I’m writing this chapter in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout this pandemic, each of us has had to face a stark reality:
We did not cause COVID. We did not desire COVID. Yet each of us is responsible for protecting our fellow human beings from it – by wearing a mask, social distancing, getting vaccinated, avoiding large gatherings and so on.

Those of us who refused to shoulder this responsibility put many other people’s lives at risk and made the pandemic much worse and much more widespread.

Our situation with WBS (white-body supremacy) is similar. Before we were even conceived, WBS was in the air, the water, the culture, the wombs of our mothers, and the seed of our fathers. We did not create it. We did not ask to harbor it in our bodies. Yet, as with COVID, we must shoulder the responsibility of keeping it from spreading. We cannot say, “It’s not my problem.” We also cannot allow it continued safe harbor in any of our institutions, norms, or practices. We’re all in this together.

Pause. Pay attention to your body for your next several breaths. What is emerging in it in response to this awareness? Sorrow? Grief? Anger? Frustration? Impatience? A desire for things to be different?

Note any:

  • vibrations
  • images and thoughts
  • meanings, judgments, stories, and explanations
  • behaviors, movements, actions, impulses, and urges
  • affect and emotions
  • sensations

If your body wants to physically respond – to rock, or cry, or snarl, or wail, or curse, or punch a pillow, or go for a long jog – allow it to, unless doing so might harm you or someone else. Then soul scribe[1] on your experience with this practice.

[1] Soul scribing simply means pausing, paying close attention to the vibrations; images and thoughts; meanings, judgments, stories, and explanations; behaviors, movements, actions, impulses, and urges; affect and emotions; sensations your body experiences in that moment, and then noting those experiences in writing. Soul scribing help you access information from all of your body’s intelligences…. You can soul scribe using brief notes, lists, or your own personal shorthand. This might include abbreviations, emojis, pictures, or whatever else you like. (If you want to be more detailed – for example, if you want to keep an embodied journal or diary – that’s fine, too.)

— Resmaa Menakem in The Quaking of America