March 3, 2022 • 54 mins
In this episode, I talk to law professor and mindfulness leader Rhonda Magee about her book The Inner Work of Racial Justice. We discuss her innovative approach to healing racial divides using mindfulness. Rhonda argues that when we bring awareness and compassion to ourselves, relationships, and the environment, we invite healing and connection. We also touch on the topics of education, spirituality, liberation, democracy, and community.
Bio
Rhonda V. Magee (M.A. Sociology, J.D.) is a Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco and an internationally-recognized thought and practice leader focused on integrating mindfulness into higher education, law and social change work. Rhonda’s teaching and writing support compassionate conflict engagement and management; holistic problem-solving to alleviate the suffering of the vulnerable and injured; presence-based leadership in a diverse world, and humanizing approaches to education. Her book, The Inner Work of Racial Justice, advocates for a mindfulness and compassion-based approach to confront racial injustice and work towards healing.
Website: www.rhondavmagee.com
Twitter: @rvmagee
Topics
01:45 Rhonda’s childhood and upbringing
06:48 Personal vs systemic racism
09:43 Education during desegregation
16:55 Rhonda’s interest in mindfulness
25:12 Bridge racial divides with mindfulness
32:51 Liberating practices grounded in being
42:59 Listen for understanding and connection
46:28 The ecology for justice
51:47 Find a collective consensus
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's important to notice when we're too focus on that
sense of our bounded ego based separate identity, and you know,
to be in engaged in a kind of set of
practices that can deliver us when we're getting stuck. Hello
(00:24):
and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. In this episode, I
talked to law professor and mindfulness leader Ronda McGhee about
her book, The Inner Work of Racial Justice. In this episode,
we discuss our innovative approach to healing racial divides using mindfulness.
Randa argues that when we bring awareness and compassion to ourselves, relationships,
and the environment, we invite healing and connection. We also
(00:46):
touch on the topics of education, spirituality, liberation, democracy, and community,
so that further Ado I bring you Ronda McGee. Wow,
I'm really excited to talk to you today, and I
thought we could just dive in because I you know,
let's just have an informal chat, you know, yes, let's do.
Thank you and thank you for the invitation to have
(01:08):
this chat. I'm a fan of your work and really
just appreciating what you're offering right now in the world
that needs who you know, so many different sources of
support and I see you as definitely offering that, and
I appreciate that very much, you know, thank you so
much for saying that. And I feel the same way
about you. At your name just kept coming up among
(01:31):
so many people that I follow and that I love,
like Sharon Foldberg and my friend Corey Mascara and who
are meditators, and your work just kept cropping up, and
I love it. I absolutely love it. So yeah, I
thought a really good place to start would be a
little bit about your your early childhood experiences. This is
(01:52):
the Psychology Podcast, after all. Would you feel comfortable talking
about that a little bit? Yes, Yes, I was born
in North Carolina to you know, to parents who you know,
have their own heritage and legacy in the soil and
(02:14):
social and cultural context of the Southern United States. I
was actually born in North Carolina. My parents, my mother
is from North Carolina. My father was from the Gulf
coast of Mississippi, you know, which has some you know,
Biloxi in this part of Mississippi is known as a
place that has at least some appeal for those who
(02:36):
delight in gambling, I guess, and just coastal living. But
to be a black man growing up in that part
of the country was not so much filled with that.
In fact, when he was growing up in the you know,
the forties and fifties, it would have been illegal for
him to enter into the water actually in many parts
(02:57):
of the coastline. And so my father actually kind of
left Mississippi and joined the Marines during a time of war.
He served in the Vietnam War. And my mother really, yeah,
was he My dad was in the Marines. He was
in the Air Force, in the Air Force. Yeah, but
(03:18):
you know, I mean service, Yeah, during the time of war. So,
you know, and my mother had, you know, worked for
a shirt factory and done done other kinds of you know,
low skilled working class you know employment, and none of them,
neither of them had gone to college. And so I
(03:40):
say all that to say, you know, I'm like so
many people in the United States. On the one hand,
you know, somebody who's benefited from all of the ways
that prior generation or two more have struggled to open
up opportunity more broadly for people whose whose backgrounds don't
(04:02):
afford them a lot of opportunity. We were, you know,
relatively poor growing up. You know, all of the ways
that the history of enslavement and segregation, impact of family
were present. So impoverishment, you know, alcoholism was something that
my family experienced and I witnessed, and then also some
of the follow on effects that can happen from that,
(04:24):
including physical abuse, domestic violence in my home. And then
subsequently my mother and father divorced, married a stepfather who
also another military veteran, this time in fact the Air Force.
And nevertheless, we saw we saw similar patterns of alcohol
abuse and abuse in the household that impacted me as
(04:49):
well directly as well. So you know, I, you know,
I at the same time, I had the good fortune
of being somehow well suited for or you know, the
way we study in public schools. And and and I say
that intentionally. I mean it's not to say that there
(05:09):
aren't other ways we could be doing education that could
bring more of us along. But I certainly had the
kind of capacity for patients for you know, long term
commit you know, sort of persistence and all of the
sorts of things that can coupled, when coupled with some
kind of ability, which I think we all have to learn,
(05:30):
can make one excel. So school was a place where
I actually did find validation and found a relatively safe
place for me to to grow and develop. And certainly
without the teachers and the community that I found there,
and the you know, the affirmation of my abilities and
my value that I found consistently through my own personal
(05:54):
public school experience, I wouldn't be here with all of that.
So yeah, that's a little bit of my path. Thank
you so much for sharing that. I hope it wasn't
too painful to talk about. Well. I have thought about it,
and you know, done some work on this, right, So
it's actually not terribly painful, but I and it is
something that I think is important for us to look at,
(06:14):
for all of us, because those difficult things, as you know,
are part of who and how we are wherever we are. Absolutely,
I was wondering, you know, just personally in school, did
did you have many experiences of racism that impeded your
ability to learn and grow? Well, you know, it's a
(06:35):
good question because I think it implicit in that is
this question of what do we think of when we
think of the term racism? I think sometimes answer the
question too right, right, what we tend to think of
it as like these explicit So we think of racism
as like a personal characteristic. We've been sort of trained.
(06:57):
Many of us are working with this broadening of our
understanding of what racism might be to include more subtle, systemic,
maybe unconscious or less than explicit manifestations of it. But
I think for many of us at a certain age,
we really imbibe this message, and most I think most
(07:19):
of us in the US still today are working with
a kind of a core definition of racism that is about,
you know, kind of a personal commitment to an ideology
and practices that reflect it, that are committed to an
idea of categorized humanity, right, putting place in human beings
(07:39):
in these categories of race, being placed in a category
of ourselves, and then rank ordering groups and therefore individuals
who fall within those groups based on notions of implicit
values culture, sometimes religious, sometimes languages. There are lots of
different inputs of the ideas we have imvibed about race
(08:01):
and racism, and so there are many dimensions of that.
Of course, there certainly can be this Again, the traditional,
I think, kind of core paradigm that we still work
with is like an individual who was committed to these
ideas and pervade, you know, put promulgating them and maybe
performing a certain kind of like outsized with the hood
(08:24):
and the you know, the swastikas. Maybe an explicit commitment
to these values and ideas is kind of, I think,
still the core hope you think of when you think
of racism and what it looks like. But of course
more subtle forms and systemic collective forms are the ones
that are you know, the water in which we swim,
(08:48):
the air that we breathe. And so when I think
about your question of like did racism impact me, I
would say that there are just a lot of ways.
Oh my god. Well, first of all, you know, I
grew up exactly like I grew up in desegregating Virginia,
I mean North Carolina and Virginia. And I say desegregating
(09:10):
just to underscore that it was an active aspect of
my experience, that we were in process. And I wouldn't
say that that process was ever fulfilled. In fact, I
you know, we could talk about some of the ways
that the efforts were dismantled, even in the latter part
of my experience of public school in the South, but certainly,
(09:31):
you know, I was a child who was bussed across
town to help accomplish these goals of a more integrated
public school scenario, and you know, what are the impacts
of being a part of that social experience? Positive and negative.
But what I'll say is one of the things that
(09:53):
I saw, certainly most of us who grew up in
desegregating circumstances saw, you know, public schools that were very
sensitively constructed to maintain appeal to white body families. So
teaching staffs that were disproportionately white not integrated in the
(10:16):
same way as maybe the classrooms. Evenmore so, most of
my teachers were white, and most of of course the
things that we learned in ways that were not always obvious,
were shaped around a kind of white Southern sensibility. That
means that certain books were not taught available. These were
(10:39):
things that I had to find on my own. So
for me, racism then showed up in those much more
subtle ways of yeah, of like what was available, what
I was able to learn, what I was able to study,
what I wasn't and by whom you know with them,
what kinds of teachers and what kinds of experience experiences
did they bring. But with all of that said, you know,
I can think of and I want to say this explicitly. Nevertheless,
(11:02):
you know, the teachers, the white body teachers who were there,
most of whom in my experience, were at least making
an effort, you know, to to do what they came
to do, which is to help identify and you know,
move through or support students with some potential in the
conventional sense. And so I can certainly think of and
(11:22):
have in my like pantheon of teachers that I really appreciate.
You know, a lot of white teachers who were I
can think of, you know, a couple in particular, who
were very, very instrumental in terms of their manifestation of
let's say, some sort of a racial equity commitment such
(11:44):
that they whatever they may have been raised with, because again,
these were people who were disproportionately raised in the South,
and with racist ideology and teachings having formed them, many
of them, you know, nevertheless, were some of my you know, mentors,
and you know, help help identify opportunities for me and
(12:05):
so on and so forth. So I think it's it's not.
And then when going to university it was, I would
say I saw more explicit examples of racism impacting me.
For examples just in my first year at the University
of Virginia, lovely school, but having examples of things like
you know, instructors not having a negative reaction to me
(12:30):
wanting to write about For example, I had a paper
topic that I proposed comparing an analysis of segregation in
the southern United States with apartheid in South Africa. Today,
I don't think people would think of that as like
a shocking proposed experiment or you know, intellectual inquiry. But
(12:50):
the particular teacher that I had, of teaching assistant that
I had was just a gast How could they even
be considered even remotely similar? Again, a white bodied male
teacher who was just coming from a perspective where something
that was normalized in the US, as you know, part
of our culture could not possibly be you know, this
(13:12):
was in the eighties when we were in that anti
apartheid struggle. It was quite you know or you know,
seeing the seeing apartheid as a certain kind of evil
that we needed to all many of us, you know,
who were at all progressive, were thinking, we must that's
an evil. But we're on the other hand, Southern segregation, well,
there's so many justifications. So that's an example, you know,
(13:34):
being sort of having my own education and my intellectual
interests sort of filter through that lens of a kind
of orientation toward whiteness that I think is a legacy
of our you know, our racism and our white supremacy.
So those are you know, the more subtle ways. It
(13:55):
wasn't until I came to California actually and heard the
inward hurl that me the first time. Oh well, no,
that's once maybe once before that when I was in Richmond, Virginia,
but San Francisco, Richmond, Virginia. So it's when it comes
to those experiences whereby personal racism in the form of
you know, the the epithets and the you know, the
(14:17):
kinds of physical threat. This can happen in Richmond, Virginia
or Hampton, Virginia as well as Half Moon based California
or San Francisco. This is American culture. Yeah, thank you
for all those differentiations and for telling that story. I
actually do see value in differentiating between personal racism and
(14:38):
systemic racism and acknowledging that both exist in lots of
complex ways. So I really appreciate you telling that story.
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(15:44):
the show. When you were young, did you were there
any mindfulness gurus that you liked. I'm curious, like, when
you're kind of inroad into mindfulness for us? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(16:07):
I write coffee like, hey we should pause? Yeah, no, absolutely,
I didn't. I know, there are some, you know, people
who grew up with parents who were meditated. Not No,
I grew up in a kind of a Southern Christian context,
and uh so I will say that, you know, a
(16:30):
kind of a center in prayer, kind of meditation was
very much a part of, you know, kind of the
context within which I grew up. I definitely had a
grandmother who was have been called to the ministry herself.
And so what I, as a very little girl witnessed
(16:51):
when I would spend time with my grandmother, which I
did fairly frequently. My parents were splitting up, so we
were spending a lot of time there. I'd see my
grandmother get up, you know, before dawn, well before she
had to according to the things she needed to do
for others or to make a living, and just spend
time in what I later learned. Right first, it was
(17:12):
a little girl seeing the light coming up from out
from underneath her closed bedroom door and knowing having been
taught that like this is Grandma's time right for her
own cultivation devotion, devotional practices, and later learning these this
was a time of prayer and centering. She would then
follow that up with often she would come out and
(17:35):
we would see her then reading scriptures, more prayer and
praise and worship, and then you know, from there getting
everybody up and going, you know, getting us fed and
getting us off to preschool or wherever we needed to go.
And so I definitely saw that kind of devoted self
(17:57):
cultivation practice. But of course it wasn't called my influence, right,
and so it wasn't until you know, I had gone
to university and come out to California and was in
between law school and starting my first job as a
lawyer when I just realized I had been studying for
so long. By then, I had also gone into Army
(18:19):
ROTC and Spay for school mostly and also because it's
a great way to learn certain things, but not because
I'm pro military. Let's just say, I'm kind of a pacifist.
Let's just say at this point, but I did, do
you know, Army ROTC. I'd studied, you know, undergraduate, I
had done graduate school and sociology and law school, and
(18:41):
I'd just been very you know, focused on all these
you know, ways of developing and conventional ways, like so
many students and those of us who are trying to
make it in the us, and here I was, for
the first time in a long while, maybe the first
time in my adult life, with I mean, finished one
major project, finished taking the bar. My job wasn't going
(19:05):
to start for another few couple of months, and I
just didn't know what to do with myself. I had
just been so you know, so trained, my mind had
been so trained to be constantly doing that I really
could barely relax. And it just seemed to me something
inside spoke of a need to like reconnect to some
(19:29):
kind of nurturing, restorative way of being, because I mean,
I just sort of had a sense that this was
not a good way to start my new career to
be this kind of overwhelmed and overwrought. So I started,
like many other people, just reading things. My partner is interesting.
(19:51):
My partner is a His background is in engineering and
he's a patent lawyer. But his cultural heritage is that
he has his parents immigrated from India, so he's not
personally a meditator. But he had a book on his
shelf that was called the Blagavad Gita for Daily Living,
(20:12):
and so he you know, and there's a whole another
story about that about how as a child of immigrants
from a culture which does meditate coming to the US
and kind of acculturating and assimilating called forth this sort
of you know, putting to one side of all of that.
So he definitely wasn't even reading this book, but there
it was on the shelf, and I read it and
(20:35):
found in it descriptions of one pointed meditation kind of
way of calming and centering the mind, specifically offered as
a translation of practice for daily living in the Western context.
So it was being offered by an Indian American immigrant
(20:56):
whose name was Eknath Estoran, right, So he had written
this books specifically to support this translation and this kind
of you know, sharing of these practices to those of
us in this culture. So and I just name that
because you know, sometimes when we think about how we
come to these practices, we can be concerned about appropriation.
(21:18):
We can be concerned about you know how we often
don't name the often Asian heritage cultures very diverse in
amongst themselves. But these you know, cultures that we are
privileged to have received these teachings from and to recogn
(21:39):
we'd often you know, often don't recognize the gift nature
of how we you know how they came to be here,
and that there was this beautiful conscious inter play and
interaction of cultures that I think is again part of
the genius of the American experience experiment, however difficult it
(22:00):
is for us to hold it. Yeah, So for me,
it was reading first and really experimenting at home and
just feeling like, oh, right away, like there was at
least something here, not something easy for me to actually practice,
but something that with practice I might from through which
you know, with practice, I might experience some greater ability
(22:23):
to calm myself and to support myself on this journey.
And so that's where that's actually how it started, you know,
in my twenties, reading books, trying to sort of steady myself,
save myself in a certain way. And it's interesting, you know,
because even though I was raised in a Christian household,
there was some way in which, probably because of the
(22:45):
way I've been doing certain kinds of mind training and
higher education for Salon, I needed a way of entering
into these practices that specifically spoke to how to cultivate,
you know, and work with the qualities of the mind.
And you know that really spoke about, you know, a
(23:07):
kind of almost psychology of well being. That's what we
can call it now. It wasn't called that, but in
other words, something that straight Christianity in the way that
I had been taught it did not so much explicitly offer.
So this is how I ended up, I think, just
feeling a little bit more drawn to these teachings as
(23:29):
a support. Cool. I'm proud of your uniqueness in the
space because you've brought together two things that are so
important in the world today, but I don't see them
going together as that frequently. So I want to brag
about you, is my point, because you made this connection,
(23:50):
and I'm wondering sort of so when did that career
start where you brought you may have this, you had
your personal awareness that wow, a lot of these mindful
techniques that you that you're reading about really can help
heal racial divides, can really help with the inner work
that we all can do. When did you start to
form these connections? Because there is something really unique about
(24:12):
that that that I associate with Ronda McGee, Like there
is like like I think Ronda McGee when I think
about that, and that is kind of special. So I
was worrying if you're kind of comment on that, Yeah,
thank you. You know, yeah, it is challenged sometimes to
take that in. But I but I work with with
sort of you know, really just with some people with
(24:34):
humility being in some sort of right relationship with with
this journey. And so I thank you for the question,
and also for the acknowledgment. I really do appreciate it.
I mean it, Yeah, no things, So I would just
say that, you know, it's hard to pinpoint any one moment,
partly because you know, these are the sources of things
(24:57):
that just immerge in a way from one's own life experiences.
And in eight I think passions, orientations, if you will,
I think I was drawn always to more deeply trying
(25:17):
to understand these divisions that we seem to have somehow
inherited and invested in on so many different levels. And
we're constantly seeming to try to reinvest in, rearticulate, you know,
every generation, every generation, right, I know, I always think
about that. I always think about, like, can we ever
(25:38):
reach a generation where we just learned from our past
like completely, like we're all you know, we're like you know,
what we're done with all that? It seems like we
have to work really really hard. Doesn't this gutt to
do that? I mean, because I do think I have
that saying. I have had this conversation with friends just
this weekend, like, wow, it looks like we just keep
(26:01):
things aspects of it was where I come in as
a psychologists. There a certain aspects of human nature that
make it likely that certain things will be created each generation.
But they're also parts of human nature that can allow
us to override it, right, and that's that's where you
come in, and that is exactly right where we come in.
I think those of us who somehow are I don't
(26:23):
even know how we get here, I don't know, but
we're certainly drawn to question how we could do things differently.
And to me, you know, just growing up, it was
just so clear that there was so much unnecessary pain
and division and missed opportunity for joy and and just
(26:45):
like really feeling the miracle of what it means to
be alive that's coming through all of this sort of
acculturation to meet us versus them, you know, me versus you,
and then us versus them, and then you know, fear
and the kind of machinations around how I can have enough,
(27:08):
and it just you know, even as a very little girl,
these questions about who we are fundamentally as human beings,
the sense that we were all one human family, which
is something I think my grandmother sort of conveyed in
interpretations I like, we need a grandmother like these. But
(27:30):
like there's always a sense that like, yeah, I mean,
could we lived in a very segregated, you know, neighborhood
where I grew up it was like all black folk
except you know a couple of white men who ran
some stores that we would go to, right, some of
the grocer but otherwise, you know, the original neighborhood that
I grew up in in my kindergarten, completely all black,
(27:54):
And yet there was this sort of teaching that like, actually,
we're all guys, children, We're all really one family. You know,
that's forgotten who we are, And that was something that
resonated with me in it. It never felt like it
was just a teaching. It never felt like it was
some story like a metaphor. It always felt like, well,
(28:16):
of course, you know, and you could just tell we're
all so similar in every kind of way, and yet
we're so deeply trained for division. And so I think
because of my own being drawn to that question, how
can we both both try and minimize the harm that
(28:37):
comes from the legacies we've all, you know, grown up
in and with. How can we minimize you know, work
for justice in other words, But at the same time,
keep our hearts open to the you know, to these
mini missed opportunities for connection. Keep our hearts open to
what you're and your writing. I think called the sort
(28:58):
of existential kind of gratefulness to be a quit, yes,
existential gratitude right like we're right, you know, how can
we keep that? Which you know, again to me, always
seem like an innate like, of course, how can we
keep those How can we do both those things at once?
(29:20):
That's the kind of a core koan, if you will
that I feel like my particular embodiment as a black
you know, racialized as I call it, because you know,
on the one hand, I accept these identity terms and
talk about them and in some ways, you know, brow
but on the other hand, at the same time, know
that these are just illusory ways we have of difining
(29:42):
ourselves and others. And you know, as much as we
can keep clear that to use those terms is not
to reduce our entire sense of ourselves to those terms.
It can help us with this sort of perspective that
I think is is you know, what's called for when we,
(30:02):
if we ever, are going to find a way to
not keep recreating the same pain and hierarchy and work
up justice every single generation. Yeah, there are illlutionary ways
of dividing. There are definitely ways of dividing, and like
people have made those choices intentionally to use that as
one of the main dividing ways opposed to the million
(30:23):
other things about a human or an individual that we
could focus on. You know, so much of the beauty
of the complexity of being human is just reduced to
that that one thing. And so yeah, I hear you,
you know, reading so much of your work. I mean
we could talk all day, right, I mean there's so
much you've you know, you've you've talked, You've have this
(30:45):
this whole five part uh, you know, ground y, I
can go through the whole thing, grounded. Let me just
read them so it's on the record. Can I do
that at least because they're just kind of because for
so much I want our listeners to hear about your work.
But so you have you the kind of ground this
this the stages of the inner work process, with mindfulness,
(31:05):
with grounding. It's part one. Part two is seeing. Part
three is being. That's my favorite. From allowed to I'm
allowed to pick a favorite. I like them, like them
all three because and I resonate most because of my
own work, you know, I really, I really love the
being doing and the existential awareness all that stuff. I
love that. That's my jam. Part four, yes, Part four
(31:26):
is doing. I was like, I don't know about that,
but here you are doing in your own way and
I'm doing it and I'm doing it. Yeah, exactly totally.
And then part five although that this part five actually
might be my favorite, liberating liberating. Can we jump Can
we just jump right to the liberating because we don't
(31:48):
have like five hours right to go through all that.
And I really deliberate, and I really I I do
bring these up because I want our listeners to least
get it on the record for them to hear, and
then for them to want to go and read more
of your work. For sure, I really recommend people that.
But in the interest of time, can you kind of
tell us, you know, what does it take to get
to that point of liberation and what and how do
you define liberation? You know, be different. You know, through
(32:09):
the centuries, through the course of human history, people have
different thoughts and philosophies and what it means to be
truly free and liberated. I'd love to hear some of
your thoughts on that. Well, thank you so much. I
mean absolutely can jump because even though I have, you know,
articulated this sort of five part approach, and of course,
by nature of a book you started at the beginning,
you end to me in common with people like you know,
(32:33):
the venerable tick not Han who pass. May he rest
in peace. May he rest in peace, May he rest
no liberation? Yeah, may he wrest in liberation. And these
teachings continue as he would seem, as he taught so often. Right,
they are here, right in a certain sense, He's not
wrestling here. But but you know that this idea of
(32:55):
intervening each of those you know, let's now say aspects
of the inner work that I described in the book,
certainly each embeds all the others, and so yes, of
course you can start liberation. We can start with any
of them and see different aspects of the others within them.
And certainly for me, I could well start any in
(33:15):
some in a certain sense, do begin my own work
at this point from this place of let's say, liberation
from some of the the ways I have been taught
to think of my own self. You see me already
kind of drawing in the sort of a fist to
(33:36):
sort of self contained atomize. I'm totally sufferate from you.
We can't, you know. We got to struggle to understand
each other and in each other reporters, Yeah, with borders.
So to me, it's about that hearts beyond right and
it's and it's to me liberation has really, as you
(34:01):
lud to it, so many different dimensions. But in this book,
I am talking about a kind of spiritual if you will,
you know, a kind of way of being in relationship
to reality that is more and more kind of open
to noticing when we're getting caught in ways and limitation,
(34:29):
in separation, in division, in reduction. It's really about the
way that the practices of mindfulness or just if you will,
kind of whatever the term is any one of us
may have, or how it is that we work to
disrupt our own delusions about who we are and how
(34:51):
things are. These practices for me can help with you know,
to me, liberations from what or for what. It's liberal
from the temptation, the tendency toward isolation, towards a sense
of self that to me is a delusion. It's at
least in part of delusion. Right. There's a way in which,
(35:13):
of course, we have our own agency and our own
work to do and opportunities, and we live and we love,
and there's some reality to that. I think as a
kind of a metaphor for psychological development in a world
in which everything is an inter relationship. It's important to
(35:33):
notice when we're too focused on that sense of our
bounded ego based separate identity, and you know, to be
in engaged in a kind of set of practices that
can deliver us when we're getting stuck. You know. So
I keep coming back to this idea of stuckness and
unstuckness and you know, opening up to psychological flexibility, social flexibility,
(35:58):
existential flexibility. Like the world is constantly always changing, how
can we notwithstanding all these changes, notwithstanding demographic change, just
to say one example, notwithstanding technological challenge, or you know,
the stress around resources that come from climate and other
(36:20):
you know, issues that we are facing notwithstanding all of that,
how do we, you know, notice the temptation to sort
of orient ourselves from a place of fear and anxiety
and notice what we can do within ourselves to open
(36:40):
up to a place of spacious realization that we have,
we always have. Life itself affords us infinite options, infinite
creative opportunities to respond to the challenges that we face.
And to me, you know, being in that liberating place
is about you know, the practices, and I often do
(37:03):
think of it again, it's like liberating, not liberation, right,
It's like, how are we actively opening up whenever that
temptation to close comes to all of us? And it
can come to all of us, so with humility, this
is like I'm in this too, you know, I open
the news the screens and see you know, war mongering
(37:29):
and saber rattling at the border of Russia and Ukraine
or whatever, at the border of the local school board
that's arguing over a critical race something called critical race theory.
And you know, parents, you know, like those these things,
like anybody needs to be pitting parents against anything in
a concept of public school. But that's happening in our neighborhoods.
(37:51):
So wherever we see these borderlines being redrawn, how are
we in relationship to that, and how can we resist,
you know, the bait, you know, not take the bait
of making someone else an enemy. To me, every different
way that we practice to minimize the likelihood that we
do that from which so much human suffering and needless
(38:15):
bloodshed has flowed over human history, over the eonchs. Everything
we can do to minimize that is falls within the
scope of what I call liberating practices and mindfulness and compassion,
and this existential gratitude, this gratitude and being alive, which
(38:36):
I think, frankly is kind of the core of mylest practice,
I really truly do. I don't think of that as
a separate practice, and it comes from grounding and a
certain awareness that we you know, life is selected for us,
so no accident here, and as we breathe, we are
(38:59):
in connectedness with this thing we call the environment out there,
but actually it's always has been a part of our being,
for which again seems to me, the only right response
is gratitude. And then from there again, so many different,
you know, opportunities to free ourselves can emerge if we
(39:21):
keep remembering that these simple facts in our existence beautiful.
There's something you said I want to just double click
on because I very much agree with it, and it's
that liberation, I would phrase, is a direction, not a destination. Right,
You never have become because what do you what's what
(39:42):
happens the moment after? If you like I'm liberated, then
the moment after you're going to be like, wait, what
do I do now? With the rest of my life?
It's always a process, right, And it's always it's kind
of like a north Star goal, right. I kind of
view like self actualization, right, you know, like we can
kind of make choices in the course of our day
to choose growth, but you know we'll mess up because
(40:04):
we're human, right, Like, it's not like you know, you
ever reach the liberation there and you're like perfect the
rest of your life. I like that you emphasize that.
Something else I want to double click on from that
chapter is the fact that you say bringing compassionate mindfulness
into community based engagement. But this is a common threat
throughout the whole book. So even earlier in the book,
you say, as I'll see from my as you'll see
(40:26):
from my story and those of others you'll meet here,
healing takes place in community. So this is this is
the theme you keep coming back to over and over again.
You brought up the critical race theory kind of criticisms,
and those discussions get so ugly. Regardless of where you
stand on I don't I want to. I want us
to step above for a second and not get into
(40:47):
the way of the debate. I want to say regard
because I know that's where you're at with this so
and I love it regardless of where you stand those
no one's listening to anyone in this right on, everyone's
just yelling at each other. And so how can we
all rise above that using your amazing work of mindfulness
of the community healing and then truly truly listening to
(41:10):
each other because this is the society I think we
both want. It's more of this act of listening and
less immediate knee jerk response, right, right, right, And I
think of these things on multiple levels. Right, you know,
there are things that we can do and we will do,
(41:31):
and we are doing even in this conversation, I would say, right, yeah,
to offer yeah, right, you know, models and ways of
kind of practicing listening for understanding and connection, and really
that's that could be his whole, whole spiritual path I
(41:54):
think right and whole self development path. How can I
practice listening and speaking for connection and understanding? What are
the other goals that people have for listening and speaking
other than right? Because to practice for understanding and connection
is to invite inquiry? What are the why? What else
(42:17):
are we trying to do with some of our communications?
Are we trying to understand or or are we trying
to experience power over in some way? Be right? But
also come across this right, but again even more so
now the systemic collective piece. All of this is happening
within a broader environment. It's not just the interpersonal dynamics
(42:38):
which are so important in which we you know, do
do we recognize and we take agency for? And yes?
And right? We live in a world you know, people
are making money, how making aggrandizing and developing and building
up power through the manipulations of our emotions, are you
(43:01):
know our communities? Frankly these so so In other words,
we're up against a lot right now when it comes
to this being willing to see more clearly more of
what we're up against. That isn't just I'm not skillful
or I'm not being the best person. It is that
(43:23):
it is part of you know, It's partly like can
I be more skillful, can I listen a little bit
more with little less judgment, like a little less judgment,
and can I put myself in the shoes the other
a little bit more? But it is also you know,
recognizing that we on the one hand, have these beautiful,
(43:43):
lovely devices around us that have enabled so much, including
us connecting and sharing more richly in the world during
these pandemic times. Beautiful, absolutely where would I be without
these devices and the way they have been developed and
we all now know churns division, right, it's kind of
(44:05):
is you know, has as a as a profit model,
the narrowing of minds and the kind of the reinforcing
of you know, those things that trigger intense emotion, including fear, anxiety,
that can that lead to this other. So so there
(44:27):
is you know, so this is where you know that
strong brought back that sort of you know, how do
we act in wise relationship not only to how our
own personal conditionings, our upbringings, right, the things we learned,
the things we haven't prefigured us to be open or
not to what we are hearing from another person. That's
(44:50):
really important, and that's you know, we have some control
over that. We must make the most of that. And
I think how we relate to technology and need and
the different ways that that organized efforts are arrayed at
kind of keeping us diluted and keeping us at you know,
(45:11):
loggerheads and at pointed spears at each other. I mean,
this is not just happening, It's not just natural. So
how how are we in wise relationship with the whole
array from like my personal what's happening into personally, how
and where we meet the structures for that, because all
of those things are part of the I would say,
(45:31):
the ecology for justice and for connection that we work with,
like so bringing awareness to every dimension, the personal, the interpersonal,
the sort of social where we meet and how who's
in charge and right, how we set up the rooms.
All of these things matter. But also this you know,
(45:51):
really hard first world, high level edgy problem of existential
crisis of how we were with technology more wise, Yeah,
all of that has to be brought into our conversation
and I think we can though with compassion. Yeah, I'm
really glad you brought that up, and I would yes
end this and say that I see the media, mainstream
(46:13):
media is a big problem with this, with the silos
of the very you know, like c and envers Fox
News for instance, Like you couldn't talk about two completely
different worlds with two completely different worldviewsut about humanity. We
need like a different I want to opt out of
all of that and have like a one a oneness
news tattle or something that takes into account the principles
(46:38):
you put forward in your liberation liberating sorry liberating chapter,
things like expanding the circle of compassion, deepening healing for ourselves,
contemplating all humanity as one family, deepening the path of wisdom.
Where's that in the news cycle? Exactly? Where's where's the
(46:58):
pr campaign for? For all that it is? Seriously well
money is it all about money, money and power over
There's no money and power over right as opposed to
power with with right money equally as much money and
power with How do we have that world? What? There
(47:19):
is at least some And I think that's part of that,
That is a part of the reality. Like you know,
we are finding ways to amplify more of the good.
But it is true, I mean some of it isn't
saleable and some of it will never be, you know,
something that we can profiteer off of and shouldn't be frankly,
(47:41):
and this is radically counterculture for me to talk about
like things we should be engaged in that are that
will never make us money and shouldn't be about making
us money. But I think that's yeah, it's it's you
know again, this is where again my heart, I have
to put a handle of the heart because we are yeah,
you know, we Yes, it's painful, it is. We're all suffering.
(48:09):
We're all suffering in different ways, right in different ways.
Oh no, no, no, I don't. I take this as
like you like healthy inspire each others. So yeah, and
I you know, we could we could talk about this
forever and hopefully in a certain way we will, if
(48:30):
not explicitly, but just nowhere in conversation where we are
about these these really really important aspects of in a way,
the dilemma. So, I mean, I guess I would say,
you know, because I'm a law have been trained in
a law in law and worked as a law professor
for so many years, you know, I am kind of
aware that again life law professor and mindful the teachers
(48:53):
life is multi dimension. My existence is multi It's like
it's I can at the same time be aware of
the oneness that interconnects us, all us as as being
part of one family already who all belong already and
don't really have to struggle for that, and at the
(49:15):
same time recognize that for us to work together in
the world to minimize the harm that we do as
we go forth, you know, seeking to make the most
of our own agency in the social realm. We do
need agreements, we do need ways of working together, and
(49:36):
we do need ways of trying to find collective consensus
or non violent ways of resolving conflict. So yeah, so
there are It's I think therefore, I'm always trying to
be a student of you know, political science and philosophy,
(49:57):
and if someone could show me in more effective way
for human beings to come together than the hard work
of trying to despite our different backgrounds, despite our different languages,
despite our different cultures, find the common ground in any conversation,
in any community, find the capacity to resolve a conflict
(50:18):
peacefully for today, provisionally we know we may come back again,
but for today we've agreed this is how we resolve
will resolve it, and we'll live another day to meet
and share and maybe come to another result. In other words,
what we have called the rule of law and democracy
(50:39):
as opposed to every other kind of way seems to
be the best approximation we can find for a kind
of public frame for discourse that allows for you know,
more free expression, more of these liberating practices, right, more
of us to kind of find our own way. And
(51:01):
so while you know, I'm aware that you know, democratic
rule of law activity political is not necessarily the ultimate
when I think about, you know, just the basic challenge
of like living with neighbors who come from different parts
of the world, and oh it helps to have rules
(51:21):
by which we drive on this side of the road
and not that side, and we stop themselves. I mean,
just basic things that keep us from killing each other.
To kind of arrive at those kinds of that those
you know, right, we don't need the hat to have
a provisional consensus, these ways of coming at provisional consensus.
(51:42):
That's what to me, law has always been, you know,
at its highest invests, is seeking to help us do
and so we have to keep investing in the inputs
of the ability to use language as bad as it is, right,
as manipulable as it is, but nevertheless, we have to
resist that cynicism that says, you know, words don't matter,
(52:04):
and trying to talk to each other and listen to
each other is just you know, never war. I think
we have to pull ourselves back always. The temptation is
to pull ourselves back from the kind of abyss of
cynicism that can come from this kind of awareness of
the infallibility of language, or you know, the kind of
(52:26):
indeterminacy of it. Like you know, the word dignity community thing,
I can you know, I could use it, Hitler could
use it. I mean, it's like, nevertheless, if we can
come together around the circles, around the tables, the campfires,
in our starting at home, in our community and our
schools with humility, with love, if you will and say
(52:48):
that word in this podcast right with love, with care,
then you know, all we can do is keep meeting
each other around that campfire with some commitment to care
and figuring out what language works for today and maybe
use another language tomorrow, but not missing that we're just
human beings struggling to find what works to keep us
(53:11):
from killing each other. Rightly, and keep us thriving in
the abundant appreciation of the gift of this life beautiful.
I'm going to end quoting you. You say I have
suffered enough. You have suffered enough. We have all suffered enough.
May we bring ourselves into continual conversation with one another
(53:31):
and with the racial injustices here and now, ending the
suffering and making things right one moment, one risk, one
luminous reconnection at a time. I'm really glad to make
a connection with you. I look forward to a reconnection
another time. Thanks for the real important work you're doing
in this world. I really support it. And thanks for
(53:52):
being on my show today. Oh my gosh, thank you, Scott.
Same same. I reflect that all back to you. Thank
you for you really important work. And it's an honor
to be in this conversation with you. Yes, may it
continue in some ways explicit and implicit from here. Thank you,
Thanks Rondon, Thank you, thanks for listening to this episode
(54:14):
of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in
some way to something you heard, I encourage you to
join in the discussion at thusycologypodcast dot com. We're on
our YouTube page the Psychology Podcast. We also put up
some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well,
so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being
such a great supporter of the show, and tune in
next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.
It's important to notice when we're too focus on that
sense of our bounded ego based separate identity, and you know,
to be in engaged in a kind of set of
practices that can deliver us when we're getting stuck. Hello
(00:24):
and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. In this episode, I
talked to law professor and mindfulness leader Ronda McGhee about
her book, The Inner Work of Racial Justice. In this episode,
we discuss our innovative approach to healing racial divides using mindfulness.
Randa argues that when we bring awareness and compassion to ourselves, relationships,
and the environment, we invite healing and connection. We also
(00:46):
touch on the topics of education, spirituality, liberation, democracy, and community,
so that further Ado I bring you Ronda McGee. Wow,
I'm really excited to talk to you today, and I
thought we could just dive in because I you know,
let's just have an informal chat, you know, yes, let's do.
Thank you and thank you for the invitation to have
(01:08):
this chat. I'm a fan of your work and really
just appreciating what you're offering right now in the world
that needs who you know, so many different sources of
support and I see you as definitely offering that, and
I appreciate that very much, you know, thank you so
much for saying that. And I feel the same way
about you. At your name just kept coming up among
(01:31):
so many people that I follow and that I love,
like Sharon Foldberg and my friend Corey Mascara and who
are meditators, and your work just kept cropping up, and
I love it. I absolutely love it. So yeah, I
thought a really good place to start would be a
little bit about your your early childhood experiences. This is
(01:52):
the Psychology Podcast, after all. Would you feel comfortable talking
about that a little bit? Yes, Yes, I was born
in North Carolina to you know, to parents who you know,
have their own heritage and legacy in the soil and
(02:14):
social and cultural context of the Southern United States. I
was actually born in North Carolina. My parents, my mother
is from North Carolina. My father was from the Gulf
coast of Mississippi, you know, which has some you know,
Biloxi in this part of Mississippi is known as a
place that has at least some appeal for those who
(02:36):
delight in gambling, I guess, and just coastal living. But
to be a black man growing up in that part
of the country was not so much filled with that.
In fact, when he was growing up in the you know,
the forties and fifties, it would have been illegal for
him to enter into the water actually in many parts
(02:57):
of the coastline. And so my father actually kind of
left Mississippi and joined the Marines during a time of war.
He served in the Vietnam War. And my mother really, yeah,
was he My dad was in the Marines. He was
in the Air Force, in the Air Force. Yeah, but
(03:18):
you know, I mean service, Yeah, during the time of war. So,
you know, and my mother had, you know, worked for
a shirt factory and done done other kinds of you know,
low skilled working class you know employment, and none of them,
neither of them had gone to college. And so I
(03:40):
say all that to say, you know, I'm like so
many people in the United States. On the one hand,
you know, somebody who's benefited from all of the ways
that prior generation or two more have struggled to open
up opportunity more broadly for people whose whose backgrounds don't
(04:02):
afford them a lot of opportunity. We were, you know,
relatively poor growing up. You know, all of the ways
that the history of enslavement and segregation, impact of family
were present. So impoverishment, you know, alcoholism was something that
my family experienced and I witnessed, and then also some
of the follow on effects that can happen from that,
(04:24):
including physical abuse, domestic violence in my home. And then
subsequently my mother and father divorced, married a stepfather who
also another military veteran, this time in fact the Air Force.
And nevertheless, we saw we saw similar patterns of alcohol
abuse and abuse in the household that impacted me as
(04:49):
well directly as well. So you know, I, you know,
I at the same time, I had the good fortune
of being somehow well suited for or you know, the
way we study in public schools. And and and I say
that intentionally. I mean it's not to say that there
(05:09):
aren't other ways we could be doing education that could
bring more of us along. But I certainly had the
kind of capacity for patients for you know, long term
commit you know, sort of persistence and all of the
sorts of things that can coupled, when coupled with some
kind of ability, which I think we all have to learn,
(05:30):
can make one excel. So school was a place where
I actually did find validation and found a relatively safe
place for me to to grow and develop. And certainly
without the teachers and the community that I found there,
and the you know, the affirmation of my abilities and
my value that I found consistently through my own personal
(05:54):
public school experience, I wouldn't be here with all of that.
So yeah, that's a little bit of my path. Thank
you so much for sharing that. I hope it wasn't
too painful to talk about. Well. I have thought about it,
and you know, done some work on this, right, So
it's actually not terribly painful, but I and it is
something that I think is important for us to look at,
(06:14):
for all of us, because those difficult things, as you know,
are part of who and how we are wherever we are. Absolutely,
I was wondering, you know, just personally in school, did
did you have many experiences of racism that impeded your
ability to learn and grow? Well, you know, it's a
(06:35):
good question because I think it implicit in that is
this question of what do we think of when we
think of the term racism? I think sometimes answer the
question too right, right, what we tend to think of
it as like these explicit So we think of racism
as like a personal characteristic. We've been sort of trained.
(06:57):
Many of us are working with this broadening of our
understanding of what racism might be to include more subtle, systemic,
maybe unconscious or less than explicit manifestations of it. But
I think for many of us at a certain age,
we really imbibe this message, and most I think most
(07:19):
of us in the US still today are working with
a kind of a core definition of racism that is about,
you know, kind of a personal commitment to an ideology
and practices that reflect it, that are committed to an
idea of categorized humanity, right, putting place in human beings
(07:39):
in these categories of race, being placed in a category
of ourselves, and then rank ordering groups and therefore individuals
who fall within those groups based on notions of implicit
values culture, sometimes religious, sometimes languages. There are lots of
different inputs of the ideas we have imvibed about race
(08:01):
and racism, and so there are many dimensions of that.
Of course, there certainly can be this Again, the traditional,
I think, kind of core paradigm that we still work
with is like an individual who was committed to these
ideas and pervade, you know, put promulgating them and maybe
performing a certain kind of like outsized with the hood
(08:24):
and the you know, the swastikas. Maybe an explicit commitment
to these values and ideas is kind of, I think,
still the core hope you think of when you think
of racism and what it looks like. But of course
more subtle forms and systemic collective forms are the ones
that are you know, the water in which we swim,
(08:48):
the air that we breathe. And so when I think
about your question of like did racism impact me, I
would say that there are just a lot of ways.
Oh my god. Well, first of all, you know, I
grew up exactly like I grew up in desegregating Virginia,
I mean North Carolina and Virginia. And I say desegregating
(09:10):
just to underscore that it was an active aspect of
my experience, that we were in process. And I wouldn't
say that that process was ever fulfilled. In fact, I
you know, we could talk about some of the ways
that the efforts were dismantled, even in the latter part
of my experience of public school in the South, but certainly,
(09:31):
you know, I was a child who was bussed across
town to help accomplish these goals of a more integrated
public school scenario, and you know, what are the impacts
of being a part of that social experience? Positive and negative.
But what I'll say is one of the things that
(09:53):
I saw, certainly most of us who grew up in
desegregating circumstances saw, you know, public schools that were very
sensitively constructed to maintain appeal to white body families. So
teaching staffs that were disproportionately white not integrated in the
(10:16):
same way as maybe the classrooms. Evenmore so, most of
my teachers were white, and most of of course the
things that we learned in ways that were not always obvious,
were shaped around a kind of white Southern sensibility. That
means that certain books were not taught available. These were
(10:39):
things that I had to find on my own. So
for me, racism then showed up in those much more
subtle ways of yeah, of like what was available, what
I was able to learn, what I was able to study,
what I wasn't and by whom you know with them,
what kinds of teachers and what kinds of experience experiences
did they bring. But with all of that said, you know,
I can think of and I want to say this explicitly. Nevertheless,
(11:02):
you know, the teachers, the white body teachers who were there,
most of whom in my experience, were at least making
an effort, you know, to to do what they came
to do, which is to help identify and you know,
move through or support students with some potential in the
conventional sense. And so I can certainly think of and
(11:22):
have in my like pantheon of teachers that I really appreciate.
You know, a lot of white teachers who were I
can think of, you know, a couple in particular, who
were very, very instrumental in terms of their manifestation of
let's say, some sort of a racial equity commitment such
(11:44):
that they whatever they may have been raised with, because again,
these were people who were disproportionately raised in the South,
and with racist ideology and teachings having formed them, many
of them, you know, nevertheless, were some of my you know, mentors,
and you know, help help identify opportunities for me and
(12:05):
so on and so forth. So I think it's it's not.
And then when going to university it was, I would
say I saw more explicit examples of racism impacting me.
For examples just in my first year at the University
of Virginia, lovely school, but having examples of things like
you know, instructors not having a negative reaction to me
(12:30):
wanting to write about For example, I had a paper
topic that I proposed comparing an analysis of segregation in
the southern United States with apartheid in South Africa. Today,
I don't think people would think of that as like
a shocking proposed experiment or you know, intellectual inquiry. But
(12:50):
the particular teacher that I had, of teaching assistant that
I had was just a gast How could they even
be considered even remotely similar? Again, a white bodied male
teacher who was just coming from a perspective where something
that was normalized in the US, as you know, part
of our culture could not possibly be you know, this
(13:12):
was in the eighties when we were in that anti
apartheid struggle. It was quite you know or you know,
seeing the seeing apartheid as a certain kind of evil
that we needed to all many of us, you know,
who were at all progressive, were thinking, we must that's
an evil. But we're on the other hand, Southern segregation, well,
there's so many justifications. So that's an example, you know,
(13:34):
being sort of having my own education and my intellectual
interests sort of filter through that lens of a kind
of orientation toward whiteness that I think is a legacy
of our you know, our racism and our white supremacy.
So those are you know, the more subtle ways. It
(13:55):
wasn't until I came to California actually and heard the
inward hurl that me the first time. Oh well, no,
that's once maybe once before that when I was in Richmond, Virginia,
but San Francisco, Richmond, Virginia. So it's when it comes
to those experiences whereby personal racism in the form of
you know, the the epithets and the you know, the
(14:17):
kinds of physical threat. This can happen in Richmond, Virginia
or Hampton, Virginia as well as Half Moon based California
or San Francisco. This is American culture. Yeah, thank you
for all those differentiations and for telling that story. I
actually do see value in differentiating between personal racism and
(14:38):
systemic racism and acknowledging that both exist in lots of
complex ways. So I really appreciate you telling that story.
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(14:59):
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a part of the Transcender community. Okay, now back to
(15:44):
the show. When you were young, did you were there
any mindfulness gurus that you liked. I'm curious, like, when
you're kind of inroad into mindfulness for us? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(16:07):
I write coffee like, hey we should pause? Yeah, no, absolutely,
I didn't. I know, there are some, you know, people
who grew up with parents who were meditated. Not No,
I grew up in a kind of a Southern Christian context,
and uh so I will say that, you know, a
(16:30):
kind of a center in prayer, kind of meditation was
very much a part of, you know, kind of the
context within which I grew up. I definitely had a
grandmother who was have been called to the ministry herself.
And so what I, as a very little girl witnessed
(16:51):
when I would spend time with my grandmother, which I
did fairly frequently. My parents were splitting up, so we
were spending a lot of time there. I'd see my
grandmother get up, you know, before dawn, well before she
had to according to the things she needed to do
for others or to make a living, and just spend
time in what I later learned. Right first, it was
(17:12):
a little girl seeing the light coming up from out
from underneath her closed bedroom door and knowing having been
taught that like this is Grandma's time right for her
own cultivation devotion, devotional practices, and later learning these this
was a time of prayer and centering. She would then
follow that up with often she would come out and
(17:35):
we would see her then reading scriptures, more prayer and
praise and worship, and then you know, from there getting
everybody up and going, you know, getting us fed and
getting us off to preschool or wherever we needed to go.
And so I definitely saw that kind of devoted self
(17:57):
cultivation practice. But of course it wasn't called my influence, right,
and so it wasn't until you know, I had gone
to university and come out to California and was in
between law school and starting my first job as a
lawyer when I just realized I had been studying for
so long. By then, I had also gone into Army
(18:19):
ROTC and Spay for school mostly and also because it's
a great way to learn certain things, but not because
I'm pro military. Let's just say, I'm kind of a pacifist.
Let's just say at this point, but I did, do
you know, Army ROTC. I'd studied, you know, undergraduate, I
had done graduate school and sociology and law school, and
(18:41):
I'd just been very you know, focused on all these
you know, ways of developing and conventional ways, like so
many students and those of us who are trying to
make it in the us, and here I was, for
the first time in a long while, maybe the first
time in my adult life, with I mean, finished one
major project, finished taking the bar. My job wasn't going
(19:05):
to start for another few couple of months, and I
just didn't know what to do with myself. I had
just been so you know, so trained, my mind had
been so trained to be constantly doing that I really
could barely relax. And it just seemed to me something
inside spoke of a need to like reconnect to some
(19:29):
kind of nurturing, restorative way of being, because I mean,
I just sort of had a sense that this was
not a good way to start my new career to
be this kind of overwhelmed and overwrought. So I started,
like many other people, just reading things. My partner is interesting.
(19:51):
My partner is a His background is in engineering and
he's a patent lawyer. But his cultural heritage is that
he has his parents immigrated from India, so he's not
personally a meditator. But he had a book on his
shelf that was called the Blagavad Gita for Daily Living,
(20:12):
and so he you know, and there's a whole another
story about that about how as a child of immigrants
from a culture which does meditate coming to the US
and kind of acculturating and assimilating called forth this sort
of you know, putting to one side of all of that.
So he definitely wasn't even reading this book, but there
it was on the shelf, and I read it and
(20:35):
found in it descriptions of one pointed meditation kind of
way of calming and centering the mind, specifically offered as
a translation of practice for daily living in the Western context.
So it was being offered by an Indian American immigrant
(20:56):
whose name was Eknath Estoran, right, So he had written
this books specifically to support this translation and this kind
of you know, sharing of these practices to those of
us in this culture. So and I just name that
because you know, sometimes when we think about how we
come to these practices, we can be concerned about appropriation.
(21:18):
We can be concerned about you know how we often
don't name the often Asian heritage cultures very diverse in
amongst themselves. But these you know, cultures that we are
privileged to have received these teachings from and to recogn
(21:39):
we'd often you know, often don't recognize the gift nature
of how we you know how they came to be here,
and that there was this beautiful conscious inter play and
interaction of cultures that I think is again part of
the genius of the American experience experiment, however difficult it
(22:00):
is for us to hold it. Yeah, So for me,
it was reading first and really experimenting at home and
just feeling like, oh, right away, like there was at
least something here, not something easy for me to actually practice,
but something that with practice I might from through which
you know, with practice, I might experience some greater ability
(22:23):
to calm myself and to support myself on this journey.
And so that's where that's actually how it started, you know,
in my twenties, reading books, trying to sort of steady myself,
save myself in a certain way. And it's interesting, you know,
because even though I was raised in a Christian household,
there was some way in which, probably because of the
(22:45):
way I've been doing certain kinds of mind training and
higher education for Salon, I needed a way of entering
into these practices that specifically spoke to how to cultivate,
you know, and work with the qualities of the mind.
And you know that really spoke about, you know, a
(23:07):
kind of almost psychology of well being. That's what we
can call it now. It wasn't called that, but in
other words, something that straight Christianity in the way that
I had been taught it did not so much explicitly offer.
So this is how I ended up, I think, just
feeling a little bit more drawn to these teachings as
(23:29):
a support. Cool. I'm proud of your uniqueness in the
space because you've brought together two things that are so
important in the world today, but I don't see them
going together as that frequently. So I want to brag
about you, is my point, because you made this connection,
(23:50):
and I'm wondering sort of so when did that career
start where you brought you may have this, you had
your personal awareness that wow, a lot of these mindful
techniques that you that you're reading about really can help
heal racial divides, can really help with the inner work
that we all can do. When did you start to
form these connections? Because there is something really unique about
(24:12):
that that that I associate with Ronda McGee, Like there
is like like I think Ronda McGee when I think
about that, and that is kind of special. So I
was worrying if you're kind of comment on that, Yeah,
thank you. You know, yeah, it is challenged sometimes to
take that in. But I but I work with with
sort of you know, really just with some people with
(24:34):
humility being in some sort of right relationship with with
this journey. And so I thank you for the question,
and also for the acknowledgment. I really do appreciate it.
I mean it, Yeah, no things, So I would just
say that, you know, it's hard to pinpoint any one moment,
partly because you know, these are the sources of things
(24:57):
that just immerge in a way from one's own life experiences.
And in eight I think passions, orientations, if you will,
I think I was drawn always to more deeply trying
(25:17):
to understand these divisions that we seem to have somehow
inherited and invested in on so many different levels. And
we're constantly seeming to try to reinvest in, rearticulate, you know,
every generation, every generation, right, I know, I always think
about that. I always think about, like, can we ever
(25:38):
reach a generation where we just learned from our past
like completely, like we're all you know, we're like you know,
what we're done with all that? It seems like we
have to work really really hard. Doesn't this gutt to
do that? I mean, because I do think I have
that saying. I have had this conversation with friends just
this weekend, like, wow, it looks like we just keep
(26:01):
things aspects of it was where I come in as
a psychologists. There a certain aspects of human nature that
make it likely that certain things will be created each generation.
But they're also parts of human nature that can allow
us to override it, right, and that's that's where you
come in, and that is exactly right where we come in.
I think those of us who somehow are I don't
(26:23):
even know how we get here, I don't know, but
we're certainly drawn to question how we could do things differently.
And to me, you know, just growing up, it was
just so clear that there was so much unnecessary pain
and division and missed opportunity for joy and and just
(26:45):
like really feeling the miracle of what it means to
be alive that's coming through all of this sort of
acculturation to meet us versus them, you know, me versus you,
and then us versus them, and then you know, fear
and the kind of machinations around how I can have enough,
(27:08):
and it just you know, even as a very little girl,
these questions about who we are fundamentally as human beings,
the sense that we were all one human family, which
is something I think my grandmother sort of conveyed in
interpretations I like, we need a grandmother like these. But
(27:30):
like there's always a sense that like, yeah, I mean,
could we lived in a very segregated, you know, neighborhood
where I grew up it was like all black folk
except you know a couple of white men who ran
some stores that we would go to, right, some of
the grocer but otherwise, you know, the original neighborhood that
I grew up in in my kindergarten, completely all black,
(27:54):
And yet there was this sort of teaching that like, actually,
we're all guys, children, We're all really one family. You know,
that's forgotten who we are, And that was something that
resonated with me in it. It never felt like it
was just a teaching. It never felt like it was
some story like a metaphor. It always felt like, well,
(28:16):
of course, you know, and you could just tell we're
all so similar in every kind of way, and yet
we're so deeply trained for division. And so I think
because of my own being drawn to that question, how
can we both both try and minimize the harm that
(28:37):
comes from the legacies we've all, you know, grown up
in and with. How can we minimize you know, work
for justice in other words, But at the same time,
keep our hearts open to the you know, to these
mini missed opportunities for connection. Keep our hearts open to
what you're and your writing. I think called the sort
(28:58):
of existential kind of gratefulness to be a quit, yes,
existential gratitude right like we're right, you know, how can
we keep that? Which you know, again to me, always
seem like an innate like, of course, how can we
keep those How can we do both those things at once?
(29:20):
That's the kind of a core koan, if you will
that I feel like my particular embodiment as a black
you know, racialized as I call it, because you know,
on the one hand, I accept these identity terms and
talk about them and in some ways, you know, brow
but on the other hand, at the same time, know
that these are just illusory ways we have of difining
(29:42):
ourselves and others. And you know, as much as we
can keep clear that to use those terms is not
to reduce our entire sense of ourselves to those terms.
It can help us with this sort of perspective that
I think is is you know, what's called for when we,
(30:02):
if we ever, are going to find a way to
not keep recreating the same pain and hierarchy and work
up justice every single generation. Yeah, there are illlutionary ways
of dividing. There are definitely ways of dividing, and like
people have made those choices intentionally to use that as
one of the main dividing ways opposed to the million
(30:23):
other things about a human or an individual that we
could focus on. You know, so much of the beauty
of the complexity of being human is just reduced to
that that one thing. And so yeah, I hear you,
you know, reading so much of your work. I mean
we could talk all day, right, I mean there's so
much you've you know, you've you've talked, You've have this
(30:45):
this whole five part uh, you know, ground y, I
can go through the whole thing, grounded. Let me just
read them so it's on the record. Can I do
that at least because they're just kind of because for
so much I want our listeners to hear about your work.
But so you have you the kind of ground this
this the stages of the inner work process, with mindfulness,
(31:05):
with grounding. It's part one. Part two is seeing. Part
three is being. That's my favorite. From allowed to I'm
allowed to pick a favorite. I like them, like them
all three because and I resonate most because of my
own work, you know, I really, I really love the
being doing and the existential awareness all that stuff. I
love that. That's my jam. Part four, yes, Part four
(31:26):
is doing. I was like, I don't know about that,
but here you are doing in your own way and
I'm doing it and I'm doing it. Yeah, exactly totally.
And then part five although that this part five actually
might be my favorite, liberating liberating. Can we jump Can
we just jump right to the liberating because we don't
(31:48):
have like five hours right to go through all that.
And I really deliberate, and I really I I do
bring these up because I want our listeners to least
get it on the record for them to hear, and
then for them to want to go and read more
of your work. For sure, I really recommend people that.
But in the interest of time, can you kind of
tell us, you know, what does it take to get
to that point of liberation and what and how do
you define liberation? You know, be different. You know, through
(32:09):
the centuries, through the course of human history, people have
different thoughts and philosophies and what it means to be
truly free and liberated. I'd love to hear some of
your thoughts on that. Well, thank you so much. I
mean absolutely can jump because even though I have, you know,
articulated this sort of five part approach, and of course,
by nature of a book you started at the beginning,
you end to me in common with people like you know,
(32:33):
the venerable tick not Han who pass. May he rest
in peace. May he rest in peace, May he rest
no liberation? Yeah, may he wrest in liberation. And these
teachings continue as he would seem, as he taught so often. Right,
they are here, right in a certain sense, He's not
wrestling here. But but you know that this idea of
(32:55):
intervening each of those you know, let's now say aspects
of the inner work that I described in the book,
certainly each embeds all the others, and so yes, of
course you can start liberation. We can start with any
of them and see different aspects of the others within them.
And certainly for me, I could well start any in
(33:15):
some in a certain sense, do begin my own work
at this point from this place of let's say, liberation
from some of the the ways I have been taught
to think of my own self. You see me already
kind of drawing in the sort of a fist to
(33:36):
sort of self contained atomize. I'm totally sufferate from you.
We can't, you know. We got to struggle to understand
each other and in each other reporters, Yeah, with borders.
So to me, it's about that hearts beyond right and
it's and it's to me liberation has really, as you
(34:01):
lud to it, so many different dimensions. But in this book,
I am talking about a kind of spiritual if you will,
you know, a kind of way of being in relationship
to reality that is more and more kind of open
to noticing when we're getting caught in ways and limitation,
(34:29):
in separation, in division, in reduction. It's really about the
way that the practices of mindfulness or just if you will,
kind of whatever the term is any one of us
may have, or how it is that we work to
disrupt our own delusions about who we are and how
(34:51):
things are. These practices for me can help with you know,
to me, liberations from what or for what. It's liberal
from the temptation, the tendency toward isolation, towards a sense
of self that to me is a delusion. It's at
least in part of delusion. Right. There's a way in which,
(35:13):
of course, we have our own agency and our own
work to do and opportunities, and we live and we love,
and there's some reality to that. I think as a
kind of a metaphor for psychological development in a world
in which everything is an inter relationship. It's important to
(35:33):
notice when we're too focused on that sense of our
bounded ego based separate identity, and you know, to be
in engaged in a kind of set of practices that
can deliver us when we're getting stuck. You know. So
I keep coming back to this idea of stuckness and
unstuckness and you know, opening up to psychological flexibility, social flexibility,
(35:58):
existential flexibility. Like the world is constantly always changing, how
can we notwithstanding all these changes, notwithstanding demographic change, just
to say one example, notwithstanding technological challenge, or you know,
the stress around resources that come from climate and other
(36:20):
you know, issues that we are facing notwithstanding all of that,
how do we, you know, notice the temptation to sort
of orient ourselves from a place of fear and anxiety
and notice what we can do within ourselves to open
(36:40):
up to a place of spacious realization that we have,
we always have. Life itself affords us infinite options, infinite
creative opportunities to respond to the challenges that we face.
And to me, you know, being in that liberating place
is about you know, the practices, and I often do
(37:03):
think of it again, it's like liberating, not liberation, right,
It's like, how are we actively opening up whenever that
temptation to close comes to all of us? And it
can come to all of us, so with humility, this
is like I'm in this too, you know, I open
the news the screens and see you know, war mongering
(37:29):
and saber rattling at the border of Russia and Ukraine
or whatever, at the border of the local school board
that's arguing over a critical race something called critical race theory.
And you know, parents, you know, like those these things,
like anybody needs to be pitting parents against anything in
a concept of public school. But that's happening in our neighborhoods.
(37:51):
So wherever we see these borderlines being redrawn, how are
we in relationship to that, and how can we resist,
you know, the bait, you know, not take the bait
of making someone else an enemy. To me, every different
way that we practice to minimize the likelihood that we
do that from which so much human suffering and needless
(38:15):
bloodshed has flowed over human history, over the eonchs. Everything
we can do to minimize that is falls within the
scope of what I call liberating practices and mindfulness and compassion,
and this existential gratitude, this gratitude and being alive, which
(38:36):
I think, frankly is kind of the core of mylest practice,
I really truly do. I don't think of that as
a separate practice, and it comes from grounding and a
certain awareness that we you know, life is selected for us,
so no accident here, and as we breathe, we are
(38:59):
in connectedness with this thing we call the environment out there,
but actually it's always has been a part of our being,
for which again seems to me, the only right response
is gratitude. And then from there again, so many different,
you know, opportunities to free ourselves can emerge if we
(39:21):
keep remembering that these simple facts in our existence beautiful.
There's something you said I want to just double click
on because I very much agree with it, and it's
that liberation, I would phrase, is a direction, not a destination. Right,
You never have become because what do you what's what
(39:42):
happens the moment after? If you like I'm liberated, then
the moment after you're going to be like, wait, what
do I do now? With the rest of my life?
It's always a process, right, And it's always it's kind
of like a north Star goal, right. I kind of
view like self actualization, right, you know, like we can
kind of make choices in the course of our day
to choose growth, but you know we'll mess up because
(40:04):
we're human, right, Like, it's not like you know, you
ever reach the liberation there and you're like perfect the
rest of your life. I like that you emphasize that.
Something else I want to double click on from that
chapter is the fact that you say bringing compassionate mindfulness
into community based engagement. But this is a common threat
throughout the whole book. So even earlier in the book,
you say, as I'll see from my as you'll see
(40:26):
from my story and those of others you'll meet here,
healing takes place in community. So this is this is
the theme you keep coming back to over and over again.
You brought up the critical race theory kind of criticisms,
and those discussions get so ugly. Regardless of where you
stand on I don't I want to. I want us
to step above for a second and not get into
(40:47):
the way of the debate. I want to say regard
because I know that's where you're at with this so
and I love it regardless of where you stand those
no one's listening to anyone in this right on, everyone's
just yelling at each other. And so how can we
all rise above that using your amazing work of mindfulness
of the community healing and then truly truly listening to
(41:10):
each other because this is the society I think we
both want. It's more of this act of listening and
less immediate knee jerk response, right, right, right, And I
think of these things on multiple levels. Right, you know,
there are things that we can do and we will do,
(41:31):
and we are doing even in this conversation, I would say, right, yeah,
to offer yeah, right, you know, models and ways of
kind of practicing listening for understanding and connection, and really
that's that could be his whole, whole spiritual path I
(41:54):
think right and whole self development path. How can I
practice listening and speaking for connection and understanding? What are
the other goals that people have for listening and speaking
other than right? Because to practice for understanding and connection
is to invite inquiry? What are the why? What else
(42:17):
are we trying to do with some of our communications?
Are we trying to understand or or are we trying
to experience power over in some way? Be right? But
also come across this right, but again even more so
now the systemic collective piece. All of this is happening
within a broader environment. It's not just the interpersonal dynamics
(42:38):
which are so important in which we you know, do
do we recognize and we take agency for? And yes?
And right? We live in a world you know, people
are making money, how making aggrandizing and developing and building
up power through the manipulations of our emotions, are you
(43:01):
know our communities? Frankly these so so In other words,
we're up against a lot right now when it comes
to this being willing to see more clearly more of
what we're up against. That isn't just I'm not skillful
or I'm not being the best person. It is that
(43:23):
it is part of you know, It's partly like can
I be more skillful, can I listen a little bit
more with little less judgment, like a little less judgment,
and can I put myself in the shoes the other
a little bit more? But it is also you know,
recognizing that we on the one hand, have these beautiful,
(43:43):
lovely devices around us that have enabled so much, including
us connecting and sharing more richly in the world during
these pandemic times. Beautiful, absolutely where would I be without
these devices and the way they have been developed and
we all now know churns division, right, it's kind of
(44:05):
is you know, has as a as a profit model,
the narrowing of minds and the kind of the reinforcing
of you know, those things that trigger intense emotion, including fear, anxiety,
that can that lead to this other. So so there
(44:27):
is you know, so this is where you know that
strong brought back that sort of you know, how do
we act in wise relationship not only to how our
own personal conditionings, our upbringings, right, the things we learned,
the things we haven't prefigured us to be open or
not to what we are hearing from another person. That's
(44:50):
really important, and that's you know, we have some control
over that. We must make the most of that. And
I think how we relate to technology and need and
the different ways that that organized efforts are arrayed at
kind of keeping us diluted and keeping us at you know,
(45:11):
loggerheads and at pointed spears at each other. I mean,
this is not just happening, It's not just natural. So
how how are we in wise relationship with the whole
array from like my personal what's happening into personally, how
and where we meet the structures for that, because all
of those things are part of the I would say,
(45:31):
the ecology for justice and for connection that we work with,
like so bringing awareness to every dimension, the personal, the interpersonal,
the sort of social where we meet and how who's
in charge and right, how we set up the rooms.
All of these things matter. But also this you know,
(45:51):
really hard first world, high level edgy problem of existential
crisis of how we were with technology more wise, Yeah,
all of that has to be brought into our conversation
and I think we can though with compassion. Yeah, I'm
really glad you brought that up, and I would yes
end this and say that I see the media, mainstream
(46:13):
media is a big problem with this, with the silos
of the very you know, like c and envers Fox
News for instance, Like you couldn't talk about two completely
different worlds with two completely different worldviewsut about humanity. We
need like a different I want to opt out of
all of that and have like a one a oneness
news tattle or something that takes into account the principles
(46:38):
you put forward in your liberation liberating sorry liberating chapter,
things like expanding the circle of compassion, deepening healing for ourselves,
contemplating all humanity as one family, deepening the path of wisdom.
Where's that in the news cycle? Exactly? Where's where's the
(46:58):
pr campaign for? For all that it is? Seriously well
money is it all about money, money and power over
There's no money and power over right as opposed to
power with with right money equally as much money and
power with How do we have that world? What? There
(47:19):
is at least some And I think that's part of that,
That is a part of the reality. Like you know,
we are finding ways to amplify more of the good.
But it is true, I mean some of it isn't
saleable and some of it will never be, you know,
something that we can profiteer off of and shouldn't be frankly,
(47:41):
and this is radically counterculture for me to talk about
like things we should be engaged in that are that
will never make us money and shouldn't be about making
us money. But I think that's yeah, it's it's you
know again, this is where again my heart, I have
to put a handle of the heart because we are yeah,
you know, we Yes, it's painful, it is. We're all suffering.
(48:09):
We're all suffering in different ways, right in different ways.
Oh no, no, no, I don't. I take this as
like you like healthy inspire each others. So yeah, and
I you know, we could we could talk about this
forever and hopefully in a certain way we will, if
(48:30):
not explicitly, but just nowhere in conversation where we are
about these these really really important aspects of in a way,
the dilemma. So, I mean, I guess I would say,
you know, because I'm a law have been trained in
a law in law and worked as a law professor
for so many years, you know, I am kind of
aware that again life law professor and mindful the teachers
(48:53):
life is multi dimension. My existence is multi It's like
it's I can at the same time be aware of
the oneness that interconnects us, all us as as being
part of one family already who all belong already and
don't really have to struggle for that, and at the
(49:15):
same time recognize that for us to work together in
the world to minimize the harm that we do as
we go forth, you know, seeking to make the most
of our own agency in the social realm. We do
need agreements, we do need ways of working together, and
(49:36):
we do need ways of trying to find collective consensus
or non violent ways of resolving conflict. So yeah, so
there are It's I think therefore, I'm always trying to
be a student of you know, political science and philosophy,
(49:57):
and if someone could show me in more effective way
for human beings to come together than the hard work
of trying to despite our different backgrounds, despite our different languages,
despite our different cultures, find the common ground in any conversation,
in any community, find the capacity to resolve a conflict
(50:18):
peacefully for today, provisionally we know we may come back again,
but for today we've agreed this is how we resolve
will resolve it, and we'll live another day to meet
and share and maybe come to another result. In other words,
what we have called the rule of law and democracy
(50:39):
as opposed to every other kind of way seems to
be the best approximation we can find for a kind
of public frame for discourse that allows for you know,
more free expression, more of these liberating practices, right, more
of us to kind of find our own way. And
(51:01):
so while you know, I'm aware that you know, democratic
rule of law activity political is not necessarily the ultimate
when I think about, you know, just the basic challenge
of like living with neighbors who come from different parts
of the world, and oh it helps to have rules
(51:21):
by which we drive on this side of the road
and not that side, and we stop themselves. I mean,
just basic things that keep us from killing each other.
To kind of arrive at those kinds of that those
you know, right, we don't need the hat to have
a provisional consensus, these ways of coming at provisional consensus.
(51:42):
That's what to me, law has always been, you know,
at its highest invests, is seeking to help us do
and so we have to keep investing in the inputs
of the ability to use language as bad as it is, right,
as manipulable as it is, but nevertheless, we have to
resist that cynicism that says, you know, words don't matter,
(52:04):
and trying to talk to each other and listen to
each other is just you know, never war. I think
we have to pull ourselves back always. The temptation is
to pull ourselves back from the kind of abyss of
cynicism that can come from this kind of awareness of
the infallibility of language, or you know, the kind of
(52:26):
indeterminacy of it. Like you know, the word dignity community thing,
I can you know, I could use it, Hitler could
use it. I mean, it's like, nevertheless, if we can
come together around the circles, around the tables, the campfires,
in our starting at home, in our community and our
schools with humility, with love, if you will and say
(52:48):
that word in this podcast right with love, with care,
then you know, all we can do is keep meeting
each other around that campfire with some commitment to care
and figuring out what language works for today and maybe
use another language tomorrow, but not missing that we're just
human beings struggling to find what works to keep us
(53:11):
from killing each other. Rightly, and keep us thriving in
the abundant appreciation of the gift of this life beautiful.
I'm going to end quoting you. You say I have
suffered enough. You have suffered enough. We have all suffered enough.
May we bring ourselves into continual conversation with one another
(53:31):
and with the racial injustices here and now, ending the
suffering and making things right one moment, one risk, one
luminous reconnection at a time. I'm really glad to make
a connection with you. I look forward to a reconnection
another time. Thanks for the real important work you're doing
in this world. I really support it. And thanks for
(53:52):
being on my show today. Oh my gosh, thank you, Scott.
Same same. I reflect that all back to you. Thank
you for you really important work. And it's an honor
to be in this conversation with you. Yes, may it
continue in some ways explicit and implicit from here. Thank you,
Thanks Rondon, Thank you, thanks for listening to this episode
(54:14):
of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in
some way to something you heard, I encourage you to
join in the discussion at thusycologypodcast dot com. We're on
our YouTube page the Psychology Podcast. We also put up
some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well,
so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being
such a great supporter of the show, and tune in
next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.
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