Session 6:
Materials
After our contemplation of racism in its history and systemic forms, the next two sessions are dedicated to exploring whiteness as it operates in our bodies, hearts and minds – with the support of somatic perspectives and the Dharma. We will be trying to “make sense” (literally) of the ways in which history and structural racism get reenacted through us, and how we might transform this conditioning which is harmful to everyone, white people included. In particular, the Buddhist concepts of vedana, delusion, conceit, equanimity and mindfulness will be examined in this light.
This session we begin at the beginning: mindfulness of the body. We consider racialized intergenerational trauma in white bodies and the what the field of cultural somatics might offer to our healing.
1) Mindfulness of the white body
This session we would like to invite you to engage with the work of Resmaa Menakem. Depending on your preferences and constraints, here are 3 different options (just choose one).
A reading: book chapter 16 from My Grandmother’s Hands: “Mending the White Heart and Body”, pages 199-213 US edition. Link here. (If you have time and have the book, chapters 4 and 7 are particularly recommended).
OR
A video conversion: Dharma teacher Tara Brach interviewed Resmaa Menakem about “Healing Racialized Trauma”. starts after the meditation at min 28. (Oct 2020)
OR
A podcast interview: Krista Tipett from OnBeing (June 2020)
Resmaa Menakem ‘Notice the Rage; Notice the Silence’
2) Cultural somatics
The work of Tada Hozumi brings additional dimensions to the “somatic abolishonism” of Resmaa Menakem, with a closer examination of the “cultural somatics” of European colonialism, through the lens of Asian mind-body traditions. This has implications for “Western Buddhism” which we will return to later in our journey.
Tada Hozumi - “Whiteness as trauma in the body” (20 min video lecture, 2020)
Resources to Go Deeper (later!)
More from Resmaa Menakem:
My Grandmother’s Hands - new UK edition with preface for British readers.
101 Racialized Trauma Course by Resmaa Menakem
Resmaa Menakem’s Cultural Somatics
More from Tada Hozumi:
“Whiteness as cultural complex trauma” (article)
“Why white people can’t dance: they’re traumatized” (article)
“Hara (the belly) and the trauma of colonialism” (video lecture)
“What is cultural somatics?” (video lecture)
“A cultural somatic reader on whiteness, trauma, and allyship” (series of articles + video)