SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia criminal defense and DUI lawyer Jonathan Katz, where we are here to regularly present you information and ideas for beating your prosecution as best as possible. Nothing on any of our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or for individuals who have paid for a consultation. And now for your host, John Katz.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Hello, everybody. This is John Katz at Beat the Prosecution. I'm a criminal defense and DWI defense lawyer in Northern Virginia. I know I keep telling you this how much I have trouble containing my excitement. It's so many of my guests, but the same goes here. Our guest today, Rhonda McGee. I met her in 2015, I think it was at the Mindful Leadership Conference over in uh Arlington, Virginia. And that was just so cool. I had heard so much about her. She's a law professor at, I think it's University of San Francisco. She's involved with the mindfulness movement. And more important to me for that, she's involved with the racial justice movement. She has a book that came out a few years ago called The Inner Work of Racial Justice. What does Rhonda McGee, mindfulness and racial justice, have to do with beating a public defender, Laura aptly saying to me when I said to her, uh, what do you do that justifies this work? I know what I do that justifies it. One of the first things she said is, we know the system is racist. And it is, or at least it's too racist. Number one. Number two, we've already had episodes before talking about the importance of mindfulness practice and meditative practice to uh do well in court for criminal defendants and their lawyers. And with that, Rhonda McGee, please introduce yourself to the audience.

SPEAKER_03 2:00

Hello, um, and thank you so much for having me on. Uh so yes, I'm Rhonda. Uh for many years I've been have been have served as a full-time law professor at the University of San Francisco, as you mentioned, um, teaching torts primarily over the years, but also courses on race in American legal history and um uh professional identity development related workshops and sessions. And I co-created a course called Contemplative Lawyering to bring mindfulness more directly in. Um and um I also had an opportunity to really reshape a Center for Law and Ethics that we had uh in existence at the University of San Francisco to bring in a contemplative dimension. So I kind of renamed it the Center for Contemplative Um Law and Ethics. But as of now, I've kind of transitioned out of my full-time role at the University of San Francisco. I'm Professor Emerita now. And um, while I'm still offering sessions at the law school, I'm also really broadening the work that I do, bringing mindfulness and um, you know, into how we deal with some of the most difficult challenges that we face. I'm bringing that work really all around the world. In fact, later this week, I'm traveling to Australia to do some of this work. So that's what's happening with me right now.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Well, speaking of that, I I received an email from a mass email from you just within the last day or two about spending time with Rhonda online. So please tell people how they got on your mailing list or what website they go to to find out about all this.

SPEAKER_03 3:43

Great. Thank you so much. Yes, check me out at rhonda vmage.com. So it's uh rhonda v, and then the last name, M-A-G-E-E.com. And you can, you know, sign up for ways to connect with me further there.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Okay, so Rhonda, this didn't all start in a vacuum. What brought you to uh being a lawyer, becoming a law professor, uh dealing with the racial justice issues as we all need to, and also dealing with uh contemplative lawyering or whatever word you want to call for that.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

Well, let's see. When I think about how I got started, I sort of, you know, there are various entry points. I was um sort of raised in North Carolina and Virginia, went to school at University of Virginia um for my undergrad and master's in sociology and law degree there. Came out to San Francisco, was practicing law for a few years there at a firm doing actually uh civil litigation, um, representing a lot of insurance companies and a few other things. And um, but in the background, I knew I really wanted to go into academia and to teach. And meanwhile, uh as a person who moved across the country and entered into this new profession and you know uh encountered all the different changes that come along with that. And as a person who is, you know, identifiable, folks would look at me and characterize me in the conventional terms as a black woman, uh, you know, born in the South. There were a lot, there was a lot that I was sort of dealing with as I was moving from, you know, um growing up in the South, going to school there, and coming to California, entering the profession. So there was some inner work that I was doing to kind of ground myself, um, exploring mindfulness-based meditation and other kinds of practices, movement practices, journaling, to give me a regular way of centering myself. I will say, underneath all of that, I think I was inspired knowing that my grandmother, a gener, you know, two generations ago, my grandmother Nanny Suggs, who didn't have all the kind of fancy opportunities I had growing up in the South that she did in the 20th century, you know, when I came on the scene, she was an elder, but I saw her get up every day and practice centering herself. Uh, so before she would get out and do the, you know, unglamorous work she had to do, she was actually cleaning houses for other people. But she would start her day with, you know, a half hour, 45 minutes of um kind of centering grounding practice, kind of fill her cup before going out to do the different kinds of work to get us off to school, to go and do the work that she did. And for her, her, I will just say it was more of a kind of a centering prayer practice. But what it did for me as a little girl watching that, my family was going through a separation and then divorced, my parents were, so I was spending a lot of time with my grandmother, seeing her start her day that way, you know, by the time I became an adult and realized that this is a difficult journey, no matter how, you know, fine our education and our training for this profession, I was um really aware uh that nothing that I had been that I'd received in the formal trainings had really helped me with this with this possibility of grounding in my own inner resources to integrate all of that work and to bring it out into the world in a in an effective way consistently. So I started um exploring what that might look like for me and found meditation and ultimately actually being out here in the Bay Area in San Francisco, I found a group of meditating lawyers. And that was back in the early 2000s, right? So more than 20 years ago. And finding that group of meditating lawyers who were meeting once a month and really supporting each other uh in figuring out ways that not just have a personal practice for restoration and resilience, but maybe to explore taking it into our practice arenas. That really helped spur all of the different works that I've been doing since then.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Okay. Well, that's uh a lot of what interests me about you, and I learned some things about you that I didn't know, which is that you actually have trial experience. Pardon, I'm still getting over some congestion. You actually have trial experience.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

Well, I have lore yes, a little bit. I mean, you know, I was working for one of those firms where a lot and the clients I had most of our cases settled before they actually went to trial. But yes, I you was a litigator in a large firm. Um, it was a Chicago-based firm, but out here in San Francisco for for several years before going into the academy.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

And okay, and so you have uh litigation experience. I have litigation experience for sure. Well, it it's wrong to call it stereotyping based on uh racial stereotyping being wrong, but if I stereotype regionally, uh going from North Carolina to San Francisco, I don't know if there are many places beyond San Francisco that are at least thought to be more racially enlightened than than most of the country. So uh I'll I'll start with that. Am I right about that with San Francisco number one and and and number two? Is San Francisco the right place to do it then? Because if we really want to be getting racial justice, don't we want to be going in the places where the racial injustice is the worst?

SPEAKER_03 9:14

Hmm. Such an interesting set of questions. You know, first, um San Francisco was a beacon for me, partly because I think as you know, growing up in the South and and becoming educated there before figuring out where I wanted to land, it San Francisco seemed to be a place where you know the kinds of progressive values that may be associated with racial justice would prevail, uh, would be a cat, you know, part of the culture. Um, you know, having lived here now for some decades, uh, you know, it's it's plain to see that San Francisco is a part of the United States. Um and really I think every part of the United States is formed as it has been through processes and um political battles that have made um racial identity significant for a very, very long time since our founding. Um you know, all parts of the country are affected by those um those aspects of the culture that I'm pointing to there. We do it in different ways, but um race is certainly uh uh quite relevant here in the in the San Francisco Bay Area. Um different ways that we kind of organize ourselves and different ways that uh resources have been distributed and access and opportunities have been, you know, unfairly distributed. Those characteristics apply here in San Francisco. Again, maybe differently, they may look different in San Francisco, um, but bias is a feature, not a bug of American society. So you do see, you know, it it in its own way here as well. Um but that said, I, you know, I do take your point as well that uh there are many other places where um, you know, sort of the kind of legacies of the the sort of structure of of white supremacy that was formed and and kind of um to some extent solidified in the southern United States that where I was born, you know, that uh does call us sometimes to sort of locate there when and as we focus on where we might, you know, need to do quote unquote the most work, really. So I understand your question, but I also think wherever we are, right, the invitation is to explore what we might do to minimize the ways that race and racism, you know, obstruct our highest and best ideals for this political experiment in this country.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Right. And of course, if we look at history as well, we know that California was uh was was where the people were sent to the concentration camp, concentration camps with the uh Japanese Americans, and then there was the racism about the quotas before that about Asian people coming over uh to work in California, for instance.

SPEAKER_03 12:21

Absolutely. And when I say in San Francisco, right, the point, the things that you're pointing to, that's San Francisco local history. That's you know, my neighborhood history, practically, uh parts of the city where I've lived in. Um, the Fillmore district. This is an area that um is known for a lot of things, but it was the area where Japanese Americans were rounded up, right? Where they came out of their homes and saw a notice on the lamppost saying that if they didn't, you know, report they would be taken uh to assembly centers that became the precursors to the internment camps. So, yes, um, you know, in many different ways. Um, you know, segregation, racial segregation impacted African Americans in this part of the country. Um uh, you know, we have we have our own unique and painful history around race and racism that impacts differently racialized groups, right? As is not uncommon wherever we are. But again, the question always is well, what's the history in the particular way we've seen it here? And I'm not even mentioning here uh the uh indigenous and Native American, American Indian issue here that also um intersects with this um aspect that we're this part of our culture that we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Right. And of course, my uh guest from a few weeks ago, Junya Suda, who did the, I don't know if you can see the calligraphy behind me, uh Niponzan Myohoji Buddhist nun, a good friend of Dennis Banks, she was on the long first longest walk, and one or two after that, in 1978, from Alcatraz or San Francisco to Washington, D.C. to advocate for Native American rights. I'm gonna jump around a little bit between uh working for racial justice and and uh mindful lowering, and and there's an overlap between the two. I want to say that when I started George Washington Law School, up until the time I ended from 1986 to 89, I didn't hear a peep uh for the most part about anything about uh wellness except for maybe once. I remember that in the first week or two, one of the associate deans came into our, I think, our criminal law class and said, I understand there's already a feeling by some of the students of some really uh stiff competition, this early on. So if you're uh concerned about how your wellness is going, come to me, but never did I don't think I ever heard anything about it afterwards. So how common now at law schools is this mindful lawing or lawyer wellness or law student wellness uh approach? And how common is this among uh lawyers and and and the legal community?

SPEAKER_03 15:02

Well, yeah, what you're pointing to is um is is resonant and with my own experience as well, right? Graduating as I did from law school in 1993. I want to say 92 for some reason, but it's actually 93. Um, uh, you know, I too didn't have the experience of of people talking about wellness, certainly no mindfulness sessions. Um, but today it is more common. I mean, I think it's consistent with the shift we've seen in our culture generally, wherein we've witnessed over our lifetimes a shift in receptivity to and comfort with recognizing the range of ways that um, you know, we struggle with mental health. We've normalized conversations about mental well-being as an aspect of overall well-being. So that is a part of our culture that's been changing. And I think at this, so the ABA, American Bar Association, and other organizations are helping um incentivize law schools to be in that conversation. So that means that a lot of, you know, it's much more common. It's uh I I hesitate to put a percentage on it, but I would say that um, you know, more likely than not, if you're in a law school anywhere around the country these days, there's at least some conversation about um lawyer well-being. Um, and um whether it's the dean of students um or particular professors who are championing this, um, members of our staff, staffs on on campuses, there's there's uh usually you know some place where uh programming and uh more and more uh courses are being offered for credit, um, as we have been offering at the University of San Francisco uh under the in the contemplative lawyering course. But you're getting credit, some credit. We get we give students two uh credit hours. Um it's a seminar, um, usually it's upper class uh students who are taking that. Uh but these are places where in the curriculum uh students get support for looking at lawyer well-being as an aspect of professional identity development.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

Right.

SPEAKER_03 17:22

Um, and for many of us who are offering sessions like that, we are including mindfulness, but there are other approaches uh being brought to bear positive psychology, right, um, which can include mindfulness and other modalities, right? So there are many different ways, but more and more it's part of the conversation in the curricular and the co-curricular, right? And so at USF2, we've offered for many years just drop-in meditation spaces. So we even if you're not enrolled in the class, you can take these drop-in meditation uh sessions as a part of your supportive toolkit. And then we've also been introducing a taste of mindfulness in our orientation. So all students are getting um the sense, and then again, I know this is happening at the other law schools as well, but being invited at the orientation to think about their well-being as an important aspect of how they not only survive but thrive, law school and beyond.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Good points. And, you know, for for those people who say, so so what is this? All the kids just getting a massage, I say that for me, uh, mindfulness is about me being able to be mindful in the in the eye of the storm, calm in the eye of the storm. Because I go right into battle. I try a lot of cases, I never back down from anything uh that I have to be fighting. Uh samurai, the best samurais, whether uh we agree with the samurai approach or not, they were involved in being mindful because if they weren't mindful, they'd have their head lopped off if they were thinking of their next move rather than being in the present. In fact, Rhonda, one of the my greatest Tai Chi teachers, when I got back to uh Tai Chi Chuan's sparring this past summer after staying away from it uh after COVID, he said to me, I'll tell you why it's so easy for me to push you. He said, You're thinking of winning. And so this whole thing is just about being mindful and in the present, and instead, my focusing on just harmony harmonizing disharmonious situations and harmonizing, such keeping harmony where the harmony is and bringing my client into it, helping my client be harmonized, that's so important. So for people who say this is just uh Nambi Pambi, Southern California, how do you feel these stuff? Well, of course, there's also, I mean, for those who are interested in the Buddhist aspect of it, for instance, I mean, you know, mindfulness and so much aspect of Buddhism or meditation in Buddhism goes back centuries. I mean, this is uh this is uh very very important there.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

So true, right? So a lot of what we call mindfulness does have roots in um ancient uh eastern uh traditions, uh different parts of Asia, India, uh, and and um China and Japan. Um I think we owe a great debt in this country, actually, to that sort of cosmopolitan sharing of ideas, because indeed um uh one of the ways that mindfulness uh evolved in the United States is through the doorway of immigrants from India and from you know Japan and China, lovingly actually translating and sharing um aspects of the practices that they carried with them when they arrived here in making them available to us. And um many have looked at how what we call mindfulness also resonates deeply with American uh philosophical and scholarly traditions. You know, think of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau, right? Um, and so we've got a long tradition across cultures of really raising up the capacity that we all have to um kind of train our minds, if you will, to recognize the power that we have, to reclaim our attention and to shape our ability, you know, shape the muscle muscles, if you will, the inner muscles that help us focus our efforts at will and um, you know, ride the waves of emotional reactivity more successfully. In other words, there's just so many different ways that uh that mindfulness can support us and so many different underlying cultural to traditions that help uh support the foundation of these practices for us.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Well, I wish I had had a chance to finish your book, Inner Work of Racial Justice, before we get on. I haven't, but I have some of my favorite parts, and I'm sure there's a lot more than that. Uh, but before we get to that, uh please tell me so what is the connection of uh using mindfulness to uh reach racial justice number one and using mindfulness for people who are victims of racial injustice to um work through that and uh I don't know if I should say overcome it because I don't like the I I wouldn't uh for for a bit say uh get over it but but but to transcend it fight it reverse it whatever is needed well this this is such an interesting question and there's so many different ways that we might respond um so maybe taking the first part of your question I mean this sorry the the second part of your question first this this part that's about how these practices support those who have suffered um racial injustice uh who have been on the receiving end of some of the harmful um consequences of the ideologies of racism the practices by which racial hierarchy is formed and maintained right that's discrimination that's hate crimes that's bias right um and we know that you know you know those things that we're talking about they sound like just concepts but they live in people's bodies and they cause harm um I'm thinking of the scholarship around um stress in general right we know that stress causes harm we know that um uh those who experience bias and discrimination um have often disproportionately higher levels of stress associated with um for example microaggressions right the kind of often very subtle um sometimes intentional sometimes unintentional ways that bias that the biases that that we carry that we've received through the culture who matters who doesn't uh the racial hierarchies that I've been pointing to that are legacies of white supremacy which has meant racial subordination in different ways for differently racialized groups who compete underneath so-called whiteness or within the framework of white supremacy for some uh purchase on the promises of our times this is all of these things land in the bodies and cause um you know disproportionate um you know vulnerability to to health distress uh to illness um and so for years researchers have been trying to help us all see more clearly on the one hand how we can minimize the harms of of discrimination and racism but on the other hand if we have suffered them to figure out ways of navigating a world um where we are a little bit more resilient uh in the face of these some of these predictable harms and so you know in my experience mindfulness has been important in really helping me sort of notice when I am feeling uh some of the consequences of some of what I see every day, some of the things that I have experienced in the past my own self or witnessed among those that I love and care for, the harms that people are disproportionately suffering as they move through the world.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

Mindfulness has been important for me and just helping me with some of the emotional overwhelm that can come, some of the sadness that can come when you see you know harm happening that seems unfair the moral injury that can happen when you feel like you're a part of an institution that has values over here that are you know that are stated around justice and equality on the one hand but then you see act actions that don't that aren't consistent with those values and so that kind of moral injury that we suffer. What mindfulness has done for me is just heightened my ability to you know be present to the early signs that I'm about to you know um kind of feel the onset of some kind of uh harmful um impact of those things and and that enables me I mean so this is in general what mindfulness can do it can help you deepen awareness so that you can take actions to offset some of the consequences that can happen when we're not aware and so if you are um you know if you have suffered some sort of racialized trauma for example um there are ways that we can um ruminate this is just one example like something happened some microaggression happened someone made a threw a slur at you one day while you're walking with a someone out in broad daylight you all of a sudden heard a racial slur thrown your way out of nowhere um that's happened to me it's the kind of thing that could stay with you and really uh make it difficult for you to concentrate focus on the things you have to do the opportunities you have on you know on any given day just thinking about why would someone say just a thing what what did my person who was work walking with me, what did that person think about me as a result of that? I mean these are the these are at least for me when something like that happens our minds then can get uh triggered into a kind of relationship with what happened that can further their harm. In the underlying Buddhist trainings that's often you know uh the metaphor used to help us understand what's going on there is the first arrow of bare experience that can cause harm, the slurs thrown at you. And the question is how do we relate to that arrow? Do we immediately try to take it out and move on or might we find ourselves thinking about it, worrying over it, you know, getting a sort of a story involved about how this might happen again if we go out and what this other person thinking on in in Buddhist terms that can be considered like a second arrow. Yeah not the first pain and now you are we are contributing to it by the way we're relating to the first pain. And so mindfulness can help us really recognize when we've received the first arrow as the first arrow full stop and then inquire about how do we respond to that rather than just go into automatic reactivity about it. And once we are open to the reality that we have choices about how to respond, then we can then get engaged in becoming our own you know agent of repair and healing. And so that is to me in a kind of in a nutshell what mindfulness has been able to do for me as a person who has suffered discrimination. When it comes to how it can help us more generally there are just so many different ways. So all of us can benefit from that kind of emotional intelligence that I just named whether we're just witnessing something that's happening to another person, it doesn't have to be you know because we've been discriminated against we're we're moral beings. We know we see injuries in the world we all can be tempted to see something and then become engaged in ways of relating to that can be more or less automatically reactive or intentionally responsive. And what mindfulness is seeking to do is help us expand the range and reach of our intentional responses as opposed to simply reacting out of immediate anger or out of you know the the closest tool that we may have and recognizing whether near or far we have a range of tools and and it's up to us to figure out as best we can you know how to maximize the potential that we have and mindfulness can help with that.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

Okay so so what do you think about the following two things first of all I was on the um I it was the equal uh educational opportunity committee at my uh college and I was speaking to the uh head of the African American uh center after one of our meetings and telling about one of my experiences with uh I I don't like to call it anti-Semitism because not only because semi Semitic people aren't just Jewish people that they're Arabs too I I assume and and other folks originally from that part of the world uh but he made a very important point he said to me uh yes you you do experience people uh uh acting out of Jew hatred but he said uh you're not being uh you're not being uh exposed to be dehumanized every moment for being Jewish because not everyone knows you're Jewish but he says when you walk around and you're African American for instance or non-white uh it's it's right out there right right there to be able to be dehumanized in that way. And and in some respects I almost uh f felt that I I I should minimize then what what I'm experiencing.

SPEAKER_03 31:07

But whether or not that that is true, I gave you this example of very being very unmindful uh about dealing with someone who's uh uh acting uh in in a in a racist way or uh bigoted way uh I was I was at the Los Angeles sorry the um the New Orleans airport and I I was talking to this cashier and she's Fennel was a Laura asked for my business card and I handed it to her and the first thing she said was oh I see cats she said are you are you Jewish or American and I just had enough of it so I I just said at the top of my lungs stupid stupid and I walked out now I suppose that uh that the mindful approach would have either been to look at compassion for her ignorance or whatever and walked out or just said well you know you can be both or something but uh I don't know is there any way I could have done it better than those alternatives I suggested my dear I feel I feel for you I mean in other words Sue Yeah I think it's a very good question and thank you for sharing first of all that uh that particular really lively experience um you know and I'm kind of laughing with you partly because you know we're we're we can we're talking about it now um we are not in it right now you we are here we are surviving we're safe and sound we can we can recognize the sort of um humor in like just like knowing that you know we react and we you know whatever we might be thinking about how we might better react it's like this is who we are if someone says something like this we might just you know just say what comes first to mind um so we're humans right so I just the meta like the overarching message with this is to recognize that we you know we we are are all kind of on we're we're traveling and walking a very unique journey each of us through the world and the landscapes that we're in in these unique bodies that we're in and um we are meeting different experiences we're having different experiences um as we move through the world and again mindfulness is really about um inviting us to explore how to cultivate not to be perfect by the way but how to cultivate um the kind of appetite for inclining ourselves you know toward more intentionality again in how we respond to these provocations that can happen to us. So we're we're we're sort of inviting if we're curious or interested, I mean mindfulness isn't for everyone but the invitation is to say hey there are some ways that I might actually cultivate I might be curious about the different ways I could you know see a range of ways of responding in a moment of provocation like that. So that yes I might just yell I'll stupid or you know again uh as you were saying recognizing almost with some compassion where ignorance comes from that it does you know uh people there are many pathways to not knowing um and um some of which are not entirely anyone's fault uh in other words right we are um often miseducated in this country about identities um and we are not necessarily um you know at full choice around the environments that we find ourselves in the places we're in spaces where we're formed and ignorances are formed right miseducation is delivered so for me recognizing that you know when someone has a misunderstanding about the reality that that um the American identity is um multi multicultural right multifaceted um and would say something like that it's i i there's i cultivate i work to kind of remain aware um of the many causes and conditions of a of a a kind of ignorance that I see yes so many that uh that are you know not about anybody's particular fault actually and to that's a little bit of a departure from some of the trainings that we get in law which are about like well let's find out who's responsible and hold them accountable yeah yeah but seeing that cause causal causation in a certain sense and this has applications to law or can trouble some of the ways we think about causation and law but the causes and conditions of of mindsets multi-layered they're coming in people are getting trained and the dominant cultures that we're embedded in that we're sort of formed in impinge upon us in ways that to me make it um not seem so just or equitable or ethical to sort of um hear in a comment like that um something that is uh well let's just put it at work and I see some of the ways that I can bring compassion to to to those who are you know miseducated to think like these things. Yeah so there's a lot there. But I mean I this I will say the other thing that's coming up for me is American identity. There has been a long multi-generational effort that's ongoing and getting re uh re-vivified in our in the current political moment that we're in. But there's been a long effort to sort of construct in our ideas here in our minds here and in the minds of everyone abroad this idea of American as white. Yes or an American as not just white but a certain kind of white like a you know white Anglo-Sax right so um so I I'll say I'll give you a story of that from my own experience. I think I have a little example of it in my book. My my partner in life and love uh is um an American born in this this country to parents who had immigrated from India and his parents when they came here they had you know they came to the United States with the idea of white American meaning white and so when he started dating me one of the things they said was well we were prepared for you dating someone American but now I guess we'll get adjusted to this as well so again all of us who are not white and even people who are not white right have imbibed this idea that American equals a certain narrow view of what we might mean by whiteness. So um this is again it's as I was saying various in various ways racism is a feature of American culture not a bug. And it shows up in many different ways and to me this is an example of it a kind of internal un often unconscious or less than fully conscious bias that we have in the construction of what it means to be American. And some of that is conscious some of it is unconscious but it's a part of what can um create this vulnerability as we move through the world in our multicultural lives and worlds and in in packages um right and meet people who are who would say things like that that are harmful.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

Now I mean the only thing I can say on my defense about Mike all that woman's stupid is it happened in 2000 I got a little better. I had a client white who was complaining about this uh courtroom clerk being slow she was uh uh African American and he made a reference to her race this was after we finished his case I think we're only asking for waiting for his disposition sorry his dis disposition sheet and I said to him the only nice thing I have to say about what you just said is you are exercising your freedom of speech. I think he picked up on that well I was speaking to a man recently who was uh asking how stressful my job is and I said well things I do to reduce the stress is the mindfulness the exercise the Tai Chichuan I said something that's also less stressful about my work is now it is the criminant in Virginia who gets to choose if there is a jury sentencing proceeding if they get found guilty by a jury. In Virginia before COVID for the most part um the thing that dissuaded a lot of non-white criminal defendants from uh uh going to trial was that first of all you have to have a jury unless both sides have no jury but in those days if you got found guilty by a jury the jury would recommend the sentence and the judge was was able to reduce the sentence andor suspend some of it the the jury was setting a ceiling but sometimes the judge will say well that's the democratic will and what I say is no matter how much racism there might be among plenty of judges it's even more uh rampant probably by jurors and it's harder to know with jurors because at least judges have had some sort of vetting process we know more about the biographies so he said to me and he's African American he said to me so well what is that he kind of hung his head down he said what does that mean what can I do about me and my uh my son and other African Americans I said well I said one great example I have of transcending that is Bill Cosby hidden not engaged in uh uh sexual predation or whatever we call it uh but but I but I said no one can let another people identify uh you uh you identify yourself. I mean what Bill Cosby did was great before I knew about the charges of uh of sexual offenses was he seemed to act as if you know I don't know if he spoke about the racism but regardless he wasn't gonna let people define him. Eartha Kitt was not going to let people define her.

SPEAKER_03 41:39

Whether it was politically correct or not for her to go to some nightclub in Botswana or wherever it was she said that two or three times the manager came over to her and said I'm sorry non-white people aren't allowed here and she said okay I understand and she just stayed and therefore she wasn't able to be defined as someone who had to be uh taken away what else can I say to that man who said to me what can we African Americans do Yeah I mean I'm not I think that um there's so much that we are doing in our own efforts already right uh and I think there's no one way to um effectively be a change agent in the face of racism and other forms of oppression right because they one of the things that we've come to understand these days is that um these vectors of oppression interrelate so you have race and gender race gender and class um immigration intersecting with so when one person enters into a space or a situation their entire the entire sort of complex of of of identity characteristics um and related you know uh swirling stereotypes and vulnerabilities are in that conversation they're in the space they're in the situation um I do think that uh recognizing our power is always you know really important I think it's at the core for me of what I call mindfulness it's recognizing the many different ways that um who we are is in no ways limited to what others think about us. There it's in no ways limited and I've already alluded to this limited to what we've been trained to think about ourselves and educated to know about ourselves and each other. Who we are is so much bigger than our resumes or even these identity boxes that we're you know we place ourselves and others in um it's challenging sometimes to you know to do the kind of what I think mindfulness can help us do is open up um our ability to disrupt binary thinking. So this it's either this or that. We're either so we can certainly recognize when race and racism is present without getting stuck in a narrative about who we are.

SPEAKER_01 44:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 44:16

You know, so it's we can both speak to um the reality of a a kind of a moment where race was unfairly causing harm or or potential injury or calling for us to attend in some way to a new policy or a new approach. So in other words, we I think what mindfulness helps us do is see multiple complex reality as such. Right. See that sometimes we do need to have a conversation about racism or sexual um bias and and sexism or um LGBTQIA plus bias. In other words there are many different types of biases. Mindfulness to me is simply a doorway into awareness of what is called for here and now and then letting go when that's been addressed.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

And I love how you said that word empowerment. We have to keep our power and not hand our power over to other people. Absolutely well I could go on and on but I told Rhonda we were going to end now. So instead of me talking about the following additional things from her book, I want to tell everybody read inner work of racial justice. One of the things that I especially like about Rhonda addressing is even in the mindfulness movement, there are uh racial aspects for instance uh those folks who look at mindfulness in terms of doing the inner work uh versus the the uh those people with cultural backgrounds or approaches of doing collective work I mean why else do uh why else do people get together to do sitting together? I mean that's a collective activity uh but there's there's so much great stuff in Rhonda's book. Rhonda seeing that you have been a litigator do you have any recommendations for criminal defendants and criminal defense lawyers for how to beat the prosecution versus just what we've been talking about.

SPEAKER_03 46:15

Well all I can say is you know I'm buoyed in the efforts that I've made by many things but one of the things that uh inspires me and gives me confidence is you know looking at elders and folks who've gone before who've seen value in these practices and those include a range of people including Supreme Court Justice Breyer who's on record having talked about right how mindfulness supported him a lesser known um exemplar for me intellectual giant for me former law professor um uh scholar Charles Black who uh you know was a Yale law professor and joined with people like Polly Murray who's another giant yes right a number of people who who you know Charles Hamilton Houston part of that generation of the greatest really the greatest Americans who were really um pulling their intellectual firepower together to to bring down um the legal structures that held uh white supremacy in place in that explicit way um that manifest as segregation right so those desegregation uh lawyers and the efforts underneath them many of those folks talked about um a multidimensional or you know their lives if you explore their intellectual histories et cetera there's a multidimensionality to how they were trying to change the world and the systems they saw a role for changing themselves and changing their own views and also yeah waking up to their own power and they uh leaned into ways of creating space for that work even as they did work in the world so it's I think if we can just see that there's a place and a space for all aspects of the work for centering ourselves for repairing the ways we've been wounded for building our own resilience and then doing what we can whether it's you know a litigation strategy and engagement or a campaign on the one hand or um really being a place you know Polly Murray at the end of her life became a priest right because she saw that there's a role to play in helping cultivate the moral and spiritual resources and view that really is what we are maybe on a certain level striving for when we when we speak about justice. You know Martin Luther King Jr spoke about justice as what love looks like in public. And I think my work ultimately is is moving in that direction as well.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Yes and and and you're you're among those folks uh Rhonda Rhonda when I found out you're gonna be at that mindful leadership conference I was beyond excited I just didn't know how I was going to get there around my uh my court day but court ended early enough and I ran over there and when we met each other oh I just loved meeting you I so much love knowing you and when you offered me a hug that was beyond the icing on the cake that's it and then I think you hugged me a second time and that was a a million a million times of icing.

SPEAKER_03 49:25

Yeah well at the end of the day isn't this kind of kind of um non-transactional love and care it's really what's at the heart of ethics of justice right of racial justice it's finding a way to make the care that we have for each other visible and um to obstruct the, you know, to disrupt the things that get in the way of caring for each other. And we know that bias can do that. So here we are and I'm glad to be in this conversation with you and to have a chance to to remember um the the early uh ways in which we encountered each other and and shared that warmth.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

Well we've gone over time how nonetheless I give all my guests who I like and you're someone I like tremendously the opportunity to tell the audience anything they haven't told them yet that they want them to know although I think you've said it all already.

SPEAKER_03 50:14

Yeah no I think just that we these are such important times for dedicating ourselves to making the most of the times that we have and um whether it's through mindfulness practice or whatever practice we can regularly engage in to deepen our resources and then be able to make a difference right starting right where we are I say go for it. That's why we're here.

SPEAKER_01 50:39

Well thank you so much Rhonda everybody Rhonda McGee is an amazing person in her book, in her work of racial justice, visit our website uh join her online you're gonna love it. And if you don't love it, uh tell me and I don't think any of you are going to tell me you didn't love it. Thank you so much, Rhonda. Thank you and uh everybody this is Beat the Prosecution on John Katz a criminal defense and DUI defense law in Northern Virginia Rhonda McGee has hit it out of the ballpark. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 51:11

Stand by thank you. Thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution this is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecutions. Nothing discussed on our media sources such as our podcast or website is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email at info at beatheprosecution dot com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.