Healing from Racial Trauma

Resmaa Menakem, psychologist and author

When I do anti-racism work, no matter who I am partnering with, it is clear that the work of changing beliefs, behaviors, and culture is not simply a matter of here-and-now. The resistance and pain I witness feel much deeper than one 90-minute workshop can address. It’s beyond what a book club can reach. It is cellular, in a way…ancestral.

So when I found the work of Resmaa Menakem, a psychologist based out of Minneapolis, it felt like a revelation. His work is centered around healing from racial trauma, using neuroscience and advanced understandings of where inherited trauma lives in the body.

Who are these tools best for?

Part of what I love about Mr. Menakem’s work is the fact that it’s for everyone. He believes that all people, including white folks, have inherited some form of racial trauma. So his practices are accessible for all. He does have very specific modalities geared towards people of culture (which is the language he uses instead of “people of color”) and specific tools for white bodies, so his work is both specific AND universal.

I feel that his tools are best for people who are further along on their journey towards anti-racism. If you feel like you’ve exhausted your intellectual understanding of anti-racism principles and have really mastered the history/language/policies part of your learning process, this is a great way to shift from the “head space” into the “heart space.”

If you like to read:

His book, My Grandmother’s Hands, is a beautiful and powerful guide to the how and why of healing.

If you’re an embodied learner:

Resmaa Menakem has a free online training program called Cultural Somatics Training Institute, with tracks available for white-bodied folks and people of culture.

If you like to listen:

Here is the first interview Mr. Menakem gave to Krista Tippett for the On Being podcast. It’s a great first listen for those who are new to the idea of somatics, or embodied practices around social change work. He gives an intro to the Vagal Nerve and offers one easy healing practice that you can start doing right away. It should give you a sense of whether this work could be meaningful for you.

If you’re a white person interested in doing work across lines of race, here is a conversation between Resmaa and Robin Diangelo (the author of White Fragility). The two of them are friends, and it is powerful to listen to the give and take of their discussion on race. There is also a very valuable discussion about why it is so important for white people to work with other white people to create new norms around culture that aren’t rooted in anti-Blackness. If you’re wondering why some anti-racism facilitators choose to do work in white-centered spaces, this offers some clear explanation and reasoning.

And what I want to point out is that most white people will go cradle to grave with few, if any, authentic relationships with Black people, with no sense whatsoever that anything of value is missing from their lives. It “just happens” that I grew up in an all-white neighborhood, still live in an all-white neighborhood, go to mostly-white schools, send my kids to mostly-white schools, and talk about those neighborhoods and schools in glowing terms, as “good.” [But] the moment we say, “Now we’re gonna separate by race, in order to work on racism,” white people become unglued.

Some personal notes on the conversation between Resmaa Menakem and Robin Diangelo:

In this interview, you’ll hear Robin Diangelo say, “When white people ask me, ‘What do I do?’ I ask them, in return, how have you managed not to know, when the information’s everywhere; they’ve been telling us forever?”

As a fellow white person, I wholeheartedly disagree with her approach here; it feels steeped in shame and self-righteousness. In my work, I support white anti-racists in learning how to not tell people of color how to respond to racism. What that work necessarily means is that white people HAVE to find grace for other white people who are new to the work. It can be harmful and tactically counter-productive to approach someone who is new to anti-racism, is excited to learn and grow, from a place of judgment. It runs completely counter to Mr. Menakem’s ethos and undercuts his role in the conversation. That’s my personal opinion on that, and I invite you to bring that critique into the process of listening to the conversation.

Additionally, you’ll hear Robin attempt to use Resmaa’s personal tragedy for her own purposes. She asks him whether he would rather face an overt racist or a well-meaning, covert racist, in the hopes that he will say he would rather deal with an overt one. She is trying to prove the point that people of color prefer racism that is in-your-face, instead of racism that is shrouded in liberalism. Resmaa doesn’t take the bait, though. He says, “None of them,” clearly asserting his refusal to be used for another person’s narrative.

If you are a person with white-body privilege, listen to the interview and think about how you can ensure that you don’t fall into the trap of “leading the witness,” or otherwise assuming that people of color exist to reinforce your anti-racist narrative.

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