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- ✋🏾#6: My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem - Book Summary & Key Takeaways
✋🏾#6: My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem - Book Summary & Key Takeaways
What is white body supremacy? How did white supremacy come about? Whose fault is racialized trauma? What is white fragility? How can I make a difference?
Hello courageous people and welcome to the sixth edition of the newsletter! ❤️🙏
This week, our featured book is My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem and it is time to spend some time looking at and dealing with our racialised trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and bodies.
There are 2 really important notes I need to make before you jump in and start reading:
🌏 1. About the transferability and applicability of this book to Australia, as this is where the vast majority of PTG Weekly readers are located. Though this book is centred on the experience of white supremacy and racialized trauma in America, and has a large focus on African Americans there are so many parallels to us here in Australia. From the origin stories of white body supremacy being rooted in European history, immigration and colonisation to the systemic injustices faced by our First Nations people, the messages in My Grandmother’s Hands are just as relevant and urgent for us.
👩🏻 2. This summary focusses more on white people. This may sound counterintuitive, but the reality is this: I am a white person with a predominantly white readership. The book has different sections focussing on actions that each group can take, in the categories of white bodies, black bodies and blue bodies, ie. police. If we (as white people), want to truly make a difference we need to first look deeply at ourselves, our behaviours, our trauma and take action.
So here are the key takeaways - let’s jump in! All text in italics are quotes taken directly from the book.
📖 What is the story behind the title “My Grandmother’s Hands”?
At the very beginning of the book, Resmaa speaks fondly of his Grandmother. Spending time sitting with her on the sofa, watching television and sometimes she would ask him to rub her hands because they were painful. He says this:
She wasn’t a large woman, but her hands were surprisingly stout, with broad fingers and thick pads below each thumb. One day I asked her, “Grandma, why are your hands like that? They ain’t the same as mine.”
She replied, “Boy, that’s from picking cotton. I started working in the fields sharecroppin’ when I was four. The cotton plant has pointed burrs in it. When you reach your hand in, the burrs rip it up. When I first started picking, my hands were all torn and bloody. When I got older, they got thicker and thicker, until I could reach in and pull out the cotton without them bleeding.” - page 4
This speaks to one of the through lines of the book, that white body supremacy isn’t something that lives in our cognitive, thinking brains. It lives in our bodies whether we have a white one or a black one. And until we are able to face, understand and overcome the way that racialized trauma exists in our bodies we won’t begin to scratch the surface on the pervasive way that white supremacy lives in us all.
🧐 What is white body supremacy?
A lot of the time when people hear the phrase white supremacy, the Ku Klux Klan comes to mind. Those people who are outright and forthcoming with their racism. But white supremacy is actually far bigger, far more common, and far more pervasive than that.
In her book, What Does It Mean to Be White?, Robin DiAngelo describes white supremacy as “the all-encompassing centrality and assumed superiority of people defined and perceived as white, and the practices based on this assumption.
White supremacy does not refer to individual white people per se and their individual intentions, but to a political-economic social system of domination.
This system is based on the historical and current accumulation of structural power that privileges, centralizes, and elevates white people as a group. I do not use it to refer to extreme hate groups. I use the term to capture the pervasiveness, magnitude, and normalcy of white dominance and assumed superiority.” - page 18
One way white supremacy manifests is seeing being white as the “norm” or standard for human beings, and people of colour being a deviation. A white actress, for example is referred to as “an actress” but a black actress will be specified as “a black actress”. The way that too often in fashion (and also bandaids) the colour “skin tone” is of white toned skin, as if there are no other options for the skin colours.
⚔️ How did white-on-white trauma create the foundation for what would become white supremacy?
Quick history lesson. (Side note: There have been many phases to this, so let me just say right off the bat that this is an extremely condensed version of an already extremely condensed version in the book!)
“What white bodies did to Black bodies they did to other white bodies first. - Janice Barbee” - page 57
It was 1619 when the first Africans were kidnapped, taken to America and enslaved by European immigrants. But I was surprised to learn that this point in time doesn’t coincide with the origin of white supremacy. That is because this type of trauma— human on human harm existed long before the 1600’s—people murdering, torturing, oppressing, abusing, conquering and colonising (🇬🇧 England, we see you 👀) each other.
Executions through the medieval period in England were spectacles, put on stages for crowds of people to watch. It isn’t difficult to understand why people were fleeing to America during those times, with many of those people having been brutalized themselves:
“Did over ten centuries of medieval brutality, which was inflicted on white bodies by other white bodies, begin to look like culture? […] The carnage perpetrated on on Blacks and Native Americans began as an adaptation of longstanding white-on-white practices. This trauma has yet to be healed among white bodies today.” - page 61-62
This trauma has been passed down through the generations, held on to by our ancestor’s bodies, embedded in their systems and ultimately into ours.
📈 How did white supremacy escalate and embed itself into all aspects of our society?
In the 1600’s (and earlier) the term “white people” didn’t exist. People were simply referred to as English or Portuguese or Dutch or Spanish. Resmaa writes that the first time white people were referred to wasn’t until the late 1600’s. And then, white supremacy really took a turn for the worse, ie. its rise:
It was only in the late seventeenth century that white Americans began in earnest to formalize a culture of white- body supremacy. This culture was designed to blow centuries of trauma through millions of Black bodies and to attempt to colonize the minds of people of all colors. - page 63
This came about by the actions of wealthy white land owners, vying for power and control over their workers. Less well off white people and black people once would revolt together against the conditions imposed by them upon their white, powerful bosses on plantations, so in order to help quiet the unrest, they created a pecking order of sorts.
The wealthy land owners would give a small parcel of land to white workers and say to them, “You’re just like us! You have land to work and you’re white.” but would not extend the same opportunity to black workers, thereby creating a severe power and wealth imbalance. Repeat en masse, over hundreds of years and it is easy to see how white supremacy rose.
⏭ Fast forward to when governments, medical institutions and education systems were being developed, the lopsidedness and damage continued at scale until we reach the present moment.
😩 Ugh.
🤷♀️ So, is racialized trauma anyone’s fault?
No, not really. It’s been a long time in the works. Resmaa says:
Trauma is never a personal failure, nor the result of someone’s weakness, nor a limitation, nor a defect. It is a normal reaction to abnormal conditions and circumstances. Nevertheless, “I had been traumatized” is never a valid excuse for murder, or any other crime. Neither is “My ancestors were traumatized.” These statements are calls to heal, not to cause harm. - page 205
It might not be our (and by us, I’m talking about me and my fellow white people) fault, but that does not mean that we get to sit back and do nothing. We cannot be helpless and we cannot push the burden back onto Black people or other people of colour to fix this giant problem that we are all stuck in the middle of.
If we want to make true progress, one of the first things we have to do is understand how white people are getting in the way of everyone’s ability to heal.
🙋🏻♀️ What do we (ie. white people) need to acknowledge before moving forward?
If you are a white person, this is a section from the book that we really need to take on board:
Your white body was not something you chose. But the imaginary construct of whiteness is something you can change. Simply because you have a white body, you automatically benefit from white-body supremacy, whether you want to or not.
Even if you’re the most fair-minded person on Earth, at times certain privileges will be conferred upon you because of the color of your skin. Your whiteness is considered the norm, and the standard against which all skin colors—and all other human beings—are compared. That alone provides you with a big advantage.
I’m not blaming you for this, or asking you to feel guilty or ashamed about it. But you do need to be aware of what those privileges are and how they function. You need to not take those privileges for granted as your birthright. You were granted those privileges, but you did not earn them. - page 205
Let’s repeat that: we did not earn them.
🤕 What is white fragility?
You might have heard this term before, and when reading more about this I have absolutely been guilty of these behaviours myself.
White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviours such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation.
This insulated environment of racial privilege builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress. - page 99
🥶 What are some more specific examples of white fragility?
We need to read these, re-read them and practise recognising when we—or other people—are using them.
🤔 What is the difference between clean pain and dirty pain?
💧 Clean pain is the type of pain and discomfort that helps us mend and heal, that helps us grow. It is stepping into the discomfort, the vulnerability and the unknown, despite not wanting to, but knowing that it is exactly the thing that must be done.
☠️ Dirty pain is when we avoid, blame and deny. It expresses when we respond from our unhealed wounds, becoming cruel or even running away. Dirty pain creates more pain. It only multiplies.
Both of these are uncomfortable. Neither of them do we want to go through and experience, but remember this:
Healing involves discomfort—but so does refusing to heal. And, over time, refusing to heal is always more painful. - page 19
🥺 How do we get better at choosing clean pain instead of dirty pain?
Choosing clean pain means doing the work. It means showing up.
Throughout the book there are sections on Body Practices which can help us be more settled, make better decisions and confront ourselves when we need to. One of the most frequently referred to exercises is the 5 Anchors.
🚢 What are the 5 Anchors and how do we use them?
⚓️ Anchor 1: Soothe yourself to quiet your mind, calm your heart, and settle your body.
⚓️ Anchor 2: Simply notice the sensations, vibrations, and emotions in your body instead of reacting to them.
⚓️ Anchor 3: Accept the discomfort—and notice when it changes—instead of trying to flee from it.
⚓️ Anchor 4: Stay present and in your body as you move through the unfolding experience, with all its ambiguity and uncertainty, and respond from the best parts of yourself.
⚓️ Anchor 5: Safely discharge any energy that remains. - page 218
In order to get the full benefit and understanding of these and all the other strategies and techniques Resmaa shares, I would highly highly (like really really) recommend that you buy the book, and take the time to experience and practice them yourself. I wish I could, but it is impossible to do them all justice here!
🥾 I’ve almost finished reading this summary. What are the best next steps I can take?
Firstly, we need to make sure that we (white people), don’t keep pushing the responsibility of guiding us out of white supremacy onto our black and other people of colour brothers and sisters.
We are the only ones who can get us out of this, and we need to stand up and take that responsibility. Resmaa has this message for us:
“To all my white countrymen, I say this: Not only is it not my business to lead you out of white-body supremacy, but I would do you a profound disservice by trying to do so. You need to develop, lift up, and follow your own leaders in the work of dissolving white-body supremacy. If you don’t—if you choose to follow a Black Pied Piper—you will collectively reaffirm the myth of white fragility and helplessness in racialized contexts.” - page 262
We need to stop deflecting, stop dismissing, stop looking to outsource the answers.
We need to educate ourselves, work on ourselves and metabolise our own racialized trauma.
It isn’t anyone else’s responsibility, and these are our next steps.
Finally, I’d like to leave you with this quote:
“I loved my grandmother every moment of my life. I still do. I know she did not invent the racialized trauma that both white and Black people blew threw her. None of those people, or their parents, or their grandparents, or many generations of their ancestors, invented this trauma. It was passed down and passed down and passed down.
It is now up to us—to you and to me and to everyone else who cares about human beings—to put a stop to this cycle of trauma. This means metabolizing the trauma in our bodies. It means accepting and moving through clean pain, individually and communally.” - page 82
I hope this has been helpful to you! As always, I am here for you and am happy to provide a willing ear if you have any thoughts or reflections bubbling up after reading.
Until next week,❤️🙏 Eleanor
This is a public post. If it has been useful to you, why not share it with a loved one 🤗
Additional links and resources:
If you are struggling, please reach out to a support service or professional:🤝 Human Rights list of Mental Health Support Services
🖥 Website - Resmaa.com - with loads of further resources and links
📸 Instagram - Follow Resmaa Menakem - 61k followers
🐥 Twitter - Follow Resmaa Menakem - 10k followers
Next week’s book:
Coming out next Friday 11th March 2022 is edition #7, featuring:📚 Invisible Girls: Speaking the Truth About Sexual Abuse🖋 by Dr Patti Feuereisen
Subscribe now to get the next edition straight to your inbox! 📬