Student Confessions on Anti-Racism: Janelle
Welcome to Student Confessions - an interview series where graduates of Becoming Anti-Racist with Nova Reid share the challenges and triumphs of their anti-racism journey.
Janelle is a writer who also works as a fundraiser in the charity sector. At the beginning of her anti-racism journey, anti-racism felt very relevant in a lot of places in her life, but she thought of it in terms of how she might show up better, as opposed to how she might change herself. But the Course, and being a member of an accountability group, have helped her go deeper, especially when she decided to take the Course a second time.
Interviewer Angela - When did you begin your anti-racism journey?
Early 2020. I began to do some work with Nova in March, 2020, which is interesting timing because obviously, a few months later, George Floyd was murdered and anti-racism became a mainstream topic of conversation. It was coincidental that I came to it a couple of months before. I signed up for a week-long online workshop Nova was running called Courageous Courage.
I’d seen Nova’s TED talk and it really spoke to me, and from there I started following her and going on her website and reading about her. The Course was on there, I remember reading about it, but when she promoted this smaller thing, Courageous Courage, I felt it was more of a step-in, rather than going straight into the Course. And, it cost much less than the course. On reflection, I think it was way underpriced for so much of Nova’s time and energy.
It was about how to interrupt racism. There was a lot about being a bystander and how you might act in a certain situation if you witnessed racism, including role playing.
So that was how I started on the journey. Having reflected since, I think I came away from this workshop with a sense of moral superiority and that I was going to help ‘fix’ racism. At that point I still hadn’t started looking at myself and my own role in upholding racism. But it was still a powerful starting point for me and I’m grateful for that. I’m actually still connected to some of the people who were in the same class.
From there I joined Nova’s Facebook community as well. And, as I’m sure will come out as we talk, it all went from there.
Interviewer - What motivated you to start / continue?
The initial catalyst was Nova’s TED talk. But, again on reflection, I think I was watching it as if it didn’t apply to me. So, I was watching it and starting to learn from a place of superiority and exceptionalism – a word I learnt from doing this work – and from a saviour point of view: If I can spot this better, if I can spot a microaggression for instance, I can do something about it. Which, we know what the problems with that are now, but that’s where my thinking was then.
But also, one of my best friends is Black. I’ve known him since primary school, since we were five. But we’re from Harrogate which is a very white, middle-class, affluent place so my friend was one of only one or two Black or Brown children in our primary school and then when we moved to secondary school, I think there was over 1,000 pupils in the school and there was only a handful of Black and Brown kids.
So, I had one Black friend, who is a very very close friend, so I was thinking about him as well when I was thinking about starting the Course. I was also thinking about the career I’d moved into.
I’d recently moved into working for a small charity doing fundraising and communications, and the charity supports women who are sex working. I’d previously been a volunteer there and then ended up joining the staff team. The services predominately support women who are street-based sex workers and many are experiencing a compounding of harmful situations such as homelessness, mental ill-health, addictions, contact with the criminal justice system etc. Just so many barriers and so much systemic harm. They are very marginalised and there is a lot of stigma with sex work. There are a lot of myths and it is rare that the women we meet there get to have their voices heard or tell their stories. As someone who does not have this lived experience, I was conscious of this and how I might approach talking about the organisation’s work and the people we support. With this in mind I was also thinking about how understanding racism better would be important for my role and the organisation.
Anti-racism felt really relevant in a lot of places in my life but, like I say, I wasn’t thinking about it as me. I was thinking about it in some of the spaces I was in, like, How can I show up better? That was my initial motivation.
What’s kept me going is the Courageous Courage group, and group learning. And from there going into Nova’s bigger Facebook community. So feeling I was in a community and not just on my own. That really helped. Because obviously there are lots and lots of reasons and motivations for why you might want to step away from this work, to avoid it or slip into a comfortable space or whatever. So having that accountability / peer pressure – for want of a better word – a feeling that I’ve now started to open my eyes to this and I know that stepping away is a choice.
And then, like I said before, when I started, the world was a different place, in a way. And literally a few weeks later George Floyd was murdered and – as you’ll remember – you couldn’t ignore it any more. So that timing was probably very influential, because anti-racism and racism was so front and centre of our consciousness.
And also I’d started to get to know Nova a little bit and she was confiding in us about how horrific it was for her to go from a manageable amount of attention and interest on social media to being absolutely bombarded with people clamouring for her time and to be aligned with her, asking for answers to, What should I do? So she was sharing a little of that and we were checking in to see if she was okay. So, knowing somebody who was in the heat of it all, obviously I felt empathy and, What can I do? It was huge.
And then – I can’t remember the timing – but I got to know other Course students a bit, I think we were all in Nova’s Facebook group, but we were completely overwhelmed with wondering what we should do. We all really cared, but it was probably the whole white urgency thing as well like, We need to do something right now. What should we do? And swoop in and take action.
Inteviewer - Save the world?
And save the world, yes. So we were starting to meet and have the odd zoom call. Obviously we were all in lockdown as well, it was during Covid, so we were all at home, probably doom-scrolling, and having all of this horrible awful content overwhelming us about the pandemic, about George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and other people who were being killed and harmed from racism and disproportionately dying from Covid. And I was starting to see things differently e.g. how when the ‘NHS Heroes’ were depicted in the press, it was usually pictures of white colleagues.
There was just so much. It was everywhere and you couldn’t turn away from it. So that’s what kept me in at that point.
And at work as well, in our charity, like every other charity we were wondering what we were going to do.
Black Lives Matter, but what were we actually doing? That’s something I continue to ask today.
Interviewer - What was the most difficult aspect of the course and why?
It’s probably all related to shame. Firstly, just continuing with it. And going back to it and, when I was avoiding it, and realised I’d avoided it, going into a shame spiral of, I shouldn’t be avoiding it. But that caused me to freeze even more and avoid it even more. That came up a lot.
But now that it’s been a few years since I first did the Course, I realise I didn’t go in deep enough. But I also think that’s what I was capable of at the time, with the self-knowledge and tools that I had then. The first time I did the Course I needed to go deeper, but I didn’t quite have the skills and self-awareness to do it then, that way.
Interviewer - So have you done the Course twice?
Yes, I’ve done it twice. So the first time I did it was the previous iteration of the Course. The Beta version. And then when the revamped version came out I did it again. And I have gone into bits of it again, as well. So I’ve done it twice, and then engaged with some parts of it again.
Intervierwer - Did you ever think of giving up? If so, why and what kept you going?
I didn’t consciously say, I’m going to give up. But I think I did give up many times. I stepped away from it in an unconscious way. I’d just not go back to it for a while. And I’d realise it had been a few weeks, maybe longer.
[Other students kept me accountable ] and then we ended up setting up a WhatsApp accountability group so we had each other to spur each other on. And also, this is again an interesting reflection and not necessarily for the right reasons, but there was – I don’t know if there still is – but there was a percentage bar of how far you’d completed the Course. And I did find that motivating, to get to the end. But I have reflected on that and, although it’s helpful in some ways, we know the work’s never done and it’s not something you can just tick off. But it did help just to see how much more content there was to go.
Interviewer - Yes, I felt the same about that. And also reflected that it wasn’t a race. And that it would never be finished. But, on the Course, I found that percentage bar helpful, to know where I was. And how much was ahead of me.
And I wanted to tell Nova that I’d finished the Course as well. And, again, reflecting on that and thinking, What’s the motivation there? And it’s a mixture of things but I wanted her to know she’d got another graduate who’d completed the Course.
Interviewer - How do you navigate shame without turning it into self-loathing?
This is very much still a work in progress. I’ve actually had therapy this morning which could have been a bad idea ahead of our conversation, but it was a really good thing. But as I was going through the Course, something I found extremely valuable about the shame module was just being able to name it. Because the physical bodily feelings and thoughts that accompany shame can be completely overwhelming and they feel very unpleasant and I don’t think, before the Course, I’d ever really been able to name what that feeling was, or what those feelings were, it was just something I wanted to get away from or avoid, as soon as possible.
So I think being able to name it and for Nova to explain what shame is and how it works and how it might show up was so powerful, because at least when I was having those feelings I could say, ‘Oh. There’s shame.’ Which really helps, to identify what’s going on. I think knowing that you’re not alone as well, with the feelings, really really helps. Knowing you’re not alone in a general sense, because there’s a module on it that explains that shame is a normal part of being human. But then also, having peers to speak to as well, who were all, at different times and in different ways, navigating shame. That really helped.
And then I think as the years have gone on since I’ve done the Course and continued with my anti-racism work, and also being in therapy, and growing in self-reflection and self-awareness, I think shame’s been lingering much more than I realised. So, recently, I’ve been doing a lot of work on self-compassion and self-forgiveness. It’s still relatively early days of me practising these, but it’s proving to be very beneficial and helping me to have more space and more ability to take action rather than freezing. Freezing is definitely something for me that happens with shame. So the shame will come and then I will try and think myself out of it.
I will go into a thinking spiral and end up not being able to move past that and getting stuck. And that adds to more shame because I’ll be saying to myself, ‘You’re not doing anything.’ So that’s been quite a game-changer because it’s helped me to speak more kindly to myself and have more love and compassion towards myself. Not to excuse things I might think or do, but to be kind to myself and know that I’m human and part of this system, including white supremacy. And they’re not from me, but I have perpetuated them and continued them.
But just having that voice to myself is so powerful. And that is covered in the Course, mostly in the self-care module, which is probably the one I’ve watched most times. But, as I’ve alluded to earlier, it’s going deeper and deeper and I think one of the things that’s so powerful about having the accountability group is speaking kindly to each other whilst holding each other to account. So we’re not saying to each other, ‘That’s disgraceful that you did that. You’re disgusting. You’re a monster and you hurt someone.’ We might say ‘You hurt someone,’ but then also being able to do that for myself. I think I’d started to take on negative stories to myself that were quite deeply rooted but I hadn’t realised. But I’m realising that a bit more now and I’m able to spot them more now. And knowing that when I am in that place I’m not in a good place to be active in anti-racism work. It doesn’t achieve anything. It doesn’t align with anything I care about. Or what we’re trying to do.
So this is all a new layer. But it’s really been very valuable.
Interviewer- How does it feel to know this work isn’t about you? That you’re not at the centre of this work?
I think you go in and out of that. So, interestingly, even as you asked that question, I did feel an immediate physical sensation, which is interesting. Because there probably is still a part of me that thinks it is about me. Because I do look for praise and external validation in life. But even being able to identify and notice that and park it is powerful. I wouldn’t have known about that before, or been able to do it.
On the other hand I think it’s really powerful. It’s quite freeing. This is so much bigger than me. It’s bigger than us. It’s motivating. Because we can zoom out and think about not just us, not just our lifetime, but after we’re gone and hopefully improving things and transforming things for the better. And that can actually take some of the fear away because this is so much bigger than just me.
Interviewer - What were your aha moments on the course?
I’m still having them all the time. I’m still having realisations years after doing the Course. But a key one for me, related to what we’ve already been talking about, was around discomfort. It comes up a lot in the Course. Getting comfortable with discomfort. And the phrase, Bypassing. So Nova talks about how we will try and just skirt around a challenging feeling or thought rather than actually being with it.
The first time I did the Course I thought I wasn’t bypassing and I was sitting with discomfort. But I don’t think I was, or not to the extent that I would now. So the first time I did the Course, I did it more like a cognitive, knowledge level. I learned the content but I wasn’t actually going inwards and really doing that inner work. I think I thought I was and I was trying to, but I’m still developing that. The second time I did the Course I definitely started to go in more deeply. That was a massive aha moment.
Another one that I wrote about the other day, is joy. Nova talks a lot about practising joy. Which, even that phrase, practising joy, was mind-blowing to me. I thought joy was an external thing that just happened or it didn’t. But the fact that you can choose to practise joy was, Wow!
The fact that anti-racism isn’t all really really heavy and hard and sad and grief and anger-filled. That all does come up, but there’s been so much that’s been wonderful. Being more honest with myself is hard but it’s also a gift. The people who I’ve connected with. The conversations and vulnerability with each other. And the art I’ve enjoyed, and things that have opened up for me have been aha moments as well.
And having my eyes opened and my senses awakened to stuff again and again that, as a white person, I’ve never seen, or never needed to see. Things I’ve not had to change about myself or check or experience. From doing the Course and doing the work you do start to see it but now, constantly, someone will share something, or something will become apparent, and I’ll realise I’ve never had to think about that before in my life as a white person in a white supremacist world.
The aha moments just keep happening and will for the rest of my life I’m sure.
Interviewer - How has doing the course helped you and the people around you? At work or in your personal life, or both?
That’s one of the most powerful things. The Course is Becoming Antiracist with Nova Reid, so it’s about anti-racism. And I’m sure this has come in the other interviews as well, the Course impacts in so many other ways as well. Even in how I speak to my partner. Or how I understand myself. Hopefully, as alluded to before, learning that not everything’s about me. And people all have their own life going on and things influencing them and impacting them.
And in the work setting, the Course has been massive. One of the areas I look after is communications. The Course has made me so much more mindful and conscious of the stories that we are putting out or we’re not putting out. And another problematic thing in the charity sector is that it is based on white saviourism. And I’m still learning about this all the time. I’m reading a book at the moment about it [Giving Back: How to Do Good Better by Derek Bardowell]. The sector I work in is based on othering people and then ‘saving’ them and helping them out and getting the feeling of, ‘Aren’t I good person for helping that poor downtrodden person.’
So it’s completely opened my eyes to how our organisation, and what I do, can perpetuate harm, when we’re all set up to reduce harm and support people and help people. The Course has changed how I feel about things and how I keep trying to hold us to account and think about our role in things. And I do keep trying to keep that present in ongoing conversations, especially now that, unfortunately, the world is moving on – has moved on – from anti-racism being as high profile as it was in 2020. Now is the time of apathy and potentially going back to old ways. And we really don’t want to do that.
The charity I work for does pride itself on being in solidarity, rather than othering. But we do have to be so careful about it. And we have to check ourselves all the time. So the Course has definitely given me a different lens on things like that, which I never would have seen before. It’s interesting to see what my motivation was to go into this work. I started off as a volunteer and ended up getting a job there. But thinking about why I did it, it was partly motivated by me wanting to be ‘A Good Person’.
In our community at the organisation we all really care about people and we all really care about injustice and we want things to be better for people and we all want to help people.
But you still have to check in with yourself and constantly check the power imbalances and what your motivations are: are they potentially causing harm is an ongoing thing. And if I hadn’t done Nova’s Course I’m not sure I would have seen that or realised that.
Interviewer - How has the course informed the work you do (if relevant)?
A continuation of that point, above. Seeing how systems work and seeing that more accurately than I used to. And being able to have difficult conversations – I’m still very much working on that – but having open honest conversations and not just saying, ‘We’re doing really good stuff and that’s that’. Thinking that means you can’t be doing anything harmful.
The Course has helped me to be more critical and more questioning of everything. Which is really challenging. You feel like things you trusted you can’t trust, and there’s a lot more dishonesty than I realised. But, ultimately – hard as it is – I am glad I know that now.
Having a more truthful lens on the world helps me show up more truthfully in the job and encouraging each other to be more honest and open as well.
Interviewer - How has the course changed / informed the way you parent / engage with young people (if relevant)?
I’m not a parent and I’m not intending to be. But I find, and I have found, that doing the Course has given me a real fire in my belly to hopefully interrupt the things that we learnt from being passed on to the next generation. When I started the Course I had no young people in my life whatsoever. I was at that place where all my peers didn’t have children, and I didn’t have any young relatives. But in the years since I started the Course I’ve got lots of young people in my life. And I find that such a motivation.
Watching that video, quite early on in the Course, and it’s on Nova’s TED talk as well, The Clark Doll Test, showing young children of three, four, five, perpetuating racism and perceiving the white doll or the white cartoon to be the pretty one and the clever one, and the darker-skinned dolls to be the ugly one and the naughty one. I think once you’ve seen that video, you can’t forget it. That video reiterated to me how important it is to start from birth basically with age-appropriate conversations about race and racism. I find that so exciting because children are like little sponges and blank canvasses we can influence in a positive way and ensure that they don’t learn some of the stuff I learnt as a kid. And it can be fun as well. Picking up books for them. And having conversations with them – the ones I know aren’t yet old enough for the conversations yet, but it is a huge motivation to feel like you can make a really positive change or prevent harm because they’re at that place in life where they’re open to everything.
I’ve become what we’ve called a Guide Mother. So it’s like a godmother but Guide Mother, to a young girl who’s not even one yet. That’s an incredible role for me to have in this young person’s life and her Mum said one of the reasons she asked me was because she thinks I’d be a good influence on a young person. It was very moving. So I’ve got my Guide Person to think about and how can I influence her – she’s white – when she gets a bit older and starts making friends and going to school and living life, to guide her to be a safe loving place for Black and Brown people rather than causing harm. And having that little innocent person and thinking about her future and all the people she’s going to meet and all the things she’s going to do, I find that very motivating. I’ll probably watch the Parenting module again.
Interviewer - Another interviewee told me about a board book for kids called Our Skin. So I bought several copies for the little ones in my life. There’s so much we can do even if we don’t have children, just as I don’t.
And as you know I love books as well. I’m already known as the Book Auntie. So I’m very happy to get them all these wonderful diverse books.
Interviewer - How has the course changed the relationships you have with Black people and People of Colour in your life?
With my close Black friend we’ve had some really good conversations. I don’t want to quote him because I can’t say for sure, but I feel like he’s more able to be open with me about these things now than he might be able to be with some of his other white friends. But something for me to reflect on is that I still don’t have that many Black and Brown peers and friends. The organisation that I work for is still very white. The place where I live – I moved from Manchester to the Ribble Valley – so I moved from a very diverse multicultural place to a very very white place. So that’s something I’m reflecting on as well, but I hope that, I feel that, I do show up differently than I would have done before the Course.
I’m also part of a community called Antiracist Cumbria – I’m a volunteer. And I’m hoping to meet more people through that because it’s obviously a very diverse group. And I hope that any Black or Brown person around me – they’ll never feel a hundred per cent safe because I’m a white person – but I hope they feel comfortable and safe around me and that they can also call me in – which people have done – and say, ‘What you did there’, or, ‘What you said there was racist or harmful in this way’. I hope I’m able to hear that and respond to it and make sure I don’t do it again. And I don’t think I would have coped very well with that before. I would probably have given a classic white fragility response if they’d been able to tell me, I’m not sure if they would.
Interviewer - How do you remain self-aware? eg, How do you avoid moving into saviourism? (How do you recognise when you are moving into saviourism?)
I try to keep checking in with myself and being curious with myself which you really do build up on the Course.
We are encouraged throughout to be curious and do lot of journalling and prompts. That worked really well for me because I already journalled a lot – but it was a good skill to develop even more. And having peers as well to check in with, like the accountability group. And our meetings as well. Having other people to check in with but also something I find so powerful, and I should do it more myself, is when someone else realises they’ve gone down a white supremacist thought process that then they’ll share it. They’ll say, I was doing this. And I thought this. And I realised, so now I’m doing this.
An example is – years ago – and I can’t remember the exact wording – but someone said something about pets. And they realised that when they thought about pet owners they never ever pictured a Black or a Brown person. And from there they followed social media accounts of Black and Brown people with pets. But when that person was really open about it, when they’d had a thought, clocked it and then they’d taken action, I thought that was so powerful. Rather than realising it and maybe going into a shame spiral saying, Oh my God I can’t believe I thought that. Or, I can’t believe I did that. They just shared it with that sense of curiosity. And also sharing the action they’d taken was so powerful.
So sometimes sharing our own examples of when we have slipped into saviourism. Like at work for instance, I look back at some of the work I’ve done before and it’s definitely got a saviourist angle to it. And I don’t do that any more, but I did. And I was doing it from the best of intentions but it was actually othering people when that was the opposite of what I was intending. So constantly checking in with ourselves and hearing other people being honest and open really helps.
Interviewer - I have what I call ‘sneaky little thoughts’. They just come into my mind. But now I get curious about them and ask myself what I can do about them. Nova’s Course has shown me that – I don’t even think I noticed them before.
Yes, they’re so ingrained. I like that as well – sneaky little thoughts. Because you’re not thinking, Horrific monstrous thought. You’re already shrinking it down – not giving it weight – and just noticing it and then getting curious. I’m definitely still building that skill. I don’t always manage to do things like that. But I’m practising that skill. I think Nova calls it Flexing the muscles. It’s hopefully creating new neural pathways in my brain, in our brains, and things become – some things hopefully – become a bit more automated and conscious. We don’t always have to actively think. It becomes part of us.
Interviewer - And the fact that we can change our neural pathways. I find that tremendously hopeful.
Yes. That is exciting. That was in the Course as well. On one of the bias modules where you do the Harvard Implicit Association test – that you can reprogramme your brain. That is – as you say – so hopeful. It’s like, Why isn’t this more known about? That we can actually take action on it rather than just denying denying denying.
If you’re honest about your biases you can take some steps to reprogramme that bias.
Interviewer - What’s been the hardest lesson to learn / accept?
Perfectionism. Knowing that there’s never a perfect amount to do. There’s never a perfect amount to know. You can’t complete this. No matter how much you commit, you will still be harmful sometimes. You will still make mistakes. You will still slip back into the previous status quo. So the more you know the more you know that you’re sometimes choosing white comfort or harm, or racism. So those aspects can be hard to accept.
But then once you do accept that there’s no perfect white ally, there are no qualifications, there’s no end point, that’s also motivating because you can keep recommitting, keep showing up, keep having that self-compassion and knowing that a big part of it for me, and for a lot of white women, is moving away from that need to be “good”. So accepting that you’re not going to be this fully “good” person because you’re human and you’re much more complicated than that.
It’s the balance between accepting that and the freeing thought that you’re allowed to be human. But you can keep recommitting and keep showing up and keep aligning to your values and when you do make a mistake – which you absolutely will, guaranteed – you can come back.
Interviewer - I find that very powerful too. That making a mistake is not the end of the work I’m doing. It’s not the end of my particular world. It’s not The End. And I can move on from making a mistake. It’s not overwhelmingly awful.
Making a mistake is not the end
And Nova reiterating that all the time. And role-modelling so much compassion, so much care, kindness and love. Rooting the work in love is so powerful because I’ve hurt her – we’ve hurt her – going through the Course and making mistakes – and her role-modelling holds us accountable but also lets us be flawed humans who make mistakes. And that we’re still here and she’s still here and that’s really really powerful. It’s such incredible role-modelling of being human.
Interviewer - This reminds me of – I think it’s in The Good Ally – where Nova says, Speaking as a Black woman, when a white person makes a genuine graceful apology the outcome completely changes. I find that very powerful.
What’s been the most important lesson you’ve learned that you carry forward?
Honesty is a massive one. I’m still learning and processing but something Nova talks about a lot in the Course is that we don’t have honesty role-modelled very much anywhere in society. We don’t often see honesty about mistakes or about harm. And then accountability. You just see denial denial denial. And even in our own little worlds we don’t learn how to be honest. Even at school when we made a mistake the teacher would say, Say Sorry. And you’d say Sorry even if you didn’t mean it or even if you didn’t really know why you were saying it. You would just do what they said. So many examples.
Nova’s really shone a light on the fact that we’re not honest, even with ourselves. So we would say, back in the day, I am not racist. That wasn’t honest. Or we might say, I don’t see Colour. That’s not honest. It’s clearly not true.
I think it’s a really hard lesson because it does shake up the foundations of your world because you see things that you thought were the case are not the case. But the power of honesty when it does happen is incredible. I think Nova’s an amazing role-model for honesty. Some of the things she’s shone a light on or held up or said about her own experiences is so inspiring. And then when you see other people doing it, like other students on the Course, speaking honestly, it helps you to then be honest with yourself more. Because they said that they do see Colour, you can say, Same here. It ripples.
It's something I keep coming back to. Thinking about. Seeing, or not seeing. Seeing more dishonesty. And how normalised it is. Honesty is not normalised at all in our culture.
I find it hard to pick the most important lesson. Just one. Because there are so many. But that was the one that came to my heart.
Interviewer - How was the format of the course for you? Was it accessible? Is there any way that the course accessibility could be improved for other people?
I did find it very accessible. I like the fact that there were different modes: videos, slides, prompts. Something I found, interestingly, and I’m finding in general in life, is I actually need to move around a lot. And there were quite a few times when I would just have the audio and I’d walk around and do some kind of very menial task that I didn’t need to think about. I found that quite helpful rather than being sat at the screen. But then sometimes Nova would say, I’ve put something on the screen now. Or, I’m going to show you a video. So just using the audio didn’t always work.
And as I say I found journalling works for me. I already did that a lot so that felt like a very accessible way for me to explore some of this. Sometimes voice notes as well – even though it was quite scary to verbalise. But that was sometimes a good way to explore things and unpack things.
But for me I found journalling really useful. Sometimes I find honesty comes out on the page more than it might do if I sat there looking out the window and wondering, What do I think about this?
Interviewer - Is there anything else you’d like to say about the course or about your anti-racism journey that we haven’t talked about?
I’d like to express my gratitude to Nova. The Course and her work and the way that she frames it and everything she brings to it: the mental health angle and the compassion, and the British lens, have been so transformational to me and hopefully to the places and people that I’m in. What she’s put together is absolutely amazing and the places where she’s had to go herself emotionally and personally to put this together – I admire her so much. Everything that I’ve just spoken about, Nova’s given as a gift – all of that learning, that self-awareness and world-awareness. I don’t know if I would have got that from anywhere else – or maybe I would have, but only by the time I’m much much further into my life.
So I’m just incredibly grateful and in awe of Nova, but also so many people she’s introduced me to or that I’ve sought out because of her invitations and I feel my world is much more technicolour – like The Wizard Of Oz, where Dorothy used to see the world through a black and white lens. So now it’s more real, sometimes it’s more painful to see through that lens, but it’s more truthful and I’m very very grateful and I think her work is incredible and I hope more people do the Course and find the work and go on the journey as well. And keep going on the journeys. And stay on the journeys.
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The Course has opened Janelle’s eyes to how the organisation she works in can perpetuate harm even though it’s set up to do the opposite. One of the areas she looks after is communications: the Course has made her much more mindful and conscious of the stories they put out (or don’t put out) and it’s helped her be more critical and more questioning of everything in her life, which is challenging because the things she once trusted she can’t trust now. But, ultimately – hard as it is – she’s glad she knows that now and glad she knows there’s no such thing as a perfect white ally. She’ll keep recommitting, keep showing up, keep accepting that she’s never going to be a fully perfect “good person” because she’s human and she’s much more complicated than that.
Learn more about Becoming Anti-Racist with Nova Reid
Books Referenced:
The Good Ally - Nova Reid
Giving Back: How to Do Good Better - Derek Bardowell
Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race - Jessica Ralli and Megan Madison