Johnson: "Privilege, Power, and Difference" (Take 2)

Johnson: “Privilege, Power, and Difference”

Following last evening’s class discussion, I reevaluated my posting for Johnson’s “Privilege, Power, and Difference,” and adjusted my reactionary thoughts accordingly.

The aim of Johnson’s “Privilege, Power, and Difference” is to confront social issues in America that involve “gender and race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, social class” (Johnson, p. vii).  Johnson maintains that all individuals in our society are responsible for inequities in power.  It is not only the white, male, heterosexual, middle-class professional who partake in the societal advantage and subsequent supremacy.  All of us are part of the problem (Johnson, p. vii, emphasis mine).  Due to the universal proliferation of the imbalance, Johnson proposes the first steps we can take to tackle and resolve these issues.  Nevertheless, the approach at resolution may be laden with culpability or blameworthiness.  Johnson (2001) elucidates:

When most people read the phrase “how we as individuals are connected to it,’ they think they’re about to be told they’ve done something wrong, that blame and guilt aren’t far behind, especially if they are white or male or heterosexual or of a privileged class (viii).

Furthermore, this self-protective retort has perpetuated “our current paralysis by preventing each of us from taking the steps required becom[ing] part of the solution” (Johnson, p. viii).  So to use a 1960′s cliché…if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.

            In reflecting upon the readings of Johnson and Delpit, I question my role as a self-proclaimed liberal educator.  Driven by the “best intentions” (Delpit, p. 28), I too am riddled by the guilt of being a member of “the culture of power” (Delpit, p. 24)—a personal cogitation which is antithetical to Johnson’s guidance to rise above the quintessential ‘blame game.’  While reading, I highlighted the statements: Many liberal educators hold that the primary goal of education is for children to be autonomous, to develop fully who they are in the classroom setting without having arbitrary, outside standards forced upon them.  This is a very reasonable goal for people whose children are already participants in the culture of power and who have already internalized its codes (Delpit, p. 28).  So, where does this leave me?

            According to Johnson, the aforementioned social issues are based upon the existence of privilege, and the use or misuse of power.  Privilege is an advantage; privilege is an inherent state of inequality.  In order to rectify the existing disproportion, Johnson suggests:

…if we dispense with the words [including racism, white, white racism] we make it impossible to talk about what’s really going on and what it has to do with us.  And if we can’t do that, then we can’t see what the problems are or how we might make ourselves part of the solution to them (2).

Thus only with a collaborative effort can these issues be resolved, and they must brought about in the open.  We must set aside all sentiments of blame, guilt, shame, and association to focus on our society and its dire need of change.  I pose this thought, and welcome feedback:  Johnson maintains that the only way to bring about positive social changes is to openly confront and discuss issues of power and privilege?  What can one person do to initiate or facilitate change?

            In closing, I have come across two individuals who are responsible getting the ball rolling and shedding light on these issues.  Thomas Norman DeWolf and Katrina Browne collaboratively worked to complete the novel, Inheriting the Trade, and the film, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North.

In the summer of 2001, Katrina Browne led nine distant family members on their own triangular passage as she made a documentary film (Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North) about their DeWolf ancestors, the largest slave-trading dynasty in early America—who transported 10,000 Africans to America and the Caribbean between 1769 and 1820. DeWolf, one of Browne's cousins, traces the journey in this soul-searching memoir, beginning in Bristol, R.I., the hub of the late–18th-century trade, and continuing to Ghana, Cuba and back to New England. DeWolf's account gains immediacy as he reports these presentations and the ensuing group discussions, along with their personal struggles to come to terms with an ignominious family history and his own sharp learning curve. DeWolf promotes conversation about truth of the past and its impact on the present (http://www.amazon.com/Inheriting-Trade-Northern-Confronts-Slave-Trading/dp/0807072818). 

In addition, here is a video of DeWolf at Columbia College in Chicago, explaining Authentic Relationships with "The Other".  Here is the link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_y-5UTZbdE&feature=related.

Do DeWolf and Browne start the dialogue?  Can one person initiate the necessary change to ensure social justice?