is, my my work. And, you know, what's different about that is that I am locating it in traditionally white spaces. And my purpose for doing that is to change the narrative, to flood spaces that have been traditionally white with our bodies taking up space, being in those environments to sort of move past the uncomfortability and the shame and the guilt that we have internalized for even showing up in spaces. And what I wanna do with equity through art is have a different conversation entirely in these spaces that make us feel good, that make us feel welcome, that we can see that sense of self compassion in those spaces.
Sabrina Phillips:And for me so far, it has been absolutely beautiful. And folks that have come through have told me that it's been transformational for them to be able to speak to their self compassion and sense of empathy, and humanity in, in those kinds of spaces that they may not have thought was for them. In fact, a lot of people who I've been bringing to a museum here have said, have said that this is this is not a space for me. I've never even been here before. I didn't even know it existed.
Sabrina Phillips:So this, for example, is a way, you know, to to think that people don't even know. They have no idea. They just have never even been. And when they get inside the building and they see the kinds of fine artworks that are around them, it's astonishing. It's astonishing to see their reactions to these kinds of works.
Sabrina Phillips:And, I just believe that we should all have access to art.
Stacie Freasier:Yeah. You brought up something that is systemic systemically racist and not inaction, and that is accessibility of spaces. Right? And so the big museums may not have the best parking options available. And so there could be something as as concrete as that.
Stacie Freasier:Like, where are these institutions placed, and how accessible they are they to different people? And, also, I question because I actually experienced, thanks to your invitation, going into a traditional art space and and shadowing and and learning and experiencing with you what you do with equity, through art. And I, myself, as a white body person, never questioned why are we quiet in these museums. Why are and and that was such an for me that you just, like, pierce the veil. Like, where did you see on the roles that you can't move your body and dance?
Stacie Freasier:That you can't create art in these spaces? That you can't do all these there are all these unwritten norms that are rooted in whiteness and white supremacy culture that aren't even real. Mhmm.
Sabrina Phillips:I know. Exactly. So when I'm teaching in these spaces, I'll bring out percussion. We're going to we're gonna make not just physically taking up space, but in a real way, we're taking up space because why not? We'll dance in front of of our works.
Sabrina Phillips:We'll move our bodies. We'll respond to the artwork in so many different ways, even if that's journaling or creating poetry or writing to each other, questioning the artist. There are so many different ways to access the art as well as looking, but in a more directed way. And if we can have embodied experiences with art, accessing all of your senses with art and doing it with other people, It can be uncomfortable. It pushes you out of your comfort zone, but in a really amazing ways.
Stacie Freasier:You mentioned Dawa, Sabrina, and my guest here is Sabrina Phillips, if you're just tuning in, founder of Equity Through Art. You mentioned Dawa, Sabrina. I give flowers to Kedada and Shaka Mahone, of writers against the storm, And, Shaka's, you know, founder of DAWA, which is Swahili for medicine. And DAWA is also an acronym, diversity, and awareness of wellness in action. And that is a space of artists and creators and healers and supporting each other in a model of liberation.
Stacie Freasier:So flowers to Dawa. I wanted to lift up one more art activation project, by people of color here locally in Austin, and I'm sure there are many more. So, I'd love to continue the conversation online. My email is stacie, s t a c I e, atk0op.org. Yeah.
Stacie Freasier:Please send me a line quick. You know, give give some flowers to BIPOC art spaces that you love here. Black art matters is what I wanted to lift up for a second. It's black art matters atx.org. And, this is part of the Austin Creative Alliance, but it's at least every year, there is a huge Black Art Matters, activation, and it fills an entire space in East Austin.
Stacie Freasier:Usually, distribution hall, I think, was the last one. And it's a celebration and a a a an acknowledgment and a seeing of black and brown creators. And, so, Sabrina, I wanna bring your voice back in as I've been rambling here for a few minutes. The, I wanted to know a couple of artists a few artists. How many every however many you want to highlight and or artwork, pieces that have inspired you in your journey in facilitating and activating racial equity conversations.
Stacie Freasier:So who are some that you can think of off the top?
Sabrina Phillips:Yeah. I mean, one of my favorite artists who's actually from San Antonio, so really, really local, is this beautiful brown man called Vincent Valdez. And I love working with his artwork. I had the opportunity to meet him. He's just such a humble creator that is creating works of art that is phenomenal.
Sabrina Phillips:You would think that they are photographs, that they're so, so intricate and beautiful. I've been working with his artwork called the strangest fruit and this is an artwork of men actually hanging and this kind of sort of in your face, difficult works of art. He's managed to make some really beautiful moments out of that. So when you visit it, it doesn't feel visceral and difficult. But it feels like, okay, I understand.
Sabrina Phillips:Okay. There's a light on this issue and I understand what this artist is saying. And to me, when you enter into a conversation with a work of art, then you're really being able to ground yourself in what is being said. This is sort of the power of art. Another artist that, is from Austin, actually, Deborah Roberts, she is working with, sort of collaging.
Sabrina Phillips:So she actually puts things together oftentimes with young black girls. So this this is the kind of work where she is amalgamating lots of different kinds of images and pieces that are speaking to the experience of young black girls. And I mean really young, like 5, 6, 7, and how they often are looked at and perhaps even encouraged to be older than they are and trying to find those different kinds of code switching that's happening. And so her artwork is a real reflection of that experience. And she was, she's an artist actually that inspired me to start looking deeper when I was talking about finding representation, internalized racism and, and, and also lifting the veil here in Austin.
Sabrina Phillips:It was one, it was her artwork that really started to make me think, okay, now I'm understanding a different experience to my own, you know, and in relation to my own children who are around that age too. Another artist, is Charles White. Charles White has been working, it was a very long time ago and he does mostly pencil drawings and huge big pencil drawings. But when he was working, he was working in a time during the civil rights movement and he was creating artworks that were against the propaganda, the artwork that was coming out at the time or the images that were coming out of the time that felt very, very, very difficult, very oppressive. Oppressive isn't even the word, like very, very violent in some ways, in a lot of ways, very violent.
Sabrina Phillips:And Charles White was creating completely different images, Families, mothers, people who are students enjoying their life, a complete counternarrative to what was being said at the time. And I think it's work like that that can be really, really transformational for people to understand and also to lend empathy because now we're seeing a totally different side to the oppression that we're constantly hit by, constantly being hit by these artworks or spaces or writings that say, hey, you're being oppressed. Hey, this is how racism is. This is what systemic racism looks like. Yes.
Sabrina Phillips:All of those things, but also beautiful and joy and family and community. And this is the kind of artwork that Charles White was really thinking about in absolutely transforming the way that we think about ourselves to get rid of some of that internalized spaces Yeah. And to in instead really engage with ourselves in a terms of self compassion.
Stacie Freasier:We're gonna have to leave it there, and we will pick it back up. No doubt. You are absolutely welcome to sit in the studio with me again. And we're going to be sitting together outside of the studio many times, Sabrina. And I'm I'm so excited to have a friendship with you and a camaraderie with you.
Stacie Freasier:And how can folks find you? Last word, how do they find you online?
Sabrina Phillips:Yes. You can find me online, www.equitythroughart.com, or you can follow me on Instagram at Equity Through Art.
Stacie Freasier:Alright. Well, you have successfully joined us on another month of Racism on the Levels. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser. Remember, in all things, love is the highest level.