The Raceless Gospel podcast offers listeners a respite. “Stay Woke?” is an inquiry for the sleepy-headed who are tired of the narrative of white-body supremacy and refuse to give it any more energy.
It’s not a nudge to the groggy, but an expression of deep awareness. It is a commentary on one’s ability to independently see the systems at work and at play in a society that actively keeps its citizens fighting each other for the entertainment and economic benefit of the wealthy, who profit from our dysfunctions, divisions and preventable deaths. It is to be conscious of the powers that be—unless, of course, you’re feeling sleepy.
After Republican politicians colonized “stay woke” by redefining it as an oppositional people group, “the woke,” and renaming it “wokeism” or “woke ideology,” the African American community responded in kind by going to sleep. A brilliant though unplanned response, it is a demonstration of semantic and somatic sovereignty, which takes the directive to a whole new level—the dream space.
But “every shut eye ain’t sleep.” While African Americans hit the snooze button on protesting systemic injustice, European Americans are slowly waking up to the reality that racism is bad for everybody and ruins everything.
This five-episode collection—“Stay Woke?,” “Give It A Rest,” “Sleep On It,” “Snooze Button,” and “Sweet Dreams”—is an invitation to continue resting your eyes and receiving the generative rest your ancestors were forbidden to take. In fact, Tricia Hersey, the author of “Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto” and “We Will Rest! The Art of Escape,” considers “rest a form of reparations.” So, it’s owed to you.
Season six of The Raceless Gospel podcast begins today and is available on all streaming platforms.
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Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
