Esther Armah is a Ghanaian-British journalist, playwright, radio host, and creator of the Emotional Justice framework. She is the author of Emotional Justice: A Roadmap for Racial Healing. She joins this episode from Accra, Ghana. IN THIS EPISODE — How Esther's mother's broken silence about the 1966 Ghana coup gave birth to Emotional Justice — and the insight that "you cannot PhD your way out of untreated trauma" — What Winnie Mandela told Esther before she interviewed Desmond Tutu: listen to the women first — Nchiki Biko's refusal to forgive at the TRC, the murder of Steve Biko, and why her "no" cracked open a new understanding of racialized forgiveness — Why reconciliation bypasses justice and repair — and how Canada's TRC has replicated the same harm as South Africa's — Nelson Mandela's forgiveness narrative: a political act of its time, and why it seeded a dangerous legacy — The emotional work that belongs to white people — Intimate Reckoning, Emotional Patriarchy, and the difference between proximity to power and actual allyship — The language of whiteness: how all of us are taught to center whiteness, and the emotional work of letting it go — Myrna's own reckoning: years of fawning for white audiences and what it took to name it — The three Cs — Courage, Comfort, and Convenience — and how we each choose to contribute to or resist systems of harm — Why you cannot self-care your way towards liberation, and what communal care actually requires — Isolation vs. solitude — why hiding can be part of healing, and why isolation is the death of liberation — Wellness in the Face of Warfare: what it means to choose wellness when your health is considered a threat to whiteness Resources mentioned Emotional Justice: A Roadmap for Racial Healing by Esther Armah - You can buy it here: https://www.amazon.ca/Emotional-Justice-Roadmap-Racial-Healing/dp/1523003367 Esther Armah — estherarmah.com Myrna McCallum — myrnamccallum.co Global Anti-Racism Summit, Stellenbosch, South Africa (where Myrna first heard Esther speak) Justice's Trauma 2026, Vancouver BC (where Esther presented on Emotional Justice) People mentioned Winnie Mandela — South African anti-apartheid activist; met Esther in Philadelphia Archbishop Desmond Tutu — South African human rights leader; interviewed by Esther Nchiki Biko — widow of Steve Biko; her refusal to forgive at the TRC was pivotal to Esther's framework Nelson Mandela — discussed in relation to the politics and harm of racialized forgiveness Resmaa Menakem — referenced by Myrna in relation to having "skin in the game" Dr. Samah Jabr — presenter at Justice's Trauma 2026; community as medicine Kwame Nkrumah — first independent president of Ghana; quoted on political and economic liberation
In this episode Esther Armah and Myrna discuss her Emotional Justice framework. In this conversation, they get into the courage that racial healing actually requires, and who it asks the most of. Esther is a journalist, playwright, and global emotional justice advocate joining us from Accra, Ghana.
Drawing on her encounters with Winnie Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Nchiki Biko — the widow of Steve Biko who famously refused to forgive the officers who murdered her husband at the TRC — Esther unpacks why reconciliation is not liberation language, why Nelson Mandela's message of forgiveness placed an impossible emotional burden on Black people, and what the emotional work of white people actually looks like. Myrna brings her own reckoning: years of fawning for white audiences, softening the language of colonial trauma, and what it finally cost her to name it.
This is Part 1. Esther will be back.
Esther Armah is a Ghanaian-British journalist, playwright, radio host, and creator of the Emotional Justice framework. She is the author of Emotional Justice: A Roadmap for Racial Healing. She joins this episode from Accra, Ghana.
IN THIS EPISODE
— How Esther's mother's broken silence about the 1966 Ghana coup gave birth to Emotional Justice — and the insight that "you cannot PhD your way out of untreated trauma"
— What Winnie Mandela told Esther before she interviewed Desmond Tutu: listen to the women first
— Nchiki Biko's refusal to forgive at the TRC, the murder of Steve Biko, and why her "no" cracked open a new understanding of racialized forgiveness
— Why reconciliation bypasses justice and repair — and how Canada's TRC has replicated the same harm as South Africa's
— Nelson Mandela's forgiveness narrative: a political act of its time, and why it seeded a dangerous legacy
— The emotional work that belongs to white people — Intimate Reckoning, Emotional Patriarchy, and the difference between proximity to power and actual allyship
— The language of whiteness: how all of us are taught to center whiteness, and the emotional work of letting it go
— Myrna's own reckoning: years of fawning for white audiences and what it took to name it
— The three Cs — Courage, Comfort, and Convenience — and how we each choose to contribute to or resist systems of harm
— Why you cannot self-care your way towards liberation, and what communal care actually requires
— Isolation vs. solitude — why hiding can be part of healing, and why isolation is the death of liberation
— Wellness in the Face of Warfare: what it means to choose wellness when your health is considered a threat to whiteness
QUOTES
"You cannot PhD your way out of untreated trauma. There is no amount of education that will replace the emotional work we all have to do." — Esther Armah
"Reconciliation is not liberation language. It is conciliatory language designed to sustain how whiteness comforts and soothes itself." — Esther Armah
"In Canada, your superpower is to mask your violence in polite neutrality and somehow describe it as no longer violence. We see that — because that's part of British whiteness." — Esther Armah
PEOPLE MENTIONED
— Winnie Mandela — South African anti-apartheid activist
— Archbishop Desmond Tutu — South African human rights leader
— Nchiki Biko — widow of Steve Biko; her refusal to forgive at the TRC was pivotal to Esther's framework
— Nelson Mandela — discussed in relation to racialized forgiveness
— Resmaa Menakem — referenced by Myrna on having skin in the game
— Kwame Nkrumah — first independent president of Ghana; quoted on political and economic liberation
RESOURCES
Emotional Justice: A Roadmap for Racial Healing by Esther Armah - You can buy it here: https://www.amazon.ca/Emotional-Justice-Roadmap-Racial-Healing/dp/1523003367
estherarmah.com
https://www.theaiej.com/
myrnamccallum.co
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>>Myrna McCallum: Hi, folks. Can you believe that we are at season four of the Trauma Informed Lawyer podcast? I certainly cannot believe it and I appreciate all of you for sticking with me through all of it and the delays and dropping episodes. I promise this season I'm going to be giving you a lot of content and on a more regular, predictable basis. I want to say that since I started this podcast, I don't know how long ago now, years ago, my evolution and my education has certainly, like, increased least. And I believe that becoming trauma informed in any respect is just the baseline, the bare minimum that we can do. The work for us is to become trauma responsive, culturally responsive, to become just and equitable, and to center humanity and integrity in all of the work that we do. In the spirit of that, the episodes, the conversations that are coming forward are intended to reflect that. And as I have come to learn, and probably you, the listener on understand, this conversation isn't just for lawyers and judges and law enforcement, like I, my initial intended audience. It has, like, spanned the globe, from lawyers to leaders to advocates, activists, practitioners, physicians, politicians. So many people listen to this content. Why? Because we are all dealing with human beings and all human beings are experiencing some degree of suffering, including ourselves. And so the work for us is to recognize that in each other, adapt and adjust accordingly so we do no further harm.
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>>Myrna McCallum: I've got the best episode for you today. I have sat down with Esther Armah. She is a phenomenal woman. She is the author of Emotional Justice, a Roadmap for Racial healing. She is a journalist, a playwright, and probably one of the most powerful speakers I have ever heard. You need to just lean into this one, enjoy it. And you're, you're gonna be like, oh, my gosh, more please. More, please. And I can promise you I will deliver more because consider this episode part one. We will hear from Esther again, hopefully in September. All right, here we go.
>>Myrna McCallum: Hi there, Esther Armah. Welcome to the Trauma Informed Lawyer podcast.
>>Esther Armah: Hello, Myrna. I'm coming to you from Accra, Ghana. We are crossing continents on this, this episode.
>>Myrna McCallum: It's wild. I need to visit there one day because, like, I've, I've, like, listened to you. I've little snippets of you. Talk about how beautiful it is there.
>>Myrna McCallum: Never been.
I'm going to go one day. I mean, I saw you when I took my team down to, Stellenbosch. Well, we went to different parts of South Africa because we were there for a few weeks or, or a couple weeks. Anyway, and I was like, oh, my God, this place is incredibly beautiful, and we need to explore some more. So maybe the next time I come that away, it might be to, like, to like you. Like, I don't know your backyard. I might be visiting.
>>Esther Armah: Who knows? Who knows? Make it happen.
>>Myrna McCallum: so like I said, I encountered you in Stellenbosch at the Global Anti Racism Summit that took place in September. You presented on Emotional justice, and when I heard it, I was like, oh, my gosh. I was planning already for justice's, Trauma 2026, which just took place here in Vancouver, last month in April. And I told my team immediately. I was like, we've got to get this woman to come to Vancouver and to present on Emotional Justice because, like, my mind was blown listening to you, and it was just such a privilege to just hear you speak twice now.
>>Esther Armah: Thank you.
>>Myrna McCallum: So inspired. So inspired. So I want to ask you, like, first and foremost, Emotional Justice. Like, those two words together. There's something about those two words together for me as a former prosecutor that was like, yes. Like, it felt immediately like, yes, this is what's been missing. But also, those two words on their own are very, very powerful. When you put them together, they're just like, ultra, ultra powerful. where. Where did that come from?
>>Esther Armah: So it came from a series of assignments, encounters, and journeys with, different phenomenal, Black and African leaders over a period of time. So I'm a former journalist, and, the journey of the phrase and the word began when my mother broke her silence about the 1966 coup in Ghana and shared with me for the first time what happened when the soldiers broke in, broke everything, glass doors, everything, and threatened our, family. And the point of that specific story is it taught me a very particular thing, that I was a very young woman when she told me the story. I, was, you know, smart. I was educated, eloquent, doing all the things, but felt very, very emotionally untethered, very, damaged. That's really the word internally. And didn't really understand why. And when she broke her silence, the story she told me made sense of the damage that I felt. So what that led me to just understand. And I didn't have the language then, but I created it later, was this idea that you cannot PhD your way out of untreated trauma. There is no amount of education that will replace the emotional work we all have to do when it comes to this legacy of untreated trauma that shapes all of us because of these systems of harm, colonialism, apartheid, enslavement, that has shaped our entire world. And so my mother's broken silence began that. And then I went to, Philadelphia, where I would end up meeting Winnie Mandela. She solidified that I was on my way to South Africa to interview Desmond Tutu. And she was the one that said to me, you've got to listen to the women first before you interview the men. And then I met Nchiki Biko, who is the widow of Steve Biko. And those three pivotal encounters, my mother's broken silence, meeting with Winnie Mandela and hearing from Nchiki Biko really solidified this understanding that we have totally undersold, underestimated, and failed to name the significance of emotionality as part of governance, part of structures, part of how we lead, part of how we move. And that, put it in a racialized context. And the idea of justice connected to who we are and how we feel became, just inextricable. And that really happened when I was listening, to her refuse and reject the forgiveness of 10 white police officers who'd murdered Steve Beaker. It's the TRC. The whole world is in South Africa. You can picture the stage, stage full of the entire global media, cameras everywhere, lights, everything. These 10 white police officers have taken the stand. It's the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The whole world is talking about how in this nation, Black people are willing to give, forgive white people for the violence that they'd perpetrated in the name of apartheid. There was only one narrative, forgiveness. Nobody had interrupted that narrative. Hadn't even occurred to me that there was another one. These 10 white officers give this testimony, and then they turn to Nchiki Biko. The media does, and said, so you've heard what they said, and do you forgive them? This no more than five foot four woman, petite, salt and pepper gray hair, braids going back, cornrows going back with her teenage son by her side. And she said, no, absolutely not. First of all, what they told you was a lie. What they said was, it was a bit of a scuffle and he hit his head, he went berserk, and that's how he ended up dead. She said, no, let me tell you what happened. 22 hour interrogation. He was naked, he was shackled, he was beaten and bruised, bloody, thrown into the back of a van, driven 100 miles, thrown into a cell and left to die. He was murdered. That's the narrative. And so, her point was not only the fact that this process is deeply emotional for us doesn't mean we don't also need justice. That wasn't her language, but that's what I heard her say in my mind. That's what I heard. The fact that this is a deeply emotional process doesn't mean it cannot be connected to justice. Then what became deeper than that was the idea that it was racialized emotionality. So it's Black forgiveness of white supremacist violence. There was not any mention of, okay, but what does it mean for Black women, Black South African women to forgive each other for what they had to do to survive apartheid? There's no language about what does it mean for Black South African men to forgive themselves for who they had to become to survive apartheid when the entire structure required an emasculation in order for you to keep it moving. There was no language about what it meant to forgive ourselves as Black African people. It was all about who white people were. That, economy, fiscal economy, and what I call the emotional economy of their identity. So that began the journey. Emotional Justice was saying very simply, we have a legacy of untreated trauma. It shows up and it shapes how we see ourselves, how we see each other, and how we lead labor and love. And it requires a healing. And when I say healing, I don't mean the individual work that kind of universalizes everything and disappears. Distinctness and trauma and white supremacy and violence. Violence. What I'm saying is that it's a collective healing that's about how we see ourselves and therefore how we see each other. That is individual, and it always extends to the institutional. So that emotional justice became a framework that was about that legacy of untreated trauma and a collective healing for Black, brown and Indigenous people.
>>Myrna McCallum:Amazing. Amazing and so beautiful. Like, what you've created is just like, oh, my heart is singing right now. I mean, it is. It explains so much of my experience as an Indigenous woman living in Canada. And I'm sure for others who have read your book, your beautiful book, Emotional Justice, A Roadmap for Racial Healing, which everybody should buy and read, like, it just felt, like validation. Putting language to an experience that I couldn't find the language for and then offering, like, a path forward. I mean, in the book, you call it a roadmap, but, like, here is the work that is required. And I love that in the book, you talk about very, like, specifically that white people have emotional work to do. And that is something like, we've had a truth and reconciliation commission here in Canada. And, you know, like, it's really become. It's really twisted and perverted. The way in which reconciliation is treated here first. We bypass truth and we get to reconciliation. But somehow the reconciliation work is the work of the Indigenous people. And
it is so upside down and it is so twisted and it is so harmful. And so when you say that there's emotional work for white people to do, I mean, that just felt so like. Yes. And what would that, what would that require?
>>Esther Armah: So it's two things I'd say. You know, part of the legacy of untreated trauma was that we, we made the, the work that of the indigenous, the Black, the brown, the Indigenous folks, and that the white people were the problem solvers and we were the problem to be solved versus the other way around. And that was what South Africa created. This idea that the TRC framework is really centers whiteness and requires of Indigenous people did this one thing or this other thing or this other thing, if Black folks would do this thing and fix this thing and fix that thing, we would be fine. When it comes to, white people and their emotional work, the emotional justice framework creates language for the emotional work that we all have to do and then separates who has to do what. And when it comes to white folks, specifically, I talk about two things. One is, emotional patriarchy, and the other one is intimate reckoning. So intimate reckoning is specifically about white people severing a relationship to power that centers the domination of all women and Black, brown and Indigenous people. In other words, the only way you feel power is that you have some level of, control over somebody's life, body, future reality who is not you. In other words, not, not white, not a man, not white, not a woman, but who is Black, brown or Indigenous. And the way that that manifests with these systems is every sector, you can identify law, health, education, leisure, entertainment, name it, and it's inside of that. So I, I talk about two things in intimate reckoning. That the work of white women is to break up with manufactured proximity to power. By that I mean when white men hold the power, white women's proximity to that power is what gives them power. The challenge with that is that, especially when I'm talking specifically about progressive white women, on the one hand, they want an allyship with black, brown, indigenous folks. Indigenous women, on the other hand, they choose to protect proximity. You cannot be Switzerland in an emotional justice movement. It doesn't work. You've got to pick a side. And if you, if you pick proximity, the consequences will always be doing harm and justify doing that harm because you name yourself an ally and that's what keeps happening. And so Intimate Reckoning was saying to white women, it's not about capacity, it's about willingness. It's not that you're not capable, you're perfectly capable. What are you willing to. To do to build the world that you say that you want? So progressive white folks will say, well, I want the world that you want. I want the future that you want. I want a thriving future. I always say I hear that and then I say, what are you willing to do to make that real? Because it's the willingness that then becomes the conversation about their roadmap, as opposed to using their political declaration of allyship as the work. That's why I said, you cannot PhD your way out of untreated trauma. That you're politically educated doesn't mean that you're not. You're not still emotionally neglecting how much you've kind of dug your stakes in and are choosing proximity to white men as a protection mechanism. because these are the white men that you m. May love, that you walk with, that you work with, that you are friends with, that you are married to all of the, all of the things. but we're living in a world right now, the rise and rise of authoritarian masculinity, that is literally waging wars, killing people, destroying futures, destroying the earth, and, in the name of domination. And so Intimate Reckoning is about saying two things to white women. Who do you say you are, and how will what you do reflect that? Not who do you tell your Black, brown, Indigenous folks that you are? Who do you say you are, and how will what you do reflect that? But the other point is saying to, Black, brown and Indigenous folk is that our work to do is specifically ours and they're totally different. and what we have to navigate is a relationship to labor as value. In other words, our only value is in the labor that we provide outside of ourselves. So as long as. Not just that you're working, but you're working for your community, for an organization. And I don't mean regular work. I'm not talking about a work ethic. I'm talking about back breaking, soul aching, break you down, lay you out. You're flatlining, but you're still saying, I'm going to do it. I'm going to make that deadline, I'm going to make it happen. and that's your relationship to value. If you're not doing that kind of backbreaking labor, who am I? The same way with white men. If you are not in control and in Power, then in your eyes you're not a man. If you're not a man, then who are you? And those kinds of questions are at the foundation of the reckoning that I'm talking about for them.
>>Myrna McCallum : What you're saying reminds me a little bit about what Resmaa. Resmaa Menakem said at, At my conference, which was essentially like, you. You need to have some skin in the game. Like, you can't just be on the outside saying that you're about this. You actually need to be like. To be about it. You have to be part. You have to be. Get willing to give something up. You've got to be willing to sacrifice something. You've got to be willing to give more than just words. And for me, that. That really sat with me and. And had me reflecting, particularly in my world, like, world that I come from, how that is, like how things like allyship is, actualized. What does that look like? And I think about things like, equity, diversity and inclusion committees that you see sometimes in big firms or other, like, government offices, including like, reconciliation offices. And I think about who is in those offices, who is doing the work. And in my experience, it's largely Indigenous people, Black people, people of color who do that work. I have yet to. Not, to say it doesn't happen, but I have yet to actually see like a white CEO who does that work and who is largely responsible for that work.
>>Myrna McCallum : Because the nature of the reconciliation commissions and their history, I have taught white people that it's not their work to do. And what we have is what I call emotional illiteracy about the harm, that is consistently caused and what part of what we need is emotional literacy as part of a leadership development strategy. Become emotionally literate, not just about the world that you're in, but the world that other people live in and the nature of that harm. I, don't ever buy the narrative that white people don't understand, don't understand the harm that they've caused. I've never bought. I don't buy that narrative. there's a difference between articulating harm as an entry into allyship. Yes, all the language, white supremacy, hetero, capitalist patriarch, being able to say all the terms. there's a difference between that and the willingness to reckon with your relationship to power and how that manifests who you say you are. Because the reality is there's a gulf and there's an ocean between those two worlds. And because that ocean, is protected by the Unwillingness to move from your position of power. It becomes a cycle, an ongoing cycle, where, DEI is considered the work of Black, brown and Indigenous people. So in other words, you're saying to the people who are on the receiving end of the broken system that it's your job to fix it. And those who were the creators of the system to sustain its brokenness get to be protected from doing that work. and as long as that is a structure that is sustained, it doesn't serve any kind of future that is healthy or healing. and so I also want to talk about the idea of, what I call the language of whiteness. The language of whiteness is the idea that society has taught all of us who we are and what our role is, Black, brown, Indigenous and white. And it taught us that, white people are the leaders, the fixers, the saviors and the creators. And Black, brown and Indigenous folks are the ones that need to be healed, fixed, saved, and are broken. and the question then becomes. Is how we internalize that relationship to whiteness that makes whiteness the center and an aspiration to be in that space so many people's work. So then the question becomes, how do you speak the language of whiteness in your work, in your world? How do you articulate the language of liberation but practice the language of whiteness? How do you speak about freedom? And, practice fear and the kind of fear that prevents you from moving in the way that you say that you want to move? and I say that to recognize that we are at this tipping point. The world is on fire. there is an urgency to liberation that is felt most by the folks who are on the front line, whether they want to be or not. Black, brown, Indigenous folk are the front line of. Of, the fire that's being caused. And the question in this moment for us then becomes, what are we going to build? And how are we imagining, our futures when this system is coming down in all these different specific ways? And how are we speaking the language of whiteness? How are we letting that go in order to create the future that we say that we. What does that mean? to reflect back. How have I. How have you. How have we spoken the language of whiteness in our own histories in order to protect position, in order to acquire position, in order to ascend in terms of promotion, in order to protect our proximity to whiteness? And it's never a point of judgment. It's saying that emotional justice, the entry point, is an honesty that enables us to move from, you know, liberation declarations to actually doing our emotional work.
>>Myrna McCallum: There is so much I want to, like, come, like, speak, speak to ask you to speak to in what you've just said. And so I'm just going to say a few things. As I'm listening to you, I'm thinking about a few things and, and before I forget, I do want us to. To talk about, your, your, like, what you. What you say about Nelson Mandela in your book around this whole forgiveness piece. I, I wanted, I want to touch on that. Please, Esther, don't let me forget that one. but as I'm listening to you talk about this, I have to just say, from my own lived experience. And this is only something that's been new to me because, like, if I'm being honest to everyone who's listening, I, I. For a very long time, as I, as I was doing training on what trauma informed law is, or trauma informed judicial practice, trauma informed lawyering is, I would never talk about things like colonial trauma, racial trauma. certainly I would never say the words white supremacy. And honestly, I think I would never even say the word racism. And it was probably only in the last couple of years I was thinking about why I bypass those topics when we talk about trauma, which. And then I would deliver the concept of cultural humility in such a careful and packaged way as to not ruffle the feathers of white people. Because predominantly my audiences have been white. Because who sits in places of power on a, in courtrooms? White people, right? Are often the judges. White people are often the senior lawyers and who are on both sides, defense, prosecution.
Who. Who are often the police? white people. Not always, but often. And so I was like, I don't want to alienate these people. I don't want them to shut down. I need them to learn some things. I need them to be open. And so I would bypass. But then when I had to unpack, actually why I was bypassing, it really came to me one day when I was like, talking with some people about trauma responses, specifically Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn. Right? The four that I have seen in my practice. And now I understand there's like eight or 10 of them, but whatever, there's four that I would talk about. And then I got to realizing that I would fawn. I would fawn when it came to white people, meaning that I would say things to appease them, to placate them, to prop them up. And I was doing it not because. Not only because I was trying to invite them into an uncomfortable Conversation where they'd have to look at themselves in all of their whiteness and all of their power and all of their privilege. I was, like, doing it because I felt uncomfortable as an indigenous woman who was seeking acceptance, who was seeking, an opportunity maybe to move up in the profession in some kind of way, and also to avoid conflict because there's like this whole thing about, like, oh, like angry Indigenous women, you know, sound like this, and they say things like this. And essentially it's like anytime we. We speak on things like white supremacy or white fragility in legal spaces, it tends to be framed as like an angry whatever.
And so what I'm sharing with you is mostly really just kind of like a self awareness about where I was coming from, why I was doing it. And then I thought, if I've been doing it, how many other people do it? Especially like, well, black and brown people, yes, but especially indigenous people, where we are such a minority in a profession that still, incarcerates us at the highest possible rates, that treats us like we're all like a certain kind of, like, lower level, low class, sector of society, etc. Etc. So we want to fit in, we want to look like them, we want to sound like them, we want to talk like them. And I remember when I was in law school, a senior Indigenous lawyer said to me, like, as soon as you start acting like a white man and you show up in the kind of car a white man would drive, and you show up in a suit, kind of suit a white man, would wear, then people will hire you, including your own people. Because there was something about, like, wearing the clothes of the oppressor that made us more legitimate and.
>>Myrna McCallum: And I guess it just really stuck with me, Esther. And reading your book brought me back to that.
>>Esther Armah: Right, right. And I hear you saying, the language of, white supremacy is brutality. So fawning. Makes sense. History, Canadian history teaches you what white people are capable of, in every sector, from children to grandmas, from babies to grandparents. Your entire history tells the story of their, love language, which is brutality. And that violence takes all kinds of forms. Nobody aspires to fail. And so the question becomes, what is required to succeed, given the system that within which I'm working m. It's always for as an Indigenous person, as a Black brown person, navigating corporate spaces, what I call resistance, negotiation, which is one of the love languages of emotional justice. You're always negotiating with the resistance. The resistance to your absolute, sure knowledge that you Know how to call when you hear. And your absolute sure knowledge that the consequence to you doing that will threaten where you are, will threaten where you're going, and will threaten your future. And you're holding those two things, intention all the time. It is emotionally exhausting and it's utterly real. And it's true across professions, 100%. And so with that reality, when the what who do you become and how does your becoming than hurt, you and what it means when you look in the mirror and you have to face yourself. And that's a question all of us have had to ask. I talk about it and write about it in the book. As a very high profile journalist in elite white spaces, Lord knows I went through that, the understanding of what it means to choose a route that isn't the truth that I know in order to serve my ambition. It's not that I don't know what I'm doing, it's that I'm making a, choice with that knowledge. Then the cancer is then I have to face the choice that I've made and who I'm becoming. And for me, it's one of the reasons I ended up leaving that particular space because I reached the very, very edge of what I'm willing to do. And I think it's a terrifying thing to meet, the brutality of whiteness inside your own spirit and what it will do for who you are and who you can become. But I also think it's the truth. It's the truth we have to speak so we don't do that weird thing of pretending that's not our story. That's not my conversation. I've not had that conflict. I come in, I'm, you know, all liberation, everything. I'm not willing to abcd. And that's rarely the, that's rarely the entirety of the truth. So I think so many of us have versions of the experience that you articulate. so I think our emotional work is to not pretend you haven't had those experiences, but to speak to the reality of them and then say, okay, this is what we know we've done. What do we want to build now? And what's it going to require to make that thing a reality? why does that matter? It actually comes back to this whole issue of forgiveness and Nelson Mandela. so I'm going to let me thread some dots and join some things up. So, the first time I went to South Africa, I, like everybody else, was fully in love with the narrative of Nelson Mandela. The 27 years, his release, the Nelson Winnie love story, all the things. And it was my mother's broken silence, meeting Winnie and listening to Nchiki Biko that began a questioning of this idea of forgiveness that Nelson Mandela was articulating. I had the privilege of interviewing Archbishop Desmond Tutu. And during that interview I realized I was becoming more and more troubled by the idea that this wasn't forgiveness. This was racialized forgiveness of white supremacist brutality in service of sustaining white comfort and a white economy. And if that is what we were calling the future as black, brown and indigenous people, we were in absolute trouble. I understood politically what they were doing because of that time. with as time has gone by, I've seen how that TRC model. I'm listening to you talk about it in Canada. It's exactly the same thing. That's what it created. People have had tr. Truth of reconciliation commissions in multiple spaces. And it's the same reality. It is not about a forgiveness that says I'm going to let go of, changing the past in order to think about who I am now. That's not what it is. It is a racialized forgiveness. It is about the Black, brown and the Indigenous people being required to overlook, let go of, discard of white supremacist violence in order to enable white people to do absolutely nothing but sustain control, maintain the power that they have, continue to hold own and sustain land, power, titles, all the things. But say. But we've been through a process that says we've had some kind of, forgiveness and so now it's time to move on. And it is dangerous for any kind of future that is about a shared humanity. And the only people that forgiveness serves is dangerous rich white men.
Nelson... It's not. It's actually not a critique of Nelson Mandela. It's an understanding of the emotional reality of white supremacy which taught all of us that whiteness was superior. And although that we develop political language to completely confront and deny that, that doesn't mean the emotional connection to that superiority was killed by that. I mean, we all, as Black, brown, Indigenous people, know how to navigate around whiteness and sublimate, subliminate ourselves, reduce ourselves to maintain, a level of comfort in terms of that whiteness. We know how to do that instinctively, I'm saying, from childhood on up. How, do we know that? How do we know that since it's not taught in school? Because it is taught in school. It's taught in every sector, every space that you're In. And so the work of a liberation movement that has an emotional justice foundation is to understand that this has all been racialized emotionality. What do I mean by that?
Anger is a universal emotion that we all feel. The way that it is framed in these forgiveness processes that are deeply racialized is that the anger in the body of the Black man, the anger in the body of the Black woman, the anger in the body of the Indigenous man, the anger in the body of the Indigenous woman, is somehow illegitimate and actually threatens humanity versus that is a human reaction to injustice, violence, trauma, and loss. So we took what was universal and then racialized it. And then once we racialized it, we ensured that it could be targeted for ongoing violence. So the anger in your body. The anger in my body is suspicious. It's not righteous. It's suspicious. The anger in their bodies. White women, white men, particularly white men, requires inquiry. What happened? What went wrong? We need to listen to him. We need to understand what happened. There is an empathy, that is targeted towards white people, that is denied everybody who is of color, the global majority. And so that is what that forgiveness seeded. What Nelson Mandela did in 1994 was preceded by what happened in Kenya in the 60s. Because with Kenya and Jomo Kenyatta and the MAU MAU. So the MAU MAU, fierce Kenyan people fighting for land, freedom and dignity. That's what their liberation movement was. Jomo Kenyatta said to the British, let's forgive and forget. Let's forgive and forget. But what that meant was that they sidelined the warriors, the tribe who put their bodies and their lives and their futures on the line in order for Kenya to get independence. So what we did was in Kenya, they censored White Comfort and sidelined Kenyan activists. And that is a legacy, we say again and again and again and again. And our work for this generation is to one, name it for what it was. You can name a future that doesn't serve you and honor and recognize and name the past that it did serve at the time. So I see Nelson Mandela's, language as the language of political reconciliation. But as Kwame Nkrumah, the first independent president of Ghana, said, political liberation then requires economic liberation. And I would say, and also requires emotional justice. We think always about fiscal economies, money, land, critical economies. Emotional Justice says there's an emotional economy to our identity as the global majority. And in the world of whiteness, it is always and only depreciating when it comes to justice, but appreciating as long as our labor is in service to that whiteness. And so that is our reckoning to navigate. And I would say that in Canada, your, superpower is to mask your violence in polite neutrality and somehow describe it as no longer violence. And what we would say to you all is that, well, we see that shit because we. That's part of British whiteness. To wrap violence in a civility, in a, more measured tone, in a softness in the appearance of neutrality, to mask the brutality. But it doesn't change any of those things. And so I think every generation has its particular work to do, right? And so in for Nelson Mandela and forgiveness, that generation's work get over that massive bridge of a political vote that transforms the political power of a country. Our ah, generation though is saying that emotional justice is the critical, unnamed, unrecognized foundation for every liberation movement for Black, brown and Indigenous people that is actually about a thriving humanity and not a more measured version of whiteness and violence.
>>Myrna McCallum: Powerful. I want to ask you, I, I wrote down, ah, a quote on reconciliation. You say reconciliation is not and cannot be the path for racial healing for us future and our humanity. And this came a little bit after you talked about how there are different, essentially different interpretations for racial healing. But can you say more about how reconciliation is not and cannot be the path for racial healing for our future in our humanity? Because what I'd like to do is maybe get into a conversation about repair and maybe reckoning, but repair, because I was, as I was saying to my daughter Ally this morning, like, so many of us are not taught repair work. And so can. Can you say a little bit more about that piece and then maybe we could chat about repair?
>>Esther Armah: Yes, rec. Reconciliation bypasses justice and bypasses repair. It requires an acceptance that nobody would be ready to offer because there's been no actual reckoning, naming, articulating, expressing all the parts of what it means to emotionally go through and articulate the pain, the rage, the vulnerability, the hopelessness, the helplessness, the despair, all of the feelings that are part of the journeys of, injustice around settler colonialism, enslavement, apartheid. And if you haven't gone through the process, how do you get to reconciliation? So reconciliation for me is not liberation language. It is conciliatory language designed to sustain how whiteness comforts and soothes itself, that it is actually about liberation when it's not.
>> Myrna McCallum : Powerful and so distinct, so distinct. and I would say I agree based on my experience here. And so when we think about repair and repair, like from like an institutional perspective, an individual perspective because there's different levels of repair. you talk in, in your book about how we've got to like, there's got to be some dismantling of systems. And I'm sure you've heard, as I hear oftentimes, well, we didn't, you know, like I either hear, well, we didn't create it as a defense to, you know, just how discriminatory or racist something is. Well, we didn't create it. And I'm like, well, maybe you didn't, but you uphold it by being part of it. or, or then I hear kind of like apathy, or I hear comfort in that. Like, well, I mean, we've always done it this way, right, as like a, explanation, to continue doing it this way. And so I think some people feel like the system is way too big to dismantle, to change, to rebuild. Like, fill in all of the different excuses as to why we can't look at the system. And let's focus on the individual, which I think is incredibly short sighted. Because you could get one individual who has like a, you know, come to Jesus moment or whatever the people say, and, and they transform their practice. But as soon as they retire, the system goes back to doing what it does. And so there is no institutional, there is no institutional repair. There is no transformation. There's no dismantling. And so when it comes to dismantling systems as one, means of maybe repair or reckoning, what would that require?
>>Esther Armah: The first thing is to understand that the, the power of the system is that it normalizes a certain kind of violence. It teaches all of us to adjust to its injustice and call that. Well, that's just how it is. No, that's how it was made to be. And a system. People think of systems sometimes as a place where I kind of leave my car, have a shower, get into the car, drive to the system, work at the system, get back into my car, drive home, and it's the end of the day. No, the systems are us. They do not, they cannot be sustained without our, contribution. So, the question becomes specific and simpler. Choose how you contribute, not that you contribute, because we're all contributing to sustaining systems on Guan Sambala. Choose how. What does that choice entail for you? So you can choose courage, you can choose convenience, or you can choose comfort. What is courage is about? Courage is about what is my circle of influence. We all have them. Circle of influence. How do I use my voice individually? How do I transform interpersonal relationships so how do I engage with other people? And then how do I. And then the institutional. How do I engage the institutions that I'm part of? And in emotional justice, institution is literally everything. You go to where there's more than one person. So the institution, family, the brunch that you go to, the place that you pray at, prayer, the place that you work out at, not just where you work, but how you live your life is all part of the system. So, courage. How am I going to use my voice? How am I going to talk to someone about this issue, maybe in a way that I've never talked to them before? How am I going to ask, engage the institution differently that I'm the part of, for however long? So courage is one of the ways that you choose it, how you contribute. Not that you contribute. We all contribute. How do you choose to contribute? And then there's comfort. Comfort is. Well, this is the way it is. This is the way it is. This is the way it's always been. I'm just trying to get mine, keep it going, get a check, pay my bills, and get on out of here. So there's a certain level of comfort, but I would say it's never comfortable when your body, your labor, your mind, your work is actually being disrespected on multiple levels, and you're participating in that disrespect in order to keep your job. But I understand, because we've all done it. Who hasn't had to hold a job to pay some bills, take care of family? That is the reality of it. So when I say comfort, it's not a negation that it's hard, but it's a recognition that it's a choice to stay within a system rather than contribute in, a way to fight it. Your circle of influence when it comes to comfort is the same as courage. So there's how you use your voice, but in this case, it's how you don't use your voice. It's what you see that you choose not to speak to, not because you don't know, but because you know the cost of speaking to that thing. So maybe you choose not to do that. It's how you choose to engage or not engage with folks who are either struggling or need help or doing something that's problematic. It's the choice to not engage as a means to protect your individual space. and that's how you engage in your institution. you do what you can with what you have, and you keep it moving. That's comfortable. And then of course, there's convenience and those three things as well. The convenience is, I didn't build the system, and it's not my job to dismantle it. It is the master's job, and I'm not going to use their tools to dismantle it. that's one element.
The other element of convenience is how it shows up for, particularly for white women who claim a certain progressiveness, and that is that they can see ways where the choice is to be courageous, but they choose convenience because convenience protects their proximity. And they choose that individually. They choose it interpersonally, and they choose it institutionally. So you have those three options. How do you choose to contribute to the system? Do you choose courage and your circle of influence? Individually, interpersonally, institutionally? Do you choose comfort? To sustain where you are, to suppress your voice, to disengage and to stay quiet within the institution? Do you choose convenience? This is specifically, really about white women, I would say, in white allyship, where you absolutely can see places where your courage would be transformative for the system but may cost you something. So in the face with those options, your contribution is to choose proximity rather than courage, because that would be too inconvenient. And for me, in terms of emotional justice, we make it practical, specific and simple, not that you contribute. How do you choose to contribute? It's always individual, interpersonal and institutional. And that is for all of us.
>>Myrna McCallum : And it's always a choice. It's always a choice. Right. Sometimes, like the decision to do nothing is a dis. Like that's the decision.
>> Esther Armah: Right, Right, right. It doesn't mean the choice is easy, and it doesn't mean the, choice doesn't have consequences. Courage always has the most dangerous consequences. Those who speak out, it costs them every single time. It costs, black and brown and indigenous folks more because they know what comes with that. But what I always say, particularly about Black women, is that we act as if courage for Black women is an option. They have to be courageous every day, whether they like it or not. That's just to stay alive, to keep their families alive. The front line is the only place that they, exist. So the idea of comfort and convenience are often not options that are attached to them, but they should be. They should be. Part of your humanity requires comfort. And not comfort that negates a contribution, but comfort as a result of the contributions you've already made. So it is the complexity within those three Cs. Courage, comfort and convenience. And all the ways they show up and speak to the, to the system, I think that we are. We give very little grace to Black women, to brown women and to Indigenous women. We have very high expectations, and we give very little grace, and we give very little grace to ourselves. there's. There's never an expectation that we shouldn't be expected to meet. And we don't, count the cost of all of those things. And in my work in emotional justice, I have this work called Wellness in the Face of Warfare. What does it mean to stay well when everything about your health is considered, an enemy or violence to whiteness? And so your wellness is always being navigated within the space of tension and conflict. But the other part of it is survival. That has been our mantra. We gotta survive. We've gotta find a way. We've got to make a way out of no way. The truth is, everybody doesn't survive. Everybody has never survived. And that, even for those who survived, there is a toll, a cost, and a consequence that has stayed unnamed, unnoticed and unrecognized. And it's in the women's health issues that we see. And so part of wellness in the face of warfare is saying that there's no choice that you make. That doesn't come with consequence. The thing for Black and brown and Indigenous folks is to say that your lives and your humanity have always deserved and required comfort.
That is the consequence of the courage you've had to show again and again and again in the most, most horrific of circumstances. that is not the same for white people. Comfort has always and only been their choice. So, you know, allow us to introduce you to courage and acquaint yourselves with what that could be in your world and in your life but choose wellness even in the face of warfare.
>>Myrna McCallum : Yes, choose wellness even in the face of warfare. Reminds me of, your words at the conference, which is, we just don't get to choose wellness and healing uninterrupted. It's never uninterrupted. It's just not a privilege that we have to just. Okay, this is what I'm going to do and what I'm going to focus on, because people will bring war to your door all the time in different ways. And, I mean, I experienced that at the conference due to some issue that was going on in, in my neighborhood. And so, that has sat with me. The other thing that has, like, there's been so many things, Esther, that you've said that keep me up at night in the best possible way, because I just reflect on it. Reflect on it. Reflect on it. And I don't try to ever figure I have all the answers, But I figure if I'm thinking this, some insight's going to come from this for me. But one of them is, isolation is the death of liberation. And I've been sitting with that, especially in the context of. I think you spoke those words not long after Dr. Samah Jabr, who presented, also talked about how community is phenomenal. And she talked about is medicine and, like, the concept of collective care, collective healing, and, how. And then I began to think about how, like, yes and yes. And I find isolation to be so goddamn seductive. Like, in a world that doesn't feel safe, I've created a nest in my home that feels safe. And it's so much easier to not go out, to not engage, to not respond to the text message, to say no to the social event, to say no to the professional engagements, to just cocoon and hide away. And it's just so seductive. And yet I also recognize that you cannot heal individually like you heal in community, which is why community is medicine. And I wonder if part of that is what has inspired your, like, the creation of your emotional justice institute that is doing, like, bigger work together. But you tell me so.
>>Esther Armah: I think it's always both. And I think there's a difference between isolation and solitude. I think solitude is critical, is a critical part of healing. And the solitude. You're talking about nesting. I'm looking at your home with this beautiful art in the background. And as somebody who is creatively fueled by art, you have a beautiful home. I've had the blessing of going to it. surrounded by beautiful nature. There's a difference between solitude and being fed emotionally or being replenished by being surrounded by things that give you comfort, and make you feel warm and make you feel safe. versus. I am going to have no engagement with people over extended periods of time. Outside of feeling fueled and energized. hiding is also part of healing. If you're really doing hard work, there are moments when emotionally, your heart calls for you to hide, and that should not be judged. The point of community, though, is somebody understands your particular thresholds. Oh Myrna's in her solitude moment. I think she's hiding right now. Cool. And then there's a moment when time has passed, and that's when your community shows up and checks in. Hey, sis. What's good? Haven't heard from you for a minute. Just need to hear your voice. I'M going to pop around and bring some soup. I need a cup of tea. Do you know what I mean? And so I think, emotional justice recognizes there is always individual work, but it must always connect outside of you individually to your community and to your institutions. What I absolutely am clear about is that you cannot self care your way towards liberation. It doesn't work. Self care is a market that, capitalism creates to, seduce, individuals. That the individual approach is the way forward, specifically when it comes to white people. Now that isn't true for Black, brown and Indigenous folks because we are communal by training, we're communal by spirit, and we're communal historically. That's literally how we move. We move in community. So we understand that self care and communal care are the one and the same. Here's the challenge though, and this is where it comes to the emotional work that we have to do among us as, the global majority. So much of the emotional labor within community falls on women. But it does not feel like communal care. It just feels like additional labor. And when that is your reality, then there's a particular reckoning that is required among us as, the indigenous people, as black, brown and indigenous people, that there is an emotional labor that women have been doing with and for the men of their communities that has not been clearly enough identified and articulated. So that there is a healing that women must do, and then there is a healing and emotional work that the men of our communities must do. And that is their work to do. It is, that is not collective. There is work for men to do that has got nothing to do with women. And that's their own emotional literacy. In order for us to move like a community, we are in a space right now where the nature of the labor, particularly the emotional labor, rests so heavily on women. It's creating and sustaining sickness within the community as well as, terrifying levels of violence. And there's no magic to changing that. Without the men of those communities doing their emotional work to reckon with pasts that have belittled their humanity and their masculinity and the way they often find that masculinity is through the bodies and the labor of the women of their community. There is no healing for us there. And that is the work within and among us as community. so I say all of that to say the differentiation is critical. No, we cannot self care our way towards liberation. That is a market. But black, brown and indigenous people, we're part of movements. And movements do require wellness in the face of warfare. They do Require that you make wellness as you go, knowing that for the majority of people, no one's going to Bali for a retreat. Ain't got the money, ain't got the time. No one's doing that. So that's off the table. But let's not talk about what's off the table. Let's look at the table and say, what can we create that allows for spaces of wellness among, towards, and with each other? And then what is the work of the men of our community? And how does them doing that emotional work then further heal the communal. That is part of communal care? And so articulating the difference is critical because when we collapse it into this kind of universalist language, it disregards and disrespects the nuance of our communities and how labor within them works, how care works, how solitude works versus isolation. And honoring the nuance and the complexity in the work of Emotional Justice as a framework always matters. You go for the nuance. You never universalize. What we know is complex.
>>Myrna McCallum : Amazing. I could talk to you all day, Esther, and like, many days in a row, like, we could go and go and go. And so I'm going to ask you, because I've already, like, taken up about an hour of your time, which is the commitment I usually ask for. Would, you come back so we could talk more about some of these concepts and about, like, the love language of emotional intelligence and how you could break that down in. In a way that, listeners can be able to not just identify with, but figure out how can I begin to implement this as a practice? I, I would. You know, I. I know folks listening are going to feel inspired and also wonder how they can meet it, you know, and very. It's very much a call to action to.
>>Esther Armah: Very much so.
>>Myrna McCallum : Right. And so would you come back?
>>Esther Armah: Absolutely. I'm always about a part two, and especially with you, my new favorite person in Canada.
>>Myrna McCallum : Okay, I love that. thank you so much for this conversation, and I look forward to having you back.
>>Esther Armah: My pleasure. Thank you so much. This was a joy. Truly was a joy.
>>Myrna McCallum : Yes, it was. Okay, I'm gonna pause.