I, like Emme, felt that both Freire's piece and Baldwin's piece echoed each other beautifully. It spoke to the unknown that makes us both fearful and hopeful at the same time. It spoke to the idea that action, and what is known, are not somehow separate but intrinsically linked. As Freire says: "...the praxis is the new raison d'etre of the oppressed, and the revolution, which inaugurates the historical moment of this raison d'etre, is not viable apart from their concomitant conscious involvement. Otherwise action is pure activism." (pg.66) One without the other is incomplete and insufficient.
However to me their two pieces spoke, most importantly, to the ambiguity that exists in the oppressed. In the case of James Baldwin, he encourages his nephew to avoid the ambiguity forced upon him by an oppressive system, rather to "take no one's word...[to] trust [his] experience [solely]", harkening back to what Freire says about not putting other's above the oppressed. He talks about how often times the oppressed are self-deprecating and don't realize that they "know things" that are of value. Following that logic, one could say that the conclusion is: just because the oppressors, who set what is valued, does not agree, that those who are oppressed's knowledge is "valuable", doesn't make it any less so. Following that both authors advocate that the way to break out of this oppressive system is to stop putting stock into it and rather build confidence in oneself and others who are oppressed.
In terms of teaching, to me this ties back to the deficit model. Do we, as members of this cohort, made up of both oppressed and oppressors, stay as vigilant as we would like to be against self-deprecation, deficit narratives and more? We talked about assessment two weeks ago, what type of knowledge is assessed as "valuable" in each of our pedagogies?
Analie - excellent post and focusing us on self-deprecation. For those of you who can, BC grad and Bennett college president, Dr. Julianne Malveaux is speaking Thursday at BC, directly before our class, at 3pm in the Heights Room in Corcoran Commons. Dr. Malveaux has spoken far and wide about her frustrations at women and women of color who have learned to self-deprecate and, complementarily, how white men very rarely discount their own expertise, sweepingly speaking, of course.
ReplyDelete