I can’t get enough of this podcast! To me, as a White middle-class cisgender monolingual over-resourced male working in and around education and activism for 30 years, Shadiin and Delma’s conversations reveal how much harm and damage folks like me can (and do) cause when we impose our whiteness and other forms of oppression on our BIPOC colleagues and friends. What the hosts talk about and how they talk about it provides a glimpse into what REAL conversations among powerful BIPOC intellectuals and change-makers might sound like when they’re undertaken outside of dominant spaces (or so I surmise given my positionality). The illuminating Baldwin-esque fire they bring to their topics and with each other, to me, reveals the kind of suppression and harm that’s endemic in white supremacy culture, in transactional-capitalist-colonial “partnerships,” and in what typically passes for “awareness-raising” in diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in most ed institutions. I suspect that Delma and Shaddiin are so honest, vulnerable, and incisive in their episodes because the feelings and fragilities of folks like me are not prioritized there, which is as it should be, ideally in a LOT more spaces beyond what they’ve built. In this way, their podcast serves as an aspiration — may we all co-create spaces where folks are free to engage like they do. Truth be told, their realness makes me feel eavesdroppy sometimes, as if the words I’m hearing are snuck, perhaps unearned. But this isn’t just refreshing to me; it’s revolutionary. It shows me how much harder I need to work to ensure I enter such spaces and relationships with the kinds of humanity and humility they require (or that I need to leave those spaces altogether because I have not earned a presence there, or because I constrain it so painfully that nothing even close to justice or peace will be achieved as long as I am there). In this way, Delma and Shadiin demonstrate both what’s possible and how easily it is destroyed or squandered (typically by folks a lot like me). Bracketing all that, the podcast is just plain helpful. The countless insights Shadiin and Delma supply about doing equity and justice work with leaders and educators have greatly deepened my understanding of the how, the why, and the what in that work. I walk away from each episode with strategies clarified, pitfalls identified, priorities re-ordered, and both joy and struggle centered. It’s a gift to have access to this kind of knowledge and counter-storytelling from superheroes like this who are playful in the way they don’t play. And can we talk about the delicious sibling banter between these two?!?! I mean, it’s some of the best digs and retorts I’ve ever heard, delivered and received with such silliness and love that it hits the ears like some kind of audio-cookie. So yeah, this podcast is good. Sick good. Can’t recommend it enough to anyone working for justice in education, both for those who need to hear, and for those who need to be heard. Listen!!!
