Module 3
Prompts & Practices
1) Causes & Conditions of racecraft
What jumped out for you in the chapter about history by Eugene Ellis and the lecture by Jacqueline Battalora?
What are some of the historical causes and conditions in which the modern construction of race came to be?
How were the colonization of India and migration patterns from South Asia connected to the Atlantic Slave Trade?
How are class and race inter-related in the example of the Virginia and Maryland colonies in the late 1600s?
What do gender and sexuality have to do with this?
2) Reflecting on Buddhist teachings
How might Buddhist teachings about the Two Truths help illuminate the workings of race through history?
In what ways does race not exist? In what ways does race exist?
In considering the history of race and racism, how are mind and world co-creating eachother?
3) Personal learnings and un-learnings
What would you like to learn more about, with regards to the history of race?
How might you go about that?
For Reflection: Quotes from Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
“A caste is an enclosed class.”
- Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development, 1916
“I regard endogamy as a key to the mystery of the caste system.”
- Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development, 1916
“Caste is not just a division of labor, it is a division of laborers.”
- Annihilation of Caste, 1936
“Far from producing harmony, graded inequality… might produce in society an ascending scale of hatred and a descending scale of contempt, and might be a source of perpetual conflict.”
- The Buddha and His Dhamma, 1956
Finding “an emotional equivalent to our intellectual understanding” (optional practices)
The history of slavery is unfathomably violent and its impact profound. We can lean so much about it, yet how might we connect at a deeper level both to those enslaved, those enslaving and everyone else entangled one way or another from this economy? Below are some optional practices to explore this.
Here are some contemplative practices you might consider:
Meditating with the voice recordings of people formerly enslaved. These were made in the 1940s. That is not long ago! If you prefer reading, you can use the slave narrative in Eugene’s book chapter.
Meditating, chanting and/or druming with this animated map of the voyages made with enslaved captives. Try playing the timelapse at different speeds. Notice the number of locations and empires involved. Can you imaginatively turn these moving dots and numbers into humans?
Visiting a memorial, making an altar, or offering a ritual or puja in remembrance of this suffering.
Something else of your invention!
It’s crucial to develop both metta and equanimity when engaging with this material, and to take good care with modulating exposure to activating material. The point is to stay with, and not to get flooded. If that happens, take a break and resource yourself…
