Why We Run
Mary Taylor
Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths while others come into the world with rocks in their shoes. That’s the difference between being born white and black in America. A smooth silver spoon is comfortable on the tongue and its purpose is to offer nourishment. An intrinsic sense of security goes along with having one, especially since you know if things take a turn for the worse, you can always sell the spoon for the silver. Contrast that to rocks. You know the feeling of being out for a leisurely stroll and noticing a pesky pebble has found its way into your shoe. You try to ignore it at first, but finally you stop to dump out the stone. What a relief! Imagine however, if you could never get rid of the stone and every pair of shoes you got from there on out came lined with more and more rocks. You’d learn to curl your toes around them so you could stand tall, but you’d never fully be able to relax, let alone sell the stones for a profit if you got into a tight spot.
Not all white folks get a spoon—there are never enough to go round—but regardless, being born white in America comes with certain privileges we take for granted, like going most places without feeling scrutinized and a bounce of freedom in your step. When you’re black, even if you’re confident, well loved and economically successful, the story is different. Scrutiny along with lack of freedom and opportunity come with the territory. There are simply no two ways around the cultural norms and systemic racism that deny you access to a level playing field, instead you are immobilized, in myriad ways. And those are the rocks in your shoes. It means you must adapt, come up with a story that makes sense as you learn to walk—even run—despite the rocks. Spoon in mouth or rocks in shoes can create wildly different storylines through which we define ourselves, see the world, and relate to others around us.
For all of us these stories that explain our circumstances are woven together to into what we call history. Some histories are recorded publicly and shared, influencing the course of nations, cultures or entire generations. Our private history, the narrative of “me,” becomes a determining factor in the trajectory of our life. Both types of histories are partial retellings, edited by the limits of the storyteller’s perspective of an unabridged series of events. To complicate matters, histories impact one another. That’s Karma. The history we construct that informs our actions—impacts the history of others and initiates a ripple of change.
If you’ve got a spoon in your mouth, you might see this as the butterfly effect. Beautiful! If your shoes are filled with rocks, this becomes a seemingly unending chain of events that are out of control and create a daily struggle to navigate in a world where inherent disadvantage has stacked things against you. Either way, history unfolds whether we consciously contribute to a positive outcome or not.
“Remember how much nicer it feels to be in love than in anger or hate.”
On May 25, 2020 history in America began to be re-written. That’s the day George Floyd was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin while the world watched in horror. The 9-minute recording was a stark exposition that racism, brutality and inequality are deeply embedded and are nothing new in this country. It became undeniable too that if we as a nation, as individuals, choose to stand by and do nothing, seeds of fear, hatred, divisiveness, me-first-ness and anger will prevail. These things will become so deeply trapped in our hearts and in our storylines that we may never recover.
Choying Dorje (CD) is a Tibetan monk who grew up on the south side of Chicago. This is the section of Chicago where Michelle Obama lived as a kid—in fact they went to the same high school just a couple of years apart. Chicago has a long history of racism and violence. Al Capone, sometimes known as Scarface, was based in Chicago, and blatant racism dates back to before the 1919 race riots where gangs of Irish Americans dressed up in “black face” and set fire to Polish and Lithuanian neighborhoods in an attempt to eliminate their rivals while pinning the blame on black Americans. Racial and gang tensions alongside street violence remain a distinguishing and disturbing feature of life in Chicago today. Part of everybody’s shared history.
In a conversation I recently had with CD, the subject of violence against black people in America came up. This year we have seen a string of killings of innocent black men, women and children by police; senseless and shocking incidents that have exposed the vicious nature of a broken law enforcement system and the power that is the unbridled prejudicial mind. The killings have brought to light too that bigotry and racism have existed since the founding of our nation, or in CD’s words, that some have a silver spoon while others get the rocks in their shoes.
This year black, white and interracial communities are witnessing the barbaric nature of the inherent inequities within the United States. Reactions have been diverse and often polarized. Confusion has prevailed in an atmosphere charged with denial, anger and fear. Even the “liberal,” mostly white media that considers itself to be non-racist, cannot resist the temptation of adding a caveat to their reporting of these kinds of incidents. George Floyd tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill, Elija Mcclain looked “sketchy” and Michael Brown ran. As if these details somehow justified murder.
“If they were innocent, why did they run? ”
“I’ll tell you why we run,” CD said when he and I were teasing apart the complexity of this year’s killings and the surge of interest in (and by some, resistance to) the Black Lives Matter movement. CD’s personal “history” was informed in part by his life as a black teenager, navigating the streets of Chicago in the late 1970’s. In those days, Chicago had a 10pm curfew. Everyone was used to it because it had been in place since being initiated in 1967 due to violent race riots that had erupted in 159 cities across the country in what came to be known as the “Long Hot Summer.” Race riots spread like wildfire that year. Just like this year’s demonstrations were fueled by images on social media that created outrage in response to police brutality, in 1967 images of police with billy clubs, attack dogs and fire hoses used to quell peaceful protests played a role in waking up a nation.
When the unrest began it was the first time in history that most households had a TV, so countless more people became aware of and frustrated by reports of the nation’s systemic and overt racism, poverty and mistreatment of blacks by the police. Chicago had its own riots that summer too, played out on the same streets upon which, forty years earlier, the bloody 1919 riots had occurred.
Ten years after that Long Hot Summer, again on those very same streets and with curfews in place, CD as a teenager and his friends were hanging out learning about life, justice and what the world has to offer. CD recalls that due to the curfew things sometimes got complicated. Like teenagers everywhere, he said, you’d get absorbed with whatever you were doing at a friend’s house and suddenly realize it was past 10pm. The police protocol was that if a kid was caught out past curfew, they’d be picked up and taken to the police station where they’d get a warning and their parents would be called to come and pick them up. That happened in Albany Park, Belmont Heights and other white neighborhoods on Chicago’s north side.
But on the south side, things were different. If you were caught out past curfew, the police would often ignore the proper protocols. They would pick you up and drive you fifteen or so miles away to one of the most bigoted and racially fraught parts of town. They’d just drop you off in those hostile areas of town; not take you to the police station at all. In those days most neighborhoods all over the country were almost completely segregated; whites in some sections, blacks in others. If as a young black man you found yourself in a racist, all white neighborhood, especially at night after curfew, things would get bad in the blink of an eye. The possibility of being beaten with baseball bats, iron poles or chains was very real. Literally your life was in danger. There were no cell phones to text or call home, and even if you were lucky enough to have the right change and find a pay phone, whomever you reached would be reluctant to drive into such a dangerous part of town to pick you up.
So if you lived on the south side of Chicago, if you were heading home after curfew, and if you saw a cop, what do you think you’d do? Probably run! Not as an expression of guilt but as an expression fear.
Remember, growing up black in America means you’ve got rocks in your shoes—things are stacked against you—so you must always be on guard. You look in your rear view mirror when you innocently drive past a police car to see if they’ve turned around to follow you. You plan your cross-country trip precisely so as not to be driving past dark. You hesitate before going out for a jog if there’s news of unrest or a crime within ten miles. Not only do you have to dot your i’s and cross your t’s (as all good white people are used to doing) but you must dot and cross the i’s and t’s for any white person who asks you to do so in order to not piss them off, or give them a reason to “stand their ground”. You’re an outsider in a land that’s been built upon the back of your ancestors.
For those of us lucky enough to be born white there is really no way to comprehend what it’s like to be born black in America. We can sincerely care and do everything in our power to support black Americans, but our personal history will always have blind spots that prevent us from fully grasping what it’s like. Being born black means that even before you can speak you are given signals blatant and subliminal that your life doesn’t quite matter as much as that of some others. That’s just the way it is. At the same time, as we learn to foster communication from all sides there is the possibility that our shared histories will inform and enrich one another and begin to define mutual pathways toward lasting understanding and a true flourishing of equality.
Just during the past three weeks as I’ve worked on this newsletter article, three young black men have been killed by law enforcement in two different incidents in the US. The latest, Casey Goodson, 23, had just put the keys in his front door, returning home with a bag of sandwiches in hand, when he was was gunned down. He fell inside his home in front of his 5 year old brother and 72 year old grandmother. Tonight, as I type, and as Casey’s family plans his funeral, racism is still alive and well in the United States. It is up to those of us who believe in non-violence, compassion and human rights to not let this sort of brutality and racism to be swept to the side yet again. It is time to demand and facilitate change.
What each one of us chooses do becomes part our personal history and it seeps into history at large through the karmic chains of events, impacting people we may never know. But the bottom line is when we begin to notice the large picture—when we take the big mind and the inclusive heart perspective—our chances of acting skillfully for the benefit of others improves. And it starts like so many other things when we step outside of our habitual patterns of behavior to look again. This allows us to see our blind spots and correct them. It helps us recognize and learn from our mistakes and become submerged in feelings of equality and connectedness rather than superiority and segregation. It begins with the courage to look into the eyes of another—especially someone who seems different from us, someone we are afraid of or disagree with—and actually feel our shared humanness, thereby bringing conscious awareness to our intentions and actions.
Taking this kind of care doesn’t have to be a big deal, but a consistent awareness in how we think, feel and behave. When we practice as a means of cultivating mindfulness it becomes easier to bring conscious awareness into our interactions in this world. Yoga teacher Gail Parker once said, when we use the words black or white with regard to others we should ask ourselves, “Am I using these terms as descriptors or labels?” Simple, clear actions. Honest self reflection. Tapping into how we are alike rather than how we are different. These are all aspects of cultivating consciousness and sincerely caring about others and they are wonderful places to start and to return to again and again.
If we want change, the only real option any of us have is to start where we are and to cultivate truth, sincerity and compassion. In the Buddhist tradition, as CD points out, there are many compassion practices including Loving Kindness or Metta practice, Exchanging Self with Other and Tonglin. Even though the playing field isn’t always fair, we can work toward equanimity and appreciation for others. Being truthful and communicating with others are powerful steps we can all take toward making this world a more tolerant, less divisive, better place.
Choying Dorje in Tibet after taking vows at the monastery of his principle teacher, Anyen Rinpoche.
Choying Dorje (CD) is a Tibetan monk who grew up in the 60’s on the south side of Chicago. In 2010 CD became a student of Anyen Rinpoche and in 2015 traveled to Tibet where he took monastic vows. He now works and lives at the Orgyen Khamdroling Buddhist Meditation Center in Denver, Colorado.
Those of you who’ve participated in our month long summer intensive may remember CD as the pillar of stability during the cadaver labs; always there in the background in case one of us needed someone to lean on! Before taking his vows , CD (then known as Thomas Crown) practiced regularly at the Yoga Workshop, where he helped with many aspects of running the studio. CD was also an accomplished body worker and taught at the Boulder Massage School.
Recommended Viewing
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S7tzCOvvdEM (Barak Obama)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=AUdPI21I7As (Cornel West)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Un_VvR_WqNs (Dave Chappell)
