Recommended: Podcasts to Learn By

Last week I wrote about some of the Mattie Rigsbees I have known, and how Me and White Supremacy, by Layla F. Saad, has helped give me tools to see them with clearer eyes. You can read that here. 

This is a Manitoba Maple I saw while walking and listening to an
episode of It Was Said. I goofed around with editing tools on my iPhone.

I have so much to learn about anti-racism. Besides reading, I'm listening.  

Here are some podcasts I recommend, if you're interested in learning but feel as if you can't read all the things. Links are to web pages or Apple Podcasts. Note that although much of the content focuses on the US, Canada shares a great deal of its history and attitudes.

1619, by The New York Times. Also, this article in Politico about fact-checking the podcast is interesting. Here's a quote from the article: 

Overall, the 1619 Project is a much-needed corrective to the blindly celebratory histories that once dominated our understanding of the past—histories that wrongly suggested racism and slavery were not a central part of U.S. history. I was concerned that critics would use the overstated claim to discredit the entire undertaking. So far, that’s exactly what has happened.

 

It Was Said, a podcast by The History Channel and hosted by historian Jon Meacham. It analyzes famous speeches--the ones you know, or think you do. I especially recommend the first three episodes for information from the Civil Rights Era. And I can't wait for my walking schedule to let me hear Barbara Jordan's speech.

Seeing White, from Scene on Radio, is from 2017 and traces the history of whiteness. I've heard only the first eight episodes so far, but that's already given me a lot to chew on. The host, John Biewen, periodically checks in with Chenjerai Kumanyika, a Black historian, to evaluate Biewen's growing understanding. Be sure to listen to the episode (previously played on This American Life) about a specific incident of massacre of Indigenous people in what is now Minnesota. 

Unlocking Us with Brené Brown. Self-help may not usually be your jam, but this distinguished researcher knows a lot of interesting people. The episodes with Tarana Burke, Alicia Keys, Ibram X. Kendi, and Austin Channing Brown are illuminating. I haven't heard the episodes with Sonya Renee Taylor or Bishop Michael Curry yet.

That's enough to start with, probably. 

These podcasts aren't perfect--none of them. But each of them (like the books your read!) offers you an opportunity to think about your behaviour and beliefs. 

When you feel yourself getting defensive, when you have an urge to argue with what you're hearing, why not take that as an invitation? Set aside your defensiveness and ask yourself, "What if what they're saying is true?" How would that change what you think or feel?

It's a lesson in empathy--which writers claim to have but all of us can likely develop further.