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AI Summary:

• Interpersonal and internalized racism are deeply rooted in human psychology and social structures. • Group identification and bias start early in life, affecting perception and memory. • White fragility hinders productive discussions about racism and maintains racial hierarchies. • Constant explanation of racism by minorities can be burdensome and potentially dangerous. • Class and education do not fully protect Black Americans from the impacts of racism. • Mindfulness-based practices like ColorInsight can help develop skills for addressing racial issues. • Interrupting harmful habits requires commitment, discipline, and renouncing certain privileges. • Systemic change necessitates awareness of internalized oppression and its effects on marginalized groups.

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Source: Resources on Anti-Asian violence

Source: China bashing since COVID is a leading cause of Asian hate crimes right now.

Source: “The human instinct to identify with a group is almost certainly hard-wired, and experimental evidence has repeatedly confirmed how early in life it presents itself. In one recent study, a team of psychology researchers randomly assigned a group of children between the ages of four and six to either a red group or a blue one and asked them to put on T-shirts of the corresponding color. They were then shown edited computer images of other children, half of whom appeared to be wearing red T-shirts and half of whom appeared to wearing blue, and asked for their reactions. Even though they knew absolutely nothing about the children in the photos, the subjects consistently reported that they liked the children who appeared to be members of their own group better, chose to hypothetically allocate more resources to them, and displayed strong subconscious preferences for them. In addition, when told stories about the children in the photos, these boys and girls exhibited systematic memory distortion, tending to remember the positive actions of in-group members and the negative actions of out-group members. Without ‘any supporting social information whatsoever,’ the researchers concluded, the children’s perception of other kids was ‘pervasively distorted by mere membership in a social group.’”

Source: “‘I have found that the only way to give feedback without triggering white fragility is not to give it at all’... These splutterings ‘work... to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the challenge, return our racial comfort, and maintain our dominance within the racial hierarchy’... the social costs for a black person in awakening the sleeping dragon of white fragility often prove so high that many black people don’t risk pointing out discrimination when they see it. And the expectation of ‘white solidarity’—white people will forbear from correcting each other’s racial missteps, to preserve the peace—makes genuine allyship elusive. White fragility holds racism in place... ‘I believe... that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color.’ Not only do these people fail to see their complicity, but they take a self-serving approach to ongoing anti-racism efforts: ‘To the degree that white progressives think we have arrived, we will put our energy into making sure that others see us as having arrived'... The most effective adaptation of racism over time,” DiAngelo claims, “is the idea that racism is conscious bias held by mean people.” This “good/bad binary,” positing a world of evil racists and compassionate non-racists, is itself a racist construct, eliding systemic injustice and imbuing racism with such shattering moral meaning that white people, especially progressives, cannot bear to face their collusion in it."

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Image source: "Here are some common ways in which white Americans use white fragility to avoid facing their unhealed trauma.”

Source: “Discussing and explaining racism is not only a burden for ethnic minority staff, it can also be dangerous. There is the constant fear that claims will be dismissed, and you will be labelled difficult or accused of ‘playing the race card’. A piece of research conducted by Pearn Kandola in 2018 found that a third of black and Asian people (34% and 36% respectively) would take no action after witnessing an act of racism. Of all respondents who said they would take no action, two-fifths (39%) said that this was out of fear of the consequences of doing so. ‘It’s clear, therefore, that the widespread belief that racism is no longer an issue and the dismissal of any complaints, risks having a significant impact on the self-esteem and general wellbeing of minorities,’ explains Prof Kandola. ‘In the long-term, we even risk minorities accepting the stereotypes with which they are labelled as evidence of who they are and what they can achieve. ‘This kind of acceptance not only lays the groundwork for mental health issues such as depression and imposter syndrome but also serves to further establish the problem of modern racism.’”

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Image source: Rachel Martin and Resmaa Menakem

Source: “Class does not protect black Americans from racism... Many politicians and academics continue to insist that education is the key to upward mobility, yet racial disparities persist even when black people attain high levels of education... being upper class does not protect black children from a future of precariousness... for both men and women, black people with a college degree have nearly a 70% higher mortality rate than comparably educated whites... the added stress and physical strain caused by the grit, perseverance and hard work needed to overcome structural racism very well may worsen one’s health.”

Source: "This Article is the first to explore the role of research-grounded mindfulness-based contemplative practices in enhancing what may be called ColorInsight, and to suggest specific practices, ColorInsight Practices, that assist in its development not only of personal capacity to deal more effectively with race, but, more importantly, of the tools necessary for effective collaborative social change in the 21st century. The Article (1) furthers efforts to push beyond the important but limited cognitive-based understanding of racism and discrimination, focusing not only on emotional but relational and systemic aspects of the dynamics of race and racism; (2) mines a rich body of research on mindfulness as a means of supporting cross-racial interactions and systemic change that has gone unnoticed in the legal domain, and uncovers the ways that the law school classrooms and other organized spaces currently tend to keep emotional-awareness and interactional-awareness out of legal education practice and discourse, and fail to create space for developing positive racial interactions and skill-building in the classroom; and (3) offers more than two dozen specific, original or adapted practices for individual, interpersonal and systemic support in opening up space for conversation, learning, and development of positive interactions across race-based and other identity differences."

Source: The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness

Source: “A commitment to the interruption of harmful habits of being is similar to a commitment to running a marathon (as opposed to a sprint). It will require discipline, endurance, stamina, patience and humility… For this process to begin to be possible, we will have to commit to renounce things that we carry that will block the way and prevent us from doing the work, such as:

Source: Good contemplative exercise on internalized systems of oppression: “The poem below lists the reason why it is emotionally and physically costly for Indigenous, Black and racialized people to hold spaces for other people to learn about their complicity in systemic harm. Read the poem once and pay attention to the different kinds of responses it evokes in you. After you have read the poem once, read the instructions that follow for the second part of the exercise.”