Contributing to Three-Fifths Magazine for the last couple years has allowed me to be a part of a
constellation of voices writing about our American experiences with injustice and also our experiences
with promising change. My priority writing for Three-Fifths is to amplify areas of history that have been erased or forgotten. I also want to audit how people classified “white” exist in relation to white-
supremacy.

Because Three-Fifths Magazine is an intersection for voices coming from many directions, it has joined
that deeply integrated space where allies spend time with difficult truths. In the words of Lama Rod
Owens in Love & Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger, “To step into the middle as the Heart
Sutra asks us to do is to step away from the extremes of black and white into the discomfort of the many
shades of gray. The gray is where we head to the edge of our practice where our hearts break and we are
forced to sit with both the love and the rage… I must make a home in the complexity, because there is
nowhere else to live if I am interested in decreasing violence against myself and others. In the gray middle
is where I begin to articulate my hurt. In the gray middle my pain is a mirror for myself so that I begin to
know what I need to do to get free from suffering.” (p171)

Three-Fifths Magazine is working in that “middle” place Owens refers to; an arena where we “…step
away from extremes of black and white into the discomfort…”

This is unfamiliar territory for many of us, regardless of our identities. We like to remain in places that feel “comfortable”. A piece inside all of us – something called an “ego” – is a thing that’s constantly reading an external landscape and steering us to assess and judge what it perceives comfortable or not. At its finest moments, the ego celebrates life’s joys or goes into high alert when real danger is present. At its worst, the ego fills our perceptions with prejudice.

Within U.S. systems of identity – the invention of race and the imposition of class – our egos keep each of
us in a state of reaction to each other. They bind our egos to prisons of labels and taught ideas; we’re
triggered at the sight of each other and our preconceived ideas about circumstances.

In a way, we can consider “ego” as that place in each of us that prefers what Owens calls “extremes of
black and white”. It’s a comfortable place for our egos to be. Existing on one side of a binary, we don’t
have to challenge our perceptions; obedience is easy.

I’d like to shine a light on the “middle” place Owens writes about – this discomfort – and consider what
that looks like for people classified “white” and our acculturation with white-supremacist systems.
To get to this middle place of discomfort, I’ll be unpacking “ego” within the context of Eckhart Tolle’s
seminal work A New Earth where he describes his theory that the “ego” manifests in two ways: 1) in the
individual and 2) in the collective; the group.

In Tolle’s framework, white-supremacy would appear in two forms: the collective ego and the individual
ego. The collective white-supremacist ego – empowered systemically, publicly, culturally – is the thing
that interacts with racism existing in the individual ego of a white person.

It may seem that a bunch of whites working on their egos is counterproductive to dismantling white-
supremacy. But when racism resides in the ego – individually and collectively – it’s the place that whites need to attend to in order to change. Using Tolle’s framework, we see how the individual ego and the
collective ego bolster each other.

Only individuals who become familiar with how their egos operate can sever that leash connecting them to a collective. But how do we locate racism in our individual egos and then how do we disrupt it and get rid of it altogether?

To understand how our egos operate, we must first know what the ego is. Tolle’s framework about a 2-part
ego (collective and individual) offers clarity. In A New Earth we can understand that the individual ego is the thing that is constantly trying to steer our attention, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, ideas in directions away from who we really are – that zest, soul, spirit, light that is me. The ego is the thing in me that is trying to distract me from a place in myself that holds a sacred connection to all living things. It’s reading external cues and factors based on what it’s consumed, been taught, or made up it’s own mind about. The ego’s interpretation of these external things organizes meaning into feelings, opinions, beliefs, and ideas. The ego is where our racism exists.

Tolle writes “You are not your thoughts”.

How many of us, regardless of our ethnicities, associate ourselves with what we’re thinking, believing, and feeling; our opinions, ideas, judgements and tastes? We accept a notion that “we” are the workings of our brains.

But if our thoughts are generated by our egos, and our egos are distracting us from who we really are –
soul, spirit, light… wait. What?!

The ego is that thing on autopilot, like a chatterbox, constantly interpreting the external world. In Tolle’s
framework, the ego distracts us from the sacred self. In Lama Owen’s framework, we can intuit that the
“black/white” world of opposition is where our egos thrive and he invites us to join him in that sacred
place of complexity – discomfort – where our humanity and our woundedness can breathe.

But how do we get to the sacred part of ourselves while existing in heavy burdens of America’s identity
systems?

Tolle advises that we practice observing our egos. For example, take a walk and notice how your ego is constantly reading cues of your surroundings and telling you how it thinks you should respond/react/feel about them. Then, after you’ve become acquainted with how your ego operates, test it out in more demanding situations like work,
school, or running errands. Ask yourself what signals is your ego sending you about the people around
you? What does the ego tell you to believe or to feel about your experiences? How does your ego jockey
for attention, power, or retreat?

Once you get good at identifying your ego, then you can work to shrink its hold over you. The person classified “white” who is good at managing their ego will be equipped for severing it’s leash to the white-supremacy collective. That thing in us will no longer be bolstered by the system. We’ll be better at challenging it’s origin and freeing ourselves in the process.

As Lama Owens says, “The gray is where we head to the edge of our practice where our hearts break and we are forced to sit with both the love and the rage.” For white people born into systemic white-supremacy, attending to this space in our egoic acculturation – where our hearts were broken and we forsake our family as Cain did Abel – will be imperative to weaken and eliminating systemic racism.

Three-Fifths Magazine symbolically brings us to that crossroads in American history which further
codified the dehumanization of African Americans. By creating something different within the context of
this wound – the Three-Fifths Compromise – publisher Kevin Robinson is pressing writers to gather in this intersection of brokenness in order to do something about it. The suffering produced by white-supremacy will begin to heal when we attend that middle place, a place that’s unfamiliar for many whites, and we join efforts for real liberation.