During the pandemic, a couple of my yoga friends and I went through an online curriculum together called ‘Being Mindful of Race.’ Adapted from The White Awareness Insight Curriculum for Uprooting Privilege (WAIC UP!): A Dharma and Racism Study Program, originally offered by Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leader 5 participants, the course is available free, online, to anyone who wants to take it.
Every month or so, we met on Zoom to discuss the current session — there were eight, ranging from ‘Historical Racism’ to ‘Institutional Racism’ to ‘Decolonizing Our Minds’ — reflect on the reading, and answer the discussion questions related to the materials (which are often updated). It was educational, often emotional and not always easy. Outside our pandemic bubbles, the George Floyd protests were in full force. We could either turn away or learn more about our privilege and start to uproot our own internalized racism. There was so much material that we ended up going through the curriculum twice. I know I could go through it again now and still discover something new.
I thought about how working through the Being Mindful of Race curriculum changed my lens on culture last weekend as we watched “June,” the recently released documentary about the amazing life and music career of June Carter Cash. Earlier in the week, Beyonce Knowles Carter (no relation, I believe!) had become the first Black woman to reach the US No 1 spot with a country song with her new single ‘Texas Hold 'Em’, which had resurfaced a long simmering conversation about the true diversity of country music despite its whitewashing by mainstream Country radio and much of the industry at large.
“June” wasn’t trying to be anything more than a thorough documentary of Carter Cash’s life-long entertainment career — from growing up and singing with the legendary Carter family, to marrying the iconic Johnny Cash — and her influence on country music, and in that it succeeds. We were both inspired and tearing up by the time the credits rolled. But it was also an example of how segregated so much of music has been, and still is. While the film serves both as a corrective to anyone who thought June Carter was simply the wife of Cash, and acknowledges, as well, the sexism and ageism that kept labels from signing to release her second album, Press On (which nonetheless won a Grammy), everyone one in it — despite footage detailing a 73-year period of time — was white.
Earlier in the same day we watched “June”, I’d happened to listen to the Broken Record Podcast’s replay of an interview with Rhiannon Giddens, a modern-day musical badass, who, in addition to her solo work, music and activism, co- founded The Carolina Chocolate Drops and Songs of Our Native Daughters, and last year was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her work co-writing the opera Omar. Beyonce wisely tapped Giddens to play banjo on ‘Texas Hold ‘Em.’ Giddens has been educating listeners on the roots of both country music and traditional banjo music in African and Black America throughout her career, and now her scholarship is rightly getting another spotlight.
If I was updating the ‘Being Mindful of Race’ curriculum, I’d add the Giddens’ Broken Record interview, a 2019 New Yorker profile about her, as well as her recent op-ed in The Guardian to the materials list! For now, I’ll put those right here. Take a read and listen:
Black artistry is woven into the fabric of country music. It belongs to everyone — by Rhiannon Giddens
Broken Record Rhiannon Giddens Comes Home
Rhiannon Giddens and What Folk Music Means: The roots musician is inspired by the evolving legacy of the black string band — by John Jeremiah Sullivan