Facebook Publication Date: 3/20/2022 16:03
Relational Ethics with Pádraig Ó Tuama – Belonging Creates and Undoes Us and The Complicated Art of Reconciliation
Relational ethics are at the core of our efficacy in our walk toward our North Star commitment to lessen and mitigate the harm endured by Black and Brown people, perpetuated by white people and white supremacy. I’ve been talking for some time about reviving our Relational Ethics series, both to revisit previous content and to introduce new podcasts, videos, or essays, to further strengthen us in this aspect of our praxis.
The time is now.
Let’s re-invigorate our engagement with our relational ethics series by returning to Pádraig Ó Tuama’s discussion with On Being’s Krista Tippett, and by encountering his lecture “The Complicated Art of Reconciliation,” both linked below.
Tuama’s “Place of Lumpy Crossings” has become a byword for what we do here, in our Lace on Race community. If you’ve wondered what that’s all about, welp, here is where you’ll learn.
To engage with our Relational Ethics series, I ask that you listen to the unedited cuts of the podcasts or lectures presented, read available transcripts, which are sometimes abridged, and immediately pivot to how this relates to race, your internal work against racism, and how we work as a community towards racial equity.
In the “On Being” recording, listen for how Krista meets with Pádraig and the dynamic she and Pádraig work under. Be ready to compare and contrast to this to her interactions with the other guests we’ll feature in this series.
As well really listen to the words themselves, in both the recording and the video. There is so much rich stuff to sink your teeth into; I myself have watched the lecture at least twice, and had fully four pages of notes on the interview. Mix it up with me, and with your fellow community members. After we all experience this, it will only draw us closer, and take us deeper.
We have faced many lumpy crossings since we last focused on this series. It is still absolutely my goal that our community, and we people in it, to be to each other, as Pádraig puts it: ‘The Place That [We] Stand When [Our] Feet Are Sore.
Let’s dig in.
Addendum:
I forgot to add that I *highly* encourage you to listen to the produced version of the conversation.
Compare and contrast the unedited conversation and what Krista and her team decided to leave out.
This is an important part of the analysis.
I am absolutely aware, from being interviewed myself, that on the one hand a producer could say everything I said is true, I used your words faithfully but deleting context, taking things out of order and the like can make for distortion and manipulation of the conversation itself.
You will see it most glaringly in the conversation with Claudia Rankine, but check to see what if any of this it’s happening in this conversation as well.
Why does all of this matter?
Because as involved consumers and analysts of content, we need to ask ourselves what we are *not* getting; what arr in the white spaces that go unsaid; whether or not an interviewer or a producer had an agenda and or constructed narrative going in, and will force that agenda come hell or high water.
You will see that this happens a lot with white interviewers on their producers when it comes to people of color.
You will find it happens less so with white interviewees.
As we revisit this series, I am asking you to hold multiple things at once, and I look forward to the conversation where we examine all of the elements together.
Listen, read, and confront:
On Being with Krista Tippett: Pádraig Ó Tuama, Belonging Creates and Undoes Us: https://onbeing.org/programs/padraig-o-tuama-belonging-creates-and-undoes-us/
Also watch and confront:
Join the discussion in the Bistro.
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