Abstract
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).
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Special thanks to Alexander J. Johnson (Class of 2018) for invaluable research assistance and to Indhumathi for patient editorial assistance.
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Magee, R.V. (2016). Teaching Mindfulness with Mindfulness of Race and Other Forms of Diversity. In: McCown, D., Reibel, D., Micozzi, M. (eds) Resources for Teaching Mindfulness. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30100-6_12
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