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Featured StoriesUnraveling Oppression
Unraveling oppression and white privilege starts here
by Kelsey Blackwell
“But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
Racism is about bodies.
It is a visceral reality that can be tasted, seen, and felt.
And yet, as I devoured Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, where the physicality of discrimination is honestly and vividly conveyed, I felt a curiosity arise in my own body. As a bi-racial girl who grew up in Utah, what was my physical experience of racism? The violence, ineffective schools, and codes of the streets Coates describes in the Baltimore neighborhood of his youth–this was not my reality. I grew up in an upper middle class white neighborhood. I was a cheerleader. Neighbors brought over bundt cakes and peanut brittle during the holidays.
Seemingly buffered from the harshness of the ‘hood, my ruminations on racism were nil. White privilege? My 14-year-old self had never considered such a thing. Plugged into the larger social consciousness of my white community, I often forgot my own heritage. Race relations? No problems here! Everyone gets along. Everyone is white.
And then I woke up. (A tale for another time)
I’m not the only one with a story like this. Given where we now find ourselves socially and politically, anyone who’d never heard of white privilege (whether you agree with this term or not), or anyone who believed racism was essentially a thing of the past except in podunk southern towns, is now getting an aggressive shake. Personally, I see the pain of my own dis-integration—a self-inflicted pressure to fit in, to be liked, to make myself a certain kind of beautiful. Collectively, I see this in all the ways we’re now grappling to understand—rates of incarceration, breast cancer incidents in Black women, minuscule representation in Silicon Valley, etc.
I’ve heard many whites bristle with resentment at the mere idea of white privilege. Who is anyone to say they are privileged? They had a hard life! Grew up poor! No one gave them anything! Others tiptoe around topics of race fearful of inadvertently saying the wrong thing. They don’t consider themselves racist (who does?), but have not done the hard and uncomfortable work of looking at why they fall where they do on our nation’s racial hierarchy, of looking at how that impacts where they work, who they befriend, what they support, and how they think.
I do not blame any of us for our challenges in contending with the grave realities of racial oppression. We are products of a country that structurally relies on us keeping our heads in the sand to protect the precious status quo.
As Rev. angel Kyodo williams writes in Radical Dharma:
Our methodologies are forged within the default mindset of colonization, capitalism-as-religion, corporation-as-demigod, domination over people and planet, winner take all, rape and plunder as spoils of victory, human and natural resources taken as objects of subjugation to the land-owning, resource controlling, very, very privileged.
Unless you support the truth, the clash between the world in which we live and your own personal ideologies must be felt on some level – even if you’ve learned to stuff these feelings deep into your being in order to “get along.”
Some of us have the privilege, due to the color of our skin, to not reckon with injustice in our day-to-day lives. But we are all in this together. Whether you agree with it or not, the impacts of racism touch us all on a fundamental level. To begin the work of unraveling this complication, we must start with whatever we feel about this situation. We must start with the body.
This work must be done in community.
If this is at all intriguing to you; if you would like to explore what this may mean, I invite you to participate in a workshop that holds this very premise at its heart. Because racism is a collective issue, it will require the wisdom of the collective to see its undoing. We will explore this on a body level on Feb. 4th and 5th in Oakland, California.
Changing the Race Dance will use the birthright practices of movement, storytelling, and song to weave and unweave our own understandings and confusions around race. This invitation is for all bodies: black, white and all shades between to come together and rest in our collective confusion. This is where we must begin. More information can be found here.
I will also co-teach a book study of Rev. angel Kyodo williams’ most recent book, Radical Dharma, starting in March. This will not be your usual sit, discuss and drink tea kinda book club. To begin contemplating racism, oppression, and white privilege, an examination must happen on the body level. We will discuss concepts, systems, provocative calls to action and we will also feel them using the tools of movement, writing, music and more.
For my friends who are not able to engage in either of these practices, I hope you’ll consider this invitation for personal inquiry. Where is white privilege held within your own being? Consider a time when you’ve experienced it in relationship to your world. What is its taste, texture, smell and color? Where is it felt in your body? It is by intimately coming to know this presence that we might begin to recognize when it surfaces in our day to day – and it will surface. From this place, we can start an examination of just how much we’re impacted by the structures that be. These are the questions and insights to begin.
Jan 20, 2017
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Thanks so much for writing and sharing this, Kelsey. I’m feeling more ready and willing than ever to delve into this particular edge of our evolving humanity. My sense is that the country is ready to face into this challenge, as well. We need your voice and I’m very appreciative that you’re bringing your experience, wisdom and contemplation to bear.
Jan 20, 2017
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Another component is that of economic privilege through which typically people of white color have an advantage. As a white youth I do remember visiting distant relatives in rural areas who did not have the economic advantages of my immediate family. They lived impoverished in a time in which white middle class was gaining affluence, they had greater challenges than my family. No doubt, because of their skin color, they still had advantages over minorities especially in terms of upward mobility and systemic racism. Even so, the plight of the poor is not limited to minorities. It is regrettable that many poor and also middle class whites are not recognizing that racism and white privilege are used as a devices of control. Using racism to blame minorities for their economic conditions, the upperclass has successfully used this to keep “social order” and certainly is being used by politicians to gain influence and attain office. Our country still has a long way to go in terms of rights of all kinds.
It is wonderful that more people of different races and ethnic backgrounds are becoming practitioners of Buddhadharma in the West. The Buddha’s teachings are for all sentient beings equally without any limitations.
Jan 19, 2017
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As a white American baby-boomer I can see that I’ve benefited from white privilege. My parents struggled financially, but I never felt that I was denied any opportunity. And I could always move freely in white America, mostly without fear.
I think, though, that as Buddhists the issue of “white privilege” also takes on another angle. In the traditional teachings there are lists of unfortunate births, which include such things as being born in a place with no Dharma teachings, or being born into the life of a farmer who has no time or energy for anything but work. I think it’s no accident that well into the 80s the sangha was mainly comprised of white, upper-middle-class baby-boomers. Our parents suffered through the Depression and WW2. They felt that they deserved to enjoy what they could of life as a human. They were selfless and longsuffering, but also simple, struggling to grasp the multi-paradigmatic views of the younger generation. As their children, we enjoyed the fruits of perhaps the greatest Golden Age the world has ever seen. From penicillin to corporate farming, our lives were made comfortable and easy. We lived like royalty by historical standards. And we absorbed our parents’ attitude that we deserved it. Like the Buddha, we had the profound luxury of getting most things we might want, so that we could afford to question: Is this it? Is this really the point of life? Then teachers began to show up in the West and we also got the teachings.
I don’t mean to diminish the disadvantages of blacks or any other minorities, and I don’t claim to know their suffering, but “Dharma privilege”, for me, is by far the greatest luxury I’ve received. It’s the luxury of living the life of Reilly in just the right setting to see that Reilly isn’t happy. Being white, of course, didn’t hurt. I’ve had the luxury of being free to pursue any worldly aims and therefore had the luxury to be able to question all worldly purposes and discover Dharma.
Jan 15, 2017
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This rocks Kelsey! A sustainable spiritual community must confront its own racism. Wish I were near Berkeley to attend the class.