Facing whiteness 8/25/23

​

Notes for a personal reflection talk I gave in the Facing Whiteness group at ZCLA.

​

Reflecting on my practice with facing whiteness in the past few years… mostly, I feel like my practice is turning slightly towards whiteness, and then turning away, and then turning back again. It’s not consistent, but I’m still returning to the practice.

 

It feels intimately connected to my Zen practice. In the past few years, I have connected with non-lying as one of my core practices. I am by nature an honest person, and lying has never come naturally or been appealing. But over the past few years, I’ve become more aware of the subtle ways that I lie to myself. I get trapped in complacent or deluded thinking, and I reinforce these thoughts by aligning my actions with them. (Usually, through non-action and avoidance.) Coming to recognize complacency and avoidance as forms of lying to myself has helped me reduce the amount of time and energy I spend trapped in complacency.

 

A particular moment comes to mind preparing this reflection. After the Bearing Witness retreat with the Natives, Meiho and I drove back down to SLC to pick up Jitsujo. We were sitting down in an Indian fast food restaurant. Meiho and Jitsujo were talking about Facing Whiteness, and Meiho talked about her practice of facing her whiteness in Augusta. I expressed that I feel I don’t have that many opportunities to practice in this way, because whereas she lives in an almost all black neighborhood, the spaces I live and practice in are mostly white. Jitsujo helpfully pointed out that we had just been served by Indian men, and how am I practicing with that? 

 

This sparked various reflections for me. The first is that the materials for facing my whiteness have to be my own life, even the apparent absence of opportunities to face the whiteness. The perceived absence is itself whiteness: I am not seeing or acknowledging the people of color in the spaces I am in (they’re there!). I am also choosing to spend time in white-dominated spaces: why? The idea that my life as-it-is is somehow less optimal for investigating my racial conditioning than Meiho’s life is a subtle lie that I tell myself. This lie masks the reality of my experience, which is that I am a white person in racially diverse spaces who overlooks people of color or sees their presence as irrelevant to my life.

 

Another thing that came up for me is that, I live in KTown for God’s sake! It’s mostly Latinx folks and Korean folks, and some black folks. How is that different from Meiho’s situation? I just don’t interact with our neighbors, whereas she interacts with hers. I also speak Spanish. I love practicing my Spanish, so why don’t I go out and interact with people more? It was a wonderful experience picking up trash in the end-of-intensive retreat a month or two ago. It was lovely to meet people from the neighborhood. Going out and buying tacos and chatting with people in Spanish would be a good way to face my whiteness and enter togetherness with our neighbors.

 

As the MRI circle works on bringing more conversations about race and racism to the Zen Center, how am I having these conversations with myself and with others? Am I defending my whiteness, or am I creating little openings for something new to enter? Life is always offering me many little openings if I am willing to notice them. As life uncovers my many little white gaps, am I defending them and covering them up, or am I letting them get exposed? Am I letting something fresh enter me and take root?

 

I aspire for the temple to be a place where all beings can find true refuge in themselves and be supported by the community. I aspire for my body to be such a temple, where I can go for refuge and receive beings with open arms. I aspire for the temple gate to be open, for the zendo to always be unlocked, for the windows to be open, and for there to be a nice cross breeze airing things out, even if it gets a little stuffy in there some days.