PERFORMANCE

A few minutes before I was scheduled to record an online interview with the renowned body-centered therapist Resmaa Menakem, I sat in my office, excited and nervous. I had thorough notes and a detailed agenda, meant to guide us through a rich discussion of somatic abolitionism, his groundbreaking work on unearthing and confronting the racism we carry in our bodies. As a Black therapist from Trinidad and Tobago, I had found this work to be seminal, both personally and professionally. But just as we were about to go live, a voice from deep within me said, “There will be no performance today. You will not perform.”

Any sense of confidence or stability I’d been feeling evaporated. In its place was confusion. I asked myself, “What does this confusion mean? What impact will it have on my conversation with Resmaa?” As he appeared on the screen dressed all in black, with images of famous Black entertainers and icons adorning the wall behind him, his smile was welcoming.

“Right before you came on,” I blurted, “I heard a voice tell me that there will be no performance today.”

As I got the words out, my chest opened, and I understood things more clearly. “Sometimes when we discuss issues like what we’re about to talk about today,” I explained, “if we’re not careful, it can feel like we’re performing. And I don’t want to perform today.”

Without missing a beat, Resmaa said, “Even if you are careful, you’ll perform. Performance is a protective mechanism for the Black body. It’s the way that the Black body survives white-body supremacy. It cuts off part of itself in order to—even if it can’t really do it—perform comfort for white bodies. So what came to you as the phrase, We’re not going to perform is the ancestor saying, ‘Just be here with your brother. Don’t worry about the white gaze right now.’”

–Akilah Riley-Richardson, “Reclaiming Black Imagination,” Psychotherapy Networker