Released 19th July 2020 Subscribe: Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | YouTube
Welcome to the podcast – I’m Jamie Smart. It’s now nearly two months since the tragic killing of George Floyd sparked a wave of protests that’s echoing around the globe. And it got me wondering…
“As a member of the principles community, what does it make sense for you to say or do in relation to this?”
And as I wondered about this, I realised something…
I realised that I didn’t know the answer to the question.
So I reached out to my good friend and colleague, Clarity Coach Davida Arnold.
Davida is a coach and educator based in Columbus Ohio. She’s a mother with young children, and she’s a black woman.
You can find out more about Davida at this website: https://davidaiarnold.com/
As Davida and I talked, I realised it could be valuable for us to have a conversation to release more widely.
Our discussion didn’t have an agenda per se – the purpose was to have a connected conversation to see what we could discover about ‘the truth of the matter’.
We had a great conversation, and afterwards, we both felt it might make sense to have a follow-up chat in a month or so. For now, here’s the episode…
Comments
Davida thank you so much.
THE most stunning, absolutely THE most fundamental mind blowing, mind freeing questions…”What’s in the way “ and “what is blocking you”. As you say it’s always about fear. To enable people, and to support people to start to chip away at that fear is,how I believe we will bring about the change.
Thank you to you and Jamie for this conversation.
Jan❤️
It has always been a curious thing for me (as a Japanese national) the low population of diversity in the 3 P’s community. Of course, I’m pretty sure there is a mathematical reasoning to the demographics of people who can tune in to this type of conversation. As Davida pointed out, the idea that “you don’t have to do anything”– although enticing, can also be initially misleading. “You don’t have to do anything,” of course, does not equal NO ACTION. I understand how it can divert from the fact that action is often possible and even “required” if it is the next thing that “makes sense.”
So much of society around the world seems to be built on the value of people relying on the status of some form (wealth, health, occupation, charity) or another. Some of the ‘important’ stuff (inner love and peace) is sometimes snuffed out by the physical and mental unpleasantries of life and our natural desire to try and “fix” things and take control to change the situation. For racism, the topmost thing our minds, perhaps, is… “MAKE IT STOP”. The violence, the injustice and the ludicrousness of it all seem so obvious, and is even more so frustrating when it does not… stop. How can we NOT as civilized people move past this level?! And yet it seems challenging to no end! It is the nature of it, right? We cannot see past our thoughts because we were built to be “fooled” by our perceptions. We were built to buy into our personal movies.
How is it that we can start to understand that there is something deeper beyond the physicality of the situation (i.e. how our minds and thoughts play vital roles in this process.) Thank you for being willing to address this issue and for the kick in the butt reminding me that there is still so much more to it.
Thank you, Davida and Jamie, I am a white male British borne from Liverpool, I am all for constructive conversation and this has become such a painful and delicate subject, it needs this kind of conversation to help people understand and heal, I have served for many years in the British armed forces and many years as a Police Officer in the West Midlands Police, I am now retired and work helping people of any color or creed recover from addiction and pain from abuse and rape. I have been fortunate to have traveled the world extensively I am 66 years old and from the age, between 10-16 years I was repeatedly abused and raped by two men, for six years almost on daily basis, this devastated my whole adult life and I have recently published my book “The Boy Who Never Lived” available on Amazon. racism is not unique to black people and any specific country in the world, and it doesn’t, in my opinion, originate from the black slave traders, although I know and admit this was an outrage, it is systemic in every nation in the world. I was kicked out of school at the age of 15 and could not read or write, my whole life has been a massive struggle but I have always worked hard and battled through my pain on my own, it was only when I was 61 years old I mentioned my abuse and rape to anyone, I have to say in spite of my difficulties I have turned out OK. I am all for the black communities of the world making their stand and I fully support black lives matter, and I support Chinese lives matter and Indian lives matter and Mexican lives matter and so on all over the world, and der I say white lives matter. becoming lawless to make your point only serves to weaken your argument, dialogue listening to the other person’s opinion like Davida said is so important, and yes we need to listen to the pains and concerns of black communities, and I can tell you from experience about pain. Thank you all for this talk the world needs much more of it and I believe it has to start at community levels in a constructive way so that communities can then be fully armed to challenge the government.