Fear and Hope cannot coexist…
Nor can they together lead to anyone’s #liberation
As the new semester activities begin to wind down and higher ed institutions all around the country are getting to their business of student success, I have to activate my own hope and encourage you to do the same.
I remember being at a recent convening with over 100 colleagues doing #racialequity work at their campuses and hearing their concern and uncertainty for the ways they operationalize their work to show its significance. Even in environments where they have support.
Barbara Love provides a digestible model of liberatory consciousness that can help us equity workers ground ourselves when confronting injustice. And it is helpful to note that injustice will come and that confronting injustice is inevitable.
Barbara Love provides a framework of 4As
🤎We must have the AWARENESS that we live in oppressive systems.
Living with awareness means to live “in an awake position” — to notice our language, behaviors, and thoughts, and observe what's happening in the world around us. When something happens that shouldn’t have, or something is said that shouldn’t have been, must be aware of it and how it may be contributing to systems of oppression.
🤎We must ANALYZE why something is happening.
After becoming aware of a problem, the next step is to not just notice it, but thinking and theorizing about it. Developing our own explanations about what is happening, why it's happening, and what needs to be done better positions us to consider whether or not a situation seems consistent with our values and goals of a fair and equitable society.
🤎We must see that ACTION is taken.
Beyond simply recognizing a problem, we must decide what needs to be done to ensure action is taken. That can look like taking initiative as an individual, encouraging others to take action, organizing and supporting others who feel empowered to do something.
🤎 We must have ACCOUNTABILITY/ALLY-ship that allows us to make progress together.
We need to “understand and manage [the] opportunity and possibility for perspective sharing & ally-ship in liberation work.” Working in connection & collaboration with others permits us to make progress in ways that wouldn’t be if we were to operate in isolation or separation.
When we digest this framework, it will lead to actions that …. “update our practices to reflect the current reality and our aspirations; shaping them to be in service of liberation and thriving rather that holding up hegemonic and colonial relationships that belong in the past.”Gillian Marcelle, PhD
“Institutions and systems respond to the initiatives of individuals and groups of individuals. Systems do not perpetuate themselves: they are perpetuated by the actions of people who act automatically on the basis of their socializations.” — Barbara J. Love .
#antiopressiona
#racialequity
#liberationforall
Join us on 8 December 2023 from 2 - 4 p.m. IST / 8:30 - 10:30 a.m. GMT for the first series of #Sindhanai Talks on Understanding #Systems and #Structures, where emerging #evaluators will share their expectations from the evaluation ecosystem https://forms.office.com/r/dsMK2NHXqJ