Liberation Thinking

Liberation Thinking

“The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is a normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave” --Assata Shakur

.Last night I read this quote, and while I liked it, and could relate to it, for me, it felt incomplete. I'll explain why. Years ago, I had a most amazing teacher by the name of Eldridge Greer. He had started to talk about “Liberation Thinking”. I was intrigued, and knew this statement in and of itself held and was truth. He had just begun to develop and implement his ideas in the counseling center he was director of, and where I worked for him. Unfortunately, at the same time, the most hideous racism I've ever seen began to rear its ugly head right before our very eyes. I watched in horror as he was slowly but surely taken down by the racism of the white staff that he supervised. Sadly and truly, these same staff supposedly believed in the principles of multiculturalism. Yet, this did teach me that even those who espouse and try to live the principles of liberation, and cross-cultural understanding, fall victim to the tangled vines of racism and have a hard time breaking free. In their inability to break free, they are also unable to see how their internalized racism is operating on, within and through them. It is a poison.

What I also learned from this situation is that as a person of color, I too must work on my internalized oppression, and keep working to set myself free from the trap that threatens to keep me enslaved.

The  above quote speaks to me of a phase in this growth and learning.

We must first figure out who we are. Then we began to see how we have been affected and enslaved during our lives by the systems that oppress. Next, once we see this, we have to change our thinking. If we continue to believe that we are slaves, we will continue to act and respond as slaves. It requires a vigilance, and I would counter that rather than fixating on ones oppression, we must instead come to see how it operates within us, and learn to first change our thinking, then our actions toward ourselves (self sabotage, etc.) and toward others. We cannot stay stuck. We must began to believe that we are liberating ourselves, and finally, we must plant within our whole being a sense that we are indeed liberated and free, and live as such. I wrote the following as my personal response to the above quote that speaks to what I just stated:
Then you have to firmly, totally, and completely go about the task of liberating yourself. You cannot remain a slave... ..or even continue to allow "slave mentality" to remain in your consciousness. it has to be rooted out like the awfullest of weeds...from the beauty of your colorful and luscious garden...

As a therapist, I have had the honor of seeing many people of color in my time, and have come to see that what is most difficult is starting the journey to a place where one learns to simply love and honor self enough that one no longer can act, live and behave in ways that damage ones being. That being becomes and must stay precious and sacred.

After graduate school, without my conscious knowledge, I set out on a path that would eventually lead to what I see as my liberation. I had to continuously look at myself as a being worthy of loving. I had to keep challenging the parts of myself that had been twisted by the racism of others and the systems I'd come into contact with over my life. I declared a moratorium on my reading material—I decided that for at least the next 3 years, I would read only books by people of color, I would not read books by white men, as I'd been, what I felt, indoctrinated by their words all of my life. I started with books by Black women, then I moved on to other women of color. My education was rich! Through the words of Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Pearl Cleage, Octavia Butler, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and the list goes on and on,  I began to find my own voice. I began to feel a pride in who I am, in the struggles that have taught me and brought me to where I am now. I then began to understand and hear the words of other women of color—Isabelle Allende, Gail Tsukiama, Leslie Marmon Silko, Paula Gunn Allen, Arundhati Roy, and many more who helped me to see how other women around the world have struggled in much the same way, though differently, depending on their countries of origin, and the systems they had to be entangled in. Through this turning away from the droning words of white men, I was able to reach places within myself that were always there, but needed to be awakened by my sisters all over the world. This is where and when I began to truly feel that I could see what freedom looks like.

From there, it has been the joy of life experiences that have schooled me, and helped me to keep walking this liberating path. In the last 6 months, I was lucky enough to be in living situations with two well-meaning but racist white women who took me further down the road than I ever would have made it alone. They showed me how I'd been enslaved, they showed me how I had acted in the past in response to the pressing, smothering, maiming, killing weight of racism. Their ignorance brought me clarity, their lack of seeing brought me sight, their random unthinking actions taught me how to be as Audre Lorde said, deliberate and unafraid. I have no more time for fear. I am a fearless warrior of my own liberation, and I now see that part of my new work as a healer in the world is to help impart this warrior fearlessness to my brothers and sisters. The work is to help us all to learn and know with certainty what it means to simply be able to live as liberated people who no longer need to see ourselves as slaves.

I am now living as a woman who is aware of oppression, but doesn't need to live in and with it. My mind and heart are set on my liberation, and the beauty of my colorful and luscious garden is growing by leaps and bounds. I am grateful to all of my teachers...