An episode of “Changing the Conversation” podcast
Aaron Johnson and host Ashley Stewart discuss healing touch for Black men.
June 5, 2023
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Ashley Stewart, Host (00:05): Hello and welcome to Changing the Conversation. I’m your host, Dr. Ashley Stewart, the director of health equity at C4 Innovations, and I’m so excited to have this space today. I will be talking with my guest, Aaron Johnson, who is the co-founder of Holistic Resistance and the founder of the CUT Project. The CUT Project stands for Chronically UnderTouched, and that is exactly what we will be talking about within our time today and that experience, specifically honoring the lived experiences of Black men. Aaron is calling in and joining us from Phelan, California. And Aaron, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.
Aaron Johnson, Guest (00:46): It is so good to be with you today. It’s an honor to be in this conversation.
Ashley (00:50): This conversation feels just like breaths of fresh air. We had a moment to just kind of think about what we would talk about today, and the conversation was so exhilarating, so exciting. We almost had to put a pause on it because we couldn’t stop talking about it as we even began to process and think through what we would talk about today. So I’m just really excited to be here with you and the opportunity to learn more about you and the CUT Project. So I’m wondering if we could start there. Can you tell us a little bit about you and how you’ve come to this work and give us a little bit of background on the CUT Project?
Aaron (01:27): Thank you so much. In so many ways, this project started at birth for me, and when I think about it coming to actual form in which we can call it the Chronically UnderTouched Project or the CUT Project, that started about seven years ago. As co-founder of Holistic Resistance, that gave me the platform to really examine and space and time to build programming. But before I birthed Holistic Resistance, I had a mentorship program, and I was mentoring a young African heritage man, and he was one of the hardest mentorship programs or mentorships I had to do and I was willing to do, but just getting overwhelmed. And we had a conflict over cleaning out the duck pen. And that argument was kind of building up for weeks of just conflict over all the chores that were needed.
(02:15): And I remember we had a conversation that day. I remember inviting him to have a seat and chat with me for five minutes, ended up being an hour long conversation. And I remember in the hour long conversation, I asked him, when was the last time he had three minutes of touch in the last 12 months that was thoughtful and platonic and healing? And he was like, “I can’t think of three minutes in the last 12 months.”
(02:36): And that really just hit me in my chest that me and him were of a very similar lineage. And I had been, at that point, about two years into just personally working on my own. Now we would call it a conference of touch plan. Back then it was just me trying to find out where the cuddles were for a Black man in America. Where is a platonic cuddle? I know where I can go play basketball, I know where I can go to the gym workout, I know where I can go and practice boxing, but I didn’t know where I could go and say, “I want to practice tender touch,” and looked at the landscape and it didn’t exist. And that was something I had been already grappling with. So him saying that just reminding me of like, oh, it’s not just me, this is a big problem. I started looking at the landscape of Black men. So that was the origin story seven years ago, actually seven and a half years ago, almost to the day.
Ashley (03:23): That’s amazing. Wow. And I always feel like when things are birthed out of these connecting experiences that we have, when we take a moment to step back and look and say, “This is what people are dealing with every day,” it comes from a place of healing, it comes from a place of love. It also is complex in that is rooted in a bunch of historical and systemic and structural issues as well. One of the things that I very much enjoyed reading about the project is that it’s specifically honoring the global majority and what have been some of the systemic and structural oppressions that might be intersecting with this it reads. And I know that watching some of the promotional materials about the project, this narrative of the Black brute archetype, I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about how that comes into the project and how this project really honors that.
Aaron (04:21): Getting chills just thinking about the Black brute trauma story in America and how under-studied in a kind of even a intentional way that the average African heritage man on the street kind of knows what it means by instinct, doesn’t have a formal exposure of this is actually a part of your shaping experience in America. And so for me, I remember leaving that conversation with that young man that I was mentoring and went online, said, “Google, how do you build a touch plan for a Black man?” Where does this come from? What is the shaping force of our tender touch programs in our world or practices in our daily life? I typed in all the… and I got nothing. Nothing. It was really crickets. I mean, Google rarely gives you crickets, but I was getting cricket after cricket when it comes to silence around this topic.
(05:07): And then I started thinking back, well, what is a shaping identity? What’s the dominant images I’m seeing? And I saw muscular athletes, I see the NBA and the NFL and the UFC. And I played four years of football in high school like most Black men were kind of excited to do, and I ran track in junior college. But there’s a level of realizing that the celebrated Black male body today, the most dominant image, is the muscular, hypersexualized image.
(05:40): And I remember in my research, I started letting people know in my community, “If you see any kind of footage or content of tender Black… Even if it’s like not even supposed to be, it just accidentally got documented.” There’s a interview sent to me of Mike Tyson. He’s being interviewed, and he says, “I used to cry before every fight.” And he was talking about his history. I was like, “How did I never see any footage of Mike Tyson crying?” I never saw it. I still haven’t seen it. When he was in his prime, Iron Mike was not crying. And so I saw is that there are ways in which people knew that was happening, but all the image we saw was this very muscular, very dominant, very violent, Black male body that was celebrated. There was no celebration of his tenderness.
(06:21): So when that was sent to me, that was the indicator that the Black brute that was created by white supremacists to justify the brutalization and lynching of Black bodies, that history is still intact in a mainstream Hollywood mainstream culture today. And we see cracks. We see cracks here and there. I do honor Prince before he passed and his career is an interruption of the Black brute. But I realize that Prince does stand alone, not only as a artist, but as his energy breaks down the idea. Michael Jackson, in parts of his career, did dismantle that, but I saw quickly how we corrected it basically in the early 2000, last 20 years that we lose that. And so I saw that the archetype of the Black brute was a persona that did not allow tender touch, but yet it was a dominant one that was shaping and defining us.
(07:07): And so I really realized that there’s a clear path where oppression does not want us to be tender because that also remembers that we’re completely full, dynamic human beings. So I always say I’m looking for the full profile of the Black male body. We are strong, and we are athletic, and we are sexual beings. This is all true things. Guess what? We’re tender. We cuddle. We’re soft too. And there’s many other things we do too, but we want to have a full profile. And that makes us… Our mental health survives. Everything else thrives on that. So I know that are many folks like myself that realize that… We always say that hugging, cuddling, snuggling is a lifesaving act. That’s true for everybody, but it’s also true for big, strong Black men, thin Black men. It’s true. It’s facts. So that’s how it birthed.
Ashley (08:02): It is true. It is facts. And I’m just over here absolutely melting into this conversation. That ideology is harmful to us all because we need that tender touch. We need that softness. We need that nurturance to be on display to be felt from Black men as much as Black men need it for themselves. And the fact that we can’t talk about it, the fact that even in some of those images of iconic examples that you provided, I think about the level of scrutiny at different points in times that folks received even thinking about the type of scrutiny that Tyson might have received for that interview and how hard our society makes it for that to be just a natural part of Black men’s existence. And so just taking a moment to honor that and acknowledge that and recognize how scary that must have been for those folks who were bringing into the space and honoring to continue to press and be themselves in a society that is so determined to depict Black men in that brute way.
Aaron (09:20): You’re a hundred percent right on that. I just will say that when I look at the journey in is that finding tender on-ramps to invite folks into that space has been one of the biggest tasks of the Chronically UnderTouched Project and the CUT Project.
Ashley (09:34): Yeah. I’m wondering, how do people initially respond when you tell them what you’re doing and when you welcome them into this work?
Aaron (09:44): I have probably three common responses. I think Black men, it’s confusion. Like, “Wait, say that again. What are you actually saying? You want me to hold your hand? Why would I want to do that? I don’t understand why we should hold hands for any reason.” Right? That’s kind of initial, or a lot of, “I’m not gay, Aaron, I’m not gay. This is not what I do.” A lot of qualification of their gender or their sexual orientation. And that’s kind of depending how they hear about it. If I give them kind of an on-ramp and they get more of a context, I’ve gotten responses of like, “We can do this?” Like, “What? Yeah, I’m in.” But a little bit looking over their shoulder a bit, like, “We can actually be human and not have to worry about our queerness or genderness or straightness. That’s all cool.” The whole spectrum. And so for a lot of them, it’s been some relief, but it has to be almost in a container where we build that safety where they don’t have to build qualification.
(10:41): Oftentimes I’m on the street talking to folks about it, and often, it’s been a workshop where you read the bio, you apply, you come with that kind of vetting. That’s a different container. So I think it depends how they hear about it. From folks that are Black women, I’ve gotten hand pumps, I’ve gotten hugs. I’ve gotten, “Oh my God, let’s go. How can I back it?” Parents have been moved, overwhelmed a bit, but parents that are raising Black boys, they have been like, “I wish I would’ve had this 10 years ago or five years ago before I got pregnant. How can I get more?” So I feel a little bit of scrambling for the parents a little bit in sense of that there’s a deep need for them.
(11:14): I think a lot of parents get how critical this is and how much they have a shaping force in it. So I’ve gotten a full spectrum. I think it also depends on how they hear about it. I think there is a way, it almost feels like this work shows up as radical. Someone has described to me almost as a kink, and I’m like, “This is not a kink at all. This is actually how we normally show up.” It feels edgy because you don’t see it, but it’s just like actually drinking a cup of water and getting someone to hold and touch you are all in the same category. It’s just like what our bodies actually need scientifically, emotionally, and evidenced in their own self. So I’ve gotten the full spectrum of responses.
(11:53): But when I add it all up and shake up all the responses, the overall is, I’m surprised we don’t have corner stores that have touch specialists inside of them coming inside being held, and that people in mental health places don’t have a space, hospitals don’t have a touch space for it, that there’s not more intentional… people exiting prisons or stopping from going into prisons, there’s a system of that realizing where it’s such interruption of so many hurts that we are plagued with in our culture today. So I think to me, it’s a little bit of both on that as my response from most of the folks that I’ve been engaging with.
Ashley (12:29): I love that. I love that spectrum. And I mean, we could spend a whole episode just talking about the physiological, neurological benefits of touch. That’s a whole nother conversation itself. So the fact that we’re not engaging in this conversation is also something. But I think that wide spectrum of response in the different ways that people are engaging is just more affirmation to the reality that it has been strategically rooted in us that that is not a healthy normal behavior. And my goodness, that was intentional, and the work to begin to deconstruct that has to be equally as intentional and equally as forceful.
(13:13): I think you said it in these words earlier, and it just like really… It is life changing. It’s life changing. It’s culture changing. It’s transformative, it’s healing. It is life. And this conversation is essential. It’s important. I’m wondering, there’s probably some folks who are listening to this and I’m sure they’re super excited as they hear this. And maybe someone’s wondering, what is tender touch? Perhaps someone listening hasn’t experienced it themselves and they’re wondering, what is tender touch and do I have it?
Aaron (13:50): Yeah, this feels like something I had to learn because I really limited– when I first realized we want to start building a comprehensive touch plan for Black men and for people, I kind of was like, okay, how can we get our hands on skin? And that’s touch, that’s true. And that’s the foundational piece of touch. And some folks, being on their trauma stories, need more or less of that. But what I also have realized is that when we started doing small group work with Black men, that the hurts are deep. And so we realized that… We started singing together, and we realized that when we started singing, that as much as touch is important, I would say in the context of America and how oppression sits on our bodies, that the environment for us to be vulnerable is equally as important as is actually practicing touch. Because if we don’t have an environment, we have a nest in which we can sit and hatch these magical eggs, we will never actually get to the touch part.
(14:47): And so we have found that touch has almost been number… Hand to hand holding is a common practice. Any kind of [inaudible 00:14:55] touch is normal, but we want to make sure we create safety. And so singing, particularly acapella, particularly vulnerably, has been almost like a daily or weekly practice in our workshops. And what we’ve found is that when folks are feeling vulnerable and practice being vulnerable, then touch becomes accessible.
(15:15): The other thing we bring in is earth. We realize that with a big history of oppression that takes land from Black folks, that Black folks don’t commonly have access to land. And so we have found that we have seen a palpable shift when we take folks out of urban environments, take them into nature, take them unplugged from the kind of distraction of the digital culture, which is powerful, but not necessarily ideal for touch, that we have found folks being able to put their feet on the ground, their feet in the creek, to walk out into a forest and space with collective support, because I know there’s complexity around Black folks being in forests in the tree material stuff. But there’s something about reclaiming what oppression has worked so hard to take from us is a central part.
(15:54): So we look at touch with the earth and touch with clay and touch with people and touch with voice has been more comprehensive than just focusing in on how fast can I reach out and hold your hand. There have been Black men that said, “I can’t hold your hand, Aaron. I can’t do that. But my feet on this earth, me singing with you, is it.” And so the first young Black man that I worked with before our first hug, it took almost 12 months to get our first hug in. But we were singing. We were natural building, we were doing all kinds of things before we got to that first hug. And so we know that that first hug is not actually the only win. It’s the culture, the microculture we create around that heart, that body, that interrupts what they’ve been told since jump in their lives is where I think we talk about touch. So touching hands is important, but it’s the wholeness that almost feels equally of some cases more important.
Ashley (16:50): Yeah. Yeah. As I listen to you, I’m having… Identifying as a Black woman, I’m having just like a flip chart almost of images in my mind and it’s reminding me how important this could be in responding to historical trauma. When we think about the things that folks are being deprived of, that’s very much a feature of deep-rooted, longstanding access to land and earth and how that has shaped itself over decades and decades and hundreds of years. Being able to sing freely, being able to dance freely, being able to do that without judgment and criticism, being able to show love and affection. I mean, there’s so much historical epigenetic and genetic healing that’s happening in this space and in these conversations. And I just am overwhelmed with joy and emotion as I think about that because this is absolutely addressing a direct and current issue. It’s also dealing with generational… generation upon generation upon generation of things that we’ve been yearning for, striving for, seeking, wanting, exploring, but even within our immediate and direct environments, the places where we’re being shamed and isolated from doing that within our society.
(18:33): So I’m hoping that folks listening are able to grasp how grand this is. This is huge. So I’m so grateful that you’re here sharing this with us. And I think your comment earlier about not being able to find anything online about it, we were talking about how you could find anything on Google, but the fact that we can’t find a lot of information about this on Google is all that really that needs to be said about how this suppression of this very vital life thread, this has been silenced for way too long and hopefully never again. One of the things… I brought in historical trauma, and trauma work is very much a big part of what we do and many of our listeners do. But you brought really interesting perspective to trauma-informed work. And I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about that with us here today.
Aaron (19:32): One thing we’ve found is that I love, love, love what has emerged for me. I’ve noticed it really clearly over the last seven years around being trauma-informed. I’ve heard trauma-informed yoga. I’ve heard classrooms being more trauma-informed, and I love how it’s just kind of fed itself into a healing for our culture. And as we started doing this work around the Chronically UnderTouched, we started seeing folks dying, dying from overdose, dying from violence. And when we saw that, we realized that there was a level of death that was at a carnage level, and Black men are at the top of that list. And what we noticed is that there had to be some radical interruptions. And so we birthed the practice of being carnage-informed as well. And this has not replaced being trauma-informed. What it does is it invites us to acknowledge the level of impact that oppression has put on Black people and people of the global majority, which we use that interchangeable with BIPOC. So those are interchangeable phrases.
(20:42): But one thing I found is that when we talk about being carnage-informed, the CUT Project is carnage-informed. It looks on the landscape of saying, “Y’all shouldn’t even be thinking about this,” and not only not thinking about it, we’re actually building practices, community and resources around it. And that takes some radical interruption, some big fund resources shifted towards it. And so being carnage-informed is acknowledging and tracking what does it actually take by any means necessary to interrupt oppression. And it allows us to acknowledge when someone’s been on the streets for multiple years and what that does to their mental health. That’s carnage. And to be informed to interrupt that takes a tremendous amount of resource and time and energy to do what it takes to get them out of that situation and into balance. And so for us, touch or any other chronic challenges that are happening, we want to make sure that we name the carnage of it.
(21:31): So being carnage-informed is for us to look at actually all the pieces. And you can’t look at the Black brute and lynching without saying that is carnage. There’s nothing short of carnage what’s happening, what’s happening to Black folks. And unfortunately, I wish it was obliterated, but I look at that book Without Sanctuary, one of the most recent public lynchings was 1961 and photographed and documented. That’s real. And so for me, I look at that. That is carnage, and we’re interrupting that directly with being tender and being a full human being as Black bodies in the United States.
Ashley (22:00): Yeah. Yeah. When we talked about it yesterday… I do a ton of work as a clinician, always thinking about trauma. And when you talked about being carnage-informed, it stuck me to… It stuck to me because I think describing a very unique form of grief that we have not yet started to talk about. And I think it’s so important that in this episode we create just a moment of space to acknowledge that and to honor that because I’m very confident that many folks will be hearing about, even thinking about being carnage-informed for the first time while listening to this. This will be the first time that folks even think about what it means, even hear the term carnage-informed. And so I’m so grateful for you bringing that into the space, being willing to talk about this in the space, but also introducing folks to maybe a new concept. What are some of the ways that you’ve been able to be carnage-informed in your practice?
Aaron (23:12): Well, one of the first things that we bring being carnage-informed into practice is there’s a way in which most support that folks get, especially therapy, which I appreciate, therapy is just 45 minutes, it’s an hour. It’s often on Zoom nowadays or in a building for a certain amount of time. And we also know that when we’re doing carnage informed in those early crisis spaces, those folks that get in the car at 10 o’clock at night and meet someone on the side of the street and go, “You’re going to fight for life today.” I remember I got a call at 12 o’clock at night from a mentee of mine, her mother was fighting for life and she had a permanent back break from cancer. She had cancer in her whole body, and she had fallen on the floor and she was in a larger body. And the fire department had come so many times that they wouldn’t come unless it would charge her 700 bucks to lift her off the floor with the six men they needed.
(24:05): And they called me at 12 o’clock at night and they said, “We need someone to help lift her off the floor.” And she’s tender because she has broken bones, because she’s fighting for cancer–or fighting cancer in its last stages. And so being carnage-informed is going there and saying, “I’m not only going to lift you, but I’m going to see you as a whole person. I’m not going to be a bunch of White men as a fire department just doing a task at 12 o’clock at night.” We spent 30 minutes building a wood system that we could prop and lift her with the people we had and get her on the actual couch so she can rest that night.
(24:39): And so carnage-informed says, “Oh, it’s 10 o’clock. That’s past my bedtime. I have boundaries.” That’s true. That is true. But carnage doesn’t say, “I’m only going to hit at time of your therapy appointment.” Carnage doesn’t say, “I’m going to only come when you’re not sleeping.” Oftentime, carnage comes when you’re sleeping, right? Oftentimes it comes when it’s not… When I look at Harriet Tubman and all those who got freed, they didn’t get free because it was a 9:00 to 5:00 escape. They escaped when the opportunity came. And so for me, when we saying carnage-informed, it’s no longer saying, “Let’s fit into the…” I’m going to learn from the hours of classroom. I’m learning all the time as a person of global majority.
(25:12): So being carnage-informed, it says, “I look at carnage, and I build village, and I heal in village, and I don’t stop until all my people are free.” I don’t get a resource and get out. If I get money, I’m in Phelan, right? People say, “Why are you in Phelan? You could be in Seattle or Portland, LA.” Why am I in Phelan? Why am I in Phelan, California, the high desert? No one knows what that is, right? “You started two organizations here. Why are you in Phelan?” Because I’m carnage-informed. You go to Victorville or Hespira, no one gets excited. No one gets excited about Black folks in the Victorville or Hesperia. It’s not a sexy city. We’re an hour and a half from Los Angeles.
(25:43): “Aaron, you have a big movement in Oakland and the Bay and Berkeley.” I love those cities. But being carnage-informed said you stay where you were shaped. I was shaped in the desert. My dad’s bones are here in the desert. Being carnage-informed is being a dynamic Black person in the face of a history of carnage and coming out with some of the best songs and music and plans. And The CUT Project is a product of that. So when I hold the earth, I don’t just hold the earth. I’m holding Phelan earth, clay that I built earth houses with. That’s what being carnage-informed is. Basically, it’s being a magical Black person in America. But those are the examples.
Ashley (26:24): How do you even communicate enthusiasm like what is rushing through my body in words on a podcast? This is just absolutely tremendous. It’s beautiful. It’s light. It’s love. Talking about or thinking about grief, right? People also to always talk about grief, grief being about loss in a lot of ways. Life changes, things shifting, adaption, going into new cultures, experiencing new things. We can experience grief in so many ways, and it’s linked and connected to us in our bodies and our experiences in more ways than we can even begin to imagine. So when we begin to think about how this work shows up, not when it’s convenient, not when it’s perfectly aligned with whatever choice, but because you are here to do this work, because you are committed to the bodies, to the connection, the connection between you and other people in this work, that’s a whole different level of transformative care.
(27:37): It’s a whole different lens for connection, for mutuality and healing. And I love it. I love it. I love it. I love how it’s tied to a deeper conversation around purpose. And I have just absolutely loved our conversation today. I personally could go on about this for hours. And Aaron, in full transparency, I can talk to you for hours. I’m so grateful for your gift. I’m so grateful for how you show up and how you do this work. I’m so grateful for your courage to have these conversations in all spaces, and it is my deep hope that this continues, that the ripple effects of this shakes this earth.
(28:21): And so, Aaron, I know that one of the ways that this ripple’s continuing and one of the opportunities that you have to share more about this is an upcoming TED Talk. I’m certain that folks listening to this podcast want to be able to see it and learn more about the CUT Project, want to learn more about the work that you’re doing, and absolutely want to learn more about Holistic Resistance. Can you tell us a little bit more about how we might be able to view this TED Talk and how we might be able to get more information about the CUT Project and Holistic Resistance?
Aaron (28:52): Thank you so much. We’ll be doing the talk on May 18th at UC Irvine, and this particular TEDx Talk is going to be really a tender place. It’s the first time we’re going to really bring the Chronically UnderTouched conversation in a very, I think, heart-centered and somewhat history-centered way into how we showed up. And I think for folks that want to back this work, that want to feed this work, going to CUTProject.org is a really powerful place for us to track the film, track the documentary, track our workshops, and what we have offering into the world.
(29:25): I am on a tour in the Northwest and East Coast, North Carolina, Asheville. It’s all in the website, so you can check that out. It’s like, oh, I want to go to a deep dive. I will be in Asheville and Georgia this year and this summer. And so just all that will be on the website as we’re building out that content. And holisticresistance.com is another place to find me where I do a lot of the work around consulting and dismantling oppression. And the Holistic Resistance is like the umbrella that’s been supporting the whole ecosystem financially and also network-wide. So it’s been a powerful journey as the CUT Project gets momentum.
Ashley (29:56): Great. Thank you. I love our conversation today. I’ve loved the opportunity to share with you, and I just want to thank you truly for being part of this podcast and having this conversation with us today. Thank you for being here.
Aaron (30:09): Thank you. It’s been an honor, really an honor.
Ashley (30:11): And to our listeners, join us next time on Changing the Conversation.
Erika Simon, Producer (30:16): Visit C4innovates.com and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube for more resources to grow your impact. Thank you for joining us.
This episode was produced by Erika Simon and Christina Murphy. Our theme song was written and performed by Peter Hanlon. Join us next time on Changing the Conversation.
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