 Hi there lovers and friends. Let's have a tough conversation. The kind of conversation that my husband hates me having because it can go wrong in so many different ways but these are the kinds of conversations that I find myself excited to have because when you're wrong out loud you can be publicly corrected. So let's talk about race specifically. Let's talk about race from my perspective as a mixed race individual and I want to touch on three events that recently happened to me that I'd like to chew on out loud. Not happen to me is the wrong term. Three events that happen that have brought a lot of perspective for me that I want to share with you. The first one is directly involved with me. It's about an interview that I did with Ashley Cobb on my podcast called Lovers and Friends. One of the top comments from this interview was from someone named Red Elephant who said, whenever I see Shan interview a phenotypically black woman I prepare myself to be disappointed. This is because colorism, featureism, and texturism is almost always left out of the conversation. You can read the full comment on the YouTube video but I'll skip to the end here. Having these discussions without mentioning racism slash colorism etc is so cringy. Please do the work guys. Secondly, I want to talk about the Erica Mina and Spice reality TV moments in which they got into a heated argument and Erica Mina referred to Spice as a monkey and that deeply impacted me and I want to talk about that. And lastly, I want to talk about a conversation that I recently had with Elaine Welteroth who I consider to be a friend or an emerging friend of mine wherein she asked me the simple question like how do you identify and the fact that that took me into a sputtering storm is something that just made me so frustrated with myself and curious about why at the age of 38 years old at my mid-life point am I still struggling to answer something very basic and I'd like to change that today and that's what we're going to get into. Squarespace is an all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you are just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything from products to content to your time all in one place all on your terms. Go to squarespace.com slash shambudy to begin your free trial no credit card required and then when you're ready to launch go back to squarespace.com slash shambudy for 10% off the purchase of a website or a domain. All right let's start with how do I identify because this will ground the rest of the discussion and hopefully this will be the shortest part because I do intend to start answering this question much more succinctly. So million-dollar question I get asked somewhat frequently is shambudrim do you identify as being black? Yes I am mixed with black proudly mixed with black. Well Shan do you identify as being Indian? Yes I am mixed with Indian proudly mixed with Indian. Shan do you identify as being white? Yes I am white I am mixed with white. I put more stuttering on that because in full disclosure of how I was raised my white side which is my mom's father wasn't present from the time that she was born so I don't have access to my white and trustee or my white family I didn't really grow up with that as being a part of my cultural identity so yes I obviously am white look at me I obviously have Eurocentric features and I'm mixed with white but in my lived experience that's just not how it was culturally raised and as I've grown up I definitely have access to the white community and have friends but that's not like the predominant way that I socialize so I say that with a stutter because I may not understand what it means to be white or the experience of whiteness in the same way that I do experience and understand blackness from the perspective of my culture and Indian-ness from the perspective of my culture and my upbringing. So that's the short answer of it I often see comments on YouTube with people saying things like well Shan doesn't identify as black so we have to keep that in mind or she doesn't identify as any keep that in mind we always keep in mind that like she can't fully be trusted and a part of that may come from my own trepidation of not wanting to step on toes but I have to acknowledge that I can't change the fact that I am I'm am black no matter how much you don't agree with that statement it doesn't change my lived experience doesn't change my genes or my biology doesn't change the fact also that I am Indian and I am white etc etc etc what this does say though is that because I am not any one particular thing I exist more as a bridge than versus as a citizen of any particular racial or ethnic group and there's advantages to being a bridge obviously where you can communicate messages from one group to the other you can identify with multiple different places and you get to enjoy the richness of each land to an extent there's disadvantages of course for the exact same reason you don't get to firmly be in any land an alternate perspective is that instead of looking at yourself as a bridge who exists in both places but not 100% in either or all three or however many places that you know you find yourself tied to is to just say well bridges are its own country by itself like you don't actually you're not black you're not Indian like you're just mixed and that's its own thing and if that's some people's choice I accept that I love being black I love being Indian and I don't want to give those spaces up I don't want to give those communities up by I don't I think I don't want to give those stories up I don't want to give that history up or that culture so for me maybe my kids might feel differently but yeah I don't desire to be identified as just simply mixed and to not have roots and feet um or whatever bridges have down in those cultures it's making me like teary-eyed to even think about it because it just it matters to me um yeah it does all right now I would like to talk about the Ashley Cobb video because we'll talk about me before I talk about anybody else and the comments that came from that so to summarize how I interpret that scenario is in essence I had Ashley Cobb who is a sex expert very accomplished very successful very funny I love the way that she approaches sex ed I've been following her for quite some time and so I wanted her to have as a guest in the podcast and with podcast guests if you watch the podcast know this I always tell people you pick the topic I am not going to do a good job of identifying something in your intimate life that you're passionate about because we're not intimately involved other than Jared whom I am so I always tell him here's what we're talking about everybody else I'm like what do you want to talk about and Ashley chose the topic of in essence she is no shortage of finding people to have great sex with she has had an issue with finding a long term lover so that's what we talked about and in this conversation we're obviously talking about our similarities right like we both talk about sex for a living so at a certain point in the conversation I created a similarity you know between us and saying that yeah I've also been stigmatized for being sexually liberal but here's how it worked out for me and here's what I did that brought me to an outcome that I think worked out for the better without acknowledging that my path is not going to be her path because we don't look the same we don't have the same lived experiences so people in the comments were saying my failure to bring that up you know is the problem and is a huge issue that I failed to address I have agreed with myself when I think back on that I agree because I I don't personally think that it is my role or place to infer on Ashley's behalf that the reason that she is experiencing the issues that she is has anything to do with her look anything to do with her race what I could do is invite her to do that by sharing my own experience so if I'm going to say something like you know what I've encountered tons of men who would slut shame me off the top and the way that I got around that is by x y and z but I also have to acknowledge the fact that my work around was probably a lot simpler because of my proximity to whiteness and how I look and how traditionally maybe people don't want to over sexualize me I could have used my experience as an invitation for her to then say well actually you know what that's a good point because as somebody who is unambiguously black here's what my lived experiences is here are the stereotypes that I have to fight against here are the impressions from other people that I know that I'm battling whenever we open up this dialogue anyways I'm very grateful to that thread I'm also grateful to the responses afterwards there's one in particular which I'm not going to quote directly but the gist of it was you know Shan doesn't have a responsibility to bring up conversations that her guests aren't and anybody who expects her to is really just coming from a place of jealousy and that's a word that we often hear in the black community in regards to people who are ambiguous and people who are not ambiguous and that's the wrong word I don't think it has a damn thing to do with jealousy I think it has to do with trust people want to know if they can trust me people want to know if I have their back or if I have them in mind and when people are calling that into question here comes this bug okay buddy okay I want to tell you about my three favorite features of our sponsor Squarespace that I recently actually used to purchase a site and get professional emails for our production company shared entertainment so we now own shared-end.com okay so appointments is a new feature that I'm now using Squarespace provides everything you need to manage your schedule except secure payments send automatic reminders and beautifully showcase your services and more speaking of beautiful you have to check out the fluid engine their next generation website design system that allows you to unlock unbreakable creativity from your browser or do it all on your phone lastly if you've been considering doing merch like I have check out Squarespace because they do it all help you design your products handle production inventory and shipping there is also their mailing list management analytics e-commerce and so much more so if any of these have piqued your interest just go directly to squarespace.com slash shambhudi now for a free two week trial no credit card required and then when you love what you have seen there and are ready to launch go back to squarespace.com slash shambhudi for 10 off the purchase of a website or domain people aren't analyzing my interactions with black women from a place of jealousy they're doing it from a very warranted place of mistrust and they have every right to do so you have every right to hold your breath when you see me speak to someone that you love that you care about because you see them so you see yourself inside of that person and that leaves into the final bit of this conversation which is the Erica Mina and spice interaction and so as you guys know I'm doing my masters right now in psychology and we talk a lot about like implicit bias right and that's what's underneath right it's that thing that when you're not thinking it's that rapid response it's the amygdala hijack it's like you either don't have time to process it this is just what comes out and if you're not familiar with that clip in essence Erica Mina and spice get into an argument some heated things were said spice said I don't think your son likes you this creates an amygdala hijack in Erica because it's obviously a sensitive space for her and then she calls spice a monkey and then takes it further and repeats that and then does gestures and it's racist and it's wrong and this is precisely why black women don't trust mixed women or ambiguous looking black women because underneath it all you don't know what's actually there and that was her true bias speaking out that was and I always balk at the word true right sometimes that happens in relationships where you get into an argument with somebody and they say something so heinous and so raw and ugly about you and you say well that's your true that's your true feelings this is how you've always felt it's like no that's a piece of the truth though right like in rational times I'm able to look at my partner and see their whole self but in times of stress and when I'm put up against a wall I'm going to focus on the negative parts that I know are going to make an impact on that person in the way that I want I want to hurt them and so is that the truth how I really feel no the whole thing is how I really feel but that is absolutely a piece of it what really hurt me about that Erica Mina moment is I hurt for all the black women who watched that who amplified and accepted and embraced that woman to then feel like damn that's how you really felt about me this whole time that's how you see me like I see you as a person who is deserving of love and respect and opportunity um I see you as no different than me and you see me as less I think infrahumanization and dehumanization are just like some of the worst forms of insults when you try to take away someone's humanity from them um not even to say like you're less human than me you're not even human at all like that's fucking that's fucked up um I've just I try to be really mindful I don't even use I try to be mindful not to use terms of calling people as monsters like we're just that's a I have to embrace my humanity and to embrace all of my humanity I have to accept all of yours because we're the same and newsflash there has been zero study that has been done and trust me there's been many there's a lot of dollars that would be invested in this particular brand of physiology and psychology there is nothing that differentiates people in terms of ability that links with race you can link it to culture like to a certain region who mates with each other and only each other for hundreds of years that you can do that but in terms of race when we look at the spectrum of race you know globally there's nothing out there that says that this version of this brand of human is better or smarter and we're capable than that brand of human or has a bigger penis even let's talk about what I know very very well so that to be said yeah you can never ever rank yourself above anybody else you are not above anybody else you are not more human more exceptional more awesome and nobody absolutely nobody who is a human is less human nobody is a fucking monkey so yeah those moments hurt and they obviously don't help people who look like me but it does help because it gives me empathy to say okay I get it and when that moment happened I revisited the comments from the Ashley Cobb interview and I was like okay I understand where this mistrust is coming from I understand why it's completely valid and I also think from a personal perspective when you are the individual you know who has that moment where your implicit bias speaks for you that's also a great healing and learning opportunity to be like oh god damn I didn't realize that that still existed in me and it that's a even a fraction of you if that's what a fraction of me really thinks how does that show up in harmful ways and if you love black women if you love yourself you will be interested in healing that not trying to gloss over that or trying to deny that you have to actually want to embrace that part of you and work that shit out and it's a great opportunity to do that if you're willing to let it be a learning opportunity I think I've seen the mistake like what's that girl's name the yellow bone girl who she tried to come out and say no no no like I'm not racist I'm not this like yeah you are yes you are a colorist yes you are doesn't mean that's all of you maybe parts of you are not and there's examples where you've been able to overcome this or there's examples where you do show allyship but there's just a strong example of where you don't so that's a part of you to embrace that and work on that and ask for help with that and there are people in the I won't say mixed community because there are definitely people who look like me who are not mixed or not a definitely not as mixed as I am but there are people who look similar to me who are in my ballpark that I know of that I know do the work and I know what that works looks like and I'm comfortable saying you know two of them which is Amber Whittington Amber's closet and Elaine Welteroth and you can see that work like when you meet these people and like every fast of their life in the art in their homes um in the friends in their family in the way that they talk about different people like you can just tell that they have worked incredibly hard to dismantle the false beliefs around colorism and hierarchy or race and hierarchy and that they do that work every single day and I just know how actively those individuals work I know it's it's really hard work um so in order to gain trust you have to be able to step up to the plate and really put in the manual labor so I think that black women have the absolute right and to be truthful the unfortunate responsibility to always mistrust people who look like me who look similar um and that is because as bridges you're also privy to the conversations being had in other spaces and those conversations can be inherently racist um they can be featureist colorist um and even if you don't align or subscribe to those messages you can subconsciously become sponges to them I can also say for myself I notice how comfortable people are saying things that are outright wrong and racist and prejudice about black women to me um I've had an example of that on the podcast with that guest sincere where he made that comment and it just rolled off of his tongue as if it was not my mom and my aunts and me and my daughter and like big huge important impactful sacred parts of me that they were also slandering um and yeah because you are a bridge some people don't feel empowered to speak up in those places because they acknowledge that they're it's a privilege them to even be a part of those conversations so there's a fear of othering yourself in those times and it takes a lot of bravery and maturity to get to a place where you can do that and some people don't feel like they can afford that for that reason I have to not only expect to be constantly critiqued and scrutinized and assessed whether I am safe whether I am an actual ally um and I have to welcome it because I have to acknowledge that there are parts of me that probably still are not it's a privilege that people even give a buck to tell me how they feel rather than just writing me off all together it is such a privilege I can't even like to begin to tell you guys this like because if you are not ambiguous you might take for granted community maybe you don't more than likely maybe you don't um for somebody to see you not know anything about you but want the best for you want to give you a better experience that day want to amplify you like just like that sense of community and oneness is not something that I have easy access to when I do experience it it means everything to me and I'm grateful and so the fact that you guys take the time to correct me and to show me areas that I am not meeting your standards just means that you care and you have that love so thank you for that I'm really proud I'm really proud of the black women who see me as a part of their community I'm really proud of the black community I'm really proud of the Indian women who see me as their community and I'm proud to be part of that community I had to really ask myself this question too recently of is it my intent or my interest in life to appear smart or to be smart is it my intention or interest to appear good or to be good and if I want to appear good then I only put out my best most cleanest most socially acceptable work if I actually want to be good then I share the works in progress of things and then I get input and feedback from perspectives that I trust and I happen to trust this community especially on this topic so here we go thank you for watching