Thought for the Day: Communion with the Oppressed

"Those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly. This conversion is so radical as not to allow ambiguous behavior. To affirm this commitment but to consider oneself the proprietor of revolutionary wisdom—which must be given to (or imposed on) the people—is to retain the old ways. The man or woman who proclaims devotion to the cause of liberation yet is unable to enter into communion with the people, whom he or she continues to regard as totally ignorant, is grievously self-deceived. The convert who approaches the people but feels alarm at each step they take, each doubt they express, and each suggestion they offer, and attempts to impose his "status," remains nostalgic towards his origins.

"Conversion to the people requires a profound rebirth. Those who undergo it must take on a new form of existence; they can no longer remain as they were. Only through comradeship with the oppressed can the converts understand their characteristic ways of living and behaving, which in diverse moments reflect the structure of domination."

-Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire was a Brazilian educator. His seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, from which the above excerpt originates, has been stopping me dead in my tracks page after page. I highly recommend it.

It's a work about liberation for the oppressed from their oppressors, and the subsequent liberation of oppressors by the formerly oppressed. It primarily elaborates a new mode of teaching, or pedagogy, to illuminate the dehumanizing systems and acts of oppression that shape the day-to-day realities of the oppressed. His observations are informed in part by a descent from a middle-class existence to shared poverty and starvation alongside the Brazilian masses in his early childhood, circumstances catalyzed by the economic fallout of the Great Depression.

The above passage is about the "converts" from the oppressors who wish to seek solidarity with those who they have formerly oppressed. While this may all sound a bit obtuse in brief, his words speak great truth to those who read them in context. As Freire describes the awakening of the oppressed to their dehumanizing surroundings, the people of Cite Soleil flash before my eyes. In my work and life, I wish to be one of those converted, to avoid the "old ways" and continue seeking another way of living in true communion—to learn to leave behind fear of the other, my status and any other paternalistic ways.

Oh, how I need greater humility!