You’re going to get soil on your hands if you want to do some proper weeding
As some of you know, we at Fearless Futures run deep and transformative experiential programmes for leaders across sectors, eg “Design for Inclusion”, a 3.5day programme. One dimension to our approach is recognising that discomfort is one of the keys to meaningful, powerful learning.
This is because, to quote the mighty James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced”. Challenging inequities, given how they’re normalised, woven into the fabric of our society and designed, means doing some digging.
Inequities and injustices have been designed so that those who benefit from them do not notice them. And that when those who benefit from them are made aware, they do everything to preserve the status quo. Such as: attacking those who highlight the problem as the problem, rather than the problem itself.
Other behaviours include; diminishing the scale of the problem; claiming a related problem is the real problem; crying; asking for numerical data as proof; fatigue from the shallowest of conversations; saying you feel silenced because you can’t talk about unrelated issues whenever you want.
The list goes on. It is vast. The privilege and power preservation toolkit is extensive in its range.
So when we speak of discomfort in our workshops, it is the discomfort that emerges for those who are confronting issues that is in their interests to look away from, to ignore, to be irresponsible towards. Those for whom the daily burden of oppressions is not known nor real.
And for these people, the slightest engagement (and you know, c.3 days folks is the maximum requirement of the engagement, it’s not that long!), where they are merely exploring rather than living injustice, feels immense. That’s the fragility that comes with privilege, right there.
The discomfort is also born out of some false equivalency work that folks with power and privilege do.
This, we contend, is to do with how some of us can respond to guilt and shame. And that on some level humans have been trained really not to like these feelings/emotions.
When we live within sites of privilege, we misunderstand and create false equivalencies between things — e.g. between the shame of having our harmful behaviour called out, with being shamed by the harm of experiencing oppression — so that we can retain our sense of self as a “good person”.
We create the false equivalency to deflect feelings of guilt and shame for our behaviour. Because if we can insist those things are the same (even when they aren’t), then we aren’t so bad.
Experiencing discomfort may also come from the strain of knowing we actually need to let go of certain conceptions we have of ourself in order to really do and be the person we want to be. Who wants that when you can convince yourself even in the face of new information that you could just stay doing and being who you are today?!
Other responses to exploring oppression from those who live within sites of privilege and power might include feeling silenced at times in discussions. Now this is super important: Not having your voice centred on particular issues in a conversation *is not equivalent* to being structurally excluded by society!
Also, side note: in learning environments in particular, there has to be a specific direction of travel. None of us can actually just talk about whatever we like whenever, otherwise we’d end up talking about Eastenders which may not get us to any precise outcomes and we wouldn’t actually be learning. In this context, your privileged position means you don’t have any light to shed on the oppression in question — because you don’t have any lived expertise about it. That’s OK. The expertise lies with those who experience it.
Being able to make distinctions in the midst of feelings of equivalency to determine if they are false is therefore key. Here is another one: Having your behaviour that perpetuates oppression critiqued and being held to account *is not equivalent* to having your behaviours, actions, ideas, attitudes critiqued because of your identity as someone who experiences oppression.
The reason why these things are not the same is because of the way power is structured, historically and in the present, at a system level and therefore how it feeds into the micro of our relationships.
The only reason why you may wish to work through discomfort, rather than walk away, which your privilege ultimately afford you, is if you wish to prioritise equity, inclusion, belonging and justice over your feelings personally. Which do you VALUE most? This work is also about reprioritisation.
Interestingly, our data tells us that those who exist at the intersection of marginalisations often find our programmes spaces of belonging and legitimacy and small sites of liberation. Maybe you have the tools now to see why *that* might be?
In light of all this, who should our programmes serve? What should they prioritise? What’s the point of this if not for that? Can deep learning happen without the above confrontations for those with privilege/power? What world are we trying to create?
And crucially: can you really pull out a massive weed without getting soiled?
We make no apology for our approach. And for *many* of the people who participate in our programmes, they are deeply committed to diving in, digging deep, and messily pulling all this out at the root, knowing that only then can they plant something new, better and just.
This blog also exists as a twitter thread, if that’s your type of thing.
