For the smart and free-thinking, Black Market Reads is a podcast featuring conversations with today's most exciting Black literary voices. We are a podcast for any one who loves to read, write, and engage. Black Market Reads is a project of The Givens Foundation for African American Literature.
“We must remember that racism is not just an ideology; it is a disease. And racial healing is the medicine.”
-Gail C. Christopher
Framed by a personal narrative detailing Dr. Gail C. Christopher’s commitment to help our nation to jettison the false belief in a racial hierarchy, Rx Racial Healing: A Guide to Embracing Our Humanity, provides individuals an overview of the methodology, tools, and resources to facilitate and engage in the Rx Racial Healing approach for transformational change in colleges, organizations, and communities.
BUY THIS BOOK – all of the proceeds go to support work on the campuses.
In this episode Lissa talks with Dr. Gail C. Christopher -a nationally recognized leader in health equity, a pioneer in integrative medicine, and the visionary architect behind the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation initiative (TRHT). Dr. Christopher has spent decades designing and leading national programs that advance racial healing, community well-being, and policy change-including her role as Senior Advisor and Vice President at the W.K.
In this episode Lissa talks with Dr. Gail C. Christopher —a nationally recognized leader in health equity, a pioneer in integrative medicine, and the visionary architect behind the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation initiative (TRHT).
Dr. Christopher has spent decades designing and leading national programs that advance racial healing, community well-being, and policy change—including her role as Senior Advisor and Vice President at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. She is also the Executive Director of the National Collaborative for Health Equity.
She joins us today to discuss her new book, Rx Racial Healing: A Guide to Embracing Our Humanity—a guidebook, a meditation, and a call to action all in one.
GO DEEPER
The Health Opportunity and Equity (HOPE) Initiative provides an interactive data tool designed to help states and the country move beyond measuring disparities to spurring action toward health equity. HOPE tracks social determinants of health and health outcomes by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.
Dr. Christopher references How to be an Anti-Racist. From Ibram X. Kendi, the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a refreshing approach that will radically reorient America on the urgent issues of race, justice, and equality.
Dr. Christopher’s advice: “ I try to remind people right now that the only way to get through this moment of madness, is to develop a set of skills and capacities as an individual that will quiet your sympathetic nervous system, elicit your parasympathetic, and bring you into what Herbert Benson called the relaxation response, The healing response, which allows you then to move forward, not from fear, but from a place of courage and a sense of certainty,”
ENJOY!
Our production team for this episode includes co-producers Lissa Jones and Edie French, technical director Paul Auguston, the voice Yo Derek, and our artist of inspiration Ta-coumba T. Aiken. Black Market Reads is a production of the Givens Foundation for African American Literature produced in cooperation with iDream.tv. We thank Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota for supporting this series focusing on the intersection of health, race, and culture. This is Black Market Reads. The struggle continues.
