What it means to be neutral.

According to Glass, antiracism is something that should be practiced 24/7, all the time. There is no end to the struggle, as it is a lifestyle to live by. Although people may be trying to practice this “antiracist” lifestyle, it is very difficult in this day and age. Why? There is just a lot going on. There might be sudden bursts of movement where people will decide to stand up and rise, but the next moment these up risers would sit down. Like Glass says, “Justice is not achieved once and for all in some cataclysmic upheaval, but rather step by step, situation by situation, particular context by particular context.” (Glass 336) Change would need to occur over time. Although we might want immediate change, it is not feasible.

I didn’t truly understand what Freire meant in explaining the relationship between practice, theory, and knowledge (no matter how many times I tried to read it). I thought what he meant was that there needs to be experience in learning, as well as teaching. Without practicing teachings, teachers would not know what they are teaching, and students might not fully understand what is being taught. This idea makes sense, but the way that it was explained was very difficult to understand.

Now both Horton and Freire felt similarly about neutrality. Horton views neutrality as following the crowd, following the greater power. Horton stated “I just stick to the facts. And that of course means that you’ve surrendered to the strongest forces.” (Horton 105) A person that chooses neutrality is in some ways giving up their freedoms to think and decide for themselves. Now, Freire feels that neutrality is a way that one could hide his or her own decisions, for whatever reasons they may have. True neutrality is impossible, in the eyes of Freire.

This next idea is difficult to explain, as it seems to be quite complex. Freire explained how teaching biology can be somewhat controversial, since it is more or less the teacher explaining their viewpoints as teachings to the class. You can’t teach biology, or any other science, without choosing a side. Any given teacher will teach the viewpoints that they value, learned from educators that taught them. Teaching the viewpoint that they value is not neutral, it is choosing the greater choice. Social conditions also play a part in this. Take, for example, a white teacher being raised in the time during the social rights movement. They would teach the history of equal rights differently than a black teacher that was raised after this time period. You would think that they would be the same since teachers theoretically teach “neutrally,” but these teachers are different since their perspectives of the same bit of history would be completely different.

I take quite the neutral stand, but neutral means something different to me. Rather than having a preconceived viewpoint on something, I hear both sides of a specific argument before deciding, or not deciding at all. I hate to choose sides, hate it! But after looking inside and truly seeing how I decide, I found out that I am not so neutral after all. I found that I typically choose the side that leads to less confrontation. For instance, at my community partner, I have the same group of students each week. Although they are great friends, they seem to always quarrel. Now, this is disrupting to each one of them, since it diverts them from the work they should be doing. Whenever I have to solve issues to get them back to work, I typically choose the side (between them) that would lead to less confrontation or elongation of the problem. I would much prefer to be neutral, but as Freire said, neutrality is an impossible feat.