Psychology Has a Whiteness Problem (with Jonathan Mathias Lassiter)

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Introduction – 00:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: This is Relationscapes, where we explore gender, race, sexuality, ability, class, and more to better understand what shapes us, what divides us, and what can bring us together. I'm journalist Blair Hodges in Salt Lake City, and our guide in this episode about psychology and race is Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: A lot of these Eurocentric values, such as individualism and competition, and this kill-or-be-killed mentality that's baked into psychology and Eurocentric thought in general is harmful for white people.

BLAIR HODGES: What if some of the ideas that psychology treats as normal and healthy are actually really harmful? In a biting new memoir, Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter writes about navigating the field of psychology as a Black gay man. He introduces us to culturally clueless supervisors, he dissects theories based on white Western assumptions, and he points out ways that we can actually be harmed when psychologists treat those assumptions as universal.

Dr. Lassiter argues that values like extreme individualism and competition don't just fail marginalized people, they can harm everyone. He says the field of psychology should dismantle this whiteness mindset and pay more attention to the experiences and traditions of people of color, LGBTQ+ folks, disabled people, and other marginalized communities. He wants the field of psychology to do better for everyone without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

His book title's hard to ignore: How I Know White People Are Crazy and Other Stories: Notes from a Frustrated Black Psychologist. Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter joins us to talk about it right now.

 

Psychology So White – 02:11

 

BLAIR HODGES: Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter, welcome to Relationscapes.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Thank you so much for having me.

BLAIR HODGES: It's a pleasure to have you. We're going to talk about your background in psychology first. There are actually few Black psychologists out there. I wanted to begin there and have you set the stage for why that is, why the disparity in numbers when we're looking at psychology. It's a pretty heavily white field.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Yes, it is. Only about 5% of psychologists in the United States are Black or African American. Only about 8% of psychologists are Latinx, and Asian Americans only make up about 3%.

BLAIR HODGES: Hmm.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: A total 20% of psychologists in the United States are from the global majority. So that means 80% are white Americans, white European descent. And that has a real effect on how we understand mental health because what does that mean? It means that people of European descent are the ones who are doing the research, the ones who's funding the research, the ones who's making up the definitions about what mental health is, what qualifies as good mental health or poor mental health, and also about what are the appropriate methods to treat mental health.

And if that is the case, that means that the lived experience of people from the global majority are being left out of the conversation and often being overlooked. And so the methods and the ways in which we think about mental health probably not gonna be appropriate for those groups, or not as appropriate as they could be.

BLAIR HODGES: Mm-hmm.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: And so the low numbers of people from the global majority being in the psychology field is a real detriment. And part of why that is, one, we don't see ourselves in the field. And so people from the global majority are looking and saying, is there even space for me there? Am I going to be accepted there?

So most people don't want to go places where they're going to be isolated.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: So maybe mental health isn't for me. And then again, if what it means to be mentally healthy is defined by people who historically and even contemporarily have been your oppressors, why do I want to go over there? Why do I want to listen to them?

BLAIR HODGES: So not only visibly, but also in the ideas themselves, it's really difficult, as you describe in the book, for Black folks and African American folks to get into the field. And then once they're there, to push back on some of those white European-centric ideas that have been smuggled into the whole field itself.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: One hundred percent. Eurocentric ideas are thought of as the default. My white colleagues, they don't even point to their ideas or their research as white ideas. They just say, this is psychology, this is science.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, and we also pass through this colorblind idea of, that shouldn't even matter, right? In order to do away with racism, we're going to ignore race and pretend—but that again smuggles race in through the back door because you're operating with all these assumptions already. They're already there.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Exactly. And those are assumptions that are going unchecked and again reproducing harm in a field that's supposed to be helping heal.

BLAIR HODGES: So with all of that, we could talk about that for the entire hour, but with that being considered, what brought you to the field?

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Well, for me, it was really about trying to understand why people did the things that they did. From just looking at my own household as a child, I would be like, hey, Mom and Dad told us not to do this thing or we would get this consequence. My siblings would do the thing and get the consequence and then be upset.

And I was, as a 6-year-old, confused. It's like, but you know this was gonna happen. And so I became very interested in why people did the things they did at a very early age. Now I realize that I'm the outlier.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, that's exactly right.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: But as a kid, I was like, just don't do what they told you not to do.

BLAIR HODGES: So that got you interested in maybe some of the ideas behind psychology. But as a field, though, you're thinking about doing this as a profession. So at what point—and you look at the field and you see it's very white. From the beginning, you see that. So how do you push past that?

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: So when I start to actually realize that psychology is a thing and could be a profession, I did look at the field and see that it's predominantly white. But for me, growing up learning about Black pioneers like Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm X, Benjamin Banneker, all of these people who were often one of the few in their area, but pioneers and really trailblazers, I said, I want to do that. I want to do that for mental health because my communities need me.

 

Diversifying the Field – 07:54

 

BLAIR HODGES: That's one of the biggest ironies of it, is systemic racism and the experiences that many Black folks go through mean their mental health is often worse off. I've talked to other scholars, Dr. Joseph Graves, for example, who's talked about mental health affecting physical health and why Black people tend statistically to die sooner.

And it has to do with stress and all of the weathering that happens through racism. So I think the biggest irony is we have this field of psychology that's really aiming to help human mental health flourish, and it's come through a white Eurocentric view that ends up not being good enough for the people who are actually needing it probably most.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Yeah. And here's the thing: just because you're a Black person in psychology studying mental health doesn't mean that you will not recreate the harm. Because here's the thing, even as a Black person, in order to get my degree, I had to master Eurocentric ways of thinking about mental health.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Oh, we'll talk about some of those specifically too.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Oh yes. And so a lot of the work to be an effective psychologist for Black people and other people from the global majority is unlearning what I was taught in school and going back to the communities, going back to culture, going back to indigenous wisdom and reclaiming that and integrating that and prioritizing that in the work that I do with the communities that I work with.

BLAIR HODGES: To me, the more diversity we can get in the field for that reason makes the entire field better because you're not just bringing insights that will help Black people. The insights that different people can bring to the field can be to the benefit of everybody. And even if it wasn't, it'd still be worth doing it.

But even on just a practical level, if you're just like, hey, I actually would benefit from this. I just wish more people would recognize that.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: No, it's 100% true. And that is something that I talk about in the book and I used to teach about in my classes. It's that, again, a lot of these Eurocentric values, such as individualism and competition and this kill-or-be-killed mentality that's baked into psychology and Eurocentric thought in general, is harmful for white people.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes, it is. This also ties into neurodivergence. The more we learn about neurodivergence and integrate those ideas into how we think about human psychology, human relationships and communication, it can improve everything from the workplace to classrooms to a field like psychology. So again, I just feel like the more diversity we have thinking about these issues together, the better results we're going to have.

So your book is a great example of that.

 

White People Are Crazy? – 10:47

 

BLAIR HODGES: Now, that being said, got to ask you about the title because the title is How I Know White People Are Crazy and Other Stories. So that's really provocative. And I can see a lot of white people being like, oh, this is—that's racist actually, or whatever, just taking offense at that.

So talk about naming the book, where that name came from, and what you hope to do with framing the book that way.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Yes. So I'm going to be honest. A lot of the title is marketing.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Listen, I had to be realistic with myself. I'm an unknown. I don't have a huge platform. I'm just this psychologist seeing my clients, a professor teaching my classes. No one knows who I am, but I believe in the ideas in the book. So I'm like, how do I get people to even be interested so that they'll open it up to connect with those ideas?

So I needed a title that was going to be attention-grabbing. So part of it's that. The other part of it, though, is my father that I talk about in the book.

BLAIR HODGES: Mm-hmm.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: He was a Black man born in 1950. So he's experienced racism. And one of the things, when he would go to work, he would often be the highest, most experienced Black person at the shop and usually person at the shop, period. And he would go to work and train these younger white men.

And then those younger white men would be promoted over him. And my father would come home and he would be incredibly frustrated, understandably so. And he would say, boy, these white people are crazy. Because essentially, how are you going to promote the person who's learning from the person with the expertise but not promote the person with the expertise? Again, you're harming your company. That's crazy.

So part of it comes from my father.

 

The Diversity Project – 12:45

 

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Another part of it comes from an experience I had when I basically failed the diversity project.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes! That's what I was referring to, the diversity project.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: I said to myself, “These white people are crazy.”

BLAIR HODGES: You got failed on the diversity project.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: Take a second to explain.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: So this is the titular chapter in the book, “How I Know White People Are Crazy.” I'll set the scene for you.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: 2014. I am this young, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed doctoral student. I've completed three years of coursework. I completed my dissertation, and now all I have left to do is this full-time internship. And I'm working at the VA in Indianapolis seeing clients, and it's myself and two other white women in my cohort. It's only three of us, and everyone on the training faculty is also white.

I'm the only melanated person there. There is one Black woman who's a psychologist on the staff, but she's not directly tied to the training faculty. Surrounded by these white folks, again, isolation. But I'm there, I'm trying to get my degree. They say, we want you to do a diversity project. We think diversity is important.

BLAIR HODGES: Great.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Surprise, surprise. So far, so good. I can't—I'm not arguing with that. And they say, so what we want you to do is we want you to put yourself in a situation where you are a minority for two hours.

BLAIR HODGES: You're like, does the last class I had with you count?

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Does this count, what we're doing right now?

BLAIR HODGES: Yes.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: So we want you to put yourself in a situation where you are a minority for two hours and then come back and tell us about it. Now, don't worry, no one's ever failed this project. We just want you to go out and have an experience and come back and tell us. So I'm sitting there, again, I'm a student. Only thing on my mind is, I just want to graduate.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Get my PhD.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, check off the box. Let's go.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: But I'm also thinking, what type of sense does this make? This is called my life. What do you want me to do?

BLAIR HODGES: I can't believe it.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: But I have no power.

BLAIR HODGES: And that also was just left hanging in the room, right? They didn't mention that either. Like, hey, this might be—maybe this—how do you feel about this? This seems a little weird.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Yeah, no, they didn't ask me that at all.

BLAIR HODGES: That's the elephant in the room. It's like, whoa.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: They just said it like it was the most normal thing in the world.

BLAIR HODGES: It's that colorblind mentality, right? It's like, hey, we're giving the same thing to everybody.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Exactly. And what it said to me on reflection was that, wow, you never even considered a different perspective, what this might be like for someone like me. You have only centered yourself.

So long story short, I end up going to a sports bar, because I don't like sports. And so they were like, well, how can you be a minority in a different way?

BLAIR HODGES: Oh, okay! [laughs] That's creative!

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: You're usually a minority because you're Black. You're same-gender loving. You're first in your family to go to college. You have a chronic illness, but that's not enough.

You're always a minority like that. How can you be a minority in a different way? So they decided I'm going to go to the sports bar.

BLAIR HODGES: You came up with that, right? Didn't you propose the sports bar thing?

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: No, I didn't. What happened is that I was so confused, so I went to my individual supervisor.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay. Yeah, that's right.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: And they were like, well, you don't really like sports, so maybe they want you to be a minority in a different way. So you don't like sports, so maybe you could go to the sports bar. And I'm like, two hours. Okay.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: So I go, and I'm 5'2" and I'm like 120 pounds.

BLAIR HODGES: You didn't play a lot of basketball.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: I didn't play a lot of basketball. I didn't do—I don't—I mean, honestly, I don't really like sports. But I'm in Indianapolis, and I'm going to the sports bar, and my mind is like, these rugged men drinking alcohol are going to be there. And I grew up when Matthew Shepard was a thing.

BLAIR HODGES: Right.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: And Matthew Shepard was 5'2".

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: So I'm thinking, oh my God, I'm the same size as Matthew Shepard. I'm going in this thing. Are people going to hate crime me? Because I'm gay and I'm Black.

BLAIR HODGES: And you went by yourself?

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: In Indianapolis. Yeah, I went by myself. So I'm terrified, but I'm also thinking I need to graduate.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Just get it done.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Just get it done. So I do that. Long story short, I come back, I tell them about it. They say, we think you experienced more bar culture instead of sports culture, so we want you to do it again.

BLAIR HODGES: That's the part that really—I mean, look, it was comical up to that point. This just pushed it over the edge into sheer absurdity.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: It's absurd. And so I'm going through—you talked about the weathering and the effect of stress on the body and how it contributes to morbidity and mortality. My central nervous system is out of whack. And so now I have to do this again.

BLAIR HODGES: Oh no.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: So I end up going to the Indy 500. I come back, I tell them about it. They're like, okay, you're fine. You passed. But to me, I was just like, this is wild. These white people are crazy. So yeah, the title of the book.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes, that's where it is. Now, the other question I have about it is you're in the mental health field. And so I wondered about the word crazy because that's stigmatizing sometimes, right? Sometimes people will—I've actually tried to stop using crazy. And now it's huge again, by the way.

Everybody's like, that's crazy. Which I'm not going to call anybody out. I'm saying for me, I've tried to stop saying it, whatever.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: And I get that. And that's something that I think my publishers had a question about. However, as an African-centered psychologist, as a Black psychologist, one of the things that we say is that we're Black first and psychologist second. And so I always prioritize my culture, not to throw away my profession, but I'm a human first in all that I do.

And culturally speaking, crazy has been around in Black communities. We use it. My dad used it. That's why it's hit the mainstream again.

BLAIR HODGES: A lot of AAVE, yeah.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: And I've even joked around with some of my colleagues, like, is crazy not an option? Some things are just crazy.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. I'm satisfied. I'm satisfied.

 

The Whiteness Mindset – 20:29

 

BLAIR HODGES: Let's talk about the whiteness mindset. We're talking with Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter about his book, How I Know White People Are Crazy and Other Stories: Notes from a Frustrated Black Psychologist. So whiteness mindset. You mean this in a particular way, and I noticed that it's not called white people's mindset, and I think that's an important distinction.

So define what you mean by whiteness mindset in this book.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Yes. So the whiteness mindset is a way of thinking that assumes that there's not enough to go around, us versus them, and kill or be killed. And in the book, I describe this as limitation, competition, and annihilation. And so when you walk about living the world in a way that assumes that those things are true at a basic level, that shapes how you think about yourself, that shapes how you think about others, and it shapes your relationships.

And clearly it shapes the sort of laws we make in society and how we show up for communities or not. And so I call it the whiteness mindset because historically speaking, most people from the global majority, pre-colonialism, they did not think that way. Not to say that no one in those societies thought that way, but that was not how they structured their societies.

If you look back at any indigenous writing, there's always an emphasis on the community, the collective. There's an emphasis on abundance. You're a steward of the Earth. If you take care of the Earth, the Earth is going to take care of you. So there's no belief that there's not enough to go around.

There's no need to hoard it. There's always going to be enough.

BLAIR HODGES: And the point is to make it go around.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Exactly. There is no, I got to kill you. There's not even a real conception of death because, again, for a lot of indigenous communities, they believe in the spiritual world that's infinite. So that's why I call it the whiteness mindset, because the whiteness mindset highlights, one, structuring society this way is a fairly recent invention with the advancement of Eurocentric or European societies.

And it is those European and people of European descent who primarily benefit from the whiteness mindset and therefore are best positioned to eradicate it.

BLAIR HODGES: Which is also kind of bad news. But if people are still wondering why whiteness, you're tying that into this Euro—basically, we're looking at the cultures that colonized other places. The goal was acquisition. It was very materialistic. It was imperialistic. It was expanding. It was capturing. It was, in some cases, annihilating.

It was controlling. It had a scarcity mindset. And not everybody within those societies shared that. There's always been religious traditions and other ways of running against the grain. And so not all white people necessarily want to advance the whiteness mindset, but we exist in a society that was built around that because we live in a country that was built on the back of slavery, because of expansion, England and the United States expanding.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: And the genocide of indigenous people.

BLAIR HODGES: Correct. And so the point is, when you're saying whiteness mindset, I just want to really drill home to people that might take umbrage at that kind of a view, that it's not attacking an individual person, although individual people can certainly embody it and further it and even want to further it. But it's really a mindset.

And importantly, it's a mindset that can even affect and become part of Black people's identities. And you talk about how your own father, for example. Maybe give some examples of how you saw some of the whiteness mindset in your own dad.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: One hundred percent. And that is, again, why I call it a mindset. And a mindset is something anyone can learn and embody. So the whiteness mindset is, to borrow a phrase from Cornel West, phenotypically promiscuous. You don't need to be white.

BLAIR HODGES: I like that.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: And so I saw it in my father in the way in which he thought about masculinity and emotions, and he saw emotions as something that needed to be curtailed, limited, and in some cases killed. For raising me as a Black man in America, he despised any shows of what he perceived as weakness.

And for me, it was just me having emotion, being sad, crying. And he would say, oh no, we got to kill that in you. Otherwise, you're going to be killed because people are going to use that against you. So there's that kill-or-be-killed assumption.

BLAIR HODGES: Weakness makes you a target.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: So that's an example of how the whiteness mindset can affect people who are not phenotypically or culturally white or European.

 

The Roots of Prejudice – 26:24

 

BLAIR HODGES: You mentioned competition too. Connect that with ideas you talk about in the book of the roots of prejudice. So you're citing the scholar Dr. Linda James Myers, who talked about the roots of prejudice. And this is a very powerful way of understanding what prejudice really is. She puts it in terms of identifying difference markers and then putting those in a hierarchy of worth.

Maybe expand on that a little bit, the roots of our prejudice.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Yes. So when it comes to prejudice, I think about the work of bell hooks as well, who talks about how people have a hard time relating to difference. And because they have a hard time relating to difference, they often story difference as deficient. And that deficiency means it needs to be conquered.

So when I'm looking at people that are different from me, I either need to mimic it and profit from it if I think it's valuable, or I need to get rid of it. Prejudice comes along to justify those responses to difference. Oh no, but it's inferior. It's not worthy. It's not worth it.

BLAIR HODGES: Or it's even a threat.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: That's the other thing. It's deficient. It's a threat.

BLAIR HODGES: And I think when it comes to LGBTQ folks, there are some, I would say, heterosexually supremacist mindsets that believe the strange idea, for example, that, hey, being gay is contagious and it's gonna catch on in society and then no one's gonna have babies anymore and human society will be wiped out.

And it sounds silly, but there's people that actually believe that, though.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: A lot of people believe that. And the logic doesn't even work. Because if that's true, how do you get gay people? Most people are heterosexual.

BLAIR HODGES: Exactly.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: If it was that easy of being contagious, there would be no gay people. It falls apart. So that logic doesn't even work.

BLAIR HODGES: Notice, though, those prejudices are rooted in difference markers, and it's a pretty simple one. I am attracted to women, and if I'm thinking of sexually reproducing, that's what I want—not everybody does—then I'm putting myself in a hierarchy over and above that, and they become a threat to that order.

And the same thing happens with race, with defining superior and inferiority based on race and phenotype and all these ways that historically religions and even science and human societies have set up these hierarchies of worth and threat. And so your book is unpacking that.

 

Bringing Cultural Analysis into Psychology – 29:06

 

BLAIR HODGES: Now, when it comes to the field of psychology, to bring it all back to your book, you talk about how a lot of therapists don't take all of this picture into account. They're not adequately considering the people sitting across from them, their clients' sociopolitical context when they're diagnosing or doing therapy.

They're not dismantling the whiteness mindset that has informed the roots of psychology and the roots of therapy. And that's what you want to do.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Yes. And that's what I do with my clients day in, day out when I'm seeing them. I just saw five people today before getting on this interview. And most of my clients are people from the global majority, people in the queer community.

And one of the things that I am often doing, making sure I do, is emphasizing, hey, this thing that you're feeling, this insecurity, this fear, this anxiety, is this call coming from inside of the house, or is it because we're in an unjust society?

Is it because we're in a heterosexist society? Is it because we're in a racist society? Is it because we're in capitalism that is out of one side of its mouth saying self-care, but I need you to do all these unrealistic tasks?

BLAIR HODGES: Work 50-hour weeks, don't have breaks.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Exactly. But if you're working with a client and you're trying to tie everything back to the relationship with the mother, but you're not acknowledging capitalism or white supremacy or heterosexual supremacy, which also helps describe the mother and explain the mother, by the way, because the mother's also affected by those systems, then we're doing a disservice.

If we're trying to tie everything back to, well, think more positively. I have clients come to me and say, am I being overly sensitive about this thing or was it racism? No, it was racism. And you can't think your way out of racism.

BLAIR HODGES: I feel like the temptation would be to—there's a term that I've heard, spiritual bypassing, which is using techniques to push through discomfort or push through something unsettling, shortcuts, really. And we all use them. We all do this to an extent just to make it through the day.

But I think a lot of wellness culture online is built on bypassing methods, like the tips that you get from a lot of, by the way, white influencers usually talking about how to deal with your stress or how to get through the day or whatever. Are these kind of bypassing things that aren't getting at the root?

But I'm also sympathetic to that, Doctor, because it can also be really heavy to start digging into the systemic stuff and can invoke a feeling of helplessness or a lack of agency in it. Because I mean, I think about this in the wake of the Trump election and everything that we're seeing right now and how powerless I feel in the face of ICE and all the horrible things we're seeing.

My question to you as a practitioner then is, how do you deal with that issue? Because sure, you can sort of bring people into a different mindset and, hey, actually this context you're in, we really ought to take a look at that. But then it can maybe feel, at first at least, disempowering of, what the heck am I supposed to do about that?

It'd be way easier if I could just meditate for 10 minutes every morning.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Well, here's my answer. It's a both/and. And see, you're right, it can feel hopeless and powerless at times. And the reality is that we all have limited power.

BLAIR HODGES: Mm-hmm.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Are we going to ignore that? Are we going to try to meditate our way away from that reality? That's not serving us either. Going back to the work of Dr. Linda James Myers, she talks about moving from an either/or perspective to a both/and perspective. The either/or says, either I acknowledge these systems or I feel powerful, but I can't do both.

A both/and says, I can acknowledge these systems and own my power. So what I help my clients do is say, okay, what is the system? How do we accept that system, the things about it that we can't change, but how do we also own our power and push back in the ways in which we can?

How do I say, you know what, this ain't my stuff to be upset over. This is that person's. I'm not going to sit here and rack my brain and say, is there something I could have did better or something I should have said instead? No, it's racism. Racism is illogical. You could have said 8 million things.

It wasn't going to make a difference. So take your power back and now shift it to someplace else. Toni Morrison is famous for a lot of things, but one of the things she said was that racism is a distraction. So part of what we do by naming the system of oppression is allowing it to not be a distraction.

Okay, this is what it is. Now let me take my energy and go over here where I got some more agency.

 

Providing Space for People to Slow Down – 34:53

 

BLAIR HODGES: Give me some concrete examples of that. Maybe a hypothetical client that you worked with and some—because I don't—also, I mean, I was kind of being a little flip about using bypassing methods, but I do think there's ways we can reset ourselves, like breathing exercises or some somatic stuff we can do.

So I'm not being super dismissive of that. I think the problem is when we use that to paper over or ignore the larger systemic issues, we're just patching holes in a dam that's going to drown us all. Anyway, okay, so give us some concrete client or something.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Yeah, no, I 100% agree that we should always be considering context. And there is utility to mindfulness. And again, feeling the hurt. Often what I'm doing is I'm providing a space for people to slow down and to be in their shame, to be in their worry, to be in their sadness. And that's incredibly important.

But to give you a concrete example, I'm thinking particularly about a client who's a professional. And she came to me one day and she said, I was at this work event and this woman came up to me and she said, oh, is that your hair? Is it growing out of your head?

Because I remember you had short hair earlier and now you have long hair. Can I touch it? And my client is saying, well, I did have short hair earlier, so maybe she really doesn't understand the concept of wigs. This is a wig. People wear wigs.

BLAIR HODGES: Hey, it looks real.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: But maybe she thinks it looks real. Maybe. Or is this racist? She's asking me, a Black woman, to touch my hair. How would she feel if I asked her to do that? Part of what I do—

BLAIR HODGES: Or if she'd been around Black people normally, would she be asking the question at all?

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Exactly. But this is taking up a lot of her emotional energy trying to figure this out.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Also, by the way, because it stacks up, if anybody's thinking, well, that's a little thing, you just ignore it. Well, these are microaggressions, is what the technical term often uses, and they just stack up.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: They stack up. Dr. Derald Wing Sue did the pioneer research on microaggressions, and yeah, it stacks up. And you start to question your own reality. And you say, am I making this up in my head? And so part of what I did with her is I was like, no, this is racism. Because to your point, if she had cultivated an environment around her where she was actually in community with other Black women, this wouldn't even be a question.

BLAIR HODGES: Right.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: She would have some exposure to this already instead of burdening you with her education.

Furthermore, she's violating your personal space, touching your hair without asking. Or even asking to touch your hair, even if she did ask. How would she feel if someone did that? She's also giving you this unsaid thing about beauty standards. Oh, your hair's usually short, but you have it long now. It's so pretty.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, you did it right now.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Exactly. So there's this also unspoken thing around Eurocentric beauty standards, which is racist.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: So part of what I help my client do is name all of those things. And then I use this technique with her called the empty chair technique. And I said, in that moment, this is your manager's wife. So you can't really say what you want to say. You had to survive.

But we're together now. Imagine her in this chair. What do you want to say? Let it rip. Get it out. Don't swallow that poison anymore. Give it over to this person that it belongs to. So it's a both/and. It's a both/and. And now, the next time something like this happens, you can save your energy.

Was it something I did? No, this is a problem with the other person.

 

Unlearning Eurocentric Queerphobia – 39:33

 

BLAIR HODGES: Okay. Two thoughts about that. First, I feel like I would need to explain that to a lot of white people, but then also add a whole extra layer of lesson of being like, also, by the way, you can be racist without trying to be mean to anyone. White people have often thought racism means you openly hate someone who's of a different race, usually Black folks, and you're mean to them or want to harm them.

But racism is more about the effects that it has on people. And so this woman could presumably be very, very generally a kind person and maybe was just trying to make small talk and maybe felt uncomfortable and wasn't around Black people a lot.

And say what you see. She saw the hair and she says what she sees, right? Just trying to make some small talk. But because it's received with all the other microaggressive packaging around it, it's harmful to the person who received it.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Mm-hmm.

BLAIR HODGES: And that can be racist. And it doesn't mean you're the biggest jerk in the world. It means you need to learn something, need to change. Now, there's also jerky asshole racism too. I'm not saying that doesn't exist, of course. But there's also this type. So that's kind of the double layer I would bring to white people.

A white audience is like, don't forget about that. Okay, that's point one. Point two, it feels like maybe you had to do some of this yourself. And I'm wondering, you talk about your childhood being gay in a Black community where that wasn't really okay. Black queerphobia is something you discuss in the book, and you had to confront that.

So have you done similar exercises where you've maybe had some conversations with people who would've said harmful things to you, or maybe even talking to your younger self and talking to him about how he might feel about himself? How has it played out for you personally?

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: When it comes to my sexuality, I definitely had to do some of that work for myself. Part of how I understand my experience now is that my parents' homophobia was closely tied to the Christian religion as taught to them from a Eurocentric lens.

BLAIR HODGES: Mm-hmm.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Because if we look back at the history of pre-colonial African societies, like in any society and across all different life forms, there's diversity in sexualities.

BLAIR HODGES: And gender identity.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: And they were not pathologized. But we don't actually find documentation of homosexuality in African societies, not because it didn't exist, but because it wasn't out of the ordinary until we get European colonization and it's in the penal codes.

And so through centuries of hearing that homosexuality is an abomination and somehow makes Black people even less human, Black people themselves internalize this and now perpetuate homophobia in their own communities, even without any white people present.

And so that happened in my family. And so part of my healing required developing a spirituality outside of the Christianity I was being taught in the churches I grew up in, and also learning about and owning real African history that predates colonialism.

There is this book by Sobonfu Somé, who writes about the Dagara tribe, which is West Africa, where they understand who we would call queer people. I call them same-gender loving people, but they understand them as gatekeepers. They actually have a spiritual role that is essential to the communities.

BLAIR HODGES: Hmm.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: And so when people are having difficulties, they often go to the gatekeepers in the community. And the gatekeepers are uniquely positioned as healers. And so when we have that sort of understanding, I can now reclaim my sexual orientation, my sexuality, my Two-Spiritness, something that was pathologized and demonized and dehumanized, as a birthright, as something that's actually spiritually aligned.

And that's powerful. And that's been powerful for my own healing. And that's something that I offer my clients when I'm working with them now.

BLAIR HODGES: There's a word you bring up, deculturalization, and I love having a word for this, the idea of a culture really being taken away and conditioned into something completely new, like offered a replacement. And this happened obviously in huge ways through American slavery and slavery in other places, but we still see this happening today.

We still see deculturalization happening today. It can happen in workplaces where people of the global majority are in the minority.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: That's right.

BLAIR HODGES: By the way, people of the global majority, yours is one of the few books where I've encountered that as a term, and I quite like it a lot. People got more familiar with BIPOC during the Black Lives Matter movement. I think white people for the first time probably were seeing Black, Indigenous, People of Color.

People of Global Majority really works well for me because it's a reminder of place and a sort of decentering of whiteness that I think is kind of the first step we need to take toward reckoning with many of today's social ills—I'm on a huge tangent. I'm going to tie it back into—

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: No, but you're 100% right. And that's exactly why I use that term in the book, because it's like you're only the majority in a very small number of places.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes. Oh, it's helpful.

We're talking with Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter. The book is called How I Know White People Are Crazy and Other Stories: Notes from a Frustrated Black Psychologist. Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, speaker, and educator. You might've seen his work featured in places like NBC, PBS, Forbes, and elsewhere.

You can follow him, by the way, on social media @lassiterhealth.

 

A Liberatory Model of Education – 46:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, Doctor, let's talk about education. So you've also spent time as an educator as well, so not just meeting with clients therapeutically, but also training folks. And you say you want education as a system in general to become more liberatory rather than consumerist.

Those are two models that you kind of put up against each other. So let's take a couple of minutes, just a minute or two here to unpack what those models are. What is the consumerist model that we're kind of saddled with right now? And what would a liberatory model of education look like?

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: So the consumerist model is what we see where students and their parents become customers that educational institutions, universities, colleges are trying to cater to.

BLAIR HODGES: Because there's money there.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Because they want the tuition. Yes. And so it becomes about what do we do to get the tuition, to get the room and board fees, et cetera, rather than how do we create, cultivate an educational environment where we develop citizens that is going to contribute to the wellbeing and freedom of us all.

And so a liberatory education deprioritizes grades. It deprioritizes having an expert and students who are just there passively receiving knowledge, but it becomes about co-creating an environment where learning is bidirectional and multidirectional, where learning comes about challenging systems of status quo and not about just learning skills to succeed in systems of oppression.

Those are the differences I see between a consumerist educational system and a liberatory educational system. And liberatory educational systems don't require universities and colleges. Liberatory education systems can be reading groups. It could be communal book clubs. We don't need a college or university for education.

And I think that's part of capitalism and the consumerism of it all, is saying this is this one legitimate source that you need to pay for in order to get an education that we deem as worthy.

BLAIR HODGES: My fear about that, and I appreciate especially the liberatory aims of the education you described, which is taking a look at how justice plays out in the world. My fear is we've seen a rise in independent education efforts, like do your own research. And so I feel like we do need expertise. We do need replicable experimentation.

We need funding that can fund, and ethical boards that can—and I know they're not perfect. I know they're not perfect. There's unethical things that can happen whether you have an ethical board or not, but I do like at least the idea of these structures that are supposed to give some order to all of this.

And my fear is that, like, I believe in the democratization of knowledge in the extreme, but also fear what happens when that goes south, like what we see with COVID denialism and stuff like that, and anti-vaxxers who think that they've done their research. And we do need expertise too. So how do you split the difference?

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Again, I go back to Dr. Linda James Myers' both/and. And Dr. Myers also talks about the different sources of knowledge. There's knowledge that comes from the external, from doing the research. And again, I'm a researcher. I publish extensively in peer-reviewed academic journals. I believe in that. I've taught PhD students how to do that.

That can't be the only avenue of dissemination. And so my point is that we need all of the above, but we also need to hold—the same way we need to hold those sort of independent scholars accountable, we need to hold those institutions accountable too. Because again, oftentimes what we get through the institutions is one singular voice that leaves out so many others.

And what we get from the independent scholars is that they become their echo chamber and they don't consider nuance. So we need both.

BLAIR HODGES: It strikes me too that some of this denial, COVID denialism and vax and all this stuff, kind of comes out of the fact that education hasn't been successfully and widely disseminated enough on a lot of these issues. So the problem that's giving me pause is also an outcome and a product of the systems that I would otherwise try to defend and be like, we need universities.

Well, maybe they're not doing so hot in these ways too. So we just need to take a look at it all. And I don't know, I don't think we're gonna solve it in this episode, unfortunately.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: No.

BLAIR HODGES: With all apologies to all of the listeners out there.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: No, it's so true. We're not going to solve it. But to your point, that's one of the things that's frustrated me as a person who did systematic research, is that my dean's ideal with an L outcome was for me to publish something that went to a peer-reviewed academic journal. And that was it. I had did my job as a professor.

BLAIR HODGES: Right. And most do it that way.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: However, that was never good enough for me because, as I said, I'm Black first, a psychologist second. I was always thinking, how can Black people like my brother, who did not go to get a PhD, who did not finish college, how can he benefit from my work? We need both. We need to be talking to the scholars and we need to be talking to the community.

And oftentimes it gets stuck at scholars talking to scholars. And so then of course the people without the degrees are going to be talking to each other and see a disconnect, an us versus them.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes. Well, your book does a great job, by the way, of bringing that knowledge. It's so well written and fun. It is an enjoyable read. Each chapter is sort of built like an essay, and it introduces so many concepts that we haven't even had time to touch on at all. But I think you're doing—I see you doing that work.

I see you doing a work of public education. You're also a researcher. You're playing the game in the halls of science where researchers work through this stuff according to these certain parameters, reaching out to more people and also individual clients that you're meeting with. So that's one of the reasons I saw you as such a good fit for Relationscapes, because it's sort of trying to do all those things as well, of individual stories, community stories, and also good research and the best data we can come up with.

And then we got to bring that all together to get a better perspective. So I see you doing that in your work, and I think the book does a really good job.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Well, thank you so much. That is the goal.

 

Learning to Live Outside the Whiteness Mindset – 53:57

 

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, well, I got a couple more questions before we're through. I'll give you both of them, because then that way we won't—if I only give you one at a time, we'll spend like 10 minutes on each.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Okay.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, so the first question is, you're inviting people to live outside the whiteness mindset. So maybe just give some practical thought about—give us some ideas about how we can live outside the whiteness mindset. And that goes for anybody who's listening right now.

And then also some advice for people who might be in therapy or looking to get into therapy, some things they can look for when they're meeting with a therapist or looking to meet with a therapist that can improve the odds that they'll have a positive outcome.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: All right. So first question, how do we live outside of the whiteness mindset? One of the things that I love about being a Black psychologist is having exposure to the decades of research of Africa-centered psychologists and really the millennia of African indigenous wisdom. That has answered so many of these questions. So when it comes to living outside of the whiteness mindset, what does that look like?

One, exposure. Go beyond the thing you normally do when you're looking for information. Go beyond Freud, go beyond Erikson, go beyond the white woman influencer you follow on social media. Go to different countries. How do they understand? I mean, I'm not saying travel. If you could travel to different countries, great. But go—

BLAIR HODGES: The internet makes it easier.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Yeah, go. What are the resources? What are the books they're reading in other countries? So that exposure is important. Expand your community. If you're really, I'm not a racist, but my whole entire circle is homogenous, that's an easy fix. And don't go and collect tokens. Actually build relationships.

And one of the ways to build relationships that are authentic is don't assume that you're the default.

BLAIR HODGES: Mm-hmm.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: And other things include living outside of the whiteness mindset is having an understanding and appreciation for the seen, not just the seen, but also the unseen. Oftentimes, again, the Eurocentric value system tells us to only trust what we could see, what we could count, what we know with our five senses. But an indigenous wisdom knows that there are things beyond our five senses.

So those are just a few ways, and I have plenty that I articulate much better in the book.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, the book is good. And also, you do mention there that it's a lifelong project. This isn't a switch that can be flipped or a summertime experiment or something. It's a way of living. It's a way of living. And the book invites us to do that.

 

How to Have a Good Therapy Experience – 57:05

 

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Yeah. Now, how to have a great experience in therapy.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, therapy.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: One, therapy is a relationship. And just like all relationships don't work, same thing with your therapist. You may need to go through multiple therapists.

BLAIR HODGES: Have you broke up with a therapist before?

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Broke up with a therapist?

BLAIR HODGES: You're like, this is—

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: I don't think I've actually ever broke up with a therapist, but I definitely had clients break up with me, which is fine. I don't even take it personal. I'm just like, well, I want you to get what you need. And if you can't get it with me, that's fine.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: So, one, knowing that therapy is a relationship, and sometimes you will need to break up with your therapist. Also, not being afraid to ask that therapist questions that are important to you. I had one client come in and first session said, I need to know where you stand on Israel-Palestine.

And I said to him, genocide is genocide. And he said, good, I can work with you.

BLAIR HODGES: Mm-hmm.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Don't be afraid. Don't be like, oh, well, is that political? Or is it that—no. If it's important to you, ask the question. And if the therapist deflects, they're probably not good for you.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. I know some therapists would answer with saying, tell me why that question is important to you. And I also see some wisdom in that too. But again, it really depends on what a particular person needs from a therapist.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: And I did ask that question after. Both/and.

BLAIR HODGES: You're not afraid to be known where you stand.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Exactly. Because that's an issue that's important to me as well. But more than it being important to me, I knew that that was something that that client needed. And so why beat around the bush when I could just go directly at it?

So don't be afraid to ask the therapist the questions that are important to you. Ask the therapist, who are you reading? What scholars, what therapists inform your work? Because if they're naming a homogenous group—

BLAIR HODGES: They're like, Dr. Phil.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Or Dr. Phil. Then maybe, if they're naming some TikToker, Gwyneth Paltrow said—

BLAIR HODGES: They're like, if you go to goop.com—

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Then maybe. But what's your relationship? How do you think about homophobia? Maybe we're not queer, but we have people in our life who support us that are queer. Well, who are the queer scholars that inform your thinking on mental health and sexuality?

So these are the sorts of questions. It's an interview. You're interviewing your therapist as much as they're interviewing you.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I had an experience like—it was in mid-2020 when I first got back into therapy, and I was on Psychology Today, which is pretty helpful to kind of narrow down options. And I found a therapist that looked like a good fit, but I also noticed in their work history they had been law enforcement of some kind.

And in many other ways, she was such a good fit. So I met with her just as kind of a let's meet and greet and see what happens. And I did. I just asked her directly what she thought about—it was right in the wake of George Floyd. There were the protests happening.

Blue Lives Matter was being bandied about as a gross response to Black Lives Matter. Anyway, I asked her about it and her answer was fine. And I think it could have been okay, but I was like, I'm going to keep looking. And she was cool about it and professional about it.

I think, to your point, most therapists will be pretty professional about it and want for their clients to find the right fit. And she definitely came across that way. So it's actually a pretty positive thing. I felt really scared asking it. I almost felt accusatory or something. But anyway, I'm glad to hear you've now made me feel less weird that I asked that.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Well, I'm glad I can make you feel less weird.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes, thank you. And you did that for free, so that's awesome.

Okay, well, that's Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter, again, author of How I Know White People Are Crazy and Other Stories: Notes from a Frustrated Black Psychologist.

 

Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises – 01:01:26

 

BLAIR HODGES: We always like to close with Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises. So this is a quick question about if there's anything about this book in particular that you would change now that it's out, or something that was the most challenging about putting this book together, or something that you learned in the process of it.

So maybe you added a new tool to your toolkit because you were doing this book and something came up. So you can kind of pick which one you want to speak to.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: So let's go with the things that I learned. I did not realize, I did not realize how much of a marketer you have to be in addition to being the author. I thought, hey, I have this book deal with a major New York City press, top five publishing.

I'm going to write this great book and they're going to get it out in front of everyone. I'm going to be meeting with Oprah and Gayle King. And it's going to be great. Surprise, surprise. None of that happened.

BLAIR HODGES: Oprah did not call you?

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Oprah did not call me.

BLAIR HODGES: Oprah!

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: I think the title may have scared her away.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, she's a longtime listener, so I'm going to just put a pitch out there. Oprah!

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Yeah, but I thought, oh, I'm going to have this machine behind me. They're going to get me in front of all these great people.

BLAIR HODGES: You'll be in every airport.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Exactly. Nope. Not have that happen at all. So much of it then was like, well, who do you know? And I'm like, why are you asking me? These are the people—this is what you do for a living. I'm a psychologist for a living. I done wrote the book. Why are you asking me who I know in media?

No one. So that's the surprise.

BLAIR HODGES: So are you doing more social media stuff? What did you end up doing?

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Yeah, so I did more social media, which I'm not really a social media person, but to me, I just look at it as another career task that I do. But I'm not into social media. But I do a lot of social media now.

Also, I hired a PR firm, which was really expensive, which was a surprise. Because they charge you all this money, they guarantee you nothing, and you just cross your fingers and hope.

BLAIR HODGES: That's right. And it's not like books are huge moneymakers either. So, I mean, unless somebody's getting an advance for it, sometimes the amount of time and effort you put into it, you could be spending money to make a book. It just depends. So it's a lot. It's a lot.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: But at the end of the day, the book has reached its audience. I have people reaching out to me on an almost daily basis, whether via social media, whether emailing my assistant, thank you so much for writing this book. You said what I couldn't say. You gave me language. I learned so much.

I didn't know there was a term for this. So I feel very proud of what the book—whether I am Ibram Kendi or Ta-Nehisi Coates, because that was sort of the vision I had at the beginning. But whether I reached that status or not, the book has reached its audience, so I'm very, very proud and happy.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, again, I highly recommend it. How I Know White People Are Crazy and Other Stories: Notes from a Frustrated Black Psychologist. We didn't get a ton into it, but there's a lot more personal stories in here too. We learn a lot more about your childhood, about your upbringing, about your background in the church and dealing with coming to terms with being gay and—the term that you used just slipped my mind.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Same-gender loving.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes. So we get to meet a lot more, and then a lot more of you in school, some of the other school shenanigans that popped up as you're navigating all these white spaces. So again, highly recommend it. It's great on a personal level to learn more about you as a person. It's great for all the ideas and concepts in here.

I give it my highest recommendation, and I'm so glad that you took time to talk to me about it.

JONATHAN MATHIAS LASSITER: Thank you. Thank you so much. And it's been my pleasure.

 

Outro – 01:05:45

 

BLAIR HODGES: Thanks for listening to another episode of Relationscapes. If you're interested in the topic of psychology, I'd send you all the way back to the second episode I ever did on the show with Dr. Marielle Bouquet. The episode is called “Healing from Family Trauma.” And I wanted to kind of do that early in the show to set us up for all the traumas that we might encounter as we go through the rest of the episodes.

So check that one out, “Healing from Family Trauma” with Dr. Marielle Bouquet. If you're enjoying Relationscapes, take a second to rate and review it in Apple Podcasts. I haven't seen ratings and reviews come in over the past month. So if you're still waiting, please, now's the time, go do it. You can also rate the show in Spotify.

I'd love to see more of those come in. Another way you can help me grow the show is by recommending it to a friend. So if anybody in your life came to mind while you're listening to this one, send them a link. You can follow me on Instagram or TikTok to see some clips from this episode and other bonus stuff.

It's @_relationscapes. Mates of State provides our theme music. I'm your host, Blair Hodges, an independent journalist in Salt Lake City, and I hope to be here again with you soon here on Relationscapes.

BLAIR HODGES: Greetings, fellow explorers of relationscapes. I've got a podcast to recommend to you. On rePROs Fight Back, host Jennie Wetter talks with experts about what's happening with sexual and reproductive health rights and what it means for actual real-life people in the real-life world. She makes these complicated issues more clear without making me feel like I need a law degree to follow along.

If you want to know what's happening with abortion access in different states, whether people can get birth control or gender-affirming care, what policies are affecting pregnancy and childbirth, rePROs Fight Back is helping me understand not just what's changing, but why it all matters and how I can make sense of it. What I like about it is that Jennie doesn't pretend like this stuff isn't heavy.

The show kind of feels less like somebody lecturing me about the news and more like just having a really informed friend help me make sense of it all. So I recommend to you rePROs Fight Back. If you're interested in these issues, check out that show wherever you get your podcasts.