Black Lives Matter, and What You Can Do
As another week of grief and anger and activism and uprising begins, I just want to take a moment to send empathy and solidarity to all my Black readers here, and to express my unequivocal belief that Black lives matter.
I support the protests seeking justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Nina Pop, Tony McDade, and all the other Black people who’ve had their lives unjustly ripped away over the years through the racist actions of police and vigilantes—and more broadly by the oppressive system of white supremacy.
I also support you in getting the self-care and community care you need in this moment, when the pain and trauma of living in a racist culture are so viscerally present.
There are a number of organizations offering free and low-cost mental-health services to the Black community right now, in case you’re looking:
The Loveland Therapy Fund, created by antiracism educator Rachel Cargle, helps cover the cost of therapy for Black women and girls.
For Black trans folks there are two therapy funds from the Okra Collective, created in honor of Nina Pop and Tony McDade.
The Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective (BEAM) is offering several Black-centered support and healing groups online.
And in the body-liberation space, the Fat Women of Color Collective has a private online community devoted specifically to supporting fat Black and Brown women in healing their relationships with their bodies. It’s led by Ivy Felicia, a fat Black woman who’s been working in this space for years.
White and non-Black folks reading this who are looking for ways to support the revolution for racial justice might consider donating to these organizations, as well as to the funds for Breonna Taylor's family, George Floyd’s family, and bail funds across the U.S.
Those who aren’t able to contribute financially can watch this video (without skipping the ads!) to send advertising dollars to organizations fighting for Black lives.
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I know we’re all in different places with our antiracism work and activism. Many people reading this are infinitely further along and have decades more experience than I do in working to dismantle racism—that is the lived experience of being Black, indigenous, or a person of color living in this racist society. (And of course none of those identities are the same, and anti-Black racism is what this current movement is all about.)
Others reading this are fellow white people who, like me, are in the ongoing process of unlearning the racist ideas we’ve all been conditioned to believe—ideas that the unearned social privilege of our skin color allowed us to avoid questioning until the circumstances of the past several years thrust them into our awareness.
If that’s the case for you, maybe you also deepened your understanding of racism and the movement to fight it last week thanks to the #amplifymelanatedvoices challenge on social media, started by dietitian Jessica Wilson and therapist Alishia McCullough. Maybe you’re looking to do more of that in an ongoing way.
I recently discovered the Anti-Racism Daily by Nicole Cardoza, and I’ve found it to be helpful for cultivating a daily activism practice: It gives you one action item each day, and helpful background on why it’s important.
(If you want to follow along with how I'm continuing to practice what I’m learning, you can check out my Twitter and Instagram.)
Finally, some folks reading this might be brand new to antiracism work and wondering what to do, or even why I’m talking about race as an anti-diet activist—to which I say, listen to Sabrina Strings break it down for you. Diet culture is a racist institution, and destroying diet culture is inextricably linked to dismantling racism.
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We’re also probably all in different places with our anti-diet work right now. Some of you may still be thinking about making peace with food and healing from diet culture, and for others those may be the furthest things from your mind. As Veronica Garnett shared on Twitter last week, “I’m a Black woman who happens to be a registered dietitian. But right now, I could not care less about food, nutrition & dismantling diet culture. All I can think about is survival. My own and my people’s. All I can do is process this trauma & grief. I’m exhausted.”
If that’s how you’re feeling right now, it’s so understandable. Focusing on survival, rest, emotional healing, activism, and whatever else is calling to you in this moment is so much more important.
If you do happen to have the bandwidth to think about anti-diet work right now and you’re looking for resources, I have an episode of Food Psych to share.
In honor of the movement to defend Black lives, and also in recognition of the fact that the anti-diet movement must also be an anti-racist movement, this week I wanted to repost another episode with a brilliant Black thinker and writer who speaks to some of the racial-justice issues that are connected to this anti-diet work.
It’s with the amazing writer and body-liberation activist Sonya Renee Taylor. Sonya has been instrumental in helping make the eating-disorders and body-positivity space more aware of racism and its intersections with diet culture and eating disorders, and she’s been doing this work for many years. I want to honor her contribution and make sure you all go check out her work—her website is here, and she has a great book called The Body Is Not An Apology that I highly recommend.
In our interview from 2017, we discussed many of the same issues that are on people’s minds today: why understanding racism and other forms of oppression is the key to creating a world that’s truly safe for bodies of all shapes and sizes, how to begin to untangle internalized oppression, why body-size acceptance means nothing if you’re not also accepted for your skin color and other identities, and so much more.
Plus, Sonya talked about why we need more radical body love in the world, how to deal with weight gain and weight stigma while learning intuitive eating, what mainstream body positivity gets wrong, and how to navigate diet culture as a body-acceptance activist. And in a new 2020 introduction, I share some of the antiracism educators and books I’ve been learning from lately.
Listen to the episode here, and I’ll be back next week with a new episode where I talk with antiracism activist Monique Melton about the current movement for Black lives and her work toward healing from diet culture. For more previous episodes where you can hear Black, Indigenous, and POC guests share their stories and perspectives on racism and diet culture, click here.
In solidarity,
Christy