Hello and welcome to the You Know How To Live Show my name is Kate Hammer and in just a moment we will have Rhonda Magee with us Rhonda is a professor of law at the University of San Francisco trained in sociology and mindfulness-based stress reduction also known as MBSR she is a highly trained facilitator of trauma-sensitive restorative MBSR interventions for lawyers and law students and for minimizing the effects of social identity based bias today we will be digging into her book The Inner Work of Racial Justice and talking about how you can develop your own ongoing practice of awareness and action against injustice now wherever you are listening or watching from I'm so glad that you tuned in and are hanging out I hope that you are ready for my favorite combination of things hopefully a bit of entertainment and of course some takeaways to improve how you work and play and do all the things you do in between please take a moment right now to subscribe follow leave a comment or give a five star review so that we can stay connected and with that let's bring in Rhonda Magee hi Rhonda thank you so much for making time to be here and to chat with me today about your book hello Kate it's beautiful to be with you thank you oh wonderful okay so before we talk about your book The Inner Work of Racial Justice would you tell us a little bit about the work you do as an educator and how you became interested in mindfulness within the context of teaching
well so thank you so much I've been um uh I'm a lawyer by training I also studied um sociology at the graduate level I was trying to decide when I at a certain point in university whether I wanted to get a PHD and maybe teach sociology I was really interested in how people resolve conflicts and so um you know in conversations with my uh graduate studies advisor we got this idea maybe you should go to law school so I ended up going to law school but the view always to be able to teach and to help people think well about how we resolve conflict so practiced law for a bit and then started teaching I've been teaching for more than 20 years at um at the University of San Francisco and visiting at a couple other places but uh you know it became very clear to me that when we really are learning and um in a way that's transformative it's not just a cognitive or intellectual practice or engagement it's a kind of a whole body thing like you know we are we are like we feel things we're in relationship with each other when we're really learning and we're really feeling kind of a flow around learning and so I started to gravitate towards ways of teaching that would enhance that sense of being completely engaged in the process of learning the knowledge skills and values associated with being a lawyer and that led me to this sort of contemplative or mindful education approach and so I'm part of this network of people who teach at the university and k-12 level and at various levels now post you know edu- post official education into professional and other developmental engagements but from this place of centering on uh the holistic subjective piece like who we are and where we come from and what we already know and how that relates to the objective you know scholarly research-based sources of knowledge and then how we interpersonally that kind of um that that second person you and I together how we learn better uh together so so um I bring this sort of contemplative way of teaching and learning to teaching about law but also teaching about multicultural education multicultural reality uh diversity equity inclusion social justice social activism so that's really what my passion has been yeah absolutely you know you take us back in your story as an educator to a time in the book to a time when this was not part of how you taught it may have been part of your personal life and your personal pursuit and you spoke about this very wise advice that you received in therapy can you talk a little bit about what that was yeah thanks for naming that part of my story um because it is such an important point it was an important point for me but i also you know hope it it resonates in some respects or invites people into a similar kind of inquiry yeah I was in this place where I was um really not sure whether after all these years of training study focused dedication having gotten tenure as a law professor I really felt that the way I had been taught in law school wonderful law school you know the University of Virginia yeah very good law school but the way I had been taught just didn't really feel you know it felt like I was leaving something behind um when I would enter into the classroom it felt like I wasn't if I were sort of teaching the way I had been taught yeah sort of following the model of the actually mostly male mostly white male law professors that I had been privileged and fortunate to learn with if I followed that model which was kind of what we learned to do in law you sort of just teach the way you were taught um I felt like I was missing something and maybe that maybe I was on the wrong path because I felt like this interior interpersonal more holistic approach to learning which invites our stories in which invites our emotional reactivity in which invites our challenges at building trustworthy relationships which can be essential if we're going to learn together um and collaboratively right so there was a lot that I felt that I wasn't bringing in so I was thinking maybe I should leave law and I went to a therapist and and I got this really important advice for me that you know you could always leave this great job that you have worked really hard to get in a beautiful city that you love living in and so and so forth like you could just leave and start over but for doing that why don't you explore fully dropping anchor where you are like really seeing if you're bringing all of who you are if you're taking the risk pushing the envelope to bring more of who you are right here and if you do that for a little bit and then you really find hey I've done that and it's you know I push the envelope as far as I can then you can sort of discern okay I've done all that and I really do need to to start over take a different path or leave and here's why and that was really really helpful advice for me it kind of helped put me on the path to doing this work to bringing my own voice my own approach and it led to all of these beautiful outcomes that you know the book and other things have flowed from that yeah I so appreciate it that you chose to share that with them because it actually can be applied so broadly you know sometimes when we evaluate our work our jobs our careers we're thinking about what they look like on paper not necessarily what we as individuals can bring to them and and how that and how we can like bring them alive and awake in that way so I love that yeah I was so moved by that we have power I mean you know we obviously have power and yet we often don't realize that we have it in ways that can be applied everywhere including to hmm how do I meet this particular job role responsibility in a way that's kind of uniquely mine and that you know is what really I think is um the basic teaching of that experience for me that we can do that anytime ah I love that okay why did you decide to write The Inner Work of Racial Justice and who is it written for
well you know I think it's a little bit of a follow-up to what I was just speaking about in that um I had been but just to say a little bit more I've been teaching law but really teaching a range of types of courses so personal injury law and immigration and just all the kind of typical some typical courses but also of course I've been creating about race and American legal history race in contemporary uh law and policy and really inviting um a kind of a deeper dive into you know what really are the aspirations that people bring to this work of racial justice and where is the law kind of um part of the problem and how has it been part of the solution and why is it have this sort of two-faced right way of presenting itself somehow so but that you know that's some that's some serious inquiry right you know this is not just here are the four elements of a negligence tort you know like here's how you prove somebody failed to use due care the kind of work I do in my my personal injury class uh it was this is inviting um you know really reflecting what does equality mean you know who what what is it that um anti-discrimination law is meant to repair or what is it meant to if it's against discrimination what is it for you know what are we really trying to achieve and again in recognition of the fact that we we're doing this in a real live context where people have experience with this thing called race and law them themselves their family their parents their loved ones we know something about this so so yeah I really uh felt in my efforts to bring this subject matter alive and and support all my my my students my colleagues and others as we engage in these issues into this sort of holistic type of engagement um that I was mentioning before yeah I really felt that um mindfulness and compassion practices were helping so I started bringing that into the classroom and in that sense I you know the book the content for the book just started to evolve and I began presenting about what I was doing in the classroom and people started saying it sounds like you either have a book or something you're working on you know so in other words actually were contacting me before I had a book ready actually and so that's always awesome that whatever it is that you're doing is resonating with people and could offer some benefit beyond where you are so yeah I mean I wrote the book partly because it was flowing out of my work I wanted to write I am as a scholar and teacher we write so I was in the process around it but then also getting this positive feedback and in terms of the audience you know I really wrote the book for everybody because I actually think that well in my humble experience on the planet these decades and in these conversations I've had with thousands of people around race uh it's so clear that um you know we all have relevant information and experience that can assist us and really understanding more about you know how race and how race is a feature in our lives today how what racism you know in its whole its various guises you know it looks different it looks different what it looks like in different contexts the impacts it has had and because I think some of us are more used to talking about race as a feature in our lives than others you know it's uh it's a good question it's not obvious that actually I'm on the one hand inviting people who haven't had very much support and experience looking at race and racism their own experience and talking about it with others definitely the book is written to invite those folks to the table but it's also written for folks who have daily experience engaging in a world which is reminding us and this is often people of color right you know in a world in context where um you know if you're a member of the majority of whatever group and you're in a place where you know your your kind of identity and background let's say you're in a majority White space community institution environment your background is can sometimes feel a little bit invisible it's almost like the water you're swimming in there's no there's nothing pointing out daily that makes you feel like it's about race or race is relevant but by contrast when people who are um minoritized or you know in a minority situation in that context are there they are able to sort of see oh no we're swimming in a particular kind of water and my experience is a little different and so it's in the invitation is for those folks as well to kind of
explore the way that awareness and compassion practices can help us and I'll speak as one who daily and regularly experiences being reminded that race is a feature in my life how these practices can help us first of all heal from some of the wounds that come from being you know targeted for discrimination or negative stereotypes or microaggressions whatever that is um and also again since our power feel uh our power to uh disrupt um some of the ways that those wounds can lead to further negative consequences in our lives uh mindfulness you know very famously supports us in sort of recognizing there's that first wound that any one of us might experience as a teaching called the two arrows the first arrow is like whatever happens it could be a physical wound an injury in other words soft-bellied human beings we are vulnerable in the world things happen to us that first hour can happen to any one of us it could be physical injury it could be psychological damage or trauma how we respond to that including how we might ruminate seize it tell us constant storage twist the arrow in a little bit more that second that's in the Buddhist teachings if I may and the base for a lot of the mindfulness work that second arrow is one we can control how deep are we how are we about really noticing what we're contributing to the harm and so a their the the work also invites that's just one example that's just one example of how the work can invite people who are feeling the wounds of racism and discrimination and all the other isms and schism by the way that intersect with race right it's gender immigration status and on and on and on right it's not just this one dimension they're always you know multiple uh intersecting vectors of social harm that we're talking about we talk about race in particular because it's often very hard to look at that part now we can very easily skip off into class or gender or anything else if we're not really holding ourselves into this space but yeah so the book was really written for um all of us uh who because each of us in our own unique ways have experienced have suffered though not equally but in some way around this uh this thing called racism which is really in my view about the the way that um human efforts to categorize in group and out group and us and them and these sorts of folks and that sort of which is a very common back to the sociologist in me that's a very common thing that humans do but once we do that we then often rank order right we're not content really with mere differentiation and diversity because then we have to end right embed in the differences meaning and um preferences you know and um from there the minute there's any kind of resource accumulation how we distribute resources varies so some people have had better access to rights to immigrate than others some people have better access to education health care respect the power to decide even how to distribute the resources that we have all of these things vary and um so I think of racism as a as an invitation for us to look at how these prejudices that flow from the differentiations that we make as human beings intersect with power differences to mouth distributions of the resources necessary to thrive and so we all like in some way might be in a place of power in a place of disadvantage around this or that and have more or less influence around these things so it's an invitation I think to really look at power its use and abuses and how power is distributed in ways that tell us something about the ongoing impact of these racial groups including in our own psyche like how are we thinking about who should be in power who should have access who should have education in health care and what are the subtle inputs that tell us that some people are more deserving than others and again race is just one of those inputs but it's one that we might want to look at if we are concerned about a more just an equal world yes absolutely you know as I was reading your book I did get that sense of how inclusive it was meant to be there are moments of challenge there are so many stories but it felt like a series of invitations and
requests for you to do something to whether it's reflect but and you know and what action you might do after the reflection but um what I found is I never felt like I was left hanging or wondering what to do next there's a lot of guidance throughout the book which I loved yeah thank you yeah so so you you speak to the necessity of healing within the community context can you describe what that means and how someone might set out to to do that to heal within community context well I'm so glad you asked that question I mean it invites really first pausing and thinking like what do we even mean by community and who's in that right already it's like yeah look at me is there a community like I mean because I think in our you know in these times I it's I think there's a lot of ambivalence almost around the idea of community I mean you know I mean it's often people feel a little bit on the outs you know right it's like yeah am I in a community what is my community where is my community and so and when we talk about these issues of race there's often like a presumption that there is for example a Black community um and we must be talking about that and there must be you know who where are they and what you know where is the member who's in charge of this community and you start to really realize it so that's a question like how am I defining community and by the way a lot of my teaching and this contemplative approach this mindful approach to teaching and learning sometimes I use content contemplative learning um as a way of thinking about it you know it's very evoc- it's very um inquiry based right it's much less about here's how you think about it and much more about what do you already know about this where are your questions and where are your mixed messages and confusion that's like so insane is true for the community piece but so I so I it's but there is something to this idea that um we first of all we live in communities right we live in groups and um often in some way obvious and not obvious we're sort of feeling our way into networks of um connection and concern and we might if we stop and think about it feel like it's kind of a community it might be the place where we grew up but the place where we live now where we work it might be defined by our social identities or it may not be so we have different ways of thinking about it but what I definitely when I in the subtitle Transforming Our Communities again as you know as you're pointing out in my book I'm writing really inviting people to think about well what is the community you'd like to be in is it where you live right now is it your workplace is it the network of people that you work with which maybe you know at this point global global or transnational or is it is it um these historical racialized communities that we think of sometimes when we think about the impact of racism right so the Black community the White community whether we're talking in a particular area or maybe even more broadly so what do we mean but however we mean that I think it's first important to think about what we mean and what that um what we what we what we what we both experience in these communities yeah that may be tied to these legacies of racism or maybe playing out some of the dynamics often unintentionally right we may have just inherited some ways of being that if we look around are kind of constituting a certain kind of community and may not have been exactly what we chose but it is what it is and so bringing awareness to who we are in this community and who we are and then inquiring about that is again part of this effort inquiring about how we might bring more intentionality to how we constitute communities um and that can look very like very many things but some inquiry into you know how did this community get to be formed this way with these demographics for example you know often even if we haven't been thinking about it ourselves if we stop and think about it we might start to understand that there's some uh dynamics driving communities to be formed and constituted populated by right demographically constituted in this way versus this way and if we look more closely at those drivers and think about our intentions our values what we really want we might be able to just discern together by the way I think a lot about this idea of working with others and having power with others as opposed to power over trying to transform how we use our power right can we use our power together as opposed to like over people that's what we mean in some ways I mean by racial justice so when we start thinking about like well how would we together form this community and what would it take to get us there and what does that take inside of me like to become the kind of person who can work with others to become you know to help form that community what would it take for us like what do we need to be able to see together do together say to each other what kind of conflict resolution processes do we have right because it's not always going to be you know puppies and rainbows how do we resolve inevitable conflicts and um and then what do we do in terms of the policies or practices that keep us going together along this path this values identified or values the line path so I think having a sense of like who the community is what our values are and then embedding this sort of willingness and the tools to support this kind of ongoing inquiry which I smile when I talk about because to me this is the joyful part it's like who are we really and what are we trying to do and let's get after that with some consciousness right and see what can come alive as we do that together yeah yeah absolutely I love though how the book is really a dirty you know it starts with you it's just simply reflecting and these stories you know reading through these stories and reflecting on your reactions and and what surfaces throughout but it moves you toward what you can do next and and what that can look like within the context of others but when I think about someone who would pick this book up okay it's somebody who's interested in learning about racial justice someone who's interested in learning about healing and mindfulness and someone who probably recognizes that there is a practice that is ongoing potentially it's not just hey I'm gonna go learn a thing and then check the box like no and you yeah and I think you explain very well why it needs to be that way um and then how you can really do that successfully over a long period of time over a lifetime hopefully yeah oh my gosh thank you so much for putting it that's that's exactly what I was trying to do with the book I mean really have people it is like an ongoing arc of life right because as you so beautifully put it this isn't about we go to a training we do right it's really seeing that of course we're we're in this soup if you will of like all of the legacies of race and racism that are just always around and it'd be you know it'd be one thing if we could somehow magically erase it all and never have any new inputs but my goodness all you have to do is pick up this guy or turn on the news right and there's more information and input right some more that we could have a reaction to yeah slide it into our pre-existing teachings and trainings about who matters who doesn't and like come out right of the later emails that we get today with a new commitment to some sort of subtle stereotype or you know what I mean so because it's ongoing in our social lives right this thing race is a like a more of a dynamic it is a construction in my view it is something that we do as opposed to something that exists in the world like and because of that dynamic interchange through which we kind of make real the ideas we hold about race it the book is kind of an invitation to be present to noticing that yeah recognizing that if we've constructed race and racism we might be able to deconstruct it in these ways that we are together but to do that is going to require lifelong yeah engagement and courage and care and waking up to where we get stuck yeah yeah so I you know I would say for someone who is interested in learning more but then wants to know what to do with what they're learning this is the perfect book for you absolutely yeah and I've actually I'll say I've had activists read it and say this reminds me of what you know we some of us have learned that the you know we look at civil rights movements and movements for social change in our history which of course some version of these have gone on through history all across the globe and over time yeah so we often we say the civil rights movements like this one thing but it's like of a piece with this broad effort across the globe looks different different places where pockets of human beings get together and say we want to try to make this world a little bit more fair and just and equal and let's see what we can do together well um in the civil rights movement in particular there were trainings given to activists there was like a school called the Highlander School if listeners are interested where before you know Rosa Parks and others went on the front lines to sit and to disrupt they were trained and how to incorporate non-violence tactics how to how to you know be in this that crucible of all of the what would you know what would come from challenging these powerful structures that were committed to hierarchy not easy um and so the training that was offered wasn't meant to help prepare the inner lives and the inner experience for being in those conflicts and coming out with something you know that could sustain and survive and thrive perhaps ideally and I've had at least you know one of my readers I'm thinking of right now who said your book is like it's like that type of training in a book for people yeah yes I agree it is training straight up yeah I love that yes okay so moving away from the book a little bit and more about uh how you make all of this work you know we know that you're a tenure professor and you're teaching and then you've decided to pursue this writing as well I think what people listening are really interested in learning more about when someone who's able to you know is able to juggle so much and find so much success within that what does that look like on the ground like how do you kick off your day what is your morning routine how are you jumping into all of this and making it happen but very specifically yeah what is your what is your morning routine on an ideal day yeah so okay on an ideal and typical not not not atypical daylight I would say um you know um I'm I get up and I'm you know I really try and create some space for starting the day with intention sometimes that looks like setting the alarm clock earlier than I need need to for whatever I you know have to do outside in the world or any engagement that I have um to to really give myself a buffer uh of grounding in my own practices and so um whether I've set the alarm clock intentionally or I know I just you know my inner alarm wakes up the goal for me always is to have a good buffer that's spaciously holding a period of time from me to ground and my intentions and in my you know practices for reconnecting to source and to values and to um you know these inner resources so that can what so that how I use that buffer time you know varies right because like a lot of folks if I'm doing the same exact thing every day it can get a little bit monotonous but I do um practices for becoming aware and awake in my body that include you know yes sitting meditation is the kind of a core practice for me uh a regular go-to practice for me that I will infuse throughout the day including at the beginning body scan meditations which I sometimes will engage in before I even get out of bed just like I'm waking up early I'm awake and clearly awake because this is the temptation with the body scan it can low one back to sleep yeah but if I feel cozy no I will go back to bed right but if you're you know calling forth this practice as a support for uh you know as one of my teachers John Kabat-Zinn says you know this idea of like body scan as you rise you know as of support for starting the day to kind of really wake up before you like you wake up and then you really wake up to like the life in your body with a body scan um lying down or seated um I absolutely uh you know have as a daily commitment some movement practice and often it is um some simple yoga asanas or qigong and I'm looking already toward the window because I often practice right in front of a window because I think it's a way for me of remembering the connection between this body and this spirit and what you know whatever I've become awake to within myself and this so-called environment this air that we're breathing right now this ground that is holding us right now that basically we're a part of we tend to think of we're somehow separate from this environment so so I'd like to have especially in the morning but not only then but certainly as a part of how I wake up in my buffer in the morning you know looking out on the day you know today we're privileged fortunate here I'm in San Francisco we've had a big rain event we've had the atmospheric river and the bomb cyclone and all this interesting weather language oh goodness yeah with intense rain yeah and wind and and right now it's calm right now it's probably going to come back but checking out right what's that dear I just said yeah it's gonna come back right but like being present to like what is this day and how is this impacting me and and and remembering I think the purpose for all of this is not just to become present to the breast and feel it which is a big part of it but also to remember to remember the preciousness of life that we have this moment for sure we know from the coronavirus and every other thing we tend to forget it as often as we can because that's what humans do but we know our lives are precious and and shockingly short actually so the question is how do we want to live we don't know exactly how long we have so part of what I'm doing in that buffer time is really remembering that my life matters and therefore the things I do matter and I'm not trying to be perfect because no one can be that's a setup for failure right but it's remembering as often as possible that what I do with the time that I have including this moment and this day matters and so yeah part of part of my regular practice is starting the day with time to meditate to focus to feel my life to feel the connection and to feel the pressures and the invitation to take some action that can be that matters right here right now and then I also like to have time later in the day so when I'm if I need it like stresses build up during the day I go for a walk a mindful walk I do movement again you know I shake it off I do all kinds of practices to kind of you know because again stress can pop up anytime so I embed these practices to like let it go and then often close the night with um a meditative sit even if it's just a few moments on the edge of the bed or on my cushion I have a cushion in an area right where I take a nightly shower if I want to do that so just different ways that I've set myself my life up to support this kind of regular check-in and remembering the most important which is that we have this moment let's make the most of it yeah I like what you just said that you'll take a walk midday if you need it so even the idea of considering at some point in your day what do I need yeah yes whoa I mean every day what right that just on its own is kind of an incredible thing for me to consider because you know we're you know up to our eyeballs and our to-do list where's the you know how are we going to check the bugs on the remembering to ask ourselves what we need so I love that do you find that there are certain tells for you where you know oh yeah I need to walk today yes and and actually walking is a pretty regular practice too so and it helps it actually because I do that regularly it kind of keeps me regulated but yeah if I um there are times when first of all when I I might go to meditate and I'm really feeling distracted and feeling out of my body for me it's like no I'm not going to be at war with reality maybe I need to move you know to shake up the energy a bit whether it's some you know movement practice or a good vigorous walk to support me in grounding I'm often uh I often remind myself that um you know sometimes tension is being held in the body in a way that actually just needs to move and from that place uh I can center and calm and have like more of the sense of restoration that can come from a seated meditation so really but the key is to sort of have this informal mindfulness running in the background throughout the day like an informal mindfulness just sort of lovingly one of my teachers and friends uses this idea thinks of mindfulness as a good friend oh it's always weird yeah to like go how are you doing like you know yeah I love that right yeah we're trying to do the thousand things we're doing all these things we're accomplishing stuff mindfulness is there to be like do you need where is your water right now
have you have you paused you know have you gone outside while the sun was shining during a period of rain you know what do you need on a regular basis and giving permission to um reclaim right that as a as a sort of a very important support for for thriving again I in my book as you know I use the phrase personal justice in a way or to kind of touch or turn us toward this part of how this relates to the justice work that we do it's like if I'm not taking better care of my own self like how in the world can I really expect somebody out there to do it how do I even know what being cared for looks like how do I know what justice might look and feel like if I don't know how to look for you know the the sort of disconnects and um unlovingness that I'm carrying in my own body toward myself so so yeah I think yeah the idea of mindfulness as his good friend that's always there to kind of like gently say oh you know what what you're feeling there is some tightness in your shoulder because you're still you know you had that difficult conversation and now sitting in your shoulder right why don't you just pause for a little bit process that do you need to pick up the phone and call this person right mindfulness is that underlying body based like it's it's the mind and relationship to the body like where am how am I doing am I running on empty because I've been staying up too late hanging out with friends whatever it is trying to make people feel like I'm with them like I said they have a party I want to be there it's like but is that serving you now and can you give yourself permission to pull back that constant remembering again most important thing this is our one life how do we want to live it and what do we need to bring in the way of commitment to ourselves to enable us to really live our best lives wow that was so beautifully said I can't wait to listen back to that
seriously I I mean yeah I just feel the sense of you giving permission for this and we need that from each other right yeah yeah for sure because you're working really hard right I mean you know you're you this doesn't just happen that you have this podcast and so having these intentionalities means you know we too need support and permission to just pause yeah yeah you know when I think about like of course of course I can believe uh if you or somebody else takes good care of themselves that that will help them and their performance and how they feel and that they'll be living their best life but when it's my turn to take care of myself there's that resistance there of like but I have these other things and so oh yeah and for me i had that as a big part of my this I've had a long and really like repairing talk about reparations I've had this long like personal reparations project repairing from like messages I got as a little girl about oh even this very simple thing of um can I
can I be unwell like is there like if I'm not feeling well I somehow got the message that my job was to push through always and you know there are times out let's admit it there are times when you kind of have to push through you know if you got to take care of somebody else you got a baby in the house or whatever you got a commitment you have to you know there are times yeah but if if you're every day all the time response to your own needs is you no you don't get anything these very negative tapes of you know meanness to ourselves I'm maybe I'm the only one that ever did this but I had these kind of tapes things that I would say stuff that I would never say to another human like a person I loved who was sort of feeling a little bad or down I would never say things but I would lift them up I would say you need a break and so I've learned to do that for myself yeah so if you're like me and you're listening and you're like okay I keep hearing about mindfulness but I don't really have any kind of practice you know
it's never too late to start I'm I'm very invested and attracted to what I'm learning from you Rhonda and um and I really see the value there so yeah and it could be doesn't have to take hours out of Wednesday a buffer that I like I talked about can be yeah three minutes it's just really claiming your attention and time for yourself and being clear about that and really locking in a commitment to ourselves and again it does not have to take more time it's about how we are with the time that we have yes so well said okay from here we are going to move on to those two quick segments that I mentioned to you before the first one is This Or That so I will list two items and in order to just get to know you a little bit better we'll hear which you would pick okay all right here we go would you rather read a book or listen to a playlist
read a book which phrase do you identify with more I am who I am or I am always evolving
I'm always evolving go on an adventure or stay in and relax
these are so hard because I like all of them
stay and relax yeah especially because it's about to be cold out right let's be real um re-watch favorites or search for a new show
really much favorites oh yeah that's so boring yes no well I have to ask them just super quick do you have a favorite that comes to mind
no but what I was thinking about is I I like classic movies oh okay so I'm a classic movie person and I've seen most of them or many many and and my favorite old stars um so yeah I am I'm thinking of that yes yeah and when you think of classic movies like what era are you thinking of what decade or well it's it's oh I'm I am I am like a film I feel like one of the lives I didn't take that I could be taking right now as a PHD in film person so yeah interesting yeah I'm curious about the entire evolution of these this cultural product of film and so I I watch I especially watch movies from like the golden age of Hollywood if you will uh-huh and yeah so it's all those early stars whose names we know and some we don't know as well but you know Betty Davis and Joan Crawford and Bill Powell I mean these people that a lot of people like who what Robert Montgomery but also um you know looking at Oscar Micheaux the first Black director um of silent movies and you know within these gates and hallelujah these early Black representations on film and films made by women producers and directors whose names we don't know enough of because a lot of the female early creators of Hollywood and a film were sort of forgotten or it kind of intentionally buried so um yeah so I it's it's another place for me to look at the social dynamics of inclusion and exclusion and to just sort of think about how they are part of those stories that are the subtle inputs to who matters and who doesn't yeah wow so it's not even just a matter of entertainment for you not really like this is a deep interest yeah yeah that's really interesting okay we're moving on okay so socially what do you prefer the more the merrier or more fun with fewer more fun with fewer okay and the last one for this or that here for humor or please be serious
here for humor all right
right because my goodness life is serious enough yeah actually both I think all that's the thing I've learned that I have this introvert extrovert like I'm right on the line I'm a lot of like this and that is my thing and uh so it was hard those choices were hard but I appreciate the questions so you just are identifying with the whole structure all of this is all of that it's all there yeah I'm so serious of course we gotta you cannot be you know you gotta be a person who laughs a lot given how seriously I take everything I love that yeah it's very well done okay so the next section is called rapid fire and so these are just shorter answer questions uh and just a handful of them first question is could you tell me something that you've read lately that you would recommend to others
uh yes I mean and I'm looking around because I have so many books do I see stacks of books next to you I have stacks everywhere like yeah right here down on the ground this book Black and Buddhist right here I've got like this whole stack of books in front of me no I am um this is the secret okay what book would I recommend um I would recommend this book The Right Use of Power by Cedar Barstow because I think a big challenge of our time is knowing that we have power knowing that there are many temptations to abusing it and dedicating ourselves to using our personal power and interpersonal power and official and unofficial power for good so this is one of the many books that I have around but this is another one Social Dominance which is about how we misuse power like and why and how the temptation to dominate other people right and again so so yeah I have a lot of books one over here is called Black Fatigue which says it all in the title how exhausting Black folk are at during this time but yeah then these are just the stacks over here over here I have a whole another yeah so this is not supposed yeah no I have I should I show you I don't know can you yes please yes let's see the stacks okay so this can you see these stacks oh yeah you're not kidding there are many stacks too many stacks my my partner's kind of like this is not supposed to be a library we're supposed to have a library space down downstairs we have both and then I have my upstairs yeah so I'm a book person yes but isn't it uh tradition of libraries to have the upstairs be the stacks like that's a thing really you're just fully living into that idea well I love it yeah thank you so much yeah I need to have you talk to my partner yeah you could even say you know I'm going up to the stacks now
the second level set we have to be three levels so I have books on every level which I don't think that's yeah yeah always within a reason yes within reach when somebody asks a really good question like what would you recommend I love that well I asked that a little bit selfishly because there's really nothing I like more than a great book recommendation so I'm for sure adding these to my list but seriously for listeners I mean we're talking about this is someone who has a room full of books so these are these are the books that she mentioned that she's recommending right now so they obviously must be fantastic yeah if we're talking about it within a room full of books so you know it's for a household really and yet really honestly I mean you know depending on what we're I love books because it's a reminder that again we've inherited so much and all all of us again not that our resources are equal because we know that they're not but the world and the world of information the wisdom that's been gathered cultivated shared is so vast and much more easily available some at cost but not all it costs there's so much more that's freely available today than used to be that um yeah I could just go on and on about the good the books I could recommend they're just so many I love that I'll have to bug you another time
okay do you have a favorite item right now maybe it's a tool or an app something that you would recommend to a friend or a colleague that has helped with maybe productivity or just something that you enjoy that doesn't that's an interesting question what am I having fun with that's like a like a device it could be yeah it could be an app it could be a game it could be some sort of tool that you use like in the context of kitchen or getting ready or your meditation practices I think generally like at any given point in time we kind of have something that we're excited about in that moment maybe it's even as simple as like a new sweater that we get or something like that is there anything that you have that you felt like oh man like this has helped me or I really enjoy this yeah
so one thing is this these sorts of like coat dress jacket things that yes wait describe in more detail okay I mean maybe I can even stand up a bit and maybe you can see a little bit more I know I'm like totally breaking all the all the podcast rules no this is fantastic okay it's like really long oh yeah and it can be worn as a coat uh you know it could be worn with nothing underneath it like a dress I could put a belt around it and these are made in different countries a couple of few different countries in Africa but Kenya in particular is one and so I found these you know you can buy them here in San Francisco or online now uh-huh so I have a number of them and I just they're just like my new go-to thing every day I feel like an extra boost of power when I'm wearing these they're like my new power jackets I love that and it makes getting ready so much simpler because you have your own yeah so if someone wanted to find such a thing what what sort of word might they use how would they search up an item like this well this particular one I will go ahead and pro promote them I get no fee no you know what I mean like this is not this is I am not a legit like you know what I mean you're not influencing I'm not in it I'm not right nobodies paying me no-ones paying me for this
they're made by a company called Zuri Z-u-r-i okay and so um shopzuri.com and they have you know they have if you don't want to invest in a jacket um because they're you know like 100 and some dollars they have these little inexpensive scarves less expensive things like I just cool um color you know what I mean like I just feel my partner's family's from India actually and many years ago now 2007 or so it was one time I went with him to his sister got married I went there for the wedding and I remember coming back and feeling like are Americans depressed why are we not having more colors there are the colors so as you immediately went from Mumbai Bombay to New York City and it was color color color color everywhere in in India and New York it was everybody's under black they're gray they're navy you know our topes are basics you know and yeah it had a spiritual kind of impact to to that the night and day color less color and I feel that is part of the hidden subtle you know kind of soup that we swim in this this the way in which our culture um you know normalizes what it looks like to be a professional it doesn't oh yeah right so um yeah I've been on a journey to kind of try and repair that sense of separation really a lot of my work is about healing separations you know and it feels like there's a way that color is meant you know out there for the artists here I am a law professor yeah and I want to bring in color I want to bring in creativity uh wherever I can ah what a beautiful statement we love this okay I'm gonna have to look this company up we'll put it in the show notes too so that people can readily find them okay awesome what is something people would be surprised to learn about you well some people know this so it's not like it's not no knowable out there but I think people are sometimes surprised to know that I trained as an army officer and almost went to West Point meaning I had a an appointment from Senator John Warner to appear at West Point uh as part of the class of you know 1989 I would have been and like the last weekend before I was due to report as a cadet there in the Summer of 1985
I had this opportunity to attend this event for like high achieving teens oh yes your honor where what was that um Teen Of The Year or Teenager Of The Year I did exactly right yes yes yeah and got that Teenager Of The Year event thank you I had gotten that and then um I was swept away and honored at this event it was my actually my first time in a plane because my family didn't have you know we didn't have resources for flying so I was in that that Teenager Of The Year honor was was the thing that led to my first flight and that was great I would it was Summer after graduating high school yeah and I here I was in what what they did at this event is I'm laughing smiling because I've never talked very much about this and I almost my partner when I talk about it he's like it just sounds like something that could never actually happen but it was something called the Banquet Of The Golden Plate and the idea was to I know right exactly to bring together like these young achieving kids yeah with people adults who had achieved a lot in the world in in in medicine in politics in music and so I was surrounded by these people they were the person who created the artificial heart Dr. Jimmy Jarvik Betty Ford was there they were like you know Lionel Richie like people who had achieved all these people and I was at a table there and and these adults were asking us things and trying to advise us and so it was in a conversation there that some basically these they call them luminaries they actually said bring the kids and bring the luminaries so these uh elders were saying you know it sounds like you might not necessarily want to be a career military officer um so you know and they and I had this um opportunity to go to the University of Virginia or Georgetown University or West Point right so I was really great options right and so they were like you could choose one of those and be okay but I was and it was a whole thing because I had a stepfather who really wanted me to go to an academy and I was going to be disappointing my stepfather but because I had these these good counselors that last weekend before I was supposed to report I said no to West Point and yes to UVA and did a different life
and that is how it goes right yes you could have been in film you could have been in the military exactly I did do the Army ROTC Scholarship though and so that so I didn't go and get the academy like career out of the military but I did do our real ROTC Scholarship so yeah that hidden thing is that I am trained as a military officer um but I got my training at University of Virginia as opposed to West Point and now I think of myself as kind of one who wants to be in the army of those who love and heal you know I mean yeah so I think it's a surprise for people to know I actually also trained in sharp shooting with an m16 um yeah that's specific imagery right there
well Rhonda this has been delightful I've had such a good time chatting with you I'm so yeah I'm so grateful that you wrote this book and decided to just you know share what you've learned through your practice in the classroom and personally with the world um and made that accessible to us so so thank you for writing it thank you for being here and talking with me about it thank you yeah thank you so much I'm so glad you reached out you know I'm I really am honored by that and I again I see what you're doing and I'm really really um it's an inspiration to be in conversation with you and so keep on doing what you are doing my dear oh thank you I appreciate that so much yeah awesome all right well I think that's a wrap you can find a link in the show notes to connect with Rhonda and you can follow her on instagram at @rvmagee that's r-v-m-a-g-e-e but whatever you do don't hesitate to pick up her book The Inner Work Of Racial Justice as we discussed in the episode today it truly is a complete guide to creating a lifelong practice of understanding and taking action for racial justice thank you for tuning in if you enjoyed your time with us today please share this episode with a friend then subscribe follow leave a comment or a five star review season one of this show will include more chats with top authors experts and influential personalities we will be serving up simplified applied psychology habit theory and quality of life tips and tricks that you can put into action right away until next week I'm Kate hammer and You Know How To Live
