Jun 8, 2020
On June 2nd the internet celebrated blackout day, a social media promoted event focused on posting content from people of color and creating features centered on people of color. Sometimes it just doesn't seem appropriate for the show to just go on as though everything is normal when things are absolutely not normal. #blackout #theshowmustpause
Tuesday was a day promoted by activists to mourn the death of George Floyd and demand policy change to put a stop to state sanctioned murders of BIPOC. Though systemic racism has been an issue in this country since its inception, this is still news to a lot of Americans. People who have been tacitly benefiting from systemic racism don't often notice that it exists.
On 6/2 we invited Fitness Protection’s Chief Nutrition Officer and black American, Dalia Kinsey to discuss her experience of living in a world that constantly demonstrates what it thinks of black skin while being surrounded by white Americans that claim to be color-blind. People flinch when they hear the term white privilege, because there is a misconception that white privilege implies that white people don't have any problems. Obviously that isn't true. The entire country has major problems right now. We have economic problems. We have pandemic problems. But if you're Black and American you don't get to just have those problems. Black Americans are coping with that shared national stress plus the stress of systemic racism, including everything from daily microaggressions, unequal access to healthcare regardless of income levels, to fearing attack from police officers.
Being a witness to state-sanctioned violence against people of color while being told that we live in a post-racial society and constantly being shown by the media and in daily interactions that people elevate white as the default is the draining emotional place that black people existed in prior to current events. Now a lot of well-meaning white people are just accepting the memo that racism exists in the United States. The tendency to suppress black voices and to not believe BIPOC when they report incidences of racism made it difficult for many white Americans to accept the memo prior to now. Now that acts of blatant racism can be recorded and shared online, white Americans are slowly starting to face the reality that black Americans have been living with for hundred of years.
As an anti-racist and an accomplice to the black liberation movement this wasn't news to Coach MK. As a person that has been black since 1981 this was not news to Dalia. Fighting systemic racism is a marathon not a sprint. We didn't get here in a day. Things may look bleak right now but progress is being made. In this conversation we look at what it takes to be brave enough to take an honest look at yourself and purge bias and white supremacy from your consciousness. It's an ongoing process since white supremacy is literally in the air that we breathe. Attacking other white people who are trying to do the right thing but perhaps stumbling, doing it awkwardly and maybe coming off as insincere is not productive. Becoming an anti-racist is a process. The goal is progress not perfection. It's okay to make mistakes. We just have to keep picking ourselves up and trying to be better. Today we discuss dealing with compound levels of stress, feelings of isolation related to living in a racist environment, the overlap between the experience of sexism and racism, learning how to have difficult conversations, understanding how truly pervasive white supremacy is, actively trying to dismantle systems of oppression vs virtue signaling and performing wokeness.
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Coach MK Fleming is the founder of Fitness Protection, LLC. Click HERE to download her most popular training plan, Tenacious AF, free!