Thursday, June 18, 2009

We Must Lift as We Climb

There are people who identify with being a minority, but do not identify with being from an “impacted community.” It is amongst many of us who possess higher education where this feeling of “us versus them” arises. When we speak of racism, we have to speak about classism, sexism, and all the other “isms.” Being a minority of privilege does allow one to maneuver in society with greater freedom. But what does that mean? That one cannot identify as being black if one isn’t poor? Or one cannot identify as being Filipino if one isn’t living and working in another country to send remittances home? How much have we formulated our cultural or ethnic identities to revolve around socio-economic status?

What is interesting is that we encounter privileged minorities (at least those who are American born or Western-raised) who have dis-indentified with their ethnic group. The type of high standard lifestyles that professionals are able to attain: Prada bags, BMWs, dinner parties… etc. essentially mimic rich Western lifestyles. Money and education provide people of color with access to the upper echelons of society, which have usually consisted of white people. Which brings me to the question: Does this access and privilege lead to cultural denial? A bleaching of one’s ethnic identity?

In some cases, perhaps. In others, perhaps not. For example, there are minorities (usually, once again, 2nd generation, American born) who go the opposite way, and over-identify with their culture – living out all the good and the bad. Then there are others who straddle the line between the culture(s) of their parents and Western culture. This often times proves to be problematic, for example, with regards to the family-centric values of the parents’ country of origin and Western individualism. Or, in another example, there exists a clash between cultures regarding traditional roles for men and women in the family and in society. Negotiating our identity to balance the values of our parents with the values of the society in which we have been raised is difficult for all. It’s difficult to know which values are healthiest for us for the life we want to live. We often discover that our values and choices go against what our parents had wanted for us, say if we were living in the country they immigrated from. There is always some type of rebellion against parental cultural values (like in the movie the Namesake), and then there is also (for some of us) the fierce longing to return back to our roots and to the culture of our parents that we have for so long denied within us. I see a lot of us trying to reestablish our ethnic identities because although we were raised amongst other Americans, our family lives were very different than our white middle class suburban school companions – different languages were spoken at home, different foods were eaten, and different histories were recounted. Yet, while we reconstruct and renegotiate our identities to incorporate all these things, I think we have to be critical of what values and ways of thinking we have adopted from our parents (consciously and unconsciously) regarding important matters like women roles (what does women’s equality really mean?), health and well-being (traditional food dishes have created physical problems like heart disease and diabetes and, in addition, excessive smoking and drinking are considered cultural norms and the only social activity for men in most cultures), and communication (for example, seeking counseling services is considered taboo in most other cultures). We must look critically at our ethnic identities. We must honor certain traditions, but we must challenge others. Our position as educated, 2nd generation children give us the perfect opportunity to challenge the unhealthy views and traditions from both our parents’ countries of origin and the dominant culture we live in. We are at a strategic intersection of multiple cultures and vantage points that we have the ability (and power) to take the healthiest values from each to create a future that links timeless traditional values (such as respect for the family unit) with modern perspectives of social justice. This is how we create a new paradigm and way of thinking about the world, each other, and development.

With this in mind, I think one of the key missions in this line of work is to organize all minorities, especially those of us with privilege because we have the most resources. (And then to ally with socially conscious white people -- but I will expound on this in other blog). Historically, people of color have not been able to exercise any type of power. Now, primarily due to the struggle of our parents to provide us with a better life in the US, our generation is not only educated, we hold rank in a variety of careers. Despite this, we do not want to come into developing countries with a similar mentality that white people have come to developing countries with: dispensing charity. The idea is to recognize the commonality of experiences of oppression in our personal lives and throughout history in order to empower each other with ideas of lifting up ourselves and creating productive alliances to gain access to resources. Again, we need to subvert the hierarchy of charity regardless of what type of privilege it’s coming from: white or people of color. Like Paulo Freire says in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both… In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both.”

So again, I ask, what is the ultimate vision? One of my biracial friends said that there existed only one movie where the two main characters were engaged in a biracial relationship and it wasn’t “a big deal.” In every other movie where there is couple from different races, part of the issue in the movie is the clash of races or cultures through the relationship. I remember my friend saying what we want are the movies to show inter-racial relationships and it’s not a big deal, not talked about, not the focus of the problems between the characters. But is that really what we want? A society that just doesn’t talk about race, gender, ethnicity? Because if we do not talk about things, then they do not exist. How can we forget or ignore the struggles of our ancestors? Or more recently, of course, our parents who immigrated? How many times did my Dad tell me as I was growing up that he walked miles to school with no shoes? Or what about when my best friend’s father tells her that he’s been supporting his family in India since he was 8 years old and he is STILL sending money to India to support them? I am only able to be here – to live amongst others of different races, religions, and cultures because the people before me have struggled. I feel like those who do not have a critical lens ultimately do not know history. If I do not know history, my personal and collective history, how can I go forward into a future that does not repeat the past?

Is ignorance bliss? There are many of us, both white and of color, who walk amongst us with blinders on. Without a critical lens on the power dynamics of race, religion, ethnicity, and gender throughout history and into the present day, then we do not see the historical trauma of people of color and minority communities everywhere. Without a critical lens, we do not have to get angry at injustice. Without a critical lens, we can blame people of color from not being able to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” because racism doesn’t exist anymore, right? Without a critical lens, we don’t have to ask ourselves why we cross the street when we see a black man walking towards us. Without a critical lens, we can spend our parents’ money freely and without guilt on expensive and unnecessary things because we don’t think about what political or economic mess they fled from in their home countries in order to live a financially secure life. Without a critical lens, we do not have to think about the genocides, colonization, wars, and displacement that affected our parents, grandparents, and ancestors. Because if we look at the issues facing minority and indigenous communities with a critical lens, with an acute awareness, then we cannot deny, cannot turn our eyes away from the physical, mental, and social sicknesses that are dragging communities of color down. If we look instead at the facts, not as the white historians have written about it in our history books, but as our grandparents and parents tell it as they reminisce about their past lives in another country, then we have no excuse in seeing how we have come to be here. We have climbed only because they have sweated and sacrificed to make sure we saw a better life. We have climbed only because they have lifted us. And now, with all our knowledge, education, and privilege, how can we fail not to lift others?

We must fully acknowledge our unique position in history and accept our responsibility in shaping the future of society. As a person of color born in this day in age with some privilege, we are able to access spheres of life that were previously closed to us (Obama is the perfect example). We are on the leading edge of a new paradigm. This new paradigm will only and can only come about through communities of color leading the way. We have the tools, as Paulo Freire says it, to liberate ourselves and the oppressor. Yet let us not fool ourselves into thinking, like I said in the beginning, that if we are of color or identify as minorities that our lives are automatically in line with this vision and cannot hurt the cause. The truth is that we are a detriment to this mission if we are ignorant and estranged from ourselves and our histories. If we cannot look at ourselves, let alone society with a critical lens, then we are indeed lost to the cause. But if we can, then it is our responsibility to lift others not only out of poverty, but also out of despair and hopelessness. By recognizing fully that the liberation of others is wrapped up in ours, we must lift as we climb.

4 comments:

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  2. The Grapes of Wrath
    Chapter 14

    The western land, nervous under the beginning change. The Western States, nervous as horses before a thunder storm. The great owners, nervous, sensing a change, knowing nothing of the change. The great owners, striking at the immediate thing, the widening government, the growing labor unity; striking at new taxes, at plans; not knowing these things are results, not causes. The causes lie deep and simply — the causes are a hunger in a stomach, multiplied a million times; a hunger in a single soul, hunger for joy and some security, multiplied a million times; muscles and mind aching to grow, to work, to create, multiplied a million times. The last clear definite function of man — muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need — this is man. To build a wall, the build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something from the wall, the house, the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving. For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man — when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it. This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live — for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And feat the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live — for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know — fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

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  3. The Western states, nervous under the beginning change. Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas in Arkansas, New Mexico, Arizona, California. A single family moved from the land. Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants the land. The land company — that's the bank when it has land — wants tractors, not families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor were ours it would be good — not mine, but ours. If our tractor turned the long furrows of our land, it would be good. Not my land, but ours. We could love that tractor then as we have loved this land when it was ours. But this tractor does two things — it turns land and turns us off the land. There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think about this.

    One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car creaking along the highway to the West. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I'm alone and I am bewildered. In the night one family camps in a ditch and other family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen. Here's the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate — "we lost our land." The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from his first "we" there grows a still more dangerous thing; "I have a little food" plus "I have none". If from this problem the sum is "we have a little food", the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two-men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mothers blanket — take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning — from "I" to "we".

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  4. If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I", and cuts you off forever from the "we".

    The Western states are nervous under the beginning change. Need is the stimulus to concept, concept to action. A half-million people moving over the country; one million more restive, ready to move; 10 million more feeling the first nervousness.

    And tractors turning the multiple furrows in the vacant land.

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