Season 7, Episode 6: Danielle, Rebecca and Jenny

Pre Order Danielle S Rueb- Castillejo's book!

Split Vision
Whiteness and the American Trauma of Separation
Danielle S Rueb-Castillejo 
(Author)
Phil Allen Jr 
(Foreword by)

https://bookshop.org/p/books/split-vision-whiteness-and-the-american-trauma-of-separation/2f93dc782ae51f71?ean=9798341903371

Here is a local bookshop: https://www.eagleharborbooks.com/item/OSAnm6ufR3vrTezaJ16gHQ

Rebecca Wheeler Walston
On belonging, loyalty, and the Black American experience — 03:42
“Now I would say that because of the history of the drop is a drop is a drop, we’re pretty good at belonging. We’re pretty good as a people at, if you want to be over here, come on. But we do question loyalty. We’re hypervigilant. We watch for and pay attention to moves that communicate loyalty and moves that communicate a kind of disloyalty. And I think at least in the case of the Black American experience, and I do want to be clear that I’m talking from the orientation of a Black American experience, that’s where I’m located and I wouldn’t profess to have the wisdom or the experience or the knowledge to speak to the entire diaspora, but particularly because of how the transatlantic slave trade impacted and really created this notion of Black American or African-American, however you want to call it, and the parameters and the boundaries and the rules of engagement that happened on US soil, we’re pretty good at belonging, meaning that if you have a sense of any Black blood in your lineage and you want to be over here, come over here.”
On racial hierarchy and access to power — 19:28
“Which I think means we have to talk about the spectrum that race or racism exists upon. In some ways, I feel like on the one end of the extreme is the white European on the most positive end of that spectrum, and on the furthest negative end of that spectrum is Black African. And that to be closer to Blackness is to have the lesser amount of access to power and resource, lesser definition as a human person deserving of all those things. And then the closer you get to white, the more access to power, the more sort of humanized you are. And I think in the United States anyway, any other people group outside of those two gets placed along that spectrum for the most part, according to phenotypically, who you look more like.”
Danielle Castillejo
On remembering histories of resistance — 25:35
“That’s what they know. And so that’s something that my husband’s talked about a lot like, ‘Oh, the vote is so conservative here. It’s the Rancheros.’ And you can hear them start to banter like, ‘Whose fault was it? Whose fault was it? Who did this?’ But it’s even just where people migrated from and their history with empire. I honestly feel like it’s time to be less segregated and more learning from the history of people who have been here a long time fighting oppression. And also for us to realize we’ve been fighting oppression for a long time too, and we’ve done really hard things. We have this own history, and so it’s helping people remember because we know that through remembering there’s a lot of power in that. So that’s what I think. We got to work our asses off.”
On organizing locally and sustaining community education — 31:17
“Yeah, I just come back to from my perspective and where I am, I think wherever we are, we should work hyper locally with our neighbors and with the people around us. And I think, Rebecca, back to your question of what happens in two years I think is going to be resting the responsibility of all of our individual communities as Latinos to keep educating, keep moving forward, keep knowing history, keep knowing what just happened in the midterms, why it’s important, why healthcare should be a right, why we need to restore the Voting Rights Act, all these kinds of things.”
Jenny McGrath

On learning how power operates — 29:25

“I’m just agreeing with that. I think I always feel like I’m in this interesting place because I was homeschooled most of my life and didn’t really have a foundational education. And so I often say my brain is like Swiss cheese where what is there is very pungent, but there’s also lots of holes. And so I just kind of assume everyone else understands how US politics work. But the more that I learn, the more I realize it’s intentionally confusing and it’s intentionally withholding and it’s my responsibility to… continue to learn and to grow in my understanding. And I think what Rebecca just said is so important because we just need information. The fact that there’s not just a book, and maybe there is, I don’t know, but I need a book that’s just like, this is literally exactly how everything works.”

On challenging harm within white evangelical communities — excerpt from 45:03–46:19

“And I think I feel very energized by my book coming out at this time that feels like a lane I am in. I spend a lot of time being like, ‘What is my lane?’ And I think trying to research and learn and translate that to people that I hope can maybe shift and grow understanding because I had people do that for me. I was part of this wedge issue, one vote, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, that’s all that matters. And so I see it as Jesus’ invitation of look at the log in your own eye. I see that as a collective body. How do I look at the log in the bodies of white evangelicals