About Me

On the Ethics of Practicing TCM as a White Person

Living in a culture of white supremacy and white entitlement, it is understandable for one to question what the place of white practitioners is in the medicine of non-white cultures. Obviously I cannot speak authoritatively on this subject, just to how I have understood and reconciled the various complexities of cultural exchange under global power imbalances and inequities. I will do my best to convey the things I hold true in my process.

First, I am aware that there are cultures that are uniformly closed, and others that at the very least have more room for exchange and practice. Cultures by their nature being living constructs made of different people with different opinions, it is not always clear what approach to cultural sharing to take, but I believe that being conservative seems warranted when other factors like power and oppression are present.

Next, I know that as a white person, I must be (re)connected to my own lineages and practices in order to avoid grasping outward at other, more intact lineages in order to find meaning and purpose for myself in this life. As white people we have collectively had to give up our cultural specificity and difference to appeal for protection and belonging to the power structure of whiteness and white supremacy. Some of our ancestors did this under duress, some willingly. This process of shoring up the power of whiteness by leaving behind unique cultures must be continuous to be effective, which leaves us today with the notion that white people have no culture outside of white supremacy culture. Rekindling my own connection to lineage is one way to denounce that lie we tell ourselves.

As I was taught the history of Traditional Chinese Medicine, we must distinguish what I practice (TCM) from Chinese medicine, which would be defined as a wide variety of medical practices and philosophies originating from the geographical area we would refer to in english today as China, with roots extending back three to five thousand years. TCM should be understood as a narrower subset of Chinese medicine practices which were selected by the administration of Mao’s Communist government in the mid 20th century CE to be taught to Western cultures as part of a relationship and exchange. The practices they collected -acupuncture, gua sha, cupping, herbal medicine, etc. - were not necessarily all practiced uniformly across China, nor were they all practiced together, or by the same practitioner. In fact, some of the more spiritual or Chinese-culture-specific elements were downplayed or excised completely by the Chinese government from this Westernized parcel of practices. Therefore, TCM has never belonged to an intact singular lineage or singular culture. In fact this particular set and form of practices we call TCM was specifically crafted for Western practitioners and Western sentiments.

Last, when there has not been a resounding explicit expression of desire for a set of practices to remain closed, I believe that medicines fall into a unique category of cultural exchange. Even most practitioners of Western medicine would today recognize that there are real limitations to the philosophies and knowledges that comprise WM. If we are to address the whole range of human experiences, and the multitude of ways in which our bodies, minds, and spirits can fall into dis-ease, we need a wider variety of tools than WM alone can provide us. In this situation we should seek to expand the availability and accessibility of a wider variety of types of medicine, not close down these avenues for healing out of a misguided sense of cultural purity (which I think we inherit from white supremacy culture).

I don’t pretend to believe that I will ever truly understand some elements of this medicine, being from outside of the cultural context in which the principles developed, but I do believe that I can be a dutiful and diligent lifelong student and devote my life to the service of bringing as full an effect I can muster of its numerous benefits.