Ruth King, Being Mindful of Race
Ruth King, a meditation teacher and author of "Mindfulness of Race," discusses how integrating mindfulness revolutionized her approach to racial awareness work in corporations. She shares her personal journey from rage to a more compassionate and effective engagement with racial issues, emphasizing self-awareness and collective responsibility.
Deep Dive Analysis
15 Topic Outline
Introduction to Ruth King and Race Dialogue
The Role of a Teacher in Meditation Practice
Navigating Overwhelming Negative Emotions in Meditation
Ruth King's Journey to Meditation and Spirit Rock
The Buddhist Principle of 'Know for Yourself'
Childhood Influences: South Central LA, Civil Rights, Jazz
Revolutionizing Diversity Work with Mindfulness
Transforming Personal Rage and Trauma through Practice
Conscious Use of Energy in Addressing Racial Injustice
Understanding Whiteness as a Racial Group Identity
Relative vs. Ultimate Reality in Race Discussions
Addressing White Privilege and the Racial Awareness Rubik
Structure and Core Teachings of 'Mindful of Race'
Advice for Privileged White Men in Racial Justice
Navigating White Fragility and Authentic Dialogue
9 Key Concepts
Self-Empathy
A meditation practice focused on being kind to oneself, especially when facing tough situations, as an alternative to self-criticism. It helps individuals get through difficult moments by fostering a gentler internal approach.
Mindfulness 'in order to'
A concept described by Joseph Goldstein where one is mindful of a difficult emotion, but with an underlying, subtle desire for that emotion to disappear. This subtle aversion prevents true acceptance and can hinder the emotion's natural dissipation or transformation.
Acceptance (of difficult emotions)
The skill of allowing intense anxiety or other strong feelings to simply be present without resistance. When one can truly be okay with a difficult emotion, its nature and force can change, or one can become less paralyzed by it.
Friendliness (Metta/Loving Kindness)
A meditation practice where one systematically envisions people, including oneself, and repeats phrases of well-wishing like 'May you be happy, may you be safe, may you live with ease.' This practice cultivates a feeling of warmth and friendliness, which can then be applied to difficult emotions and physical sensations, making them easier to accept.
'Know for Yourself' (Buddhist principle)
A core teaching emphasizing that spiritual understanding and truth should be embodied and personally experienced, rather than blindly accepted dogma. This approach encourages individuals to relax into their experiences and discover their own capacity for freedom and release from entrenched mental strongholds.
Relative vs. Ultimate Reality
In a Buddhist context, relative reality refers to the day-to-day conceptual ways we navigate life, including identities like race, community, and politics. Ultimate reality, however, points to a deeper truth beyond these concepts, such as the interconnectedness or 'oneness' of all things. A mature spiritual practice engages with both.
White Skin Privilege
The ability for white people to choose whether or not to acknowledge their racial identity or engage with issues of race, often without significant personal consequence. This privilege stems from being part of a dominant collective in society, and its denial is often a manifestation of the privilege itself.
Racial Awareness Rubik
A framework for understanding race dynamics that consists of two key pairs: individual vs. racial group identity, and dominant vs. subordinated group dynamics. It highlights that privilege is a collective phenomenon residing with the dominant group, which is often overlooked when discussions focus solely on individual biases.
Racism as a Heart Disease
Ruth King's metaphor describing racism as a curable condition that can be addressed through the intervention of mindfulness. Mindfulness helps cultivate an inner atmosphere that supports wiser responses to personal and societal distress, leading to clearer perception and healing.
7 Questions Answered
Teachers and community are incredibly useful but not a must. While one can practice effectively through books and apps, a teacher offers invaluable guidance for navigating the mind's complexities and asking specific questions.
It's okay if intense emotions feel too strong to fully accept; it's a skill being trained over time. One can test their edge but also adjust (e.g., stand up if restlessness is too much) while continuing the practice, and cultivate friendliness (metta) towards difficult sensations.
Meditation helped her recognize the impact of her actions on collective well-being, realizing that rage and righteousness, while sometimes 'right,' were deadening and planted seeds of negativity. This led her to seek a way to address internal struggles without burning out.
Many white people approach racial dialogue as individuals, overlooking their collective identity and the historical lineage of whiteness. Claiming this identity is crucial for genuinely understanding racial dynamics and having respectful conversations, as privilege is a collective, not just individual, phenomenon.
White privilege is the ability to acknowledge one's race or not, or engage around race or not, without significant personal consequence. It resides at the collective level of being a dominant race, not necessarily in individual wealth, and its denial is a key aspect of the privilege itself.
They can push boundaries on authority and use privilege to address issues where people of color cannot, break the 'collusion dynamic' among white people (blindness, sameness, silence) by speaking about and confronting race, and form racial affinity groups to unpack 'whiteness' and understand collective conditioning.
While acknowledging white fragility, it's important to differentiate it from vulnerability. White people need to do their own work in racial affinity groups to understand whiteness collectively, enabling them to bring their experiences and even disagreements to dialogue from an informed, rooted place, rather than just trying not to 'get in trouble.'
23 Actionable Insights
1. Examine White Racial Identity
White individuals should recognize and examine their identity as part of a racial group, known as ‘whiteness,’ rather than solely viewing themselves as individuals, as this understanding is crucial for meaningful racial dialogue.
2. Form White Racial Affinity Groups
White individuals should consider forming racial affinity groups with other white people to unpack and intimately understand ‘whiteness’ and their personal conditioning around race, keeping the focus inward on their own history and lineage.
3. Integrate Mindfulness with Race Work
Approach the challenging work of addressing racial issues by integrating mindfulness meditation principles. This supports an inner atmosphere that allows for wiser responses to distress and clearer perception of racial dynamics.
4. Transform Rage into Intentional Energy
Recognize that intense emotions like rage are energy; instead of indiscriminately spewing it, become sensitive to how that energy is used and choose to direct it intentionally to make a difference, rather than planting seeds of hate or righteousness.
5. Utilize Privilege for Systemic Change
Individuals in positions of privilege should use their influence to address issues they observe, even if it means pushing against authority or company policy, to create positive change where others might not be able to.
6. Break Racial Collusion & Silence
White individuals, especially those in positions of power, should actively break the ‘collusion dynamic’ of blindness, sameness, and silence among white people by speaking up about race, confronting racial issues, and refusing to turn a blind eye.
7. Practice True Emotional Acceptance
Cultivate genuine acceptance of difficult emotions, recognizing that ‘in order to mind’ (being mindful with an underlying wish for the emotion to disappear) is not true acceptance. This is a skill that improves over time with practice.
8. Cultivate Friendliness Towards Emotions
When difficult emotions or sensations arise during meditation, do not just note them with nonjudgmental remove, but also approach them with friendliness and warmth, as if ‘blowing them a kiss,’ to foster acceptance and soften their impact.
9. Know for Yourself (Embodied Faith)
Approach spiritual or personal growth with a willingness to ‘know for yourself’ through embodied experience, rather than blindly trusting dogma. This leads to a deeper, more authentic understanding and release from entrenched strongholds.
10. Diagnose Your Racial Conditioning
Undertake the process of diagnosing your personal racial conditioning by understanding yourself as both an individual and a racial group member, and by recognizing the dynamics of dominating and subordinated racial groups.
11. Practice RAIN for Stress
Utilize the RAIN practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) to work with stress and other difficult internal experiences. This helps in understanding and responding wisely to the distress in your heart and mind.
12. Meditate Daily, Even Briefly
Engage in meditation for at least a minute or two most days, as even short, consistent practice yields significant benefits for well-being.
13. Seek Meditation Teacher/Coach
If possible, find an experienced meditation teacher or coach (locally, via Skype, or through apps) to ask questions and gain personalized guidance, as this can be incredibly powerful for deepening your practice.
14. Adjust Meditation Posture
If intense physical discomfort or restlessness becomes too strong during meditation, it is acceptable to adjust your posture, such as standing up, and continue the session to test your edge while still being with the sensations.
15. Practice Deep Listening
Engage in deep listening and hearing, especially in sensitive discussions, as this is a vital part of the educational process and fosters genuine understanding.
16. Recognize Defensive Patterns
Cultivate self-awareness to identify your personal ‘buttons’ and defensive patterns that arise in challenging discussions, especially about race, to prevent them from hindering constructive dialogue.
17. Bring Group Identity to Dialogue
When engaging in discussions about race, bring a sense of yourself as both an individual and as a member of a racial group identity. This provides a more rooted and comprehensive perspective.
18. Engage in Artistic Expression
Involve yourself in some form of natural artistic expression to find more aliveness, creativity, and joy in your life. This can serve as ‘cultural medicine’ and purify energy towards what’s possible.
19. Cultivate Self-Empathy in Tough Situations
Shift away from the tendency to ‘beat the crap out of yourself’ when facing difficult situations. Instead, practice self-empathy and self-compassion, which can be incredibly powerful for navigating challenges.
20. Consider Meditation Retreats
If time and resources allow, consider attending a meditation retreat, as this can significantly accelerate and deepen your meditation practice.
21. Read Meditation Books
Begin or continue your meditation journey by reading books on the subject, as this can provide foundational knowledge and instructions for practice.
22. Focus on Meditation Instruction
When attending meditation centers, especially those with Buddhist traditions, feel free to ignore ceremonial aspects (‘smells and bells’) and focus solely on the core meditation instruction if that is your preference.
23. Read Mindful of Race Book
Read Ruth King’s book, ‘Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out,’ to gain deeper insights and practical guidance on addressing racial conditioning and distress.
8 Key Quotes
Jesus is my Lord and personal Savior, but the Buddha left instructions.
Ruth King
I was right, but there was a way I was dead right. I was dead on the inside. I was shut down.
Ruth King
This life is not personal. It's not permanent, it's not perfect.
Ruth King
I don't want to waste energy at this time of my life. It's, it's, it's a utility. I don't want to just spew it all over the place indiscriminately. It's very important that I use it to really make a difference.
Ruth King
We're all individuals who've suffered and had our lives and our stories and our traumas and had to do these dances with our parents in order to get approval and to stay loved. And, and, but we're also part of racial group identities and that, that's a collective experience that, uh, you know, that people have as a race.
Ruth King
When white people come to the table as just good, well-meaning individuals without being rooted in their history and lineage and how that gets played out, uh, socially, politically, uh, then I think there's a lot missing in, um, our, um, potential to really graduate to real human and respectful conversations.
Ruth King
I don't think when I see people marching with tiki torches in Charlottesville, I deplore it obviously, but I don't think, oh, there's a problem with my people. We need to address it.
Dan Harris
If I can't argue from, from my experience as a white man with people of color, if I can't talk about what that's like for me, if I can't disagree without being then seen as blah, blah, blah, or, uh, of, of not really being a good white ally or not being somebody that's really listening, then what is this?
Dan Harris
3 Protocols
Loving Kindness (Metta) Meditation Technique
Dan Harris (referencing Spring Washam)- Systematically envision people, including yourself.
- Repeat phrases of well-wishing (e.g., 'May you be happy, may you be safe, may you live with ease').
- Cultivate a feeling of friendliness.
Mindful of Race Book Structure for Engaging with Racial Conditioning
Ruth King- Diagnose the Issue: Understand racial conditioning, individual vs. racial group identity, dominant vs. subordinated group dynamics, and six hindrances to racial harmony.
- Establish Meditation Practice: Work with internal distress from racial inquiry, develop a relationship with ease, bear witness to internal experiences (shame, blame, guilt, rage), and practice self-forgiveness, compassion, kindness, and 'RAIN' (Recognizing, Allowing, Investigating, Nurturing).
- Culture of Care: Explore interdependence, learn how to talk about what disturbs you (with inward attention to distress), cultivate social equanimity, and engage in artistry as cultural medicine.
Actions for Privileged White Men to Contribute to Racial Justice
Ruth King- Push the bar on authority and use privilege to address issues where people of color cannot.
- Break the 'collusion dynamic' among white people (blindness, sameness, silence) by speaking about and confronting race.
- Form racial affinity groups with other white individuals to unpack 'whiteness' and understand collective conditioning.