Prompt CR 9: Unfinished Business, Addressing Injustice: The Work of Human Beings
I like to be human because of my unfinishedness. I know that I am conditioned. Yet conscious of such conditioning, I know that I can go beyond it, which is the essential difference between conditioned and determined existence. …
I like being a human person because even though I know that the material, social political, cultural, and ideological conditions in which we find ourselves almost always generate divisions that make difficult the construction of our ideals of change and transformation, I know also that the obstacles are not eternal. (Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 54–55)
For this Critical Reflection: Consider the course guiding questions and the principles of Ethics From the Margins (in italics). Focus on how Freire’s ideas help you respond. As you only have a few pages of reading, please dive in to these ideas and be sure to use specifics from your community partner experience. This is also an opportunity to bring in concepts and points from other texts as the questions below are the foundation for your final paper as well.
- What? How is are you/your social identity and that of others conditioned by larger social structures? What social ideologies and structures cause and perpetuate injustices (unraveling social ideologies)? What have I learned from the community partners and voices of people I have worked with this semester? Why is participation in the census important for these communities as well as for all of us and our humanization (identifying victimization and agency)?
- So What? What are the larger contexts, histories, and narratives that created and perpetuate structural injustice? How do the conditions caused by unjust structures translate into the census definition of being “hard-to-count”(examining power, privilege, and social domination)? Do we all bear an ethical responsibility to examine and challenge social ideologies and power dynamics and structures that perpetuate inequity and cause suffering? (Placing subjugated voices at the moral center/Identifying victimization and agency/Creating a social movement)
- Now What? How has community engagement plus course texts, themes ethical principles and methods deepened my critical consciousness? How have I learned/benefited from community strengths and wisdom, from “placing subjugated lives at the moral center?” How can we as individuals and as a collective democratic “body” ethically orient ourselves to create inclusive and equitable structures that liberate rather than oppress (creating a social movement)?
Below are some quotes you might work with and some further suggestions:
Idea: Paulo Freire writes, “What makes men and women ethical is their capacity to ‘spiritualize’ the world, to make it either beautiful or ugly. … It is impossible to humanly exist without assuming the right and the duty to opt, to decide, to struggle, to be political” (53).
How does this help you think about your role and “ethical duty” in terms of what you’ve learned this semester from the readings and discussions and importantly from community?
