Decompiling Oppression #88
Sam McVeety
The longer I live, the more I see life as an ongoing journey to better understand myself and the world around me. Deepening my understanding of equity and justice is a major strand of this braided path, and sometimes it leads me unexpectedly towards a deeper understanding of myself (see also #36 and #52). My latest step in that direction took me to a place called the Strozzi Institute, which takes an embodied approach to leadership development, relationships, and self-awareness.
When I say embodied work, I'm referring to the combined reaction that your intellectual and physical presence has to a given situation. This particular training began with a foundational focus on consent, with participants practicing saying "no" (or "yes", or "maybe") to a partner, along with a physical gesture to accompany the statement. Try it, with whatever physical gesture feels natural. Does your "no" feel like you want to push the other person away, or is it establishing a stable boundary centered around you and your needs? Does it feel easier to say "yes", "no", or "maybe"? These are the kind of questions that embodied practices offer us.
Naturally, it was its own journey to enter this particular learning space. I've noticed that I am someone who feels comfortable (and even exuberant) in academic and intellectually-oriented spaces, whether that's an actual classroom or reading law review articles on the sofa. Learning in this way is important to me, and importantly, it's also incomplete. With this comfort comes a risk of remaining at an intellectual remove: finding the content fascinating, without translating that fascination and energy into any kind of real-world action.
This concern over intellectual siloing became even more pronounced as I read more and more material that pointed in the direction of embodied work. Resmaa Menakem's My Grandmother's Hands, Thenmozhi Soundararajan's The Trauma of Caste, and Staci Haines's The Politics of Trauma all offered variations on a theme: it's not enough to understand injustice on an intellectual level; one must look at how you experience your instinctive, physical responses to truly build a vision of liberation.
How does this relate to justice and equity? For example: it adds structure and method to the instinctive idea that there are "good stretch" and "bad stretch" moments in this work. A good stretch offers someone the chance to sit with discomfort and explore the roots of that feeling, creating an opportunity for learning and growth. A bad stretch takes things too far, often provoking fear and anger. These aren't purely intellectual responses; they are embodied responses as well, and if we have decades of fear-based conditioning informing our responses, we can't unlearn those simply through intellectual willpower.
What an embodied approach opened for me was a realization that I've been defining much of my own path in the negative, at least with respect to whiteness. Don't act this way; avoid doing that. In myself, I found an embodied habit of making myself small (and, perhaps this has another embodied root). Upon receiving praise, I would hunch my shoulders, cast my eyes downwards, and find a way to deflect. In aggressively avoiding the prospect of unearned confidence (especially in complex situations), part of me decided that meekness was safer than risking arrogance.
I remember a time when I reveled in praise, and I'm only now realizing how I overcorrected. Binaries are easy: my defaulting to a not-deserving response rather than deserving was a simple flip of a switch. Opening myself to the complexity and specificity of every different situation is hard. One of the practices at Strozzi offered a felt sense of dignity, which I found particularly resonant. Whereas before I had prioritized pushing away the risk of arrogance, I realized what I needed to cultivate was a sense of centered, purposeful dignity. For me, that is feeling a sense of comfortably holding space, not pressing outward or collapsing inward.
And. This isn't easy, at least not for me. As a white (cis, male) person, taking up too much space is often hypervisible. Smallness is a simple enough reaction to try, but comes at an emotional cost: smallness brings a sense of isolation and self-doubt with it. Without a way to stop that slide, those negative emotions amplify and build upon each other. Dignity, however, is confident in its finiteness, neither pushing out to the corners of the room or shrinking back into oneself. I want to offer this middle path, the one that I found I needed to show up for the people around me.
A central practice at Strozzi is called a declaration. This is a short, powerful statement that connects your body, mind, and purpose to the future that you wish to inhabit; a longing and a commitment for what could be. Looking backwards, I found that the loudest voice shouting me down was often my own. And so I realized: I am a commitment to loving myself enough to be a transformational leader.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: Are there times when your words don't match your embodied response? Are you able to notice when this happens?
Communal: When our instinctive responses push us apart, how can we create space for alternative responses?
Solidarity: Support Resmaa Menakem and his work to help people, communities, and organizations find strength in healing that is holistic and resilient.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
FAQ
Can I share this newsletter with non-Googlers? Yes! Feel free to forward this note externally; it does not contain confidential information.
Is this an official Google newsletter? Nope. The views expressed in this newsletter are not the official position of Google, and we are not affiliated with any particular ERG.
I am leaving Google or transferring to another bet. Can I still receive this newsletter? Yes! You can join the external list here.