![Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation by [Williams, angel Kyodo, Owens, Lama Rod, Syedullah, Jasmine]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51C7-8RTv8L._SY346_.jpg)
In response to James K. Review, and how this book enlightened me:
Respectfully, James, I feel you may have missed the point of the book. Maybe I’m wrong, but my felt sense about this book is, that it is an ON RAMP to beginning to have open discussions about what white people can do. It is up to white folks, like me, to DO THE WORK to UN LEARN our white supremacist ways.
I understand this book to be urging that it is MY responsibility to begin the honest inner work on how my own racism affects me and the people I come in contact with. This racism that I, and I believe EVERY white person has is not by choice, I don't believe racism is inherent. Racism is so because of the social/political/economic white persons America that we live in. It is and has been easier for white folks to pretend like racism doesn’t even exist, it is easier for a white person to follow that story-line. But that story-line HAS to stop, for the sake of a healthy and sane environment.
Out of respect for humanity, and out of respect for ourselves, it is the responsibility of all white folks to DO THE WORK! Figure out your own racist bias, and talk about it out loud with others! None of this is easy, and there are no easy answers. But the book is asking folks to take the first steps towards liberating ourselves from our own racist ties... the same ties that keep up bound in fear, and far from love and understanding.
There aren’t solid “answers”… this is about a REVOLUTION of UNLEARNING decades of white supremacy. That doesn’t happen overnight, but it HAS to start somewhere! I believe that people of color are exhausted with trying to explain this to white folks who have no way of understanding their felt experience.
A bunch of white folks made up the rules to disenfranchise and disengage people of color. Even if we weren’t part of making those rules, we have followed them blindly and have benefited from the comfort they offer. Finding solutions to changing attitudes and beliefs is up to white folks like me. I just don’t think this too should be put on the back of folks who are exhausted.
To think that our sangha’s, and the way they have been and are organized don’t have everything to do with how people of color might not feel welcome in a predominantly white space is not realistic. The amazing authors of this book are Buddhists, sharing their most intimate selves as people of color in the world and in their own Buddhist communities.
Buddhism in the West is part of a systematically deeply rooted white supremacist society. Buddhism doesn’t just get a “pass” because our lineages teach us about basic goodness in ALL sentient beings.
I understand that you believe even your “whitest” sangha doesn’t try to exclude people of color, and in fact puts effort into being welcoming. I guess I am wondering how your white sangha KNOWS they are being welcoming to people of color? Has your group sat down and had disturbingly honest conversations with the folks of color you are welcoming? I’m guessing not, only because so very few people are having open dialog about race.
To me, this is what this book is about. It is about disrupting the deeply rooted racist structures that keep people who are living as neighbors in a community where there are groups of “them” and “us” and “other.” To me, this book is about encouraging white folks to come into the reality of their privilege, to talk about their racism out loud with other white folks.
The hatred, fear and violence isn’t going to stop until white folks, like me, stop being comfortable and start getting real. It is going to take 3million small steps by a couple million white people before we get to some kind of noticeable social justice for our neighbors who were not born into this privilege.
You can start to take those steps RIGHT NOW! First by just making a commitment to respect yourself and other sentient beings enough to become educated on the United States TRUE history. Next step? Maybe go out of your comfort zone and sign up to take an Undoing Racism Workshop.
This book has inspired and overwhelmed me. But this book made it clear to me that it is MY responsibility to figure this out. For me first, and with my other friends of privilege. It has also shown me that I can’t look for anyone to give me a point by point rule book, instead I’ll find my answers in my own felt experience of love.
In Kindness,
Mandi M. Miller
Madison, WI
- File Size: 3114 KB
- Print Length: 249 pages
- Publisher: North Atlantic Books (June 14, 2016)
- Publication Date: June 14, 2016
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B01CWYTK2A
- Text-to-Speech:
Enabled
- Word Wise: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#117,550 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #13 in Buddhist History (Kindle Store)
- #21 in Gay Studies
- #27 in Buddhist History (Books)
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