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. Good evening. So one of the words you can hear tonight is privilege. And there's a way I want to talk about privilege. It has to do with this teacher sitting to my right. I feel so privileged to have spent time with her this past few days, but also just a growing friendship and admiration for what she has to give, and I hope will continue to give in many years to come. This is Angel Kyoto Williams Sensei. She's a Zen teacher, and many more things that you're going to hear about right now. I think we have to do this.

[01:15]

This is our job, to really open ourselves to the kind of pain that's resulting from long, long stupid reasons, white privilege, whiteness, a construct. And as that Buddhist, we know it's a posture, and it's a very powerful one. And it's our job, I think, to deconstruct it as quickly as we can. I hope, while I'm still alive, I can still accept the criminal. Thank you so much for helping us to hear these words in a safe way. Not too safe. Yeah, not too safe. So I'm going to use the microphone. My voice is low. which doesn't, not great for some people's hearing. So, how's that? Is it good enough? Great. Yeah, so, good, I thought, that's Jeff's arm in the back. So, I can just add to the, wanna add,

[02:23]

to a little color, if you will, to my concern. And then I'll say a little something else. So for me, the sharing of when Fu came and she spoke about it, the first student meeting we had, she said we need to learn our history. And particularly white folks often, but really all of us, don't know the history of the construct, how the country was founded and constructed. We have bits and pieces. But my concern is I'm very aware that I don't live here. That I get to be here, say my thing, and I will take off on a stage, literally, tomorrow. And so I don't want to be irresponsible with the potency and what this can generate for people, because the idea is to wake people, not to break people.

[03:30]

And so I'm going to offer this slide show presentation that I've put together. And I keep adding to it over time, but I'm going to do the version of it that doesn't go deep. And so if you're interested, you can find me somewhere when I'm doing the full presentation and really go into all of the notes deeply. I believe that you're sensitive and intelligent enough to glean the stuff that isn't going to be really dug into here. So I'll just say that. I want to thank you all for letting me be here ruffling feathers. This is a long time coming for those of you that don't know.

[04:32]

My first book was written about 17 years ago. It was called, it is called, Being Black Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace. And at the time, the overwhelming number of Buddhist bookstores, because those animals still existed on the planet then, said it wasn't a Buddhist book, it was a black book and they wouldn't carry it. And so we've come a long way for me to even be here. And as I shared with the workshop participants that we're with, that it's great to have come a long way and it's frustrating that I'm the person that is still having that conversation 17 years later. I feel honored by it, but also like, really? Really? Because, you know, y'all are my people. And in the same way that we often talk about our people, and you may think I'm talking about black folks or people of color, the Zen community writ large is my people.

[05:39]

And I... And then further than that, you know, liberal white folks are my people, right? Like we're hanging out in the same camps on the far edges of the corners of America. And, you know, and eventually everyone's my people. But you know what I'm saying, like in the like, oh, we're tribe. We're tribe. And so it's hard when you feel like your tribe is asleep. And you don't know... what to do to wake them up, and it feels like the water is rising, and the water is rising. And so here we are in the era of 45, 45th president, and the water is over a lot of our heads. And so I feel sort of like, well, that was coming, and a little bit of like,

[06:43]

why didn't you wake up soon right so both things and uh are with me and they're always with me um but but mostly what's what is with me these days is a gratitude for the seizing of the opportunity however it came and and we're at this point and let's as the hashtag says get woke and stay woke right so let's do it So I made this slideshow for the Western Buddhist Teachers Conference a couple of years ago and the story is basically they wanted me to do a presentation on the history of race in 10 minutes. Yeah, so I will do it in the same way. I will say read and someone from the audience just call out and read what you see. Hopefully I will stay with the Slide show, because I can't see it behind me, but I think I have finally figured this whole presentation thing out.

[07:48]

Yes, that's intentional. Yes, it's a dramatic flare. Yeah, we can take the lights down, thank you. It may be easier for people to see, actually. Especially the first slide. So someone would, there's going to be two paragraphs, and I'll say read and read, two different people. Yeah. Ah. Thank you. It's also cooler. Oh, I just realized I don't have my reading glasses on. Please read. Organizing and demonstrations begin, and knowledgeable people speak to the long-standing issues embedded in our culture, there is an open-ended backlash.

[08:58]

Last, which holds a lot of answers... Please read. The programmatic narrative is affected by people like one years ago, and any inequalities that present themselves today are indicative of a flaw in the character of the formerly marginalized. One truth, however, is that people of color in America are marching the same long march, dealing with the same court issues, with the superficial details and the cultural backdrop change. There. So that's what Aura stands for. For those of you that don't know, Aura translates to now in Spanish. We expanded it a little bit.

[09:59]

Please read. Race, a satious classification of human beings created by Europeans, whites, which assigns human worth and social status using white as the model of humanity and the height of human achievement for the purpose of establishing and maintaining privilege to be power. Please read. White. The term white, referring to people, was created by Virginia slave owners and colonial rulers in the 17th century. It replaced terms like Christian and English to distinguish European causes from Africans and indigenous peoples. So the slave trade in North America began when a slave carrier called the Desire, interesting, was built and launched in Massachusetts. A fellow named John Punch in 1640 was a runaway black servant.

[11:02]

He was sentenced to a servitude for life. So there were indentured servants that generally spent seven years-ish in servitude. But when he ran away, he was sentenced to servitude for life. But his two white companions that ran with him just got extended terms of servitude. So John Punch is the first documented slave for life. Massachusetts in 1641 became the first colony to legalize slavery, followed by Connecticut in 1650. And in 1661, Virginia created a fugitive slave law that if whites were caught with blacks, both would serve the sentence of blacks. So it began to partition whites out even further. So there was already the... It became established that blacks would get slavery for life if they ran away, but now...

[12:04]

whites would get the blacks punishment if they were to run with them. So the European slaves, they weren't whites then, they were European slaves, indentured servants would get a stiffer punishment if they were to stick with the African slaves. So in 1664, New York and New Jersey legalized slavery and hereditary slavery began because Virginia passed a law that said that slaves took on the status of their mothers rather than their fathers, which had just been the social norm forever through British common law. And they did that to enslave the children of white men to deter them from fraternizing with Africans. That same year, Maryland mandated lifelong servitude for all black slaves. New York, New Jersey, the Carolinas, and Virginia all passed similar laws. This is all pre-United States of America.

[13:07]

And then by 1676, there was a fellow named Nathaniel Bacon. A rebellion was named after him. It did not end until Jamestown, Virginia was burned down, and the English had to intervene militarily to put it to an end. Needless to say, the ruling class did not like this. And they created then laws in which if the white folks continued to fraternize with the black people, then they would get the kind of punishments all across the board. They then instituted, in order to keep them apart, they began to institute. So this is the ruling class began to institute laws in which white went into the legal books for the first time. And what you can see there is that the descendants of John Rolfe, who was married to Pocahontas, was excluded from laws because only whites...

[14:14]

were being entitled to particular benefits and access to privileges in the colonies at this time. They outlawed mixed marriages, and then in 1705, all the indentured servants, so these are Europeans from all over the different countries, were replaced by Africans. When the Europeans got freed, they got land, They got money, they got food, and they got protection, they got weapons. And at the same time, what happened is the rest of the colonies began to pass the same laws. So all of a sudden, the class-based slavery shifted indentured servitude and they transferred it all into black slaves.

[15:15]

Shortly after that, we have the Declaration of Independence. They were saying all men created equal, but at the same time, they were also coming up with scientific racialism. Would somebody read those four categories? And what do you notice the differences about those? The first three have to do with place, geographic place, and the fourth one has to do with the color. That's right. And that was very important because as was mentioned before, prior to that time, people were identified by where they came from. And it was very important where you came from. And so by separating a people and describing only as a color, right? So Negroid came from negra, the Spanish word for black.

[16:17]

What they did is cut people off from their place. They should have been Africoids, by any logic, but they were not. Simultaneously, shortly after that, the cotton gin was invented and the cash crop of the American South really started to boom, and it created a huge demand for slave labor, so much so that at some points there were twice as many slaves in some of the colonies or states as there were white folks yes oh i'm so sorry i'm gonna pause and say i've asked to not um i should have asked to not ask questions in between unless there's clarification only because of the time and i want to make sure that we have um we don't just leave people on the slide information have time to Have questions and have your feelings.

[17:19]

Okay? Okay, thank you. And sorry for not saying it before. If someone would please read. Oh, I'm sorry. Let me just go back and say, oops, that's not back. Go back. The reason that Caucasoid became the term for whites is is because the scientist, Blumenbach, believed that the peoples, that the men that he saw there were the most beautiful race of men he'd ever seen. And that's why the term Caucasian was used for whites, even though there is no evidence that that is where what we understand as European white folks actually came from. So it was a scientifically-based myth. Please read. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only that blacks are inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind.

[18:27]

Thomas Jefferson. Very influential thinker of that time period. You can read the slides yourselves. But this is important because this set of things... describes what was happening in terms of wealth in the country. It went from only very wealthy people, because $640 was a lot of money, could own land. Then there's kind of a middle class, because you now have installments and smaller parcels of land, so you needed less money, but people were making money hand over fist, the ones that had money. And then... And at the same time that that was happening, right, all of this land is now being made available, the Naturalization Act, which allowed Europeans to become citizens of this newly formed country, said that you had to be a free white person of good moral character, code language for Christian, that's the only people that could become citizens, right?

[19:35]

And so... who else was coming other than these, the Europeans? Who else? What did that mean? That automatically meant simply that the indigenous peoples and black people could not. And that simultaneously meant they couldn't own property, right? They were not entitled to all of the things that came with citizenship. Because of the... coming together of the colonies, all of Virginia's horrific laws, slave laws, became nationalized. So they took the harshest laws that were being generated in the colony that was making the most money off of the slave trade and they nationalized those laws. Then they began to remove the indigenous people. Native Americans were removed from their land, the Cherokee, the creek. They were pushed west of the Mississippi.

[20:35]

All of that land was taken. And a fellow named Samuel Morton found a skull. It was the biggest skull. And he said, that proves that white people who are not from where this skull came from are superior. And then... all of the land, 55% of Mexican land was then taken. That land, when the Treaty of Guadalupe included all of Texas, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, parts of California, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. So if you've ever seen Mexican people wear a T-shirt that says, I didn't cross the border, the border crossed me, you now know why. Mass immigration allowed for many Chinese to come in so they could build the Continental Railroad. And also, the Irish by that time, because of mass immigration, comprised of 43% of the population.

[21:36]

Not everybody was happy about that. Please read. The German and Irish aliens, like the Negro, have a great deal of guano in their destiny. They are ferried over the Atlantic and carted over America. to ditch and to drudge, to make corn sheep, and then to lie down prematurely to make the spot of green grass on the prairie. So we have to think about who our heroes are. The other thing that was happening at this time is you had the Homestead Act. They took all that land from the Mexicans, all that land from the Indians, and then land was simply given away, 160-acre parcels go out, take your flag, run, get some land. So I don't know if you all noticed, but early on this says affirmative action, white affirmative action from 1690 until now. And that's why it's referred to as that. But remember who it is that could do that only, the naturalized citizens, right?

[22:42]

So you had about a 10th of the land mass of America was just simply given away in huge parcels to only white folks. By this time, we're at the Emancipation Proclamation. And the question for many people is like, but didn't they get free? Well, 1865, blacks owned one half of 1% of the total worth of the United States. And by 1990, they accelerated to a full 1%, 135 years. And that is because of what's called the Jim Crow era that's not elucidated here. Many of us have heard that, but basically the North made deals with the South in order to appease them for the loss in the Civil War and allowed the laws to be construed, federal laws to be construed in such a way that consistently kept blacks in a place of...

[23:50]

you know, second class would be high. My fourth class citizens allowed them to be forced into chain gangs. They enacted the black codes, which kept them from congregating. They created, when they were sued, of course, there was Plessy versus Ferguson that called for separate but equal conditions. But of course, the conditions were not equal. Those laws affected every area of one's public life, and so that means there was segregation in schools and parks, drinking fountains, restrooms, we know buses, trains, restaurants. There were whites only, and colored signs were constant reminders for all of this very long period of time, 75 years, in which blacks were constantly reminded that they were beneath the order of white folks, and the conditions were certainly not the same. Many people believe that the civil rights era was about black people getting the vote.

[25:00]

They had the vote from Emancipation Proclamation. but Jim Crow also affected voting in a significant way that they, in the South in particular, they consistently made laws and remade laws and came up with things over and over again to drive the voter rolls of blacks down. And other so-called minorities in the country were not excluded from the target of the construct of whiteness In 1882, after having brought the Chinese over to build the railroads, they then had the Chinese Exclusion Act. This is a Chinese Exclusion Act because it was a federal law. This is not somebody in a corner just saying, like, we don't want Chinese people, we don't like them. This is the federal government committing to, in law, an act that kept Chinese out for 60 years. People of East Asian ancestry were then separated. Their children were separated.

[26:01]

They'd been here for 60, 80 years, and their children were separated from the rest of the population. We had a significant influx of Sikhs in particular, but white folks called them Hindus. We had that little wrong. And they called it the tide of the turbines. There was also then... the Alien Land Act and the Citizens Act, which meant they took land and property away from Japanese and Chinese people and people of ancient ancestry and called that period of time Yellow Peril, very much not wanting to keep people from all of these countries out of the United States. A Japanese man, Takawa Zawa, applied for citizenship, and he was told that it was denied because he was Mongoloid, not Caucasian, And there was a famous publisher, Miller Freeman, and this is what he said. He published in his newspaper, actually. Can somebody please read?

[27:02]

The people of this country never invited you here. You came to this country of your own responsibility. Large numbers after our citizenship rules that Japanese inflation had been suppressed. You came notwithstanding, you knew you were not welcome. You've created an abnormal situation in our midst for which you are to blame. So the Japanese and Chinese were banned from owning land. That ban lasted until 1952. Then seeing that Bagat Singh then also applied for citizenship, but he was also considered ineligible, even though he was Aryan-Caucasian. And anthropologists agreed that He was of the same race as whites. And this is what the Supreme Court said in 1923. Somebody please read. Please read. The average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences. So you can see that the marker of what white is moved according to the whims of the ruling class.

[28:10]

Many people think that the New Deal created a middle America, but the New Deal systematically, and you can see that systematically, kept Blacks and Latinos and Asians out of the social nets that we now take, the safety social nets, social safety nets that we take for granted. $120 billion in loans, 98% to white folks, Social Security, was allowed to disclude agricultural and domestic workers, resulting in most Asians, blacks, Latinos not being able to have Social Security for another 30 years. So they didn't have that head start with Social Security. The Wagner Act made sure that the unions, even as they were creating unions, the unions could disclude non-whites. Same thing. Federal agencies allowed and endorsed race restrictive policies. Even the real estate realtors got in. It was actually considered ethical.

[29:12]

These were ethical guidelines. Somebody please read that a realtor should. Federal money created 350,000 new homes in California. Less than 100 went to blacks. The GI Bill, everybody got educated. The middle class not only got now wealth property, but they also got education, but not blacks. They went and fought the war, came back. Only a fifth of them were allowed to actually apply and get into colleges. And then the historically black institutions universities and colleges were overwhelmed and could not allow blacks in, and so they lagged behind on education.

[30:12]

The most conservative estimates say that the 200 years of unpaid slave labor has resulted in a $1 trillion benefit. The most conservative minimum estimates, even people that are like, no, we don't believe this, economists say that it has resulted in a trillion-dollar transfer of wealth to whites. If somebody would please read. But we are also privileged by it. When we organize and ask our own question, not the inspector privilege, that is the inspector. I'll just leave that there for effect if we can turn the lights up.

[31:26]

So how many of that, for you in the room, does that feel like, in its form, somewhat new information? How many of you felt like that was part of what you knew, that you knew had a good sense of what this is? That's a good number of folks, that's great. But not quite enough. of us new, right? I'd love to hear some reflections. Anything anyone want to share? Please. It is creating an interesting effect on me, I guess. You know, I feel like bits and pieces of this I've heard, but it's very easy to miss the effect of the picture. when you don't have it cohesively presented.

[32:47]

You know, because it's like, oh, where did I hear that one piece? I did read about that, but it's easy for that to sit through the cracks, I guess. So the effect is much better or much stronger when presented this way, fully. And that's by design, right? That the information is incoherently... available. It's all out there. No, this is not Google-able. You can go and find it. But that it is like amorphous and in a cloud somewhere that you have to really work to hold it together is by design. It has always been by design. The kind of confusion or haze or lack of clarity about our history is by design of this country. It has been in the foundation It is the way things have been constructed because how else could people for 200 years abide by witness and being complicit in the destruction of people and the degrading of other human beings in the way that happened?

[34:02]

For not just a little, like 10 years, wow, we were really twisted back then. How'd that happen? But for 200 years. So the design exists. It's built into the structure to make sure that we don't put it together. None of us put it together. By the way, colored people don't come with some automatic knowledge of this. It's missed for us, too. And so the impact of that is different, but also very powerful. And there's also some shame. You're like, and I don't know the full picture, but I don't want to put that out there and ask. I don't know who to ask. So then you're just kind of like, I'm feeling ignorant, and I don't know what to do about it. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Greg, is there something you wanted to say? Shiro, or?

[35:04]

Just noticing how much of that is in my neighborhood. You know, I spoke up. I said, oh, I just taught that. The textbooks in segregated Oakland, Ohio, were the only black people we ever saw were cleaning the houses or cleaning the laws. And going to the south to see my grandmother, you know. So yeah, black people, I'm a lot of this wonderful. You know, it's wonderful. It's being told that. It's like, that's normal. You know, as a kid, I was like, oh, that's normal. That's really quite painful. Thank you. Please, yeah, would you please say, I'm sorry, say your name again, please. Lauren, thank you so much. Your name.

[36:05]

Steven. Steven, thank you. I think it was really interesting, kind of, like, my knowledge about this stuff. kind of windowed, kind of shrunk the closer we got to the modern era. So that's really interesting to kind of notice with that first slide about it being the biggest thing of the past. But also I feel like there's like, like there's like a clue in there to be really important to notice. And I guess the feeling that's coming up to me is like, this sort of legislative effort I could create, for the specific lower class with the purpose of the correct wood. Just like the language of the law of view, . And that's actually a really great for us to examine, that see the direction that this vector is moving in.

[37:11]

because what I notice and what I feel and kind of like really awfully clear that coming a lot more in cities, it's like really like, really, really, really, you know, I mean, [...] that's right that's right thank you and and uh there's an organization called race forward and they said what you you'll see now is the level of sophistication the laws are not they are facially neutral but they're not racially neutral So it's become so sophisticated that even though the words are not so gross, so coarse, they appear neutral on the face, but they are not racially neutral because they're adding to the compounded system of the momentum of racialization and the creation of an exploitative concept remains in place.

[38:28]

They don't have to be so coarse any longer. because it can just work on what was already there and build on that. moments of happiness in this life, in this history, I feel when there's an interaction that I'm like, this is a manifestation, it's all of it. And this quote of organizing against privilege, not just oppression, but privilege.

[39:29]

But I see a lot of organizing against our own oppression, but then organizing against the privilege It's like that much scarier, that much unfamiliar, more unfamiliar. And I want to respect that unfamiliarity. I want to still have to speak it. Every day, that we wait. Every day, every moment. Or it's, again, about my profession. Again, it's all, this is really hard for me. I think it feels like how my this is. I'm like, when is that going? I hope so. I hope that this moment in time, something is happening here. That white, liberal-ish America is feeling confronted

[40:37]

by the coarseness you want to talk about the insidious nature of the kind of administration but that the coarseness of it is like it's not subtle anymore right and I think it makes it harder to you know just kind of nod back to sleep it's very possible but I think if we take the take this as an opportunity rather than something that we just bury our head in the sand about to really confront not just this administration, not just, like, keep looking and saying, what happened to those people in the other part of the country that voted for this, but what is the momentum that led up to this moment? And how have we been convulsed in it? And how have we been ignorant of it, willfully ignorant we talked about in our work? How have we been, how have you been willfully ignorant of what has been there all along? And that is just... more potent, more coarse, more gross.

[41:41]

I mean, really in the true sense of disgusting in this particular moment. But are we going to let three and a half years pass and then vote it away and go back to sleep to this? Momentum is really the question. That's really the question for us. It's not like, oh, are we going to defeat Trump? But will we stay awake, will we stay in the discomfort, particularly as practitioners long enough, be willing to, we have a practice of this, to be in our discomfort long enough to feel ourselves hooked into that kind of urgency to confront it. And to find ways to confront it that don't feed the momentum of aggression and division that this system is totally designed to be fed off of.

[42:43]

Does that make sense? That was a lot of words. Yes? You know, I think that sometimes towards affirmative action is that they're doing something to help disadvantaged people out of kind of the generosity of efforts. That's right. When you look at the fact history, if blacks were kept out of colleges, kept out of owning land, getting out there, it's actually a writing of rocks or something criminal that happened that needs to be addressed. That's affirmative action. Right. That's why it was called affirmative action. But without the history, A lot of people are understandably in the dark about not understanding, especially under-educated or lower-class white folks that feel like they're vying for this limited piece of the pie.

[43:48]

Like, why are you giving the blacks something? Why are you giving the women something? Why are you giving those other people something if they don't have any context? Then it's understandable that they'd just be mad and think, like you're giving somebody something special, as opposed to, oh, long as being righted. You just are hearing the results and not, most of this country does not, I mean, most of this country doesn't know who most of the presidents are except the last, what, two. And so without the history, It's understandable. And then the rhetoric, you add the rhetoric, right, and all of the dog whistle language that used to call that is no longer, now all the humans can hear it, but we don't even need a dog whistle anymore. We can just say things that would, you know, used to be totally coded. And right now we have the highest office in the land.

[44:52]

Talking about reverse race and so on. So yes, and what we have to understand is that without this information, it makes sense. So it's not that the people are just evil in their heart. It's not that the people back then were just evil in their heart. But what would you choose if you were going to run? And if you were going to pick somebody to run with, are you going to pick the black person to run with? If getting caught means you're going to have certainty for life? Are you going to be like, you know what, dude? We're friends. I like you, but you're kind of dangerous for me. If we get caught, you know, I'd rather do an extra year or two, not the rest of my life. So friendships, connections around class, around shared experience of oppression were pulled apart.

[45:54]

And Europeans were set against their fellow servants, you know, slaves. They would set apart from you intentionally. Intentionally. Did you want to say something? I just wanted to say, I wanted to address the myths that I grew up with, sort of like what Greg was saying, but just how much harder it is to wax the stultment about the past and how these the miseducation that I received about the revolution. I remember reading in Howard Zinn's history that more black people and more Native Americans fought for the British than fought for the revolution. I think that says a lot. I sort of grew up in the heart of the empire. My father was a Calivarian and he spent time in D.C. and I remember being at basically a war rally. They didn't call it that. It was like a Calivarian, the death of the storm.

[46:59]

It fought in my hands. to grips with that and just on a daily basis, it's like once you open up the book or once you tear it open, I can't watch a movie and just sort of be like, well, where are all the people of color in this movie, you know, and especially the older ones, right? So, yeah, and it's still happening. I actually had the opportunity to teach social studies and I hadn't read that book yet. I hadn't read Howard Zinn's book yet and I sort of perpetuated the same myths that were taught to me, and that was just in 2005, 2006. So I needed to say that this revolution was really for the legal elite and not for who was cut out. So anyways, that's all I want to say. Yeah, thank you. One of the things that starts to happen, I like this hashtag, wait, oh, woke. Same one. You know, I feel like I have never realized before, giving lectures at Green Gulch, after starting to do this thinking and reading and studying, I look at the audience at Green Gulch and they're all white people.

[48:12]

I never saw that. I've been lecturing for 12 years. I speak to white people. I don't know. I don't know. Wow. You know? I just want to know I came once and I knew. The first time I came back, you didn't know that. And that's what black people would say to us. We've been to Green Girls. We didn't come back. And, you know, right now. So, I think we have to walk. Get the woke. Stay woke. Get woke. Get woke. Oh, get. Right here. I'm going to fly for that. Get woke and stay woke. And, uh, We've been doing a summer program and asked by the students. It wasn't my idea. The students said, we want you to study racism for the summer. And I'm like, oh, really? I mean, we'll be thinking about Ava Top Soccer Street or something. And so they were very insistent. And so Randolph and I said, OK, we'll put something together. Well, we spent a long time doing something together. And the more we put together,

[49:13]

the more awesome it got to be, the more we began to realize this is really treacherous territory for white people to start walking out of thin ice here. And they're all falling through. And I think it's about time. I can't be more grateful or more appreciative of what's happening inside my body and my heart as it's breaking. And I find out these things. And the film Moonlight, I mean, you know, these poems are... Anyway, we're being told all the time this truth. And Victor Lewis was one of the teachers who came, and I went to him after he spoke at Pringles on Wednesday night. I said, okay, I can call a group of people together. I've got a position I can do that. I can get some folks from around the Bay Area or whatever, and do what? And he said, why don't you learn your own history? Which is, I think, what we're being offered right now, and there's a lot more in it, too. This is just a scat. There is so much to the system. She's not showing the pictures of the Wips guards or the backs of these people.

[50:16]

So I think it's important for us to be willing, not only willing, we have to hurt in knowing our history, and we will have it. And our humanity will be regained. That's what we're going to get. We're going to get our humanity back because we lost it by knowing, by being ignorant. And here it is. So... Anyway, I... Yeah. I'm so grateful you all are here in China to listen. It takes some courage. Let's do it. Checking with you. Yeah. Yeah. And... I think it's... Yeah. And it's... I just wanted to say thank you so much. The last, I guess, two days, three days, an hour of today, feels like so little.

[51:27]

And I wonder if, and I really appreciate this slideshow. And as you just said, it's really it's just back to the surface and I wonder if you could offer like a reading list or something like that yeah yes we can see now the most unfortunate thing is what's part of our practice that you commit that you commit to the unveiling of your own ignorance and I know that y'all, I usually tell people that Google knows everything, but I guess y'all don't have a lot of access to that here. But it's the, right, it's the recognizing and finding whatever way you have to find to see and know that your skin is in the game, that you're not doing this for me or you have to do this for the people of color, right, to prove something for them because then you'll go back to sleep

[52:40]

It is really, I believe, truly necessary for white folks to really understand and see and lean into, like, oh, this is actually a loss for me. This has damaged me, my family. This has set me in a place of lack of connection, inability to see people hold fully for who they are. It kept me away from love. And that's the most important thing. I think we have to end. Okay, ask me. Okay, ask me. Thank you all so much. Thank you so much. 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.

[53:45]

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