Set Apart Conversations

They Don't Wear Hoods Anymore

“They don’t wear hoods anymore. They wear smiles, neighborly greetings, professional titles, and church clothes. The harm did not disappear. It learned to dress for the room.” SECTION 1: SPIRITUAL OPPRESSION AND SPIRITUAL REPRESSION Understanding the Distinction Before we can talk about what spirit is operating in people who perpetuate covert racial harm, we need to establish a clear working vocabulary. Two terms matter enormously here: spiritual oppression and spiritual repression. Spiritual oppression refers to an external spiritual force that exerts pressure upon a person or a community from the outside. It does not require the cooperation of the person being oppressed, and it does not necessarily mean that the person is spiritually unclean or morally culpable. Scripture is filled with examples of righteous people experiencing the weight of spiritual oppression. The forty years in the wilderness, the Babylonian captivity, the sustained persecution of the early assembly of believers: these are all expressions of spiritual oppression operating against people who were, in the eyes of YHWH, chosen and beloved. Spiritual repression, in contrast, refers to a condition that operates from the inside out. It describes what occurs when an individual or a generational line has suppressed, denied, or never developed spiritual truth. The soul is not neutral. In the absence of light, darkness fills the available space. When a person has never been taught to examine the posture of their spirit, when they have never sat with the question of what they carry and what they transmit, when they move through the world acting out patterns they received without questioning those patterns, they become vessels for whatever was planted in them by their environment, their family system, and the spiritual forces that influence both. This distinction matters because it reframes how we understand the people perpetuating covert racial harm. They are simultaneously perpetrators, for whom accountability is real and necessary, and carriers, in the sense that they are transmitting something that was placed in them long before most of them were old enough to choose. Holding both realities at once is not an act of excusing harm. It is an act of seeing clearly. If you prefer to listen rather than read, the audio companion to this section is below. Audio Companion SECTION 2: THE THREE D's: DECEPTION, DISTORTION, DOMINION Every system of sustained control requires a mechanism of entry, a mechanism of maintenance, and a desired outcome. In my theological framework, I describe this as the Three D's: deception, distortion, and dominion. DECEPTION: THE ENTRY POINT The enemy, and by this I mean the adversarial spiritual force that scripture variously calls HaSatan, the accuser, and the father of lies, does not announce his presence or his intent. He is not capable of operating in the open, because exposure destroys the effectiveness of deception. Deception works by presenting a distorted version of reality as though it were the true one. In the context of covert racism, deception operates at multiple levels simultaneously. The perpetrator deceives themselves about the nature of their behavior: they have convinced themselves that what they are doing is fair, neutral, procedurally correct, or at worst, personally justified. The systems around them often participate in that deception by treating the harm as invisible. The target is encouraged to deceive themselves by dismissing their own perception as oversensitivity or paranoia. DISTORTION: THE MAINTENANCE MECHANISM Distortion is how reality gets reshaped once deception has secured a foothold. Distortion does not require outright lies. It operates through emphasis, omission, and reframing. When a courthouse clerk withholds information about fee waivers and divorce packets they have not technically lied. Reality has simply been presented in a way that produces a false understanding. When a professional delivers feedback that undermines a person's confidence while maintaining a tone of benevolent guidance, the feedback may not be literally false, but the presentation distorts the target's perception of their own competence and standing. Distortion is the mechanism through which a person can be made to doubt what they saw with their own eyes, what they heard with their own ears, and what their body told them was happening. This is not only a spiritual dynamic. Psychologically, it maps directly onto the clinical understanding of gaslighting, coercive control, and reality-distortion as instruments of harm. DOMINION: THE DESIRED OUTCOME When deception has been successfully installed and distortion has done its reshaping work, the adversary secures dominion over the target's perception, confidence, decision-making, and ultimately their destiny. Dominion does not require chains. It requires only that the target operate from a compromised relationship with their own discernment. A person who doubts what they perceive, who has been conditioned to second-guess their own reading of a situation, who has internalized the message that naming harm makes them the problem, is a person who has been, in practical terms, rendered less able to move freely toward their calling. This is why the watchwoman is prophetically essential. Her function is to disrupt dominion at the level of perception. By naming what she sees, she breaks the deception for herself and for everyone in her community who has been gaslit into silence. Audio Companion SECTION 3: GENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION-TRAUMA, INIQUITY, THE INHERITANCE OF HARM Clinical trauma theory and Hebrew scripture arrive at the same conclusion through different pathways: harm does not terminate in the generation that first experiences it. It travels. In the field of epigenetics, researchers including Rachel Yehuda at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have produced significant evidence demonstrating that trauma alters gene expression in ways that can be transmitted biologically across generations. Yehuda's research with Holocaust survivors and their descendants showed measurable differences in cortisol regulation, a primary stress hormone, in the children of survivors, even when those children had no direct trauma history of their own. The biological architecture of their stress response systems had been shaped by what their parents endured. This is the clinical language for what the Hebrew scriptures describe in the concept of iniquity traveling through bloodlines, what the Torah names when it speaks of the consequences of certain patterns visiting subsequent generations. Learned behavior theory, rooted in the foundational work of Albert Bandura, teaches us that behaviors are transmitted through observation and modeling. A child does not require direct instruction to absorb a behavioral pattern. They need only to observe it enacted by a person they perceive as credible, authoritative, or powerful. When a child grows up watching adults in positions of power deploy subtle, effective tactics against people of color, and when they observe that those tactics go unnamed and unpunished, they learn that the behavior is acceptable, effective, and safe. The pattern gets encoded. It becomes part of the behavioral inheritance of that family system and, by extension, that community. Modeled behavior refers specifically to the way that behaviors demonstrated by admired or authority figures are replicated by observers. In the context of white supremacist organizational structures, which have long functioned as both social networks and ideological training systems, modeled behavior is deliberate. The tactics are not always formalized in written doctrine. More often they are transmitted through culture: through stories, through the celebration of certain outcomes, through the quiet admiration extended to those who successfully execute harm while maintaining the appearance of innocence. This is the natural mechanism. The spiritual mechanism is iniquity, the Hebrew word avon, carrying the sense of a twisted or bent condition, a distortion of the moral spine that gets passed from one generation to the next unless it is deliberately broken. The spiritual and the clinical are describing the same phenomenon from different vantage points. Audio Companion SECTION 4: THE MENTAL HEALTH IMPACT ON PEOPLE OF COLOR What does it do to a human being to live inside a system designed to exhaust, misdirect, diminish, and gaslight them, while also requiring them to perform competence, maintain professionalism, and navigate daily life? The answer is not simple and it is not small. Chronic exposure to covert racial harm produces a sustained state of hypervigilance. Hypervigilance, in clinical terms, refers to a condition in which the nervous system remains in a heightened state of threat detection, scanning the environment continuously for danger signals. This is an adaptive response to a genuinely dangerous environment. The body has correctly identified that the environment is threatening. The problem is that chronic hypervigilance takes a significant physiological toll. It maintains the body in a state of sympathetic nervous system activation, the fight-or-flight response, that over time depletes immune function, disrupts sleep architecture, contributes to cardiovascular stress, and creates the conditions for a range of somatic disorders. The body carries what the mind is not always permitted to name. Racial battle fatigue, a term developed by scholar William Smith, describes the physical and psychological toll of navigating chronic racial stressors in predominantly white institutions. The symptoms include frustration, shock, anger, disappointment, resentment, anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness, and the kind of exhaustion that rest alone does not resolve, because the body cannot fully relax when it knows the threat environment has not changed. Internalized racial oppression, another clinically recognized phenomenon, describes what can happen when a person of color, having been subjected to sustained messaging that their perception, competence, or worth is inferior or suspect, begins to incorporate some of that messaging into their self-concept. This is not weakness. This is the predictable outcome of sustained psychological warfare against a person's sense of self. The clinical intervention is not to shame the internalization but to name it, trace its origin, and dismantle it from the root. From a somatic perspective, the body of a survivor of chronic covert racial harm holds the history of that harm in its tissues, its fascia, and its nervous system regulation patterns. The work of healing is therefore not only cognitive. It is somatic, relational, and spiritual. True healing requires attending to the body that survived, not only the mind that processed. We have covered the full architecture of this harm, from the natural tactics to the spirit that animates them, from the generational mechanisms of transmission to the clinical realities of what sustained. Let me close with this. You were not wrong about what you saw. You were not paranoid. You were not oversensitive. You were not reading too much into it. What you experienced was real, it was patterned, and it was designed. Knowing that does not make it hurt less. What knowing does is restore the authority of your own perception, and that restoration is the beginning of everything. The work of the watchwoman is not to carry the burden of what she sees alone. Her work is to name it clearly, to document it faithfully, to pray over it with discernment, and to trust that the God who appointed her to see has also equipped her to bear witness. YHWH does not send a seer into a space to be consumed by what is dark there. He sends her to illuminate it. The words of the Prophet Isaiah, the 54th chapter and the 17th verse, close this conversation: "No weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue that rises against you in judgment, you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of YHWH, and their righteousness is from Me," says YHWH. The weapon was formed and it was real. It was intentional and it did not prosper. I am still here. I am still building and I’m still speaking. This is Set Apart Conversations. My name is Shenera Wienken. I will continue in the truth that made me free. Shalom. Audio Companion If this piece spoke to you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. See clearly. Name what you see. Move accordingly. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit inspireyourmindbodyandspirit.substack.com/subscribe [https://inspireyourmindbodyandspirit.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

They Don't Wear Hoods Anymore

Before we name what is hidden, we first ground ourselves in what is true—not perception, not preference, but what is real—because harm often arrives through softness, politeness, and deniability. SECTION 1: NAMING WHAT WE ARE DEALING WITH Covert Racism and the Architecture of Plausible Deniability To understand covert racism, we must first understand what it is not. Covert racism is not a slur. It is not a burning cross. It is not the kind of hatred that announces itself, because announcing itself would expose it to legal accountability and social consequences. Covert racism is racism that has learned to wear professional clothing, to speak the language of policy, process, and procedure, and to cause harm through mechanisms that are systematically difficult to prove. The clinical literature uses the term "racial microaggressions," a concept introduced by psychiatrist Chester Pierce in the 1970s and later expanded by psychologist Derald Wing Sue, to describe the brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to members of marginalized groups. The term "micro" is, in some ways, misleading, because the cumulative impact of these exchanges is anything but small. Research consistently demonstrates that chronic exposure to racial microaggressions produces physiological stress responses, disrupts neurological functioning, and contributes to conditions including depression, anxiety, somatic disorders, and complex post-traumatic stress. Plausible deniability is the operating mechanism of covert racial harm. The term originated in intelligence and political discourse, referring to the capacity of senior officials to deny knowledge of covert operations by ensuring that no documentation connecting them to those operations exists. In the context of racial harm, plausible deniability functions the same way. The perpetrator executes harm in a manner that leaves no fingerprints, so that when the target names what happened, the perpetrator can say, with apparent sincerity, "That is not what I meant," or "You are reading into it," or "That is not what occurred." The target is then placed in the position of proving a negative-something that is, by design, nearly impossible. Psychological warfare, in the context we are discussing today, refers to the strategic deployment of tactics designed to destabilize another person's sense of reality, erode their confidence, delay progress and manufacture conditions of helplessness. In military doctrine, psychological warfare involves the use of propaganda, deception, and targeted manipulation to demoralize an adversary. Psychological warfare is being operationalized in civilian spaces; workplaces, courthouses, medical offices, universities, and professional organizations often without the language to name it. This section is also available in audio below. SECTION 2: THE TACTICS: WHAT TO LOOK FOR The Playbook of Covert Racial Harm One of the things that has become clear to me, through a few years of lived experience and clinical study, is that these tactics are not random. They are patterned. They are consistent across geography, across industries, and across generations. That consistency is not coincidence. Consistent, repeatable patterns across unconnected contexts suggest transmission, either through cultural instruction, through institutional modeling, or through deliberate teaching. Here is what the playbook looks like. DELAY: is one of the most frequently deployed tactics, and it is devastatingly effective because it resembles bureaucracy. Your application is processed slower than everyone else's. Your case is continued repeatedly with no clear reason. Your request sits unanswered for weeks. Each individual delay is deniable. The accumulation of delays is the weapon. MISDIRECTION: involves steering a person toward the wrong resource, the wrong office, or the wrong procedure, so that by the time the error is discovered, time, energy, and often legal standing are already lost. Courthouse staff who withhold information about filing options, fee waivers, divorce packets or procedural rights are engaging in a form of institutional misdirection. When it happens to one person, it is called an oversight. When it happens consistently to the same demographic, it is a pattern. FRONTLOADING & OFFLOADING: occurs when excessive procedural barriers are placed at the beginning of a process to discourage a person from completing it. Offloading occurs when responsibility for a problem is continuously transferred to the target, ensuring their energy spent defending themselves rather than advancing their objectives. Together, these tactics function as a double bind: the target is either too exhausted to continue or too occupied with defending themselves to move forward. PASSIVE AGGRESSION WITH A SMILE: This is perhaps the most recognizable tactic to those of us who have spent time in predominantly white professional spaces. It is the comment delivered with a warm tone that contains within it a diminishment of your credentials, your intellect, your belonging, or your validity. It is the question phrased as curiosity that is actually a challenge. It is the "concern" expressed about your work that is actually a destabilization of your confidence. The smile is load-bearing in this dynamic. Without it, the aggression would be visible. ADMINISTRATIVE OBSTRUCTION: This refers to the use of systems, processes, and paperwork as instruments of harm. Broken links that cannot be verified as intentional. Deadlines communicated in ways that left strategic ambiguity. Procedures explained incompletely, just incompletely enough to cause a misstep. Each instance, taken alone, is deniable. The pattern, taken together, is unmistakable. THE ACCUMULATION EFFECT & ONE THOUSAND SMALL CUTS No single tactic is intended to be the fatal blow. The strategy is accumulation it is a relentless, unceasing application of friction across every domain of a person's life until the weight of navigating constant resistance becomes its own form of incapacitation. Research on chronic stress demonstrates that the cumulative physiological burden of sustained low-grade stressors can be more damaging than a single acute trauma event, precisely because there is no clear moment of crisis that would prompt intervention, and no clear perpetrator to hold accountable. SECTION 3: WHITE WOMEN AND THE SPECIFIC TEXTURE OF THIS HARM What I am about to say comes directly from my lived experience. It comes from years of navigating predominantly white professional spaces, from my time in the state of Pennsylvania specifically, and from pattern recognition across multiple contexts and institutions. Women of European ancestry, a specific subset of them, have, in my experience been among the most consistent perpetrators of covert racial tactics in my personal experience. This observation deserves careful unpacking, because it runs counter to the cultural narrative that positions women of European ancestry as natural allies to women of color in shared struggles against patriarchy and systemic harm. That narrative, however appealing in theory, does not always reflect reality. Women of European ancestry occupy a structurally complex social position: they experience gender-based oppression while simultaneously benefiting from racial privilege. In spaces where racial hierarchy is still operative, a subset of women of European ancestry deploy that racial privilege in ways that are particularly insidious, precisely because they can simultaneously claim victimhood in one dimension while perpetrating harm in another. The harm they deliver is often performed with a softness of tone that makes it socially difficult to call out. It arrives in the form of concern, questions, procedural guidance that is incorrect, of professional feedback that undermines without leaving a clear record. The femininity of the delivery is part of the operational design. Calling it out risks social penalty for the target, who is then characterized as aggressive, difficult, or unable to receive correction. In my experience, these are not unconscious behaviors. They are practiced, refined, and in many cases generationally transmitted. My memoir, Smiles and Shackles: The Face of Covert Racism in Rural America, documents this in specific, particular, named detail. SECTION 4: THE ANCIENT ENEMY: AMALEK AND THE SPIRIT THAT STRIKES FROM BEHIND We now turn the lens, because what we have been describing in the natural has a spiritual counterpart that Hebrew scripture names with precision. In the Torah, the Amalekites appear first in the book of Shemot, what the Christian tradition calls Exodus, as the nation that attacked Israel in the wilderness. The manner of their attack is significant. The text in Devarim, Deuteronomy chapter 25, describes it this way: they attacked from the rear, targeting those who were faint and weary, those who had fallen behind, those who were most vulnerable. They did not meet Israel face to face in open combat. They struck from a place the target could not easily see. Across centuries of Jewish scholarship, rabbinic tradition has understood Amalek not merely as a historical enemy but as a recurring spiritual archetype. The Talmud and subsequent commentators speak of the spirit of Amalek as the force that targets the exhausted, the displaced, the ones still finding their footing. Amalek represents a cowardice of strategy—the deliberate choice to attack where defense is weakest. What is being described in covert racial harm maps precisely onto this archetype. The target is not met in the open. The harm does not arrive with its name attached. It strikes from behind bureaucratic processes, from behind professional pleasantries, from behind administrative systems that are, on their surface, neutral. By the time the target realizes what hit them, the perpetrator is already positioned somewhere else entirely, with clean hands and a deniable record. The instruction given in Devarim regarding Amalek is to remember, to never forget, and to be vigilant. The Hebrew verb tsaphah, meaning to look out or watch, captures the spiritual stance required when operating in environments where this spirit is active. You do not become paranoid. You become discerning. There is a critical difference between the two. Paranoia is reactive and unfocused. Discernment is clear-eyed, Spirit-led, and rooted in both pattern recognition and prophetic attunement. This is why the watchman or watchwoman is not optional for our communities; it is necessary. The ability to see what others either cannot or choose not to name is not a pathology. It is a gift. Hebrew scripture honors this capacity through the language of the prophetic office. We have covered significant ground in this first part of our conversation. We named what covert racism is and distinguished it clearly from its overt predecessor. We defined psychological warfare and plausible deniability as the structural framework within which these tactics operate. We walked through the specific mechanics of the playbook: delay, misdirection, frontloading, offloading, passive aggression, administrative obstruction, and the accumulation effect that makes each individual tactic deniable while the cumulative impact is devastating. We named the specific pattern I have observed, grounded in my lived experience and without apology, in women of European ancestry in professional spaces. We then turned to the wisdom of Hebrew scripture and the rabbinic understanding of Amalek as the spiritual archetype of covert, strategic, rear-facing attack. In Part Two of this series, we are going to go deeper into the spirit operating behind these behaviors. * We are going to examine what spiritual oppression and spiritual repression look like in the natural. * We are going to break down what I call the Three D's: deception, distortion, and dominion, and trace how each one functions both in the spirit realm and in the lived experiences of people of color navigating hostile systems. * We will examine the generational transmission of this spirit through the lens of both clinical trauma theory and Hebrew scripture. * We will look at what chronic exposure to covert racial harm does to the body, the nervous system, and the soul. The closing question for Part Two will be the one every survivor of this kind of harm must eventually answer: now that I know what I am dealing with, how do I walk in wholeness without being consumed by what tried to destroy me? If this language gives you clarity for something you have experienced but could not name, stay with me for Part Two. With Warmth, Shenera Wienken If this sharpened your discernment or put language to what you’ve been sensing, share it with someone who is learning to see clearly. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit inspireyourmindbodyandspirit.substack.com/subscribe [https://inspireyourmindbodyandspirit.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

When the Soul Cries

Photo by Ahmad Odeh [https://unsplash.com/@aoddeh?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText] There are moments when my soul simply cries. The tears do not come from anger alone. They do not arise from bitterness. They come from grief for what I see when I look around at our world and at our country. Living in Central Pennsylvania became a rupture point in my life. For forty-three years, I carried the belief that certain chapters of our history had largely been left behind. What I experienced and what I witnessed disrupted that belief in ways I will never forget. Now, when I scroll through social media and watch people divide themselves over race, something within me aches deeply. Race itself is a social construct, yet it continues to function as a powerful tool for fragmentation and hostility. Human beings separating themselves over something so superficial reveals how deeply wounded we remain as a society. The Hebrew Scriptures speak directly to this kind of inner grief. The psalmist wrote: “How long, Adonai? Will You forget me forever?”Psalm 13:1 A similar cry appears again: “My eyes shed streams of tears because people do not keep Your instruction.”Psalm 119:136 This is the grief I feel at times. It is a kind of soul-cry that rises when I witness the ways people harm one another, dismiss one another, and divide themselves. At the same time, I know I am not exempt from the same human struggle. My own thoughts and biases require continual examination. When a judgment or assumption rises within me about a person or group, I pause and ask myself a series of honest questions. Why am I thinking this?Where did this assumption come from?Is this belief actually true?Is this thought aligned with His truth, compassion, and humility? Many times, the issue does not live outside of me. The issue reveals something within me that still needs to be examined and corrected. The Hebrew Scriptures speak to this tension within human nature. One part of us moves toward division, fear, and self-protection, while the deeper self longs for what is whole, just, and good. My soul does not celebrate division. My soul cries when it sees it. Perhaps that cry is not weakness at all. Perhaps it is evidence that something within us still recognizes goodness, justice, and wholeness when it sees their absence. The real work may begin there. It begins with each of us choosing to look inward, challenge our assumptions, and move toward humility rather than division. The healing of communities does not begin with accusation. It begins with honest reflection, personal accountability, and the courage to change. With care, Shenera Boodie-Wienken Thank you for reading Mind, Body & Spirit Chronicles. If this reflection on grief, humility, and the healing of division resonated with your own inner work, feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit inspireyourmindbodyandspirit.substack.com/subscribe [https://inspireyourmindbodyandspirit.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

What Is the Posture of Their Heart?

Photo by Marek Piwnicki [https://unsplash.com/@marekpiwnicki?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText] There is a question I learned to ask the hard way, not from a textbook, not from a training, not from a supervisor sitting across from me in a clinical consultation room. I learned it from living inside the consequences of not asking it soon enough from watching credentials hang on walls, licenses get renewed, professional websites get updated, and business cards get handed to me by people whose hearts were not postured toward my good. People whose souls I never thought to examine before I signed anything, agreed to anything, or trusted them with anything. So before we go any further, I want to give you the two questions that should precede every relationship you enter from this point forward, not just romantic relationships. Every relationship. What is the posture of this person’s heart? What is the character of their soul? These questions are not just for survivors of domestic violence, though the Lord knows we needed them first. These questions are for anyone who has ever been harmed by someone they trusted in a professional capacity. A doctor, an attorney. an employer, a counselor, a mentor, a spiritual leader, abusiness partner, a friend, a colleague. Anyone who came into your life carrying a title, a license, a credential, or simply a warm smile and a convincing story about who they were. Because here is what those institutions did not fully account for when they handed out those credentials: a license certifies competency in a skill set. It does not certify the condition of a person’s heart. It does not assess the character of their soul. It tells you what someone can do. It tells you nothing definitive about what they will do when no one is watching, when there is money involved, when there is pressure applied, or when they are asked to choose between your wellbeing and their own interests. A lot of fields need to begin doing more rigorous assessment of those two things before they bring anyone into positions of power over vulnerable people. We are not there yet. Which means the responsibility, for now, falls on you and on me. So how do you assess it? You give it time. That is the part we skip. We are in a hurry because we are in pain. We are in a hurry because we need help. We are in a hurry because they seem so right, so aligned, so much like what we prayed for. We sign the agreements. We open the door. We disclose the tender places. We trust before we have given time enough to show us who we are dealing with. Time is the only honest assessor of character. A person can curate a website. They can build a following. They can carry every licensure their field offers. They can speak your language, use your vocabulary, mirror your values back to you in an intake conversation. But time, time will show you whether what they presented was the truth of who they are or a performance designed to gain your access. Give it time before you sign anything. Give it time before you disclose anything irreplaceable. Give it time before you hand over the keys to any part of your life, your health, your finances, your legal standing, or your story. This is not cynicism. This is discernment. There is a difference. Cynicism says no one can be trusted. Discernment says trust must be earned through observable pattern over time, and until it is, you watch. You pay attention. You notice the incongruences between what someone says and what they do. You notice whether their presence brings you clarity or confusion. You notice whether you feel more like yourself around them or less. You notice whether they honor your no, your boundary, your pace, your questions. The soul reveals itself. It always does. Your job is not to rush the revelation. Your job is to slow down long enough to receive it. Ask yourself before every relationship you enter personal, professional, therapeutic, spiritual, business, employer, employee, client, provider, friend, partner ask yourself these two questions. What is the posture of this person’s heart? What is the character of their soul? Give it time. See them clearly. Name what you see. Move accordingly. Written from the lived experience of a licensed counselor, survivor, and Watchwoman. Inspire Your Mind Body & Spirit, LLC owner@inspireyourmindbodyandspirit.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit inspireyourmindbodyandspirit.substack.com/subscribe [https://inspireyourmindbodyandspirit.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

The Architecture of Division: What Race Could Never Fully Explain

I want to speak honestly about something that has long sat uncomfortably within me. The language used to describe human division has never fully resonated with my spirit. Words such as race and minority carry a weight that feels misaligned with something deeper and more unified within us. The experiences these words attempt to describe are real and often deeply painful. At the same time, the terms themselves originate from a system of classification that fragments a human population that shares far more in common than it does in difference. These categories were constructed to divide, label, and organize people in ways that serve systems of hierarchy rather than truth. My experience in Central Pennsylvania reflected something more layered than what is often reduced to a race issue. Race, as it is commonly understood, functions as a social system of categorization rather than a biological foundation for human worth. Certain groups have used this system to organize themselves into hierarchies of access, value, and power. The drive to rank, control, and extract does not originate from the surface of the body. It reflects the condition of the inner life. It reveals what a person’s heart has come to accept, what it has inherited, and what it continues to carry forward. I witnessed this distinction in a very real and human way at a farmer’s market in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. A woman of European ancestry stood beside a sixteen-year-old young man of African ancestry. She had brought him to her market stand so he could learn how to count money and make change. She demonstrated patience. She offered guidance. She invested her time and knowledge into a young person who had been underserved by the systems surrounding him. Carlisle Farmers Market, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania The moment carried a quiet depth that stayed with me. That same region contained a courthouse that denied me due process. It included attorneys who overcharged and misrepresented their role. It involved systems and institutions that perceived me through limitation before I had the opportunity to speak. The individuals operating within those systems were not acting from the surface level of identity. Their behavior reflected something deeper. Their actions revealed internalized beliefs shaped over generations, beliefs that position certain people as resources to be extracted from, managed, or held beneath an invisible ceiling established long before any of us entered these spaces. The woman at the farmer’s market and the individuals within that courthouse differed in something far more fundamental than ancestry. They differed in the posture of their hearts. One heart moved toward investment, care, and development. Another heart moved toward control, limitation, and extraction. One recognized the inherent worth of another human being. Another reduced a person to a category that did not warrant full humanity. This distinction invites a deeper examination of what truly divides us. The conversation extends beyond race or physical difference. It moves into the realm of the heart, the internal agreements a person forms over time, and the beliefs that are either questioned or preserved without reflection. When conversations remain centered only on race, space is created for avoidance. A person can claim not to see difference and walk away with a sense of resolution that requires no further examination. A focus on the posture of the heart removes that distance. The question becomes clear and direct. Does one recognize the full humanity of the person standing before them, or does one reduce them to a category shaped by assumption and inherited belief? The orientation of the heart determines whether one moves toward another person’s growth or toward their containment. This choice lives within each individual. It always has. See them clearly.Name what you see.Move accordingly. With Warmth, Shenera Boodie-Wienken Thank you for reading Mind, Body & Spirit Chronicles. If this reflection helped you think more deeply about what truly divides us and what restores our shared humanity, feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit inspireyourmindbodyandspirit.substack.com/subscribe [https://inspireyourmindbodyandspirit.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]