Navigating Recurring Tensions in Social Justice Work
Jessica Munafo, Clinical Psychologist
Having walked along a path from being non-racist (i.e. identifying as someone who believes that they don’t do or say racist things) to engaging with anti-racism (i.e. understanding more about the nature of oppression and the immense work that it takes to resist it) over the past 20 or so years, I have come across recurring tensions that we don’t seem to have found many reliable, workable solutions for… yet.
Making room for both disruption and connection
Looking back in history, we can see that social change has occurred through revolution as well as evolution; through determined resistance as well as steadfast relationship-building. Often the two go hand-in-hand or overlap – what starts as a rebellion may become a chain reaction whereby bonds are formed that lead to meaningful shifts, or what starts as tentative conversations cascades into extreme unrest. I have often seen clashes between the two approaches, with the disruptors feeling as though the connectors lack courage or conviction, and the connectors feeling that the disruptors lack sensitivity or strategy. Getting caught up in winning the argument versus solving the problem can be distracting. Obviously this is over-simplistic but it’s frustrating to watch the haemorrhaging of energy that occurs when people try to prove their superiority. It possibly takes both types of energy and so people could play to their strengths (which may be in both disruption and connection at different times). Compassion has many faces – both fierce and tender.
Engaging with denial while trying to get on and problem-solve
People who oppose or struggle with challenges to the status quo, or who find the reality of oppression too confronting, may pose a dilemma to those who are no longer debating the existence of inequalities. A huge tension can arise between not wanting to ignore their concerns/humanity but also not wanting to use limited resources on managing defensiveness or indifference. Disagreeing about the nature of a problem and disagreeing about the solution to a problem are different things. I have found that people who are really attached to wealth/status or have wounds around shame/anxiety may have a harder time with anti-oppression work. If the main aim in life is to create as comfortable an existence as possible, either power-wise or psychology-wise, then there is likely to be much more reluctance towards the change work that needs to be done. In a capitalist, consumerist, individualistic culture, people want to have all material needs met and feel good about themselves at the same time. This requires turning a blind eye to many things.
Holding both personal and political identities simultaneously
Living in a world in which people hold varying amounts of power, and in which unjust hierarchies exist, it becomes apparent that we are able to have political identities as well as personal ones. My political identity relates to the patterning of power that I hold; for example, I am a cisgender, heterosexual, middle-class, enabled female, racialised as white. These aspects of my identity afford me certain freedoms and some restrictions too. My personal identity relates more to my individual character, temperament, and preferences; for example, being an anxious, analytical but also silly, day-dreamy person who loves dolphins and hates mushrooms. I have noticed that the more privileged a person is, the more invisible their political identity seems to be, especially when situated within a majority group, which can then seriously undermine dialogue with those who are regularly made painfully aware of their political identity. Being rigidly stuck within a political identity or refusing to acknowledge your political identity can be limiting in different ways. This tension also relates to the dilemma regarding where to focus energies – on changing systems or changing people. They are inextricably bound. Racism, sexism, homophobia/transphobia, disabilism, capitalism, etc., are soulless forces whose aim is only to amass power and assert dominance or advantage for particular groups. However, they of course require ‘bodies’ to flow through in order to enact their processes and ‘institutions’ in which to house and sustain themselves – to survive beyond the natural life course of a single human life. Plus they do initially arise from humanity with its twin motivations of cooperation and competition. To either over-personalise or under-personalise oppression is to miss an important piece of the puzzle.
Spaces for the different pieces of work that need to be done
There are so many tools needed in our toolbox when it comes to the task of dismantling oppression and re-building a more fair society. Sometimes separate spaces are necessary to do some of these jobs, whereas other times shared learning spaces are the most productive. We need spaces for people with lived experience to heal and be seen, heard and understood fully as well as cultivate joy. We need spaces for people who hold privilege to explore what this means and connect with the discomfort that rehabilitation brings. We need spaces for people who are not invested in change to be held accountable for their actions. We need spaces for people to share their perspectives and develop solutions together. Trying to do all the work in one space can lead to immense amounts of triggering and also increasingly sophisticated defence mechanisms or projections.
Wrestling with the head and the heart
The self work and the systems work that needs to be done involves engagement at both emotional and logical levels. It is painful to experience discrimination, marginalisation, othering, and outsidership. It can also be painful to accept that you are a participant in an oppressive group, even though of course your life outcomes are improved. Trying to intellectualise these things away just tends to embed them deeper in an inaccessible, unconscious place. It’s hard to truly connect with another person if they are under pressure to ‘cut away’ these aspects of themselves in order for the relationship to work. Equal partnerships require that bonds are created and negotiated so that both people or groups have enough of their needs met. It cannot be on one side’s ‘terms’ only. However, there is also the opposing issue of when someone’s trauma is so unhealed or where they are carrying extremely unresolved feelings such as anger or guilt, that their capacity for communicating is impaired. In these situations, the logical mind has gone offline and needs to be more present in order for people to find a way forward.
The balancing act between universal themes and specific perspectives
Our brains like to create shortcuts and heuristics so that we can filter and categorise the massive amount of sensory input that needs constant processing. Sometimes this makes it easy for us to generate assumptions and blanket statements that allow us to make sense of a confusing and complex world. When it comes to interpersonal relating, it’s part of our evolution to create ingroups and outgroups based on a wide range of characteristics, be they genetically determined or socially constructed. In a social justice context, people may jump to feeling as though all members of a group may think/feel/act the same way about things. We know this cannot be the case but it gets complicated as sometimes there are predictable themes that tend to arise, e.g. with conservatives, progressives, radicals, etc. Or patterns might relate to commonalities in the ways that people respond to grief, trauma, shame, authority, etc. Allowing for clarifying ‘truths’ while staying curious about alternative possibilities and critically appraising our carefully crafted realities is maybe something we need to be learning about at school.
The seesaw of rushing and procrastinating
When there is a critical issue to be solved, sometimes you see an all-or-nothing reaction, as people either feel compelled to sort it out right now due to a genuine sense of urgency or there is a freeze response due to the enormity and complexity of it all. Either way, it’s hard to contain the overwhelm. Sometimes there is a strange blend of these two approaches whereby something superficial happens very quickly, while something meaningful unfolds much more slowly (except in cases where there is no true investment in change because people are wedded to other motivations such as increasing profit or raising their profile – in these situations, the superficial level is as far as it gets). We need to reach acceptance that some things can happen quickly while some things can only happen slowly, without conveniently using the latter as an excuse to kick the problem down the road for as long as possible. The more privileged people are, the more they are able to relax into the idea that social change takes time. It’s likely that many more things could be done quickly if we had more shared understandings of the barriers that get in the way.
Trying to be a ‘jack of all trades’ or a ‘master of one’
When there are so many forms of oppression, there arises the dilemma of whether to focus your energies strongly on one particular issue, or to do a little bit of everything: to be a specialist or a generalist. You hear a lot about ‘whataboutery’ (the scenario in which someone raises a social justice concern and the knee-jerk response is ‘but what about …’) nowadays and I partly sympathise because, again, there are lots of problems and none of them are as simple as they seem. Sometimes it’s good to consider ‘exceptions to the rule’ and to remember that there are other groups also struggling under the weight of oppression, but maybe not when the ‘whataboutery’ is actually a form of avoidance in dealing with the issue at hand. It’s OK to pick your battle and pour your energy into one arena while respecting the fact that others are working on other causes and sometimes making time to learn from each other, as well as notice which causes receive less attention. None of these things are separate anyway – the axes of oppression frequently interact to create kaleidoscopic forms of harm that are both niche and very broad. Intersectionality is definitely something that society could reflect more on as the dialogue deepens.
Surviving the rollercoaster of hopefulness and hopelessness
When you really bring your whole self into these conversations and into this work, there are some truly heartening moments when it feels as though we might be turning a corner and that future generations may have a very different experience. Then there are the heavy days where it seems as though oppression doesn’t shift, it merely mutates and when it’s as though everything is sliding backwards. At these times, it’s necessary to try to hold onto the idea that life just simply isn’t that all-or-nothing, even though that dichotomous approach can be enormously seductive as it creates the tantalising illusion of order being made from the chaos. The ‘woke vs anti-woke’ culture wars seem to feed this voracious beast, particularly in a time of climate change threat when people crave answers and safety. However, at the same time it appears that people are more able to talk about oppression as a system and are learning to over-personalise it less. This is positive as it reduces the inevitable defensiveness which slows progress down. People also seem to be speaking more openly together rather than only in their own ‘groups’ so that cross-fertilisation of ideas is possible. Even though this brings new dilemmas, it gives me hope.
Conclusion
I’m absolutely not saying any of this from some kind of ‘I’ve worked it all out’ type of place. There are certainly many more tensions in this work, but these are just the ones that have stuck in my mind and kept me awake at night! I make mistakes all the time and my aim is to try not to repeatedly make the same mistake again and again. They say that progress moves at the speed of trust – I do so hope that we can move towards building sufficient trust in each other to take meaningful steps towards a better future together.
Acknowledgement
Photo by Alex Azabache on Unsplash
