[INTRO]

Tema Okun: [00:00:00] If I think about my own racist conditioning, I think it's not helpful to tell myself I'm gonna be free of it. I'm gonna get rid of it, and there's gonna come a time when I no longer have any racist conditioning. I don't find that helpful. What I find helpful is that I am going to have a different relationship with my racist conditioning.

I'm gonna be.

And in that way, I'm gonna be able to move through it with much more grace.

Jenny Stefanotti: That's Tema Okun. She's an activist, educator, and spiritual guide who's been a leader in the racial justice movement for over 35 years. This is the Denizen podcast. I'm your host and curator, Jenny Stef. In this episode, we're discussing white supremacy culture, and we are incredibly fortunate to have Tema join us as she's the author of the influential 1999 paper on the topic.

This is a particularly important conversation for the [00:01:00] Denizen community. We are predominantly white and most of us don't center racial justice in our work, and we all care about systemic change. So it's important for us to confront the inescapable conditioning that comes with being white. In this conversation, Tema and I discuss the pervasive role of fear in white supremacy culture.

We touch on most of the 15 attributes she outlines in the paper, as well as antidotes that we can deploy in our organizations as part of our anti-racist practice. Of course, we also put the conversation in the context of what is happening in the world today. As always, you can find show notes and the transcript for this episode on our website becoming denizen.com.

There you can sign up for our newsletter. I bring our latest content to your inbox. Alongside information about virtual and in-person denizen events, I'm certainly looking forward to reflecting with the community on ways that we can shift our culture in the directions outlined in this episode. All right.

Without further ado, it's an honor to bring you Tema Okun. 

[INTERVIEW]

Tema first, I just wanna say, wow, what an honor and thrill it is that you are here to share your work [00:02:00] with us and your wisdom with us. It's so important and it's impacted me so much. So I just wanna just express such incredible gratitude for you, for your work, and for also your willingness to be here with me today.

Tema Okun: Well, thank you. It's really an honor to be here and I look forward to our conversation

Jenny Stefanotti: so much to talk about. Your paper has lived with me for really since the inception of, of Denizen. There was this unexpected moment when it came into being and we defined our values and they were curiosity, generosity.

Integrity, which is really this theory of change around becoming an integrity with a different systemic set of values and incentives and diversity. And as soon as I put diversity out into the wild, I was like, shit, I need to do better because it came out of my own personal network and someone handed me a paper and I remember reading it and my first reaction to it, white supremacy culture, that's not me.

I hadn't worked in racial [00:03:00] justice before. This wasn't language that I was accustomed to and I just had this like contraction. But then you'd say, and I think this is, is really important, so I wanna start here. And you say, we all live in a white supremacy culture. I. The importance of acknowledging that all white people have internalized racist conditioning.

An anti-racist commitment is about figuring out what are we going to do about our conditioning. So I'm just even curious about the choice of words of white supremacy for the paper and people's reaction to that. Reflecting on my initial reaction to that piece.

Tema Okun: It's a great question. I'll say that lots of people have asked the question often in the context of asking me or the collaborators I was working with at the time.

If we would be willing to change the name of our group, which was called Dismantling Racism Works change the name of our workshop, which was called Dismantling Racism.

Jenny Stefanotti: Mm-hmm.

Tema Okun: Or change some of the word

I. [00:04:00] You're about, or what I hear you talking about is the importance of meeting people where they are.

Jenny Stefanotti: Mm.

Tema Okun: And I actually really believe in that. I also believe that we need to name things as they are. And maybe the challenge is in meeting people where they are is to really listen to why words are hard.

Sort of explore, have conversations about what we mean by those words, and I'll say that the reason that I call it white supremacy culture is because the whole concept of whiteness was mm-hmm. Developed and constructed as a hierarchy with white at the top. Whiteness doesn't exist without its construction as being at the top without its construction as being, and because we are white, that doesn't mean that we have to buy into it, but it does mean we have to deal with it and we have to navigate it.

So this construct, it's sort of like capitalism or any other

Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah. [00:05:00]

Tema Okun: Construct that we have. Grocery things are.

They're presented to us and so then our agency becomes what we're gonna do about how we respond to it. We're gonna navigate it.

Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah. Well, I think also just reflects my own journey over five years of just being like white supremacy. That's the K, k, K, that's not me. Versus like a really understanding that the dominant culture period.

Yeah. Particularly in the us, particularly as it relates to our economy. That is just so baked in that it is the water that we're all swimming in that you can't see. And so the the sort of softening and the acknowledgement of the internalized racism that they can't deny because it is something that we do need to confront.

Tema Okun: Yes. And I would say I also, one of the ways that people try when people are feeling defensive or institutions are feeling defensive, they'll bring out words like, are you saying I'm racist?

Jenny Stefanotti: Hmm.

Tema Okun: Somebody names racism. [00:06:00] The focus will be on, you're calling me racist, not what's been named. I'm not interested in whether somebody's racist or not.

Ridiculous conversation if you or no. So I think that's where the concept for me, that's when I started. Around conditioning more and more that whether I am or am not racist is really not the issue. I'm a human being. I'm full of all kinds of complexity.

Jenny Stefanotti: Mm-hmm.

Tema Okun: Part of the complexity I'm full of is that I was raised in a culture that conditioned me into racism as a white person conditioned me to see the world as a white person through a.

Very I did

and I'm interested in condemning people as racist myself,

relationship.

Jenny Stefanotti: I really appreciate the choice of the word conditioning. It also, it does something very critical. That is a very critical [00:07:00] part of this. It's the decoupling of the behavior from the person. Yes. It's not an indictment on you as a person that you behave this way. We behave this way because of our conditioning, and it's just about awareness.

And so that shame response, and you kind of diminished when you had that decoupling. Yeah.

Tema Okun: Although for a different article when I was writing about this, when I write, I tend to share it with friends just to, to get feedback and to make sure I haven't missed something. And one of my, my friends a, a woman of color, when I was talking about the uselessness of shame, said she didn't agree with me that she feels like white shame is actually important.

We do have, as a community of people, historically, a lot to be ashamed about. I appreciated her. Becoming aware of what it means to be white in a racist and a white supremacist system is going to, if we're at all human, produces, it's inevitable. So it's, it's something we should feel as we grow into awareness about what it means to be a white bodied person in this kind of [00:08:00] a system.

It's just, we don't wanna get stuck there. It's not a strategy, it's not a way to move people.

In people's shame because what happens is that if we get stuck in it, it turns into resentment, and I think that's true. We can look around and see the product of so many white people right now, some of our political leaders, because we're talking now in the second administration of Trump and Elon Musk, so unwilling to feel anything around their identities on all kinds of.

So important that you not feel shame. We're gonna legislate it as they have done in Florida to say, we're gonna pass laws prohibiting any teaching of history that makes white children feel bad.

Jenny Stefanotti: Comfort. Let's flag that attribute for that example. The right to comfort. Well, it's interesting too, there's some nuance here around productive shame that you experience in your body when you become into awareness about something.

Yeah. And [00:09:00] how much value and wisdom and information is in what feelings we feel in our body and unproductive shame. Which is coming from the outside.

Tema Okun: Right.

Jenny Stefanotti: As a form of almost punishment. That's right. For particularly when people are doing things subconsciously around blind spots. Right. I also wanna make sure before we get into all the details, there's so much juiciness here around just white supremacy.

Culture. Culture in systemic context. This is a meaningful addition in the 2021 version of the paper where you talked about the intersectionality between colonialism, capitalism. Can you speak a little bit to that?

Tema Okun: So the easiest way for me to do that, I think the other important identity that I carry among many is that I am Jewish.

Jenny Stefanotti: Hmm.

Tema Okun: And I'm also an anti-Zionist Jew, and what that means is that I'm a Jewish person who believes that the state of Israel is not a good idea and does not make me safe. And that what Israel is doing in order to maintain its agenda, which is to be a [00:10:00] settler colonial project in the Middle East and to reshape the Middle East is beyond, it's just beyond, I don't even have the words for it.

It's a present day. So it's a reenactment of what was done here. People, two indigenous people, and bringing people here in enslavement and the treatment of enslaved people here for the settler colonial project here. Settler colonial projects all depend on in order to expand and to govern in. Powerful way in, in ways that require the erasure of people.

You have to create an ideology that says, as a people, we're better, more deserving, superior. We're more civilized, we're more peaceful, we're more rational. We're more fill in the blank than whoever it is that we're displacing or attempting to erase or expelling. So we're seeing in, in the present day the way that Israel is positioning Jews as being [00:11:00] more civilized, more reasonable.

And you've even seen some of Israel's Zionist, right leaders saying, all Palestinians are terrorists and we're killing children because when they grow up, they will be terrorists. So it's this extreme othering, and it's happening now with a great resurgence. It's just this idea that white people are more valuable, are wiser, more able to govern.

Smarter. You can't disentangle whiteness from this notion of superiorities because it was constructed as an organizing tool to erase people's national allegiances or ethnic allegiance in order to join this thing called white and to be able, in some ways, at least material, or to try.

Public theologian, Ruby Sales, and she said African American public theologian, Ruby. And she was talking about whiteness and she said, I don't think whiteness is a privilege. I think [00:12:00] it's a death sentence.

Jenny Stefanotti: Mm. Yeah. You mentioned that. Yeah.

Tema Okun: One of the reasons I'm. Zionist and I'm, we tales back and forth is because there's a way in which the Zionist right in Israel is trying to create a Judaism the way and of Jews what white people were created for here, which is a, a justification for things that cannot be justified.

And it's a dehumanization both of ourselves because we're doing it.

Jenny Stefanotti: Tell us a little bit about the backstory behind the paper, the original 1999 paper and the 15 attributes that you put in there. Where did you get those 15 attributes?

Tema Okun: The first version was written in 1998. I was living in San Francisco and I was working with my colleague Kenneth Jones.

The longer story before I partnered up with Kenneth, I. Grassroots leadership based in North Carolina, and we were doing a lot of support work for people doing community organizing in the [00:13:00] Southeast. What happened is that the organizations we were, were supporting were coming to us and saying, racism is tearing us apart.

We need help. Sexism is tearing us apart, homophobia, tearing us apart. We weren't equipped, but our director, a man named, was curious, okay, we're getting all these requests, what are we gonna do? So he wrote a grant and we actually got funded and we went all over the country getting training ourselves for what was out there.

And then we started a program called Berries and Bridges, and worked with people for two years. And along the way I met this man, Kenneth Jones, who was doing Antiracism work together in.

We had a workbook, this was before the internet, and you had to type and print everything. And so we were constantly updating it and trying to make sure that we were reflecting our learning and our understanding. And then I think I, my memories that I went to a meeting that was incredibly dysfunctional, A lot of behaviors that I [00:14:00] saw in the meeting, I just was.

Full of fury. Mm. Came home and I sat in front of the computer and what I remember is that the characteristics just poured out of me. Mm. It was not a research paper. I didn't sit down and spend hours, you know, they literally poured out of me, and once they poured out of me, I started describing them, and then I showed what I was doing to Sharon and she said, you can't write about the problem without offering antidotes.

Mm. Then I came up with anecdotes or we did all of this informed by all of my colleagues

Jenny Stefanotti: and

Tema Okun: we put it in the workbook and then it

Jenny Stefanotti: took on a life of its own. So it was like this beautiful moment of something coming through you in the writing of it

Tema Okun: came through me, I think, because there a lot of people's wisdom was part of it.

Jenny Stefanotti: Of course.

Tema Okun: About that time, Al Gore invented the internet apparently. And um, so somebody who came to our workshop posted the piece.

Jenny Stefanotti: Okay. And also I appreciate how much you have mentioned in the first paper, in the subsequent update and on the website, how [00:15:00] this is really an amalgamation of so much that you've borne witness to over the course of your career and your work. Yes. And then in 2021, you wrote an update and I think one of the.

Critical. Probably the most critical point that you made that you didn't make so clearly before was I and colleagues have come to see other central elements of white supremacy culture that need to be named. Fear is an essential characteristic. Mm-hmm. We also say white supremacy is number one. Strategy is to make us afraid.

Yeah. You wanna say more about that?

Tema Okun: Well, I mean, all we have to do is look out the window. This is true. I mean, I think Trump and MAGA and Elon Musk are using this strategy with great effectiveness. It seems so obvious. I don't really have much to say about it. Just it feels like,

Jenny Stefanotti: yeah,

Tema Okun: you said this and I believe that white supremacy, culture, patriarchy.

For the benefit of a few people [00:16:00] generally to profit in some kind of way. Yeah. Any of those are, they're fear-based energies. You have to make people afraid in order to get them to go along with what otherwise would be considered absurd. And I think about if we say out loud what's happening, which is that we have organized our country and many other countries are organized in this as well.

So that four men, three of them are. More money, right. Than the globe is holding by exploiting and stripping resources and people, it's absurd. Mm-hmm. It's absolutely absurd. And we accept it. We seem to have reached a point where we think it's normal. Right. What normal is, and that we have all the ways in which we organize ourselves that make no meet.

Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah. Well, I think there's a lot here. Well, one, I think it's just because this cultural legacy is [00:17:00] hundreds of years old. It is the water that we're swimming in and we don't realize what's possible. We don't question norms like urgency, perfectionism, et cetera. You're like, this is, this isn't white supremacy.

This is just how businesses work. Not understanding that the whole project of colonialism and now modern day capitalism is deeply intertwined, and so we don't question it. And that's part of what, you know, the intention of this podcast is to provoke and to question like, Hey, actually, yeah, this thing doesn't.

Doesn't have to be this way and this thing is actually kind of fucked, right? So there's that like temporal arc, which leads to us not questioning the water that we're swimming in, and I appreciate how much your work does that. But I also think really interestingly about when we talk about fear, the couple things that strike me, one is just what that does to our nervous systems and having that awareness that, okay, I'm now in a sympathetic state.

My entire cognitive functioning is different. I go into fight or flight or freeze. I'm, I don't access compassion and curiosity and that kind of deep inner wisdom that's really [00:18:00] more, you know, tied to something spiritual that I know your work has kind of veered towards more recently. So that fear and how it relates to how we're showing up in the world, I think is really important.

But then also. And you get at this, in the update to the paper, how the fear ties into something so deep in all of us around enoughness and lovability and the links that we go to because we don't believe in our inherent worthiness. Yeah. To offset that. Right. How much there is at the core of this, I would argue, and I think you would agree, what is so essential for all of this to be built on top of is that relationship with ourselves and that knowing of our, and you mentioned that like we're perfect.

Tema Okun: Another example of intersectionality and sort of the arc of, I'm gonna use the term Christianity, knowing that there are so many different ways that people are Christian, but of dominant Christianity. And the [00:19:00] storytelling that came outta dominant Christianity around both supporting the idea of white supremacy, but also the idea that we have to prove ourselves that we'll never be good enough.

And then I wanna say that the flip side of what you're talking about, I've been thinking a lot about this is the addictive nature of bully energy. I think a lot about those folks who are actively engaged in enacting white supremacy or enacting fear or enacting Zionism who are. Violence of it.

Jenny Stefanotti: Mm-hmm.

Tema Okun: Israeli soldiers and settlers, some of them, not all Israeli soldiers and not all settlers. The boys here, people who are, and what I notice is there's sort of shadow side of fear is producing fear and the ways in which it requires collective energy because. Wouldn't such unspeakable things. Mm-hmm. You need to be supported in that, that there's this high that comes violence onto people when.[00:20:00]

So your actions become more and more extreme, and you can see it in Trump and you can see it in Musk. It's just sort of this addictive nature of we've come up with something terrible to do today. Oh, and tomorrow we're gonna do something even more terrible. Right.

Jenny Stefanotti: Adrenaline high. Dopamine high.

Tema Okun: Yes. Right.

Which has to do with what you said earlier about the somatics of it.

Disconnection from any awareness of what's actually going on. It's very hard to stop it because it's like addiction. Our bodies are craving more and.

Jenny Stefanotti: And that gets into, because fear is so overarching, let's talk about the antidotes. I wanna talk about the kind of attributes and then the cultural container. 'cause I wanna have, I just wanna be able to package for the audience. Yeah. What does a culture look like holistically? And obviously I'm gonna sit down with the Deni and community and look at little, how can we shift our norms in this direction?

Where are our opportunities? But let's just talk about the [00:21:00] antidote to fear. 'cause it is so overarching.

Tema Okun: I think the antidote to fear is love. Hmm. When I talk about love, I'm not talking about soft Pollyannish love. I think love is fierce,

Jenny Stefanotti: which is why that's the name of your website.

Tema Okun: Yes, that's right.

Loving Well is one of the hardest things. It's a challenging practice for. And not for everyone. For some people I don't think of it as soft and gushy, and I don't think of it as boundaryless or, yeah. That requires a lot of wisdom and discernment, and if you were to ask me what my theory of change is, I would say my theory of change is choosing love and helping other people to choose, and then when.

If I think about my own racist conditioning, I think it's not helpful to tell myself I.

I don't find that helpful. What I find helpful is that I am [00:22:00] going to have a different relationship with my racist conditioning. I'm gonna be aware when it's showing up and when it shows up, I'm gonna pay attention to why it's there and what it thinks it's doing for me. And in that way, I'm gonna be able to move through it with much more grace.

I don't think there's getting rid of fear. I think that this is,

Jenny Stefanotti: this

Tema Okun: is me speaking now and what I feel like I've learned, which is that it's much more helpful to think about what's the relationship we're gonna be in with whatever it's that arises. How am I gonna welcome it? How am I gonna listen to it?

How's that gonna help me to make a choice? Because the freedom is in no longer reacting, but choosing to respond. That's freedom.

Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah.

Tema Okun: I'm just reacting for my conditioning. I'm not making a choice. My conditioning is moving me forward in a way that's often very harmful.

Jenny Stefanotti: Hmm.

Tema Okun: Because I don't think of conditioning.

I think that the sort of loving people isn't conditioning, at least not for me. So conditioning, it usually is fear-based. And so the more I know my conditioning, the more I'm in [00:23:00] what I would call loving relationship with it, the more I'm able to say, okay, here you are. I see you. Let's talk and I'm gonna make a different choice.

Jenny Stefanotti: Ah, it's so good. Oh, I love that. Are you familiar with Internal family systems?

Tema Okun: Yes, totally. Yes.

Jenny Stefanotti: That makes me think of no bad parts. Yes. Right. And I've been wanting to have Dick Schwartz on the podcast because what I found fascinating about that book, he talks about internalized racism and the part of you.

That has that story and how do you have a conversation with that part and how do you, how can you do parts work, internal family systems work to address a systemic racism within you? So I just, the parallels were so apparent in your comments right now. I wanted to bring that into the conversation.

Tema Okun: One other thing to say about that, which is that love and belonging are, are very much aligned in my view.

And as I think a lot about this word safety. Because it comes up a lot like this is a safe space.

Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah.

Tema Okun: We need Israel to be, to make Jews safe, or I, I wanna be safe. And [00:24:00] I think one of the things that, for me, I just wanna suggest that safety lies in the strength of our relationships. So another way of saying that is in, in our solidarity with people and our ability to see other people is fully human.

And it starts with ourselves. The most important place for us to belong is with ourselves. So many of us are walking around, not all of us, but so many of us are walking around with these really brutal voices in our heads, always pointing out what's going wrong or how we're falling short or shaming us, and it's not good for us.

The brutal voices are not voices of liberation. They're not gonna freedom. Love is gonna lead us to freedom. What does it mean to love the brutal voices? What does. Belong to ourselves. What does it mean to befriend myself in this moment when I'm willing, afraid, I'm learning to be in conversation with the things that are hard so that they do not rule me, but I'm able to still to make choices.

Jenny Stefanotti: So that's a nice bridge to perfectionism. So let's talk about [00:25:00] perfectionism as a cultural attribute that perpetuates white supremacy.

Tema Okun: Okay? What I'll say about it. I'm doing spiritual direction, mentoring, coaching, whatever you wanna call that, and I'm sitting with all kinds of very different people, really wonderful people.

And what I'm noticing as a theme is that for most people, myself included, whatever it is that we're doing, we think that we're doing it wrong. There's some other way to do it better, and that there's some place we're gonna, there's limited ability to go, oh, I'm grieving the way I'm grieving. This transition the way I'm handling it, can I into some of just acknowledging what is before immediate.

It can so important and helpful to develop the practice of noticing where we're right now and what's present right now. Inform where it is that we're gonna be in the next moment. In the next moment, and to let [00:26:00] go of so much pressure that most of us who are in the west feel around needing to show up.

Differently.

Jenny Stefanotti: Mm mm Well, I also appreciate how, I think there are two really important effects of perfectionism. One is this, the shame response. I, I need to be perfect, and if I'm not perfect, something's wrong with me, which means that if you bring up any sort of critique or feedback. Then I'm going to shut that down because it really feels uncomfortable.

And so there's this lack of ability to absorb and experience and, and you create a culture where it's not safe to express those things because of the way that it fronts at a very deep level worthiness for the people in leadership positions. The other piece of that that comes through in your writing is the tendency towards being critical versus being appreciative.

So now I'm noticing everything that's not perfect, and I'm pointing out everything that you did wrong. I'm not acknowledging all the things that are happening that are right. Yeah. [00:27:00] Right. And that's also when we talk about fear, the way that that creates a culture of fear. Oh, if I'm not perfect, then I'm going to be shamed for not being perfect in this environment.

And so then I'm not gonna speak up. And this is the ways in which. You can't have multiculturalism because if you try to bring in a different cultural perspective, it gets shut down because it's an affront to this perfectionism of the leadership. Right. So there's just so much richness in that one.

Tema Okun: Yeah.

A thousand stories are coming up. When I was working with the collaborative of dismantling racism works. I was the elder, both in actual age and in terms of experience doing the work. And we had a lot of newer people coming in, learning how to do the curriculum, adding their own ideas, and there was a, a, a meeting at somebody's house and people were exchanging all kinds of ideas about things that needed to change.

And I noticed that I was getting really defensive because what I was hearing was the way we've been doing it isn't good enough. So we need to change it. And the only person [00:28:00] here who that could be, yeah, who blames that is me.

Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah.

Tema Okun: So at that point, luckily I was experienced enough to, when my body gets, like, that gets all rigid and I stop breathing.

I know some things I've learned to like go take a walk. So that's what I, and then it just struck me, it's like all people are doing is being creative and offering ideas about how things could be better. This is not about you, right.

We're so afraid that we're not enough, and at the same time, that makes us afraid to hear new ideas. And yeah, it's just, it could be a really vicious cycle and the skill attached to that, or the trick, if you wanna call it that, attached to that is to learn to say, oh, that's so interesting. Tell me more.

Jenny Stefanotti: One of the things that I really appreciated, are you familiar with Terrence Reel's work?

Tema Okun: No. Mm.

Jenny Stefanotti: But Terrence Reel is a very well known relationship therapist. He created something called Relational Life Therapy, and he has this great book called The New Rules of Marriage, where he delineates five losing [00:29:00] strategies. Mm-hmm. And the first one is being right. Yeah. Yeah. And this kind of nicely dovetails into one right way.

That's right. Right. Being right. And so this is the need to be right and the need to defend. One Right way in defensiveness or other attributes. And what he talks about, and this has been so valuable for me, is that, and you just pointed to this, which is when that part of you gets defensive, turn all of that fodder into curiosity.

Yes. When you wanna defend with your story, that's at odds with this other thing. Be like, oh, that's interesting that you see that. Or as I see this, help me understand more so that like you don't toss away the defensiveness, but you actually see the value in alchemizing it.

Tema Okun: Yes. Absolutely. I love curiosity.

Again. That's a wonderful anecdote. Always.

Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah.

Tema Okun: The other is that when, whatever it is that we're feeling, like when I feel defensive or I see someone else getting defensive, I'll just ask the question, what am I defending?

Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah.

Tema Okun: There's something I feel like I need to defend. What is it? You're defensive.

Tell me what it's, I [00:30:00] wanna know. I really wanna.

I have a reason for. However, it's that we're feeling isn't right or wrong, it's what we do with it.

Jenny Stefanotti: Totally. Totally. And then I appreciate this was a meaningful addition in the update, which is qualified. Mm-hmm. Which is related to some of the original attributes of paternalism. And I think this is also related to one right Ray, which we already spoke to a little bit, but let's talk about qualified in fraternalism.

Tema Okun: Well, I put that one in because.

I'm qualified to fix things that I often have no knowledge about. Mm. Or was party to actually creating as a mess in the first place. Mm. That's what paternalism is. It's like, I can fix this for you, or if you do it my way, it'll be better. And it can, it can be really small and it can be really big so I can be in.

I feel myself going, oh, that's a stupid idea internally. [00:31:00] That's, that's just a stupid idea. We need to be doing it this way. And so noticing that immediately I shut down actually thinking or being curious about what the other person is saying or trust that they have a good reason for saying what they're saying.

How quickly that often will. I digress into, they're not educated enough. They're not smart enough, they're not whatever enough to, it's just a, a shit show of layers of crap.

Jenny Stefanotti: Well, it is this kind of, this presumption of superiority due to the fact that you are educated or the fact that you're in a leadership position and then you dismiss those ideas.

You know, I thought of something when you were making your comments that I think you'll appreciate. I used to teach at the design school at Stanford. When we did the brainstorming, we tell people to decouple assessment of the ideas from the ideas and that there are no bad ideas, right? There is some kernel of something interesting.

And so we'd actually do an exercise where we would have a team come up with like a really awful, [00:32:00] stupid idea and hand it to the team next to 'em and say, okay, turn this into a great, the great ideas are built off of bad ideas. Right? Yes. So, and that gets into openness and curiosity instead of defensiveness.

Yes. But the qualified paternalism is so interesting 'cause that leads to the hero complex. The savior complex.

Tema Okun: It's deep in our culture. Think about all the superhero movies and all the movies where the Save the Day narrative is very strong in our culture. It's kind of not really how the world works at all.

Jenny Stefanotti: Well, I also really appreciate how this sort of qualified paternalistic one, right Ray, and this ties to perfectionism, it leads to this inability to say, I don't know. Yes. Right. Because if I said I don't know, then suddenly my qualified ness, my leadership becomes questionable. Like I have found that the leaders that I respect the most are the ones that are willing to say that.

Tema Okun: And I think so in the South we have a expression, bless [00:33:00] their hearts or bless your heart, you know? And I think about what an incredible mess we're in as a nation right now. And the leaders I respect the most are ones who are trying to figure out what does it make sense to do in their lane and how to encourage other people to join in.

And there are some people who are just really. My response is, bless your heart. I honestly know how we're gonna get this

t. And beings. And so we're gonna figure it out. And um, I think part of figuring it out is what I notice. So in terms of what I notice having been in the movement my whole adult life, is that we are becoming kinder. That's my experience. We're becoming.[00:34:00]

I can see the culture of the movement and we have a long way to go and there are still places where people are really hard on each other and and hard on each other because we're so desperate. We're so desperate for a world that makes sense. Yeah. That can hold us in a way that we want. So I understand that.

But I do think we're learning. We're a lot smarter than we used to be, and I think we're learning to be with each other in a more loving and caring way be.

Jenny Stefanotti: I appreciate the commentary on how. The movement is shifting in your multi-decade experience of being in it. Yeah. What other attributes should we talk about?

How about progress is bigger and more and quantity over quality.

Tema Okun: Again, I, we just have to look out the window. I mean, it's just this, you know, capitalism is built on the idea that once you have something, you should want something else. And once you have that, you should want something else. And once you have that, you should want more of something or you know, [00:35:00] I have one now.

I should have two. And now I have two. I should have four. And now I have four. And again, just sort of. I think is the word that these four or five people have.

Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah.

Tema Okun: Billions ands and billions and billions of dollars. Like what is the point of that? What is the point? And um, in some ways it's hard for me to comment on these because I feel like they're so,

Jenny Stefanotti: they're so obvious.

I can comment on what I found insightful about them in the context of the broader thing. And then we can move into the antidotes. Yes. So obviously progress being bigger, more the sort of growth imperative that's. Baked into the economy as one of the fundamental yes flaws of capitalism. I think tied to that is that incentive to extract and accumulate, and this ties back to relationship to self and enoughness and the need to be better than in these sort of externally focused ways because you don't have that internal validation, right?

Yes. The quantity over equality is really, I think, important too, because you get into talking about the way that process matters. I talk about this all the [00:36:00] time, how you do something is more important than what you do. So having organizational processes that reflect consideration of differing viewpoints, understanding complexity and nuance, valuing teamwork instead of individualism, cooperation over competition, et cetera, et cetera.

So that nuance. And then this also encapsulates like when we do focus on things that can be quantified, what do we leave out?

Tema Okun: Yes.

Jenny Stefanotti: Right. And I think Charles Eisenstein talks about like things that are most precious to us are not quantifiable. Right. And in fact, they are free. They're not scarce either. And so I think that's a really important point.

Tema Okun: Lemme say something about that. I think process is as important. I don't know if it's more important. And the reason I say that is because. I'm thinking about a chapter of an organization that I was part of that fell apart because so much time on process

being useful, which something. Of [00:37:00] feeling, of being engaged and making a difference and having a purpose. And there's can be a pendulum swing too. When we've ignored process for so long, we might need to pay more attention to it in the beginning. And and process just means, you know, what is the quality of our relationships and our, we tending to our relationships?

The story that I tell about that is just. Ways in which all of us have been to meetings where agreements have been made, but people leave the meeting and do not follow through because they were not seen or heard, or their experience was erased. And we think, oh, it we're taking too long with storytelling, not understanding that the storytelling is actually going to make our decision making easier.

Jenny Stefanotti: Totally.

Tema Okun: Was noticing this balance between feeling very passionate and engaged in such a deep way that it's hard for her to pause. And then she reaches a point where she really needs to pause, and the pause is the place that gives her the space to reflect on what was happening to the passion and [00:38:00] brings wisdom, and then she can pour that wisdom back into the next wave of passion.

So it's just this way of learning to be in rhythm with ourselves and our wisdom and our energy. And again, to be able to notice it, to not always wish it was different than it, but to notice when relaxation into ways being ourselves.

Productivity of capitalism. So it's like reclaiming ourselves in our own rhythms.

Jenny Stefanotti: Those comments actually point to like a really critical attribute of white supremacy culture, which is urgency. Yeah. Let's investigate what disconnection that this is fostering, which is like a disconnection from our bodies.

And how capitalism wants us to be a machine that doesn't need rest, and that's not an acceptable thing to rest. And how urgency shows up in over commitment in our work plans or what we're proposing to the foundations that are funding our work. You need to get something done and make a decision so there's not [00:39:00] tolerance of more inclusive processes.

Right, and I really appreciate, this is what I want to tell you around how your work has been sitting with me over time. I mentioned that I first read it when we put diversity out there as one of our goals and as Denizen grew from my personal network, it's very white privilege centric. I went to several events at the end of last year where there was this real dissonance between.

The rhetoric of regenerative future, just regenerative future, and the actual practice of the groups that were organizing those events. And it was really a moment of reflection for me around, well, rather than being critical, I can critique and share feedback. And what about using it as an impetus to look myself in the mirror?

Tema Okun: Yeah.

Jenny Stefanotti: And I was like, ah, WTF, 70% of our podcast guests are white. And so I sent out an email and I pointed to your paper. I pointed to the attribute of urgency, and I said, look, for me, the urgency of, oh, I have to deliver a podcast every two weeks, and who's the person that I just met that I can have on? And they're [00:40:00] invariably more likely to be white because it's my immediate network and, and just like really taking that seriously.

Mm-hmm. So I just appreciate you helping me name that attribute in my own work and correcting for it.

Tema Okun: Well, it's the one that gets people the most angry.

Jenny Stefanotti: Mm. Say more.

Tema Okun: Well, urgency. I'm that problems aren't urgent. Fact being targeted

in times gets into of. So that there's very little ability to take the pauses that are needed in to respond some level of wisdom or strategic honor process so that multiple voices and multiple levels of experience are allowed space. And I've just seen that over and over and over again in organizations where things that aren't urgent are made urgent because that's the only way an organization or leaders know [00:41:00] operate.

So it becomes a conditioned response. And I think people wiser than me have said, I think it's sun zu, but it might have been someone else. You know, things are urgent, so we must slow down.

Jenny Stefanotti: I also appreciate how urgency relates to, how does it, when I say urgent, this is urgent. When I come at you like, Tema, this is really urgent, what does your body do?

What happens in your nervous system? This ties to fear. Yeah. And being reactive versus being responsive. Yeah. In addition to the ways Yeah.

Tema Okun: Our, our vision and our creativity gets really narrowed and sliced off, and in an urgent state, we will default to our conditioning and

Jenny Stefanotti: totally

Tema Okun: our conditioning rarely is actually what is needed in the moment.

Jenny Stefanotti: Totally. The last one that I wanna speak to, and then we'll talk to the antidotes. I think it's important to make sure that we name it is the right to comfort and the fear of open conflict. We've spoken a little bit of that in terms of how perfectionism relates to that, but let's speak a little bit more to it.

Tema Okun: Well, I mean, it's just, it's everywhere. I mean, it's, it's the way in which over and over and over again, [00:42:00] people will myself include, and I wanna be clear, I haven't risen above any of these characteristics. I'm still in relationship with all of them. The ways in which if somebody names racism or somebody is critical of something I'm doing, or that my instinct is to blame the person or blame the messenger.

Expression rather than to look's being named or where a whole room will, unless there are some brave people in.

Well, people will try and take care of somebody whose feelings just got hurt. So a whole room, you know, a person of color or a LGBTQ plus person or a queer person or a whatever wonderful identity is being marginalized, will speak up about something about their experience, and the whole room of dominant identities will then spin their energy trying to person attacked.

I [00:43:00] remember the story behind that. Early on when I was at Grassroots leadership, my colleague James Williams and I were doing some facilitation of a drug prevention program that involved all these different groups in Durham, including a woman who was in charge of the community center at one of the. Low housing communities in Durham and she was a very wise and powerful woman.

And I said something, I don't even remember what I said or what I did, but something that really rubbed her wrong. And she an African American woman, she really let have it in front of the whole group really called me out and I felt humiliated and ashamed and I went home and I was crying and.

I, again, I was at that point new enough to know that I had to go deeper, and I sat with it for a while and I thought, oh, okay. Actually, what happened here was that she took the risk of telling me what I had done wrong in [00:44:00] her view and gave me a chance to address it. What she could have done and what most people would do in that situation is just said, oh, that's just.

And so with that insight that this was actually in some ways a gift that she had given me. I was able to go back the next day and have a conversation with her about it. And we then became that led to a relationship. Mm. And it was, I shudder to think how many times people without me even being aware of it written off because of this.

Right. To. However I'm communicating that I'm too fragile to hear what it's they have to say. So it's just, it's a barrier to authentic communication and it's so important for us to understand that in the end, this is not about us. We're always enough and we always need to change. Both things are true. I'm perfect as I am, and I really need to.[00:45:00]

I always get to decide. I always get to decide if I'm gonna take it or not. I always have that. And it's always to my benefit to seriously consider it. Mm. It might be offering me something. I just think about people who try and shield their children from any kind of negative emotion.

Jenny Stefanotti: Totally.

Tema Okun: It's just like, whatcha doing?

Whatcha doing? You're not allowing them to

Jenny Stefanotti: learn how to be a human and deal with a human experience. Yeah.

Tema Okun: Yes. That Who would I be if I had never, if people had not said things that were hard?

Jenny Stefanotti: Totally. I just wanna wrap first talking about what are those cultural antidotes and I, I think the, the first thing that struck me, and it's very interesting also looking at all the antidotes that you clearly delineate, layered in with all the things that I've been thinking about in terms of changing culture with denizen from the work that I've been doing for so long.

The first thing that really strikes me in the kind of necessary, but not sufficient, but absolutely necessary piece is just [00:46:00] self-awareness and emotional intelligence. That inner work that all of us. Need to do.

Tema Okun: Totally,

Jenny Stefanotti: totally.

Tema Okun: When Kenneth and I started doing the work, we focused a lot on institutional policies and procedures.

Yeah. And shifting those. And then we moved into culture because we understood if you don't shift the culture, you can change all the policies you want, but things aren't gonna

Jenny Stefanotti: shift.

Tema Okun: Yeah. And now I'm really interested. They're all important. So again, this is, but I'm just in a phase.

We're working out as Lamar Owens, my teacher says, if we don't do our own work, we become work for others. So we don't become, I love that work for people, you know, and that we are not leading out of our trauma, and not that our trauma can inform the way that we lead, but we're not trying to solve. Through way that we lead.

So I'll say that. And then I'll also say that the page that I think gets overlooked the most on the website, which is probably the most valuable page, is the racial equity [00:47:00] principles page.

Jenny Stefanotti: Well, that just made me think of that racial equity principle around working at all levels of the system.

Tema Okun: Yes. Those are principles that we developed as a collaborative at at Dr.

Works, and I use at least one of single day.

Find them very, very useful. And what I would say the most important one is to choose connection. So if there's a principle or if there's a guide that people want for themselves or for their work or for their organization, it's like in this moment, how do choose connection? Because fear and. All those fear-based energies are gonna encourage us to disconnect.

Mm. So what do we need to do to choose connection over and over again?

Jenny Stefanotti: Mm. They appreciate that the way that shows up with me is asking you for a little bit more time today so that we could actually connect as people and not be transactional and center care. Yes. So thank you for taking a little bit of extra time.

I also really appreciated that you talked about. The link [00:48:00] to self-care and the ability to show up even just we talked about the nervous system and where are you at in your nervous system and and what version of you is showing up. Are you kind wise, compassionate, or are you the reactive, not really thinking version of yourself, but the awareness of the bias and the worldview kind of related into antidote to objectivity.

The notion that there's one objective reality and that I don't see everything bias. I appreciate that, and just having this tolerance of discomfort. And I think it's interesting how our, our interpersonal relationships, 'cause when you talk about in the racial justice, racial equity principles, you talked about working at all three layers and you added your fourth layer, which is personal, interpersonal as one, and institutional and then cultural.

And then you added spiritual. And so you see these leaders who are saving the world, but their family life is falling apart or they're not taking care of themselves. And so that kind of. Relationship to self is essential. It's actually something that we're looking to add to the Denizen community agreements that like you just take care of yourself so that you show up as that version of yourself.[00:49:00]

And then I also really appreciate it. So another one that comes up is the culture of appreciation versus criticism. Valuing team versus individual work.

Tema Okun: That's where the rest comes in too. It's sort of like, so first of all, the understand that critical thinking is important. It's a skill. It's not a way of life.

The way of life is a gratitude and critical thinking in a spirit of gratitude makes all the difference. And then also the way that this, what you're talking about rest, that's so important to.

If I feel like I'm on my own, then, then I can never be tired. But I'm not, I'm in a collective and I, I remember the other day I was, the New York Times, wrote something egregious. I've finally canceled my subscription, but at the time I've gotta write, I've gotta write a letter. And I went to the letters and people had already written letters and I went, oh, it's taken care of.

I don't need to do this. And it's just a.[00:50:00]

I should definitely move back so that somebody who's ready can

Jenny Stefanotti: be

Tema Okun: upfront. And then when they're tired, then we're dancing with each other. Really. We hope eventually, and sometimes now a magical way where we can see each other and take care of each other. We don't always need to all be on at the same time.

Jenny Stefanotti: And that also reflects a cooperative versus competitive, right? If I step back, somebody else is gonna get ahead versus like, we've got each other. Yes. Actually had a, a community call with a recent podcast guest and she assigned me rest for two weeks and said, I do not wanna see a podcast come out. I like, I, you know, ashanti's orders.

And it was that ability to center care for one another that I really value, but also appreciation. So now I've started doing appreciations at the end of of our meetings. Mm-hmm. My husband and I do this, we write texts back and forth, a stream of appreciations every day to keep us in a frame of gratitude because it is so easy to get critical.

Yes. Right. And you also spoke to the tendency to kind of within this, the kind of [00:51:00] cultural attributes of like gossiping, basically talking about people behind their back and not giving them feedback. And then when you withhold those things, you tend to that distorted negative story. Then you see everything through confirmation bias.

So the ways in which appreciation is an antidote to that critical. Tendency to drift into that just because of the way that our minds work. I appreciate that. Another really critical one was just identifying and stating values and having that be a living document that everybody has front and center, and naming that you value things like who operation and that you value things like process.

Mm-hmm. That you value these qualitative versus these quantitative things. I really appreciated that and also really I think critically in terms of what are the things that we value in a anti-white supremacy culture or anti-racist culture. Valuing and validating emotions.

Tema Okun: Yes.

Jenny Stefanotti: The wisdom and emotions.

Tema Okun: Yes.

Jenny Stefanotti: We also talked about other forms of knowing as an antidote and emotions being one of them. Intuition being one of them. Like [00:52:00] that. Yeah. Our, the wisdom in our bodies. Yeah. And then I think another really critical one is I thought a lot about Carol Dweck's work as I was reading your paper around growth mindset.

Tema Okun: Mm-hmm.

Jenny Stefanotti: Learning from your mistakes. Yeah. We all make mistakes and it's almost like kind of having a culture of experimentation, iteration, understanding complexity. We're always learning new information. There's always lessons to be had. Mistakes are good things.

Tema Okun: And also who decides what a mistake is?

There are so many ways to understand something.

Jenny Stefanotti: I think it also speaks to language. A mistake. Connotes, I did something wrong. Conflict connotes me versus you.

Tema Okun: I think about the word weed, you know, and some of the weeds in my garden are quite beautiful.

Jenny Stefanotti: Mm.

Tema Okun: But they're not supposed to be there, so they're a weed.

Jenny Stefanotti: I think that's another thing around attributes of a anti-racist culture, like anti anti, its to white supremacy culture around like competence and defined protocols in conflict resolution. Yeah. So that that's held in a communal container and that there is a learning opportunity. Anything else? I mean, there's a couple of things I [00:53:00] have written down here.

Just inclusive decision making, seventh generation decision making.

Tema Okun: Yeah. Which takes more time.

Jenny Stefanotti: Which takes more time, which leads to realistic work plans,

Tema Okun: which is why a culture of urgency is not usually helpful for wisdom.

Jenny Stefanotti: Totally. I wanna close on a quote of yours that I thought was really beautiful and I think it ties to where your work is today, which is.

This is the magic of racial justice work. Our commitment to racial justice is a healing practice for all aspects of our lives.

Tema Okun: Yeah, that's been my experience. Yeah, so I'm grateful that on this podcast, this. I'm excited to learn about the people that I was with,

grateful be in the world with other people like me. After she died and the conversation she had with me, she said, one of my instructions for you is to find the others.

Jenny Stefanotti: Mm. Well, I just wanna thank you so much for your work and the [00:54:00] ways that it's influenced me in the ways that I've been able to interweave it into our work.

And just really thrilled to expose everyone so directly to you and your work. So thank you again so much for the time. 

Tema Okun: You're welcome. 

[OUTRO]

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