Paulo Freire on the Relationship between Colleges and the Community

These days colleges and universities have come under increased scrutiny and criticism for (1) not adequately preparing students for employment upon graduation, and (2) for being too expensive for the average person to afford. So the question has been raised and debated, “Is a college education worth it?” As a faculty member at small, faith-based liberal arts university, I cannot stand aside from this debate since I am both a product and purveyor of higher education. However, it often seems to me that underlying these criticisms and the ensuing debate is another more fundamental issue, which is the relationship between colleges and universities and the communities in which they are located, and say they seek to serve. 

The so-called “Town and Gown” tension has been widely advertised and been the subject or backdrop for any number of books, movies and even television shows like the current hit “How to Get Away with Murder.” At issue is the perception, rightly or wrongly, that institutions of higher education may employ members of the local community, but somehow see themselves aloof, and perhaps separate, from the communities in which they are located. To make matters worse, these non-profit institutions pay no property taxes while occupying large swaths of lands from which  town and city councils could make revenue from if those lands were not so occupied.

In response to this criticism and dilemma, the Carnegie Foundation has developed an award that recognizes colleges and universities that seek to engage and serve their local communities. Students increasingly are encouraged to participate in service learning, internships and volunteer activities designed to serve the local community. There are now academic journals and organizations whose purpose is specifically to highlight university-community engagement. While these are all good things, all too often these efforts seem to use the community as a place of learning, service and research without really connecting in a meaningful way with the people who live in that community.

With these things in mind, I want to share some thoughts from the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, whose book Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a standard, though often exoticized, text in many teacher education programs. In a series of letters to his niece, published as Letters to Cristina, Freire comments on the role he believes the university  should have with the wider community beyond its campus. Given the current concerns about the value of higher education, I find his insights to be helpful and even profound.  In the 12^th letter of Letters to Cristina, he writes:

[T]he distance between the university (or what is done in it) and the popular classes should be shortened without losing rigor and seriousness, without neglecting the duty of teaching and researching… In order for that to happen the university must, if it hasn’t yet, increasingly become a creation of the city and expand its influence over the whole city. A university foreign to its city, superimposed on it, is a mind-narrowing fiction… [T]he university must start to be identified with its environment in order to move it and not just reproduce it…. These universities should cooperate with the state, towns, popular movements, production cooperatives, social clubs, neighborhood associations, and churches. Through such cooperation, the university could intensify its education action (Letters to Cristina, 1996, p. 133, 134)

What Freire is saying is that a college or university that only sees its mission as educating the students who enter its halls, has too narrow a vision. Learning is not an enterprise of the select few, but is part of what it means to be human. Thus, a university’s mission must extend beyond its walls to the wider community. In an age when local school districts particularly in urban and rural areas struggle financially to offer even the most basic level of education, when arts, music and sports programs are being cut because of lack of funding, and when politicians remain polarized over the role government plays in promoting quality education, institutions of higher education must step in.

In particular Freire sees universities in his native Brazil stepping in and providing teacher enrichment services for overworked and under-prepared teachers. In our U.S. context programs  could be created  to help community residents address local issues and challenges, as well as providing support and succor for movements for social change. For the past several years I have sought to bring my skills and experience to serve local neighborhoods and to be a support for efforts to enrich the quality of life in those places. I have offered my writing and analytical abilities to efforts of activist groups to address social inequities. Yet I have done these things largely without the knowledge or the support of my institution; i.e. it has been on “my own time.” I have often wondered what it would be like to have part of my responsibilities to share my research and teaching opportunities with these communities. What if my courses could involve students with local residents where both students and community folks could be educated by each other. I have done these things by taking my students to these places, but again it has often felt like I have done it in spite of rather than because of my responsibilities as a professor.

Many colleges would contend that they serve the community by the graduates they send into the workforce and the community at large, but Friere would say, and I would agree, that such a vision is far too narrow. In the midst of the current economic disparity, institutions of higher education have both the opportunity and the duty to seek to find ways to concretely and continuously engage with the communities around them and even beyond in the global community in ways that are enriching and life-giving for both. I, for one, would welcome that paradigm shift

Advent Meditation: Choosing the Darkness

“Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again”

 (‘Sounds of Silence,’ Simon and Garfunkel)

Advent began this past Sunday, November 29. Traditionally Advent is a time of waiting and longing for the coming of Christ both in his birth, and in the promise restoration at the end of history.  Simultaneously Advent is a time of contemplating the suffering and what Paulo Freire called our human “unfinishedness” and our hope for wholeness.

The prophet Isaiah expressed this idea of waiting in the midst of struggle in words that our central to the Advent theme:

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. (Isaiah 9.2; Matthew 4.16):

The focus of Advent is usually on the light, with darkness as the backdrop, but this Advent I have chosen to focus on the darkness.

Deadly violence in Paris, Lebanon, Mali, Denver and San Bernadino have reminded of us of the deranged hatred that is racking our globe. Police brutality against young people of color: Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and countless others - have given rise to a movement calling for justice in our criminal justice system. The violence of young people against each other, the shootings in Emanuel AME church in Charleston seem senseless. Republican candidates fight over who can degrade undocumented immigrants more viciously. The governor and legislature of Pennsylvania wrangle for six months over a state budget while low income school districts and non-profits serving our most vulnerable citizens go unfunded. Everywhere we look there is unspeakable callousness, deep suffering and uncontrollable grief.

Beyond these widespread and well-known incidents, there are the personal struggles. Two weeks ago 45 people at Eastern University where I teach were given termination notices because of financial shortfalls, and treated in ways that seemed callous and cold. I feel overcome with a mixture of sadness, confusion, and loss.  

In all of this I find myself in what St. John of the Cross called “the dark night of the soul.” Thomas Moore describes the dark night as “a period of sadness, trial, loss, frustration or failure that is so disturbing and long lasting” it that  can “[make] you question the very meaning of life.” According to Moore, we don’t choose our dark night, they are a gift and “[our] job is to get close to it and sift it for its gold.”( Dark Nights of the Soul, p. xiii)

The dark night is a time of introspection, of lament and ultimately of inner transformation. We let go of our need to control, to have the answers and the belief we will come out on top. Instead we take note of our emotions, we pay attention to our dreams, and we listen for voice of Someone  or Something beneath and beyond the darkness that speaks into our lives. The darkness is a sort of liminal space, a cocoon, a time of waiting, watching, and wondering if any sense of direction or answers will come. There is no promise that there will be answer; there may be only deeper questions.

Erin Thomas, a former student of mine and a blogger, notes this about the first Christmas: “[P]eople were longing without certain hope of any Christmas at all. There was no knowledge of a Saviour, no expectation that a pregnant virgin was going to give birth to a world-changer, and certainly no thought that God was going to intervene out of Palestine.” They were in that liminal space, the place of unknowing, the place of darkness.” Erin goes on: “Will we enter into this darkened season with such humility? Do we dare? Dare.We must."

So I dare this Advent to focus on and live into the darkness. I choose to listen, to struggle, to sit without expectation or foreknowledge. To simply be in that place called the dark night of the soul.

The poet Ranier Marie Rilke put it this way:

“Let this darkness be a bell tower

and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength. 

(“Sonnets to Orpheus II”, 29)

Advent offer us both light and darkness. I choose to focus on the darkness.

The Politics of Easter

On Good Friday for the last five years I have attended an ecumenical service/witness against gun violence sponsored by the interfaith gun violence prevention organization Heeding God’s Call. Five years ago, along with 11 others, I participated in a civil disobedience action against a gun shop known to be a major source of illegal guns used in crime. Starting that year Heeding God’s Call began holding Good Friday services that not only included Christians but also Muslims and Jews remembering the violent death of Jesus and linking it to the senselessness of gun violence in our city and country. This year the service was held in a park in West Philadelphia and 221 t-shirts draped on crosses were displayed representing the 221 victims of gun violence in Philadelphia during 2013. It was both a sad and moving spectacle.

Linking Good Friday with gun violence reminds me of the inherently political nature of the Good Friday-Easter celebration. While most churches emphasize the salvific nature of Jesus’ death on the cross, I have come to increasingly appreciate the way in which his death represents and binds him to the oppressed and suffering of the world. I am reminded that religio-political power structure of Jesus’ day (for there was no such thing as the separation of government from religion) sought to silence and marginalize him.  When that didn’t work they took to discrediting him, then threatening him and finally setting in motion the process that led to his death.  This year as I read the Gospel of Matthew’s account of the last days of Jesus life, I could not help but be struck by the way Jesus was regarded and treated by the power structures of his day….and how similar it was to what happens in our day. 

As we look around the world at despotic governments being challenged by movements for change in Syria, Ukraine, Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere, we see similar patterns meant to immobilize would-be challenges to economic and political power. As we look at the machinations of the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun organizations, we see their manipulation of the facts, and the use of their vast resources to intimidate political leaders into silence. They dismiss gun violence prevention advocates as naïve, unpatriotic and unrealistic, in ways remarkably similar to the way the Pharisees sought to marginalize and discredit Jesus.

Yet, there is even a more personal, political dimension to this special day. The Brazilian educator and liberation thinker Paulo Freire said that people of privilege who seek to be aligned with the oppressed had to go thru what he called an “Easter experience” in order to be in true solidarity with the poor. Of this experience he wrote:

“Such an [Easter experience] implies a renunciation of myths that are dear to them: the myth of superiority, of their purity of soul, of their virtues, their wisdom, the myth that save the poor, the myth of the neutrality of the church, of theology of education, science, technology, the myth of their own impartiality. … This Easter, which results in the changing of consciousness, must be existentially experienced. The real Easter is not commemorative rhetoric. It is praxis; it is historical involvement.” (Politics of Education, p. 123).

The real Easter is praxis, historical involvement. The real Easter does not allow one to be removed from the struggles of history. The real Easter calls us to a choice to join with those who struggle.

As I listened to mothers and fathers at the Good Friday service share their grief at the loss of their children to gun violence, I was struck by the profound meaning of the cross that was challenging me to the side of the suffering and the oppressed. At the same time they shared their commitment to rid the streets of guns and to save other parents from the suffering they themselves must endure. The oppressed know Jesus because he shares their sorrow and struggle and if I am to know Jesus in any real way I must choose to join them. I must let go of my “myths“ of invincibility, of transcendence, of exceptionalism. Their pain must become my pain, their sorrow my sorrow, their struggle my struggle. I have to make a choice.

So I have come through this Good Friday-Easter commemoration with a renewed commitment to transformation and renunciation of privilege, and a desire to join those who know Jesus’ suffering because they suffer with him. However at the same time they know the resurrection of Jesus, because despite great tragedy and struggle they have a fire in their bones for change; like the women at the tomb they long to see a resurrection of hope in their community. I too want that fire; I too want a resurrection of hope; but to do so, I must make a choice. I must undergo an Easter experience again… and again… and again.

Why I Have Hope

 

About a month ago a good friend called me and informed me that my blogs were depressing him and that he needed to stop reading them for a while. I was bit taken back because despite a frequent focus on the injustices in so many facets of our public life, on a day to day basis I’m a pretty hopeful guy. His comment got me reflecting on what gives me hope in the midst of the corporate greed, institutional racism, government gridlock and general erosion of basic human rights in our country I so often focus on.

Here’s what I came up with.

Upon reflection I would say that my hope comes from three main sources. The first source of hope is the students I am privileged to teach in the Eastern University Urban Studies program. When each new group of students begins our program I tell them that they are special slice of humanity because they have forgone the lures of consumerism and materialism and, for reasons that vary from individual to individual, have decided to dedicate their lives to work in solidarity with the poor, the marginalized, the forgotten and the oppressed. These students are not only extremely committed and intelligent, but they bring a clear belief that they can make a difference in the world. After taking classes in urban problems, racism, broken communities, research, leadership, and the like, their idealism gets tempered with a gritty awareness of how to address the challenges before them, and  they go on to work in organizations and with community groups do the work of justice at the grassroots level. Being able to invest myself in these young folks (most are in their mid to late 20’s) and seeing what they are doing gives me tremendous hope for the future. The battle for justice is long but there are people committed to that process for decades to come.

My second source of hope lies in the many small movements for social justice that are happening and continue to happen: fast food workers advocating for a raise in the minimum wage; undocumented folks and their allies pushing for immigration reform; moms and student resisting the NRA and gun lobby to work for changes in laws around the use and purchase of firearms; and people from across Pennsylvania working together to make a fair funding formula for public education a top political priority in the state – just to name a few recent ones. As I read the blogs and newsletters of progressive organizations, I am reminded that the Montgomery (AL) Bus Boycott in 1955 that brought the Civil Rights Movement into national media attention was preceded by decades of effort by small groups of committed individuals working to bring about change in the segregated South. Rosa Parks was not the first person to refuse to give up her seat on a segregated public bus, Martin Luther King, Jr. was not the first preacher to give voice to black people’s concerns, and Montgomery was not the only Southern city to have faced a challenge from its citizens of color. These things had been going on in communities big and small for a long time; what Montgomery did was light a spark that brought the energy together to forge a movement. I see the seemingly small and disconnected efforts that have been going on for the past several years as moving us toward a time when a larger movement will emerge to challenge the corporate power structure and the government leaders who have sold their soul to lobbyists and the big donors instead of listening to their constituents. A new civil rights movement is coming. I don’t know when, how, where or what it will look like, but I can feel the movement coming; like clouds before storm, like tremors before an earthquake.

My third source of hope comes from the promise of the Bible that God is truly on the side of the oppressed. During this Advent season I have been struck by how often the promise of the coming Messiah is couched in the language of justice. Isaiah 40 speaks of the Messiah being one who “gives strength to the weary and power to the weak” (vs. 29).  Isaiah 11 says that this Messiah “with righteousness judge the needy, with justice give[s] decisions for the poor of the earth” (vs. 4). Mary in her beautiful song upon learning that she is given birth sings that God “has brought down the rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1. 52-53). Paulo Freire, who is my inspiration for many things having to do with justice, said that God gives us the vision of what the world can and should be and then commissions us to go out and make it reality thru what he calls denunciation and annunciation. According to Freire, our job in essence is to denounce things in our current reality that block or undermine that just society from coming into being and work to dismantle them. Then our job is to announce the new reality, the just society God desires to see, and work toward it.  I don’t think that God is somehow going to wave his hand and all injustice will go away, nor am I waiting for things to get better only in the afterlife. Rather I believe God gives us a picture of what life can and should be, and empowers us to make it happen.

This hope is not based in a quick fix or magic transformation. Hope calls me and others like me to a life of struggle, disappointment, frustration and occasional celebrations for small victories. As the apostle Paul points out in Romans 5.1-5, hope is borne out of suffering, but that the hope connects us with an infilling of God’s spirit, the spirit of history, to continue the struggle. In non-theological terms it comes down to knowing one is on the right side of history, working for that which is good, just and true, and moving into the future with a conviction shared with other like-minded individuals. This hope recognizes that the power structures are deeply entrenched and will not easily be toppled or transformed, but it also recognizes the continued concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few is not sustainable for the planet or the country. If nothing else the structure will topple under the weight of its own hubris or more likely it will be torn down like the Berlin Wall, but in any case it will fall.

I was too young to fully appreciate the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s in the moment. However in my study of that movement I know that from it issued forth other movements for peace in Vietnam, women’s rights, and environmental awareness. Could something similar be about to happen now? The increased racial/cultural diversity of our nation, the pressure of global warming, the arrogant intransigence of the one-percenters and the growing unrest within the general population are setting the stage for something to happen. That is why I keep writing and working and teaching and living into that newer, more just and inclusive world; therein lies my hope.

Where Were All The Christians (& Other People of Faith)?

Last week (June 3-7) I attended the annual conference of Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed (PTO) at the University of Texas in Austin. This gathering brings together students, educators and practitioners working for healing and social justice in communities and schools across the world. The organization takes its name from the two seminal thinkers and activists who developed the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Paulo Freire) and the Theater of the Oppressed (Augusto Boal). Both men have passed away, but this conference brings together folks who continue to work in solidarity with those most ignored and injured by the policies, structures and practices of our society. About two-thirds of the participants were practitioners of Theater of the Oppressed (TO) and one third were educators such as myself seeking to practice the pedagogy of the oppressed (PO) within and beyond the formal classroom.

While I have only recently begun to learn about the life and thinking of Boal, I have studied and sought to put into practice the teaching philosophy of Freire for several years. In that study, I have come to recognize that Freire was a revolutionary thinker and educator who sought to use teaching and learning as a tool for helping the oppressed change the dehumanizing systems that hold them down; I have also learned that he was a deeply spiritual man who referred to himself as a “friend of Christ.” In Freire’s native Brazil the overwhelming majority of people are affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. Freire himself had great tensions with the Church because of its complicity with the military junta and wealthy elites that exiled him from his country. Nonetheless one can not read his writings without coming across references to Christ, Easter, conversion, and love. While he did not write extensively about his beliefs, it is clear that his spirituality and faith in God shaped and undergirded his work and writings. Furthermore, his thought was shaped and helped shape the writings of the Latin American liberation theologians who taught that Jesus preached a “preferential option for the poor” and stood on the side of the poor and oppressed

As a result it has always baffled me that only a handful of scholars have written about Freire’s spiritual beliefs, and usually only in the context of liberation theology or religious education, and rarely in relationship to his philosophies of teaching and social change. Many authors make mention of his relationship to liberation theology and his use of Marxism, but few make mention of his connection to Christ. Moreover, it surprises that so many folks who claim to be shaped by his perspective on teaching & learning, and the process of social change don’t make the connection to the spirituality that undergirds his work. This is a project I have taken up and am attempting to present and publish in when I have the opportunity.

It also surprises me at gatherings such as the PTO conference that spirituality is rarely if ever discussed. In one workshop I attended we were discussing what a society free of oppression would look like. After several substantive suggestions were made, I offered that this new society also ought to have a spiritual dimension in that (a) Freire himself was a deeply spiritual man and that (b) almost all the world’s major religions have a vision of a preferred future that can inform our thinking on peace, equity and social justice. Well that comment dropped like a stone and the conversation quickly moved to something else. Afterwards a woman who worked at a church came up to me and shared a similar experience from another workshop where she also had felt alienated when she dared to bring up a spiritual topic.

So it left me thinking: where were all the Christians and other people of faith who see their faith tied to issues of social justice? Where are people whose work for justice and peace is fueled by a deep spirituality? Where are people like Freire, like Martin Luther King, like Gandhi, like Mother Teresa, who are willing to bring their religious faith and spiritual beliefs into the public sphere? What confounds me is how often in circles where we discuss issues of social justice the names of people like Dr. King and Gandhi are invoked, and yet how seldom the focus goes to the spiritual vision that energized them to do and speak as they did.

Have we as justice seeking Christians become so intimidated by the religious right that we are unable or unwilling to associate with so called political radicals? I know that’s not entirely true because I have many friends actively involved in politically progressive efforts who do so as an outgrowth of their faith; yet are there not other thinking people of faith who see that connection? Likewise, I have to believe that there are many political activists who in the quiet of their own offices or homes are nurtured by spiritual practices such as prayer, meditation, worship or devotional reading be it Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Zen or otherwise. Where are these spiritually oriented folks when it comes to these conversations among political progressives? For the past three years I have been attending conferences such as these, both politically oriented, as well professional academic settings, and I have experienced the same void when it comes to discussing spirituality. Next week when I attend the US Social Forum in Detroit, I expect to find the same hesitation. While this hesitation confuses me, it also troubles me because it suggests that issues of faith and spirituality have been pushed out of serious public conversation to the private and personal sphere, the implication being that spirituality has nothing substantive to offer.

During the years I was a Baptist pastor I often got in trouble with my congregations when in their words I “mixed religion and politics.” Most of those folks would have been considered political conservatives. The ironic thing is that people on the left of the political spectrum seemed to have the same hesitation.

Ironically, at the conference the most extensive conversation I had about spirituality and Freire’s work was with a Brazilian born linguistics professor who was a professed atheist. He said to me “Even though I am an atheist, I recognize that Freire was a dedicated Christian.” He too was surprised that spirituality was not more of an item of conversation at the conference. So here I sit in what my colleague Nathan Corbitt calls the “muddled middle” wishing to find more people of faith willing to make the connections between our spiritual practice and our work for social justice.

Racism, White Privilege and the Need for an "Easter Experience"

The following remarks are taken from a sermon I preached at West Philadelphia Mennonite Church on May 18, 2008.

Racism as a Power
In my experience when the issue of racism comes up, most whites feel either guilt or anger or both. Often they are angry because they feel like someone is trying to make them feel guilty. As white people we often feel we are being held accountable for something we didn’t do.

However, I want us to think about racism in broader, more systemic terms. I want us to think of it in terms of what Paul calls “principalities and powers” and in terms that Walter Wink talks about racism in his book, The Powers that Be. While racism is sometimes expressed in overt acts, the power of racism itself is a force in our society that is bigger than any one person or group. It is a force that distorts our sense of who we are and creates barriers between people of different racial and ethnic groups. In this sense it’s not so much that we have racism, but rather that racism has us. In order to resist racism , we first must recognize it’s power over us.

For those of who are white, racism is a force that often puts us in positions of power that we do not seek with privileges we did not ask for. It’s a power that grants those of us who are white a more exalted status as a group, while causing us to resist being seen as a group. One thing a white person doesn’t like to hear from people of color is that he or she is a “typical white person,” because we see ourselves as distinct individuals not as a group. At the same time racism excludes, distorts, makes sick, impoverishes and oppresses those who are not white. It is a power that causes people of different races to choose to live in different neighborhoods, worship at different churches, socialize in different places, and generally relate to people of their own group. Racism is a power that permeates the economic system, the political system, and the educational system. It is a power that is often joined with the powers of Classism and Sexism, which together can have a devastating effect on our sense of identity and our ability to live in community with others.

So when we talk about racism the issue is not about guilt, but rather about recognizing racism’s power over us , and then seeking ways to act responsibly against that power. We need to resist racism’s impact just like a recovering alcoholic has to resist the pull of the drug. Like an alcoholic we must admit that our lives have been shaped and influenced by racism and work diligently to unleash ourselves from the pull of that power. And like the alcoholic we can’t resist alone. To try to go it alone is to play back into racism’s power. We need a group and need to act as a group. In short we need to be in conversation with each other.

White Privilege
One of the first things we as whites must come to grips with is what is known as white privilege. The tricky thing with privilege is that it is largely invisible to those of us who are white, but glaringly obvious to those who are not. White privilege operates in subtle and devious ways. When I get on an elevator, women don’t back away in fear. When I walk into a grocery store, clerks don’t suspect me of shoplifting. When I drive through a predominantly black neighborhood, I don’t have to fear being stopped for being in the wrong place. These are “privileges” I enjoy that people of color can’t assume. Just because of the color of my skin, my children are more likely to own their own homes, go to a good school, get a better job, and earn a better a salary when they get that job.. These are privileges they enjoy simply because they are white. And as I said they didn’t ask for them, but they are there.

And unconsciously these privileges can slip over into the way we as whites interact with people of color. A year ago this past winter, I joined a class of the Alternative Seminary on the topic bridging the gap of race and class. We met for eight Tuesdays nights from January to March in a small Methodist church in North Philadelphia. The purpose of the course was to explore the forces that divide whites and people of color from each other and to think together about ways we could work more effectively across racial lines. The group consisted of somewhere between 15-20 people and was evenly divided between whites and African Americans. There were two Puerto Rican men who came the first two nights but did not continue. About 2/3 of the group were women and there were no African American men (although we did have some African American men come in as speakers). The group was facilitated by two women, one white and one black.

Now I went into that class thinking I had a pretty good handle on what racism was and how to communicate across differences. I had good relationships with my co-workers of color. I had even taught courses on the stuff. So I thought I was in pretty good shape when came to racism and I assumed the others in the group would see that and accept with open arms on that basis. But I was in for a big surprise because over that two month period I was confronted with the ways I talked and carried myself that unwittingly conveyed a sense of superiority and privilege to the people of color in the group. And because I was on their turf, they had no qualms in letting me know how arrogant I came across. It wasn’t I made any racist statements, I was just being my normal white self. To the other folks in the group I was conveying that I was a person of privilege.

Tobin Miller Shearer in the book, Set Free, says that white privilege tends to express itself in many different ways, one of which is a need to always be in control. In that group I wanted to be right, even if I was wrong. I wanted to be heard, even I needed to listen. I wanted my points to count, even if they were not pertinent. At the time I didn’t know why, but later I figured it out: as a white person, I was used to having my opinion count. I was used to being listened to and respected; that was my privilege as a white person. As painful as it was, that experience was invaluable for me because it forced me to see myself as others saw me. It forced me to see myself from a different perspective.

Paul’s Change in Perspective
And you see in Acts 9 that’s what happened to Paul; he went through a dramatic change of perspective. Luke tells us that Paul was “breathing out murderous threats” as he traveled on the road leading into the Syrian city of Damascus. He was on a mission to find, capture and imprison as many followers of Jesus as he could possibly round up.

And then he had this incredible vision of Jesus speaking to him out of the sky. He immediately went blind, and heard a voice saying to him “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.” Now there are two things to note about this event. First of all, the people who were with Paul saw no light, saw no Jesus, and only heard a rumbling sound. So this was an intensely personal experience for Paul. Second, as far as we know Paul had never had any personal contact with Jesus before his death. So when Jesus accused Paul of persecuting him, Jesus was identifying himself with his followers; he was in essence saying that by seeking to imprison his followers, Paul was persecuting him. Up to this point Paul had seen himself as a hero and a servant of God’s people; all of a sudden he saw himself as a killer and an enemy of God’s people

Paul was directed by Jesus to go into the city and wait. After three days a man named Ananias came and prayed over him. With that prayer Paul’s blindness was removed, he was baptized, and he began an entirely new way of life. He dedicated himself telling folks about the life and message of this Jesus, and he suffered and eventually died for that purpose. What happened to Paul on the Damascus road was a dramatic change of perspective that turned him completely around from being a hunter to one of the hunted, from being a persecutor to one of the persecuted, from being an oppressor to one of the oppressed.

The Easter Experience
He had what Paulo Freire called an “Easter experience.” Paulo Freire was Brazilian educator who dedicated himself to using education as a means of helping poor and oppressed people gain the means to overcome their oppression and work for their liberation. His book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, has inspired a whole generation of students, teachers, community organizers, and anti-poverty advocates. Freire was also a dedicated Christian. In a letter to a theology student he wrote that if non-oppressed people want to work in solidarity with oppressed persons for their liberation, they had to go through what he called an “Easter experience”. By that he meant was that those who are privileged need to go through a spiritual transformation that releases them from their attachment to power and enables them to see and experience the world from the vantage point of the oppressed. I believe that is what happened to Paul on the Damascus Road. That’s what happened to me in the Alternative Seminary course. I want to suggest that is what needs to happen to those of us who are white and privileged, if we are to truly stand by those who are limited and sometimes crushed by the injustice of racism.

I want to suggest that the gospel’s call to those of us who are white is to seek ways to let go of our control and privilege and undergo a spiritual transformation leading to a perspective change. It not just about whether we commit overt acts of discrimination, or whether we behave respectfully toward people of other races. No primarily it is about whether or not we are willing to recognize the advantages that our culture has afforded those of us who are white. And it’s about our willing to relinquish those privileges for the sake of justice and reconciliation.

Using Our Experience as a Window
Now when I bring this up, some white folks will say, “Wait a minute I’ve been a victim of discrimination, I’ve been despised because of my gender or my social class or my accent or even my white skin.” If that is the case then I say “good – hang onto that awareness.” Because as painful as those experiences have been, they have given you a window into what people of color experience nearly every day of their lives simply because they have a skin color other than white.

When I was in that group there were many times when I felt like I was being disregarded and ignored simply because I was white. And it ticked me off. There were times I wasn’t sure if people didn’t like what I said because they were simply dumb statement or if it was because I was this big talkative white guy. I’d go home all angry and confused, and then it dawned on me: this is what a lot of African American people, and Hispanic people, and Asian people and Native American people and immigrants go through every day. And it was like a window into their experience. And it helped me see things from another perspective. Every day people of color are reminded that they need to work a little bit harder and be a little bit smarter just to get to the same place white folks get. And if they do get a good job or a promotion, they have to deal with the question of whether they got it on their merits or because of some quota or affirmative action policy. Everyday people of color have to wonder if they are being heard or respected or ignored simply because of their skin color. Everyday when they pick up the newspaper or watch a news program they are reminded that their schools are underfunded, the courts sentence them to harsher and longer penalties, that they are not likely to get the same pay for the same job as a white person, and that the systems of this society routinely slight them. Everyday that is their reality.

Those of us who are white know these things too, but we don’t experience them, and we can forget them and ignore them and even rationalize them away. But we don’t have to live with them. But if we can get a window, we can remind ourselves to think and act and see the world from the side of the oppressed rather than from our normal place as the privileged.

Paul’s “Easter experience” on the Damascus Road happened in a dramatic fashion. But for many of us, and I know that at least for me, the Easter Experience transformation has taken and is taking a lifetime. Nonetheless I see my situation as a white person in Paul’s story. Like Paul, at times I feel like I am blind to things that are going on right around me. Like Paul, I am confused and overwhelmed by the fact that I thought I was doing the right thing and the helpful thing, only to discover it was just the opposite. Like Paul just when I think I am beginning to understand, I realize how far I have to go. Like Paul, I realize I need an Ananias, someone not afraid to come along side of me, and pray with me and talk with me, and help me see what I am blind to see. Like Paul I realize I need people who are willing to engage me in a sacred conversation about this force called Racism that so often messes me up and gets in the way of constructive and meaningful relationships with people who are different than me.

And so I us to explore ways that we who are white & black or Filipino & Native American & Vietnamese or whatever race or ethnicity can engage in conversation about this force that divides and distorts us. And not only talk but then we act on what we learn.

Hope Vs. Realism

Today in church, the pastor was talking about hope, and I got to thinking about the current knock on Barack Obama’s message of hope. Hillary Clinton and John McCain attack Obama as simply having nice-sounding words with no substance. McCain and Clinton have a legitimate right to challenge Obama to speak specifically and concretely about his potential plans and policies. However, underneath their political jabs is the troubling and cynical assumption that there is no such think as hope, because one must be "realistic!" To the "realist," hope seems like a pipdream. Given this cynical attitude, it is no wonder Obama entitled his latest book The Audacity of Hope; to purveyors of American real politick Obama’s message is an affront.

Over the last couple of years I have been studying the life and work of Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator who developed a method of literacy training that enabled thousands of illiterate campesinos to read in a matter of months. His methods were so successful that the Brazilian government imprisoned him for sedition, and eventually exiled him. The ruling elite didn’t trust someone who would teach folks how to read, because then those same folks were able figure out that their so-called leaders were working in ways that limited their opportunities and caused their suffering. Freire spent his 20 year exile traveling the globe sharing his message and educational philosophy. Late in life when the Brazilian government changed hands, he was allowed back into the country where he held a government post as Education Minister until his death in 1997.

Throughout much of his life Freire sought to raise the prospects of the poorest of the world’s poor by giving them one of the most valuable tools for advancing one’s station in life: the ability to read. His work came to light in the English speaking world with the English translation of his seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed in 1970.Freire understood that what he was doing had political implications, and thus he taught his students to not only read the word, but also “read the world” and the forces that oppressed them. Through this process of consciouness raising, Freire's method empowered poor folks to challenge their oppressors and change their conditions.

Despite his personal struggles and the powerful opposition he faced, Paulo Freire was always known as a joyful man full of hope. Thus, it is fitting that one of his last writings was entitled Pedagogy of Hope, which was a retrospective on the working out of ideas expressed decades before in Pedagogy of Oppressed.

Denis Collins, one of Freire’s biographers, said of him,

“How is one to account for the optimism of Paulo Freire?… Freire’s life and work as an educator is optimistic in spite of poverty, imprisonment and exile…. On a planet where more than half the people go hungry every day because nations are incapable of feeding all their citizens, where we cannot agree that every being has a right to eat, Paulo Freire toils to help men and women overcome their sense of powerlessness to act on their own behalf” (Denis Collins, Paulo Freire: His Life, Works, and Thought).

Freire himself put it this way late in his life when he wrote: “Above all my difference lies in my critical, in no-way-naïve optimism and the hope that encourages me and that does not exist for the fatalistic” (Pedagogy of the Heart, p. 40). Fatalism and cynicism had no place in Freire’s life because he was too busy trying to be part of the solution to injustice rather than a cynical bystander.

Freire believed that the messenger of hope had a two fold purpose: denunciation and annunciation. The prophet denounces the systems, policies and persons that oppress and marginalize the poor and outcast, while announcing the possibility of a world where justice, freedom and opportunity are equally available to all. Like other messengers of hope such as ML King, Mahatma Gandhi and Cesar Chavez, Freire's message was a threat to the folks in power because he not only challenged their place of privilege, but also the policies and actions that gave them that privilege. You see, cynicism always serves the purposes of those in power because it discourages people from seeking meaningful change.

Time will tell if Barack Obama is simply mouthing high sounding words or is a true messenger of hope. In no way do I place him in the same company as people like Freire, King, Gandhi or Chavez. At the same time I can not side with those who would regard hope as unrealistic. Perhaps I am a dreamer, but dreamers are ones who change the world from what it is to the world as it could and should be. Hope is not the opposite of “realism,” but rather the antidote to a fatalism that saps people of their drive and capacity to work for meaningful change.