and nonjudgmental nature on them. Love them like the earth that can receive what we have to give and heal it and transform it and give it back. Participate in the Dharma joy of loving people who come to you like the wind with the sense of freedom, movement, and non-clinging.
The Sangha should consider whether to adopt a formal Welcoming Statement for leaders to offer at each Sangha gathering. Such a statement could be similar in form, if not in content, to the appended Welcoming Statements that Charles King provides in Thay’s book on diversity. Again, the Diversity Committee could draft a welcoming statement for Council consideration.
Schedulers should remind leaders of the importance of adequately welcoming newcomers. Leaders should…show more content… These events and the wounds they opened in us likewise called with urgency to apply Thay’s teachings to help us heal, to help us develop awareness and insight. Addressing Sangha diversity as to people of color also is opportune in light of the ongoing initiatives in Madison to address racial equity as well as the nationwide efforts of Buddhist leading on this issue.
Committee members stated they had been deeply moved by the seemingly non-ending video recordings of incidents of malfeasant law enforcement treatment of African-Americans. International media sources have likewise detailed with shocking reports the extent and depth of our racial animus. These incidents have opened wounds within us. As one scholar has said, the matter of race is not just limited to people of color, but to white people as well.
Ongoing initiatives in the Madison area to address racial equity are likewise a compelling reason to prioritize Sangha racial Diversity work. In the Madison area, a wide disparity exists in social outcomes between whites and African-Americans as documented in the Race to Equity report released in 2013. The report documents examples of this disparity, such as the…show more content… Dane County African Americans, in other words, were almost 5.5 times more likely to be jobless than their white neighbors. By contrast, in the same year, the national African American unemployment rate averaged only a little more than twice that of whites.
The black/white poverty rate gap in the county is even wider than our local employment disparities. In 2011, the Census’ American Community Survey reported that over 54% of African American Dane County residents lived below the federal poverty line, compared to 8.7% of whites, meaning Dane County blacks were over six times more likely to be poor than whites. Compare this with the fact that in the country as a whole African Americans were about 2.5 times as likely as whites to be in poverty.
This disparity has not gone unnoticed. The local media, leaders in the city’s African-American community, and grassroots activists have called for action. SnowFlower Sangha has been contacted to help support these
