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Growing Up: ending social anxiety + let's talk about race (in a not annoying way) + Alzheimer's
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"Your race is not a significant feature of who you are. Who you are is your character, your value, and your skin colour doesn't say anything about that." (see below) Guys hi, I just watched the 10 min clip of Coleman Hughes on the View (Whoopi Goldberg's show) and was blown away. Someone on twitter put it so well: BUT FIRST Completely unrelated, a little anecdote from the book I'm currently finishing (this one I started & read about 40 pages of when I was in the Himalayas ~18 months ago. I wrote to you guys from there... remember! (can't believe this was pre podcast) Slash if you're new here, hi, welcome aboard!!!) The book is Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach And this is story about a man who attended a 10-day retreat the author was leading. Jacob, almost seventy, was in the midstages of Alzheimer's disease. A clinical psychologist by profession and a mediator for more than twenty years, he was well aware that his faculties were deteriorating. On occasion his mind would go totally blank; he would have no access to words for several minutes and become completely disoriented...
...A couple of days into the retreat, Jacob had his first interview with me. These meetings, which students have regularly with a teacher while on retreat, are an opportunity to check in and receive personal guidance in the practice. During our time together Jacob and I talked about how things were going both on retreat and at home. His attitude towards his disease was interested, sad, grateful, even good-humored.
Intrigued by his resilience, I asked him what allowed him to be so accepting. He responded, “It doesn’t feel like anything is wrong. I feel grief and some fear about it all going, but it feels like real life.” Then he told me about an experience he’d had in an earlier stage of the disease.
Jacob had occasionally given talks about Buddhism to local groups and had accepted an invitation to address a gathering of over a hundred meditation students. He arrived at the event feeling alert and eager to share the teachings he loved. Taking his seat in front of the hall, Jacob looked out at the sea of expectant faces in front of him … and suddenly he didn’t know what he was supposed to say or do. He didn’t know where he was or why he was there. All he knew was that his heart was pounding furiously and his mind was spinning in confusion.
Putting his palms together at his heart, Jacob started naming out loud what was happening: “Afraid, embarrassed, confused, feeling like I’m failing, powerless, shaking, sense of dying, sinking, lost.” For several more minutes he sat, head slightly bowed, continuing to name his experience. As his body began to relax and his mind grew calmer, he also noted that aloud. At last Jacob lifted his head, looked slowly around at those gathered, and apologised.
Many of the students were in tears. As one put it, “No one has ever offered us teachings like this. Your presence has been the deepest dharma teaching.”
Rather than pushing away his experience and deepening his agitation, Jacob had the courage and training simply to name what he was aware of, and, most significantly, to bow to his experience. In some fundamental way he didn’t create an adversary out of feelings of fear and confusion. He didn’t make anything wrong.
How beautiful is that story... my reminder to accept the negative feelings as they pass over me and not resist. By welcoming them we are free of being consumed in them... Okay the Coleman exchange (watch here instead / thank you AI for creating transcripts for me how useful / if you're here for the social anxiety bit, that's at the bottom). I know it's a tad long but this is really so great and so important! TLDR: ... also I know very American focussed (hi Americans, you are very welcome here, you're just slightly outnumbered by "Rest of World" people as you call us) but interestingly I went to a talk by Lord Tony Sewell last week who was making the same arguments about race in Britain (for example education for students in London, which includes black students is now miles ahead of parts of Wales for example (white, working class). I.e. education disparities in Britain today are a largely a class issue not a race issue.) Okay transcript (slightly edited for clarity) or skip to bottom to read about this week's pod and CONSENSUS-ISM: Whoopi: The first question that I should ask you to do is explain to folks what you mean by this. "Arguments for a colourblind America." What do you mean when you say that? My argument is not for that. My argument is that we should try our very best to treat people without regard to race, both in our personal lives and our public policy. Of course. And the reason I wrote this book, thank you. You're welcome. The reason I wrote this book is because in the past 10 years, it has become very popular to, in the name of anti-racism, teach a kind of philosophy to our children and in general that says your race is everything. And I think that is the wrong way to fight racism. And that's why I wrote this book at this time. There has been such a pointing of very specific racial things. Like women couldn't go to get into colleges. If you are a black person, there are a lot of colleges wouldn't accept you trying to equal the playing field. I think that's what a lot of folks have been trying to do. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. You know, as a counterpoint, when I was in fifth grade, we all watched Roots together in public school. So these are different experiences. I think it's also different generations. It's different parts of the country, right? We have very different cultures all living together in one country. So I'm not going to deny that. But I think I view this notion of a colour-blind society similar to the idea of a peaceful society, which is to say it's an ideal. It's a North Star. And the point is not that we're ever going to get there. We're not going to touch it. But we have to know when we're going forward and when we're going backwards and we're going backwards… A different The View lady (not Whoopi): … but wait, I want to get to the book. You actually believe that public policies that address socioeconomic differences would be better at benefit benefiting disadvantaged groups and that race based policies often hurt the very people they're trying to help. What are some some examples of policies that would be better at reducing racial disparities. (lots of applause) Sunny Hostin: And not my question, but when you say that socioeconomics picks out people in a better way than race, when you do look at the socioeconomics, you see the huge disparity between white households and black households. You see the huge disparity between white households and Hispanic households. So your argument, and I've read your book twice because I wanted to give it a chance, your argument that race has no place in that equation is really fundamentally flawed in my opinion. Coleman: Well, there are two separate questions. One is whether each racial group is socioeconomically the same. I agree with you, they're not. Yeah, they're not. And the stats show that. Yeah, of course, I agree with that fully. The question is how do you address that in the way that actually targets poverty the best? And what Martin Luther King wrote in his book, Why We Can't Wait, is he called it, we need a bill of rights for the disadvantaged. And he said, yes, we should address racial inequality. Yes, we should address the legacy of slavery. But the way to do that is on the basis of class. And that will disproportionately target blacks and Hispanics because they're disproportionately poor. But it will be doing so in a way that also helps the white poor, in a way that addresses poverty as the thing to be addressed. That part is true. But as you are a student of Dr. King, I'm not only a student of Dr. King. I know his daughter, Bernice. Right? So I'm going to get to my point. Whoopi: Go ahead, go right ahead. Bernice, Dr. King's daughter, points out that four years after giving that speech Dr. King also said this “A society that has done something special against a Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for Negroes”. He also said in 1968, it was about less than a week before he was assassinated, “this country never stops to realize that they owe a people kept in slavery for 244 years.” So rather than class, he did write about that earlier on. Right before his death, he made the argument for racial equality and racial reparations. And so your argument for colour blindness, I think, is something that the right has co-opted. And so many in the black community, if I'm being honest with you, because I want to be believe that you are being used as a pawn by the right and that you are a charlatan of sorts. Another host: Okay, let’s let him answer Coleman: I think it's very important. The quote. That you just pointed out about “doing something special for the Negro”. That's from the book, Why We Can't Wait, that I just mentioned. A couple paragraphs later, he lays out exactly what that something special was, and it was the Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, a broad class -based policy. Alyssa: Coleman, thanks for being here. So in the past decade, it feels like racial tensions have gotten worse. Do you see it that way and what do you attribute it to? It was actually just technology. We all got social media and smartphones and we had videos being promoted in the algorithm that were unrepresentative and it created this impression that racism was on the rise when in fact it had been on the decline for decades… Another host: Okay. I have a question. Cause you write that the anti-racism movement, there are a couple of...I don't even know who they are. Maybe Robin D 'Angelo. Robin D 'Angelo or Ibram Kendi, for instance… Well, you say that that is just another form of racism, and you even say it has a lot in common with white supremacy. How can you compare those two things? You're talking about anti -racism. You're comparing it to white supremacy. Neo-racists like Rob DiAngelo, they say that to be white is to be ignorant, for example. Well, this is a racial stereotype, and I want to call a spade a spade and say this is not the style of antiracism we have to be teaching our kids. We should be teaching them that your race is not a significant feature of who you are. Who you are is your character, your value, and your skin colour doesn't say anything about that. (lots of applause) Whoopi: Thank you, Coleman Hughes, for coming. Because this is a show of lots of different opinions. And we are multi-generational. And we all got an opinion. So The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colourblind America is out now. And we're giving it to you all. So you can read it and judge for yourself how you feel about what he's saying. Previous editions here. Forwarded this and want to subscribe? Click here. |
Hi! I'm Delia Burgess
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