Healthy Identity, Race and Bad Teachers
As this Sunday’s BIPOC full moon circle approaches, I wonder what 30 year old me would think. I was into my second year living at predominantly white meditation centers, because that was what was available, and had convinced myself it didn’t matter. I hadn’t heard the term BIPOC yet—Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
In was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, surrounded by people ready to talk about feminism, the climate, food insecurity, the opiod crisis, refugees…but never race. Once the founder of the meditation center said to me and the one other resident of color— “I don’t get all this focus on identity politics, aren’t we supposed to be dropping the self?”
I want to SCREAM just remembering it. At the time I was shocked, and the power difference was so drastic that I couldn’t find my voice. I stewed for weeks. I talked to another teacher about it and he dismissed it, saying “oh, she knows…” but does she? Or was that a very intentional, racialized power move?
Teachings are always translated through the body of the person offering them, and all of their unexamined conditioning. In this case, I was steeped in practices translated through privileged white bodies. Not only did these teachers lack understanding of what racial discrimination means, they often warped Buddhist teachings in service of white supremacy. Let’s dig into her comment…
The true teaching from Dogen (13th century scholar, father of Japanese Zen): “To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the body and mind of others drop away.”
We release an unhealthy, rigid sense of self by seeing our true nature, our ever-changing full complexity, with curiosity and love. We cannot drop the self before we have this connection to the self. For any teacher to suggest race is not only irrelevant, but somehow a distraction, is extremely unethical and foolish.
For people of color in America, development of a healthy sense of self is actively interrupted at every step of the way. Children begin to perceive race and experience discrimination as early as preschool, well before their identity and self-worth has developed. Children of color learn from an early age that their behavior is monitored more closely than their white peers, and safety is often conditional. For many this conditioned fawning continues into adulthood, manifesting as code-switching, hypervigilance, and other stress responses.
For white people in America, development of their self-identity is co-opted by white supremacy— teaching them that domination over people of color is the path to success, and they are entitled to people of color’s energy, caretaking and labor. I don’t care how many years of practice someone has, if they are a white teacher and not actively examining their internalized racism, they are perpetuating white supremacy. Same goes for non-Black POCs, we have constant work to dismantle internalized anti-Blackness.
The wounds of practicing in predominantly white spaces are layered and often hard to see. The first time I practiced in an all people of color space, I was in awe at the ease I felt, the softness in my breath. While of course “people of color” includes many cultures, intersecting identities, and experiences, there was a palpable sense of feeling seen, and that it was safe to be seen.
When I share BIPOC only offerings, I often get questions from people of color uncomfortable about the idea of excluding white people. We are so conditioned to think of white feelings first, frankly because when we don’t, it can be very unsafe. This is exactly why BIPOC only spaces are so essential. We need to be able to put down this very necessary hypervigilance, to feel our bodies below the constant buzzy tension. Anyone who feels threatened by BIPOC spaces should wonder why.
Connection is always the point, and affinity spaces can welcome in connection to parts of ourselves that have been systematically shut down. Creating safety for all of these parts to gather and be seen is essential to expanding our power for collective liberation.
If you’re in NYC, join us Sunday night! The vibes will be Earthy, centering on the root chakra, and breathwork playlist will include Cleo Sol and Erykah Badu. I’ve been anchoring into Black Liturgies by Cole Arthur Riley; to close here is an excerpt from a prayer for queer bodies:
“Strange god, thank you for reminding us it is ok to be incomprehensible— to be creatures of mystery and fluidity…Against hope, we have found a way to hear the truth of us amid the vitriol of this world. May these queer bodies be a beacon to a world in bondage to its own binaries; may our flesh liberate the world into embodied attunement.”
~may it be so