At Our Body Politic, the impact and experiences of Black women and other women of color takes center stage. This week, Farai interviews award-winning journalist, producer and author Danyel Smith, whose latest book, Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop offers insight into Danyel’s career in music journalism and highlights Black women’s seismic - and sometimes unsung - influence on the world of pop music. Then Our Body Politic presents a conversation between TransLash podcast creator and host Imara Jones and Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, producer and actor Janelle Monae. Janelle opens up about the challenges of exploring their queerness in the public eye. And in the weekly segment Sippin’ the Political Tea, Farai speaks to licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson and Girltrek co-founder Vanessa Garrison about health and wellness practices, specifically how to honor and communicate your needs in the wake of mass shootings.
Farai Chideya:
Hi folks. We are so glad that you're listening to Our Body Politic. If you have time, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcast. It helps other listeners find us, and we read them for your feedback. We are here for you, with you, and because of you. Thank you.
Farai Chideya:
This is Our Body Politic. I'm Farai Chideya. Black women are a critical part of the global pop music industry, but have not gotten all of their props as strategists, business women, and creators. Author Danyel Smith weaves her own life into an exploration of iconic Black women musicians. It's all in her book Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop. Danyel Smith tells stories with passion and beauty in novels and magazines and more. She was the first Black woman editor of Billboard, editor-at-large at Time Inc., and editor-in-chief of Vibe. She currently hosts the podcast Black Girl Songbook. Smith and I were also baby journalists together back in the day, and in addition to being a tour de force of music commentary, Shine Bright gave me a chance to reminisce with Danyel about what covering pop culture means and how it shapes those of us who do it as well as the world. Hey, Danyel.
Danyel Smith:
Farai.
Farai Chideya:
You are all the things. This book is stunningly, beautifully written, and thank you for it.
Danyel Smith:
Thank you. You're welcome. I am still at a place where I think I am still somewhat in shock that the book finally exists in the world.
Farai Chideya:
And I just want to say that your witty use of language, like you have phrases like keep it within Nutbush City Limits, that was about the ways that Tina Turner is constrained by the music business, and then cut off like Kunta Kinte's foot, about how the pioneering guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe was cut out of the origin story of rock and roll, phrases like that just give me life. And often it's about things that are traumatic in terms of these powerful women being constantly boxed in, stolen from, underrated, poorly represented, and yet still triumphing. So what made you write this book?
Danyel Smith:
I'm inspired by the crimes that have been committed against these women with regard to their careers and their lives. I'm inspired by the music that they continue to make. By the way, they continue to write songs of joy when oftentimes they were experiencing so much sadness and unfairness, so I'm inspired.
Farai Chideya:
Let's go into some of the ways in which you present case studies, these detailed, beautiful portraits of creative Black women and how they have to navigate the industry. And you start with The Dixie Cups. I had never heard of them, even though I had heard their music a million times, and I don't think that's an accident. So who are they, and tell us a little bit about them.
Danyel Smith:
Well, The Dixie Cups are a girl group with one number one pop hit, one top five pop hit. We all know those records, we just don't know the girls that sang them and who arranged them vocally and who co-wrote them and who were only really credited for their vocals. Those are The Dixie Cups, three girls out of the projects in New Orleans, Louisiana, and they have that great song, (singing).
Danyel Smith:
So I wrote about The Dixie Cups, because when I was a little girl in the car with my mother listening to the radio, that song was on the oldies station that my mother listened to, those, and my mother's sister enjoyed. And I began to think that one of the reasons why it appealed to my mother and her sister and to myself and my sister is because maybe those girls are from lower middle class New Orleans, as my family was before they migrated to Oakland in the early 1920s. So I wanted to really talk to them, Rosa Lee Hawkins and Barbara Lee Hawkins, and I was able to specifically for this book. Rosa Lee died just a few months ago before Shine Bright came out and it's heartbreaking to me, but talking to them was an education and a joy.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. And they were put in a position where you make a very clear argument that they should have gotten more credit for the songwriting and arranging than they did.
Danyel Smith:
Yes, absolutely. I mean, we talk about the credits, like people get paid for very specific things in recorded music, and you get paid for songwriting, you get paid for vocally arranging, you get paid for producing. All these things are separate and big checks, especially if it's a big record. So if you did vocal arranging, if you did some co-production, if you did some songwriting, but all you're getting paid for is vocals, you are being stolen from, and The Dixie Cups were stolen from, massively.
Farai Chideya:
In that section, you have a couple of different things in there that were these gems that stood out to me. You talk about the politics of caste and how they operate, and that those politics blocked the ungendered interracial synergy that could have been the promise of music, and also that credits are claims to gold mines. That stuck out. But it's just all of that together, like the promise that was missed when Black people and Black women were marginalized and the stolen wealth.
Danyel Smith:
Yes. I mean, The Dixies knocked the Beatles off the number one spot with Going to the Chapel, and it's just rarely spoken about, and it's something they're hyperaware of. They're also very hyperaware of that they weren't on Motown, and so they didn't receive a lot of the credit, even that The Supremes who still don't receive the credit that they're due, but The Dixies never received the credit even that The Supremes received, just because The Supremes were a part of a bigger community, much more plugged in, and have the weight of Berry Gordy and company behind them.
Farai Chideya:
I wanted to actually focus a lot of what we're going to talk about regarding artists on one family, the Drinkard family. I had never heard of them either, but I had, because they are Leontyne Price, Dionne Warwick, Whitney Houston, among others, this musical family. Tell me a little bit about this family and their roots.
Danyel Smith:
Well, it really is bizarre to me that we don't talk about the Drinkard family as a dynasty, that we don't talk about the Drinkard bloodline as a musical phenomenon over the course of the last 100 years, because it starts with Leontyne Price in Mississippi, who is one of the most famous opera divas in the history of American opera, definitely, and has so many firsts attached to her name in opera and music that it's difficult to even quantify. Her cousin is Dionne Warwick, Dionne Warwick with her many, many hits. Many, many hits, my goodness, and her effect on pop culture all the way from Do You Know the Way to San Jose, all the way to That's What Friends Are For, and beyond. All the songwriting and vocal arranging that Dionne Warwick doesn't get credit for could fill an entire warehouse or three.
Danyel Smith:
And then you speak about Dionne Warwick's blood relationship to Cissy Houston, who is the mother of Whitney Houston. Cissy Houston appears as background and foreground singer on records from everybody from Elvis Presley to Paul Simon to Van Morrison to Aretha Franklin. It goes on and on and on into forever. And then she also is responsible for training the voice of the 20th century Whitney Houston. That alone would put her in any hall of fame.
Farai Chideya:
Let's move on to Dionne Warwick. How did you write about her in this book?
Danyel Smith:
I wanted to write about Dionne Warwick as the genius that she is. I think we all are into reclaiming Miss Warwick now because of her incredible presence on Twitter, on social media. She has pithy remarks, she's obviously super funny and super brilliant, and I think many of us are acting as if that is new. Dionne has always been that way. Dionne's always been forging a path. She has always been in hugely successful multicultural creative relationships, hugely successful multicultural creative teams. She laid the ground for Whitney Houston's career.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. And as you were writing this book, you went very deep not only into the lives and the financial and creative struggles and triumphs of so many different people, you also went into witnessing Whitney Houston on her journey, at times good and bad, another member of this same musical family. Just a tragedy. But give me a sense of what your arc was with listening to Whitney Houston as just a listener, and then getting to cover her struggle.
Danyel Smith:
I'm still sad, still mourning Whitney's death. When I see Dionne Warwick, even now, and all of her status as being an elder in our community, and then I think about what we could have witnessed if Whitney had lived. The time with Whitney that I was able to spend with her as a reporter, as a feature writer, as an editor-in-chief negotiating a cover for Vibe magazine, running into her at various music industry community events, it makes it all the more precious for me, and I wanted to write something about her that allowed people to maybe see her more clearly, to see her more fully in her humanity. It matters to me. It matters to me that Whitney, for all the credit she has received... People say to me, "Danyel, how can you say that Black women don't receive credit?" I say, "They do receive credit. We do receive credit. We just don't receive the credit we are due, and there is a difference."
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. That was music journalist Danyel Smith on her new book, Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop. Coming up next, we continue our conversation with Danyel Smith, including the barriers she faced as a Black woman in music journalism. Plus, Our Body Politic presents Janelle Monae on Imara Jones's podcast, TransLash, and Sippin' the Political Tea on practicing mental health and wellness in times of tragedy. That's on Our Body Politic.
Farai Chideya:
Welcome back to Our Body Politic. If you're just tuning in, we're continuing our conversation with Danyel Smith, longtime music magazine editor and author of both fiction and nonfiction. Her new book is Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop. I want to move into more of your personal journey and how it comes out in this book. Let's start with Vibe. There is a point in the book where you talk about someone threatening your life. I mean, that's not trivial, in a business, in the music industry, where people do get shot over both business and perceptions of beef. Can you just tell us a little bit about the circumstances and how you handled it?
Danyel Smith:
I was functioning off instinct. I was functioning off... There are some wonderful ways in which I was raised as a little girl, but there are also some terrible ones. I was functioning off both of those experiences. Our space in the world is so huge, culturally, as Black people, that because it gets narrowed down to such small spaces, like at the end of the day, Vibe, Ebony, Essence, those spaces at the Black magazines become very hotly contested territories. They mean more, frankly, even than they ought to. And I was head of one of them when rap and R&B had just moved again after the '80s to the top of the charts, and everybody wanted a Vibe cover. And that literally was my job, to take advice from my amazing staff, whoever was on it at the time. So yes, I got the call, and when-
Farai Chideya:
From a music industry executive, someone who had institutional power who threatened your life.
Danyel Smith:
Yes. And who we all know and love currently, and who I speak to.
Farai Chideya:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. You talk about having a million photographs with this person and just not backing down, and not taking this lightly, but also not rolling over.
Danyel Smith:
No. I wasn't going to roll over. In hip-hop at that time, rolling over was just asking for the rest of your professional days to be miserable and you'd never get anything done. And I hate even the sound of my voice right now, because it's so easy, honestly, for me to fall back into that mode of listen, Vibe is my responsibility and I am my responsibility, and it seems to me that you are trying to harm both. So listen to me. If you want me to fight, sir, that is available to you. I don't act that way anymore, but I definitely did. And I had to, and I think what's wild about it is people respected me for that.
Danyel Smith:
Like I really have to act this way in order for men in particular and sometimes women to take me seriously in my position in this job. It's wild how on a day-to-day, you don't feel the weight of it. You don't feel the amount of energy that you're putting into the fight. But if you really do look at my career, I've never stayed in an editorial job at the top of the masthead for longer than maybe just over two years, because I wake up and say, "I'm tired, and it's time for me to write, or it's time for me to go back to school, time for me to travel, or just rest."
Farai Chideya:
You did so much as editor of Vibe. And I, of course, used to write for Vibe with Gratitude before you became editor-in-chief. And it was a huge part of my development as a writer who had been trained in majority white newsrooms where Black people were a they, and then to be able to write for Vibe where Black people were a we.
Danyel Smith:
That's a beautiful way to put it, Farai. A beautiful way to put it. Vibe is and was a correction of the record. Professor Eric Weisberg wrote a book, and he's quoted in Shine Bright as saying, "America's Top 40 is not America's Top 40, if it ever was." And to be honest with you, the reason why Vibe was so successful is because we were covering the music that was actually the most popular in this country and in the world, and other people were covering what they wished was the most popular music in this country and in the world, and that is the reason why their numbers were sagging as ours were growing. It felt so wonderful to be a part of the magazine that was dealing in truth.
Danyel Smith:
See, everyone thinks, "Oh, it's a Black magazine." Yes, it was. It's a multicultural magazine, absolutely. But the Black and multicultural staff, without question, we were in service to see the truth, which was hip-hop rules, which was Biggie, and Tupac, and Toni Braxton, and Busta Rhymes, and Lauryn Hill, and Mariah Carey, and Whitney Houston, Beyonce, Destiny's Child, Jay-Z, all these people that should have been on the covers of mainstream magazines throughout the '90s. It's only in the 2010s that you really begin to see it. And it's still not reflective of the impact that R&B and rap has on the global pop culture.
Danyel Smith:
I came up almost as an advocacy journalist. Hip-hop was very much in need of defending in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the world at large was calling it a fad and saying that it would never last and it wasn't art and it wasn't real music. That doesn't mean that the art form isn't problematic and doesn't need to be interrogated as much as it is celebrated.
Farai Chideya:
I'm going to wrap up here by asking you a little bit about your journey to self-define. Throughout this book, you are really also giving us a history, I think, of how you became a woman, and reading some of the passages about the cruelty of your stepfather and the ways in which you had to self-define and find all sorts of spaces, whether it was summer camp, or school musicals, or just riding your bike, to be free. As a child, did you think you could be free, given all you were facing?
Danyel Smith:
I think as a child, I had a brief time, once I realized that I was in the situation that I was in and that I might be in it for a while, the cruel situation, I had a brief period of thinking that I could never be free. But I had, honestly, backup, my sister Raquel, my best friend in the world. But I also had the love of my great-grandparents, who I write about a lot in this book. My great-grandparents overloved us, and they trusted us to do the right things.
Danyel Smith:
They trusted that we could sit, as I write about in Shine Bright, and just listen with my blind great-grandfather to a whole A's game, which gave me my first taste of being a citizen of a city, that I am from Oakland and we have a baseball team and we are really a good and strong community here. These are the kind of things that gave me, when I was going through some terrible times, the ability to say, "I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to get some kind of life that matters to me, and I'm going to do it, if I have to, on my own."
Farai Chideya:
So what gives you the joy and the strength to keep being vulnerable and keep expressing your freedom as you evolve?
Danyel Smith:
I believe in my own writing as a space for me to really just be known and understood, and I think that that's what so many Black women in music are doing. They sing out, and they songwrite, and they dance, and they choreograph, and they do all these things to be known and understood, because so often that's just taken from us, so I keep right on going, Farai, and also because it's fun. I literally enjoy it.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, we are the better for it, Danyel. I could talk to you all day, but I'm going to let you keep on keeping on with your book tour. Thank you so much.
Danyel Smith:
Farai, thank you for having me. It's much appreciated. Love you dearly.
Farai Chideya:
Love you too. That was author Danyel Smith on her new book, Shine Bright, and her career journey as a music journalist. And now, on this week's Our Body Politic Presents series, we get a chance to stay in tune with Black voices in pop culture. This series highlights independent voices in audio, and that includes host and producer Imara Jones interviewing here one of the most celebrated Black musicians of our time, Janelle Monae, eight time Grammy Award nominated singer, songwriter, producer, and actor.
Imara Jones:
In 2020, you told the world that you were both non-binary and pansexual, and I'm wondering what that means to you, because words mean different things to different people. I'm wondering if you can just talk to us about what the words mean to you personally right now, and how, since you've said them, has it impacted your creativity and your perspectives as a person and an artist?
Janelle Monae:
Yeah, I mean, I think as you evolve and as life reveals things and as you start to discover the nooks and crannies of who you are, what you can be, what you're into, all that shifts and changes. It becomes like a journey and not a destination. As I'm going through my journey, I'm in real time, I'm growing in front of the public, which can be very stressful, but it comes with the territory. And so I try to be as honest to where I am as possible. I also don't put any pressure on myself to reveal anything. If it's in a casual conversation or if I'm supporting a community or if I feel like it, then I move. But I just think that sexuality, gender, all of that is such a personal relationship with oneself.
Imara Jones:
Yeah. I think that that's really important that we are a dynamic people. We are always learning and growing and changing. We're not static. We don't have to have everything figured out, even though we get in a trap of thinking that we do. The world tells us that we have to have everything figured out, but we don't. And a part of us being creative people is that dynamism. And I think that as you continue to speak from your own personal experience, that'll be really important because it's going to give people the courage to continue to be themselves, and it's a part of your art that just continues to unfold.
Janelle Monae:
Yeah, I think you're right about that. I think that there was probably a time where I did feel like, "Oh, well, I said this last year, but I feel differently this year. Oh, well, am I a hypocrite?" I think those are just questions, but I'll tell you, I'm in the most carefree, I don't have anything to prove, space that I feel like I've ever been in. Like I don't owe anybody an explanation for my decisions. Just because I have a platform that does not mean that I need to say everything or talk about everything. There's no way that I can keep everybody up to speed and up to date on what's going on in my mind.
Janelle Monae:
And I'm still becoming who I am, my own self, and I'm allowing myself the space, and I encourage everybody else to allow yourself the space, to change, to grow, change your mind given new information, to not be embarrassed by publicly having to learn a lesson. I think that we're all teaching each other. How do we continue to, in our most authentic ways, become those examples. I mean, if that happens, it happens, but you keep living life and just know that you can say and do and be what you want to do. But you have to have that I don't give a (beep) level of attitude about like I actually don't... I'm not considering the world when I'm making my decision, if that makes sense.
Imara Jones:
Yes. Wow. Totally. How does it feel for you to realize that you're at the point in your life where you feel the most open and carefree that you've ever been? What is that like in your body?
Janelle Monae:
It feels euphoric. It's like a deep happiness. But you know what? I didn't just get here overnight. I think even doing Dirty Computer, that album, I did this retrospective where I was just really thinking back to who I was, and some of the old photos that I was looking at, I was like, "Man." I was so unhealed, and had so many rejection, abandonment issues, I didn't even know it back then. But I think being an artist amplified it because my relationship with my father, which we're close, very close now, my mama had me, he didn't claim me. He didn't know. He didn't want to be a father at that time. And then he ended up dealing with drug abuse and he became sick, and sick to the point where he couldn't really mentally engage with me in the way that I would want to have a relationship with my father.
Janelle Monae:
And there were moments he'd say he's coming to pick me up, and he's not. So people who have dealt with parents as addicts will know what I'm talking about, but that kind of feeling of coming into the world feeling rejected and abandoned carried with me, but I didn't know that because I had so much love around me. My mom loved me. My aunties loved me. My family loved me. I had a big support system, but that still bothered me and I think I buried it. And what do they say? What you bury will grow. And I started to have this unhealthy relationship with being perfect so that nobody would leave me. Perfect performance, perfect album. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Like I can't make a mistake, I can't afford, because I don't ever want to feel the pain of being abandoned or rejected.
Janelle Monae:
If people don't like my next album, what does that mean? What does that mean to lose an audience? And that was connected directly to my childhood. I didn't know that, and now that I've healed from that, I was like, "Man, what? Oh my god." So I'm learning to love myself in a way, radically in a way, that I just hadn't. So a part of me needed to go to therapy, have necessary conversations with friends and family. And if you're in a relationship with somebody, what does that mean to be pansexual, what does that mean to be non-binary? They have families, their families may have questions. You have to just be really ready, and also know that you have people that you have to talk to that are in your life in a real way, and what does it mean to grow and not be that thing and have to tell them, "Hey, take it or leave it," or have to deal with well, what if they abandon you? All of that was considering, and I'm so happy I'm over that stage in my life where I'm even considering thinking about them.
Imara Jones:
In 2019, you dedicated your Grammy nominations to trans people, and I'm wondering what led you to do that. And was there any blowback, side eyes, people saying that you shouldn't have done that, and was there any downside of you doing so? Can you just talk a little bit about that, what the impact has been, if anything?
Janelle Monae:
I mean, I have trans friends who I hang out with all the time. When I look at a community of folks with such a resilient spirit, or I look in the eyes of my friend, I'm not always like, "Oh, you're trans." That's just not how I rock. We are human, we are everybody's everything, but I'm looking at everybody's spirits and I just did not love, and I still to this day do not love, how my trans brothers and sisters and folks are treated. I don't like how trans people are treated in the Black community. I'm Black, so I can talk about it. I've seen it, and I don't love it, and I hate it, honestly.
Janelle Monae:
I think it's up to white people to do everything that they can in their power to reach back and protect marginalized people. If you walk around in this world and you have privileges that some people don't, I encourage you to use your power. Don't abuse it, but use it to help further the careers, the lives, the safety of marginalized folks. And I think for me, being an artist, having a platform, not having to deal with the same things that my trans friends have to deal with, I felt that responsibility, and I think that came from a genuine place, and it'll always come from a genuine place.
Farai Chideya:
That was the TransLash podcast with Imara Jones. Coming up next, our weekly roundtable Sippin' the Political Tea talks mental health and wellness practices with a licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson, and co-founder of GirlTrek, Vanessa Garrison. You're listening to Our Body Politic.
Farai Chideya:
Each week on the show, we bring you a roundtable called Sippin' the Political Tea. Last week, we spoke with Black journalists from Buffalo, New York, and of course, there was the mass killing by a self-identified white supremacist there. This week, we are confronted with the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, leaving 19 children and two teachers dead. President Joe Biden spoke after the killing and said that the Second Amendment was not absolute, and he added...
President Joe Biden:
The idea an 18 year old can walk into a store and buy weapons of war designed and marketed to kill is, I think, just wrong.
Farai Chideya:
President Biden's remarks came just days before the start of the NRA's convention, and most political analysts don't see a coalition for gun law reform in Congress. And yet here we are, more people killed in racial terrorism, more children killed by an 18 year old, somebody barely not a child himself. So what do we do emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually for our wellness? To center wellness, we have Vanessa Garrison, co-founder of GirlTrek, the largest public health organization in the US for Black women. Welcome, Vanessa.
Vanessa Garrison:
Thank you for having me.
Farai Chideya:
And Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson, licensed clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor at University of Michigan School of Public Health. Hi, Dr. Anderson.
Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson:
Hello.
Farai Chideya:
So Dr. Anderson, you're a clinical psychologist who specializes in working with young people. I want to start out by playing a little bit of a interview we did with Nelba Marquez-Greene, a licensed therapist who's also the mother of Ana Grace, who was killed in the shootings a decade ago at Sandy Hook.
Nelba Marquez-Greene:
In the aftermath of Ana's killing, we wanted to make sure that other children who are loved just as much as her, as her brother Isaiah, would have resources also as they experienced tragedy or came from situations where they needed to heal. So we provided mental health support conferences funding for many different schools, we were embedded and are embedded in many different schools providing direct mental health services.
Farai Chideya:
Dr. Anderson, Nelba is both a mental health professional and a griever who lost her six year old to one of these mass shootings. So she and her husband are doing all sorts of things. They started a school, they're doing all these interventions. This is a core part of their life, and they still have a young man who's their son who they have raised. What resources are there for families who either are directly dealing with something like this, or whose kids happen to be walking by the television and watch the sobbing families and watch the pictures of dead children? How do you tell people to resource themselves and their families for these moments?
Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson:
Yeah, I promise I'm going to get to your question, but I have to share some of the things that I've started seeing that hit me especially hard this week. When I'm looking through Twitter, I'm looking through the reactions that people are having, parents and educators are talking about having these drills in the classroom that are preparing children for active shooters. And it dawned on me that we're asking these children to be ready for what we're saying is the inevitable, that something is going to happen, when in reality, we don't have to have active shootings. We simply do not have to have folks with assault rifles walking around in our communities and in our country. So the first thing that I would say with respect to how do we resource ourself is to actively work toward legislation and talk to our representatives to enforce this process where we're not needing to do these drills, not needing to give resources to our babies.
Farai Chideya:
What do you think most schools are equipped to do for kids these days? I mean, I'm thinking about my mother who spent 16 years in the Baltimore City Public School System. Any thoughts for teachers or caregivers?
Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson:
Absolutely. So I'm a product of the Detroit Public School System. Both of my parents are educators in DPS. I was also an educator in the Atlanta Public School System, so this is hitting especially hard for me and my family, frankly. The reality is we're not equipped in our public school systems to deal with these types of large-scale issues. There are so many daily things that our children are walking into our classrooms with already, and it's hard to even address those things, so it's really important for school systems or schools in particular to partner with local community services, because it's really unfair to ask any one teacher to have all the equipment to handle all of the things that their kiddos are coming into the classroom with. That doesn't absolve them of having certain skill sets. So we should, again, be taking time to process with our little ones, so to show them our own emotion, but it also requires school-level administration to partner with people with these skill sets.
Farai Chideya:
And I want to turn to you, Vanessa. I am a huge fan of what you have done with GirlTrek, creating space for Black women to join in solidarity around our health, our wellness, our enjoyment of life. And this isn't just about what happens to kids after a shooting like this. All of us carry stress in our bodies. How does the practice of GirlTrek and the kind of work that you have built up over years impact our ability to be resilient and to heal?
Vanessa Garrison:
In a couple of ways. The first is we build communities of care and we give women the tools to organize themselves so that they can be the lifeline and resource for each other on the ground. I cannot tell you... And this was before this shooting this week, last week after the Buffalo shooting, I had a woman who she reached out to me after a walk I led and she was like, "I've been afraid, afraid to go outside." And that is a dominant theme that we hear from women in GirlTrek. They're afraid to go outside. They were afraid to go outside during the pandemic. They're afraid to go outside because of police violence. Now they're afraid to go outside because a trek to the grocery store could get you murdered. And when you live in that reality, you carry that trauma in your body, in your bones.
Vanessa Garrison:
And GirlTrek offers a solution to that through a daily discipline of walking, a daily discipline of walking that is going to literally move that negative energy through your body. That's going to create space for you to process what's going on. That's going to slow the world down for you a little bit, step by step by step so that it doesn't feel like the onslaught is just coming and coming and coming. And then we have a call to action around justice and frontline activism. So women in GirlTrek are not just walking because there is a health crisis which is killing Black women, and there is, but we are walking because the health crisis that's killing Black women is rooted in systemic injustice, and we understand that we have to now be healthy enough to stand on the frontlines so that we can do the hard work that needs to be done. And that includes legislation around gun violence, and healthcare, and education, and the ecosystem that allowed for this shooting to happen in Texas. So we implore women, men, allies, we're fighting for our lives, walking faster than the Grim Reaper out there.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what is it like for people who have not walked with GirlTrek to experience the kind of sisterhood and community and peer bonding? What do you want to happen? You've already talked a bit about it, but just give us a little taste of what your experience might include.
Vanessa Garrison:
It's beautiful. We target Black women, but we have all sorts of people who walk with us. We have a podcast called Black History Bootcamp, and it's a walking podcast, 30-minute episodes, that are meant to be on your feet. And across the board, from allies, Black women, whoever's walking, people are having revelational personal transformations while they're out walking. That's what we want to happen. That's the first thing. They're connecting with parts of themselves that they had shut off, that we have allowed the noise to crowd out, like you're meeting yourself for the first time out on the trail or out on the pavement and they're having all of these personal ahas.
Vanessa Garrison:
But beyond that, something really powerful is happening. This year, GirlTrek is... We're reclaiming 1,000 Black neighborhoods to ensure that we have walking crews in all of those neighborhoods. And it's because when you are out walking in your neighborhood, you're able to talk with your neighbors, talk with the person you're walking with, and solve problems together, and you're able to audit the environment around you. You're able to actually assess for yourself, like, "Do we have sidewalks? Do we have green space here? Could I actually walk to the grocery store? Is there a safety issue if we're not in numbers?" And that's where we become informed as citizens through our walks.
Farai Chideya:
You are listening to Sippin' the Political Tea on Our Body Politic. I am Farai Chideya. This week, we're discussing mental and spiritual wellness in the face of tragedy with Vanessa Garrison, activist and co-founder of GirlTrek, and Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson, licensed clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. And going back to you, Dr. Anderson. As I was listening to Vanessa talk, it strikes me that there are a lot of different types of healing work that are going into a GirlTrek trek, but what are other ways that we can heal during times of trauma, mass trauma?
Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson:
It's a great question, and it's one... As Vanessa was saying, I was really struck by just how much goes into the body. So I think often, when we think about mental health, people really limit it to the mind. So when we're thinking about these various interlocking components, sometimes folks think of racism, as an example, as one component, and then they'll talk about economics, or nutrition, or education, or healthcare as these different components. But racism is this thing that allows for poor nutrition, allows for residential segregation, allows for challenges in healthcare. It is the tie that binds all of these systems of care in our communities.
Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson:
So if we're thinking about improving our mental health, it can be in any number of these systems. We can have smaller classrooms. That's something that I saw a lot in our Detroit Public Schools, classes of 45. How do you give individual attention to young people, how do you make sure that they're well when you have so many young people? Can we ensure that we have healthy foods in our local community centers, in our spaces of food service? Can we ensure that the healthcare that we provide is equitable? Can we make sure that the folks that are in the healthcare system are skilled and actually care about these community members?
Farai Chideya:
And Vanessa, you co-founded GirlTrek with Morgan Dixon a decade ago, and there's all sorts of wellness spaces. Some of them are very expensive, and places where you're supposed to buy a jar of cream for $100 or more, and that's one type of wellness space, spas are one type of wellness space, the woods are one type of wellness space. How do you think that the wellness industry deals with Black women?
Vanessa Garrison:
Yeah. Wellness and industry feels a little bit like a... Is it oxymoron or something, to me. There's a lot of products being marketed to Black women, but I don't think a lot of those products, services, and spaces are getting at the root of our needs. When Morgan and I, a decade ago, got into this work, we didn't come from a public health background. I was in media and she was an educator as well. And we were talking from a personal lens around the health crisis, and we were asking our own selves, "What do we do so that we avoid this trajectory," of which we had seen all of the women in our families and Morgan was seeing it, especially, in the girls in her classroom, where there wasn't just the threat of early death, but there was a decreased quality of life.
Vanessa Garrison:
And we were saying, "How do we change this for ourselves?" And walking, it's affordable. You don't need a gym membership. It's accessible. A good pair of sneaks will get you what you need. It democratizes health for so many people, walking, and that's why we settled on it. And it also has a historical context. Across the globe, walking has been used for social change from Gandhi and the Salt Marches to Mandela and Soweto to what we saw over these last couple of years in the United States when people have taken to the streets, because walking is how we galvanize our communities.
Farai Chideya:
And Dr. Anderson, part of your work includes helping Black families talk to their children about race and discrimination. So speak to those Black parents and parents of Black children who aren't always Black, who have a Black child or child of color who is asking, "Why are people like this? Why do people want to hurt me?"
Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson:
Yeah. Such a great question and great points. So when kids are asking questions around, "Why me," one of the things that we do in our work, it's based on the talk, which a lot of families of color know about, but it's really just sharing the joys and the challenges of race and racism with young people. The first rule is that you have to talk. So some families, often, who are not of color, think that silence, think that a shushing is appropriate when these questions come up, and that is not what the evidence demonstrates. So the first thing is that we have to have the talk if we're going to have the talk. You have to be able to have something come out of your mouth.
Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson:
The second is to make sure that you are well, that you've done your own processing, whether that's with a partner, whether it's a therapist, whether it's with yourself in the mirror, frankly. Have you done your own work? Can you pick up a journal? Can you process some of the things that are going around in your head? But when you're engaging with those questions, the third thing that we would say is to affirm your child. So if you start with the negative, that people don't like you, people don't like people like us, it's a hard life to be Black, while all those things may be true to some degree, what we know is that rooting our children in culturally affirming talk is going to help the rest of the conversation.
Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson:
So people may not like that you have such beautifully curly hair. People may find it challenging that you walk upright and tall and have such wonderful skills, have your own unique language, your own unique style. If you're able to tie it to some of these things that you've already affirmed, that might peak for your child, "Wow, that's that person's problem. It's not my problem that I'm living so beautifully, so wonderfully, so uniquely, that I have that type of talent in my body and in my culture. It's their problem that they can't handle it."
Farai Chideya:
I'm going to wrap up here, Vanessa. How do we have the talk with each other as sisters? Sometimes you have a friend who is making poor diet choices and has a comorbidity. Sometimes I might be that friend who's been struggling with my weight and really making a commitment. How do we talk to each other in ways that are loving and not judgmental, knowing that stress can drive behaviors from overeating to self-isolating?
Vanessa Garrison:
First, from an I statement, an I point of view. So in GirlTrek, we tell women, "We have thousands of organizers across the country, women who organize for GirlTrek, but you can't organize unless you have a personal testimony yourself around how GirlTrek has changed your life. And it's not about weight loss, but are you out there every day, getting your walk on, are you trying to overcome the same struggles I am?"
Vanessa Garrison:
From a friend point of view, from a family point of view, when you're going to try to engage somebody around their challenges, come from an I perspective of what you have personally experienced so that you can create a level of vulnerability that allows people to be honest with you about what they are experiencing and why they are that way. They might be paralyzed with fear, and that's why they haven't got off the couch. They might have a lack of comfort or care in their life. It will open up the gates for that person who you know is experiencing something to hopefully start to open up a little bit and start to share with you what they are experiencing.
Farai Chideya:
Well, thank you so much, Vanessa.
Vanessa Garrison:
Thank you.
Farai Chideya:
And thank you so much, Dr. Anderson.
Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson:
Thank you.
Farai Chideya:
That was Vanessa Garrison, activist and co-founder of GirlTrek, and Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson, licensed clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor at University of Michigan School of Public Health.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week -- and everywhere you listen to podcasts.
Farai Chideya:
Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora Farms. I'm the executive producer and host, Farai Chideya. Our Co-executive producer is Jonathan Blakely. Bianca Martin is our senior producer. Bridget McAllister is our booker and producer. Emily J. Daly and Steve Lack are our producers. Natyna Bean and Emily Ho are our associate producers.
Farai Chideya:
Production and editing services are by Clean Cuts at Three Seas. Today's episode was produced by Lauren Schild and engineered by Mike Goehler [GAY-lur] and Archie Moore.
Farai Chideya:
And thank you to our friends at TransLash Podcast, produced by Translash Media. Imara Jones is the host and executive producer. The TransLash team also includes Oliver-Ash Kleine, Callie Wright, Xander Adams, and Daniela Capistrano. Music for the show is courtesy of ZZK records.
Farai Chideya:
This program is produced with support from the Ford Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Democracy Fund, The Harnisch Foundation, Compton Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the BMe Community, Katie McGrath & JJ Abrams Family Foundation, and from generous contributions from listeners like you.