In 2007, I took a course that was about the Anthropology of Resistance
and Power. My lecturer, the laudable Diane O'Rourke, covered a multitude of
incidents where people had risen up and overthrown the presiding hegemony, or
power structure. Over the course of a few short months, my understanding of my
own agency was irrevocably changed.
What is agency, I hear you ask? It is taking control of the parts
of your life that you can control, or influencing the parts of your life that
you do have influence over. It is the belief that your actions matter, and that
they have a bearing on how your life plays out.
People's beliefs in self-efficacy, or personal agency "determine
whether people think pessimistically or optimistically, and in self-enhancing
or self-debilitating ways.
Efficacy beliefs play a central role in
the self-regulation of motivation through goal challenges and
outcome-expectations. Whether people act on the outcomes they expect
prospective performances to produce depends on their beliefs about whether or
not they can produce those performances." [ref]
Basically, if you believe you will make a difference to your own
circumstances, you are more likely to make a difference to your own
circumstances.
History is replete with these examples.
We learned from James C. Scott about how Malay farmers gave
spoiled, rotten or malformed crops as zakat
to tax collectors, when authorities cracked down and demanded a double tithe, the
farmers came up with even more dastardly evasive strategies, such as
misreporting their yields, or planting in 'gardens' instead of fields.
French peasant farmers struggled for four centuries with 10% of
their taxable grain being taken by the tax-exempt nobility and the clergy, and
resorted to strategies from mixing taxable crops with non-taxable crops in the
same field to flat out refusing to pay and threatening to throw the collector
into the river.
Their rebellion was not quite the same as the tax-evading giants
we have issues with now - these farmers were trying to avoid having to choose
between starving and paying tithe. There was an excellent term for this:
'rituals of rebellion' by Max Gluckman, and this is one example of many where
people covertly rebelled against oppressive powers.
As the weeks in my course went by, we were presented stories of lynchings
in the United States' South, and I was affronted by someone so articulately
saying 'Someone's worth is not determined
by the colour of their skin.' It's
so obvious when you say it aloud in one sentence like that. It was not a
thought that had overtly occurred to me prior to that. My question then became
'How could anyone ever believe that someone's worth would be
based on the colour of their skin?'
We studied the Civil Rights movement in the United States, and the
long slow struggle towards human rights, voting rights, and equality. Martin
Luther King's words from Washington rang out across the ages, and across our
lecture hall:
"I have a dream that my four little
children I will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
colour of their skin but by the content of their character"
I had not heard any of his speeches before. All of a sudden I understood why he was such a big deal.
We read of the horrors of the hunger strikes in Northern Ireland, and how prisoners smeared bodily fluids on the walls instead of leaving their cells and being beaten by British prison guards on their way to empty their chamberpots. These prisoners believed in their cause so much, they were willing to starve to death before giving in. They were fighting for the right to vote, as it was denied to Catholics, and other basic human rights such as equitable access to social housing, employment, the right to vote, the right to not be harassed or killed by paramilitary forces while going about their everyday lives.
One aspect that I have grown to admire about the Irish struggle is how they reframed the narrative around the events. The British portrayed the Irish as terrorists and criminals, and therefore the answer to the Irish problem was harsher policing, and criminal justice.
The Irish Catholics of Northern Ireland, with the help of international media, reframed events like Bloody Sunday in 1972 as a peaceful protest against an oppressive government, demanding the right to vote, and the response to it a massacre of unarmed citizens. The British described them a rebellious insurgents stirring for a fight, and the attack provoked.
Irish who were imprisoned from that time on told their story as prisoners of war. As prisoners of war, they had rights such as not having to wear prison clothes, to be treated humanely, to contact family about being imprisoned. They fought for those rights, and eventually triumphed in getting them fulfilled. A hollow victory in a lot of ways - acknowledgement of prisoner of war status rather than being common criminals is hardly what most would perceive as victory.
Irish who were imprisoned from that time on told their story as prisoners of war. As prisoners of war, they had rights such as not having to wear prison clothes, to be treated humanely, to contact family about being imprisoned. They fought for those rights, and eventually triumphed in getting them fulfilled. A hollow victory in a lot of ways - acknowledgement of prisoner of war status rather than being common criminals is hardly what most would perceive as victory.
So much of oppression is the story the oppressors tell to justify it. The Irish did a really compelling job of changing the narrative.
We learned of Gandhi and his peaceful protests in India, catalysing the overthrow of British rule in the colony.
We studied the overthrow of communism and restoration of democracy
in the Czech Republic, initiated by playwright Vaclav Havel, the Magic Lantern theatre company, in the Theatre Without a Balustrade.
The influence of the arts in resistance and power struggles cannot be
overstated.
Tutorials were spent debating the works of Gramsci, who wrote
about Cultural Hegemony, while he was imprisoned in fascist Italy. Cultural
hegemony is the narrative that those in power create to justify their actions
and maintain the status quo. (Obviously, we have to spend x on military but
couldn’t possibly afford y for medical provisions... sound familiar?)
We dabbled on the fringes of the French Revolution, and with each
new topic and each passing week, a common theme was emerging:
People
shape history,
Small
insignificant people can do mighty things,
What
you do IS culture.
Culture
is fluid.
Your
actions create it.
We spoke a lot about the idea of agency; acting as though you have
the power to influence your situation.
The idea of culture as an impermeable membrane,
static, historic, bigger than them and impervious to influence was challenged, and replaced with 'culture is symbiotic'.
Culture is a collection of shared beliefs and practices. But much
like how the surface of the skin might look smooth and silky, and yet is an
ever-changing canvas of shedding skin cells, a home to a host of microbes, the
idea that culture is still and static is simply false.
See, the thing is you are part of culture. And you are not still, static or sedentary. So why would culture be?
One of the other women in my class was a pakeha woman living with her Maori partner in Wainuiomata, a less-than-desirable part of Lower Hutt. She was relating an interaction with her partner about how he was struggling with having to move back to a place where he grew up, because that was the only place that they could afford to live. He'd worked so hard to fight off the stereotype of Maori as poor, unemployed, unqualified, government bludgers who never do anything useful with their lives. He was qualified, successful in business and yet still living in Wainuiomata. She simply said to him: 'You challenge the stereotype by simply being who you are, by living here and having a job, by living here and being qualified, by living here and being successful. That's how you change the stereotype. The stereotype changes as you change.'
Culture changes as you change.
Cultures exist because people make a choice to continue to do life
in those ways. Each story that is told, each conversation that is had, each article that is written either conforms to culture, or transforms culture.
If beliefs are passed down from generation to generation, it is because
the next generation has accepted – consciously or not - that those beliefs and
practises are valid and still serve the community.
Much like Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction - the
economy being in a constant state of flux, with businesses constantly birthing and
bankrupting – so it is with culture. It is the debates, the subjugation, the
arrests, the discourse, laws, beliefs, the conversations, the memes, who gets
air time and who doesn’t, every decision made of how to frame and share media
stories or not, who gets a particular position, who gets a bank loan.
Everything. Everything in the public domain. Which information is privileged and
which is kept hidden or ignored. Who is privileged, who is hidden or ignored. These
are all the ingredients that comprise culture.
With each successive generation, you get to help choose: will you
continue as your forebears have, and accept the status quo, or will you pause,
analyse, investigate, experiment, and change.
Learn. Think. Grow.
Do better.
This is how we evolve as a society. Some might even argue, this is
how we evolve as a species.
Throwing up your hands and simply saying 'Oh it is bigger than me, [this thing] I'm complaining about, it will
never change' doesn’t help anyone. Sure, ambivalence and defeatism is the
easy way out, but that definitely doesn’t change anything.
Also – look at the
rate of change in even the last 100 years. Nothing is socially constant!
History gives us jarring examples of what used to be OK, but now
isn’t.
There was a time when it was OK to beat your wife - but only if
you had a stick as wide as your thumb. Now people are punished for domestic
violence.
There was a time when it was OK to wear a fox skin draped around
your neck. No longer. Even faux fur is questionable.
There was a time when it was OK to hunt whales. This didn’t
disappear by accident – it was through activism.
There was a time when it was OK to arrest people for being
homosexual. This was overcome with protests, and slowly incrementally telling
stories that showed people the human cost of those policies.
There was a time when it was OK to have slaves - but this was
overcome. Not with peaceful protest mind you, but with bloody civil warfare.
There was a time when a woman in the workplace was scandalous,
particularly if she wanted to do ‘men’s’ work.
There was a time when it was OK to conflate economic superiority
with cultural superiority, and participate in White-is-right type rhetoric,
because everyone else was.
The British Empire is gone, but its legacy still remains - one of
economic rifts, inequality and perceived cultural superiority. It is now our
choice to continue on with the situation we find ourselves in, or to create a
new narrative.
Obviously, huge wide-reaching systemic changes are needed, but
before we get there, there needs to be a hundred thousand smaller changes.
Most importantly: You need to change your attitude to one where
you believe that you can change the world.
That starts with changing your world.
There needs to be openness to new ideas, to other perspectives, to
other people’s lived realities. You need to be willing to call people on their
privilege, and on their bullshit. We need as a society to learn how to have the
difficult conversations about difficult topics without yelling or cutting
people off. The calm, quiet ‘This is my story’ has a place in changing the
world. Moreover, we need to identify and dispose of your own outdated outmoded beliefs and the bullshit we sometimes spin for ourselves. (Everyone has a little in there somewhere.)
This post was actually intended to be about creating a more
environmentally friendly world after the Covid-19 pandemic, and that is 100%
important. Voting with your wallets about which businesses should and shouldn’t
succeed in the 21st century is important, and we need to get into
the habit of voting with our wallets and with our votes as much as possible. We
are privileged to be in a democracy where we can speak out without fear of
consequence, in fact, in hope of positive outcomes. When we speak up, it makes
a difference, and adds to the growing call for change.
This is agency in action.
But this last week, the world has had something else to reflect
on: the murder of George Floyd.
The George Floyd protests are a symptom of much greater problems:
the ruling class has taken and taken, and ignored those at the bottom for too
long. The lower echelons of society have been punished in every conceivable way
in this pandemic – losing jobs, higher likelihood of dying from Covid-19, huge
hospital bills for being hospitalised, soon more likely to be evicted, more
likely to work in marginalised jobs that will be called back to unsafe working
conditions. And now, more likely to be killed by those sworn to protect and
serve. They are, understandably, on the brink of revolution. They have nothing left
to lose.
And so they rise up. They use their agency. As they damn well
should.
Unfortunately, it seems that minority agency alone is not enough, and it is not until these ideas capture the popular imagination that they really take hold. Others have risen with them because it is evident when everyone unites
the larger issues of justice and equality become the story, rather than simply race.
The youth of the world has risen with them, with protests in nearly 100 countries internationally.
I hope that the world continues to take heed, and we can stay
present in this moment long enough to do something useful, rather than just be
ashamed. Already in the last 2 weeks alone, the protests have garnered such changes as Minneapolis defunding their police force, and looking into a community led policing model, much like New Jersey did in 2013, and the Governor of California looking to spend a lot more money on prevention than cure by way of investing in education and healthcare instead of policing. There's also a bunch of other stuff here.
A lot of people have condemned those who are rioting, but I think it is an expression of utter soul-destroying grief and frustration. As the saying goes - 'hurting people hurt people'. If you are in pain you're likely to lash out at other people or things to externalise that pain. This is so much more than a trite platitude though. We have witnessed attacks of physical injustice, which has megaphoned the conversation about systemic racism and ongoing institutionalised injustice through things like employers habits, justice systems, healthcare, economic factors, lack of access to housing and education, as well as police brutality.
If our society is based on the dehumanisation, subjugation and economic
enslavement of wage-servants, then the social contract is no longer bent out of
shape, but broken. It is in the process of being torn up, and it needs to be
re-written.
There’s two options, as I see it, from here. Rapid systematic
change within the current systems, or revolution.
The culture within the US Police force in general is a culture of
discrimination and racial profiling, of violence and excessive force. A culture
of protecting some and punishing others. The ethos seems to be warrior and enforcer,
rather than guardian and custodian of justice.
Social media has been a power force in taking the narrative out of the hands of mainstream media. Black Lives Matter has taken the internet by storm in the last 2 weeks, but there has been consistent evidence through film of the racial discrimination that faces POC, which if you're not a victim of it, is hard to believe that it still exists.
So where to from here?
How do you come into
this?
With each conversation, with each sharing of information on social
media, with each book you read, each friend you make, organisation you donate
to, protest you attend, with each neighbour you befriend, you are creating a
culture within yourself, within your family, within your neighbourhood of
either conceit or caring, community or continuation of the current.
You are the difference between us staying the same or changing.
Culture starts with which thoughts you allow inside your head. The
conversations that you have with your family and friends. The communities that
you are a part of, and the reading that you do, the TV shows you ingest and the
movies you spend hours of your life watching. You conform to culture, or
transform it.
There is too much at stake for you to not have an opinion about
this, to not have a voice.
Culture is changed by those who are willing to speak up, but also
by those who are willing to act up.
The downtrodden and oppressed seldom manage to triumph over the
ruling class without allies in the majority.
The ruling class when it tries to instil order is 'allowed' to use
sanctioned violence for the sake of the greater good, to keep the peace, to be
a strong enforcer of the rule of law.
When protesters and dissidents are trying to overcome ridiculous laws
or standards, and they use similar levels of violence, they are accused of
being terrorists or guerrilla groups. This is the language of cultural hegemony. The story the ruling class tells is one where anyone that questions the status quo is wrong. If this trend continues without change and progress, the ruling class will not be the ruling class for very long.
The story of Irish independence is a brutal one, and involved a
lot of violence, but also a lot of desperation. Michael Collins and his gang of
IRA 'delinquents' assassinated a lot of informants so that the British
didn't have information about what the IRA was planning next.
Know what?
I hate them.
Not for their race or their
brutality.
I hate them for leaving us no way
out.
I hate whoever put a gun in
Vinny's hand.
I know it's me and I hate myself
for it.
I hate them for making hate
necessary.
I'll do what I have to do to end
it.
Michael Collins movie, 1996
When you put that in the context of 700 years of brutal social,
economic, religious, and often violent, oppression of the Irish though, it
starts to make more sense. They had already tried for centuries various other versions of resistance throughout that time, and nothing had worked. Daniel O'Connell had advocated political protest, and non-violent protest for many many years, and had made some gains, to the point where England was talking about instating an Irish Parliament before World War 1.
The war put a stop to that, and Irish independence hopes were dashed. Their patience spent, the IRA didn’t want to take that route, but they saw no other way to attain their freedom. The Easter Rising of 1916 was a watershed moment, built on by Michael Collins several years later, resulting in the Republic of Ireland that we have today.
The war put a stop to that, and Irish independence hopes were dashed. Their patience spent, the IRA didn’t want to take that route, but they saw no other way to attain their freedom. The Easter Rising of 1916 was a watershed moment, built on by Michael Collins several years later, resulting in the Republic of Ireland that we have today.
So what about you?
You have enormous influence over your own life, but you also have
influence in society. As a consumer, you get to choose which businesses you'd
like to see flourish or perish in the next little while. As a voter, you get to
choose which government you would like to have - or not have. As a community
member, you choose whose voice you amplify and whose you ignore.
In every conversation you get to choose which ideas you bring to
the fore, which ideas get air time, you get to choose which stories you will
read about or listen to, whose story will you privilege?
We all have our soapbox, whether it be online platform, classroom,
friend group, book club, church, or local business. We have a place where we
can present ideas, and how we present them will start to shape other people's
ideas.
Have a look at all that is going down, and tell me that you do not
see a revolution coming. Any model that maintains human rights abuses in order
to continue is not a model that can last forever.
 |
| In the same way that having no genders does not honour women's struggle and saying everyone is asexual doesn't honour LGBTQI+ community's struggle |
The time of being an unthinking consumer of culture is over: You’re either
part of the problem or part of the solution.
You may not be able to change the whole world, but you can change
your world.
Choose carefully, mindfully, where you are spending your thoughts,
your words, your time, and your money. They are your most precious tools for
change.
 |
| Can never read this too often, amiriiight? |
And so I sit here as a ‘white’ female, embroiled in privilege, not even knowing what to do with that identity. I’m
only just beginning to grasp what that even means. I have not personally
experienced racism as such, certainly not from the colour of my skin.
Cross-cultural living is always difficult, regardless of the
context. I’ll never be part of the Irish inner circle. I think differently, I
sound different, my values are different. Those differences can be maddening.
This
is nothing like the systemic racism that POC experience.
I spoke to a friend who is a POC over the weekend and her rage was
evident, palpable, unsettling. Good. It should be. Rage is the start. It tells
us the gap between where we are and where we should be. The next step is action.
What can I do to help?
She told me to read. Read? That seems so feeble. But read I shall.
I shall school myself about what it is like to walk in shoes that are not mine.
‘It would be so easy for me just step back and not participate in
this discussion at all’ I heard myself saying to her.
‘This is why it’s so hard to talk to white people about racism –
they’ve never experienced it, so they think as long as they aren’t racist, it’s
fine. But that’s not enough.’
She then presented me with this quote from Martin Luther King Jr, written whilst in a Birmingham Jail cell:
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
Listen.
Stop pretending like it isn’t real.
Identify your privilege.
Be an ally for change.
We need white people advocating against racism. We need males
advocating for women's right. We need managers and business owners advocating for better working
conditions for minimum wage workers. We are stronger together. We need
community, we need unions, we need strength in numbers.
In the context of racist injustice, reconciliation and healing is needed to really move forward. My homeland, NZ, has made some steps towards this end, but the systemic problems remain, and it will take a long time to make up for the mistakes of the past.
Acknowledging that there was, and is, a problem acknowledging that wrong was done, making moves to increasing equality and creating space for conversations and opinions beyond the mainstream are a start. Monetary reparations are good. Cultural reforms are good. Acknowledging privilege and the limits of knowledge and understanding are good. Putting POC into positions of power is good.
'Not my monkeys, not my circus' doesn't apply here. Accidental
ignorance is one thing, but intentionally ignoring anything that might help you
understand this power struggle is another thing entirely. This is the call to
school yourself about this fight. It is once again a fight between the haves
and the have-nots. This fight goes beyond creating poverty, social division,
poor health or poor educational achievement; this one is costing lives.
Who’s
side will you be on?
 |
| This applies to racism definitely, but also to all the other isms - sexism, environmentalism, classism, etc etc |
The loudest voices are the ones that write history. Who are you
yelling with? Even just a whisper helps.
I know there's a lot of things to care about right now, and I know
your Care Budget is at a low ebb, but keep exercising that muscle. You
contribute to society by what you do and do not care about, by what you do and
do not talk about. What are you contributing? Waistline worries and cat memes?
Come on...
Most importantly of all, include kids in these conversations. The
earlier that caring about these issues becomes normal for children, the more
empathy, care, concern and intelligent dissent we will see in society, the
better our society will be for it. Inform your children. They lack age and
knowledge, not care or concern.
I always felt like I had very little influence over anything much
as I grew up, until one lecturer started to tell me the stories of how even the
lowest of the low had changed their lot by standing up to the power structures
of their day and demanding better.
I'm not suggesting we break out the guillotine, but if the
existing power structures fail to act, then action is the only option.
One thought. One conversation. One protest. One blog post. One
dispelled myth. One book read. One understanding deepened. One friend made.
This is agency in action. This is how we rewrite history. One step at a time, transforming culture.
Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability, it comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. And so we must always help time and realize that the time is always right to do right.
Extras: ( Leave a comment below to add any other resources to this list)
Books:
Headscarves and Hymens - really interesting book about how we need to
help Muslim women overcome cultural oppression - their culture can be changed,
just like ours, but they can't do it alone.
The Last Runaway - really beautiful story about a woman who helps
slaves escape using the Underground Railroad
How to be an antiracist - Ibram X Kendi
So You Want To Talk About Race - Ijeoma Oluo
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You - Jason Reynolds
To Kill A Mockingbird
TV/Movies:
13th (Netflix)
When They See Us (Netflix)
I Am Not Your Negro
Teach Us All (Netflix)
Crash
Django Unchained
Some Mother's Son
Bloody Sunday
Michael Collins
Django Unchained
Some Mother's Son
Bloody Sunday
Michael Collins
Articles:
Spinoff article - Analogy to understand how White Privilege works as a tailwind
Super-touching things from the protests that haven't been shown in mainstream media
The Velvet Revolution in the Czech the Republic, and the theatre at the centre of it. Also this.
Interesting discussion from Warwick University about what is culture
Martin Luther King Jr Washington Speech transcript
Cultural Anthropology Basics -
First/second year anth summarised in one post.
What if video of George Floyd hadn't been captured?
Scott, J.
(1987). Resistance without Protest and without Organization: Peasant Opposition
to the Islamic Zakat and the Christian Tithe. Comparative Studies in Society
and History, 29(3), 417-452. Retrieved June 2, 2020, from
www.jstor.org/stable/179032
