Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye. When I'm on a book tour, I sleep on couches or in guest bedrooms of different host families along the way. A few years ago, a very kind gentleman in North Carolina was generous enough to host me in his home for a couple of nights.
He was elderly, African-American, and disabled, but he wanted to attend my book talk even though it was late in the evening and he had trouble seeing at night. So he asked that I drive us both to and from the event in his car. After a great discussion at the bookstore, we were so engaged in conversation on the drive back to the house that he forgot I was relying on him to give me directions back to the house.
As soon as he realized it, he said, "Timber, you were supposed to turn left back there." So I made a U-turn in the middle of the street, and he reacted as if I had just hit a pedestrian and driven away. He had a death-grip on the door handle with one hand, grabbed the center console with the other, and screamed, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" I pulled over because he was obviously distraught and said, "I just turned the car
"around because you said I had driven past your street." He looked at me and said, "Oh, you don't know about DWB, do you?" That night, I learned the difference between white privilege and white ignorance.
Yes, I was ignorant that DWB, Driving While Black, means you can't pull those kinds of maneuvers on the road because, if a certain type of cop sees a person of color doing the same thing, that driver would get pulled over so fast, head slammed against the hood of the car with arms handcuffed behind his back, and I didn't even think twice about making that U-turn; that is white ignorance. Privilege is when you think something is not a problem just because it doesn't personally affect you.
Well, racism is a problem whether it personally affects you or not. And it isn't limited to job inequality or persons of color serving prison sentences four-times longer than a white person who had committed the same crime, racism is bigger than my parents forbidding me from dating anyone in my teens who wasn't white and Jewish, to which I obviously responded by dating the darkest-skin, black Christian I could find, racism is a matter of life or death.
A few days ago, I tried starting an online discussion about how we can manage our outrage over the brutal murder of George Floyd. Many people responded that I have no business talking about racism because I'm not black, which is a fair point, though I've had my share of death threats, hate crimes, and even swastikas carved on my locker in high school simply because I'm from Israel.
And other people said it would be irresponsible for me to ignore what's going on and keep posting as if nothing happened, which is also a fair point. Others understood my effort as an ally to bring mindfulness to a very sensitive and chaotic situation. But too many started arguing with one another using racial slurs so disgusting that I finally deleted the online posts altogether.
It was my friend Dwayne who encouraged me to speak my truth, explaining black people didn't end slavery just like Jews didn't defeat the Nazis, allies who come together are imperative for love to win the day. You don't have to be a woman to stand for women's rights, nor black to fight for equality. I get people's anger and feel it coursing through me.
I watch the protests and rioting that remind me of the aftermath from the beating of Rodney King back in 1991, furious that we've made so little progress in the past 30 years. Silent and peaceful protests clearly have not worked, and when worldwide violent riots don't affect change, the mistake I made was trying to put out the fire while it was still raging. Any fireman knows that sometimes you have to let a blaze burn for a while before it can be managed.
What I try to remember whenever I feel this level of rage within me is that if I start hating the haters, I become a hater myself. And since everyone feels their hatred is justified, I turn to the Buddhist eightfold path of mindfully responding to what we witness rather than reacting to it. Yes, we are taught to be tolerant and accepting, but tolerance does not mean accepting what is harmful.
George Floyd was choked to death by a police officer kneeling on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, while George was crying, "I can't breathe." Three other officers stood by and watched, as George's body became unresponsive. Regardless of your personal opinions about what happened, I want you to set a timer for eight minutes and 46 seconds to truly grasp how long that is.
Tempting as it may be to respond to violence with violence, I'm still going to risk saying this too soon because it's better than speaking up too late: Buddhism is about controlling your emotions, which doesn't mean avoiding your emotions. Feel your temper, understand your temper, but please don't lose your temper. Don't stoop to the very violence we wish to eradicate. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg says: "Reacting in anger will not advance one's ability to persuade."
This brutal crime was videotaped and is rightfully causing outrage all over the world. This police behavior is NOT okay. Things MUST change. So, be enraged. Be furious. It's not just about bringing those 4 officers to justice, it's time for all of us to really question what is just, and hold everyone accountable. As we chant in Zen temples every morning all over the world: Greed, Hatred, and Ignorance rise endlessly, I vow to abandon them.
In George Floyd's memory, the following are eight minutes and 46 seconds of silence. Let that sink in.