Ruth King on Healing Racism (Re-release)

this full episode with her. I hope that you find lots of wisdom and healing in her words, I work with the bad wolf, so to speak, in a way that is not making it wrong, because the minute I make it wrong, it has to act out more to get my attention. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great tinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us,

our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks

for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Ruth King and emotional wisdom author, coach, and consultant. She's a guiding teacher at Insight Meditation Community of Washington. She's also on the Teacher's count Soul at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and is the founder of Mindful Members Inside Meditation Community

in Charlotte, North Carolina. Ruth has a master's degree in clinical psychology from John F. Kennedy University and is the author of several publications, including her new book, Mindful of Race Transforming Racism from the Inside Out. And here's the interview with Ruth King. Hi, Ruth, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's lovely to be here. I am happy to have you on. Your book is called Mindful of Race Transforming Racism from the Inside Out, and I'm looking

forward to sharing the book with the listeners. But let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with her grandson. She says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred

and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at his grandmother, and he says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, it's a beautiful parable. I've heard many versions of it, and the one I'm remembering is from the Cherokee tribe. It's an grandfather talking

to a grandson. But you know how these things go, We turn it around, you know, they go through like the can listening, and they come up with different versions. So I don't know what it is, but the point of it is so powerful and and what it means to me, especially lately, is that the polarity of the good one and the bad one, uh, you know, is

really both of coming from our mind. So um, part of what I'm really sensitive to at this time in my life is really befriending both the good and the bad thoughts are you know, beliefs and things that race through our mind and not being attached to one being better than the other because they all come and go with regularity. You know, I work with the bad wolf, so to speak, in a in a loving way, in a way that is not making it wrong, because the minute I make it wrong, it has to act out

more to get my attention. But when I welcome it and sit with it and become more curious about what the disturbance is and how it's running through my mind, heart and body, just like how the good wolf, you know, the good thoughts and beautiful things run through my body. I have to develop a tolerance for that also, because sometimes I can have an allergic reaction to good things

and want to move through that quickly. But mostly what I'm doing these days in my life is holding both in my aren't with a sense of curiosity and non attachment.

That curiosity is so important, Yeah, I think it's important because without it, we're just an automatic pilot, right, We're just like believing our thoughts and moving through the world like it's absolute, and then separating the good and the bad wolf becomes externalized, and we see good and bad people, and good and bad cultures, and good and bad races, and we don't get to understand the subtlety of mind that is projecting on what arises in our view and

our and our consciousness. So I think it's a good calling, especially when when the good and bad are extreme. You know, that's when it we get gripped the most. You know, Uh, to really back up a little bit and just gentle, be a bit gentle and curious about how the experience is being lived and the heart, body and mind, and just to relax with that without taking action, without feeling like you gotta go do something. Um, just really feeling into this thing, these two wolves, and maybe having to

have a conversation with each other. You know, when the bad wolf thoughts come up, we can call in the good wolf to kind of talk some sense into that guy. That's how I'm working with that. So you say that racism is a heart disease. Explain what you mean by that, Well, it's rooted, uh. And my having open heart surgery at the age of twenty seven, where um, I realized that so much of what I had been doing up to that point was just really running around and righteous rage.

My first book was about rage, you know, and you know, being so right in the world, about how I felt and saw who was wrong and the racist this and that, and um. I am realized how to be with my upset And before I knew it because of a hyperactive thyroid um diagnosis that I had had a hyper thyroid that had gone on diagnosed for many years, which enlarged my heart, which contributed to the need to have open

heart surgery for a micro valve prolapse. And in the course of this surgical procedure, I became aware that it was more a spiritual intervention that was suggesting to me that I needed to reevaluate how I went about living my life, which up to that point had just been righteous rage run amuck. And it was in the recovery of the heart surgery that I got in touch with how matters of the heart was really my work in

the world to do. And so uh it took a while for me to build eyes what that actually meant lived out loud, but I often say to people that the recovery from the heart surgery was my first silent retreat because I got a chance to really listen to how much hate I was embodying, and a lot of it was wrapped around Race. The rage was wrapped around Race, and my body was just riddled with such upset that

I needed to vacate the premises. And I vacated the premises using rage as an exit route until I couldn't do that anymore, and then I had to thaw out.

I thought out into a realization that I had to make a different deal with the disturbance I was in, and that it required tenderness, that it required a lot of care, that it required me befriending the upset, the bad wolf, if you will, in a loving way, And in the course of that, I stepped into mindfulness meditation, and that became a real tool for me, being able to sit with the upset in a loving way and to hold it and see it as energy moving through

the body, as beliefs that I didn't have to necessarily agree with or do anything with this gradual process that I entered into, this healing if you will really spoke loud to me about how Race is so entangled with the heart and matters of the heart that I call it, you know, a heart disease, a global heart disease, and it's curable through our awareness, through our care um and through this kind of tenderizing our gentle ng that I talk about that's so important as medicine that supports us,

and being able to tolerate this conversation, being able to keep our heart engaged when we're having this conversation. Uh, it just squires a lot of love basically. Um, So I bring that to this. You know, phrase of racism is a hard disease and it's curable. It's not easy, it's messy as hell, but it is possible to transform internally. That shifts our view and shifts our relationship to our

understanding of what race and racism is. You talk about early on that when any of us, people of color or non hear the word racism, where we start to think about it, something happens, you say, we you know, we get alarmed, and then whether we're conscious of it or not, we tend to go to our weapons of choice,

which each of us have. You know, you mentioned aggression in your case, or hatred, you know, distraction, denial, doubt, worry, depression, indifference, I really like that summary to realize that how that word triggers all of us, and we all have habitual patterns of of how we think about it, and that for all of us are habitual pattern doesn't serve us as well as it could, or doesn't service as well

as a pattern that is more current. Let's say that, yeah, because the habitual pattern is oftentimes a layer on top of what the real deal is that we're experiencing that we can't tolerate by the way, So it's a defense mechanism.

And I think that, um, after a while, you know, if we're really interested in in deepening this our understanding of this topic, we we have to be willing to step into that zone of of what's underneath our habituation are our habits uh, and really understand it and then be willing to kind of let it go, you know, or or move it to the side, so that we can see a bigger picture, um, and entertain a bigger

story about what this is about. One of the most striking parts of the book for me was this idea that that you bring up and I'm just I'll just read what you say, a common disconnection between people of color and whites, is that the former tend to experience the world through group identity, whereas the latter tend to experience the world through individual identity. White people generally think of themselves as well meaning, hard working individuals, unaware of

themselves as a racial group. And boy, did that really strike me and hit home. And you go on to say that part of white privilege is the ability to identify or not identify racially, whereas people of color, it's not really that case that racial identity is so strong. It's part of the world that you you swim in. And and as white people, we can choose to either be a part of being white or distance ourselves from being white. And I just thought that was very profound.

I had never thought of that before in quite that way. Oh. Yes, that's one of the most common and painful ways that we miss each other when we try to have a conversation. Um, you know, white people come to the conversation and the certain innocence and um, an individual, you know, I'm a good person. Uh And um, I didn't do anything. I

wasn't living in that time. Um, I'm here now, you know, as if there's no rude rootedness and the history, the lineage of the people, the collective people are that we've been touched by our lives and the and the generations

of people that helped us get here. Uh. And whereas people of color are aware of being good individuals as well as being racial identity groups, because part of being a subordinated group racial group in this country especially, but I think is more broadly than this country, you know, part of being a subordinated anything, whether it's a race, a woman, a gay person, you know, a poor person. The dynamic of subordination is that what groups us together

is that we share oppression and dominant groups. Whether it's it's white people, or its men, or it's heterosexuals, or it's Christians. I mean, there's a lot of you know, those categories. The characteristic of dominance is that you don't have to look you just don't have to look at yourself as a group because because you just don't have to, and so you don't. But this is particularly painful when

we're talking about race. It's it's kind of the piece that will support what I believe will be a transformation around this conversation. When white people get together with other white people and explore the territory of whiteness that every other race seems to know a bit about, but them.

What this means is that I work with a lot of white people that are in what I refer to as racial infinity groups, and it's so difficult for them because they talk about, uh, you know, we get together and I don't feel anything, and I'm bored, and what we don't have anything to talk about, and you know, and the tendency is to go off and join a cause or to have other people of color educating you

about what's needed, how do we fix it? But there's a lot of avoidance among white people to talk about whiteness. And I think that's a very interesting place to begin this journey. You say that white people may never have as much experience as people of color and talking about racial distress and racism, but they must start, especially if

they are in leadership positions. And you know me, I mentioned We've had Austin Channing Brown on the podcast, and I'm trying to have more of these conversations um as a way of trying to engage in that debate in a in a useful and healthy way. Tell me a about a little bit more. Tell the listeners because I know because I read the book about racial affinity groups, because that was a very interesting idea that I had

not really heard of. And the book spends a fair amount of time talking not only about what they are, which you're going to tell us, but also how to have one. Yeah, I just want to have that concept out there in in listeners ears if it's something they're interested in. Very good. Well, first of all, you know, uh, it's important to understand these six hindrances that I talk about in the book, UM, so that there is something to get our arms around and discuss within the racial

affinity groups. So there's some education we need about the structure of racism that's in our social realm. There's a structure to it that we can begin to recognize and not only see out there, but see our relationship to it. And when we have that kind of curiosity, um, that's

alive in us. Forming a racial affinity group would be a simple process of getting together with from two to five other people of your same race, and actually with white people, I would say, with your with your same gender, because sometimes white people get together and it's mixed gendered. The issues that white women have with white men tends to trump the discussion around race and it becomes more

of the upsets around gender. So to minimize that, I say, you know, white men get together, white women get together. However that goes, you know by racial people get together and just come together. Commit for a year to meet once a month for about two and a half hours. And what you're doing in this in this racial affinity group, and what I'm offering is a mindfulness practice of getting

yourself still and stable together. So there's a guided meditation that you would begin with, and then there's a series of about thirty five or forty questions that you would answer over the course of the year. And what these questions are are there inviting us to look at our conditioning, look at our beliefs, look at our long aims, look at what's unfinished that we're still carrying. Um. Talking about the hoops and ouches in those places of embarrassment and

shame with each other. UM. So it's really pitted teasing through these these kind of tender zones where you've been conditioned to believe certain things and looking at your anger and whatever it might be that can come up. It's there. It's a structure that supports us and having a place where we can engage this topic. So when white people, for example, form racial affinity groups, one of the beautiful things about it because I also suggest people of color

forming racial affinity groups. But when white people learn about whiteness, it takes the weight off of people of color educating them about whiteness. There's certain things that white people can do on their own, but you know, habitually, you know, so many white people that I meet don't even think about race unless a person of color brings it up. I'm suggesting you think about race and you commit to your own engagement and education. There's loads of resources out

there around whiteness, you know for white people. You know, if you don't have to look at those resources, you won't. But I'm encouraging a structure of tenderness and care where there can be a mindful uh uh an intentional, compassionate looking at our conditioning around race, so that we can soften and forgive and open our awareness to see something beyond um. What's often um fear and shame that kind of closes the lens and the heart closes along with it.

So the racial affinity groups are just a crucial part, I think, because it provides a structure for us to investigate our conditioning and work with that in a very intentional way. And when we don't have a structure, we tend to just not go there. We just can easily go back into amnesia, or we can just work. You know, I think our thoughts are all there is. And um, so I think it's very helpful. It's it's it's been

said to be very helpful for people. Wonderful. Let's talk for a minute about you know, in order to understand the dynamics of racial you call it dominance and subordination, we have to look at group habits of harm rather

than looking solely at individual acts or single incidents. And I thought that was so Another very helpful way to think about this is, again, as as a white person, I'm familiar with the concept of well, I'm a good person or I wasn't there, or you know, I'm looking at individual actions, and you're talking about looking at habits of harm. And you use a great metaphor for this

around um, stars and constellations, because you share that with us. Yes, the stars and the constellations are one of the six hindrances. That's important for us to look at the first one we've talked about a bit, which is around the white individual as a good person. That's the first hindrance. But the second one is the stores in the constellations, and it goes with individual versus group. Now, all of these hindrances have to do with ratio group dynamics, not so

much individual acts. So the stars and the constellations are invited us to notice for ourselves, and we can all do this um the habits that we tend to have around how we view racial harm. So one of the ways I described this is when Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, there was a group of us here in Charlotte that got together, a mixed group, to talk about the killing. The video was showed and we were all asked to talk about what we saw and how we felt.

And there was a white guy in our small group of about four or five people who um spoke very um passionately and sincerely about how you know that man should have never killed that boy and left him in the streets and this is horrible and I'm just really upset, And he was shaking and trembling and crying, and he was telling his story, Um, he saw a star. His description of what he saw is what I would call a star, A single incident described um in the situation.

When I talked about what I saw, I said something like, I can't believe that once again, a white police officer has killed an unarmed black person. And this has just gone on way too long. And I named several of the people that have been killed. Uh. And I was describing a constellation, and I think this is another way that we miss each other. Uh. And because of what we bring to the table and how we've been conditioned to see. So, you know, the white guy that s

folks saw an individual incident. It wasn't even colorized in the description and the language that he used. It wasn't like a white man or a black man. It was that man should have never killed that boy. Well, to me, it was very textured. And it's because of the ways, because of the pattern I see, the tattoo that's out there, the repetitive motion, an injury, the chronic nous of this situation.

It's a it's a big dipper. It's a comic in the you know, in the in the constellations So to me, it's useful if we're not just seeing uh, single incidents, because it doesn't have the gravity, It lacks an understanding of the gristant of the broader pain. Uh that's repetitive out there. So I think that's a difference also in looking at it from an individual lens and also from a racial group identity lens um that you're part of a group and individual wouldn't see all these things, they

would just see the single incident. Another example of this is when people talk about all lives matter as opposed to Black lives matter. All lives matter is an individual view. We're all important. Black lives matter is speaking to a constellation. So the these are things we can begin to open our hearts and minds to to see that it's not just a solo incident. It's the patterning, uh that we

want to bring some attention to and open to. Yeah, it makes me think of something that you wrote in the book that really was was touching, and you said you're talking about a dharma talk you gave. You said, I ended with this. The next time you hear of a brown person being killed by anyone, stay present and say to yourself, oh my another of Ruth's children has been killed, then check in with your own heart to

determine the appropriate response. Yeah, that's that's how I move in the world, as a as a body, as a woman, you know, as a lesbian, as an author, as a great grandmother. You know, I'm concerned about these constellations of harm towards the bodies of color, and you know, and there's probably harm within the white body as well. But we're looking at the dominant and subordinated dynamic here. Um. But I don't want to overlook the fact that we

all have experiences of suffering and harm. Terminology question for you here. I was talking with someone recently who said that, Well, it was my son who said that only white people in this country can be racist because racism indicates a system of oppression. Now, everybody's prejudiced, but that racism is speaking to this, you know, um, constellation of harm that we're talking about, or this system of oppression. Do you use same terminology? Yeah, you know, I want to meet

your son. Boy, he's not too far away. I told you he's in North Carolina. He really speaks to this this. You know, the younger generation too, Maybe that's coming up that's that seems to be, you know, have their fingers and a lot of these pots, and I think I think it's good news. Um. But yes, so, I very seldom use the word racist because racists is a word

that speaks to individual actions. Um and um, you know, so it's at the individual level of certainly people can have racist behavior depending on what they're doing at the individual level. Um, But racism is at the institutional level, it's at the it's at the group and beyond level. Racism I associate very much with policies, practices, social norms, um, political systems. Who's you know, when the dominant system is white. White supremacy is an expression of racism and the sense

of its intentionality. Um. The alt right movements, um, the uh you know, white nationalist movements that are concerned about staying on top or examples of racism, racist intention whether. But racism in our social structure is when it becomes institutionalizing. It becomes normal that we see black folks killed with regularity. You know, it's normal that most of the people in the prison industrial complex, the profiting complex, the disaster capital,

it's complex, Uh, is full of is brown bodies. You know. So these are examples of racism as they live in our social context. Their norms, practices, policies, blind assumptions, you know, a police institution, and the habitual pulling of the trigger. Uh, you know. And racism is not something I think we all need to try to avoid recognizing our associating with.

I think it's something we need to you know, kind of embrace and be curious about, because if we're afraid of being a racist or being a part of a racist system, being being a part of racism, then it's very hard to you know, we're ashamed of that. It's very hard to investigate it, to really understand it more deeply. Um. But yeah, it's part of it's it's more of a collective um um, dynamic and and reality in our social realm. You know, who do you see on television most, when

you turn on the news, who's got positions of power? Most? When you look at when you go to your doctor, who are most of the lawyers? You know, you can see the economic influence of it as well as the cultural piece. But I associate racism with culture and with the ways that norms and practices and policies and beliefs are embedded in the social fabric that we all are breathing that air and swimming in that water together. You know.

I think one of the reasons that people tend to avoid things, whether it be common, run of the mill procrastination like my task list, or bigger things, is when things feel way too big to tackle, you know, when something feels overwhelming, our tendencies to walk the other direction. And when we talk about race in the of a racist a person, you think, well, if we could just get that person to change how they feel, well, that feels like, okay, I could step up to the plate there.

When we start talking about this racism as this overwhelming you know, the water that we swim in, how do people not you know, I even feel it in myself. When I start to think about all of that, I go, oh, she's that's you know, I can think about changing a heart or two, right, So what's your reaction to that. Well, I think it's a really good question and a common one, and I think we have to start with changing our own hearts, because I think that's really the fundamental ground

of waking up around this. Again. That's why I talk about it as transforming from the inside out. Because that's where we get in touch very intimately with the mechanism of changing our habits. And this is where a mindfulness practice can be most helpful, because it allows you to sit with what's involved in softening into opening up. You know, when we get ourselves still, when we set our intention, hey, I'm gonna take this on. I'm gonna give this some

real daily time. I'm gonna be paying attention to my habits, to my thoughts around race. I'm gonna be involved in a racial affinity group for support and to know I'm not in this alone. I'm not gonna commit to doing a bunch of actions just yet, going to give myself a few months just to be with my own kind of unfolding and awareness around this. So I think that's

a place that we begin. And I also, you know, I coach a lot of educators and meditation teachers and uh DORMA teachers, and one of the things I say to them, and these are a lot of them are white, And one of the things I say to them, if you're doing your own investigation around race, if you're bringing it and dropping it right into the seat of your mindfulness practice, when you're bringing that disturbance, saying all that confusion, all all of that anxiety, whatever it is, and you're

dropping it into your practice, then you have some stories to tell about how that's going for you. Right, And when you have some stories to tell, that's really all you need to be telling, you know. In terms of working with other people, of course, there's the institutional level of joining organizations and you know how you vote in all of that. But I think at the interpersonal level, we don't have to change anybody. We just need to maybe begin to understand our own experience and talk about it.

You know. I think for white people it's a good use of privilege to talk about race and how you're working with understanding your race. You know, it's a good used for you to have me on this show to

be exploring this discussion. I worked with a guy that um was that was in a high position and a bank, and when the devastation happened in Florida with the floods, he rented three trucks and called a bunch of his friends, most of whom he worked with, and they went down there to help clear out some some of the homes, right, helping people um that were stuck there and in the middle of them doing that work, he got a call from his ball saying, listen, you know you're putting us

in jeopardy down there. You know you're setting a precedent. This is not part of our policies. I think you need to come back to work right away. And he he said, when you come down here and see what I'm seeing and understand what I'm understanding, you will understand and why I can't leave here until I'm done. And he hung up the phone. He was piste off and that was kind of the end of it. There could have been a situation where he could have really been

in trouble, but he wasn't really in trouble. He really challenged a policy or a belief. Are are kind of way a norm that they had always operated. He challenged it with his own authority, his own privilege, and said, no, that's not what I'm doing. I'm staying here and tell this job is done. So we all are on that edge as as people of taking that risk of whether we what I often call beard or pass in these situations, do I follow my good wolf or my bad wolf? When I when my heart is telling me I have

to go to Florida and help these families. Whatever it takes, I'm gonna you know. So we're always making these decisions, whether we know it or not. Uh. And when we turn a light on that to really see and listen to and respond from that place, that place of care, that place of this is something I want to do. This is something I can do. This is something that will serve. Uh. It may not fix the whole problem,

but it's something I can do, something I want to do. Uh. That's I think that's the zone we're in because this is messy. It's not going to be fixed in our lifetime. So we don't have to bite the whole elephant. We can just keep planting seeds and knowing that when we plant them, it's the future generations, it's your son, it's people that come after that kind of smell a certain fragrance from that bloom and say, oh, I get it.

You know, I can look at it this way. There's another story that you tell in the book about um back to this idea of you know, white people tending to see ourselves as individuals and not as part of a racial group, and and how people of color do differently. You tell a story about talking with some folks in a in a training program you were doing after the two thousand and sixteen election, where there were a couple of white men, UM who felt like, you know, I'm

being treated as a Trump supporter because I'm white. Can you share that story? I thought that was very insightful. Yeah. So it was these these white guys in the training and when I was talking about the individual and group, you know, uh, that we're all good individuals and we're part of racial identity group, they both said, you know, I'm getting all this flak as a white guy because people look at me and think I'm I'm just because I'm white, I'm a Trump supporter. And UM. So again

that's a very individual voice. You know, it's not me. I'm not one of him, you know. UM and I and I basically said, welcome to my world, you know. And the welcome to my world point is that that's what it's like to be remembered. Yes, that's what it's like to be a racial member. I have to manage and most people of color have to deal with not only their own we're all in this. Most of us have to deal with our own experience as well as the projections that other people place on us, but because

of the power difference, it has different impact. So so I'm dealing with all of the projections that people place on me as a black woman. You know, um, the automatic assumptions that might be made about me being a teenage mom and you know, growing up in south central Los Angeles and all these things. You know, people seeing that as old poor, poverty, you must have been poor, and it was like, yeah, all of that's true. And I was raised around all this strength and jazz and

the civil rights movement and all this passion. Right, So I'm dealing with what's projected on me as well as my lived experience. I'm dealing with my individual experience as well as my group racial group identity experience. White people tend to deal with their individual experience, but when they're uh racial group identity experience is fed back to them, there's like, wait a minute, right, you know, that's kind

of what happened. So it was a real moment for these two white guys to fall out and get that that's what we're dealing with. Of course, So how are you managing the fact that you are a member a

number Another spin on this eric Is. I think that white people have have um, well, white people have said to me that another reason they don't want to move towards racial group identity is because they'll be considered maybe a Trump supporter, but also, uh you knows, I've heard him say a skinhead or or you know, something extreme as opposed to the majority. The majority experiences around whiteness

that hasn't really been vetted or examined. Uh So the fear is that it's going to look like these extremes, and because they're not that they don't go there. But I think there's some real value in seeing what this experience of day to day ordinary white people is really about, under the under the lens or under the inquiry of of race. Being curious about what it's what is the collective experience that we share as white people, could be

really valuable. I can't think of the comedian whose joke is you know, it's it's similar to that about how good it is to be a white person, and how he could you know, you know, as people of color have to be afraid getting in a time machine, but as a white person, you can in a time machine and end up in any time and it's like this

pretty good time to be alive. I also think racial affinity groups are also important for people of color because you know some of the traps we get into our um thinking we know all there is to know about race. But I just came back from Canada, and this is

just one example. My partner and I traveled through the Canadian Rockies and then I stayed in uh for ten days and it was amazing, And I ended up in Vancouver at the end and taught a five day retreat their meditation retreat there, and being in Vancouver was one of the most diverse places I've ever been in my life, and I've traveled a lot. And so people of color sometimes we think we know all there is to know about race, but we haven't really examined the by of

color that we have this presumed solidarity with. So what's what what happens with us as people of color is we know about we know a bit about our own racial group identity, but not about other racial groups identity in the body of color. And so we know a lot about our own race. We don't know about other people of color races. We don't know that experience. But in our conversation. We tend to think it's all clumped together. So for people of color, it's important for us to

investigate what people of color means. What does it mean among us as a body of color, especially when we come together, say in a racial affinity group. What is our individual experiences of being a race, not so much as a collective, but as individuals, And how do we understand um our our diversity within the body of color.

And this is where my Canadian experience comes in, of being in Canada and working closely with a Chinese Canadian there, which is very different than a Chinese American who had roots his family roots were in the railroad, building the railroads there and UM, so it was it really stretched my assumptions about um Chinese because I was in another context. I wasn't in American context. I was in Canadian context.

And I think it's this kind of intimacy with the body of color that we need to understand and be curious about so that we're not making blind assumptions and and we're not moving just because we have a common enemy. So this week, the white people, you know that we really turned that around and look at you know, what is it that we're missing out in terms of our

own connections with each other makes sense. One of the things, Ruth, that we have not had a chance to talk about is, in addition to all your teachings on race, you're a hell of a dharma teacher and um we are. We are out of time here, so you and I are going to do it in the post show conversation. But you have a little part where you talk about the three marks of existence that Buddhists talk about, and a short teaching there that blew me away, and I'm really

excited to talk more about it. Listeners, if you're interested in the post show conversation, go to one you feed dot net slash support and become a contributor and you can hear all of those. You can listen to him right in your podcast player, and this one, I assure you was going to be worth hearing. But Ruth, thank you so much for taking the time to come on and to share um your book with us in your thoughts. It was very helpful for me. Thank you so much

for having me. Okay, bye bye bye ye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the one you Feed podcast Head over to one you feed dot net slash support. The one you Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.