Dharma and diversity: the changing face of U.S. Buddhism has raised issues of race and privilege within a spiritual practice that includes new immigrants, communities of color and the trendy elite.

Sitting in my half-lotus position in a Zen center in Northern California, I find myself among a hundred people, but one of the few people of color in the room. Where have all the people of color gone? I wonder. How did a religion predominantly practiced by Asians and people of color outside of the United States become a religion for white Americans in this country?

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It turns out that I am not the only one asking these questions. A growing number of people of color are now being drawn to Buddhism. They are writing books and magazine articles, setting up online groups and meeting in private groups to meditate and study the dharma, the teachings. They are also joining "diversity committees" to change the racial make-up of their sanghas, or Buddhist communities.

The changing face of U.S. Buddhism has raised issues of race and privilege within a spiritual practice that includes new immigrants, communities of color and the trendy elite, as well as those seeking a message of liberation and those in search of methods of relaxation. Buddhists of color who are challenging elitism and white privilege in their sanghas have encountered a familiar struggle to name racism and identify its effects in an environment where such dynamics can often be masked.

"It's not just economic privilege, it's an internal sense of privilege," says Angel Kyodo Williams, author of Being Black, a book on Zen for African Americans. "I think that's creating a highly politicized environment where people are congregating."

Buddha Goes West

The American Religious Identification Survey estimates that about a million people practice Buddhism in the United States. But there is little more information, since Buddhist groups typically have no records of their members that would hint at race, ethnicity, income and employment. It's even difficult to designate who is and isn't a member.

While the first Buddhist temple in the United States was built in San Francisco in 1853 by Chinese Buddhist immigrants, it was not until the 1960s that immigration laws permitted an increase of Asian immigrants, including Buddhists. Once here, Buddhist teachers found an audience with the countercultural anti-Vietnam war movement that was searching for an alternative to American materialism and war. For those young, white kids, Buddhism had a particular appeal. They interpreted the religion's seeming lack of dogma as anti-institutional and reveled in Buddhism's straightforward philosophy: life is painful; suffering has a cause; the cause of suffering can be ended; and there is "the way" to end the cause of suffering.

According to Rev. Ryuei Michael McCormick, this group, which has inevitably been dubbed the "Elite Buddhists," is the most well-known group of American Buddhists. They tend to be European-American, come from wealthy and educated backgrounds and follow a number of different schools: Tibetan Buddhism, Vipassana and Japanese, Korean and Chinese strains of Zen. What the different schools have in common is an emphasis on meditation as a method to self-instruction, discipline and enlightenment.

Not surprisingly, these Buddhist centers are predominantly white for the same reasons that churches, synagogues, mosques and temples are: a long legacy of racism, the location of neighborhoods where meetings are held and a lack of people of color in leadership roles. "There is an assumption that people on a spiritual path do not have the conditioning that people who don't have a spiritual path have," says Buddhist teacher Hilda Gutierrez Baldoquin. "Racism is the same whether it's in the dharma center or if it's out there, it's the same."

For many Buddhists of color, being in a predominantly white institution creates a sense of isolation within their practice. "I think a lot of white people expect folks to walk in the door, and they don't want to see or talk about their color," says Marlene Jones, a practitioner and teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in northern California, adding that "race is such an excitable issue, and a big part of racism is not wanting to see people for who they are. I felt unseen, and I decided I needed a community of people of color."

Gutierrez Baldoquin had a similar experience during her first visit at California's Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in 1990. "There were maybe 100 people there, and if there was someone besides myself that was of color there then there was a lot, and not one person said hello to me," she recalls. "I mean nobody came and talked to me. I stayed for tea, went to Muir Beach, walked across the field to the beach, and I never went back to Green Gulch after that Sunday."

The New Color of Dharma

Despite the white face of many dharma centers, a number of people of color have been making their place there for the past 30 years and now have a following. The Yahoo newsgroup "blackbuddhists" offers an introduction and virtual community. The magazine on Engaged Buddhism Turning Wheel has dedicated entire issues solely to Buddhism in people of color communities, while memoirs like Dreaming Me: An African-American Woman's Spiritual Journey by Jan Willis have put a personal face to the experience. Gutierrez Baldoquin's new anthology Dharma, Color and Culture is exploring the nuances of the religion from a Buddhist of color perspective.

"When people from groups who have historically found themselves socially, economically and politically outside the margins hear that the Buddha taught liberation, nothing more needs to be said," says Gutierrez Baldoquin. "There is no need to proselytize or seduce."

Choyin Rangdrol sees the increase in Buddhists of color as a direct result of more accessible information and practice in the last five years. "There has been much more literature available, much more discourse," he says.

But faced with white dharma centers, people of color are forming their own spaces for meditation and study--usually not as a replacement to the predominantly white Buddhist centers but as a supplement. They find peer support and also meet teachers of color.

Mushim Ikeda-Nash, chair of the diversity committee at the San Francisco Zen Center, thinks that people who suffer daily from institutionalized racism and oppression don't want to be told "accept things as they are" by a white teacher. "It sounds too much like what we go through every day," he says, "being told to 'accept,' that is, be resigned to a status quo in which our faces and histories do not appear."

For their part, Buddhist centers are eschewing the word "race" and instead organizing "diversity committees." At Spirit Rock Meditation Center, a new diversity coordinator is recruiting teachers of color who are then paired up with more seasoned teachers. Funding from donors and wealthier practitioners has also increased in recent years. There are now scholarships at many Buddhist centers for people of color who can't afford the costly retreat fees that can range from $100 to $200. There have also been some efforts to tie race matters to the institutions. For example, funding for the new meditation hall at Spirit Rock was, according to its web site, contingent on the center reaching out to the area's "diverse population."

But no one is holding their breath for changes to come any time soon. "I think the obstacles are institutional," says Donna Hines, who has been practicing Buddhism for less than a year and is one of the few people of color on the Diversity Committee at San Francisco Zen Center. She has joined small study groups and meetings in private homes. "I won't put my spiritual development on hold while these institutional barriers are resolved."

Kara Andrade is program coordinator and community organizer for Environmental Prevention in Communities, a youth policy and prevention group in Berkeley, CA.