Isaiah Oliver, President and CEO of the Community Foundation of Greater Flint, leads an organization focused on engaging people in philanthropy in Flint and Genesee County, Michigan. In this podcast he speaks with Dr. Gale Christopher, racial healer, holistic doctor, and architect of the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) initiative taking place in Flint and 13 other communities across the United States. TRHT is a comprehensive, national and community-based process launched by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Dr. Christopher describes “the why” behind TRHT and what communities can do to address the contemporary effects of racism.
If you’d like to learn more about the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation initiative, visit their website here: https://www.wkkf.org/what-we-do/racial-equity/truth-racial-healing-transformation. If you’d like to learn more about Dr. Gail Christopher, you can visit her website at http://drgailcchristopher.com
To support the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Fund of the CFGF, give at www.cfgf.org.
Isaiah Oliver, President and CEO of the Community Foundation of Greater Flint, leads an organization focused on engaging people in philanthropy in Flint and Genesee County, Michigan. In this podcast he speaks with Dr. Gale Christopher, racial healer, holistic doctor, and architect of the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) initiative taking place in Flint and 13 other communities across the United States. TRHT is a comprehensive, national and community-based process launched by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Dr. Christopher describes “the why” behind TRHT and what communities can do to address the contemporary effects of racism.
If you’d like to learn more about the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation initiative, visit their website here: https://www.wkkf.org/what-we-do/racial-equity/truth-racial-healing-transformation. If you’d like to learn more about Dr. Gail Christopher, you can visit her website at http://drgailcchristopher.com
To support the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Fund of the CFGF, give at www.cfgf.org.
This week. I'm speaking with Doctor Gail Christopher ratio healer and founder of the Truth Racial Healing and transformation initiative taking place in Flint and 14 communities throughout the United States.
Speaker 2:Welcome to our philanthropy speeds podcast series with your host Isaiah, our president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Greater Flint. Join us as we engage in candid conversations with leaders throughout the nonprofit world and inspiring individuals who are making a real difference in Flint and Genesee county, Michigan.
Speaker 1:I am Isaiah Oliver, president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Greater Flint, which means I lead an organization focused on engaging people in philanthropy, giving time, talent, and treasure to make the communities we love better places to live in, work in, and contribute to today. I am excited and honored that the architect of truth, racial healing and transformation is here with us today. Doctor Gail Christopher, welcome. Thank you, Isaiah. It is my privilege and honor to be here with you today and to be in this amazing city of Flint, Michigan. Is it not an amazing city? It's pretty cold outside, but it's an amazing city. The people are wonderful. Well, we'll start today with the context for our conversation is truth, racial healing and transformation. And if you could for me just define TRHT and its current success, I'm happy to do that. Truth, racial healing and transformation is the name of an adaptation of the internationally recognized truth and reconciliation process. We decided that it was time for America to do that. You know, uh, over 40 different efforts have happened around the world in different countries. Postconflict sometimes looking at historic conflict and trauma like in Canada, but our nation has never done that. And so we knew that it was time for America to do truth and reconciliation, but we also knew that in America to say reconciliation would be to misrepresent the task for us. There is not really a need to reconcile that would imply that we were ever together. And this notion of division and racial hierarchy, it's in the DNA of America and that's why the adapted version for us is called truth, racial healing and transformation.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:truth, racial healing and transformation or a tear or age t is, I'll probably call it throughout. The rest of this has been around for a while. So if you could just talk a little bit about the when and the why of the work after the, the, the terrible killings at mother Emmanuel Church. Uh, and Dylan Ruth was the person that did that. Uh, he made it very clear what has motivated him to do that was an attempt to create a race war. Uh, he had been motivated by the website's storm front and by white nationalists rhetoric, uh, and belief systems, right. And so the, the need for this honest reckoning with that antiquated belief system was palpable at the time. And so we had at the Kellogg Foundation been doing, uh, an effort for over a decade, a decade, which was called America healing. And it was a racial equity, racial healing effort. So over time, you know, we had learned a lot. We'd evaluated that effort. We knew that there was a palpable community out there of people and practitioners. And so this notion of truth and reconciliation, it just felt like it was an idea whose time had come. That was prior to the 2016 presidential campaign. Uh, it was when the Obamas were still in the White House. So we didn't know that our country was about to move in this direction of overt racial division. You know, back then the term they used was dog whistle politics, you know, uh, we didn't know it was going to become bull horn, you know, racial politics. But it did. And so in that sense, the motivation, the energy to do this was probably a ahead of its time a little bit, but on time, hmm.
Speaker 3:A lot of times I'll use the term lucky and people will obviously push back against it. I would say luck is when preparation meets opportunity. And earlier in our conversation you talked quite a bit about this coming to you after a prayer. If you can just talk a little bit about that process. Okay.
Speaker 1:I will. I, uh, I am a spiritual person and I believe very much in the presence of our ancestors and our guidance from other dimensions. I don't think that the wisdom and the brilliance and the love of history is loss. And so when I need direction, I do pray. And I knew it was time to move on, so to speak, from a decade of work at the foundation. But I was unclear as to how best to do that. And so I did pray for guidance and I asked actually for the words for my resignation, and I woke up with this truth, racial healing and transformation. And it was very clear, it was an impression not only of, um, the words truth, racial healing and transformation, but also the meaning that it was in fact an adaptation of the truth and reconciliation process. Now there's a gentleman who's written a book recently called why we sleep for those who don't want to go with this as spiritual insight. Uh, he says that it is when we are asleep, that our brain can actually sort of integrate all of our desires and hopes and knowledge and give us ideas. So whichever way you want to go with that, that's how he came about. Uh, and I was, I knew immediately. And so I called the president of the foundation then and said, you know, do you think we could get behind this idea? And, and she responded by saying she would ask the board and the board was unanimously supported. And so we had a good year of lack anything of significance, a good year of outreach, recruitment, engagement and then ultimately collaborative design process in terms of we reached out and we engaged about 140 organizations whose combined reach to their constituencies was well over 200 million on survey, maybe 250 million people. And then we engaged to representatives of those organizations into a collaborative design process based on the framework that I developed for this, which has five components. And I can give those all say that that reveal that came along with the revelation TRHT came out, truth, racial healing and transformation, but also the framework. So if you could, if we can just take a moment here to take the deep dive and dissect TRHT itself and then the framework. Okay. I'm very happy to do that. And I'll say truth in the sense that, uh, these I, this idea of truth and reconciliation is about honesty. You know, it's about an authentic reckoning and authentic telling and understanding and listening and so truly is key, right? Racial healing is, is this notion that this belief in a hierarchy of human value is racism. You know, it's grounded in an, in an archaic, antiquated, uh, concept, but botanical and biological concept of a taxonomy of the human family. That, and it came out of the 1,615 hundreds, this crazy idea that you can divide humanity into these groups based on their physical characteristics and their geographic place of origin. Um, Linnaeus was the creator of the original taxonomy. A, he was a botanist and he gave us many of the taxonomies that we still live with today in plants and you know, and various other aspects of biology. But he created one for the human family and then his contemporaries, Emmanuel Kant, and, and others began to ascribe personality or character traits to that hierarchy. And it became a bed, you know, and it was the basis of scientific racism. And, uh, I was taught it in school as a little girl growing up that there was these different groups caucasoid and African, you know, it's down, right? But so racial hierarchy is, is antiquated and inappropriate and has no place as a belief system. And the 21st century, the human genome has contest shown this anthropology has shown this, uh, it's been known for for many years now that this is a false idea, but the idea itself still exists and it's legacy still exists. So when we say racial healing, we mean getting rid of that idea, right? And then when we say transformation, which is pushing the envelope a bit, most truth and reconciliation processes stop at the truth telling. And the reconciling, we looked at those 40 plus efforts and read the critiques and we knew that this had to go further. The transformation has to do with creating a new way forward, creating policies and practices and institutions that honor our collective humanity in an equal way. And so that's what we mean by truth, racial healing and transformation. Or you've committed your current time, talent, and treasure to taking this work very deep. And part of what I think is an important context for this is just your background. If you could talk a little bit about your background and then move to talking about racial healing, um, from the perspective of the book that you're in the, in the process of writing right now. Rx, racial healing. Okay. Thank you. I will, my, my background clinically is as a holistic doctor, a licensed Nutura path nap ProPath, which is a connective tissue specialists and nutritionists. And for many, many years, I had a private clinical practice in Chicago and I was always bothered by the disparities, the inequities. Uh, and uh, I'll never forget this book that I read. I guess it would have been back in the 70s, which was called the textbook of black diseases. And I was like, what is this? Right. But this was a, an African American cardiologist who, who just knew that they were all these disparities and heart disease and hypertension and diabetes and blah, blah, blah. You know, so that was what that was about. So as I, my training is holistic in nature. I've viewed the body and it's integrated systems and I know that the body is by design, self healing and self regenerating and self maintaining. And so my training is to look at what barriers do we put in the way of that and how do we create conditions that interfere with that self healing mechanism. So when I say healing, for me it's not a deficit frame. It's an understanding that to heal is natural and it is about balance and harmony. That's what the body is always seeking a, the clinical term, it is homeostasis. And that evolved into what they call allostasis or the the adaptation if you will, is the one thing to have balance. It's another thing to have to adapt to the demands, right? So to clarify, because our human imperative, our fundamental human imperative is connection and relationship. That's who we are as mammals. That's what we need. This notion that separates and isolates us one from another is an anathema to who we are and it creates stress and stress throws the body into a defense mechanism. And that defense state when it is protracted actually burdens our systems and organs and depletes our energy. And so I think that underneath all these labels we give all these conditions, they are manifestations of an Allis static load. They are manifestations of a system that's been distracted in defense and unable to be naturally restored and naturally balanced. So, so I have my whole life, my whole career looked at how do we mitigate the stress that we as people of color have a disproportionate burden of experiencing. So, uh, so that led me from clinical practice to you know, social program designed to public policy work to try to make the government more accountable, uh, to philanthropy. And that's been this decades long trajectory, but it was always about how can I make life better for the people that I feel, you know, the most direct connection to people of color, but better for it evolved to understanding that we have to make life better for our whole country in order for that to be real
Speaker 3:believer in. And that your gift will make room for you and I'm thankful for you and the gift that not only you have but the gift that you bring into our communities. And um, I guess I'll, I'll follow this question of, I'm going to ask a question, but it's going to be, I'm going to apologize up front for the question because it may not be a direct connection and no, one of the chapters of your book is focused on the abcs. And last night at dinner you were talking to my daughter and I, and we were talking about Black Panther and abcs. And I don't know if there's a direct tie, but I feel like there might be around the, at least the a, but there may be stronger connections between B and c if you could not only talk a little bit about the abcs, but then, well now rx, racial healing prescription, racial healing is the name of the book. And it's my way of trying to capture
Speaker 1:is this effort and this understanding of the actual process of racial healing circles. And we'll come back to that. And the, the broader meaning of racial healing in terms of jettisoning the belief in a hierarchy of human value. But, um, so the movie Black Panther for me was a phenomenal movie. Uh, it was just brilliant in its writing and its direction. And I had the privilege of meeting the director by the way, which was just amazing. I thought it was so sensitive and nuanced and I walked out of there, I've seen it three times. Right? And so you see all these people in the theater, you know, high fiving each other, feeling good about this movie. And as someone who's been in this racial healing space forever, I thought to myself, that was a two hour dose of affirmation, affirmation, imagined, but so acute. You know what I mean? So powerful. Our ancestry, you know, the contemporary side of it, the respect of the cultural view of the ancestors and their role. I mean, the beautiful women who were strong and who were leaders. It was just so much affirmation. Right. And I couldn't help but think so what, two hours of that did for me, right? It goes six hours. If I saw it and I thought, can you imagine what it is like for white people who live their entire life with every day, every second of every day, every movie, everything affirming their superiority. Can you imagine the mountain that they have to climb out from under to let go of that false notion of a hierarchy of human value? And they're at the top of that, right? And so, you know, my friends who know me well and they just say, Gail, you're the only person I know that could have seen black panther and found a way to be empathetic with white people. I said, well, if all about the narrative, you know, it's all about what the stories we hear and the stories we see and you and asked me to give the framework for TRHT and I didn't. So I'll take a quick minute if that's okay. So the narrative is a five part framework that that is designed so that there's enough flexibility in it for communities to embrace the framework, but to implement TRHT in a way that he's at unique to their local priorities. Right? So we've got these five, I call them buckets, very scientific. So the first one is narrative change in. And your question about Black Panther is really appropriate because it's the stories that we hear and see and read and experience that shape our beliefs and our understanding, right? So we know that part of what is wrong in terms of this racial hierarchy, Egos, is that we keep getting the same false story that somehow in particular white males are superior to everybody else, not only in their capacity, but in their value and in their words and in what they deserve. So we got to tell a different story. We got to tell a story that honors the native Americans who were stewards of this land that honors the actual cultures and intelligence and intellect and drive of African nations. Long before the enslavement experience began, the tremendous resilience and power. People don't understand that the idea of enslavement was always resisted. You know, no one just laid down and said, okay, enslave me. And people don't understand the depth of the resistance to enslavement and what that means. And when you, when you do you have more respect I think and we'll regard for the struggles and more appreciation for the violence that was required in order to maintain enslavement and why the civil rights movement had to be nonviolent in order for it to happen. That's another podcast. But so narrative is critical and we believe that we can change narratives through radio like this podcast through television shows, like for through movies, through textbooks. My first foray into this work was developing a multicultural education k through 12 program, then revisited the history of this country from multiple racial and ethnic perspectives. That was back in the eighties so that's the purse part narrative change. The second piece of the framework is the racial healing, the actual circles of bringing people together, providing opportunities for d biasing through connection. Uh, and we can talk more about that. And then the last three pieces of the framework, it's a five part framework. The last three pieces point us to addressing in action ways how this, this belief and its consequences, how this structured racism has become embedded and entrenched and sustained for centuries. One vehicle for that is through separation. As long as I can keep myself separate from others, I can hold on to these false narratives. Right? But through interaction and engagement or even living in an integrated community, oh, wouldn't that be nice? Right? Then I, I see people as the human beings, they are, and I don't hold onto that. So separation is one of the main pieces. The other is through the law. Uh, our country was built on the notion of racial hierarchy. The constitution embodies that many state constitutions embody that. Uh, we've lately come to see the criminal justice system as a mirror of that, but it's also the civil and policy and legal structures. So all of our legal structures to some degree reflect this false hierarchy. And then finally the third, the final piece of the bucket is economic. Ultimately, this idea of devaluation translates into the capital system. And so the idea of a racial hierarchy has been an economic engine for this country as well. So those are the five pieces of the framework, narrative change, um, racial healing and trust, building the separation, the law and the economy. And the communities that are doing the work, we ask all the communities to, to embrace the narrative change work in many different forms and the racial healing and relationship building because that's sort of like the, the spine, if you will. And then to, to pick whichever of the other three separation, the law, the economy seems right for their community to take on at that point in time. Um, no thank you for that answer. Now I have a question and we talked a little bit about Black Panther or any, and I've learned that you are a Trekkie. Yes. And there is a word that you've used over and over again. I want you to say the word and then tell us why you chose that word. Yeah, well, I am a Trekkie. My kids, that was our one rituals, you know, was to watch that show together growing up. But, uh, jettison, that's one of the words from Star Trek and admit, you know, putting it out into space and it would be gone. Let's Dennison this idea. And I think that's what we have to do with this false taxonomy notion. Uh, we have to just say it has no place in our universe or in the galaxy, if you will, that we have to get rid of it, but we have to replace it. And that's the, that's the rub, right? So if I, if, if there is no hierarchy of human value, well how do we relate as human beings, we relate as equal. We relate as equal reflections of the beauty and I call it the majesty and the awe of this design. That we are a, a reflection of that which is perfect, all of us and that we are equal in our value and our worth. Uh, it's so ironic because these superficial adaptations upon which the hierarchy is based, whether it's skin color or hair texture or the shape of our noses are eyes, all of those were part of nature's wisdom in adapting our ancestors to the climates in which they evolve, right? If you needed a wider nose in relationship to the air quality and the humidity that you were living in nature adapted to that. You know, if you needed a darker skin to protect you from the sun's rays in an in an extreme than the pigmentation was provided for that. If you need it, less pigmentation so you could get more to make more vitamin D, then you had less pigmentation, you know? But it was the wisdom of nature that adapted to climate, which is, which is a subtle reminder of our ever present relationship to the environment in which we live and how we should value and respect that. That's a, a given other conversation. So I just think we have to replace this other idea and begin to understand our sacred interconnectedness as as human beings. So you will know Flint was a selected alongside 13 other communities from across this country to pilot this truth, racial healing and transformation work. As we begin to round out this podcast, my question to you would be, what would you share with this audience to not only activate their individual, but also to activate their collective efforts? Toward a commitment to jettisoning this belief. I would say to be honest with oneself about the power of what we believe, what we believe drives our actions and, and, and shapes our, our way of living and being. And that historically we have tried protest, we have tried litigation, we had tried legislation, we have tried the civil war, we've had the civil rights movement and all of those things are important and valuable and we wouldn't be where we are if it weren't for those. But we'd never actually had a concerted, organized effort to challenge the belief itself to say that this belief is a fallacy and it has no place in our reality. We have to do that now because it's resurfacing as an organized movement. This notion of white supremacy. And so you heard a elected official actually say, well, when did it get to be a bad idea? You know, and fortunately Congress reacted his peers, but he could say it because it is surfacing, it is in the ethos now and, and the destruction and the harm that comes from that is in measurable. So I would say to people know that this is our work and that it is sort of a precursor to all the other work. Uh, we, if we learn anything from history, we have to learn that if we don't engage the hearts and the minds, and the belief is about the mental frame, if we don't transform that we ended up having to repeat all of our efforts. Uh, so I would say this work can be done. That and the rewards from doing it, the joy of connecting at a deeper level with one's fellow human beings, with one's community in ways that you might never have an opportunity to. Uh, it's, uh, the people who are involved in it, they can attest to the fact that it's really good work. It's affirming work. And actually probably in with the abcs of our exploration, which I neglected to do. The a is appreciation, you know, and appreciation and affirmation. And that's part of what we all need. And it means to grow. So we grow in our intellect and in our emotional intelligence when we do this work, the B is belonging. It's a fundamental human need. It's, it's something that we can't be without. We must connect with other people. We must feel a sense of belonging. And the denial of that basic human need and imperative, as I talked about before, is stress inducing and it creates a defense reaction, which is detrimental. And the C is the consciousness change. And I think that the work is designed to change our consciousness about our relationship as a human family and to emphasize that we are I a sacred inner connected human family and that we depend on one another. So that is, those are the abcs of our ratio healing. They are in many ways the abcs of truth, racial healing and transformation. Dr Gail Christopher, I want to thank you for being here. Well beyond just thanking you for being here. Want to thank you for being a champion of this work.