Spiritual Shadows in Whiteness Work

Trigger warning for People of Color: This post deals with the anniversary of Tony Robinson's death, recent assaults by a white teacher of a young black girl in Madison schools, and white spiritual bypassing. Please read at your own discretion.

For white folks, this post is likely to make you as uncomfortable to read as it made me to write. So please, read with kindness. But read it. It's essential.

What seemed separate suddenly wasn't.The new hashtags #blacklivesmatter or #blm had, previously, felt important, but far away. Distant. Not that I did research to see when any Black people had been shot by police in Madison. Not if, but when. Police violence against Black bodies seemed conveniently elsewhere, even if Ferguson was in the Midwest depending on who you asked, even if it was the hometown of one of my longest running students, a white woman shaken to the core by how close it suddenly felt to her.

But checking twitter that night in March four years ago, I swear - though this may be 20/20 in hindsight - I could feel the walls falling, the distance closing. Seeing at first the bare descriptions - a young black man, an older white male cop - then the name: Tony, called Terrell - Robinson. Then there was a face, too, varying depending on who was putting it up - local Black community or police department. There were no pictures of him where he looked like a thug. No, that difference came in description, evocation of the incident - mentions of drugs, possibly being armed, uncontrollable.

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Ilana is reading the 76 page police report - with a lot of redaction - about an 11 year old black girl whose braids were pulled out, who was dragged on the ground, and hit by teacher at Whitehorse Middle School a couple of weeks ago in Madison. Reading the report is bringing it closer, clear, even with all the details protected for privacy. That feels important, because the white male teacher won't be returning to Whitehorse, but this week our Black District Attorney announced he will not press charges against the teacher.

The gap between the versions of the story, the experiences of the girl and black witnesses, versus the teacher and white witnesses, is a gaping maw. These differences are so separate as to seem surreal, seem as if someone must be lying, or over-exaggerating, or denying, or projecting, or all sides doing some of the above. Of course, eyewitness testimony in any situation, much less a traumatic one, is notoriously inaccurate. But to decide one side is completely accurate and reject the other totally, especially to side with a white teacher as a black male DA, is infuriating.

This is the same DA who didn't press charges on the officer who killed Tony Robinson four years ago, so these instant seem separate but they aren't, and any number of ways.

Unconscious biases aren't a conspiracy. They aren't that, well, conscious. I've been thinking of them more lately as subconscious biases - not without any consciousness, but coming out of wounding, shadow material we'd rather not look at. What John Welwood calls spiritual bypassing is at work when people involved in spiritual practices - such as meditation - believe we have become realized enough that we don't have to deal with our shadow crap. But shadow stuff - wounding, psychic pain, trauma - will keep acting out without our awareness until we connect with it, touch it, see it, recognize it, heal it. These are painful processes, far from bliss.

But healing these shadows is the only way through massive gaps between the stories of those with privilege and access and those who are oppressed. When we can use those gaps to identify where there’s shadow work to do (both personally and societally), we can actually get through these biases and begin to truly heal.

The impact of what the teacher did affects the girl and her community in such a different way from any intention the teacher had and how those who identify with him see what happened. Excusing away this kind of gap is what gets in the way of liberation for everyone.

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For some, #blacklivesmatter is a slogan that focuses too much on identity. Aren't spiritual experiences supposed to be about transcending such specifics? No. Spiritual experiences are about accommodating such complexities. Being able to hold the both / and is crucial, including holding our own discomfort, fear, insecurities, and triggering that comes when our identity as transcended, white, spiritual people is threatened.

Yesterday, talking with a friend who is Chicana, I got some beautiful schooling on how very liberal white folks of our generation or younger can be so busy trying to “Not be like my racist uncle” that we go right into the undealt-with crap and manifest new forms of racism through bypassing. We also miss out on the wisdom of previous generations. There is little wisdom in saying “I am not like them,” or trying to separate from the shadow aspects of our social/cultural moment. Othering racist shadow parts of ourselves, or othering others who represent to us the shadow sides of our white identity groups, doesn't resolve the intense othering of the very People of Color we might be trying to help.

Only the long practice of acceptance, inner integration, intensely loving and kind in-depth scrutiny can do that. Using the awareness and mindfulness that come to those of us who practice Buddhism specifically to work in these shadows areas is absolutely necessary. We can’t hope that by just practicing compassion with what is easy or personal we will somehow automatically become compassionate around hard issues like race. It just doesn’t work that way.