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Whiteness handed you a script on how to belong, lead, and stay comfortable — but somewhere between the lessons and the living, that script started to feel small, thin, and suffocating. It didn’t give you culture. It didn’t give you community. And it definitely didn’t give you permission to be a full human without a hierarchy attached.
The wild thing is this:You’ve always felt the fractures before you had the language for them.
This conversation with Amy Wisner (pronounced Wise-ner) Rebel Professor wasn’t about theory. It was about the lived journey, the awkward, the missteps, the grief, the grace, and what it means to stay in the work without abandoning yourself.
I was joined by Amy, a fellow educator and simultaneous unlearner, and what struck me most wasn’t just her honesty; it was her willingness to let the messy middle be a teacher too.
It’s easy to sit in spaces and critique “the system” like it’s floating somewhere outside of us, but Amy offered something different. She didn’t position herself above the fray. She talked about her own conditioning, her exhaustion, her expectations of perfection, and how those same systems show up in the way we parent, teach, work, and repair in community.
Because decolonization is not a trend. Somatic healing is not optional. Liberation education is not academic cosplay. It is lineage. It is praxis. It is execution.