This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So I am so, I don't even know the right word. I'm so happy, really deeply happy to have Angel joining us here at Tassajara. She's spoken at Green Gulch a few times. I know she's been here in the past. Some of you may have had the opportunity to learn from her. I learn from her every time I'm with her. I don't know how many of you realize or know that Green Gulch has chosen racism and white privilege as our theme for the summer. So we've been talking about that among ourselves and bringing guest teachers. Angel certainly was one of... the teachers who came and was extremely important to many of the people in the community. So we've had a number of people of color coming to talk to our community.

[01:03]

We've been watching films. We've been really trying our best to take this on as an extremely important and deeply significant aspect of our society, of this world, and something that really has to change. So... I feel like we're just beginning to open that wound, to take that bandage off, which has been covering for a lot of us, has been covered over by mostly not talking about it. So I think one of the things we're trying to force ourselves to do is open our mouths and talk about it, talk about the pain of it, talk about our feelings about it and so on. One of the speakers that... Well, actually, I went to teach some folks at the Redwoods, which is a retirement center in Mill Valley, and most of the people there, a room full of maybe 100 people, who are basically the next thing that they're going to be doing is dying. So they're very serious about their spiritual life. And I was talking to them about the work we're doing around racism, and one of these men, probably in his 90s, he said, is that still happening?

[02:09]

And I thought, wow, you know, yeah, it's still happening. So when Victor Lewis came, he's another marvelous teacher, to speak with us a few weeks ago, I asked him after he spoke, so I can gather people together, and my role as abbess, I can call meetings, I can have people come, but then what should we do when we get together? And he said, you need to learn your history. You white people need to learn your history. You don't know it, and you haven't been taught it. So I made a commitment myself to learning our history, and what I've learned so far is terribly, terribly painful. It's horrific, and we need to know it. And we can't really regain our humanity until we do. So I'd like to encourage all of you to do that work, and I'd like to welcome Reverend Angel. Thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. Thank you for... So... I feel like my first opportunity to come to Tassajara and to be able to have a conversation like this with students was really... Yeah, healing is the word.

[03:27]

Just out of the interest, right? That we were in the kitchen, the dining room, and that there would be interest... in that at all was, and this was before actually Radical Dharma was done. And, you know, meant for me that there was hope for my home, my practice, my people, my community. So I've got people and I've got people. And for a long time, it's not that I had so much lost hope, but, you know, it was very like no hope and no fear and just put it down. that, you know, maybe not in my lifetime. And so the invitation by Greg at the time to come and then to be able to speak to people that were so enthusiastic and so hungry and so welcoming was really, really very important to the work that I'm continuing to do.

[04:34]

It was actually important to Radical Dharma itself, the book, There's another radical Dharma, which is, you know, beyond the book, and that's what we hope to be offering here. And I have been really just enriched by my friendship and my kinship, really, and I think kinship is really the word, with Fu, not Abbas Fu. And yeah, and just watching it unfold. You know, it's like you're being in your family and you just think we're never going to be able to have this conversation. Like whatever there is in that thing in your family that you, you know, have that is like that stuck place and nobody looks at it and everybody acts like it's not really there and you kind of like skirt around it and, you know, being whatever, the youngest or the one that got married. to school or even one that just got out in the world, you know that it's there and you somewhat feel forced to participate in this silencing that is very much part of particularly the construct of whiteness, is how whiteness has held itself together to be able to, I think, bear the atrocity of the history of this country and what we have done just to be here.

[06:02]

just to clear the land in order to be here, and what we've done to enrich this country and to make it the country that is now causing new forms of harm and decimation to the world. But being able to do this and to come here and to be... welcome at such significant levels of leadership, the highest levels of leadership, which you all know is not always the case. You know, it often feels like this is something that has to be sort of fought for from the ground. And so the opportunity or the meeting and the willingness of the leadership here with Fu, and it continues to spread throughout the Zen Center community. is like finally being able to deal with that, you know, elephant is hardly the word, but it's like the elephant that the house, the room is inside of the elephant.

[07:06]

It's not even the elephant is in the room. The room is inside of the elephant, deeply in the belly of the elephant. And so that's how hidden it has been from us in many ways. And that's how... enormous and pervasive and all-consuming it is and where you the degree of impact that you feel of course is different or it has been different and I think very much a part of the work of privileged communities is to realize that that to be inside the belly of the elephant is not a safe place, and it does not leave you in a position in which you are somehow not implicated in it and not complicit, and not burdened, right? Just because you're not under its ass doesn't mean you're not burdened by it. It's just burdened in a different way. It's consuming, literally.

[08:08]

It is consuming people. It's consuming our ability to relate to the planet and to be able to be in good relationship with peoples throughout the world. Because if we can't see each other, we can't love each other. And if we can't love each other, then we don't know how to be in this planet, the planet Earth together. So that's my side. Yeah, we thought we wanted to be in dialogue with you all. We've got three days to, I think there are going to be three times we can meet. Is that right, Jacqueline? So we'd love to hear your questions and your curiosity about the work we're trying to bring to our community. And also we have this teacher here. So please, please feel free to ask us whatever you'd like. May I just say one thing, that if I wiggle my nose or squint at you, it is because I do not have my regular glasses on.

[09:17]

Which is why I came in late, so please excuse me for that. I was trying desperately to find my glasses, and I haven't found them. So if I, you know... If I eye you, I'm not winking. My partner is here. And it's just that I'm trying to make your face out clearly. These are reading glasses. I'm over 40. This is when you have two pair of glasses. Angel did mention Radical Dharma, which is her latest published work. Before that, she wrote a book called Being Black, and I think both of them are in the library as well as the bookstores. So if you get a chance, they're quite remarkable. May I say something about being black? Just to give some context to folks, because I know who's here changes. So just as a short piece, one of the things that would be probably helpful to know just to get a context in terms of like how

[10:20]

we have shifted or in the process of shifting. When my first book came out, it was now 17 years ago. Being Black, Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace. So first of all, it was not really my intention to make it solely for a black audience. It just didn't. Being people of color, Zen didn't flow off the tongue as well. And so that's why I got just being black. And at the time, we had these anomalistic things called independent bookstores. And further anomalistic things, dinosaurs called Buddhist bookstores, still existed. And when the book came out, and the publishers were very generous and thought, like, this is really important, and this is really going to be important to... you know, the communities, both black communities and Buddhist communities.

[11:21]

The Buddhist community, the bookstores at the time, said this is not a Buddhist book. This is a black book. And so that was the, just to give you a sense of what the climate was. And it was like widespread across the country, all over the place. Buddhist bookstores, which is why they're dinosaurs now, would not carry being black. It was... And it was relegated, if people hadn't relegated to, you know, small corners. I literally would go into bookstores and it would be relegated to some little corner of the bookstore, you know, sort of clustered with other things and difficult for people to find. So I feel very gratified for the fact that we are in a different place, I think, now that there is this many people in the room even. And also simultaneously chagrined that I'm the person having this conversation 17 years later. So both things are true simultaneously.

[12:25]

I wrote that book so somebody would say something, and I didn't know it would be my 17-year-older self that would be the saying something, meaning in the larger forum. So yeah, I just wanted to offer that piece of context because I know... Some of you were practically not here. Maybe not practically not even born yet when the book came out. But it's essentially saying the same thing. It's a different frame in some ways. But the call, particularly of the quest, the request, the yearning to speak to the Buddhist community was the same in being black. So when I'm having this conversation, I often hear about white privilege.

[13:26]

And my understanding of that is essentially it's a privilege that white people have that we're basically not awake to. Like we're not sort of even aware of it for the most part. And so I'm curious about two things. One is, what would it look like if a white person or a white community were awake to that? Like, were awake to the white privilege. And then my other question is, maybe if you could share some kinds of experiences that you've had that are more subtle, the ones that we're sort of asleep to. I guess I'll even say, just talk about me, that I'm largely asleep to those kinds of experiences that minorities, darker state people experience.

[14:29]

I'm really curious about how that is for you. Yeah, sure. So first of all, how many of you have heard the term intersectionality? Intersectionality is really about how different forms of oppression are intertwined with each other. The term was originally coined by a black woman. Her last name is Crenshaw, and her first name is escaping me. I'm over 40. And Kimberly Crenshaw. And so it talks about the way in which we are facing different things at different times, right? black women are facing the oppression of gender as well as the oppression of race. And we're often made to split along those lines. And so you could be in a space that was so-called a gender safe space, but then be facing racism. You could be in a space that was like a black safe space or a colored safe space, but then be facing patriarchy with black men or colored men and machismo and all of those things.

[15:41]

So it has come to now address the fact that these oppressions are intertwined. And so one of the things I want to offer is that what I try to do is not solely point to race, but also keep touching on the ways in which there are different forms of oppression by creating spaces or speaking in ways that both call people's attention to it and also creates... the possibility of new kinds of spaces. So that was a long way of saying, can you please tell me your name and your pronoun? My name is Eric, and he is fine. Okay, great. Thank you. And over the course of days, we'll talk about pronouns. I'll say something about pronouns and why that's important in spaces. So... The reason white folks don't know about their privileges is because they don't know about their history, right? So the moment you see the history and you understand really the history of the, when I say the history, it's like the history of the construct of whiteness, right?

[16:48]

And, you know, particularly in this country. And white, of course, existed before this country, but in terms of it being, having legal ramifications, that is our creation. It's our special sauce, like Big Macs. And then we re-exported it back out again, right? So the legal ramification, the structure, like the notion that white has legal connotations in which it is ascribed particular privileges began here, was sealed into law here in the United States. So often we have this like, but yeah, but it was not, you know, British and blah, but no, we've... Special sauce. Like many things, we're innovative like that. And so if you know the history, then immediately you get the sense of like, oh. And I do a slide show that shows 375 years of white affirmative action. Like the ways in which white folks have benefited from the...

[17:55]

had unearned benefits. So the way that I define privilege is unearned benefits at the cost of others. So it's unearned benefits at the cost of others. We're not talking about the ways that people worked hard, right? We know people worked hard. We know people lost their lives. We know, you know, there were many, you know, bootstraps that have been pulled up, but without thinking about, like, who made the boots and, like... and that nobody paid for the boots. So they were pulling up bootstraps, but with no thought about who made the boots, the land that the boots landed on, right, was given and given freely. So wealth was created for white people over hundreds of years at the cost of indigenous peoples, Mexican people, and of course African peoples. And so, I think that, yeah, finding, getting your history is finding out your history.

[18:58]

Like, we'll tell you over and over and over again. It wasn't like one moment. It wasn't just slavery, right? It's from the beginning and the inception of this country all the way. It was even before the inception of the country itself all the way until now. The easiest way to think about that is just to balance. There's a statistic that I give when they did the New Deal, And, you know, billions of dollars, I don't know, this is too much to me to mind, I think it's like $235 billion, 98% of that went to benefit white folks. Which means the colored folks, what they didn't get, right, means that that's because white folks got it, right? So white folks got something, got more, because colored folks didn't get it. And that's how you can think of, like, how it gets weighed. So of 100,000 new houses that were built in California, less than 100 of them went to black people, right?

[20:00]

So if there was an appropriate distribution of those houses being given to black people, that would mean fewer white people would have gotten them. And so those are really light examples, right? But just in terms of numbers that can help people understand what I mean by unearned unearned benefits, right? Like just things that were given. Land, big pockets of land. People said, like, go. Go out there and just, you know, you get 235 acres of land and go just run out. You had to run really hard. I mean, exhausting, right? Like make your way across the country. You've given your flag. You had to fight your way. But who did the land come from? They took it from the Mexicans, right? Or they cleared it from the indigenous peoples here. And so... The hard work is often thought of, talked about, known about, but not where those things came from. So that's the answer to the first question, right? That's the ways that we see, the way that white privilege is, why people function blind to it.

[21:05]

I'm fair skinned, relatively speaking. I have curly hair. makes me more palatable to most white folks just on their eye. I speak the queen's English well. In fact, the compliment that I always grow up with is you're so articulate with the sort of surprise tone. And still, the compendium of microaggressions is what I think you're asking about. I don't know what's micro about them, that I've experienced is astonishing. And so I'm having trouble finding a little spot. I came here. How about that? I came here. And a fellow knew I was a teacher, and he walked up and he said, I have worked in the ghettos.

[22:10]

I used to work in the ghetto. And I said... And my attendant was white. Like, I was like, I turned around, looked at him, I said, close your mouth. It was like one of those days when there were lots of flies. So I was like, close your mouth. And I just said, you know, I haven't. I doubt if I, I mean, maybe I've drawn, driven through one. Or I have this black friend. Or do you know... the one black person somewhere across the country in a tradition that's not even mine. Always. Many years ago, I was making my grand return to San Francisco Zen Center. My first sit, my first formal sit was there. And I felt so pleased with myself because I had a Samway.

[23:14]

And I had a Raka suit. No, I didn't have my, no, I had a Samoy. And yes, and I had a Raka suit on. I did. And I was coming to sit. I was very pleased because I bought my first cushion there and everything. And so there were two people and they were sitting in a little desk right at the door. And the woman looked right at me and she said, are you interested in meditation? Okay. yes so she couldn't see me right she couldn't I was just I was just a color I was doing a little pilgrimage and I went to um the name was Green Gulch that's right that's the that's the it must have been Green Gulch Yeah, I have a different picture.

[24:19]

Is there another center? Yeah, I've got it. The land is so different, because it was 15 years ago. So it was something different. So we went in, and my partner at the time was fairer than I am. I had my rockets in one somewhere I'm totally ignored. Just utterly, like I wasn't there. So that kind of thing. Yeah, that answers your question. Yeah. And I just want to say more coarsely, and I hope this is okay to share. You know, I said once I came here in the life of a teacher, and so as a teacher I could... observe a different schedule that students often do. And I said something about the no clothing in the bathhouses. And I was told, I think Linda said, everybody does that.

[25:24]

I was like, not people of color. Somebody knows what I'm talking about. Why not? Because a lot of folks of color did not grow up with nakedness as an accepted thing. And even if you did amongst your own folks, the black and brown body is an object of, it's objectified in a way that does not make us feel comfortable. So I, had I been a student of my sensibilities coming from the East Coast, right, from brown folk in the East Coast, I would have never been able to take a proper bath, a proper shower, and just deal with my hygiene being here because I had to kind of sneak around the hours in order to because there was no, you know, what I've seen called here in California, shy shower, right? That just something with a curtain on it, people. It wasn't just... And it's not because I have shame about my body, but I do have awareness and sensitivity that we have different bodies and we just didn't grow up that way, right?

[26:33]

And the challenge is more that, like, A, it's not recognized, B... I think the sensibility was like, but everybody does that. And it's like, no, what you mean when you say everybody is you mean white folks. And so I guarantee you that the folks of color that that does not work for are just not saying anything. It's because I have a position of power, whatever that means, that I'm right. That the saying something is even happening. Right. And so. Imagine what that means about the kinds of things that folks of color are facing and having to navigate in terms of white people thinking that their cultural orientation is the norm all across the board. And because they don't have positions of power, they have no ability to push back at it. Can I mention the example that happened at Green Gulch around your teeth?

[27:37]

Do you mind? Not at all. So one of the people at Green Gulch came up to Kyoto. She was talking to a student at the table and just leaned into their conversation and pointed at, I won't say which gender, their own teeth and said, I have a gap in my teeth too, which is a stereotypical characteristic, oftentimes cartoons of African-American people. And the whole thing was strange. I mean, for a teacher to be talking to someone to have this kind of personal comment made was strange. Not more than strange. It was offensive. And so Kyoto was... We were in the room. Yeah. Yeah. We were talking. Oh. What? Well, Miss Fonnie was trying to remember. She couldn't remember what it was. I remember. Wow. So later on, we were talking at the table, and you... told us this story and we were like, wow, you know, an example of this kind of thing you're asking about. And while she was telling us the story, another very senior person at the table, white person, said, well, they didn't mean it.

[28:44]

They were just trying to be friendly. And she didn't say anything. And I was like, wow, you know, Angel is amazing. Cool. She went on talking. And then eventually she said, without looking at this person, and then one thing that white people do is they apologize for each other. They cover each other up. It's like, well, they didn't mean that. That wasn't meant to be offensive. I'm sure they didn't realize it. So this is another thing that we all do. We make excuses for each other when we're disrespectful or when we... do these unconscious biases so we want to keep an eye out for our habitual ways of disguising the behaviors and really listen like ouch you know ouch that hurt me so for us to be able there's a term called white fragility and there's a very good paper about white fragility where white people it hurts your feelings if you tell them they're being racist so black people are supposed to protect us from feeling bad right well no So we have to not be fragile. We have to be brave and courageous.

[29:45]

Nowhere near as brave and courageous as people of color have had to be to survive in this society. But we do have to listen and take the pain of knowing. how the structural racism has been working in our society. It's not the individuals. You all may be very nice to people. That's not the point. It's the structural, the legal, the institutional, the historical structures, which are still in place, and they're hideously being re-outlined by the current administration. So anyway. Something just occurred to me, like literally last night, I think we have to stop saying, I was like, you know what, actually white people are not fragile. You're fragile around race. So we should call it white race fragility. Because to suggest that they're just wholesale fragile is to let people off the hook in some way too, I think. So I'm suddenly for, it's white race fragility.

[30:47]

People are resilient. Amazing. Amazing, actually, right? And intrepid and innovative and, you know, and sometimes in almost pathological ways. So to suggest, like, fragility is to, I think, then not be able to sense-make of, like, Trump, right? And, like, the kinds of things that are going on. I mean, fragile egos, maybe, right? But not just simply fragile. Mm-hmm. I just want to share one experience that was startling for me at Green Culture. I've been there for two years. This is Dina. I'm Dina. Thank you. Ever since this curriculum, I started seeing microaggressions. Before that, I wasn't very familiar with it. I was like, oh, they're just nice, or their intention is good. I had the same excuses.

[31:49]

But... Ever since being exposed to this, just like a month ago, I think, a guest came and stayed for about a week or a few days. And from the first day that she was there, she was breaking her neck to look at me. And I didn't care. I was like, okay, she likes me. I'm pretty and whatever. But I was walking with another friend and he's white. And he was like, she was staring at me as we were going. sit back to the dining room and he was like, what is her problem? He got really angry and I was like, oh, I guess I should say something. It's happening still. And I said something to her and I was like, what is there? Did I not help you? Did you need something for me? What's going on? And she said, it's just very rare for me to see an African-American practicing Buddhism. And I was like, I'm just going to end the conversation here because I know, like she was like, I'm so sorry. I just, I didn't realize I was staring.

[32:52]

It might have been unconscious. And it became this whole conversation, but there's this unconscious microaggression too that people are not aware of. Like, oh, there's someone different. I can't stop looking at them or whatever it is. So it's those subtle things too. Makes me feel uncomfortable. The aggression. micro and the history come together for me it's like ownership like it's okay to touch your hair you know it's okay to just lean into a conversation and talk about your teeth you know your body's are your own bodies. That's something they think about all the time. No, they're not. Yeah, they're proprietary.

[33:54]

White folks, broadly speaking, there's something in the water, if you will, the subtle consciousness, that black bodies is a proprietary relationship to black bodies, in particular black bodies. It's a very interesting thing. You don't hear the same sort of... conversations about particularly physical touch and handling from Asians because black bodies are owned in the subconsciousness of white America. And so there's something about talking, intruding, not that intruding is different, but particularly like physically handling or touching black bodies is a very, it's a unique experience to African-Americans. And my experience, My theory on that is that in the subconscious of, and also my co-author, the subconscious of white America, even people that have no, like no intention.

[34:54]

Friendly, even friendliness is like a handling. And I remember I went to actually the place I was just at, Shambhala Mountain Center. And one of my students came and said something about someone picking up her rakasu. And my attendant, so the student, this student was black and the attendant was white. She just lost her mind. She was like, nobody ever touches my rakasu, like ever, ever, ever. How would they like even think it was like remotely appropriate? just reached out and picked up her rakasu and just, you know, just say this is beautiful, but picked it up off of her body. How many of you had somebody come and pick up your rakasu, like pick it up and, you know, hold it and like examine it like it was, you know, an item for sale in the store. So very potent and painful because then what does she do? We've been trying to like not embarrass them.

[36:01]

right? It's kind of our fault. It's like, don't want to embarrass the white folks. You know, it's, yeah. I don't want to be talking alone. Okay. Just to share a story that touched me from a friend who is a longtime practitioner here and black and said that she was in the bathhouse here, where she always felt stared at. And a guest said, are you part of the prison program? I had no idea that was going on here. She was like, oh, that's just what I live with. Can you briefly say how you came to Zen and what it means to you? Is that my beginner's mind?

[37:05]

It's funny, because my partner reminded me of this today, that when I read, I found a copy of the book. It was mostly aesthetic, right? It was sort of like, I lived in a world of... It's true. African-American aesthetic, sort of writ large, is not monolithic, obviously, tends to not necessarily be spare, right? Especially because people have been withheld, things have been withheld so long that abundance of stuff is fairly common. And so the spare aesthetic always appealed to me, particularly the art that I saw... and so really I was just looking for a copy of a book with some kind of Zen because I thought I didn't like art and then I realized that I didn't like all that what felt like noise to me and so I went looking for a copy of a book with the word Zen in it so I could try to get closer to what that was I was actually studying, it was art that I was after and I read the book and the two things that pulled me in was A, I felt like someone knew my mind

[38:21]

Like that was what my mind was internally. And I had no way to express it. I didn't have words for it. It's like someone putting, articulating something that you know is different about you and that you see the world differently, but no one else is speaking that language. And, you know, you don't even have language, right? It's like, I don't know how to explain what water does for me. because no one else seems to be talking about what water does for them, and so there are no words. And then, like we do, we get excited, and I was giving out copies of the book, and folks were like, who's a Greek? I have no idea what this is saying. And I was like, oh, I think there might be something there for me then. And I just chased it, you know, like a... I was like... I felt different enough in my life, over the course of my life, even by that time, that to find something that felt, as one of my teacher mentor's friends would say, belly button to belly button, like I couldn't not take the opportunity to try to figure out what that was.

[39:40]

And, yeah, order. I would have been in the military if I hadn't found Zen, honestly. I would have been a Marine. Yeah, so I'm a very low move. Those of you that understand astrology, so, yeah. I think there was an essay about how you can use that practice and you'd sit alone in your room, there's no sense. Did you write that essay? Could be. I mean, a lot of us have that same experience, huh? And so, being out of that silence into speech, how did that unfold for you? When did you know, you know, I have to write this book? When did you know that you could really explore this kind of agency with others? You know, I didn't have the kind of like a

[40:47]

Right, again, like another way people often think, like I didn't have a negative experience of being a black person. In fact, my most contentious and first negative experience with race was with black people. And so it was actually, you know, Caribbean peoples in particular. And it was like a bunch of different black people from different, especially Caribbean islands. And I had not had, I had lived actually in a very multicultural, and grown up in a very multicultural country. area and complex. So my first experience of race and negative experience of race with white folks really wasn't until much, much late, of like one that I was conscious of, was really much, much later, which gave me the facility to move amongst white folks easily. And so I didn't, I didn't have, I had a sense of entitlement. And so I entered into Zen with a sense of entitlement, like I can do whatever I want to do.

[41:48]

So it did, it did occur to me to feel like I couldn't do this. It's like for white people, as is true for many of many colored folks, like there's a little bit more of a barrier when your life has not been, um, you know, uh, connection with easy connection with white folks. Um, but I remember walking around and, you know, we were doing campaign and, uh, there were like, you know, 40 pairs of white feet in mine. And there was something about the visual. I wish I had a camera, right? It was like these four... And I was like, uh-huh. And the sense of... And I didn't so much care about the white folks. I was like, why are my people not here? Why should they get access to... this doorway of lifting burdens off of their minds and their hearts.

[42:53]

So that was really it. It wasn't like a fight against white people. It was an invitation to folks of color. Oh, and I didn't know I had to write it. I actually didn't think about writing it. It was actually just when I said, how come there's no people of color My white teacher and her white teacher said, we can't do it. You have to. And I was like, OK. So nothing sexy. That's how the book came. A lot of artists are very dynamically engaged with race in the contemporary art world. And two people that I'm thinking of, specifically Glenn Ligon and Carol Walker, both with that something, works that are very different but have a similarity and I can say something to the effect that I feel most black when I'm against a white ground. I'm wondering about the same context and the speech that comes from that.

[44:03]

How might that have provided a generative refuge for saying that. Do you know what that phrase is? Oh, yeah, I don't think I was... Okay, if you took, like, rounded up all the black people in the country, and I'm actually multiracial, but I'm politically black and not African-American. I'm sorry. I'm not African-American. I'm black. I don't mind, my feelings won't be hurt if you say African American, but I really think of myself as black. And out of all the black people in the world, especially at that time, I am maybe in the third percentile of who would have ever written a book called Being Black. I was so not identified with I'm black. And I don't think that would have been so had it not been for Zen practice.

[45:08]

So I was against the white. My name is Jonathan. I'm a he. Thank you, Jonathan. The song I come from in Texas, we often have black people who would drop by, and they would stay for maybe one, maybe two visits, and then we'd come down to see them again. don't really know how we could make it more welcoming. What can we do as practitioners to empower black people that come to our sanghas to come back, to continue their practice with us? So you can never empower black people, first of all. They're empowered. they're reacting to the felt sense of not inclusive.

[46:13]

So there's welcoming, like into what though? Right? It's a very subtle thing that colored folks can feel, right? What a space is. There are white spaces and there are white spaces. And Some white spaces you just go into and it's like, oh, I'm going to get to be who I am in this space. And other spaces feel like they're going to be really nice and invite me into their space. And I hear you say welcoming, but I often make a difference, a distinction between inviting and welcoming. And I don't think until white folks have done their own work and know what their skin is in the game, will they really be able to make truly welcoming spaces. That doesn't mean that individuals won't be welcoming, but it means that institutionally, it's like the air stinks of whiteness.

[47:18]

And we're actually so empowered now that we're like, we're not dealing with it. That's actually what's happening. I don't need to infiltrate or integrate another space. It's subtle. There's a little bit of which is fantastic. Progressive white America is trying to catch up while colored folks have seen a black man in the White House in another stratosphere. So the old school, like, but we can give them jobs, is not working anymore. People are invested in seeing themselves, seeing reflections of themselves in leadership, positions of power, because we don't want to become small and contort into white spaces just so we can fit anymore. Well, it's been a real struggle for our sangha. We're in Austin, Texas.

[48:20]

And it's been a struggle, and we talked about it a lot among ourselves, how we could reach out. But maybe that's our problem, we're reaching out. Yeah, why don't you reach in? Maybe we're trying too hard. Yeah, you might have to reach in, and that's two things. Like, reach into your own heart and knowing, right? And learning. Right. And go where they are. Oh, that's good. We're so bent on, like, they should come... And by nature, it's like you can be really even welcoming at your table, but still your table. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for asking. What's the difference between black and African-American people? So it's very... You didn't say your name. And she. She said. So I feel like politically speaking, so in some ways, like to say I'm multiracial, right, in many ways I've realized I started to let white folks off the hook because then they could identify like sort of like amorphous, not blackness.

[49:37]

And so when I say black, right, white is confronted, it's implicated just by the fact of saying black. When I say African-American, I think there's a term, it positions me someplace that is not actually consistent with what other hyphenated Americans are. I don't know my African heritage. I don't have a relationship to Africa other than, like, I went to Kenya and realized, like, oh, I'm American. And I was like, oh, I'm really American. And I asked the Kenyan guy, you know, just even to say that, right, like, he was my driver. So that's how deep that was. I asked him, you know, you know, we have colors, right? And there's a, I don't know how many white folks know it, but like amongst black people, there are like these color gradations and we have names for them. And so there's like chocolate and there's red bone and there's like high yellow and, you know, things like that. And so I was saying that to him and I said, so, you know, my mother's, you know, we're talking about my mother's, my mother's considered high yellow.

[50:42]

And I said, what would you call that in Kenya? And he said, White. And I was like, oh. I was like, okay. And I said, well, what would you call me? You said, white. I was like, ooh. Right, so to be like, oh, I'm African-American? First of all, why am I a whole continent? Why do I need to be identified with the whole continent? And I have no idea. like what country or peoples on that continent I would connect back to and say that I was South African-American or Kenyan-American or, you know, whatever else may be. So it's a political statement, you know, that actually confronts whiteness, right? Really stands strong, like, and I did this pre-Black Lives Matter with the book, with being black. I watched my own squiggliness around whiteness. calling it being black, right?

[51:44]

And I was like, oh, very much practice, right? Go into exactly what was uncomfortable for me. And so that choice was about going, and again, right, so that came from Zen, right? Like seeing my discomfort with naming myself black was what caused me to go in. But had I not had a Zen practice, I would not necessarily have done that. I might have done something different with it. And... pre-Black Lives Matter, it was like owning, like, no, this is something to love and to stand in, and even when I don't, you know, quote-unquote, technically have to. And so, yeah. I really appreciate that, because I've had struggle on, like, what do white people, what are you supposed to call me? But I'm Haitian, so just call me Haitian. But also, yeah, anyways, and I also really appreciate your question about, and your response. Tang Fu and another person on the way up to here, that I didn't embrace my Blackness until I got to Zen Center, actually, and I was so embarrassed of my Haitian-ness.

[52:55]

And it wasn't until I was surrounded only mainly by white people that I was like, oh my gosh, Being black is awesome. I am. Look at me. I'm just so grateful to embrace my culture in a way and to do it in the opposite culture. I grew up with black people and I was like, oh my God, it was all crazy. I had my own prejudice against other black people. Yeah, so, yes. And, you know... I mean, Barack Obama is actually African-American. Right? He is Kenyan. Oh, American. So he's African-American. I'm not hardly an African-American. I can't find a single African, you know, an African ancestor. Like, they're all here. So that's also... It's just... Yeah, it's weird, and I think it's like Caucasian.

[53:58]

Yeah. Wrong. I don't know if this understanding is right, but I understand Caucasian. I think the Caucasians, Aryans came from the Caucasus Mountains in Central Asia, came into India, called themselves Aryans, meaning the Aryans, the Aryan nation, And they set up the standard of caste based on color. And vana, which is the Sanskrit word for caste, means color. So the lighter, the higher caste. That's right. So the indigenous people in India were caste-skinned people. And shudra means dark. Yeah. So beneath that is untouchables. Yeah. So the only thing beneath dark is just completely untouchable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. in our history. But the Caucasus thing came from the discovery of the largest skull that had been found. And so when trying to create a scientific racialism, it's called, they decided that white people must come from the Caucasus.

[55:10]

There's no evidence that white folks come from the Caucasus. Not zero. But because the biggest skull was found in the Caucasus, surely that must be where white people came from. Africa, by the way, y'all, is where they come from. And that's where that came from. So for a long time, Caucasus was referring to actually this largest skull, which had nothing to do... And then there was a scientist, his name was Blumenbach, And maybe he was queer, but he thought that the people from the region, the men, were the most beautiful he'd ever seen. He was quoted as saying that. And so in his lust or something, he decided that when he was illustrating these, he wasn't thought to be racist per se, but when he was illustrating the different peoples and trying to parcel it out, he then named white people

[56:16]

people's Caucasoid. Interesting. I think we're, I don't know what time, Greg, are you people? Oh, it is. Your people. Our people? His people. His people, okay. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[56:56]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_91.67