I am writing from my perspective as a white man, body therapist, and a meditation practitioner. I strongly support Black Lives Matter and the protests against police brutality. It is not a new concept to me that white supremacy affects how I see the world. My efforts to rid myself of it are also not new. But the weeks since George Floyd’s killing mark a new cycle of deepening my self-examination and commitment to live free from the influence of white supremacy and to stop perpetuating it in my choices, actions, and inactions. My meditation practice has been indispensable throughout this journey, but never more so than in recent weeks.
This post is for fellow white folks who are at some stage of their journey to come to terms with white supremacy, both in society at large and within themselves. I certainly don’t have all the answers. But we have to start talking to each other about how white supremacy has conscripted us and survives through us. White Americans can help build a new anti-racist culture, and I believe the self-reflection, self-love, empathy, and embodiment accessible through meditation can help.
There is an old Zen saying that goes something like: “You should meditate for 1 hour a day unless you are very busy. In that case, meditate for 2 hours a day.”
The point is that when we feel harried and drained we need even more time to restore and reflect on the best way forward. We may even find that meditation, not doing more or being more productive, actually addresses the root causes of our busy-ness. Feelings of stress, anxiety, and overwhelm embed themselves in our bodies and perpetuate themselves through how we interact with the world.
Now, let’s adjust that zen saying to be about white supremacy in America.
“Meditate for 1 hour a day unless you are feeling overwhelmed by white supremacy in America. In that case, meditate for 2 hours.”
White supremacy infiltrates our bodies and minds. It becomes the lens through which we interact with the world, whether we like it or not. As with busy-ness, doing more does not necessarily help. I am not saying that we should not go to protests, donate money, read the real histories of America, or talk to our friends and family about race. I am saying that these actions may not address how white supremacy survives within our bodies. Unconscious bias and ingrained assumptions exist within the nervous system and are largely inaccessible to conceptual thought. Just as with busy-ness, we have to examine and heal from white supremacy on an embodied level to truly be free from it. That is how we un-do, unlearn, and interact with the world in a new way. If you want to learn more about the theory of racialized trauma, look to Resmaa Menakem’s courses or writing.
Now, as you read the next couple of paragraphs, note your physical experience.
I am writing this three weeks after the killing of George Floyd by four Minneapolis policemen, two weeks after Donald Trump and Bill Barr tear-gassed peaceful protestors outside the White House, about a week after a black trans woman was brutally murdered and thrown into a river in Philadelphia, and 2 days after the Atlanta police shot Rayshard Brooks in the back while he ran away.
I am writing it 3 months after Breonna Taylor was shot in her own home, almost 4 months since Ahmaud Arbery was murdered on a jog in his neighborhood, and over 400 years since Africans were first brought to America as slaves. There are countless documented and undocumented instances of the physical, emotional, and spiritual tolls white supremacy has taken on black, brown, and indigenous bodies in this country.
If you clicked on some of those links, how did you feel in your body? If you didn’t click, what feeling in your body caused you not to?
These past weeks I have felt like an electrical wire trying to conduct an ever-increasing amount of voltage. At some point every day the breaker switch in my body gets thrown and I’m left staring out a window, scrolling Facebook, or sinking deeper into the bed, couch, or chair. Some days, I drift in and out of focus and have to struggle to accomplish even the simplest things. Other days, I am electrified, outraged, and passionate to bring about change. Others, I am melancholy and feel the weight of all the challenges that lie between us and the world I would like us to live in.
What have you been feeling? It’s very important to take time to feel. That is what meditation is: a structured and safe way to feel however we feel. By paying attention to how we feel we can slowly heal our minds and bodies. We can replace guilt and shame with empathy and self-reflection. Because even if we understand theoretically the role meditation could play in being anti-racist, we still might feel guilty or ashamed to sit quietly in our homes. Meditation might feel like indulging in privilege. Black people are being killed on the street and we are following our breath, wtf? It feels so disconnected.
Guilt and shame are the strongest impediments to white Americans taking effective and sustained action. Guilt and shame are part of the self-flagellation approach to solidarity: we attack ourselves with these emotions in an effort to renounce our privilege and level the privilege-field with people who have less than us. We deprive ourselves of comfort and happiness, and overwhelm our emotional systems with outrage and horror, in an effort to bring ourselves closer to the reality of living in the other America. And we think this prepares us for effective action for racial justice.
I think the impetus here is to try to empathize. Empathy is one important starting point for solidarity and collective action, but flooding ourselves with shame is going about it the wrong way. True empathy comes from a place of strength. Empathy means staying rooted in your body in the face of suffering. Empathy is feeling in yourself what others are feeling. Shame is a debilitating internal collapse. The felt experience of shame is dissociation.
Listening to the experiences of black people, watching videos, reading books or articles, or getting involved are powerful opportunities for empathy. As white people, we need to incorporate these experiences not just on an intellectual level (police do not keep communities safe), but also a felt level, and empathy is the key to unlock that door. But alongside empathy, we also have to practice self-reflection.
Self-reflection is another starting point for solidarity and collective action. Considering more completely the reality of white supremacy in America will trigger inherited and unexamined racial bias in ourselves as white people. We might feel guilt, helplessness, disbelief, or embarrassment, or we may dissociate and not feel anything at all. These feelings indicate how white supremacy has embedded itself uniquely within each of us. How do disbelief and dissociation in the face of racialized violence serve to continue that violence? How do those emotions make us into bystanders? How does guilt redirect the blame for a racist society inwardly, instead of at the systems and people in power?
What if instead of a self-inflicted shame cycle we experienced empathy? What if instead of a bottomless guilt pit, we practiced embodied self-reflection based on self-love? We would slowly understand, unravel, and release what we have inherited from living in this racist society. Seeing that white supremacy harms us too further motivates us to join the fight.
Meditation isn’t about opting out superficially and retreating into comfortable privilege. It also isn’t about stripping away all emotional boundaries, hollowing ourselves out, and attacking ourselves with feelings of guilt, horror, and shame.
The true potential of meditation is to strengthen our capacity to stay open and embodied in the face of suffering, either someone else’s or our own. It won’t shield us from feeling pain and suffering. It won’t help us avoid taking responsibility.
In truth, feeling is not enough. But genuine feeling leads to genuine action in solidarity for a better world.