To Be Truly Body Positive is to Be Actively Anti-Racist

“When we start seeing the inherent beauty of every person, we can’t shoot the gun that we have in our hand and kill a person of color.” —Mandie C., Be Body Positive Facilitator

We are the two white founders of The Body Positive, an organization that works to transform the ways that all bodies, diverse in race and size and all identities, are seen and experienced. The Body Positive’s work is to bring us home to our own precious bodies, to recognize how our body dissatisfaction is tied to abuses of power in our culture—including racism—and to reach for a fierce quality of self-love to transform our relationship to our bodies.

This task is astronomically harder to achieve for people whose bodies have been othered, whose bodies have been called not beautiful, whose bodies are traumatized, whose bodies continue to be incarcerated or killed because of their skin color. 

We write today to share our solidarity with Black people. Our work as white leaders is to take action now to support change, right in our own communities as well as in the larger world. To do this, we first need to investigate and bring to awareness the shadow places within our own hearts, to understand the ways in which our own fear and greed allow us to “other” Black people and not see and feel their suffering. To wake up to the ways we focus on our own demands, defenses, and distractions instead of taking action to support others. Our work is to address the ways our internalized racism allows us to participate in systems that harm People of Color, and to take action to correct those harms.

We’d like to share some of the simple, practical, and direct ways we are taking action right now (plus more), in an effort to offer ideas and inspire others who may be looking to do the same. To be invested in Body Positivity is also to be invested in anti-racism. The two are inextricably linked.

• Opening our hearts. Let in the pain that Black people are experiencing. Meditate on it. Do not shut it out or run away. Allow it to be a catalyst for action.

• Donating to local healers and organizations that support Black people through the trauma they are experiencing right now so they can offer scholarships.

Black Seeds (see image below for more information) is a San Francisco Bay Area project Connie is supporting that offers 1:1 healing in nature for Black people. Donations to provide scholarships can be made to the facilitator, Dominique Cowling, on Venmo or PayPal using @dominiquecowling.

• Supporting the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL)
  Their mission “Seeks to reach millions, mobilize hundreds of thousands, and organize tens of thousands, so that Black political power is a force able to influence national and local agendas in the direction of our shared Vision for Black Lives.” Start with their practical suggestions for each day this week. Begin at a level that makes sense for your own life.
  
  Donating to other organizations and individuals working to protect voting rights, creating bail funds, and finding food and housing for Black people like Color of Change, National Birth Equity Collaborative, and the Bail Project, or find groups and individuals on the front lines in your own community.

• Educating ourselves about racism:

o   Read some of these books suggested by Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America and How to Be an Antiracist.

o   We also highly recommend the new book, Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor, by Layla F. Saad. And listen to her Good Ancestor podcast.

o   Read President Barack Obama’s recent article in Medium, and click on the link he shares for more ways to take action, and on this link for concrete recommendations for organizing to change policing in the United States.

• Signing petitions and letting our voices be heard. Color of Change has many campaigns they work on that need your name attached. 

May we all work together to build a country and world where Black people can live with freedom and safety.

In solidarity,

Elizabeth Scott, LCSW, CEDS-S, and Connie Sobczak
Co-Founders, The Body Positive

Main photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash