'If you plant corn, you get corn': on mindfulness and racial justice in Florida and beyond.

• Author: Magee, Rhonda V.
• Position: Special Issue on the Benefits of Mindfulness

Before Sandra Bland's questionable stop while on her way to start a new job at her alma mater and mysterious death in police custody in Mississippi; (1) before Eric Garner's killing for selling "loosees" (single cigarettes) in front of a corner store on Long Island; (2) and before Michael Brown's killing and horrifyingly public on-street display in Missouri, (3) there was the tragic death at the hands of neighborhood police watchman George Zimmerman of young, Twittles-toting, Arizona Iced Tea-drinking Trayvon Martin. From the Chesapeake Bay to the San Francisco Bay Area, millions watched as the investigation proceeded to trial, and the trial proceeded to an acquittal. (4) Along the way, we witnessed a Zimmerman supporter admit to a view that, since prior burglaries in the area had been committed by black men, it would have been reasonable to assume, based on his mere presence in the neighborhood, that Martin was a burglar as well. "Well, you know, there's an old saying: If you plant corn, you get corn." (5)

If you plant corn, you get corn. We may never know exactly what he meant when he made this statement, but in context, the speaker seemed to be explaining why a bias against all black men--viewing them as would-be burglars, criminals--would be justified. He seemed to be admitting to explicit bias against young black men based on a presumed pervasive culture of criminality--a bias that would absolve a person who would assume criminality in any young black man he might encounter in a neighborhood under watch. As disappointing as it is for most of us to be confronted with such an explicit statement of bias, it is based on a specifically anti-black racial ideology--the "culture of violence" thesis--that has served as a politically (and legally) powerful alternative to biological explanation of racial disparities between blacks and others in the post-civil rights era.

As a law professor who teaches mindfulness, the phrase "If you plant corn, you get corn" has a different meaning for me. For the past 17 years, I've been teaching about race and law. At the same time, I've had a long-standing personal contemplative, mindfulness meditation practice. Long before research began to provide objective evidence to support doing so, I had begun to rely on my own practice to assist me in the difficult work of turning toward evidence of racism in our midst, again and again, and of helping my students, lawyers, and others to do so. Beginning in 2004, I began incorporating mindfulness practices into my work with lawyers and law students about race and bias and...