Racism

We have, as it seems to me, a very curious sense of reality—or, rather, perhaps, I should say, a striking addiction to irreality.

In a white supremacist society, such as the United States, white privilege is the unearned benefit one incurs from having white skin. Therefore, if you are white, you have white privilege and, in wielding and enjoying that privilege, you are inherently upholding white supremacy.

You don’t like how you look, how you sound. You think your Asian features are undefined, like God started pinching out your features and then abandoned you. You hate that there are so many Asians in the room. Who let in all the Asians? you rant in your head. Instead of solidarity, you feel that you are less than around other Asians, the boundaries

More than the grand beauties of our lives, wonder is about having the presence to pay attention to the commonplace. It could be said that to find beauty in the ordinary is a deeper exercise than climbing to the mountaintop.

Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness,

Now, recall a moment of loving presence with another person or a moment of deep gratitude. Bring that recollection into your heart and mind. Allow yourself to recall that moment as fully as you can, as a way of igniting your direct experience with care, with kindness.

The advocates and defenders of the black jazz avant-garde and the emergent black cultural nationalists had to distance themselves from what they took to be the threat to their project of black freedom—bebop as jazz authenticity, and cultural assimilation as the solution to black cultural subordination.

In our culture we hear a lot about guilt but not enough about the politics of shame. As long as we feel shame, we can never believe ourselves worthy of love.