Critical Reflection #3: On Accompaniment as Policy, The Ethics of Loneliness, Challenging Ourselves: Critical Self-Reflection on Power and Privilege

In Cheryl A. Hyde’s “Challenging Ourselves: Critical Self-Reflection on Power and Privilege” Hyde emphasizes the power of realizing our own privileges outside of our subordinate groups and how our identity shapes us all to have a call to action to fight against oppression and discrimination against certain marginalized identities. Hyde emphasizes that “we might have access to racial or gender privilege, yet be in subordinate groups for religion and sexual orientation” (Hyde 432). This demonstrates that, “often, we become more focused on those parts of our identity associated with subordinate-group membership and then don’t see the privilege we might have… building an identity of victimization” (Hyde 433). Hyde is demonstrating a need for people to realize that even though they are in subordinate groups we are all a part of some privilege that some people are not. For example, I am an African American female which puts me in a subordinate group, yet I am an educated Christian which puts me in a dominant group. This means that anyone who is, “‘fighting the good fight’ they do not need to address issues regarding their own power and privilege” (Hyde 428). This further explains that even though I am not wealthy neither do I qualify as middle class in America I may qualify as middle class compared to how people live in other countries. I have basic needs such as food, clothes, and water. I may never have ‘white privilege’ but then again being educated was once only a ‘white privilege’ and now that those things have changed there are identities that make me privileged in some way.

Furthermore, in connection to Paul Farmer’s, “Accompaniment as Policy” Hyde relates to Farmer because she asserts the importance of being aware of the identities that other people see in you compared to the ones you identify with. For instance, Farmer is a white male who went to Haiti to help the people suffering from poverty that has lead to a lot of disease and illnesses. While working with the patients he stress the importance of how, “as a society, we are happy to help and serve the poor, as long as we don’t have to walk with them where they walk… as long as we can be sure that we will not have to live with them… only from a controllable, geographical distance” (Farmer 4). The goal is to walk with people being there as a person and not just any person but the person the patient needs you to be. Referring back to Hyde, “making the genuine effort to understand how others experience you is critical to relationship building and essential if you want to deconstruct and challenge your own societal privileges” (Hyde 433). This explains that understanding how others perceive you is key to knowing what identities work in order to connect to people and what identities should be less identified with.

In addition, the interview “Ethical Loneliness” by Jill Stauffer, accompaniment relates to ethical loneliness because is “a name for double abandonment” (Stauffer 1). Ethical loneliness is not having an accompagnateur on top of “the experience of not being heard when you testify to what happened” (Stauffer 1). This happens because, referring back to Farmer, “when the iron cage of rationality leads to an imaginative poverty, cynicism and disengagement follow” (Farmer 5). This reiterates that importance of self reflection and acknowledgement of privilege to realize that there are people suffering more rather than seeing only yourself as a victim of societal oppression. We need to understand that, “we live in a world where every relatively privileged life relies on the use of misery; the clothes we wear and the food we eat come from abusive labor conditions” (Stauffer 3). That means that in America or any 1st world prospering country has prospered and is still prospering at the expense of someone else’s suffering and exploitation. Even though we did not directly create the systematic structural violence we need to understand that benefiting from it and not understanding that, “human beings can destroy other human beings, with or without violence (that is, destruction is not only physical but can also be emotional or social)” (Stauffer 3) can be detrimental to ever facilitating change. We need to push and be advocates for a better society where, reinstating Farmer quoting Bill Clinton, “There is plenty of evidence that more effective government can produce higher incomes, better living conditions, more social justice, and a cleaner environment across the board” (Farmer 5).

Since I am fairly new to working with my community partner I am getting use to working with a particular group of girls and the first few times didn’t go so well so I had to figure out what identities they could relate to and my serious and extrovert identity did not matter, neither did my race, I presume, yet my youth and sex helped me connect to the girls. I was able to joke with them, find out what boys they liked and music they listened to. In relation to the readings I think the key identity is being educated and being myself. “Perhaps, education is needed” (Hyde 433). For example, I can teach the girls that if they want to end racism then education is key and that is why what they do every day such as going to school, the Canal Alliance afterschool program and doing their homework. Everyone has a lot to offer to be educated, open-minded, and aware is key, especially to teach others the same.