Emerging From Racial Separation And Its Legacy

Emerging from racial separation and its legacy
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, insto When evidence of our separation is a steady drum beat, we can perceive this as a mindfulness bell calling us to arc toward awareness, healing, and justice. We can act on the internal separation-of body and mind- and the external separation-of communities, cities, society. To hear the drum we must stop and experience stillness. A stillness brought by calming the mind allows the clarity to hear the drum beat, reminding us that it is our separated selves that have built separated societies. But we must see the path to this suffering, this separation, before we can intention the path toward wholeness and emerge.

How did we merge into this illusion of separation in the first place? The wrong view that laid the foundation for fabricating this illusory world of separation and inequity was the view that skin color and cultural differences determined superior and inferior human beings. Our history of unequal government policies which built the US, in housing, health, transportation, education, recreation, employment, etc. provides evidence of the outcome of this wrong view. The brutal segregation of slavery, displacement of indigenous peoples to reservations, and exploitation of Mexican Americans’ land provides more evidence. This wrong view has normalized our perceptions of what is attractive and inviting and what is ugly, aversive, and fearful. These perceptions are embedded in the psyche of Americans as confirmed by research on implicit or unconscious bias. The action resulting from wrong view and wrong thinking built the illusory world of separate and unequal communities. This discrimination built physical structures that marginalized and under-resourced Black and Brown bodies, directly causing stress to the body and mind of the individuals who were the victims.

A growing body of research shows that genetic material, our DNA, is modified secondary to environmental stressors, such as racial injustice. This field of study, called epigenetics, continues to show us how our wrong perceptions of superiority and the actions based on these perceptions result in changes in the DNA of those targeted by our actions. These DNA modifications subsequently affect our mental and physical health. This effect in one generation-our grandparents or great grandparents- is passed on to children and future generations because of its impact on the genetic material. So while it is an illusion that we are separate, the world we fabricated based on White superiority and Black inferiority-and the various skin tones in between- has resulted In real outcomes on a personal and a structural level. Outcomes include premature death and chronic illnesses from generational stress and trauma that affect the immune, endocrine, and mental health systems through our DNA. Premature death also results from direct injury as in current day shootings and brutality by police and the history of physical violence enacted on Black and Brown bodies.

Emerging from this illusion is possible. We can emerge from this illusion of separate and superior racial/ethnic and other intersections of oppression through a new merging: into an awareness of non-separation, non-superiority and non-inferiority. For White people with privilege this does not mean one becomes color-blind, telling people of color that you don’t ‘see’ our color or ignore our cultural differences. It means our differences-foods, ways of being, clothing, rituals, language, etc- are recognized and there is not aversion or judgement of inferiority simply because there is difference. This is insight and it requires spaciousness created through reflection, stopping, stilling the mind, and relaxing the body. Like a calm and clear body of water that allows seeing beyond the surface, when the mind is calm we can see beyond the initial perceptions and notice the details of our conditioning; we can see through the murkiness of delusion. We can notice aversion or welcoming with people who are different and similar. We can begin to recognize when we first started responding/reacting in these ways? We begin to touch the root of our perceptions, embrace them without punishment, and slowly set a new path out of this delusion. After noticing and looking deeply we might respond differently as time goes on based on our emergence from our wrong view of separation, inferiority and superiority. Slowly we can begin to change habitual ways of perceiving and fabricating the world we inhabit.

This is a process of training, training ourselves to notice and change the imprinting that has contributed to our unconscious bias and microaggressions. Microagressions are the everyday aggressions that we impart on each other through our wrong views; for example when teachers don’t expect students of color to know class material and refer only to white students for answers. Or when an employee in a restaurant seats a White couple before the Black or Asian American couple, even though the White couple came later. Such everyday occurrences of aggression motivated by racial discrimination, like continuous drops of water, accumulate and form larger formations. Each drop is stressful, is painful, and becomes internalized. Over time a seemingly small drop overwhelms us as our river gushes over and we drown in pain. While each drop of pain is real, with a mind trained to be still and notice, we get to decide if the river will gush and we will drown in this suffering.

Shameka Cunningham

Our perceptions of ourselves also becomes clouded by these continuous aggressions and we internalize these messages and believe them. We believe we are inferior and that White people are superior and we act accordingly from within these roles. A mind that is clear, that is still, can distinguish the nature of our true selves and understand the social construction of separation. Such a mind can begin to emerge from this illusion of separation.

On a larger, systematized scale, when Black children walk to school daily and see half of the houses on their block boarded with litter in the yards and used syringes in the streets, a perception of low self-worth can develop. These are aggressions that are delivered through the environment; environments created by systems that disinvested and marginalized Black and Brown communities perceived as inferior. These are large drops of aggression in the river and especially true when 3-4 blocks away the neighborhood changes with no boarded houses, clean streets, and the majority of the residents are White. How are we to teach our young sisters and brothers that this illusion of separation and its violence is not the only reality? How are we to help them emerge from this illusion and see clearly the strength, beauty, and gifts they possess?

Data source: American Community Survey; Map created: Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance.

In communities overwhelmed with negative environments that cultivate restlessness, anger, worry, and fear research shows the benefit of mindfulness and other forms of meditation. Cultivating the personal care and awareness through meditation with the awareness of the conditions that co-created such illusive thinking and action is critical. Without this personal transformation the society of right thinking we all want will not emerge or be sustainable. Facilitating two workshops at Goddard College in Vermont recently I attempted to weave together this practice of meditation, history, and social justice. At the beginning of each workshop participants were guided in a breathing exercise to get in touch with sensations of tension and ease in their bodies. In the first workshop this was followed by a slide presentation of the history of community development based on the illusion of separation in Baltimore. In the second workshop the slide presentation covered the emergence from separation in the form of community organizing and collective and co-operative housing and businesses. In each slide presentation after every 5-6 slides of this history a blank slide and a slide of nature were inserted. Participants were invited to notice-and write or draw- the sensation in their body when they viewed the blank slide and when they viewed the slide of nature. At the end of each workshop participants were invited to comment on their perceptions of the slides of nature and emptiness. At the end of the second workshop we sat in a circle and shared reflections, practiced slow walking meditation, then closed. The truth of how American policy institutionalized segregated communities is not an easy history to digest. Over the years I have experimented with the use of nature slides interspersed throughout similar presentations. The response is always the same: the nature slides bring calm and help participants stay with the difficult history and not become overwhelmed with fear, anger, guilt, shame. Participants report that the slides of nature offer them space to breathe and remain fresh. At Goddard College, helping participants sink into their body sensations brought an awareness of the body and mind connection in how we receive difficult emotions and where they land in our body, where we are connected and disconnected. We begin to notice where we hold our tensions, where our drops of water are collecting and where we can direct our attention to bring calm and release, healing ourselves. As we train ourselves in small moments of awareness we slowly develop larger moments of awareness, and more frequent moments of awareness. This awareness reveals our pockets of pain, wrong view, and ease. We begin to choose how we will re-connect and re-create ourselves as we emerge into clarity, understanding, and justice.

This awareness and connection, inside and out, is desperately needed in Baltimore. Two years after the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody, Baltimore has not changed much to address the results of inequities between communities of rich and poor, Black and White. The government continues to provide tax benefits to wealthy developers with little planning to ensure that existing residents benefit from these deals while the mayor vetoed the minimum wage bill. The budget for policing is just below that for youth activities. Crime is still a major problem with murders at its highest rate in the city since this data was collected. We’re still locking up and punishing drug offenders and missing the rehabilitation and respect aspect of treating this as a medical problem. Lead poisoning rates continue to be higher in Baltimore than most cities and we remain a segregated city in race/ethnicity, income, wealth, health, transportation, housing, etc. If ever there was a city urgently in need of emerging from separation and its legacy, it is Baltimore.

Loring Cornish

Loring Cornish

James Baldwin

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