A thread: So in many of the workshops that Theory of Enchantment facilitates, we discuss individuals like Dr. King, James Baldwin, and Daryl Davis, all of whom have a vision of the human condition that is unique.

One of their fundamental ideas was that someone who oppresses another human being is suffering. James Baldwin stated in a Q&A once "that the people who had been the most mistreated in the world where American white people." (See "The Moral Responsibility of the Artist.")

Now, on its face, this sounds ludicrous. But Baldwin was speaking of the psychological suffering that informed racist ideas. He wrote about how racism was a product of overcompensation by white Americans who, at the end of the day, had failed to love themselves.

For him and for the civil rights generation, a racist person had to be suffering from a lack of self-worth, from insecurities vast and perplexing, because he was overcompensating about such things and taking the things he hated about himself and projecting them onto others.

And individuals like Daryl Davis & Deeyah Khan uncovered this phenomenon in their constant engagement with white nationalists.

Now, often times in our workshops, the question comes up: why does this work have to be on the burden of people of color?

That question has always given me pause because it's not the paradigm that many civil rights legends were viewing their work through. They saw their oppressors not as having privilege -- as we like to say today in 2021 -- but, again, as SUFFERING.

So the opportunity to adopt a spiritual practice against resentment and self-righteousness was a burden but also an opportunity to raise people to their higher selves by embodying an example of what that higher self could look like which in turn transformed the culture.

So yes the work is a burden but it is also a gift & an opportunity to call people to their higher selves. Seeing it only as a burden misses something fundamental.

What do you think of this paradigm? How does it complicate the privilege/victim dichotomy language we use today?