January 28, 2025 • 58 mins
In this episode of Cults and the Culting of America, hosts Scot Loyd and Daniela Mestyanek Young engage in a profound conversation with Amanda Gross about the intersections of race, privilege, and healing. Amanda discusses her book, 'White Women Get Ready,' which explores the concept of Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome and the role of white women in anti-racist movements. The conversation delves into personal histories, the current climate of racism, the importance of community, and the challenges of navigating white privilege. They also touch on the impact of cancel culture and the role of arts in fostering healing and understanding. Throughout the discussion, the hosts emphasize the need for self-reflection, accountability, and the interconnectedness of liberation and healing.
Amanda's Links:
Book: White Women Get Ready
Recommended paired reading: Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Dr. Joy Degruy
Intagram: @MistressSyndrome
TikTok: @MistressSyndrome
Patreon: @MistressSyndromeBook
Daniella's Links:
You can read all about my story in my book, Uncultured-- buy signed copies here. https://bit.ly/SignedUncultured
For more info on me:
Patreon: https://bit.ly/YTPLanding
Cult book Clubs (Advanced AND Memoirs) Annual Membership: https://bit.ly/YTPLanding
Get an autographed copy of my book, Uncultured: https://bit.ly/SignedUncultured
Get my book, Uncultured, from Bookshop.org: https://bit.ly/4g1Ufw8
Daniella’s Tiktok: https://bit.ly/3V6GK6k / KnittingCultLady
Instagram: https://bit.ly/4ePAOFK / daniellamyoung_
Unamerican video book (on Patreon): https://bit.ly/YTVideoBook
Secret Practice video book (on Patreon): https://bit.ly/3ZswGY8
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:25):
Welcome to Cults and the Culting of America podcast.
I'm Scott Lloyd along with the knitting cult lady, Daniela Mestenec Young.
And she is always standing guard, working hard.
And every time I see her, she's knitting away and dropping knowledge about cults and theculting of America.
(00:46):
And that's what we're all about here, Daniela.
It's good to see you once again.
It's good to see you too.
Here we are.
We're officially like in the cults.
The bad guys are running the world.
It's gonna be an interesting time.
a challenging few days here, challenging few years to come.
But thankfully we have people like yourself and our guests tonight to inform us, to betterinform us and to help us navigate the days that are ahead.
(01:16):
We are joined tonight by Amanda Gross.
Amanda, it's great to have you tonight.
How are you?
Yeah, I'm doing okay.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's good to be here.
Yeah, and we sort of start these conversations by giving our guests an opportunity tointroduce themselves and tell us a little bit about your background.
(01:39):
And I'm sure we'll get into that story as we move along and what you're up to these days.
So Amanda, welcome.
Introduce yourself to all of these folks.
Yes.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Amanda Catherine with a K gross born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and havebeen for the past 15 years been involved in anti-racist organizing and for the last eight
(02:10):
years have been working on a book that came out in July called white women get ready howhealing post-traumatic mistress syndrome
leads to anti-racist change.
So a lot of my work is organizing with status quo and passing white ladies like myself tochallenge and confront and dismantle racism and do that in intersectional ways because all
(02:33):
of these systems are connected and support each other.
And I believe white women have a really important role to play.
Absolutely.
Can you, what was your subtitle again?
So the subtitle is, How Healing Post Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-RacistChange.
(02:53):
Okay, mistress syndrome.
Can you tell me a little bit about what that means?
That's the first time I've heard that term.
Yeah, absolutely.
So it's inspired by Dr.
Joy DeGruz's work on post-traumatic slave syndrome and used with her permission.
so Dr.
Joy's work is really looking at the multigenerational inherited trauma for people ofAfrican descent because of the legacy of enslavement and how structural racism continues
(03:20):
to play out today.
And part of her work in the introduction, she talks about
how if there is a post-traumatic slave syndrome, then there also must be a post-traumaticmaster syndrome.
Because in order to be complicit in doing harm to others, dehumanizing others, wedehumanize ourselves.
And so she's really looking at the legacy of enslavement for people of African descent,but offers this like little window, which I found a lot of inspiration from.
(03:50):
And I wanted to know, especially when I was first starting out organizing in anti-racistspaces,
often one of few white folks in multiracial spaces and beginning to facilitate a lot ofwhite affinity or white caucus spaces.
I was like, I need to read that book.
What's the book on post-traumatic master syndrome?
And so I had a colleague I went to and I asked him about where the book is and where Icould find it.
(04:15):
And he was like, it doesn't exist.
You should write it.
So it planted a seed and the post-traumatic master syndrome didn't quite fit.
because gender has been such an important part of my experience.
And so I began to really investigate the history of the mistress of the plantationhousehold and look at her legacy, the legacy of white womanhood.
(04:37):
And especially how I've been socialized into that identity, how I was raised in it as agood little white girl growing up in the South.
And yeah, how it's a barrier to our organizing, right?
When we come together in multiracial coalitions.
to make social justice and change happen.
Wow, that is incredibly interesting.
(04:57):
And as somebody who's done a little bit, not quite to the scholarly level that you've doneit, but a little bit of that work, it can be challenging.
And I think there, for the most part, if there are white people, people that look like youand me that want to do this kind of work, they don't take the time to do the internal work
(05:22):
first.
And that causes a lot of
issues because we live in a society, in a culture that was built for people that look likeus by people that look like us to the exclusion of black and brown and people of color in
this world.
so there's a lot of privilege for lack of a better term.
(05:46):
I know a lot of people don't like that, but it fits.
We call it normal, right?
Because that's the way that we have been instructed to believe things are in the world.
But obviously, for people that don't look like us, the experience is very different.
(06:07):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, whiteness is both normalized and rendered invisible on purpose.
we were taught if we're white, we're taught not to see it.
Yeah, that's really fascinating.
I have another podcast called Hey White Woman with a creator called White Woman Whisperer.
And she was talking today actually about like how healing is where we need to start.
(06:32):
Can you say more about that as well?
Mm hmm.
Yeah, absolutely.
well, a couple of things I can say about that.
One is, as I also always say that my work is a compliment, not a substitute.
Right.
And so I think it's really important, especially because white supremacy culture can be sodualistic in either or that like we can hold space for both.
(06:55):
And they're both really important and interconnected.
The self work and the self healing piece.
and if it's,
If it's deeply transformative, if it's actually personally transformative work, then it'sgoing to also be transformative in terms of our interpersonal relationships, in terms of
shifting culture, in terms of being able to shift power, in terms of being able to makepolicy change and systems change and structural change.
(07:20):
And I think the healing piece is also, I mean, so important because it's so counter towhite supremacy, right?
We're healing, we're acknowledging that there's harm.
first of all, which in order to continue to be complicit and uphold white supremacyculture, we have to deny that it exists, right?
There's a level of denial that happens.
(07:41):
So the acknowledgement piece is really important.
And the slowing down piece is really important in order to heal because capitalism is solike rush, rush, rush, do, do, do.
And yeah, and it doesn't, these systems of oppression don't want us to
be healed, don't want us to be in touch with our intuition and our bodies and listen tothat wisdom and be able to really attune to each other and attune to each other's
(08:09):
humanity.
And in order to be able to do that, we have to do our own deep healing work.
It's really important.
Amanda, tell us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and how you grewup, and how that led to these studies now as an adult.
(08:30):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, well, I trace two really important lineages that I feel like I'm connected to andcommunities that have really supported my work.
So I was raised in Atlanta, Georgia, in Dr.
King's legacy and the civil rights legacy in a lot of ways.
And so I had, you know, many educators growing up.
(08:52):
I was occasionally the only white kid in spaces.
And I was also born into a Mennonite community that my parents moved from places furthernorth to Atlanta on the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement.
And there are a lot of Mennonites who moved down to the south to be a part of thosemovements.
(09:17):
And so my family ended up there in more like service oriented work, but
Certainly those Anabaptists and social justice roots informed the work that Mennoniteswere doing.
The church that I grew up in Atlanta was actually started as an intentional multiracialcommunity in the 50s and 60s.
(09:42):
those are the legacies that I like to name and call into the space.
of course, neither of those histories and those legacies are also not.
without critique, like we could be critical lovers of those communities and thosehistories and legacies.
Yeah, and I have a very similar experience with my cult of Pentecostalism that I was apart of.
(10:08):
so, you know, the Pentecostal movement in North America traces its roots primarily to theAzusa Street Revival in 1906, Los Angeles, led by a black man who had innovations that he
learned from another minister, a white minister, but...
(10:29):
the popularity of Pentecostalism owes its existence to William J.
Seymour, a black man, the son of former slaves from Louisiana, who ended up in Californialeading this revival.
But a lot of his innovations were appropriated and then to the exclusion of black people.
(10:50):
And so I had all of these sort of problems in my movement as well, right?
There was lot to be said.
about progress being made on behalf of people of color.
But then every time progress was made, it was appropriated by white communities and thenpresented in a mediocre fashion.
(11:11):
And the people that were responsible for those innovations were never given the creditthat they deserve.
So I hear you when we look back on our heritage, right, with some sort of angst and cringeelement, because I see a lot of things that were
that were good, that were promising, but a lot of it feels bad now in retrospect, and itwas bad.
(11:34):
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
And I mean, Mennonites, I think there there are things to be proud of or I use the termMennonite humble because you're not supposed to be proud of Mennonite culture.
There are things to like that we can look back and be like, yeah, Mennonites helped writethe first petition against slavery in this country.
You know, there's there are things about the history of nonviolence and being a historicpeace church that I think are really important.
(11:56):
And there's also, you know, there are narratives that we don't tell.
Right.
Those are like the chosen traumas, chosen glories that we.
celebrate and I was certainly told about Anabaptist martyrdom in Europe being that likemain story.
Those were stories that I was told in the church during children's time when I was four.
But then, you the story of how my ancestors helped settle and colonize Pennsylvania anddisplaced the Lenape people, the ways that there are, you know, histories, traditions of
(12:29):
anti-Semitism built into like
parts of the Mennonite church, like there are these things that are not talked about verymuch or are beginning to be talked about more.
So it's always really interesting those, the narratives that we wanna uphold and glorifyand then the other parts of our history that get silenced as well.
Yeah, so speaking of parts of our history that get silenced, what's it like having thisbook out right now in history, day two of second Trump administration, when it seems like,
(13:04):
I mean, Elon Musk did a Nazi salute, right?
Like it seems like white supremacy is just saying everything out loud right now.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I mean, in some ways it's helpful that the way that racism has been covert in thelast couple of decades has been more overt.
(13:26):
Like it's been there.
It's not that it's not been around.
So I think there is clarity that comes from those overt forms of white supremacy.
And...
And also it's the same work.
I mean, it's different.
It's heightened, right?
(13:46):
Absolutely.
And it's, it's been the same work by like white womanhood has been used to leverage,oppression for centuries.
And, and I've had, know, several black organizers that I've worked with independent whodon't know each other have told me like, if white women would get their act together, like
(14:06):
these systems wouldn't stand a chance.
And so I think we're in the same position that we've been in.
And, and it is, you know, I think for some folks who have been able to be more comfortableor in denial, folks who have had a lot of access and relative advantage, white folks,
folks with class privilege, this is a moment where, you know, the harm is even more, thevisual, I mean, it's visible.
(14:37):
in more ways to more people.
And I'm holding that at the same time that the harm has happened for many communities,right?
Has been deep and consistent and not, even if it becomes more severe in some ways, it'sbeen persistent.
What are some of the things that you discovered in your studies that surprised you, thatyou found out and when you found out became very challenging perhaps to your, I think we
(15:08):
all carry this personal narrative of our lives, right?
And we sort of, we have this tendency to always put ourselves at the center of our heroicjourney.
But when you...
confront your history, your own history and the history, the problematic history that wehave here in the United States, you discover a lot of circumstances and atrocities that
(15:33):
give us pause.
And what I've had to come to terms with is that in a lot of ways, even though perhaps Iwas ignorant, I was still complicit with the abuse and the harm and the fact that we're
all swimming
in this system, again, that is built to privilege white people and to center whitepeople's lives and experiences.
(16:01):
It's really difficult to disengage from that and to think about it in a serious way andthe ways that it impacts you personally.
And in no way do I want to diminish the experiences of those that have lived thisfirsthand, right?
But
for those of us that are living in this culture for white people, racism, systemic racismperpetuates harm on everyone.
(16:29):
Am I right?
Yes.
Yeah, absolutely.
I would say to speak to your first question about what surprised me, I mean, there aredefinitely things that I found out about history.
Again, those stories that get passed down and told.
I chose the name, you know, that phrase, mistress syndrome, without thinking that Iactually had direct ancestry to like a plantation mistress.
(17:02):
and I mean, it's not like a direct lineage, but what I found out is that there were in mydirect line, there were two brothers and one of them stayed in Pennsylvania and you know,
became conservative Mennonite and that's who I'm descended from.
And another one moved to North Carolina and enslaved people and had a plantation.
And, so yeah, just like, I didn't know when I chose the term this stress syndrome, that itwould be like that directly close.
(17:31):
even though there are ways that I certainly have been socialized based on that legacy.
And I was aware of that.
So there are surprises in that respect.
then when I first started writing, I was really honing my critical analysis.
And I had this beautiful book of all the things that were wrong.
(17:55):
And I was so depressed.
It was a really rough.
several years of just reading the history of these horrors and horrors and all of thesuffering that folks have gone through.
I didn't want to write a book, another book about all of the things that are wrong.
I wanted to offer Grace Lee Boggs, this is the term solutionaries.
(18:18):
And she says, solutionaries are the real revolutionaries because they're working to createalternatives even as they dismantle the systems that are harmful.
and so I wanted a book that was more solutionary, that was more solutions based.
And I ended up, doing a whole, doctorate in expressive arts.
because yeah, like arts and culture, I needed that.
(18:42):
I needed story and I needed, I needed other places to go and not just be in the trauma insuch a heavy way.
and so one of the things that I learned in writing this book that I really wasn'texpecting was how to write narrative.
And the book became more and more memoir and more and more story focused as I realizedlike, stories hold wisdom.
(19:06):
Stories are, you know, a bomb stories can help us heal.
and so that was something that I really wasn't, wasn't expecting when I, when I firststarted to write.
It's amazing that like you're you're connected in that way, but I think it also speaks tolike that we're all connected in some way to like this stuff, you know, even as you're
(19:32):
talking like my family came from Slovakia or Yugoslavia in World War One.
So like in theory, we're not connected to any of this.
But I mean, I just remember the first time I heard the term white privilege and beinglike,
that explains it.
Like for someone like me coming here to the US at 15 and then just like, I always used tojust describe it as I'm being treated better than I should.
(20:03):
But I didn't understand like, what about that?
What do you have to say to like, like people like that, right?
That are like, well, not my ancestors, not my people, but like, we're all complicit today.
How do we start unlocking that?
Mm-hmm.
(20:23):
Yeah.
mean, sometimes like privilege or white privilege, people can get hung up on that term.
I really appreciate Martin Friedman's work and he uses the term relative advantage.
And so the idea that you can have the same, you know, be of the same gender, have the samelike economic status.
And if, you know, you are white and someone else is not white, that you're going to haverelative advantage based on race.
(20:50):
And so that's something that
no matter if someone arrived in a white body.
In the US, we get a race and an ethnicity, and folks are immediately racialized, no matterwhat country, what part of the world they come from.
And that can be hard if that's not someone's context or the frame that they're comingfrom, especially in terms of identity.
(21:14):
I think that can be really threatening to folks.
But to understand that relative advantage, I think, can be really helpful.
And the other part kind of to what you were speaking to earlier, Scott, is that likewhiteness is harmful, right?
That this harms white people.
so in order to assimilate into whiteness, like, you know, our ancestors have given up,gave up a lot, right?
(21:38):
Like there was names, language, you know, I don't speak, I don't speak German fluently.
I wasn't raised in the language of my ancestry.
There's a lot of...
The People's Institute for Survival and talks about how language is the first thing that'slost and food is the last thing.
So maybe there's recipes that get passed down, but culture and so much of those traditionsget lost and assimilating into whiteness.
(22:07):
And the values, like how we can be in relationship with each other in different ways,those also get often sacrificed and lost or devalued.
Yeah, you know, this is one of the areas that I noticed where it's like the cultexperience of this is just the kind of extreme version of what like white millennials are
(22:28):
going through.
And like exactly like you were saying, like because I grew up in a cult, like we didn't,we were separated from the family.
So we didn't even get like the recipes or the simple things that were passed down.
But like that's kind of what whiteness has done to everyone in the U.S.
And part of what, you know, in my book is the opposite of solutionary.
(22:52):
It's mostly just diagnosing the problems.
But it's like we've given up.
We've given up community for whiteness and all of these like groups and who belongs where.
And now like, this is what we've got.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
And it's disconnecting.
Like it's disconnecting between, you know, in our relationships and our communities andwhiteness disconnects and, you know, colonization also it's about separation.
(23:21):
But it also separates our minds from our bodies.
Like it separates internally too.
So I talk about the framework I offer in my book is looking at
these four D's of defensiveness and denial and distancing or dissociation and deferenceand the ways that those are trauma responses, right?
They align with fight, fight, fawn and freeze pretty neatly.
(23:45):
And they're things we've learned to protect ourselves, right?
Our bodies, we've learned them for a reason, but like white supremacy really plays onthose so that we're stuck in our trauma response.
We get stuck in defensiveness.
And we're disconnected from our bodies, so we aren't able to regulate our nervous systems.
We aren't able to ground.
We aren't able to really see the other person in front of us as human, because we getstuck in those places and just cycle.
(24:12):
And this is really a conversation because right now in the United States, the election ofTrump, you have him doing away with a lot of the diversity, equity and inclusion, hiring
practices, things of that nature.
In fact, the other day I heard the defense nominee, Pete Hexeth say that...
(24:37):
equality is a good word, equity is not a good word.
it blew my mind because I was like, how can you have equality in a society and in aculture that gives relative advantage, as you said, to white people?
And if you're looking to establish a meritocracy where people are actually judged on theirmerit, then equity has to play a part in that, right?
(25:05):
Because
Surely he understands, maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, or worse yet, he's just denyingthat there are people that have had different experiences in the United States.
And if you're going to judge them on their merit, then you've got to have equity do itswork there to make it even playing field.
(25:26):
mean, that makes perfect sense to me.
But why do you think we're seeing so much of this backlash now against these diversity andequity
programs.
Yeah, I mean, I think they do know and that's why.
Like equity is threatening to.
Yeah, and equity is threatening to our authoritarian power.
(25:51):
Like it's I we can look through history and see that like whenever there is a shift andthere's backlash.
so, you know, I not to minimize the threat or the suffering or the violence that we areunder in this moment.
But I do think it means that we've been effective, right?
That like change has happened to a certain point that there is like pretty extremebacklash.
(26:15):
And that means that what we are doing has been in many ways effective because like thesefolks are scared.
Like they feel like it's so threatened that they need to like look down to this extent.
So, I mean, it's like really heart wrenching and very scary.
And also I think it's a testament to
(26:36):
the collective power of the organizing that's been happening in our movements.
And I think this might be a good time, Daniela, because you have firsthand experience withthe military.
Just out of curiosity, Hexeth, what's he talking about?
(26:56):
He says you're going to be judged on your merit, but equity is not going to be involved.
Well, so, I mean, it was particularly a rich piece of theater because he is like the leastqualified person for Secretary of Defense ever, right?
So like, but it like to me, this is just so obvious and he is like the epitome of everyjust like angry white bro who, you know, I think like Amanda said, they know.
(27:29):
You know, and I hear sometimes people say like giving others more of the pie doesn't meanthere's less pie for you.
And I'm like, well, that's not how pie works, right?
Like giving equity, right?
There's 20 % women in the military now, which by the way means you can't do youroperations without women on your side anymore.
But that does mean that 20 % less spots went to men, right?
(27:53):
And that's not necessarily something they're competing for, but.
What he is talking about is just a long history of the military segregating and keepinggroups of people out by saying they wouldn't be able to meet the standards, right?
They wouldn't be able to do this.
So this has been the long-term debate with women.
(28:14):
And so in my day, it was, well, fine, do it, right?
So fine, Daniella, you at a hundred pounds to prove that you're equal, you are gonnacarry.
a hundred pounds on your back because that is what that guy is carrying.
And then you get broken and they're like, oh, well, look, you can't do it.
(28:36):
Instead of what we discovered when we put these first women of which I was part of likeonto these combat teams was like, oh, everyone brings a different piece, right?
And like the...
The ironic part is the way that we have been warfighting in every special division for along time is every person doing a different part, right?
(29:01):
So again, it's like we know that diversity leads to the best operational outcomes.
And I think it's just so much of these like angry men and women who are trying to hang onto the power.
and standards in the army, when you hear that, it's very much a parallel toprofessionalism in the work world, which is just like racism covered up.
(29:29):
and it struck me, you know, when he was talking about these standards, you know, well, youknow, women can't carry this particular piece of equipment that weighs such and such.
was thinking, are we, we having a failure of imagination?
Can, can we not change?
Can we not innovate?
Can we not develop equipment that perhaps doesn't weigh as much?
(29:51):
Can we do those kinds of things?
But that's the thing, right?
It's that even, and this is what I explore a lot, it's like even saying that like, thewomen can't do this.
Like you're supposing that men do it the best, but you've held women out of it for all ofhistory.
(30:11):
So like, that's actually a pretty silly assumption.
And I think what's fun now is actually interesting is that like,
in a lot of ways, like women, especially black women right now, I think have so muchadvantage of perspective because they understand everyone else's perspective that has been
shoved on them, but they also have their own perspective, which is why I've just learnedso much from just listening to black women over the past, I would say, three to five
(30:41):
years.
I'm always just like, when I wanna know something, when I'm confused, like, okay, how areblack women doing it?
So here's an interesting thing.
There was this, I think it was a TikTok, but she was talking about how like black womenrate the lowest for suicides up to and including in the military.
(31:04):
that the scientists believe that it has a lot to do with community, like communityconnection and spirituality that is common amongst black women.
And
you know, as you were talking about post-traumatic mistress syndrome, it's just like thatpicture, right, of like the white woman by herself alone in the big house, completely cut
(31:31):
off from community.
Yeah.
Now, Irvin Painter writes about that specifically and looks at that history and talksabout how like plant elite white women of plantations would have benefited so much from
community and that, you know, black women were doing that.
They're forging not just for themselves, but for their communities, these alternatives,alternative spiritualities to counter the racism that was in Christianity and that
(31:56):
doctrine and tending to their communities in these ways.
And that plantation, the stresses were.
isolated, they didn't have alternatives to patriarchy, like that your value and worth isbased on this patriarchal model.
And yeah, just how isolating and harmful that is.
(32:17):
Amanda, in your work, how have you learned to introduce yourself into these conversations?
Because I know that it can be very problematic.
I'll just use myself as an example.
A few years ago, I wrote a blog piece right after the murder of George Floyd.
And I was reflecting on a relationship that I had with a black friend, young man, when Iwas a kid.
(32:44):
We were all kids.
I was reflecting on my younger self and our interactions, me and my friend, he had sincehe's passed away before I got to have this conversation with him.
But based upon, I was writing it from the perspective of based upon what I know now, Iknow that you experienced so much racism and a lot of it was, you know, perhaps
(33:12):
well-intentioned, right?
But it was still.
It was still racism and it was white saviorism on the part of our church and ourcommunity.
the fact that we were friends, but when we went to predominantly white spaces, peoplewould speak to me and they would ignore him as if he was invisible.
And I expressed that and it received a lot of attention and encouraged a lot of people,especially black people that are around my age.
(33:41):
I'm 53.
But I did notice and I took this criticism relatively well.
It kind of hurt my feelings a bit at first, but that's the white privilege part of mestill rearing its ugly head from time to time.
But I listened to the younger black people offer some critiques to what I had written andI learned a lot and they had a point.
(34:10):
If you go back, chose not to change it because I want it to be something that communicatesto others, but I embedded the critiques that I received and a lot of it boiled down to the
fact that still as a white person offering a genuine heartfelt emotional apology of sortsto my black friend, I was still centering my voice.
(34:32):
And so when I enter into these conversations, sometimes it's difficult for me
to check my white voice at the door, so to speak.
And I know that I need to do that and I know that I need to work on that.
So how do you navigate those particular situations?
Have you found something that's helpful in doing so?
(34:56):
Mm.
Yeah, well, I unpack a lot of this in the book.
I unpack a lot of my relationships, especially with the Black women, to individuals whobecame like chosen family to me and, you know, the ways that we navigated or didn't
navigate conflict.
Because I mean, it's like that inner personal peace is important.
(35:18):
Relationships are important.
And also
these other aspects of our life experience and identities are gonna be present and theways that we've been socialized into them are gonna be present and show up.
And I also, there was a time in my anti-racist organizing where I created, I think this isa good connection with some of y'all's work on cults.
(35:39):
Like I connected, created an anti-racist rule book for myself, right?
It was very dogmatic.
And instead of the dogma of like some of the Christian fundamentalism of my youth that Iwas introduced into, I just, had these rules, these all or nothing rules.
And so, you know, that's a very patriarchal, very white supremacist way of approaching it.
(36:01):
And so the shift for me has to become more and more relational and that depends, right?
Like people of color, black folks are not a monolith.
People are going to have different perspectives.
And so, you know, there's people that I can have certain levels of relationship.
because we are in relationship with each other, we're committed to each other, and we'regonna be able to have conversations.
(36:24):
there's a level of trust there, both that I'm gonna receive someone's criticism, theircriticism and their feedback, but also that our relationship, there's enough of a
container that we can have a back and forth, right?
That I can also show up as myself, because one of the things that I, one of those four Dsthat I have leaned on,
really heavy in my work is deference, deferring and transferring that what I learned tokeep myself safe and deferring to the white men in power and anti-racist spaces to defer
(36:52):
to black women and not being honest about when I disagreed or what I actually thought orfelt.
And that has not served me because it's meant that I've been dishonest in the relationshipand eventually how I really feel or what I really think comes out.
And then that has done a number on the relationship.
So I think, for me, my work has been trying to be more more courageous and because I tendto defer as my go-to, that's growing up as a white kid in black cultural spaces where I
(37:22):
didn't know the cultural rules or the context, like I was quiet, I just kinda got along asbest as I could, I was protected because I was a white girl.
So for me, that's meant being more courageous and sharing what I think and what I feel.
And not in a group setting to take the center of attention, but especially in thoseone-on-one relationships to try to be more emotionally honest with myself so that I can be
(37:49):
more emotionally honest in my relationships.
And then certainly continuing to always bring in that race is present, right?
To not pretend like we're in relationship without it, I think is just so important andthat there's gonna be lifelong learning for especially white-bodied folks.
around that.
(38:10):
Yeah, so having some acceptance around that, but it's hard, like toxic shame culture, partof white supremacy culture.
And so it's hard to receive a critique and not identify it with like being wrong, doingwrong, being wrong.
And so it's a lot of work to receive and respond in different ways that are not just outof those like go to coping mechanisms.
(38:36):
And I think, you what you said about shame is so important.
Like this is true, by the way, for every person deconstructing a cult, right?
Because if you've operated in the cult system, you've been a perpetrator of some kind.
And I even realized this when I was deconstructing my time in the military, you know?
It's like, well, if I call this a toxic organization, then now, like, it's hard to beproud of, like, the things that I earned in it, right?
(39:03):
And so there's this shame.
And one of the things for me, I think it's just the neurodiversity, but it's just like,just don't, I always say my attention span is too short to like stay in shame for too
long, but just like understanding that like we are gonna mess it up.
Like we've grown up in a culture where white supremacy has been inculcated into all of us.
(39:26):
And like, of course we don't know things if we're not being told that.
So that's like just.
a tip for people that has been useful for me.
know, I always say like, say like I go white woman all over the place and then just beopen to the feedback when people pull you in and apologize and like, don't stay in the
(39:48):
shame.
That has been the biggest thing for me and I'm really glad you talked about that and wroteabout that.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and I organized a lot and studied with Felicia Savage-Freedman, who has ananti-racist Raja Yoga school.
And she always would say, like, it's not about what you do, it's about how you respond.
So I try to hold that, too, as like, okay, I'm going to make mistakes, but I can also,like, really work on how I respond when I receive correction or when I get that feedback.
(40:16):
And try to play with that, respond differently.
Yeah, can you speak to cancel culture?
Because this frustrates me so much, the idea that, you do something wrong and you're justdone forever.
Have you encountered that?
How do you talk to people about that?
Yeah.
I mean, I think this is where trauma healing is so important because I think cancelculture is coming out of trauma and, know, especially like, and it's replicating policing.
(40:47):
mean, it's really replicating, like trying to control other people's behaviors.
And I get it, especially within movement spaces that, I mean, we don't want to be, wedon't want to be part of perpetuating harm and saying harmful things.
But there's also, I think part of white supremacy culture is that it's so performative,especially white womanhood.
(41:13):
And so it's like, if we're associated with someone who says something wrong or quoteunquote bad, right?
And we've learned, like punishment is separation.
Like we lock people up.
We don't want to be a part of it.
That's not us.
We're not bad, they're bad.
So I think that separation piece is where cancel culture comes from.
(41:35):
that people have experienced a lot of trauma and harm and so trying to regain somesemblance of control and self-determination.
And then I think there's also that performative piece, which is like, no, I don't want tobe associated with it or tainted or if I can stay pure, right, which is talk about white
(41:55):
womanhood, stay separate and pure, then I won't be connected to that.
It's so reactionary.
and just like not relational and not helpful at the end of the day to really learn.
So I'm curious about how we support each other and learning from our mistakes.
And you can tell when someone is, I mean, I think we can discern when someone is doingsomething out of malice or has no intention of learning from what they've done.
(42:26):
And when people like legitimately have made a mistake and didn't know or like,
there's room for even if they're feeling defensive or acting defensively that they want tobe in relationship and they want to be in community.
And there's a whole range there.
so we've like, cancel culture, think has moved us, it's moved us very far away from thatdiscernment, that community discernment, the relational piece.
(42:48):
And, you know, I think it is important to think about like, how do we hold each otheraccountable?
The work of like abolitionism and transformative justice is really speaks to that.
But,
we need to be able to hold each other accountable for when harm is caused.
And also we can so replicate the violence of the state when we do it in punitive ways andways that shun and separate folks.
(43:16):
I Mennonites have a long history of shunning, so.
Yeah.
I mean, I found this term in cult studies a few months ago, and I literally yelled when Ifound it because it was so perfect.
And it's like when you're all policing each other and enforcing the rules on each other,it's called performative regulation.
You know, I remember being like 12 years old and my family was away from the cult and thenlike none of the rules applied anymore.
(43:43):
And I just I just remember looking at my dad and being like,
so you don't actually believe this stuff, right?
It's just all like, performative.
Yeah, but.
really interesting, Amanda, what you say.
It's so helpful, right?
Because we do get, we fall into these patterns.
(44:03):
I know that when I got some criticism from the blog piece that I wrote, my instinct,right, I was defensive and my instinct was to reach out to these people that were
criticizing me and to have a conversation.
rightfully so some of them they didn't want to talk to me and I understand that I didn'tat the time but I do understand it now but there was one one man he actually went on
(44:29):
social media having read what I wrote and and went on a 45 minute rant basically justtelling me to fuck myself and it was interesting because his roommate reached out to me
via email and said hey I think you know
he's misunderstanding, we're having an argument in our household about what your intentwas.
(44:52):
And so I was glad to pick up the phone and call him and we had a great conversation.
We recorded it.
We put it out there live for people to watch and to dissect.
And I learned a lot from that experience because he was willing to talk to me and correctme.
And also I was willing to say,
(45:12):
You know what, I'm in need of some correction here.
There's some things I don't understand.
Yeah, I mean, that's so beautiful when repair can happen, right?
And correction can happen and it's not always possible.
And I think it's just such, it's incredible when it can happen like that.
Yeah.
(45:33):
Something you said, Scott, also about impact though, or intent, right?
And I remember I had this realization that helped me with anti-racism.
You I had done something silly and I was like, just doing the white woman thing of tryingto defend myself and get people to be like, I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it.
(45:55):
And all of a sudden I just pictured our cult parents.
And when we try to talk to them about our trauma and they're like, what?
I didn't know, right?
And I have this thing that I say to them where I'm like, well, you know now, right?
Like you didn't know then, but we're hurting now and we're telling you this now.
(46:15):
And I immediately was, was like, yeah, it doesn't matter.
Like the intent actually doesn't matter.
And sometimes like you said, Amanda, repair can't be made.
And even when you do,
I think that's another thing for us to learn, Scott, is that we don't get to always feelgood about it at the end.
(46:36):
Right.
Absolutely.
Yeah, and I mean, it can feel really liberating and empowering to take responsibility forsomething that you did wrong.
Like, I mean, that's something that we miss in like shame and avoidance and like don't dosomething, you know, like perfectionism, shame culture.
Like, actually, it feels really incredible to be like, I messed up about this and I'mreally sorry and like take responsibility for it in like a deep way that I mean, the
(47:06):
moments I've been able to do that in my life.
have felt, yeah, really, would use the word liberating, like to have clarity around it andto get to have, you know, to forgive myself on some level, right?
Because I'm not trying to avoid it or push it off or dismiss it or pretend like it didn'thappen.
Yeah, that can be really incredible feeling too.
(47:29):
Amanda, tell us a little bit about the work that you're doing now.
You mentioned it a couple of times.
It sounds fascinating.
And how does that help complete or continue your studies into these issues?
Yeah.
starting in 2016, actually, that was the first, at the beginning of 2016, not the end,myself and a colleague started the first white women's affinity space.
(47:56):
We called it white women's group just because we didn't have another name and then itstuck.
And I unpack actually a lot of that work in the book.
But that has since evolved.
had a friend and colleague recently who read my book and was like, Amanda, this is ateaching book.
And so
I've really been embracing that.
There's a group that started to read the book in March before it came out and we readchapter by chapter.
(48:20):
They helped me develop a discussion guide.
And what I learned from that process and this ongoing affinity space work is just howimportant it is for us to do our own healing work and do that collectively.
I think it can be really powerful to read a book on its own.
But those books have changed my life for sure in my perspective.
(48:43):
And also because like we are trying to shift how we show up with each other and ourbehaviors.
I think it's like really important that we do it, the work and community.
And so I have a couple of book groups.
have a Patreon virtual book group with folks from all over, but then I have several groupsthat are local.
And I think the important part of the local piece is that then those folks are not onlybuilding relationship in like a white women's affinity space,
(49:10):
that they're also building relationships with local Black and Brown organizers andaccountable building, accountability relationships and showing up for what's happening
locally in their communities too.
So those are the main things that I'm involved in right now.
I do occasional workshops and support some coaching work in other ways, but I'm reallyinterested in this small group model.
(49:40):
because there's a lot of patterns within white women.
I talk about like the witch hunts in Europe and how we have learned some of this, thecompetition and the comparison and the perfectionism so deep in relationships with each
other.
so it's a practice space for how we can show up with each other differently.
(50:01):
It's a space for us to talk about.
all of the points of access and power we have in our lives, specifically in our familysystems.
White women have so much power in family systems and a lot of work to do there becausethat's where we have access and relationship with folks who we're not gonna like
necessarily be friends with or be aligned politically.
(50:24):
So I think we have so many, there's a lot of work and opportunity in our family systemsand work to do.
I'm so glad you mentioned perfectionism because I for sure took a really long time tounderstand that perfectionism is self-hatred and that it was really tied into this
(50:46):
patriarchal white supremacists, I call them cult systems that we are locked into.
And I'll never forget.
black woman in my audience saying to me, yeah, I never trust a white woman who's aperfectionist because I know she's gonna hurt me at some point.
And that like, I mean, it shifted my entire perspective and made me realize like not onlyare we harming ourselves with the perfectionism, but we're these little like fragile bombs
(51:16):
that can go off and harm other people.
Yeah.
When the ideals, right?
When like the ideals are more important than the humans in front of you.
That's so dangerous.
It's so violent.
cult thing too, is putting systems and doctrine and ideals before individual humans.
(51:37):
And one of the ways that we deconstruct from that is by understanding that the human beingalways matters more.
I love that framing for it as well.
Earlier, Amanda, you also mentioned being involved with the arts and seeing that helpfulto your work.
Can you flesh that out a little bit for us?
(51:58):
Mm-hmm, yes.
So, well, I'm a weaver.
My loom's back there.
Fiber artist as well, like Daniela.
And I use a lot of fiber art metaphor in my work.
I feel like I should pick up painting or something.
Because you guys are doing something.
I'm doing nothing.
Mm-hmm.
(52:19):
Yeah, like, you know, conflict, in fiber art, you have to have tension.
And so, especially as someone who comes from a culture, you know, Mennonites are veryconflict avoidance.
Conflict is seen as like violence, even though they're not the same thing.
have conflict that's not violent, although we don't have many models of that.
Yeah, so like, in order to make a piece of fiber art, you have to have tension.
(52:41):
Too much tension, it'll snap.
Not enough tension, you don't have integrity of fabric.
So I use a lot of those metaphors and those fiber wisdoms in my work.
And my doctoral research was around this question of how arts and culture can supportwhite settlers in sustaining long-term work with anti-racism and decolonization efforts.
(53:01):
When I did the work with my family members, actually about what I had written about themin the book.
So we used different...
arts engagements and arts broadly, right?
So like with family members who cook, we cooked together.
With family members who sing, we sing together.
With our family members who are like archivists and like have all the photographs.
(53:23):
So we like looked at photos together.
But we use that to like help set the container so that we could enter into like hardconversations about what I had written.
And yeah, it was really incredible.
talk about the solutionary piece, the ways that my family members showed up and surprisedme and were ready to engage and just the level of connections and conversation that we
(53:49):
could have about like, what are our shared values and how does that relate to like how weactually show up in our relationships?
I'm telling you, it's easier to have hard conversations when you have yarn in your hands.
People will tell me this all the time on my sites.
(54:10):
They're just like, I just listened to this whole thing, because I was mesmerized by yourhands.
And I just absolutely love the history of fiber arts and culture.
I would probably just sit down and read your whole dissertation.
Yeah, I can't wait to read your book.
In fact, that's going to be one of my first stops when we finish up here.
(54:33):
And speaking of which, if people want to follow you or find your work or read your book,what's the best way to do that?
Yeah, MrSyndrome.com is my website and that has links to the book and I'm also on Patreonand Instagram and Facebook and sort of on Twitter.
(54:55):
get it.
Yeah.
We'll make sure all the links are in the show notes so that everybody can find you.
Yeah, so I've been moving away from some of those platforms and not as active on others,but definitely my website is a good place to start.
Amanda, before we conclude, if there's one thing that you hope that people take away fromyour book, one or two things, what is your message that you want to communicate to
(55:21):
everyone?
Well, if you are a status quo or passing white lady, then I think it's so important for usto do our own work because we do have so much access to the arrangements that are the
systems that exist right now.
And if we got our act together, we could really make some major change happen.
(55:44):
So that's one thing that I offer.
And then the other piece is just how important the healing component is.
to integrate that into all that we do, right?
that's, sometimes I use the phrase, the solidarity framework is really important and thatmy liberation is tied up with yours.
And so also like, I'm doing this so that I can get free along with everyone else.
(56:10):
I think it's important to have that both and, because then it's not quite saviorism,right?
Then I'm not doing this on behalf of someone else, but I'm really recognizing how.
our healing and our wellbeing is interconnected and interdependent.
Well said, thank you so much.
just want to say for me this falls under with cults.
(56:30):
have this like sacred assumption, this one thing you believe and sacred assumption isalways a lie.
And the sacred assumption of white supremacy is that we, status quo or white passing womenare better off and we're not.
And we're not better off.
So I'm always like, I want to do this work for everyone, but it's also for us, you know,like it is also.
(56:53):
about healing us and getting us access to a better world and better community andhopefully not all being lonely and taking our lives because we want proximity to power.
So your book is so powerful.
I love it so much.
Thank you so much for being here with us.
Yeah, thank you both for having me.
Really appreciate it.
(57:14):
And I appreciate the work that y'all are doing.
I've learned a lot listening to your podcasts too.
Thank you, Amanda.
We appreciate that.
And we look forward to perhaps having you on again in the future to continue theconversation.
So everyone go and follow Amanda Gross, buy her book, check her out, and also give Danielaa follow and purchase and read her book as well.
(57:36):
Uncultured, a great resource for all of these conversations, important conversations thatwe are having.
Be sure and hit that like and subscribe and share button.
Give us some feedback if you enjoy the podcast and share it with a friend.
Until next time, I'm Scott Lloyd for Daniela Messenek Young.
(57:57):
We'll see you on the next episode of Cults and the Culting of America.
Welcome to Cults and the Culting of America podcast.
I'm Scott Lloyd along with the knitting cult lady, Daniela Mestenec Young.
And she is always standing guard, working hard.
And every time I see her, she's knitting away and dropping knowledge about cults and theculting of America.
(00:46):
And that's what we're all about here, Daniela.
It's good to see you once again.
It's good to see you too.
Here we are.
We're officially like in the cults.
The bad guys are running the world.
It's gonna be an interesting time.
a challenging few days here, challenging few years to come.
But thankfully we have people like yourself and our guests tonight to inform us, to betterinform us and to help us navigate the days that are ahead.
(01:16):
We are joined tonight by Amanda Gross.
Amanda, it's great to have you tonight.
How are you?
Yeah, I'm doing okay.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's good to be here.
Yeah, and we sort of start these conversations by giving our guests an opportunity tointroduce themselves and tell us a little bit about your background.
(01:39):
And I'm sure we'll get into that story as we move along and what you're up to these days.
So Amanda, welcome.
Introduce yourself to all of these folks.
Yes.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Amanda Catherine with a K gross born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and havebeen for the past 15 years been involved in anti-racist organizing and for the last eight
(02:10):
years have been working on a book that came out in July called white women get ready howhealing post-traumatic mistress syndrome
leads to anti-racist change.
So a lot of my work is organizing with status quo and passing white ladies like myself tochallenge and confront and dismantle racism and do that in intersectional ways because all
(02:33):
of these systems are connected and support each other.
And I believe white women have a really important role to play.
Absolutely.
Can you, what was your subtitle again?
So the subtitle is, How Healing Post Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-RacistChange.
(02:53):
Okay, mistress syndrome.
Can you tell me a little bit about what that means?
That's the first time I've heard that term.
Yeah, absolutely.
So it's inspired by Dr.
Joy DeGruz's work on post-traumatic slave syndrome and used with her permission.
so Dr.
Joy's work is really looking at the multigenerational inherited trauma for people ofAfrican descent because of the legacy of enslavement and how structural racism continues
(03:20):
to play out today.
And part of her work in the introduction, she talks about
how if there is a post-traumatic slave syndrome, then there also must be a post-traumaticmaster syndrome.
Because in order to be complicit in doing harm to others, dehumanizing others, wedehumanize ourselves.
And so she's really looking at the legacy of enslavement for people of African descent,but offers this like little window, which I found a lot of inspiration from.
(03:50):
And I wanted to know, especially when I was first starting out organizing in anti-racistspaces,
often one of few white folks in multiracial spaces and beginning to facilitate a lot ofwhite affinity or white caucus spaces.
I was like, I need to read that book.
What's the book on post-traumatic master syndrome?
And so I had a colleague I went to and I asked him about where the book is and where Icould find it.
(04:15):
And he was like, it doesn't exist.
You should write it.
So it planted a seed and the post-traumatic master syndrome didn't quite fit.
because gender has been such an important part of my experience.
And so I began to really investigate the history of the mistress of the plantationhousehold and look at her legacy, the legacy of white womanhood.
(04:37):
And especially how I've been socialized into that identity, how I was raised in it as agood little white girl growing up in the South.
And yeah, how it's a barrier to our organizing, right?
When we come together in multiracial coalitions.
to make social justice and change happen.
Wow, that is incredibly interesting.
(04:57):
And as somebody who's done a little bit, not quite to the scholarly level that you've doneit, but a little bit of that work, it can be challenging.
And I think there, for the most part, if there are white people, people that look like youand me that want to do this kind of work, they don't take the time to do the internal work
(05:22):
first.
And that causes a lot of
issues because we live in a society, in a culture that was built for people that look likeus by people that look like us to the exclusion of black and brown and people of color in
this world.
so there's a lot of privilege for lack of a better term.
(05:46):
I know a lot of people don't like that, but it fits.
We call it normal, right?
Because that's the way that we have been instructed to believe things are in the world.
But obviously, for people that don't look like us, the experience is very different.
(06:07):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, whiteness is both normalized and rendered invisible on purpose.
we were taught if we're white, we're taught not to see it.
Yeah, that's really fascinating.
I have another podcast called Hey White Woman with a creator called White Woman Whisperer.
And she was talking today actually about like how healing is where we need to start.
(06:32):
Can you say more about that as well?
Mm hmm.
Yeah, absolutely.
well, a couple of things I can say about that.
One is, as I also always say that my work is a compliment, not a substitute.
Right.
And so I think it's really important, especially because white supremacy culture can be sodualistic in either or that like we can hold space for both.
(06:55):
And they're both really important and interconnected.
The self work and the self healing piece.
and if it's,
If it's deeply transformative, if it's actually personally transformative work, then it'sgoing to also be transformative in terms of our interpersonal relationships, in terms of
shifting culture, in terms of being able to shift power, in terms of being able to makepolicy change and systems change and structural change.
(07:20):
And I think the healing piece is also, I mean, so important because it's so counter towhite supremacy, right?
We're healing, we're acknowledging that there's harm.
first of all, which in order to continue to be complicit and uphold white supremacyculture, we have to deny that it exists, right?
There's a level of denial that happens.
(07:41):
So the acknowledgement piece is really important.
And the slowing down piece is really important in order to heal because capitalism is solike rush, rush, rush, do, do, do.
And yeah, and it doesn't, these systems of oppression don't want us to
be healed, don't want us to be in touch with our intuition and our bodies and listen tothat wisdom and be able to really attune to each other and attune to each other's
(08:09):
humanity.
And in order to be able to do that, we have to do our own deep healing work.
It's really important.
Amanda, tell us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and how you grewup, and how that led to these studies now as an adult.
(08:30):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, well, I trace two really important lineages that I feel like I'm connected to andcommunities that have really supported my work.
So I was raised in Atlanta, Georgia, in Dr.
King's legacy and the civil rights legacy in a lot of ways.
And so I had, you know, many educators growing up.
(08:52):
I was occasionally the only white kid in spaces.
And I was also born into a Mennonite community that my parents moved from places furthernorth to Atlanta on the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement.
And there are a lot of Mennonites who moved down to the south to be a part of thosemovements.
(09:17):
And so my family ended up there in more like service oriented work, but
Certainly those Anabaptists and social justice roots informed the work that Mennoniteswere doing.
The church that I grew up in Atlanta was actually started as an intentional multiracialcommunity in the 50s and 60s.
(09:42):
those are the legacies that I like to name and call into the space.
of course, neither of those histories and those legacies are also not.
without critique, like we could be critical lovers of those communities and thosehistories and legacies.
Yeah, and I have a very similar experience with my cult of Pentecostalism that I was apart of.
(10:08):
so, you know, the Pentecostal movement in North America traces its roots primarily to theAzusa Street Revival in 1906, Los Angeles, led by a black man who had innovations that he
learned from another minister, a white minister, but...
(10:29):
the popularity of Pentecostalism owes its existence to William J.
Seymour, a black man, the son of former slaves from Louisiana, who ended up in Californialeading this revival.
But a lot of his innovations were appropriated and then to the exclusion of black people.
(10:50):
And so I had all of these sort of problems in my movement as well, right?
There was lot to be said.
about progress being made on behalf of people of color.
But then every time progress was made, it was appropriated by white communities and thenpresented in a mediocre fashion.
(11:11):
And the people that were responsible for those innovations were never given the creditthat they deserve.
So I hear you when we look back on our heritage, right, with some sort of angst and cringeelement, because I see a lot of things that were
that were good, that were promising, but a lot of it feels bad now in retrospect, and itwas bad.
(11:34):
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
And I mean, Mennonites, I think there there are things to be proud of or I use the termMennonite humble because you're not supposed to be proud of Mennonite culture.
There are things to like that we can look back and be like, yeah, Mennonites helped writethe first petition against slavery in this country.
You know, there's there are things about the history of nonviolence and being a historicpeace church that I think are really important.
(11:56):
And there's also, you know, there are narratives that we don't tell.
Right.
Those are like the chosen traumas, chosen glories that we.
celebrate and I was certainly told about Anabaptist martyrdom in Europe being that likemain story.
Those were stories that I was told in the church during children's time when I was four.
But then, you the story of how my ancestors helped settle and colonize Pennsylvania anddisplaced the Lenape people, the ways that there are, you know, histories, traditions of
(12:29):
anti-Semitism built into like
parts of the Mennonite church, like there are these things that are not talked about verymuch or are beginning to be talked about more.
So it's always really interesting those, the narratives that we wanna uphold and glorifyand then the other parts of our history that get silenced as well.
Yeah, so speaking of parts of our history that get silenced, what's it like having thisbook out right now in history, day two of second Trump administration, when it seems like,
(13:04):
I mean, Elon Musk did a Nazi salute, right?
Like it seems like white supremacy is just saying everything out loud right now.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I mean, in some ways it's helpful that the way that racism has been covert in thelast couple of decades has been more overt.
(13:26):
Like it's been there.
It's not that it's not been around.
So I think there is clarity that comes from those overt forms of white supremacy.
And...
And also it's the same work.
I mean, it's different.
It's heightened, right?
(13:46):
Absolutely.
And it's, it's been the same work by like white womanhood has been used to leverage,oppression for centuries.
And, and I've had, know, several black organizers that I've worked with independent whodon't know each other have told me like, if white women would get their act together, like
(14:06):
these systems wouldn't stand a chance.
And so I think we're in the same position that we've been in.
And, and it is, you know, I think for some folks who have been able to be more comfortableor in denial, folks who have had a lot of access and relative advantage, white folks,
folks with class privilege, this is a moment where, you know, the harm is even more, thevisual, I mean, it's visible.
(14:37):
in more ways to more people.
And I'm holding that at the same time that the harm has happened for many communities,right?
Has been deep and consistent and not, even if it becomes more severe in some ways, it'sbeen persistent.
What are some of the things that you discovered in your studies that surprised you, thatyou found out and when you found out became very challenging perhaps to your, I think we
(15:08):
all carry this personal narrative of our lives, right?
And we sort of, we have this tendency to always put ourselves at the center of our heroicjourney.
But when you...
confront your history, your own history and the history, the problematic history that wehave here in the United States, you discover a lot of circumstances and atrocities that
(15:33):
give us pause.
And what I've had to come to terms with is that in a lot of ways, even though perhaps Iwas ignorant, I was still complicit with the abuse and the harm and the fact that we're
all swimming
in this system, again, that is built to privilege white people and to center whitepeople's lives and experiences.
(16:01):
It's really difficult to disengage from that and to think about it in a serious way andthe ways that it impacts you personally.
And in no way do I want to diminish the experiences of those that have lived thisfirsthand, right?
But
for those of us that are living in this culture for white people, racism, systemic racismperpetuates harm on everyone.
(16:29):
Am I right?
Yes.
Yeah, absolutely.
I would say to speak to your first question about what surprised me, I mean, there aredefinitely things that I found out about history.
Again, those stories that get passed down and told.
I chose the name, you know, that phrase, mistress syndrome, without thinking that Iactually had direct ancestry to like a plantation mistress.
(17:02):
and I mean, it's not like a direct lineage, but what I found out is that there were in mydirect line, there were two brothers and one of them stayed in Pennsylvania and you know,
became conservative Mennonite and that's who I'm descended from.
And another one moved to North Carolina and enslaved people and had a plantation.
And, so yeah, just like, I didn't know when I chose the term this stress syndrome, that itwould be like that directly close.
(17:31):
even though there are ways that I certainly have been socialized based on that legacy.
And I was aware of that.
So there are surprises in that respect.
then when I first started writing, I was really honing my critical analysis.
And I had this beautiful book of all the things that were wrong.
(17:55):
And I was so depressed.
It was a really rough.
several years of just reading the history of these horrors and horrors and all of thesuffering that folks have gone through.
I didn't want to write a book, another book about all of the things that are wrong.
I wanted to offer Grace Lee Boggs, this is the term solutionaries.
(18:18):
And she says, solutionaries are the real revolutionaries because they're working to createalternatives even as they dismantle the systems that are harmful.
and so I wanted a book that was more solutionary, that was more solutions based.
And I ended up, doing a whole, doctorate in expressive arts.
because yeah, like arts and culture, I needed that.
(18:42):
I needed story and I needed, I needed other places to go and not just be in the trauma insuch a heavy way.
and so one of the things that I learned in writing this book that I really wasn'texpecting was how to write narrative.
And the book became more and more memoir and more and more story focused as I realizedlike, stories hold wisdom.
(19:06):
Stories are, you know, a bomb stories can help us heal.
and so that was something that I really wasn't, wasn't expecting when I, when I firststarted to write.
It's amazing that like you're you're connected in that way, but I think it also speaks tolike that we're all connected in some way to like this stuff, you know, even as you're
(19:32):
talking like my family came from Slovakia or Yugoslavia in World War One.
So like in theory, we're not connected to any of this.
But I mean, I just remember the first time I heard the term white privilege and beinglike,
that explains it.
Like for someone like me coming here to the US at 15 and then just like, I always used tojust describe it as I'm being treated better than I should.
(20:03):
But I didn't understand like, what about that?
What do you have to say to like, like people like that, right?
That are like, well, not my ancestors, not my people, but like, we're all complicit today.
How do we start unlocking that?
Mm-hmm.
(20:23):
Yeah.
mean, sometimes like privilege or white privilege, people can get hung up on that term.
I really appreciate Martin Friedman's work and he uses the term relative advantage.
And so the idea that you can have the same, you know, be of the same gender, have the samelike economic status.
And if, you know, you are white and someone else is not white, that you're going to haverelative advantage based on race.
(20:50):
And so that's something that
no matter if someone arrived in a white body.
In the US, we get a race and an ethnicity, and folks are immediately racialized, no matterwhat country, what part of the world they come from.
And that can be hard if that's not someone's context or the frame that they're comingfrom, especially in terms of identity.
(21:14):
I think that can be really threatening to folks.
But to understand that relative advantage, I think, can be really helpful.
And the other part kind of to what you were speaking to earlier, Scott, is that likewhiteness is harmful, right?
That this harms white people.
so in order to assimilate into whiteness, like, you know, our ancestors have given up,gave up a lot, right?
(21:38):
Like there was names, language, you know, I don't speak, I don't speak German fluently.
I wasn't raised in the language of my ancestry.
There's a lot of...
The People's Institute for Survival and talks about how language is the first thing that'slost and food is the last thing.
So maybe there's recipes that get passed down, but culture and so much of those traditionsget lost and assimilating into whiteness.
(22:07):
And the values, like how we can be in relationship with each other in different ways,those also get often sacrificed and lost or devalued.
Yeah, you know, this is one of the areas that I noticed where it's like the cultexperience of this is just the kind of extreme version of what like white millennials are
(22:28):
going through.
And like exactly like you were saying, like because I grew up in a cult, like we didn't,we were separated from the family.
So we didn't even get like the recipes or the simple things that were passed down.
But like that's kind of what whiteness has done to everyone in the U.S.
And part of what, you know, in my book is the opposite of solutionary.
(22:52):
It's mostly just diagnosing the problems.
But it's like we've given up.
We've given up community for whiteness and all of these like groups and who belongs where.
And now like, this is what we've got.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
And it's disconnecting.
Like it's disconnecting between, you know, in our relationships and our communities andwhiteness disconnects and, you know, colonization also it's about separation.
(23:21):
But it also separates our minds from our bodies.
Like it separates internally too.
So I talk about the framework I offer in my book is looking at
these four D's of defensiveness and denial and distancing or dissociation and deferenceand the ways that those are trauma responses, right?
They align with fight, fight, fawn and freeze pretty neatly.
(23:45):
And they're things we've learned to protect ourselves, right?
Our bodies, we've learned them for a reason, but like white supremacy really plays onthose so that we're stuck in our trauma response.
We get stuck in defensiveness.
And we're disconnected from our bodies, so we aren't able to regulate our nervous systems.
We aren't able to ground.
We aren't able to really see the other person in front of us as human, because we getstuck in those places and just cycle.
(24:12):
And this is really a conversation because right now in the United States, the election ofTrump, you have him doing away with a lot of the diversity, equity and inclusion, hiring
practices, things of that nature.
In fact, the other day I heard the defense nominee, Pete Hexeth say that...
(24:37):
equality is a good word, equity is not a good word.
it blew my mind because I was like, how can you have equality in a society and in aculture that gives relative advantage, as you said, to white people?
And if you're looking to establish a meritocracy where people are actually judged on theirmerit, then equity has to play a part in that, right?
(25:05):
Because
Surely he understands, maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, or worse yet, he's just denyingthat there are people that have had different experiences in the United States.
And if you're going to judge them on their merit, then you've got to have equity do itswork there to make it even playing field.
(25:26):
mean, that makes perfect sense to me.
But why do you think we're seeing so much of this backlash now against these diversity andequity
programs.
Yeah, I mean, I think they do know and that's why.
Like equity is threatening to.
Yeah, and equity is threatening to our authoritarian power.
(25:51):
Like it's I we can look through history and see that like whenever there is a shift andthere's backlash.
so, you know, I not to minimize the threat or the suffering or the violence that we areunder in this moment.
But I do think it means that we've been effective, right?
That like change has happened to a certain point that there is like pretty extremebacklash.
(26:15):
And that means that what we are doing has been in many ways effective because like thesefolks are scared.
Like they feel like it's so threatened that they need to like look down to this extent.
So, I mean, it's like really heart wrenching and very scary.
And also I think it's a testament to
(26:36):
the collective power of the organizing that's been happening in our movements.
And I think this might be a good time, Daniela, because you have firsthand experience withthe military.
Just out of curiosity, Hexeth, what's he talking about?
(26:56):
He says you're going to be judged on your merit, but equity is not going to be involved.
Well, so, I mean, it was particularly a rich piece of theater because he is like the leastqualified person for Secretary of Defense ever, right?
So like, but it like to me, this is just so obvious and he is like the epitome of everyjust like angry white bro who, you know, I think like Amanda said, they know.
(27:29):
You know, and I hear sometimes people say like giving others more of the pie doesn't meanthere's less pie for you.
And I'm like, well, that's not how pie works, right?
Like giving equity, right?
There's 20 % women in the military now, which by the way means you can't do youroperations without women on your side anymore.
But that does mean that 20 % less spots went to men, right?
(27:53):
And that's not necessarily something they're competing for, but.
What he is talking about is just a long history of the military segregating and keepinggroups of people out by saying they wouldn't be able to meet the standards, right?
They wouldn't be able to do this.
So this has been the long-term debate with women.
(28:14):
And so in my day, it was, well, fine, do it, right?
So fine, Daniella, you at a hundred pounds to prove that you're equal, you are gonnacarry.
a hundred pounds on your back because that is what that guy is carrying.
And then you get broken and they're like, oh, well, look, you can't do it.
(28:36):
Instead of what we discovered when we put these first women of which I was part of likeonto these combat teams was like, oh, everyone brings a different piece, right?
And like the...
The ironic part is the way that we have been warfighting in every special division for along time is every person doing a different part, right?
(29:01):
So again, it's like we know that diversity leads to the best operational outcomes.
And I think it's just so much of these like angry men and women who are trying to hang onto the power.
and standards in the army, when you hear that, it's very much a parallel toprofessionalism in the work world, which is just like racism covered up.
(29:29):
and it struck me, you know, when he was talking about these standards, you know, well, youknow, women can't carry this particular piece of equipment that weighs such and such.
was thinking, are we, we having a failure of imagination?
Can, can we not change?
Can we not innovate?
Can we not develop equipment that perhaps doesn't weigh as much?
(29:51):
Can we do those kinds of things?
But that's the thing, right?
It's that even, and this is what I explore a lot, it's like even saying that like, thewomen can't do this.
Like you're supposing that men do it the best, but you've held women out of it for all ofhistory.
(30:11):
So like, that's actually a pretty silly assumption.
And I think what's fun now is actually interesting is that like,
in a lot of ways, like women, especially black women right now, I think have so muchadvantage of perspective because they understand everyone else's perspective that has been
shoved on them, but they also have their own perspective, which is why I've just learnedso much from just listening to black women over the past, I would say, three to five
(30:41):
years.
I'm always just like, when I wanna know something, when I'm confused, like, okay, how areblack women doing it?
So here's an interesting thing.
There was this, I think it was a TikTok, but she was talking about how like black womenrate the lowest for suicides up to and including in the military.
(31:04):
that the scientists believe that it has a lot to do with community, like communityconnection and spirituality that is common amongst black women.
And
you know, as you were talking about post-traumatic mistress syndrome, it's just like thatpicture, right, of like the white woman by herself alone in the big house, completely cut
(31:31):
off from community.
Yeah.
Now, Irvin Painter writes about that specifically and looks at that history and talksabout how like plant elite white women of plantations would have benefited so much from
community and that, you know, black women were doing that.
They're forging not just for themselves, but for their communities, these alternatives,alternative spiritualities to counter the racism that was in Christianity and that
(31:56):
doctrine and tending to their communities in these ways.
And that plantation, the stresses were.
isolated, they didn't have alternatives to patriarchy, like that your value and worth isbased on this patriarchal model.
And yeah, just how isolating and harmful that is.
(32:17):
Amanda, in your work, how have you learned to introduce yourself into these conversations?
Because I know that it can be very problematic.
I'll just use myself as an example.
A few years ago, I wrote a blog piece right after the murder of George Floyd.
And I was reflecting on a relationship that I had with a black friend, young man, when Iwas a kid.
(32:44):
We were all kids.
I was reflecting on my younger self and our interactions, me and my friend, he had sincehe's passed away before I got to have this conversation with him.
But based upon, I was writing it from the perspective of based upon what I know now, Iknow that you experienced so much racism and a lot of it was, you know, perhaps
(33:12):
well-intentioned, right?
But it was still.
It was still racism and it was white saviorism on the part of our church and ourcommunity.
the fact that we were friends, but when we went to predominantly white spaces, peoplewould speak to me and they would ignore him as if he was invisible.
And I expressed that and it received a lot of attention and encouraged a lot of people,especially black people that are around my age.
(33:41):
I'm 53.
But I did notice and I took this criticism relatively well.
It kind of hurt my feelings a bit at first, but that's the white privilege part of mestill rearing its ugly head from time to time.
But I listened to the younger black people offer some critiques to what I had written andI learned a lot and they had a point.
(34:10):
If you go back, chose not to change it because I want it to be something that communicatesto others, but I embedded the critiques that I received and a lot of it boiled down to the
fact that still as a white person offering a genuine heartfelt emotional apology of sortsto my black friend, I was still centering my voice.
(34:32):
And so when I enter into these conversations, sometimes it's difficult for me
to check my white voice at the door, so to speak.
And I know that I need to do that and I know that I need to work on that.
So how do you navigate those particular situations?
Have you found something that's helpful in doing so?
(34:56):
Mm.
Yeah, well, I unpack a lot of this in the book.
I unpack a lot of my relationships, especially with the Black women, to individuals whobecame like chosen family to me and, you know, the ways that we navigated or didn't
navigate conflict.
Because I mean, it's like that inner personal peace is important.
(35:18):
Relationships are important.
And also
these other aspects of our life experience and identities are gonna be present and theways that we've been socialized into them are gonna be present and show up.
And I also, there was a time in my anti-racist organizing where I created, I think this isa good connection with some of y'all's work on cults.
(35:39):
Like I connected, created an anti-racist rule book for myself, right?
It was very dogmatic.
And instead of the dogma of like some of the Christian fundamentalism of my youth that Iwas introduced into, I just, had these rules, these all or nothing rules.
And so, you know, that's a very patriarchal, very white supremacist way of approaching it.
(36:01):
And so the shift for me has to become more and more relational and that depends, right?
Like people of color, black folks are not a monolith.
People are going to have different perspectives.
And so, you know, there's people that I can have certain levels of relationship.
because we are in relationship with each other, we're committed to each other, and we'regonna be able to have conversations.
(36:24):
there's a level of trust there, both that I'm gonna receive someone's criticism, theircriticism and their feedback, but also that our relationship, there's enough of a
container that we can have a back and forth, right?
That I can also show up as myself, because one of the things that I, one of those four Dsthat I have leaned on,
really heavy in my work is deference, deferring and transferring that what I learned tokeep myself safe and deferring to the white men in power and anti-racist spaces to defer
(36:52):
to black women and not being honest about when I disagreed or what I actually thought orfelt.
And that has not served me because it's meant that I've been dishonest in the relationshipand eventually how I really feel or what I really think comes out.
And then that has done a number on the relationship.
So I think, for me, my work has been trying to be more more courageous and because I tendto defer as my go-to, that's growing up as a white kid in black cultural spaces where I
(37:22):
didn't know the cultural rules or the context, like I was quiet, I just kinda got along asbest as I could, I was protected because I was a white girl.
So for me, that's meant being more courageous and sharing what I think and what I feel.
And not in a group setting to take the center of attention, but especially in thoseone-on-one relationships to try to be more emotionally honest with myself so that I can be
(37:49):
more emotionally honest in my relationships.
And then certainly continuing to always bring in that race is present, right?
To not pretend like we're in relationship without it, I think is just so important andthat there's gonna be lifelong learning for especially white-bodied folks.
around that.
(38:10):
Yeah, so having some acceptance around that, but it's hard, like toxic shame culture, partof white supremacy culture.
And so it's hard to receive a critique and not identify it with like being wrong, doingwrong, being wrong.
And so it's a lot of work to receive and respond in different ways that are not just outof those like go to coping mechanisms.
(38:36):
And I think, you what you said about shame is so important.
Like this is true, by the way, for every person deconstructing a cult, right?
Because if you've operated in the cult system, you've been a perpetrator of some kind.
And I even realized this when I was deconstructing my time in the military, you know?
It's like, well, if I call this a toxic organization, then now, like, it's hard to beproud of, like, the things that I earned in it, right?
(39:03):
And so there's this shame.
And one of the things for me, I think it's just the neurodiversity, but it's just like,just don't, I always say my attention span is too short to like stay in shame for too
long, but just like understanding that like we are gonna mess it up.
Like we've grown up in a culture where white supremacy has been inculcated into all of us.
(39:26):
And like, of course we don't know things if we're not being told that.
So that's like just.
a tip for people that has been useful for me.
know, I always say like, say like I go white woman all over the place and then just beopen to the feedback when people pull you in and apologize and like, don't stay in the
(39:48):
shame.
That has been the biggest thing for me and I'm really glad you talked about that and wroteabout that.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and I organized a lot and studied with Felicia Savage-Freedman, who has ananti-racist Raja Yoga school.
And she always would say, like, it's not about what you do, it's about how you respond.
So I try to hold that, too, as like, okay, I'm going to make mistakes, but I can also,like, really work on how I respond when I receive correction or when I get that feedback.
(40:16):
And try to play with that, respond differently.
Yeah, can you speak to cancel culture?
Because this frustrates me so much, the idea that, you do something wrong and you're justdone forever.
Have you encountered that?
How do you talk to people about that?
Yeah.
I mean, I think this is where trauma healing is so important because I think cancelculture is coming out of trauma and, know, especially like, and it's replicating policing.
(40:47):
mean, it's really replicating, like trying to control other people's behaviors.
And I get it, especially within movement spaces that, I mean, we don't want to be, wedon't want to be part of perpetuating harm and saying harmful things.
But there's also, I think part of white supremacy culture is that it's so performative,especially white womanhood.
(41:13):
And so it's like, if we're associated with someone who says something wrong or quoteunquote bad, right?
And we've learned, like punishment is separation.
Like we lock people up.
We don't want to be a part of it.
That's not us.
We're not bad, they're bad.
So I think that separation piece is where cancel culture comes from.
(41:35):
that people have experienced a lot of trauma and harm and so trying to regain somesemblance of control and self-determination.
And then I think there's also that performative piece, which is like, no, I don't want tobe associated with it or tainted or if I can stay pure, right, which is talk about white
(41:55):
womanhood, stay separate and pure, then I won't be connected to that.
It's so reactionary.
and just like not relational and not helpful at the end of the day to really learn.
So I'm curious about how we support each other and learning from our mistakes.
And you can tell when someone is, I mean, I think we can discern when someone is doingsomething out of malice or has no intention of learning from what they've done.
(42:26):
And when people like legitimately have made a mistake and didn't know or like,
there's room for even if they're feeling defensive or acting defensively that they want tobe in relationship and they want to be in community.
And there's a whole range there.
so we've like, cancel culture, think has moved us, it's moved us very far away from thatdiscernment, that community discernment, the relational piece.
(42:48):
And, you know, I think it is important to think about like, how do we hold each otheraccountable?
The work of like abolitionism and transformative justice is really speaks to that.
But,
we need to be able to hold each other accountable for when harm is caused.
And also we can so replicate the violence of the state when we do it in punitive ways andways that shun and separate folks.
(43:16):
I Mennonites have a long history of shunning, so.
Yeah.
I mean, I found this term in cult studies a few months ago, and I literally yelled when Ifound it because it was so perfect.
And it's like when you're all policing each other and enforcing the rules on each other,it's called performative regulation.
You know, I remember being like 12 years old and my family was away from the cult and thenlike none of the rules applied anymore.
(43:43):
And I just I just remember looking at my dad and being like,
so you don't actually believe this stuff, right?
It's just all like, performative.
Yeah, but.
really interesting, Amanda, what you say.
It's so helpful, right?
Because we do get, we fall into these patterns.
(44:03):
I know that when I got some criticism from the blog piece that I wrote, my instinct,right, I was defensive and my instinct was to reach out to these people that were
criticizing me and to have a conversation.
rightfully so some of them they didn't want to talk to me and I understand that I didn'tat the time but I do understand it now but there was one one man he actually went on
(44:29):
social media having read what I wrote and and went on a 45 minute rant basically justtelling me to fuck myself and it was interesting because his roommate reached out to me
via email and said hey I think you know
he's misunderstanding, we're having an argument in our household about what your intentwas.
(44:52):
And so I was glad to pick up the phone and call him and we had a great conversation.
We recorded it.
We put it out there live for people to watch and to dissect.
And I learned a lot from that experience because he was willing to talk to me and correctme.
And also I was willing to say,
(45:12):
You know what, I'm in need of some correction here.
There's some things I don't understand.
Yeah, I mean, that's so beautiful when repair can happen, right?
And correction can happen and it's not always possible.
And I think it's just such, it's incredible when it can happen like that.
Yeah.
(45:33):
Something you said, Scott, also about impact though, or intent, right?
And I remember I had this realization that helped me with anti-racism.
You I had done something silly and I was like, just doing the white woman thing of tryingto defend myself and get people to be like, I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it.
(45:55):
And all of a sudden I just pictured our cult parents.
And when we try to talk to them about our trauma and they're like, what?
I didn't know, right?
And I have this thing that I say to them where I'm like, well, you know now, right?
Like you didn't know then, but we're hurting now and we're telling you this now.
(46:15):
And I immediately was, was like, yeah, it doesn't matter.
Like the intent actually doesn't matter.
And sometimes like you said, Amanda, repair can't be made.
And even when you do,
I think that's another thing for us to learn, Scott, is that we don't get to always feelgood about it at the end.
(46:36):
Right.
Absolutely.
Yeah, and I mean, it can feel really liberating and empowering to take responsibility forsomething that you did wrong.
Like, I mean, that's something that we miss in like shame and avoidance and like don't dosomething, you know, like perfectionism, shame culture.
Like, actually, it feels really incredible to be like, I messed up about this and I'mreally sorry and like take responsibility for it in like a deep way that I mean, the
(47:06):
moments I've been able to do that in my life.
have felt, yeah, really, would use the word liberating, like to have clarity around it andto get to have, you know, to forgive myself on some level, right?
Because I'm not trying to avoid it or push it off or dismiss it or pretend like it didn'thappen.
Yeah, that can be really incredible feeling too.
(47:29):
Amanda, tell us a little bit about the work that you're doing now.
You mentioned it a couple of times.
It sounds fascinating.
And how does that help complete or continue your studies into these issues?
Yeah.
starting in 2016, actually, that was the first, at the beginning of 2016, not the end,myself and a colleague started the first white women's affinity space.
(47:56):
We called it white women's group just because we didn't have another name and then itstuck.
And I unpack actually a lot of that work in the book.
But that has since evolved.
had a friend and colleague recently who read my book and was like, Amanda, this is ateaching book.
And so
I've really been embracing that.
There's a group that started to read the book in March before it came out and we readchapter by chapter.
(48:20):
They helped me develop a discussion guide.
And what I learned from that process and this ongoing affinity space work is just howimportant it is for us to do our own healing work and do that collectively.
I think it can be really powerful to read a book on its own.
But those books have changed my life for sure in my perspective.
(48:43):
And also because like we are trying to shift how we show up with each other and ourbehaviors.
I think it's like really important that we do it, the work and community.
And so I have a couple of book groups.
have a Patreon virtual book group with folks from all over, but then I have several groupsthat are local.
And I think the important part of the local piece is that then those folks are not onlybuilding relationship in like a white women's affinity space,
(49:10):
that they're also building relationships with local Black and Brown organizers andaccountable building, accountability relationships and showing up for what's happening
locally in their communities too.
So those are the main things that I'm involved in right now.
I do occasional workshops and support some coaching work in other ways, but I'm reallyinterested in this small group model.
(49:40):
because there's a lot of patterns within white women.
I talk about like the witch hunts in Europe and how we have learned some of this, thecompetition and the comparison and the perfectionism so deep in relationships with each
other.
so it's a practice space for how we can show up with each other differently.
(50:01):
It's a space for us to talk about.
all of the points of access and power we have in our lives, specifically in our familysystems.
White women have so much power in family systems and a lot of work to do there becausethat's where we have access and relationship with folks who we're not gonna like
necessarily be friends with or be aligned politically.
(50:24):
So I think we have so many, there's a lot of work and opportunity in our family systemsand work to do.
I'm so glad you mentioned perfectionism because I for sure took a really long time tounderstand that perfectionism is self-hatred and that it was really tied into this
(50:46):
patriarchal white supremacists, I call them cult systems that we are locked into.
And I'll never forget.
black woman in my audience saying to me, yeah, I never trust a white woman who's aperfectionist because I know she's gonna hurt me at some point.
And that like, I mean, it shifted my entire perspective and made me realize like not onlyare we harming ourselves with the perfectionism, but we're these little like fragile bombs
(51:16):
that can go off and harm other people.
Yeah.
When the ideals, right?
When like the ideals are more important than the humans in front of you.
That's so dangerous.
It's so violent.
cult thing too, is putting systems and doctrine and ideals before individual humans.
(51:37):
And one of the ways that we deconstruct from that is by understanding that the human beingalways matters more.
I love that framing for it as well.
Earlier, Amanda, you also mentioned being involved with the arts and seeing that helpfulto your work.
Can you flesh that out a little bit for us?
(51:58):
Mm-hmm, yes.
So, well, I'm a weaver.
My loom's back there.
Fiber artist as well, like Daniela.
And I use a lot of fiber art metaphor in my work.
I feel like I should pick up painting or something.
Because you guys are doing something.
I'm doing nothing.
Mm-hmm.
(52:19):
Yeah, like, you know, conflict, in fiber art, you have to have tension.
And so, especially as someone who comes from a culture, you know, Mennonites are veryconflict avoidance.
Conflict is seen as like violence, even though they're not the same thing.
have conflict that's not violent, although we don't have many models of that.
Yeah, so like, in order to make a piece of fiber art, you have to have tension.
(52:41):
Too much tension, it'll snap.
Not enough tension, you don't have integrity of fabric.
So I use a lot of those metaphors and those fiber wisdoms in my work.
And my doctoral research was around this question of how arts and culture can supportwhite settlers in sustaining long-term work with anti-racism and decolonization efforts.
(53:01):
When I did the work with my family members, actually about what I had written about themin the book.
So we used different...
arts engagements and arts broadly, right?
So like with family members who cook, we cooked together.
With family members who sing, we sing together.
With our family members who are like archivists and like have all the photographs.
(53:23):
So we like looked at photos together.
But we use that to like help set the container so that we could enter into like hardconversations about what I had written.
And yeah, it was really incredible.
talk about the solutionary piece, the ways that my family members showed up and surprisedme and were ready to engage and just the level of connections and conversation that we
(53:49):
could have about like, what are our shared values and how does that relate to like how weactually show up in our relationships?
I'm telling you, it's easier to have hard conversations when you have yarn in your hands.
People will tell me this all the time on my sites.
(54:10):
They're just like, I just listened to this whole thing, because I was mesmerized by yourhands.
And I just absolutely love the history of fiber arts and culture.
I would probably just sit down and read your whole dissertation.
Yeah, I can't wait to read your book.
In fact, that's going to be one of my first stops when we finish up here.
(54:33):
And speaking of which, if people want to follow you or find your work or read your book,what's the best way to do that?
Yeah, MrSyndrome.com is my website and that has links to the book and I'm also on Patreonand Instagram and Facebook and sort of on Twitter.
(54:55):
get it.
Yeah.
We'll make sure all the links are in the show notes so that everybody can find you.
Yeah, so I've been moving away from some of those platforms and not as active on others,but definitely my website is a good place to start.
Amanda, before we conclude, if there's one thing that you hope that people take away fromyour book, one or two things, what is your message that you want to communicate to
(55:21):
everyone?
Well, if you are a status quo or passing white lady, then I think it's so important for usto do our own work because we do have so much access to the arrangements that are the
systems that exist right now.
And if we got our act together, we could really make some major change happen.
(55:44):
So that's one thing that I offer.
And then the other piece is just how important the healing component is.
to integrate that into all that we do, right?
that's, sometimes I use the phrase, the solidarity framework is really important and thatmy liberation is tied up with yours.
And so also like, I'm doing this so that I can get free along with everyone else.
(56:10):
I think it's important to have that both and, because then it's not quite saviorism,right?
Then I'm not doing this on behalf of someone else, but I'm really recognizing how.
our healing and our wellbeing is interconnected and interdependent.
Well said, thank you so much.
just want to say for me this falls under with cults.
(56:30):
have this like sacred assumption, this one thing you believe and sacred assumption isalways a lie.
And the sacred assumption of white supremacy is that we, status quo or white passing womenare better off and we're not.
And we're not better off.
So I'm always like, I want to do this work for everyone, but it's also for us, you know,like it is also.
(56:53):
about healing us and getting us access to a better world and better community andhopefully not all being lonely and taking our lives because we want proximity to power.
So your book is so powerful.
I love it so much.
Thank you so much for being here with us.
Yeah, thank you both for having me.
Really appreciate it.
(57:14):
And I appreciate the work that y'all are doing.
I've learned a lot listening to your podcasts too.
Thank you, Amanda.
We appreciate that.
And we look forward to perhaps having you on again in the future to continue theconversation.
So everyone go and follow Amanda Gross, buy her book, check her out, and also give Danielaa follow and purchase and read her book as well.
(57:36):
Uncultured, a great resource for all of these conversations, important conversations thatwe are having.
Be sure and hit that like and subscribe and share button.
Give us some feedback if you enjoy the podcast and share it with a friend.
Until next time, I'm Scott Lloyd for Daniela Messenek Young.
(57:57):
We'll see you on the next episode of Cults and the Culting of America.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.