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In this episode, Dani talks mostly to White People about listening to Marginalized Folx and BIPOC.
See full episode notes for recommendations & links!
Dani is honest and refreshing in her takes on the world and society. Listen as she explains how she’s come to understand the world through kindness, both towards ourselves and everything else.
Podcast Intro:
[0:00] Hello friends! Welcome to Understanding Kindness, a podcast hosted by me, Dani! I’m someone who approaches life by learning from everyone around me, and I’ve decided to write it all down and talk about it here with you. I’ve learned that in order to create change in this world, we need to understand ourselves and the world around us, all while infusing kindness into everything we do. If I can do it, you can do it, and we can do it together. Welcome to Understanding Kindness.
Episode Intro:
[0:30] Hey there everybody! Today I’d like to talk about listening and choices. I’ve been practicing a lot of listening lately and have had some deep and insightful revelations about it that I’d love to work out and share with you here. I’ve lauded listening to BIPOC throughout this show, and at this juncture realize that this is sometimes easier said than done. So, I’d like to share my experience and recent understandings with you so that you too can practice your listening skills more. No matter who we are, we can always practice listening and helping one another out more. Hopefully by the end of this episode you’ll see how transformative listening can actually be. Let’s see if I can get ya there!
Native Segment:
[1:09] For today’s Native segment I’ll be talking about the Winnemucca Community Resistance Camp. Indigenous Action recently posted about how Elders were threatened by an unknown individual earlier in January. There is some necessary context needed to really flesh out what’s been happening in Winnemucca Indian Colony.
[1:25] Back in December, members of the American Indian Movement Northern Nevada chapter (AIMNNV) made visits to the colony where they were disrespectful, misogynistic, and abusive towards Elders, Women, Queer, 2-Spirit, and Trans members in the Community. Things became so aggressive and disrespectful that a Shoshone-Paiute organizer ended up removing the AIM flag from its position flying over the sacred fire and requesting a meeting with AIMNNV. These AIMNNV members continued to push to seize control of the Colony. By early January, the resident Elders took the Community back into their own hands and maintained their demand that AIMNNV leave and not return.
[2:04] Unfortunately, that was not the end of this conflict. On 10 January 2022, an unknown individual claiming to belong to the AIM Grand Governing Council arrived at the home of an Elder in the Colony and demanded that the camp be cleared and control be handed over to AIMNNV. This individual was armed and made culturally specific violent threats. Fortunately, a couple Land defenders sat with the individual before they ultimately left the Colony without carrying out any of their threats.
[2:33] Though this situation didn’t end in the violence that was threatened, the fact that AIM and affiliated individuals turned on other Natives is violence enough. They’re continuing to perpetuate colonial violence and harm against Natives, similar to government agencies like the Bureau of Indian Affairs or mining companies. It’s important to recognize that this harm is being caused by other Natives who have co-opted colonial violence. The United States has a rich history in turning members of Communities against each other to assist in its overall goal of genocide - its been at it for centuries! This is nothing new. It is always disappointing, though, to realize they’re still at it and are continuing to perpetuate harm. In this case specifically, the Winnemucca Community Resistance Camp has come up with some ways for outsiders of the Community to help them.
[3:22] You can take action to help prevent or diffuse situations like this in the future, and/or to help individuals building safer homes for Elders. To stay up-to-date on what’s going on at the Winnemucca Community Resistance Camp follow @neweneensokopa on instagram. If you’re an experienced frontliner and would like to join in the frontlines of this camp, you can email AutonomousABQ@protonmail.com for info and vetting. And lastly, if you have the means, donate to the Support Mutual Aid Builders gofundme. I’ll link all of these and the Indigenous Action article in the episode notes.
Shout-Outs:
[3:58] YooooooOOooOoOo! It’s Patron time! Thank you all for your support and appreciation of the show. I love y’all very much.
If you’d like to support the show, visit patreon for monthly donations or paypal for one-time and recurring donations. They’ll be links for both in the episode notes.
Main Topic:
[4:16] Alrighty. Where to start with this one..Hmmm, let’s see. Well I guess I’ll start by mentioning this: I mostly want to speak to white People since we’re the ones who need to do the most listening. I think there will be aspects of what I will talk about that can be helpful for anyone, so take what you want, leave what you don’t. But if you’re white, listen the fuck up.
[4:39] I’ve heard it my whole Life. Listen to others, just listen. And sure, I thought I was listening to People. What I was really doing was just hearing them. I didn’t actually know how to listen. I don’t know if I was actually taught how to listen to others. I’m not sure how you teach this, aside from just setting an example. And in order to set an example of listening you need to have had an example yourself, which this society doesn’t really allow for or give room for because if we did listen to everyone this definitely wouldn’t be the society we have currently.
[5:13] As white People especially, but also anyone who grows up and learns within the US education system, we’re fed narratives almost exclusively of white People and told that they’re right. We’re told other Peoples’ (Non-White Peoples) stories through a white lens. We’re told of the great victories of the US empire and how Indigenous and Black People “helped” create the successes we see today. Non-white People are simply characters in the Non-Trans Heterosexual White Man’s quest for greatness. Unless we go out of our way to seek out the narratives of Marginalized People and BIPOC, we do not hear them, and therefore we cannot listen to them.
[5:50] Our US education throws bones their way though. We get stories about Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr. and Harriet Tubman and Pocahontas. They’re all presented to us through a white lens though. How can we make the struggles of these People palatable to whiteness while ignoring the atrocities that whiteness causes and creates for Marginalized People to have to struggle through? This is how history in the so-called United States is presented to us in order to maintain the class and racial dynamics that have been played out for the past 530 years or so here. And we’re forced to hear them.
[6:25] But we’re not listening. Hearing about the struggles of Marginalized People from anyone other than themselves is never sufficient. You will never get the full story or how one felt or why someone chose to do the things they did. You will only get a watered down version of events and you should take note as to who is telling you about what happened. This is where we can begin our listening process.
[6:46] Who is telling you the story? Is it the Oppressor? Are they the ones who made out in the end? If so, take heed. You’re better off listening to the Oppressed and Marginalized for a true history of events. What do they have to lose? And what does the Oppressor have to lose from telling history accurately? Think about that one for a moment. When we understand the reality of the answers to these questions, we can begin the listening process.
[7:15] The difference between listening and hearing is understanding. When we start the listening process with first asking these questions we can better understand how honest the telling of events will be. This will quickly weed out Oppressors so we can turn our attention and focus onto those who the Oppressor marginalized. And now we can practice listening to these Peoples’ stories.
[7:36] In order to listen we must ask questions to clarify and get ourselves to a point where we can empathize with them and see where they’re coming from. This is difficult to do when the Person you’re trying to empathize with isn’t the one you’re listening to. It’s not impossible, it is just difficult to do at first when we’re still learning how to listen and understand. It’s much easier when we can get the information from the Individual who is experiencing the thing so we can ask questions about their experience directly and begin to understand more. And this is why we always want to seek out the narratives of those who were oppressed directly from their mouths. They have the most accurate representation.
[8:11] And all we have to do is listen. I understand that this is a skill because I had to teach myself how to really listen to others, and I’ve only really been able to hone my abilities well pretty recently. That’s why I’m sharing my knowledge and experience about this with you. Really all you have to do is focus. Center their story by listening intently to what they’re saying and how they say it. Remember that everything someone says and does is important and treat your interaction with them in that way. You can learn so much from listening to someone. Feel their emotion with them while you center their story; really try to understand what it is like to be in this Person’s place in Life.
[8:53] Listen to who they tell you they are. Listen to what they tell you about themselves and their experience. Listen to who and what brings them joy. Listen to their pain. Listen to their sadness and anger. Listen to their ideas. Listen to their complaints. Listen to their aspirations and desires. Listen for when they ask you for help; for when they tell you how you can be better. Listen to who they tell you they want to be in the future; to what they want for the future.
[9:22] Now how do we know that we’ve truly listened? This takes time, both in the sense of the general learning process and in the context of each individual interaction. It takes trial and error; making mistakes and learning from them. Listening means we take in what someone is telling or showing us and taking time to digest it. Sometimes things that others tell us will make us feel bad or upset or sad or angry. As a listener, our job is to listen. We are definitely entitled to our feelings, but, especially while listening to Marginalized Individuals, our feelings are not to be centered. Understand that white People historically have been the oppressors and, as a white Person, you are there to begin shifting that narrative to no longer perpetuate that harm. That begins with this listening process.
[10:12] And how can we be sure we’re still listening? By what we do next. The true measure of listening is in the choices we choose to make going forward. Have you really internalized what’s been said? Like I mentioned, this takes time. The listening process is a process. The physical act of listening is just a part of the process.
[10:34] So we went in assessing who is telling us the story. We then centered their experience and listened to their story. Now we put in even more effort. It’s okay to have our feelings about what we’ve just listened to; it’s incredibly important though that we work through our feelings in our own time. This is mostly true for white People when listening to Marginalized Folx. Like I said before, white People, historically, have been the Oppressors, whether they’re directly causing harm or enabling it by doing nothing about it. We must keep this in mind and realize that it’s about time we start listening to and centering those who we and our ancestors have oppressed so we can stop further harm.
[11:13] This means we must work through our feelings on our own time. If you really need someone to work through them with, find another Friend (a white Friend if you’re white) who you trust and work through it with them. If you can’t find a Friend, realize you still must work through your feelings and it may be difficult at first, but you can do it! You will live through it and be better for it in the end. Always remember that I am here as well if ever you’d like someone to talk to - I’ll do my best.
[11:45] What do I mean by work through your feelings though? I don’t think this is something that we’re taught to do either. At least in my education I wasn’t taught how to work through feelings past like kindergarten probably. I personally had some examples of how to do so in my Life, I know that everyone is not as lucky so we don’t all have the opportunity to learn how to do this effectively.
[12:06] Working through our feelings is tough, especially when we’re not used to it. Feeling emotions can be overwhelming. In our society, we’re taught to stuff down our emotions and act as if they do not matter. Fun fact: our feelings do matter and we can’t actually “stuff them down”! When we treat our feelings as if they’re non-existent, we become anxious, depressed, angry; it’s almost as though we need to work through them. So I suggest that we do just that.
[12:39] It will be uncomfortable. Even now, as someone who notoriously loves feeling emotions, I still get very uncomfortable when confronted with emotions that I find difficult to deal with (usually ones that make me feel embarrassed or like I could’ve done better in a particular situation). I must deal with those emotions though, because that’s the only way I will get better.
[13:00] Allowing myself to feel my emotions helps me move forward. Choice comes into play again here. Once I’ve felt my emotions I can better internalize what I was told about this Person’s experiences. I do want to interject by saying that as I’ve practiced listening more and more throughout my Life, I’ve found that I’m more able to continually go through the listening process with someone right in front of me in the moment. I can assess, listen, hold my feelings aside, and continue listening without having to take a minute or two to have my feelings. There are definitely times when I’ve reached a limit and do need to excuse myself to think about what I’ve just listened to, but I now see that they’re fewer and farther between because I’ve been practicing listening for so long - and you can get there too!
[13:44] Anyway, once I’ve felt through my emotions I can really begin thinking about what they told me. I can think about how they’ve told me it has affected their Life; I can think about how I’ve been perpetuating that harm without even realizing, or sometimes without caring; I can think about situations where I’ve noticed others behaving as I had before I was aware; I can think about how this impacts other Marginalized Peoples’ Lives and how it may make them feel; I can think about how it would make me feel; I can think about how to do better in the future; I can think about what I can do next time this comes up; I can think about what to say, how to act, how it will feel, how it will make others feel, how I can get through it. This is how we begin the change portion of the listening process.
[14:29] We must think through how we can be different, how we can change to stop causing and perpetuating harm. This is the real measure of how we know we’ve listened. What do we do with the information that this Person has given us? Do we think about it for a bit and then try to forget so we can get back to living our Lives? Do we continue to sit with it and feel debilitatingly guilty for realizing how much harm we’ve caused? Do we think about what they’ve said, realize our role in perpetuating that harm, understand what we can do in the future, and try to change? The answers to these questions define who we are as Individuals, as a Society, and as a global Community.
[15:11] In the first two scenarios, there is no action or change involved. Both of those roads lead to nowhere better than where we are currently. If the answers to either of these questions is “yes”, you haven’t been listening. If you take the last question into account when analyzing your listening, you’ll find that People feel much more listened to.
[15:31] When People come to us with their feelings we need to take them seriously. We need to understand that their feelings are no more valid or invalid than our own. Putting ourselves in their shoes and remembering how we feel in similar situations can help us understand the need to have these feelings listened to and understood. In order for us to function as a Society or a Community, we need to have trust. We need to be able to trust that when we come to each other with our feelings that they will be taken into account and treated as though they matter. We need to understand that if we ever expect others to change on our behalf, we must be willing to change on their behalf as well.
[16:12] Right and wrong are concepts that we’ve constructed to talk about the concept of morality. Our actions or behaviors are not inherently right or wrong, as are no one else’s. We must not feel personally invested in others’ feelings. We must empathize with them and not take it personally, or else we’ll end up debilitated with guilt. Realize that just because you do something does not make it “right”. Realize that you can change. Realize that if someone is coming to you with information about how they feel, they are asking you to change because they believe that you can change. They believe in your humanity and are extending their experiences to give you an opportunity to believe in theirs.
Conclusion:
[16:58] Listening isn’t always inherent. We’ve all got stuff going on in our Lives and sometimes it’s difficult to center others’ feelings when we’re really feeling our own. As often as we’re able, we need to offer our listening ear to others because, as white People, we need to listen to Marginalized Folx and BIPOC to stop perpetuating that we and our ancestors have caused for centuries. We also know that we will need a listening ear at some point too.
[17:25] Keep in mind that we are a social species and in order to survive for millennia, we’ve had to form close-knit bonds revolving around trust. We need to be able to trust one another; we need to know that we can go to others with our feelings and have them cared for and respected. We need to know that we are capable of change. We can listen to others’ feelings and understand our part in their experience so we can change.
[17:50] We need to understand how to really listen. Think about who the information is coming from; what has been their role historically? Focus and ask clarifying questions; do I really understand what they’re telling me and my role in it? Center their feelings and experience; am I able to put my emotions aside to really listen to what they’re saying? Work through your emotions on your own time; think through any and all questions and scenarios that come up and how the information you’ve just learned is applicable. Understand what you can do to create change; is there something you can work on personally and/or something you can do to change minds/societies at large? Do it - and get listening!
Recommendations:
[18:35] BOOM! It’s recommendation time! There’s only one recommendation today and that comes from our Native segment. Check out the article on Indigenous Action titled “BREAKING: Man Threatens Elder[s] at Winnemucca Community Resistance Camp”. This will give you all of the info on the situation and provide links to donate, to join/inquire about the frontline resistance, and to follow their page on instagram. I will also link all of these in the episode notes.
Plugs:
[19:02] If you enjoyed this episode, help support the podcast! All this content is free and I’d love to make it my job one day, so if you’re financially able join our patreon or send a one-time or recurring donation through paypal! You can also share an episode with family or friends, and give UK a kind rating and review!
Check out UnderstandingKindness.com for all episodes, transcripts, and blog posts. And why not take a listen to my other podcast, Better When Awkward, co-hosted by my childhood best friend Jasmine!
Get in touch with me by emailing UnderstandingKindness@protonmail.com, or through social media. You can find all links in the episode notes.
For now, be kind, be compassionate, be understanding, and question everything. I’ll be here. Thank you for listening to this episode of Understanding Kindness. [End transcript]