Mindfulness and reconciliation

Though it is still new to me, I’m my basic understanding of mindfulness is the idea of focusing on the internal, what our thoughts and reactions are to what we experience. This idea has been applied in some of the most inspiring situations, such as Mandela’s time in prison, where he emphasized what freedom he had in his mind despite being physically imprisoned. On a smaller scale it has helped me to track my thoughts and feelings about everything we have been experiencing here in South Africa. But where does this concept of mindfulness play a role in approaching reconciliation?

Reconciliation is inherently in the context of moving beyond past conflict. In the case of oppression, the component that is one of the most heartbreaking to me is the psychological component. I think of the Black doll/White doll experiment conducted in the States, where they asked black children if they preferred a black or white doll, and the majority picked the white doll. This was an experiment originally done in the 50’s after Brown v. Board of Education, but redone recently, and it has consistently created similar results. These children are young, around 5 years old. And they already see that in the world, Whites are treated as “better.” Or I think of what our tour guide Andile told us about black children under Apartheid dreaming to be white children so then they could dream of possibilities for the future. In these situations, how much of it is internal, and how much of it is it the reality of the external situation? For children then, as much as internally they may have felt free and dreamed of the future, the government made it impossible.

Mindfulness cannot change larger society, only the way in which we perceive our own interactions with society. There is no doubt that this is also extremely valuable on the individual level of changing beliefs and attitudes, but to me seems to be secondary to pursuing more tangible change. Andile also told us that if he hadn’t had to go through Bantu Education, he would not be a tour guide but rather in the department of tourism in the government. This wasn’t because of his internal processing of the world around him, it was because of the outside forces acting on his life. Changes in access to basic needs, such as the always critical issue of education that can empower people, seem to be a more practical focus to me.

I got to hear Dorcas’s Auntie Renita over skype, and she spoke wonderfully about how important it is that oppressed people are uplifted. In that way, mindfulness seems absolutely relevant to reconciliation when considering what kinds of changes it can produce in beliefs and attitudes of an individual. But it is such a personal process, so how does one promote that for others, especially for an oppressed society? Religion has also played a large role in the reconciliation process here in South Africa, but does that mean religion is something we can advocate specifically for reconciliation? When people, especially children are told that they are worth less than the privileged, and then treated in a way that reinforces that idea, people internalize it. So then how do we as outsiders go in and advocate for a change in oppressed people’s internal processes as a means of reconciliation?