This is exactly the reason they largely cater to one ethnicity at the temple; maintaining these traditions and ways of being in the world requires effort, and such centers provide a place to maintain their languages and cultural traditions when there is no other available outlet. But what culture does this white-majority group seek to conserve, and why? And why, when queried, do they insist that they are simply “American” rather than white, when it’s obvious that there are multiple ways—multiple cultures, multiple ethnicities and races, multiple languages, multiple experiences—of being American? Buddhism and Whiteness, edited by George Yancy and Emily McRae, works to answer these questions and others through a critical inquiry into the habits of whiteness or white culture—a culture that refuses to be called a culture. As the authors in this book point out, the assertion of representing “Americanness” is symptomatic of those very cultural habits that render whiteness simultaneously dominant and transparent.
Do you instinctively shake hands when meeting a new work colleague, or do you bow? Does your head automatically nod to indicate “yes,” or does it wobble side to side? Awareness of bodily habits reveals how we unconsciously or automatically embody the habits of our culture. These bodily habits, as well as habits of thinking and perceiving, seem so “normal” that they become nearly invisible, meaning they are rarely noticed unless we encounter people who behave differently from our own sense of normalcy. To an anthropologist’s eye, there is clearly a culture shared by white people in the United States, a culture with its own holidays, bodily norms, language styles, foods, attitudes, values, and so on. So why is naming this so perplexing for many whites? And why do some whites find naming whiteness “un-Buddhist”? Strategies of denying white cultural specificity and subjectivity, as multiple contributors to this volume note, are a core feature of the maintenance of white cultural dominance.
I find the author’s views somewhat troubling here. Whilst I agree that there is such a thing as an ethnic Welsh culture, or English or German culture I don’t agree there is such a thing as “white culture”. If we take the United States, there is no “white culture”. There are Americans with a heritage from Germanic culture, a Welsh culture, or French or Swedish. Granted, there are similarities between these but they are also distinct in themselves. America has always been a nation of immigrants. It has always been multicultural. What has united American’s has typically been then a civic nationalism. Allegiance to the constitution and the principles of it, namely the freedom that comes with classical liberalism. I imagine this is partly why said people say they are only “American” rather than white. I also imagine part of the reason why they say they are American rather than White is because it used to be the case that if you made that claim, you were possibly if not absolutely a racist. Now the ideology has changed. Now if you don’t make that claim then you are possibly if not absolutely a racist, if only unconsciously so.
Put simply, this denial of the existence of culture—which involves erasing, marginalizing, silencing, and degrading nonwhite experiences—is an example of what Buddhist traditions identify as ignorance or delusion (avidya).
Certainly the author is ignorant here, since avidya has nothing to do with worldly ignorance. The author is apparently unaware that avidya is ignorance of the four noble truths, rather than being ignorance of her leftist worldview.
But as Larry Yang notes in Ann Gleig’s chapter, altering Buddhist teachings and practices to make them culturally accessible is not the problem; the problem is that the dharma is being presented in a white-dominant culture marked by white privilege and racism, such that the dharma is being shaped to adapt to, rather than alter, injurious white cultural patterns. The unquestioned assumptions of whiteness continue to manifest in the harmful, arrogant attitudes used to justify the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual authority of whites even while claiming a desire to be more “inclusive."
I assume the “injurious cultural patterns” which “justify the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual authority of whites” has to do with Buddhist centres which delegitimise merit making in favour of meditation, the apparent real meat of the Dhamma. I agree that this is a problem, and I do dislike secular Buddhism for it’s rather shallow presentation of the Dhamma. That said, why do we find this attitude amongst Western converts? I think largely it has to do with the rise of secularism and anti-religious sentiment in the west, which has seen religion fall into the background for many white Europeans and increasingly Americans. Most of this has been driven by the left. As tradition was eroded, society progressed forward. Religion, being of the old, is seen as something outdated if not backward. In short, if the author wants to find the cause of the issues she has highlighted I would look to progressive politics and the left first.
