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In this episode, we sit down with Maiysha Clairborne, an integrative family physician and co-author of Conscious Anti-Racism: Tools for Self-Discovery, Accountability and Meaningful Change. Maiysha shares her insights on the journey towards ending oppression, and the distinctions between solidarity, allyship, co-conspirator, and co-liberation. We discuss the importance of becoming trauma-informed, understanding the nature of trauma, and how it shows up individually and collectively. Maiysha also explains how individuals can actively question their actions, unlearn harmful behaviors, and become part of the solution. Join us as we explore the steps towards meaningful change and mutual liberation.

Maiysha Clairborne is an integrative family physician and is the co-author of Conscious Anti-Racism: Tools for Self-Discovery, Accountability and Meaningful Change.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “From solidarity to co-liberation: Understanding the journey towards ending oppression.”

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: All right, welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast and get CME for this episode by clicking on the CME link in the show notes. Today we welcome back Maiysha Clairborne. She is an integrative family medicine physician. She’s the co-author of the book Conscious Anti-Racism: Tools for Self-Discovery, Accountability and Meaningful Change. We’re going to talk about her most recent KevinMD article, “From solidarity to co-liberation: Understanding the journey towards ending oppression.” Maiysha, welcome back to the show.

Maiysha Clairborne: Thank you, thank you so much for having me back. It’s always a pleasure to be with you.

Kevin Pho: So you’ve been on multiple times. For those interested in hearing Maiysha’s story, just go to KevinMD.com/podcast, click the search icon in the upper right-hand corner, search for Maiysha’s name, and then you can find her prior episodes where she shares her story. So let’s go right into your KevinMD article, “From solidarity to co-liberation: Understanding the journey towards ending oppression.” Now tell us, how did this article come together?

Maiysha Clairborne: Well, I did a keynote, a speaking engagement, at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, and during that time one of my colleagues who had also done a keynote was talking about this concept of co-liberation. It really struck me, because in this work to end oppression and racism, I recognize that there are these gradations of participation by people who are on this journey with us. And I just thought to myself, it really is important for people to understand, especially people who identify as white and people who are not people of color, what the difference is between allyship and co-conspiracy and accomplice, and then what this movement towards co-liberation is.

Kevin Pho: Absolutely. So for those who aren’t familiar with that vocabulary, and like you said, there’s kind of a spectrum of participation: We have solidarity, we have allyship, co-conspirator, co-liberation. Give us some definitions so everyone’s on the same page.

Maiysha Clairborne: Absolutely. So when you’re in the journey of anti-racism and anti-oppression, there are a couple of places that you can be. Allyship is a word that is used very, very often, but what we’re starting to discover is that allyship is the beginning of the journey. It is that place where people say, “Well, I support your cause.” And supporting the cause, while nice, doesn’t always move the needle in this work. So when we move from allyship, and it’s actually a place to start, so I’m not saying that any one place is wrong, what I’m saying is that it’s the starting point. It’s the place where a lot of people are learning about this work, right?

And then when we start to move forward, we become what we call accomplices or co-conspirators. This is where people actually jump into the sandbox with you. When they jump into the sandbox, they’re actually in the work, in the policies, doing the work to call in those behaviors that are perpetuating oppression and racism, and those biases, and those types of things.

And so the next step in the journey, which is what I was enlightened to, what was expanded for me at this conference, is that space of co-liberation. It really is the concept that we all are interconnected and interdependent, and our freedom together is dependent upon dismantling this system that is oppressing groups of people. And so when we begin to understand that your liberation is tied to my liberation, and it’s tied to others’ liberation, then we really have a commitment, and we can really begin to dismantle this whole system that perpetuates oppression in multiple communities.

Kevin Pho: So as it relates to health care and medicine, give us some scenarios that would be classified under each of these definitions. What would be some practical examples or stories that you could share that can really illustrate these different levels of participation?

Maiysha Clairborne: Right. So allyship is the statement on the web page. That was the sort of solidarity/allyship; it’s like, “We stand with you,” right? And then the move to accomplice and co-conspirator might be actually having someone come in and do a training for you, having a training. But then the move towards co-liberation is starting to understand that this work impacts us as much as it impacts you, and banding together, and getting into policy work, getting into really who’s the leadership inside of an organization, and having that leader understand that if the communities are not benefiting, then I’m really not benefiting.

Kevin Pho: So what are some examples of what you have done to move the needle as a co-liberator?

Maiysha Clairborne: Well, even as we speak, inside of health care we’re getting ready to re-engage with a university up in the Northwest Pacific to help their psychiatry department understand the relationship between bias and restraint in children. This is something that they did some research on. I think Dr. Jill and I talked about this in a previous episode. They found that understanding the relationship with their own biases actually lowered the amount of restraints in children of color, right, Black children and children of color.

And so now I think they have recognized the benefit of this, and the organization not only has gotten funding to continue this project, but they actually went out and got an alternative source of funding in addition to their own hospital funding. So what that showed was a full commitment to really continuing this work, and that is where that space of co-liberation is demonstrated.

Kevin Pho: So tell us what kind of questions one should ask themselves, or an organization should ask themselves, so they know their place in that spectrum of participation.

Maiysha Clairborne: The question to ask is, “What actions am I taking?” That’s where you can assess where you are personally in your journey. “What actions am I taking?” That one question will start to give some insight into where you are in the process. If the actions that you’re taking are posting on social media and putting a statement on the website, then you’re probably closer to allyship and solidarity than you are to accomplice and co-conspirator and co-liberator. When you’re actually doing the things like bringing in educators, when you’re changing and shifting policies, when you’re sifting out problematic leadership, then that is when you’re moving more towards accomplice and co-conspirator.

And what I’ll say about the co-liberator space is that it’s more of an understanding, because the actions are very similar to the accomplice and co-conspirator, but it’s the skin you have in the game. And so I think that’s more of a space, and I think that comes with deeper personal work than anything else. I think that’s the question to ask: “What actions am I taking, and what is my understanding of my relationship to this work?”

Kevin Pho: I’m going to assume that the further you are along the spectrum, the more disruptive you are, the more change that you’re going to make, and inevitably you’ll get more pushback from, say, the status quo. Tell us a story about some of the pushback you may have received and how you responded to that.

Maiysha Clairborne: Oh, well, what I’ll say is that even just in an engagement that’s coming up, where we’re getting ready to go in and do some anti-racism work, there was pushback that a few physicians should be exempt from the work. One of the ways that we tend to navigate resistance is to listen. What is the actual concern? Because oftentimes resistance is simply an unlistened-to, unheard concern, and when we can address that concern, a lot of times that resistance begins to lower, and people are willing to take the journey, or at least dip their toe in the water.

Now, sometimes the resistance doesn’t fade, and we have to meet people where they are. We’re not about forcing solutions; that is unhelpful and really actually perpetuates more of the same. They say what you resist persists. But I think by and large, when we meet resistance, we like to listen and lean into that resistance to understand what the deeper concern is, so that we can navigate that and help them to move past that into the next space.

Kevin Pho: One of the things that you wrote in your piece was the reasons why becoming trauma-informed is an integral part of the journey. So talk more about that.

Maiysha Clairborne: Well, the bottom line is that 100 percent of people, 100 percent of us, are impacted by trauma at some point in our lives, in this work and being in the system. If you look at what’s going on in the world today, you can understand that we’re all impacted by trauma. And so being trauma-informed just means that you understand that what people are going through, and people’s expressions and communications and behaviors, oftentimes are informed by something that has happened in their past.

So why it’s extremely important is because a lot of times trauma gets mislabeled as other things, and when we can look through the lens of trauma, we can become more compassionate in this work, and it helps it to move further along. Otherwise, it’s trauma talking to trauma talking to trauma talking to trauma, and no one gets anywhere. And beyond being trauma-informed, the next step is becoming trauma responsive, and that’s learning to communicate in a way that helps to navigate people who are having that trauma response, in a way that can help to mitigate further harm.

Kevin Pho: Can you give us a story or an example that can really illustrate that trauma-informed approach?

Maiysha Clairborne: Yes. So in one of our anti-racism trainings, we did have some pushback from one of the executive leaders, and one of the ways that we managed that was to meet one-on-one to really understand what is important to him and what his concerns are. We understand that there can be trauma in white people, and people who identify as not people of color, in learning about this work. It can occur like an attack; it can occur like their character is being attacked. And we listen to that and understand, “OK, this could be traumatic in a way for them,” so that we are able to listen to what their concern is. Once again, it really is listening in a particular way, and navigating that helps them to move forward.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Maiysha Clairborne. She’s an integrative family physician, and her KevinMD article is titled “From solidarity to co-liberation: Understanding the journey towards ending oppression.” Maiysha, if a clinician with an organization wants to begin anti-racism work, or even wants to begin at the beginning of that spectrum that we’re talking about today, what are some ways that they could get involved, or even move that needle in their organization? What are some examples or practical examples you could share with other clinicians?

Maiysha Clairborne: Yeah, well, the first thing is there are a lot of books out there, including the one that Dr. Jill and I have written, Conscious Anti-Racism. In addition to that, there’s Ibram Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist and Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands. There are a lot of books that you can begin to read, especially if you’re looking to have that trauma-informed lens as well.

We do have a course, the Conscious Anti-Racism course, so if you’re really wanting to dive deeper into that work, you can go to consciousantiracism.com, and you can look and see what the options are for, number one, your personal development, but also your greater development in the anti-racism journey.

Kevin Pho: Now, there are some physicians for whom anti-racism may not be high on their list of concerns. So tell us, in health care, why is anti-racism work so important?

Maiysha Clairborne: It’s really important because it affects all of us. It affects health care, but it also affects us as physicians as well. We know that the rate of burnout is still rising, and we know that there are a lot of inequities, not only in health care, but there are inequities in the way that we hire, in the matriculation through medical school, the matriculation through residency programs. And when we understand that, again, our freedom is tied to each other, then we can really expand ourselves by doing this work, this personal work.

The other thing I just want to put in, in terms of the trauma-informed piece, is that sometimes being trauma-informed is the first step. It’s really the step before people get into anti-racism work, because it feels like, ironically, the safer way to go, right? To understand trauma, to understand why this work can be traumatic, and to understand how to become trauma-informed can be the access point into anti-racism work. And especially for Black people and people of color, being trauma-informed is actually just as important as the anti-racism journey.

Kevin Pho: And my final question, Maiysha: Tell us some of your take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Maiysha Clairborne: I think the biggest take-home message is that we are interconnected and we are interdependent, and if we’re not free, nobody’s free. We are better, we are more creative, we are more productive when we are operating in unison and we can honor each other’s differences and celebrate each other’s differences. As we dismantle the system, it is a big system. It is definitely going to take quite a while to dismantle, and the work has to be done.

Kevin Pho: Maiysha, thank you again for sharing your time and insight. Thanks again for being on the show.

Maiysha Clairborne: Thank you for having me. Thank you.