December 1, 2023 • 34 mins
How can we “act selfishly for our own humanity”? How might we recalibrate institutions so they reflect how our individual futures are intertwined? Explore these questions and more in a timely discussion with sociologist Ruha Benjamin. She takes on racism in education, healthcare, the arts and beyond in this riveting conversation.
Currently, Dr. Benjamin is an associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her book, Viral Justice, offers an inspiring vision of change.
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Race/Remix.
This is Race/Remix
a podcast that pushes forward, enriching
and challenging conversationsabout the arts and racial justice.
We talk with artists, poets, writers,
directors, dancers, designers, performers,
and creative practitionersfrom the Arizona community and beyond.
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As you listen, be inspired to advocateand activate in your community.
Together, we can create a more just
joyful and sustainable world.
Welcome to Race/Remix.
Welcome to Race/Remix.
I'm your host, Gloria Wilson.
Co-hosting this episode is Racial Justice
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Studio co-director Chelsea Farrar,and visiting with us
today in the studio is
Dr. Ruha Benjamin
Welcome to the show. Hi.
It's great to have you with us todayto talk about your latest project,
Viral Justice.
Thank you for havingme. I'm thrilled to be here.
So to start off, Ruha,
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can you tell us a bit about yourselfand the work that you do?
Absolutely.
So any question of origins, it'shard to think about,
you know, which story to tell.
What's the most relevant?
We could talk about my academic trajectoryand how it led me to this point
in this project,and that's perhaps the most boring, but
you can find that out onlineto kind of read how that has winded
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through different fields and led meto viral justice through black studies.
There's a personal trajectory.
My family of originand my African-American side
and my Iranian and Indian sideand my parents
meeting and deciding to marryafter one day of conversation,
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which I to give you a little glimpse ofin the intro to the book.
So that that's a little juicierthan an origin story
and how the merging of those familieshave really shaped my thinking
about race, ethnicity,diaspora, gender, nationality,
borders, and all of the thingsthat I ended up studying.
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And so I think
the thing that I will highlight here,
perhaps meeting in the middlebetween the academic and the personal,
is the fact that I am herebecause I've been cared for
and nurtured by multiple communitiesthroughout my life.
And so a lot of what motivates
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me is the sense of responsibilityand accountability
to all of the people and communitiesthat have poured into me.
My entire life.
So I don't I don't knowif I give this sense enough in the book,
the fact that growing upI always felt seen
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and I felt big up, as we might say,
a sense of purpose, a sense of a kinship
that I was moving through the world,not just for myself.
And so part of this bookis just one acknowledgment
for all
of the things that I'm grateful for,the people that have taught me,
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not just my academic mentors, but,you know, all of the different people.
And so in terms of the citationpractice in the book,
it's also trying to recognize that
we learn and we gain knowledgenot just from the things that we read, but
from the things that we observe,what we encounter,
the explicit thingspeople try to teach us, but also
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all of the implicit lessonsthat, for better or worse,
teach us what it to be human,to be responsible for each other.
And so I think what has led me to
this project is
just taking pause to note what haveI learned in my life up to this point?
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What are the sources of that knowledge?
How can I reflect backand share that with others?
And so in many ways, as I say
in the acknowledgments section,the whole book is an acknowledgment
for all of those tiesand those communities
that have poured into meand have in many ways just cheered me on.
I felt all my lifeand buffered me from the harsh and hostile
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environments that I have also navigatedthat we all navigate.
But I've learned that we can do thatbut still be protected
and protect each other in the process.
You have said so many things
that that trackand that resonate this notion of
community, the notion of responsibility.
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You mentioned the communitythat gave you the big ups,
you know, that tracksand what it seems like is
this is also returning that big upsto the community that protected you
and nurtured you, you know, through thesenotions of kinship and triggers, this
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idea of interdependence
that you talkso beautifully about in your introduction.
And so can you say more about that?
Absolutely.
You know,I was trying to think throughout the text,
you know, as much as I'm pointingto the things that are tearing us apart
and that are killing usis death making structures
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at every pointthat I highlight and observe and dissect.
One of those I'm pushing myselfto look around
for the antithesis,for the counter-narrative, for the process
that is working to affirm us,to grow different things and alternatives.
And so in many ways,my methodology of writing
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the book was urging myself
to look around forthe things that we need more of.
And so to the extentthat I think about the fracturing,
the tearing downthat so many of our institutions
and norms and structuresengage in on a day to day basis.
I want to ask ourselves, what's
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what's the reality that these structuresare fighting against?
The reality is that we are not atomized,individual, isolated,
free, floating
individuals.
We are connected, for better or worse.
That is to say, when something harms you,
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it in some ways is harming me.
But when I'm picked up in that that,you know, description of my my communities
that I have raised me over time is thatthey're doing that also for themselves.
They're pouring into mebecause it's coming back to them.
And so I want us to think aboutif the truth of our social
and spiritual realityis that we're interdependent.
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We are we have this sense of oneness.
How do we have to
recalibrate and restructure our world?
So it reflects that back at us.
And so one of the ways that we seethis truth
unfold is through our bodiesand our health.
That is to say,
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inequality makes everyone sick,
not just the obvioustargets of unequal systems.
And so when we start to actually see that,observe that empirically,
that in cities, states, countrieswhere there's a wider gap
between the haves and the have nots, therein those contexts, the so-called
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haves are internalizing the stressand the lie of their superiority.
We see thatin terms of public health outcomes.
So that's a signal.
That's a sign for us that that structure
of of resourcehoarding and opportunity hoarding,
while they may seem to benefiton one level,
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the principle of interdependence
makes us observe the way that it's harmful
in the long run for them through,
whether it's the kind of anxiety,whether it's kind of the anomie,
the isolation that is requiredto hoard resources and wealth.
One story that didn't make it in the book.
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If, for example,when I went to boarding school and in
what was then called Swaziland as a tinyone of the first things I observed
was that the very small elitein that country
essentially had to fortify themselvesbehind barbed wire and high walls,
that they had to imprison themselvesin their wealth
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and have guards and have all of
I mean, if you look from the outside,look like, you're living in a prison.
To me, that was a symbol of what it means
to structure a society against, you know,
this principle of interdependence,where you're trying to, you know,
hoard and maintainyour sense of superiority and wealth.
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And so that's just a signfor what we actually can see
in so many other arenasthat might not be as visible.
So, again, thinking about what it means,I think the invitation is
once we start to reckon with the fact thatequity justice this is not charity work.
This is not work that some groupsare doing on behalf of others.
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I'm inviting you to this workto act selfishly
for your own humanity,for your own well-being, to understand
that you are connected to every otherliving thing on this planet.
And so trying to create societies
that reflect that back at usis beneficial to everyone,
not just those who are currently sufferingthe most under these systems.
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Ruhollah.
Your latest book, project
Viral JusticeHow We Grow the World We Want,
is filled with such poetic language
and personal stories and references.
Some of the greats,the writers, such as Octavia Butler,
James Baldwin, Toni Morrison,Christina Sharpe.
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There are six chapters of the memoirand social analysis
chronicling moments and movements.
What were your goals in this project?
AQ For that overview, it's lovely.
You know, I started writing April 2020
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and in many ways I was writing for myself.
I was writing
to push myself to metabolize
the grief and the anger thatwe were all experiencing at that time.
It was likemy my personal mental health program
to think about, okay, with this,you know, onslaught of headlines and hot
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takes and hashtags, whether having to dowith public health or police violence.
How do I make sense of this?
How do I turn this into somethingthat could be nourishing,
that we can learn from, that we could,you know,
not sort of get buried under the
the harshness of the world that we were,
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you know, sort of witnessing together.
And so I started writing in that space,that emotional space and mental space.
And it required me to think about both
how I personally got here,but how we got here personally.
My own father,a few years prior, had passed away
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from another virus, the H1N1 virus,very suddenly.
And so I was tapping into that
still shockand grief of that personal loss.
But to
really think about the fact that it wasn'tthe virus that killed him.
It was a confluence of stressors
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and oppressors that made him vulnerable
to that meeting with the viruswe might see.
So that was a personal lessons.
Then Think about what are we dying from?
Are we simply dyingfrom a biological entity
that's wreaking havoc on the planet?
Or have we already been slowly dying
from a whole confluenceof stressors and oppressors
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that have made some more vulnerableto this particular moment than others?
So that was one starting pointthat I was trying to wrestle with
and think about How then doI plot those connections
between slow death and swift death
between our insides and our outsides?
How do I move us beyond this idea of
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individuals being predisposed to certain
forms of death in the waythat the language of predisposition
often takes the responsibilityoff of larger structures and institutions?
So that was one
goal, was trying to plot those connections
between thingswe might assume are discrete.
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And then the otherwas to really push myself to look around
for the answers that already existed,not to report that I was going
to present some new way forward,
but to say there are alreadypeople, groups, movements, initiatives
that long before this particular
moment of crisishave been working to create
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the kinds of the fabric,the social fabric that we need
to sustain ourselves, to buffer ourselves,
whether that is the kind of flourishingof mutual aid that we saw that had a long
standing tradition in many communitieswho may not even call it mutual
aid, just call it living
in community and sort of tracking that.
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What we assume is new in this moment.
There are deep rootsunderneath the forest floor,
the kind of myceliumthat give rise to this, these, you know,
this sprouting of these mushroomsand in moments of of crisis.
As I'm thinking here about an essayby Rebecca Solnit, who talks about how,
you know, when we see the mushroom,we think, just appeared out of nowhere.
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But no, under the forest floor,
there are these vast networksand connections happening underground.
And she likens that to the waythat social movements
and groups are working undergroundall the time, making connections,
and periodicallythey erupt above the forest floor.
And so just trying to, in my view,as so much of this book is trying
to look beneath the forest floorto see what has been happening all along
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that we haven't been paying attentionto, that we can draw
on as a form of sustenance to root us
as we try to create somethingnew out of this, this chaos and crisis.
And so I was thinking,if I'm writing myself towards that,
trying to nourish myself,then perhaps this is
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maybe there are other peoplewho would also appreciate this
redirection,this attention to not just the harms,
but also all of the soulsearching, soul affirming
practices of kinship
and community and movement buildingthat are happening all around us.
And in many ways we know about one or two.
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We have a view that you knowof part of the world
that this is happening,but I wanted to put it all in one frame
so we can see, you know,we actually are doing a lot.
There's a lot going on.
And so when we start to feel depressed,we start to feel,
you know, like there'sno chance that we're going to win.
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I want us to give us a view of reallyour power so that we can build on that.
And so it's really an invitationto own our own power, collective power,
as we try to not just uprootwhat's killing
us, but also see the kinds of practicesand things we want more of.
So imagine
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our audience and who might pick upthis book.
Scholars, Non scholars.
How would you describe
what viral justice is?
Yeah, it is a micro vision of change.
It's a way of looking at
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the things that are seemingly small
and understanding their import,understanding their connections
to larger processes.
Whether that seemingly small thingis a city budget
where we look and see,
these line items are telling us
where we're putting our public funds.
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It's a microscopic attentionto looking and seeing,
okay, if we're pouring all of this moneyinto policing, it's
not going into public health,it's not going into social welfare.
It's not going into housing and work.
It's not going into youth services.
And so when we start tolook at those little line items we see
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as the Seattle Solidaritybudget organizers taught me
and which I reference in the last chapter,that a budget is more than a budget.
It's a moral documentthat tells us what and who we value.
So that seemingly small thingactually is a portal,
a lens into something much more profound.
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And that when we start to changewhat those numbers look like,
as they did in Seattle, shiftingfunding away from policing
into the things that actually serve usand actually keep us safe,
that is that is that small shift
in digits is a profound shift in values.
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And and we can see evidence of that changein our everyday lives.
And so that's just one example of manywhere viral justice becomes a lens
to magnify something that seems otherwise,
a small or easy to dismiss.
So whether that's on the sort of clientside of budgets, but it's also on the what
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we might think of as the more humanisticside of things like poetry and art,
that we also need to sustain us, thatwe don't just need food and air and water,
but we need beauty and meaningso that the arts and poetry,
something small, like a
poem which easy to dismiss
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can be a way of reconnectingwith our own humanity and those of others.
And so it's bringing all of thatinto the frame so that we can understand
that we don't need everyone to doand be the same thing.
The wars against usare coming on different fronts,
top down, bottom up, sideways.
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So we need people working, thinking,investing their energy and talents
in in different arenas.
We don't need a prototype of an activistor an organizer that everyone else.
If you don't fit this mold,then you're not.
You're not. You're a sellout.
You know, we need to understand thatall of these different modes of
of relating and organizingand worldbuilding are valuable.
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And once we begin to really revalueall of the different ways
we come to the table,I think that is a beautiful foundation
to build community and build movementsrather than trying to cut off
parts of ourselves to fit a mold of aparticular, you know, type of
changemakerthat, you know, is quite limiting.
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I think.
In your introduction,
you set up kind of these different,
like you said, like it comesand looks in different ways, right?
And you set it up.
And so beautifully the different waysthat we see this notion of virility.
Will you read a passagethat gives a really great example of that
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first one as a page 11 there? Yes.
What if instead we re-imagined
virality as something we might learn from?
What if the virus is not something simplyto be feared and eliminated,
but a microscopic modelof what it could look like
to spread justice and joy in smallbut perceptible ways,
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little by little, day by day,
starting in our own backyards.
Let's identify our plots.
Get to the root cause of what's ailing us.
Accept our interconnectedness.
And finally grow the fuck up.
Thank you.
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I mean, you've talked already.
Describe this ideaof what this micro vision
for change means for youand how you how you came to that.
Yeah.
I mean, I think part of it is metrying to wrestle with my own training
as a sociologistand the attention to big macro
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processes and, you know, world like
global level phenomenon.
And, you know, we have wonderful languagearound institutional racism,
structural inequality,these lenses that are getting us
to pay attention at a scalethat is well beyond the individual.
And I think for myself,I developed a kind of allergic reaction
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to anything that reeked of individualism.
Like anything that was individualresponsibility, individual,
you know,if it just even smelled a little bit
like it was in that direction,I would break out into hives,
partly because of my training and partlybecause I know how that has been
weaponized to keep people in placeand to put responsibility
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on the most vulnerable for their own,their own circumstances.
That, in my own thinking, minimizedthe power of individuals
to shape culture,that a society is made up of people.
An institutionlike we talk about institutional racism
as if it does not rely on individualsmaking decisions that are harmful.
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And so in some ways, that languagethat my disciplinary language
can become a kind of alibi for individualsnot to take responsibility
for the ways they are complicitand responsible for injustice.
And so, again, me writingthis book for myself was thinking, okay,
I need to reckonwith the power of individuals,
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both as a form of complicity,but also as a form of accompaniment.
How can we channel our individual power,link arms to actually move things
in the direction that we think we wantto go rather than just throw up our hands
and think, this is all institutionalinjustice or structural?
And so I can't do anything, you know, likewe have to watch in our own minds
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how that becomesa way out of taking action
and trying to do something about the harmsthat we're seeing.
And so it's an attention to viralityor the seemingly small
ways that we all participate
in unjust systems is not an endpoint.
It's not to say, well, you know,this is the way it is, is to say if
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that is what we're doing by justclocking in and out, following directions,
following orders,you know, as a teacher, for example,
that might be, you know, teaching a classthe way it's been taught for the last
30 years, you know, the same deadwhite guys not questioning the canon,
you know, just carrying on businessas usual, rather than saying,
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why are these the only people thatwe're looking at as a source of knowledge?
Did they were thereother people who were being
neglected, scholars, artists, thinkers
who I might want to includein this class on X, Y, and Z?
So that moment of me not caring, thepattern continuing on business as usual
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is is
within all of us can sort oftake that individual
power back from the institutionsthat we work in to question and not to say
there won't be consequences
and not to say that there won't bea backlash because certainly we're living
in a profound moment of backlash,especially in the educational setting
when it comes to teaching thingsthat are different, expanding the canon.
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So that is certainly the case.
But I think we we have to
not simply put our heads downand assume that because things
are happening at these larger levels,that we have absolutely no power.
And my invitation is to say we do
and we especially dowhen we work collectively.
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So not to saythat I have to go at it alone,
but when we look around and think,who else cares about this thing?
Who else is working on this thing?
How can I join up with them?
And when we begin to organizeon a more collective level
against whether it's injustice in oureducational system, health care work.
And so there are lots of examples of that.
And one comes to mind really quickly
just in this context of educationand technology.
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A few years ago,a number of schools were just kind
of adopting these learning,these learning platform platform,
these systems in schools to make learningmore efficient and tailored.
Facebook was designingone called Summit Learning
that was being adopted in many schools,and there was a group of students
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in a Brooklyn high school that noticed,okay, we hear all these buzzwords,
tailored learning,you know, efficient, etc., etc.
but we get to see our teacherfor 15, 20 minutes a week
of human contact.
Otherwise, we're stuck behindthese screens and tablets under the guise
of more progressive,you know, high tech education.
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And they decided, no,this is not real education.
And they staged a walkoutand they made their feelings and thoughts
known and got thatplatform removed from the school.
And this is just oneexample of many of young people
taking actionand saying this is not real education.
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And so we see that in.
And I'll give you one more example,
just because it's on my mindin terms of health care, medical students
who were like,we're going out into communities
where we know these stressors are in andpressers are impacting people's health.
But our medical education is notaddressing the role of racism in health.
And so they looked at the curriculum,they looked at who was teaching them.
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They looked at the slidesthat they were the pedagogy
and they formed an organization calledWhite Coats for Black Lives and chapters
all around the country and startedstaging all walkouts and dying.
And when we had these high profile murdersand they didn't just object
to the lack of attention
and care and medical educationfor the role of police violence.
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But they saidwe need to change the curriculum.
We need to change who's teaching us.
And so they decided, you knowwhat, y'all are trying to grade us.
We can't grade you.
We're going to grade the medical schools.
We're going to put a report out every yearthat kind of says where you fall along
the spectrum of dealing with curriculumand faculty and community engagement
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and on and on.
This is an example of viral justicebecause it's people owning their power
and not seeing themselvessimply have consumers of an education
that has been predetermined, but shapingthe education that they want and need.
Saying you we can't graduate without thisbasic knowledge of racism and justice.
And so you need toyou need to meet us where where we are.
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And so, again, many, many examples.
And when we start to,
I think, hear and see, itcan embolden us to think what's happening
in our ownbackyards. That needs to change.
How can we link arms with othersand begin to to
to plot to plot a different way forward?
Well, you read another passagefrom your introduction
Page 19, starting with viraljustice as an admission.
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Of viral justice is an admission.
I am.
We are exhausted, discouraged, grieving,
and sometimes even to exhausted to grieve.
It is a recognitionthat even the most resolute
and hopeful among us worrythat our efforts are futile,
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and we need encouragementto see another day
in its attention to everyday insurrectionsand beautiful experiments.
Radical designsfor living, seeking, venturing, testing,
trying, speculating, discovering,exploring new avenues,
breaking with traditions,defying law, and making it
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viral justice expresses a deep longing
that animates black life
and that listing,I should say, is quoting here
You can't hear the quotes,but quoting Saidiya Hartman
Beautiful experiments.
This podcast, The Race Remix,
is part of the Racial Justice Studio.
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And so in the Racial Justice Studio,we're really interested in the stories
of how the arts intersect withabolitionist and anti-racist practices.
And so one of the reasonswe really enjoyed your book
is because it's it talks about and givesgreat examples of the ways in which
visual culture, the arts,
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like through fashion and the waywe present ourselves in the world.
And you write about this ideaof presentation for preservation
or visual indicators of care.
Can you talk a little bit more about whatthat is, what you mean by that?
Absolutely.
So this was a section of the bookwhere I was describing some experiences
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of being a kind of tween and teenand running up against my grandmother's
sense of fashion and respectability
and my own kind of grunge rundown, rugged
holey jeans, you know,big oversize clothes, combat boots.
And so really thinking about fashionas a side of struggle
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and as a side of race making and identity
making and generationally
really thinking aboutwhere those tensions came from rather
than just seeing it just dismissing,it's just respectability politics.
Thinking about what in her lifehad made the investment
an a certain kind of esthetic look,especially when moving through the world,
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especially when traveling so important
and thinking about whatour fashion communicates to others.
And for her generation,you know, growing up in Arkansas,
moving to Atlanta for collegeand then Texas later as an adult,
moving through the world, what that thatparticular way of looking like you belong
to someone is the way that I describe it,where your clothes are pressed just right
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where you have the white gloves,where you wear, you look like.
Put together that.
That's not simply tryingto be white or trying to be
wealthy.
It's a way of communicatingthat someone woke up early
to press my clothes, to wash my,
you know, gloves to get my hat just right.
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So if I go missing.
So if something happens to me,people are going to come looking.
And so it's a way of communicating againthat you belong to someone that some
some group of people took care to, to
to get you ready and present you.
So learningthat only really coming to grips
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with that later I understood whymy esthetic which look like
I didn't belongand nobody I belong to myself
was in some ways threateningbecause it meant that,
if something happens to me, it
just felt like a very
fragile
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but meaningfulway of trying to protect me.
That didn't feel like protectionat the time.
And and so, again, to your pointthat art esthetics representation
there more than meets the eye,you know, there's a whole politics
and sociality bubbling beneath the surfacethat I think behooves us
to really think about and reckon withrather than just reacting to the surface.
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You have you have been so generous,
so thoughtful,
so vulnerable.
We appreciate that.
And the beautiful work
that you have done and you've lefta lot for us to be inspired by.
And so thank you so much.
Again, the honor was all mine.
Thank you so muchfor the really generative questions
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that elicited all of that gushiness.
Thank you for joining the conversationon Race Remix today.
The podcast is the creation of RacialJustice Studio in Tucson, Arizona.
Land of the Tohono O’odhamand and the Pascua Yaqui.
This episode would not have been possiblewithout the efforts
of our team of students, staff and facultyfellows Me, Chelsea Farrar,
(33:31):
Amy Kraehe, gloria wilson, Isaac Schutz,
Deanna Scott, and Jenny Stern.
This program is brought to youby Arizona Arts at the University
of Arizona, with generous supportfrom John and Sandy Flint.
If you enjoyed this episode,please invite your friends,
family, students and colleagues to listen.Interested in joining our community,
or listening to more episodes, pleasevisit https://RaceRemix.Arts.Arizona.Edu
(33:57):
and sign up to receive an emailabout upcoming news and events.
You can also learn more aboutall of our guests in the show notes.
Race/Remix.
This is Race/Remix
a podcast that pushes forward, enriching
and challenging conversationsabout the arts and racial justice.
We talk with artists, poets, writers,
directors, dancers, designers, performers,
and creative practitionersfrom the Arizona community and beyond.
(00:23):
As you listen, be inspired to advocateand activate in your community.
Together, we can create a more just
joyful and sustainable world.
Welcome to Race/Remix.
Welcome to Race/Remix.
I'm your host, Gloria Wilson.
Co-hosting this episode is Racial Justice
(00:43):
Studio co-director Chelsea Farrar,and visiting with us
today in the studio is
Dr. Ruha Benjamin
Welcome to the show. Hi.
It's great to have you with us todayto talk about your latest project,
Viral Justice.
Thank you for havingme. I'm thrilled to be here.
So to start off, Ruha,
(01:05):
can you tell us a bit about yourselfand the work that you do?
Absolutely.
So any question of origins, it'shard to think about,
you know, which story to tell.
What's the most relevant?
We could talk about my academic trajectoryand how it led me to this point
in this project,and that's perhaps the most boring, but
you can find that out onlineto kind of read how that has winded
(01:28):
through different fields and led meto viral justice through black studies.
There's a personal trajectory.
My family of originand my African-American side
and my Iranian and Indian sideand my parents
meeting and deciding to marryafter one day of conversation,
(01:49):
which I to give you a little glimpse ofin the intro to the book.
So that that's a little juicierthan an origin story
and how the merging of those familieshave really shaped my thinking
about race, ethnicity,diaspora, gender, nationality,
borders, and all of the thingsthat I ended up studying.
(02:09):
And so I think
the thing that I will highlight here,
perhaps meeting in the middlebetween the academic and the personal,
is the fact that I am herebecause I've been cared for
and nurtured by multiple communitiesthroughout my life.
And so a lot of what motivates
(02:30):
me is the sense of responsibilityand accountability
to all of the people and communitiesthat have poured into me.
My entire life.
So I don't I don't knowif I give this sense enough in the book,
the fact that growing upI always felt seen
(02:51):
and I felt big up, as we might say,
a sense of purpose, a sense of a kinship
that I was moving through the world,not just for myself.
And so part of this bookis just one acknowledgment
for all
of the things that I'm grateful for,the people that have taught me,
(03:13):
not just my academic mentors, but,you know, all of the different people.
And so in terms of the citationpractice in the book,
it's also trying to recognize that
we learn and we gain knowledgenot just from the things that we read, but
from the things that we observe,what we encounter,
the explicit thingspeople try to teach us, but also
(03:36):
all of the implicit lessonsthat, for better or worse,
teach us what it to be human,to be responsible for each other.
And so I think what has led me to
this project is
just taking pause to note what haveI learned in my life up to this point?
(03:57):
What are the sources of that knowledge?
How can I reflect backand share that with others?
And so in many ways, as I say
in the acknowledgments section,the whole book is an acknowledgment
for all of those tiesand those communities
that have poured into meand have in many ways just cheered me on.
I felt all my lifeand buffered me from the harsh and hostile
(04:21):
environments that I have also navigatedthat we all navigate.
But I've learned that we can do thatbut still be protected
and protect each other in the process.
You have said so many things
that that trackand that resonate this notion of
community, the notion of responsibility.
(04:43):
You mentioned the communitythat gave you the big ups,
you know, that tracksand what it seems like is
this is also returning that big upsto the community that protected you
and nurtured you, you know, through thesenotions of kinship and triggers, this
(05:04):
idea of interdependence
that you talkso beautifully about in your introduction.
And so can you say more about that?
Absolutely.
You know,I was trying to think throughout the text,
you know, as much as I'm pointingto the things that are tearing us apart
and that are killing usis death making structures
(05:26):
at every pointthat I highlight and observe and dissect.
One of those I'm pushing myselfto look around
for the antithesis,for the counter-narrative, for the process
that is working to affirm us,to grow different things and alternatives.
And so in many ways,my methodology of writing
(05:47):
the book was urging myself
to look around forthe things that we need more of.
And so to the extentthat I think about the fracturing,
the tearing downthat so many of our institutions
and norms and structuresengage in on a day to day basis.
I want to ask ourselves, what's
(06:09):
what's the reality that these structuresare fighting against?
The reality is that we are not atomized,individual, isolated,
free, floating
individuals.
We are connected, for better or worse.
That is to say, when something harms you,
(06:31):
it in some ways is harming me.
But when I'm picked up in that that,you know, description of my my communities
that I have raised me over time is thatthey're doing that also for themselves.
They're pouring into mebecause it's coming back to them.
And so I want us to think aboutif the truth of our social
and spiritual realityis that we're interdependent.
(06:54):
We are we have this sense of oneness.
How do we have to
recalibrate and restructure our world?
So it reflects that back at us.
And so one of the ways that we seethis truth
unfold is through our bodiesand our health.
That is to say,
(07:16):
inequality makes everyone sick,
not just the obvioustargets of unequal systems.
And so when we start to actually see that,observe that empirically,
that in cities, states, countrieswhere there's a wider gap
between the haves and the have nots, therein those contexts, the so-called
(07:39):
haves are internalizing the stressand the lie of their superiority.
We see thatin terms of public health outcomes.
So that's a signal.
That's a sign for us that that structure
of of resourcehoarding and opportunity hoarding,
while they may seem to benefiton one level,
(08:03):
the principle of interdependence
makes us observe the way that it's harmful
in the long run for them through,
whether it's the kind of anxiety,whether it's kind of the anomie,
the isolation that is requiredto hoard resources and wealth.
One story that didn't make it in the book.
(08:23):
If, for example,when I went to boarding school and in
what was then called Swaziland as a tinyone of the first things I observed
was that the very small elitein that country
essentially had to fortify themselvesbehind barbed wire and high walls,
that they had to imprison themselvesin their wealth
(08:46):
and have guards and have all of
I mean, if you look from the outside,look like, you're living in a prison.
To me, that was a symbol of what it means
to structure a society against, you know,
this principle of interdependence,where you're trying to, you know,
hoard and maintainyour sense of superiority and wealth.
(09:07):
And so that's just a signfor what we actually can see
in so many other arenasthat might not be as visible.
So, again, thinking about what it means,I think the invitation is
once we start to reckon with the fact thatequity justice this is not charity work.
This is not work that some groupsare doing on behalf of others.
(09:29):
I'm inviting you to this workto act selfishly
for your own humanity,for your own well-being, to understand
that you are connected to every otherliving thing on this planet.
And so trying to create societies
that reflect that back at usis beneficial to everyone,
not just those who are currently sufferingthe most under these systems.
(09:53):
Ruhollah.
Your latest book, project
Viral JusticeHow We Grow the World We Want,
is filled with such poetic language
and personal stories and references.
Some of the greats,the writers, such as Octavia Butler,
James Baldwin, Toni Morrison,Christina Sharpe.
(10:16):
There are six chapters of the memoirand social analysis
chronicling moments and movements.
What were your goals in this project?
AQ For that overview, it's lovely.
You know, I started writing April 2020
(10:37):
and in many ways I was writing for myself.
I was writing
to push myself to metabolize
the grief and the anger thatwe were all experiencing at that time.
It was likemy my personal mental health program
to think about, okay, with this,you know, onslaught of headlines and hot
(11:00):
takes and hashtags, whether having to dowith public health or police violence.
How do I make sense of this?
How do I turn this into somethingthat could be nourishing,
that we can learn from, that we could,you know,
not sort of get buried under the
the harshness of the world that we were,
(11:21):
you know, sort of witnessing together.
And so I started writing in that space,that emotional space and mental space.
And it required me to think about both
how I personally got here,but how we got here personally.
My own father,a few years prior, had passed away
(11:43):
from another virus, the H1N1 virus,very suddenly.
And so I was tapping into that
still shockand grief of that personal loss.
But to
really think about the fact that it wasn'tthe virus that killed him.
It was a confluence of stressors
(12:06):
and oppressors that made him vulnerable
to that meeting with the viruswe might see.
So that was a personal lessons.
Then Think about what are we dying from?
Are we simply dyingfrom a biological entity
that's wreaking havoc on the planet?
Or have we already been slowly dying
from a whole confluenceof stressors and oppressors
(12:29):
that have made some more vulnerableto this particular moment than others?
So that was one starting pointthat I was trying to wrestle with
and think about How then doI plot those connections
between slow death and swift death
between our insides and our outsides?
How do I move us beyond this idea of
(12:52):
individuals being predisposed to certain
forms of death in the waythat the language of predisposition
often takes the responsibilityoff of larger structures and institutions?
So that was one
goal, was trying to plot those connections
between thingswe might assume are discrete.
(13:13):
And then the otherwas to really push myself to look around
for the answers that already existed,not to report that I was going
to present some new way forward,
but to say there are alreadypeople, groups, movements, initiatives
that long before this particular
moment of crisishave been working to create
(13:34):
the kinds of the fabric,the social fabric that we need
to sustain ourselves, to buffer ourselves,
whether that is the kind of flourishingof mutual aid that we saw that had a long
standing tradition in many communitieswho may not even call it mutual
aid, just call it living
in community and sort of tracking that.
(13:56):
What we assume is new in this moment.
There are deep rootsunderneath the forest floor,
the kind of myceliumthat give rise to this, these, you know,
this sprouting of these mushroomsand in moments of of crisis.
As I'm thinking here about an essayby Rebecca Solnit, who talks about how,
you know, when we see the mushroom,we think, just appeared out of nowhere.
(14:20):
But no, under the forest floor,
there are these vast networksand connections happening underground.
And she likens that to the waythat social movements
and groups are working undergroundall the time, making connections,
and periodicallythey erupt above the forest floor.
And so just trying to, in my view,as so much of this book is trying
to look beneath the forest floorto see what has been happening all along
(14:43):
that we haven't been paying attentionto, that we can draw
on as a form of sustenance to root us
as we try to create somethingnew out of this, this chaos and crisis.
And so I was thinking,if I'm writing myself towards that,
trying to nourish myself,then perhaps this is
(15:03):
maybe there are other peoplewho would also appreciate this
redirection,this attention to not just the harms,
but also all of the soulsearching, soul affirming
practices of kinship
and community and movement buildingthat are happening all around us.
And in many ways we know about one or two.
(15:25):
We have a view that you knowof part of the world
that this is happening,but I wanted to put it all in one frame
so we can see, you know,we actually are doing a lot.
There's a lot going on.
And so when we start to feel depressed,we start to feel,
you know, like there'sno chance that we're going to win.
(15:46):
I want us to give us a view of reallyour power so that we can build on that.
And so it's really an invitationto own our own power, collective power,
as we try to not just uprootwhat's killing
us, but also see the kinds of practicesand things we want more of.
So imagine
(16:07):
our audience and who might pick upthis book.
Scholars, Non scholars.
How would you describe
what viral justice is?
Yeah, it is a micro vision of change.
It's a way of looking at
(16:28):
the things that are seemingly small
and understanding their import,understanding their connections
to larger processes.
Whether that seemingly small thingis a city budget
where we look and see,
these line items are telling us
where we're putting our public funds.
(16:51):
It's a microscopic attentionto looking and seeing,
okay, if we're pouring all of this moneyinto policing, it's
not going into public health,it's not going into social welfare.
It's not going into housing and work.
It's not going into youth services.
And so when we start tolook at those little line items we see
(17:12):
as the Seattle Solidaritybudget organizers taught me
and which I reference in the last chapter,that a budget is more than a budget.
It's a moral documentthat tells us what and who we value.
So that seemingly small thingactually is a portal,
a lens into something much more profound.
(17:33):
And that when we start to changewhat those numbers look like,
as they did in Seattle, shiftingfunding away from policing
into the things that actually serve usand actually keep us safe,
that is that is that small shift
in digits is a profound shift in values.
(17:55):
And and we can see evidence of that changein our everyday lives.
And so that's just one example of manywhere viral justice becomes a lens
to magnify something that seems otherwise,
a small or easy to dismiss.
So whether that's on the sort of clientside of budgets, but it's also on the what
(18:17):
we might think of as the more humanisticside of things like poetry and art,
that we also need to sustain us, thatwe don't just need food and air and water,
but we need beauty and meaningso that the arts and poetry,
something small, like a
poem which easy to dismiss
(18:38):
can be a way of reconnectingwith our own humanity and those of others.
And so it's bringing all of thatinto the frame so that we can understand
that we don't need everyone to doand be the same thing.
The wars against usare coming on different fronts,
top down, bottom up, sideways.
(18:59):
So we need people working, thinking,investing their energy and talents
in in different arenas.
We don't need a prototype of an activistor an organizer that everyone else.
If you don't fit this mold,then you're not.
You're not. You're a sellout.
You know, we need to understand thatall of these different modes of
of relating and organizingand worldbuilding are valuable.
(19:21):
And once we begin to really revalueall of the different ways
we come to the table,I think that is a beautiful foundation
to build community and build movementsrather than trying to cut off
parts of ourselves to fit a mold of aparticular, you know, type of
changemakerthat, you know, is quite limiting.
(19:43):
I think.
In your introduction,
you set up kind of these different,
like you said, like it comesand looks in different ways, right?
And you set it up.
And so beautifully the different waysthat we see this notion of virility.
Will you read a passagethat gives a really great example of that
(20:05):
first one as a page 11 there? Yes.
What if instead we re-imagined
virality as something we might learn from?
What if the virus is not something simplyto be feared and eliminated,
but a microscopic modelof what it could look like
to spread justice and joy in smallbut perceptible ways,
(20:29):
little by little, day by day,
starting in our own backyards.
Let's identify our plots.
Get to the root cause of what's ailing us.
Accept our interconnectedness.
And finally grow the fuck up.
Thank you.
(20:49):
I mean, you've talked already.
Describe this ideaof what this micro vision
for change means for youand how you how you came to that.
Yeah.
I mean, I think part of it is metrying to wrestle with my own training
as a sociologistand the attention to big macro
(21:11):
processes and, you know, world like
global level phenomenon.
And, you know, we have wonderful languagearound institutional racism,
structural inequality,these lenses that are getting us
to pay attention at a scalethat is well beyond the individual.
And I think for myself,I developed a kind of allergic reaction
(21:35):
to anything that reeked of individualism.
Like anything that was individualresponsibility, individual,
you know,if it just even smelled a little bit
like it was in that direction,I would break out into hives,
partly because of my training and partlybecause I know how that has been
weaponized to keep people in placeand to put responsibility
(21:57):
on the most vulnerable for their own,their own circumstances.
That, in my own thinking, minimizedthe power of individuals
to shape culture,that a society is made up of people.
An institutionlike we talk about institutional racism
as if it does not rely on individualsmaking decisions that are harmful.
(22:22):
And so in some ways, that languagethat my disciplinary language
can become a kind of alibi for individualsnot to take responsibility
for the ways they are complicitand responsible for injustice.
And so, again, me writingthis book for myself was thinking, okay,
I need to reckonwith the power of individuals,
(22:42):
both as a form of complicity,but also as a form of accompaniment.
How can we channel our individual power,link arms to actually move things
in the direction that we think we wantto go rather than just throw up our hands
and think, this is all institutionalinjustice or structural?
And so I can't do anything, you know, likewe have to watch in our own minds
(23:05):
how that becomesa way out of taking action
and trying to do something about the harmsthat we're seeing.
And so it's an attention to viralityor the seemingly small
ways that we all participate
in unjust systems is not an endpoint.
It's not to say, well, you know,this is the way it is, is to say if
(23:28):
that is what we're doing by justclocking in and out, following directions,
following orders,you know, as a teacher, for example,
that might be, you know, teaching a classthe way it's been taught for the last
30 years, you know, the same deadwhite guys not questioning the canon,
you know, just carrying on businessas usual, rather than saying,
(23:49):
why are these the only people thatwe're looking at as a source of knowledge?
Did they were thereother people who were being
neglected, scholars, artists, thinkers
who I might want to includein this class on X, Y, and Z?
So that moment of me not caring, thepattern continuing on business as usual
(24:13):
is is
within all of us can sort oftake that individual
power back from the institutionsthat we work in to question and not to say
there won't be consequences
and not to say that there won't bea backlash because certainly we're living
in a profound moment of backlash,especially in the educational setting
when it comes to teaching thingsthat are different, expanding the canon.
(24:36):
So that is certainly the case.
But I think we we have to
not simply put our heads downand assume that because things
are happening at these larger levels,that we have absolutely no power.
And my invitation is to say we do
and we especially dowhen we work collectively.
(24:59):
So not to saythat I have to go at it alone,
but when we look around and think,who else cares about this thing?
Who else is working on this thing?
How can I join up with them?
And when we begin to organizeon a more collective level
against whether it's injustice in oureducational system, health care work.
And so there are lots of examples of that.
And one comes to mind really quickly
just in this context of educationand technology.
(25:22):
A few years ago,a number of schools were just kind
of adopting these learning,these learning platform platform,
these systems in schools to make learningmore efficient and tailored.
Facebook was designingone called Summit Learning
that was being adopted in many schools,and there was a group of students
(25:42):
in a Brooklyn high school that noticed,okay, we hear all these buzzwords,
tailored learning,you know, efficient, etc., etc.
but we get to see our teacherfor 15, 20 minutes a week
of human contact.
Otherwise, we're stuck behindthese screens and tablets under the guise
of more progressive,you know, high tech education.
(26:05):
And they decided, no,this is not real education.
And they staged a walkoutand they made their feelings and thoughts
known and got thatplatform removed from the school.
And this is just oneexample of many of young people
taking actionand saying this is not real education.
(26:27):
And so we see that in.
And I'll give you one more example,
just because it's on my mindin terms of health care, medical students
who were like,we're going out into communities
where we know these stressors are in andpressers are impacting people's health.
But our medical education is notaddressing the role of racism in health.
And so they looked at the curriculum,they looked at who was teaching them.
(26:48):
They looked at the slidesthat they were the pedagogy
and they formed an organization calledWhite Coats for Black Lives and chapters
all around the country and startedstaging all walkouts and dying.
And when we had these high profile murdersand they didn't just object
to the lack of attention
and care and medical educationfor the role of police violence.
(27:12):
But they saidwe need to change the curriculum.
We need to change who's teaching us.
And so they decided, you knowwhat, y'all are trying to grade us.
We can't grade you.
We're going to grade the medical schools.
We're going to put a report out every yearthat kind of says where you fall along
the spectrum of dealing with curriculumand faculty and community engagement
(27:32):
and on and on.
This is an example of viral justicebecause it's people owning their power
and not seeing themselvessimply have consumers of an education
that has been predetermined, but shapingthe education that they want and need.
Saying you we can't graduate without thisbasic knowledge of racism and justice.
And so you need toyou need to meet us where where we are.
(27:55):
And so, again, many, many examples.
And when we start to,
I think, hear and see, itcan embolden us to think what's happening
in our ownbackyards. That needs to change.
How can we link arms with othersand begin to to
to plot to plot a different way forward?
Well, you read another passagefrom your introduction
Page 19, starting with viraljustice as an admission.
(28:18):
Of viral justice is an admission.
I am.
We are exhausted, discouraged, grieving,
and sometimes even to exhausted to grieve.
It is a recognitionthat even the most resolute
and hopeful among us worrythat our efforts are futile,
(28:41):
and we need encouragementto see another day
in its attention to everyday insurrectionsand beautiful experiments.
Radical designsfor living, seeking, venturing, testing,
trying, speculating, discovering,exploring new avenues,
breaking with traditions,defying law, and making it
(29:03):
viral justice expresses a deep longing
that animates black life
and that listing,I should say, is quoting here
You can't hear the quotes,but quoting Saidiya Hartman
Beautiful experiments.
This podcast, The Race Remix,
is part of the Racial Justice Studio.
(29:25):
And so in the Racial Justice Studio,we're really interested in the stories
of how the arts intersect withabolitionist and anti-racist practices.
And so one of the reasonswe really enjoyed your book
is because it's it talks about and givesgreat examples of the ways in which
visual culture, the arts,
(29:46):
like through fashion and the waywe present ourselves in the world.
And you write about this ideaof presentation for preservation
or visual indicators of care.
Can you talk a little bit more about whatthat is, what you mean by that?
Absolutely.
So this was a section of the bookwhere I was describing some experiences
(30:07):
of being a kind of tween and teenand running up against my grandmother's
sense of fashion and respectability
and my own kind of grunge rundown, rugged
holey jeans, you know,big oversize clothes, combat boots.
And so really thinking about fashionas a side of struggle
(30:28):
and as a side of race making and identity
making and generationally
really thinking aboutwhere those tensions came from rather
than just seeing it just dismissing,it's just respectability politics.
Thinking about what in her lifehad made the investment
an a certain kind of esthetic look,especially when moving through the world,
(30:53):
especially when traveling so important
and thinking about whatour fashion communicates to others.
And for her generation,you know, growing up in Arkansas,
moving to Atlanta for collegeand then Texas later as an adult,
moving through the world, what that thatparticular way of looking like you belong
to someone is the way that I describe it,where your clothes are pressed just right
(31:16):
where you have the white gloves,where you wear, you look like.
Put together that.
That's not simply tryingto be white or trying to be
wealthy.
It's a way of communicatingthat someone woke up early
to press my clothes, to wash my,
you know, gloves to get my hat just right.
(31:38):
So if I go missing.
So if something happens to me,people are going to come looking.
And so it's a way of communicating againthat you belong to someone that some
some group of people took care to, to
to get you ready and present you.
So learningthat only really coming to grips
(32:00):
with that later I understood whymy esthetic which look like
I didn't belongand nobody I belong to myself
was in some ways threateningbecause it meant that,
if something happens to me, it
just felt like a very
fragile
(32:21):
but meaningfulway of trying to protect me.
That didn't feel like protectionat the time.
And and so, again, to your pointthat art esthetics representation
there more than meets the eye,you know, there's a whole politics
and sociality bubbling beneath the surfacethat I think behooves us
to really think about and reckon withrather than just reacting to the surface.
(32:46):
You have you have been so generous,
so thoughtful,
so vulnerable.
We appreciate that.
And the beautiful work
that you have done and you've lefta lot for us to be inspired by.
And so thank you so much.
Again, the honor was all mine.
Thank you so muchfor the really generative questions
(33:07):
that elicited all of that gushiness.
Thank you for joining the conversationon Race Remix today.
The podcast is the creation of RacialJustice Studio in Tucson, Arizona.
Land of the Tohono O’odhamand and the Pascua Yaqui.
This episode would not have been possiblewithout the efforts
of our team of students, staff and facultyfellows Me, Chelsea Farrar,
(33:31):
Amy Kraehe, gloria wilson, Isaac Schutz,
Deanna Scott, and Jenny Stern.
This program is brought to youby Arizona Arts at the University
of Arizona, with generous supportfrom John and Sandy Flint.
If you enjoyed this episode,please invite your friends,
family, students and colleagues to listen.Interested in joining our community,
or listening to more episodes, pleasevisit https://RaceRemix.Arts.Arizona.Edu
(33:57):
and sign up to receive an emailabout upcoming news and events.
You can also learn more aboutall of our guests in the show notes.
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