Whether we acknowledge it or not, discrimination touches the life of everyone, not just minorities. As scary as it can be, it's incredibly important that we not turn away from conversations concerning this subject, but rather work to mindfully connect with people we think we don't understand. I'm so excited to have had the opportunity to speak with Patti Digh of 37days about this very important work that needs doing. (graphic courtesy of 37days)As a person of color, your blog renews me in a way that I can't even put into words. Every time I have an encounter with a white person that not only treats me the way they treat their friends, but is actually happy to see me, a little more of my life force comes back to me. How did you become not only interested in issues of racial discrimination and The Circle Project, but also make it a life precept? First, I’m so sorry that the experience you describe—of being treated with joy and a welcoming heart by white people—isn’t your usual experience. That you experience something other than that, something that reduces your life force, pains me greatly.
Secondly, thank you for those very kind words. I’m glad 37days is a source of renewal for you – renewal is such a big, important word, particularly in a fast-paced world bent on achievement and action instead. So, many thanks for those words.
There were two primary catalysts for my lifelong commitment to race issues:
When I was sixteen, I got on an airplane for the very first time and flew 12,000 miles to live in Sri Lanka with a Sinhalese family in a small village called Pita Kotte. I was an exchange student there—a very young, very white, very freckled and red-haired girl in a sea of beautiful brown. I stood out, as you can imagine. The principal of the school I attended—Museus Buddhist Girls’ College—stared at me intently during my first meeting with her, finally asking at the end of our interview if they hurt, pointing to my freckles. I learned so much from that experience—about myself in the world, and about the world outside myself. One of the things that I recognized immediately was that while the people around me looked very different from me—and lived very differently from me—underneath all that difference was a solid core of similarity, of shared humanity, of loves and heartaches and desires and pains and secrets that were far more similar than different. That was a very big lesson to learn at such a young age. While I believe I must have intuitively felt that earlier in my life—which is why I describe it as “recognition”—that experience literally changed my life. I can point directly to that time living in Sri Lanka as having framed my interest in cross-cultural and international issues, which is where I first entered the world of work after graduate school, working in an association that dealt with international education issues, and primarily in the developing world.
The other experience that most shaped my worldview relative to race was falling deeply in love with a man in college who was black—I am Caucasian. The year was 1979 and the town was Greensboro, North Carolina. Some might remember that the Greensboro Massacre took place in 1979—an event in which five people were shot in the streets by KKK members. Shot in the streets. Richard and I lived not two miles from there. So, as you can imagine, our relationship wasn’t well received in such a place, in such a time. I was honestly shocked by the reaction of those around us—a statement that reveals so much about the white privilege I had enjoyed until that time. Our college campus, Guilford College, was our safe haven in a storm of racism that awaited us on the streets of Greensboro. Richard wasn’t accepted by my family either. It was a very difficult time, a time during which my father died in the midst of that estrangement. Everything surrounding that period in my life confirmed to me that this was my work to do in the world, to explore my own privilege and racism (and other isms) and to help others do the same. I knew that I was in service to this work, from that moment on.
Years ago, a friend who is white asked me why black people liked living in such bad conditions. The first thing I thought was that the answer to that question is very complicated. I then felt myself getting impatient because I find that I (as well as other groups of people) constantly end up explaining things concerning race that aren't necessarily only facts, but quite often just my opinion. In the end, I took the lazy way out and said I didn't know. What do you think is the most considerate and effective way to connect deeply with people when there is no easy answer?
What a great, complex question. I think at some point in our lives we must decide what is ours to do, and what is not ours to do. Perhaps it is not yours to do, to answer every question about what it is to be a person of color. It doesn’t have to be yours to do, any more than it is mine to answer questions about the wide scope of white experience from my limited perspective.
What a great, complex question. I think at some point in our lives we must decide what is ours to do, and what is not ours to do. Perhaps it is not yours to do, to answer every question about what it is to be a person of color. It doesn’t have to be yours to do, any more than it is mine to answer questions about the wide scope of white experience from my limited perspective.
The very fact that people of color get asked these questions—while in most cases white people do not—reveals some of our thinking about race, doesn’t it? The Other always seems a monolithic entity, while we afford ourselves the position of the differentiated, the individualized. That we presume we can ask any black person to be our cultural informant for what it is to be black, but couldn’t imagine being asked, ourselves, to speak for all white people—we have to understand what that means before we can go farther in our dialogues about race, I believe.
Also, I’m always struck by the ways in which we—particularly in this culture—look for quick, short-term answers to issues as complex as race. These are wicked, complex problems onto which we consistently try to impose tame solutions. It is easier to ask for the “ten hints for dealing with people of color” than it is to spend years building relationships from which real learning and insight (about us and them) can emerge. And yet anytime we stay outside of a culture, we look at the people in it as “whats” not “whos,” a tame solution that not only doesn’t address the wicked problem, but actually obfuscates that it is a wicked problem to begin with…
I know that you don't speak for everyone, but what do you think is the most pressing issue that white people have with black people and how can I help address this?
I believe that even well-intended white people are paralyzed by the feeling that they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t when it comes to race—that if everything is seen through the lens of race and racism, there is no space left on that ledge for turning around, going back in, sitting down to talk about it. For example, a colleague recently wanted to increase the diversity on his Board, and so invited a black colleague to join the group. At the first meeting, that new member angrily told the group he felt like a token. These are so often right vs right dilemmas, not right vs wrong dilemmas—but we don’t seem to be equipped for that. Our method of dealing with race is too often to set up what we call dialogues but whose primary intention is to negate the other. Maybe we could all try to give up our attachment to being right to see if that might work. Perhaps on both sides of equations like that we could move toward constructive dialogue by simply assuming positive intent first. Even if we are tired, even if we are sure the intent isn’t positive, even if the person or institution is racist, I wonder if simply assuming positive intent—on both sides—might revolutionize our national dialogue about race.
I believe that even well-intended white people are paralyzed by the feeling that they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t when it comes to race—that if everything is seen through the lens of race and racism, there is no space left on that ledge for turning around, going back in, sitting down to talk about it. For example, a colleague recently wanted to increase the diversity on his Board, and so invited a black colleague to join the group. At the first meeting, that new member angrily told the group he felt like a token. These are so often right vs right dilemmas, not right vs wrong dilemmas—but we don’t seem to be equipped for that. Our method of dealing with race is too often to set up what we call dialogues but whose primary intention is to negate the other. Maybe we could all try to give up our attachment to being right to see if that might work. Perhaps on both sides of equations like that we could move toward constructive dialogue by simply assuming positive intent first. Even if we are tired, even if we are sure the intent isn’t positive, even if the person or institution is racist, I wonder if simply assuming positive intent—on both sides—might revolutionize our national dialogue about race.
I wonder if we spend so much time disavowing that we are racists that there’s no time left for owning up to the fact that we all discriminate, on both sides of the equation and even inside each side of the equation. Perhaps if we spend more time noticing our first thought and working on our second than trying not to have that first thought in the first place, we’d be better able to move forward—together.
How do you deal with the challenge of self acceptance?
I’ve been working really hard the past three years to own up to the disconnect between what my bio says and what I feel inside. I think sometimes we stay busy to avoid the conversations we need to have with ourselves. It’s so easy to look outside of ourselves for approval—I do that in so many, many ways—ways I don’t even yet recognize, patterns that I cannot yet see. When asked to do something new, do I decide based on what I want and need to do, or based on what will look good on my bio? I’m trying to get to the point that Eve Ensler talks about, not waiting for permission, but believing we are good enough, from the inside out, not the other way around.What is your biggest fear and how do you face it?
Here’s what my gut told me the moment I read this question, so I’ll go with it: My biggest fear is that something bad will happen to my two daughters, Emma and Tess, and I won’t be able to stop it. I face it by preparing them to live without me, which was the genesis for my blog. I wanted to write an instruction manual for life that they could have after I’m gone. Not about how to steam an artichoke, but about how to love and accept love, how to stand up for what they believe without being attached to being right, how to say yes to life, and how to extend the same level of humanity to others that they extend to themselves.Sometimes I'm content with my life, other times I feel so disappointed with it. I was given the gift of learning firsthand years ago that it's not possible to live someone else's life. How do you see your life for what it truly is and still make peace with it?
Many days, I see life as miraculous. Some days, I don’t feel that way—when people disappoint me or I disappoint them, when kids are cranky and so am I, when I think I’ll scream if I have to wash one more fork. And some days, I feel such panic at having wasted so much time. It took me all my life to get to this point of writing in my true voice. I have moments of depression when I feel regret at having not gotten to that point earlier, at all those years of moving papers around inside organizations, writing business books that weren’t really my work in the world. It is very easy, I believe, to keep doing something because you are good at it, not because it is your passion. But I realize I couldn’t have gotten to this point of real clarity without all I have done and seen and experienced. I’ve decided to risk my significance in different ways now–as a mother, most of all, above all.
How do you deal with the challenge of self acceptance?
I’ve been working really hard the past three years to own up to the disconnect between what my bio says and what I feel inside. I think sometimes we stay busy to avoid the conversations we need to have with ourselves. It’s so easy to look outside of ourselves for approval—I do that in so many, many ways—ways I don’t even yet recognize, patterns that I cannot yet see. When asked to do something new, do I decide based on what I want and need to do, or based on what will look good on my bio? I’m trying to get to the point that Eve Ensler talks about, not waiting for permission, but believing we are good enough, from the inside out, not the other way around.What is your biggest fear and how do you face it?
Here’s what my gut told me the moment I read this question, so I’ll go with it: My biggest fear is that something bad will happen to my two daughters, Emma and Tess, and I won’t be able to stop it. I face it by preparing them to live without me, which was the genesis for my blog. I wanted to write an instruction manual for life that they could have after I’m gone. Not about how to steam an artichoke, but about how to love and accept love, how to stand up for what they believe without being attached to being right, how to say yes to life, and how to extend the same level of humanity to others that they extend to themselves.Sometimes I'm content with my life, other times I feel so disappointed with it. I was given the gift of learning firsthand years ago that it's not possible to live someone else's life. How do you see your life for what it truly is and still make peace with it?
Many days, I see life as miraculous. Some days, I don’t feel that way—when people disappoint me or I disappoint them, when kids are cranky and so am I, when I think I’ll scream if I have to wash one more fork. And some days, I feel such panic at having wasted so much time. It took me all my life to get to this point of writing in my true voice. I have moments of depression when I feel regret at having not gotten to that point earlier, at all those years of moving papers around inside organizations, writing business books that weren’t really my work in the world. It is very easy, I believe, to keep doing something because you are good at it, not because it is your passion. But I realize I couldn’t have gotten to this point of real clarity without all I have done and seen and experienced. I’ve decided to risk my significance in different ways now–as a mother, most of all, above all.
What are the similarities and differences you find in people when traveling around the world?
What we value and love and cherish and fear is all the same—everywhere. I’ve lived and worked and traveled in over 70 countries in my years on this planet and in every single place, we share deep, deep needs and wants.
What we value and love and cherish and fear is all the same—everywhere. I’ve lived and worked and traveled in over 70 countries in my years on this planet and in every single place, we share deep, deep needs and wants.
What is different is our expression of those values and loves and fears—sometimes the expressions or behaviors that express those core humanities are so vastly different that we get confused and believe the underlying values are vastly different, too. But they are not.
What do people from other countries think of Americans?
I get a regular lesson in humility when I hear the perspective of my friends from around the world on our country. Any of us outside a system (or country) looking in are put in a position of judging other people’s outsides from our insides, a process that by its very definition leads to over-simplification and misunderstanding, doesn’t it? We’re not playing well on the world scene; our very high national esteem (ahem, arrogance) gets in the way of our ability to build healthy relationships. What we could use, I believe, is a lesson in cultural humility. There’s a lot we could learn from others in the world, but we’re blinded to that learning. For my first book, we interviewed almost 80 CEOs from 30 countries, including a CEO from Bangladesh. People laughed—what can we learn from Bangladesh, they said. That CEO from Bangladesh was Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. We Americans are blinded by our standard of living, not realizing it has cut us of from curiosity and relationship. We need to cultivate moral imagination.
I get a regular lesson in humility when I hear the perspective of my friends from around the world on our country. Any of us outside a system (or country) looking in are put in a position of judging other people’s outsides from our insides, a process that by its very definition leads to over-simplification and misunderstanding, doesn’t it? We’re not playing well on the world scene; our very high national esteem (ahem, arrogance) gets in the way of our ability to build healthy relationships. What we could use, I believe, is a lesson in cultural humility. There’s a lot we could learn from others in the world, but we’re blinded to that learning. For my first book, we interviewed almost 80 CEOs from 30 countries, including a CEO from Bangladesh. People laughed—what can we learn from Bangladesh, they said. That CEO from Bangladesh was Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. We Americans are blinded by our standard of living, not realizing it has cut us of from curiosity and relationship. We need to cultivate moral imagination.
What brings you comfort and joy?
I am most comforted by simple expressions of relationship and care and love and humanity. By people who see a man falling and stop to catch him, even though they don’t know him. By people who are generous when giving is their only reward. As for joy, the greatest source of that in my life are my two daughters, Emma and Tess. They fill up all the chambers of my heart and the whole solar system of my soul. I’m also quite fond of the sound of rain on a tin roof, ginger chews, k.d. lang singing ‘hallelujah,’ the novels of Richard Powers, and the poetry of Billy Collins.
I am most comforted by simple expressions of relationship and care and love and humanity. By people who see a man falling and stop to catch him, even though they don’t know him. By people who are generous when giving is their only reward. As for joy, the greatest source of that in my life are my two daughters, Emma and Tess. They fill up all the chambers of my heart and the whole solar system of my soul. I’m also quite fond of the sound of rain on a tin roof, ginger chews, k.d. lang singing ‘hallelujah,’ the novels of Richard Powers, and the poetry of Billy Collins.
