Rhonda V. Magee

The Master's Tools, from the Bottom Up: Responses to African-American Reparations Theory in Mainstream and Outsider Remedies Discourse

This Note posits a Critical Race Theory (CRT) analysis of the historical legal responses to reparations claims on the part of groups, using the African-American claims as an example. The article then discusses racial remedies theories, suggesting that the prevailing theories must be expanded to provide support for reparations. Following a review of contemporary and historical proposals for reparations, the author argues that reparations merit a prominent place within remedies theory, and echoes central tenets of CRT in explaining why they have not to date.

Community-Engaged Mindfulness and Social Justice: An Inquiry and Call to Action

This chapter presents an argument for mindfulness and secular Buddhism as inherently suffused with what might be called social justice concerns and thus calls for mindfulness teaching which includes practices and teachings that make explicit the links between mindfulness and social justice. Drawing on my experience within the fields of mindfulness teaching, law teaching, and contemplative pedagogy, in the first part of this chapter, I discuss how the practices we call mindfulness tend to cultivate a felt sense not only of interconnectedness and compassion but also of solidarity—unity of agreement in feeling or action (especially among individuals with a common purpose)—among practitioners, that assist us in working together for a more just world. I support these claims by reference to an exploratory case study: an offering of community-engaged mindfulness to address a community facing revelations of racism among law enforcement in a major American city.

Teaching Mindfulness with Mindfulness of Race and Other Forms of Diversity

At a recent retreat for mindfulness teachers in Europe, one of my fellow attendees, a man who, if asked, we would identify as “white,” who spoke with a European accent, noted that I was the only “Black woman” in the group of more than 200. “I imagine you’re used to that, though,” he said. I nodded, and we continued on without further reflection on these apparent facts. After all, he was right: in over years of experience within a variety of communities focused on practicing and teaching mindfulness, I have more often than not been one of the few, if not the only Black woman in the room. Within and across a variety of mainstream, Western mindfulness communities, people of color across the spectrum remain significantly underrepresented (Kaleem, 2012).