Educating Allies: The Basics
Introduction
Just before the manuscript of the first edition of Becoming an Ally was ready to go to the printer, the publisher, knowing the book grew out of my practice as an adult educator, asked why I had not included anything about my specific methods for educating allies. I hadn’t because I had seen the book more as a reflection on the process of becoming an ally than any kind of teaching manual. I quickly assembled some of the exercises and resources I and my colleagues were using into a chapter called “Educating Allies.”
In the years that followed, I was horrified at how my quickly-offered exercises were sometimes misused. As a result, in the second edition, I expanded the chapter, adding discussions of the principles behind ally education, some of the choices educators face in this kind of work, the skills and context required for it to be effective and the conditions under which it can backfire and trigger backlash.
Then, between the second and third editions, I did a great deal of growing as an adult educator. For thirty-five years I had taught people who chose to take part. This gave me an open, vulnerable facilitation style, sharing leadership as much as possible with participants, and a positive picture of my fellow citizens’ willingness to become allies.
From 2006 to 2011, I accepted a contract teaching mandatory equity courses to provincial civil servants. I soon met resistance, both open and subtle. Abruptly I had to re-learn an old lesson in just how widespread and determined bigotry can be under the veneer of the “nice” Canadian. Roughly one out of five of these classes was dominated by participants who would try to commandeer the session, attacking marginalized group members, present or not, the teacher, and anyone who defended either. When they discovered they could not get away with direct attacks, they would try to disrupt the session in other ways. Favourite tactics were texting on their cellphones, resisting participation with surly silence, carrying on side conversations, organizing games such as tic tac toe out of the teacher’s line of vision, vandalizing flipcharts and handouts, deliberately breaking the rules or cheating during simulation exercises, repeating the same point over and over again whatever the explanation or response, inserting nasty comments just quietly enough that I couldn’t hear and laughing. When I asked them to repeat the comment, they would say something like, “You don’t want to know,” followed by another laugh.
The teaching methods that had served me so well up to that point were useless in this setting. Battered by one particularly vicious session, I considered quitting, but my confidence in my facilitation skills and belief in the possibility of a more just world, along with the loving challenge and support of my partner, would not let me walk away. I abandoned my methods of sharing leadership with participants and took back control of the classroom. I began to experiment with surprise and humour, honesty and clarity, deeper and more extensive knowledge of my subject and the work done by the participants, thoughtful listening, more skilled timing and a better balance of firmness and openness. I received support and insight from colleagues, concerned managers, human resource professionals, union leaders and members of the Public Service Commission’s Diversity Roundtable. Before long, I began to get much better responses from participants.
As I learned and changed through this experience, I thought about writing a book solely about educating allies, but then discovered that it already exists. The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don’t Want to Know by Tema Okun divides the concepts up and names them a little differently than I do, but she has basically said much of what I wanted to say.1 I shelved the idea of a separate book and, instead, added a summary of her analysis to my “Educating Allies” chapter, along with what I had learned from the experience of teaching mandatory equity education. I also expanded my analysis of Canadians’ responses to learning about their privilege.
Between the third and fourth editions, I continued to experiment in my teaching, developing new exercises and presentations to help students explore the concepts they need to become allies as individuals and, increasingly, to bring more equity to their institutional settings. The fourth edition is a substantially different book from the first three editions, and shorter. One way to reduce the length of the book has been to take out the “Educating Allies” chapter and place it here on my website. This has another advantage as well, because a website is more flexible than a book. As I continue to learn from participants and co-facilitators, and develop new exercises and methods, I can continually update the website content. I can also offer my handouts in a form others can use.
This article is a discussion of the theory and context of ally education, the basics. I have put my favourite exercises and handouts in the section called the “Toolkit.”
The Basic Approach: Popular Education and the Pedagogy of the Privileged
Much of my work for the past fifty years has been in the field of adult education, specifically popular education. The term “popular education” is a translation from the Spanish, “educación popular.” Although it was developed in all of the Southern continents–Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands—it made a specific journey to Canada from the grassroots organizations of Central American during the 1970s. Its aim is to overcome the internalized oppression that marginalized people have learned from our oppressors and give us the analysis and action tools to move toward liberation. It is based firmly in a structural and historical understanding of oppression, where people are seen as part of larger systems, products of history, rooted in a class system that makes us very unequal in our access to power, wealth, legitimacy and resources.2
By contrast, liberal education assumes that if we increase the knowledge and change the attitudes and behaviours of individuals, then organizations, institutions and society as a whole will also change. This is, in general, the approach of “diversity education” and “cultural competence,” although the naming of educational approaches can be quite flexible. Sometimes a teacher or facilitator who refers to what they do as “diversity education” or “cultural competence” will turn out, on close inspection, to be taking a structural approach. Or sometimes an educator will take a structural approach within a program named “diversity education” by the institution they work for. It is very common for someone who refers to what they do as “equity” or “anti-oppression” education, terms that usually indicate a structural approach, to be working from a liberal perspective.
There is nothing wrong with building skills and knowledge in individuals, as diversity and cultural competence approaches seek to do, as far as it goes. Skill-building is an important component in the growth and development of allies. The problem is the assumption is that this activity in itself will change larger structures.
Popular education assumes that our institutions and culture can change only if we fundamentally change their patterns of status, power and resources, and this can happen only through collective organization and action informed by reflection. The process can be illustrated as a spiral, moving from experience to reflection, then to analysis, strategy and action, beginning again with the experience gained from taking action.
As I began to think about my own role as a member of dominant groups, I joined many other educators adapting the popular education approach to the task of “unlearning” our role as oppressors. Sometimes this approach is called “unlearning oppression,” “anti-oppression education” or “the pedagogy of the oppressor” in reference to Paulo Freire’s seminal work on popular education, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.3 I tend to think of it as “educating allies.”
The Organizational Context of Ally Education
Before ever beginning any ally education, it is very, very important to be sure it is part of the right organizational context. All too often, organizations want a quick fix, a day or weekend of “sensitivity training” or “diversity training.” My teacher Helene Moussa calls this “hit and run” education.. When equity education is attempted without being grounded in a larger, longer campaign for organizational change, in my opinion, it does more harm than good. Even if we do accomplish some positive change in that group of people on that day, there are no structures in place to reinforce it and carry it forward. It will just be an interesting day that allows everyone to check “diversity eduction” off of their list and then is quickly forgotten.
A true effort to make cultural change in an organization involves a very long time frame, measured in years, sometimes decades. It must be supported at all levels, particularly upper management. Resources are required, not only to make change activities possible, but to signal to everyone that this effort is valued by the organization at the highest levels. Such an effort has at its core a group of committed individuals who are allowed the time to reflect, learn and plan, with the organizational power to implement those plans. The aim is to transform the way power and resources are used in and by the organization – that is, structural change – moving it toward greater equity and collaboration. New management and leadership skills must be developed and all must be held to account, including the highest levels in the hierarchy.
Such change is possible. My work with provincial civil servants was guided by a Diversity Roundtable representing all of the departments, support units and unions, For a time, conditions within the civil service were such that they were able to make some important changes, including employment equity and respectful workplace policies, education and criteria for management training and hiring, supported by the uppermost levels of the organization. Later, it seemed to me, the loss of some key people and collisions with barriers, particularly in some departments, caused the momentum to fade. I was not close enough to the situation to know why, or even if my perception is accurate; however, my point is that organizational change is possible. During my work under the guidance of the Diversity Roundtable, progress was made. Their work on employment equity had been inspired by earlier changes made by an inter-departmental committee working on issues of health and safety. This campaign, over a couple of decades, had transformed the civil service into a workplace where there was universal awareness of health and safety, and universal support for correcting problems that came to light.
If courses and workshops are not grounded in a long term, committed organizational effort to achieve change, they can generate, at best, token change. The organization checks “diversity” off its list, posters appear on walls and the “right” books are purchased for resource shelves. People pick up “politically correct” language, helping them pass as open-minded and tolerant without really grappling with the continuous, structural, collective nature of dismantling oppression. This can lead members of oppressed groups to trust them when they shouldn’t and it becomes more difficult to identify the real sources of injustice.
At worst, “diversity” education out of context can create a backlash in which the most vulnerable people, the very minority employees the program was designed to support, are further victimized. In the presence of bullying, corruption and poor management, justice is not possible. All the “education” does is erode the fragile ledge the “different” employees or other participants in the organization are standing on, making it more difficult for them to quietly get by in whatever way they must to survive in the organization. They become scapegoats for their colleagues’ anger over the pressure to take part, particularly if the “education” is mandatory.
Mandatory diversity/equity education can be controversial. It can come under attack for generating backlash as described above and it is a pale cousin when compared with the depth of organizational cultural change that can be generated by voluntary education in a setting where people have the motivation to take part. However, I strongly believe that mandatory education has an essential place in organizational efforts to achieve equity, especially in the early stages. Later it can take its limited place alongside voluntary education. Mandatory education can make talking about equity less scary by “breaking the ice” and introducing respectful language for discussing the issues. It can establish basic concepts and reach those who need it most, those who would never volunteer to take part given the choice. Mandatory education makes it clear to all employees that the organization places a high value on its equity policies and practices, and that everyone in the organization will be held accountable to them. It goes without saying that it must be true that everyone will be held accountable. If not, people will soon discover that they can safely ridicule and ignore the organization’s diversity language.
On the other hand, mandatory education carries great risks, as described above, generating backlash, exposing already vulnerable people to increased bullying and harassment, making it possible to claim that everything possible has been done and disguising the roots of the inequity that continues to plague the organization. Mandatory education can backfire completely if it is not compulsory at all levels. While working with provincial civil servants, I frequently heard: “If this is so important, why isn’t our manager here?” I admit I would rather have participants challenge me over the absence of their manager than deal with a hostile manager, but when it is the managers undercutting the intent of the session, everyone else follows their example or at least stays silent. On the other hand, when a manager is present and taking the session seriously, even with high resistance in the group, the tone was respectful. Some of my best sessions took place in departments notorious for their harassment and rough culture, but with a skilled and thoughtful manager modelling the line between honest questioning and destructive bullying.
In order for mandatory education to contribute what it can and minimize the risks, it must have a well-thought-out place in a much larger campaign for organizational change. It must be firmly and consistently backed up by management at all levels and it must be competently designed and facilitated by teachers skilled and experienced in this type of education. A teacher who does not thoroughly grasp the concepts and demonstrate being an ally in their own actions, who does not have the skills to deal with the deep emotions that will be stirred up, panics under attack or gives up control of the room to the “bigotry” group can solidify oppressive attitudes, contributing to backlash against the most vulnerable people involved.
If you are considering leadership of ally education and are not completely clear on the concepts involved or do not have the skills and experience to deal with attacks and strong emotional reactions, please do not experiment. Find an appropriate opportunity to learn or apprentice with someone more experienced. The aphorism “every little bit helps” does not apply in this case. The risks are such that doing nothing is sometimes the better choice.
What Makes Effective Ally Education?
Let us assume that you have a willing group of learners and a sound context for ally education work: a community or organization with a long term commitment to develop a structure and culture of equity. Let’s also assume that you have the skills and experience to facilitate this type of education. Now it’s time to design your workshops or course. What will it look like?
I cannot overemphasize my belief that when ally education is effective, it is because it successfully challenges three key blocks in participants’ thinking: their ahistorical, individualistic and dualistic worldview. It does this by leading them to understand the structural nature of oppression.
Having come to this conclusion several years ago, I was delighted to discover The Emperor has no Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don’t Want to Know by Tema Okun.4 Okun is an anti-racism educator with experience in both community-based organizations and the National Louis University in Chicago, where she teaches in the Department of Educational Leadership. Building on a thorough analysis of our “normal” and invisible white supremacy culture and the dynamics of what she calls “privileged resistance,” she lays out a process for a fundamental cultural shift away from racism. Her prescription centres on changing three deeply-held elements of North American cultural belief: the right to profit, individualism and binary thinking.
The right to profit Okun defines as the cultural valuing of money over human life, making capitalism possible. Because the global system of private wealth and power is an evolution of colonialism, the exploitation of the peoples of Africa, Asia, North and South America to benefit the people of Europe, it has white supremacy for its foundation.
Individualism, according to Okun, grows from the right to profit, embedding in us the notion that we are separate from community, culture, our species and our planet; that what we do or don’t do does not affect anyone else, that we can get rich without making someone else poor, that our personal experience defines reality. Individualism makes it almost impossible for us to see larger structures of wealth and power, oppression and privilege. It also makes it possible to believe that oppression is a matter of intent: if I don’t intend to participate in racism, then I’m not racist.
Binary thinking, Okun’s third cultural keystone, is also an outgrowth of colonialism/capitalism, in that it divides what and who is valued from what and who is not, who has the right to own from who is owned, the side we are on from the side we fight against. This simplification of, and therefore ability to control, the world, unfortunately traps us in an understanding of ourselves as either good or bad, right or wrong, making it extremely difficult to grasp the complexity of the systems of oppression and privilege in which we live.
Okun boils down the essential beliefs that provide the foundation for oppression and privilege into these three: the right to profit, individualism and binary thinking. I feel that much of what she says about the right to profit complements my analysis in Becoming an Ally, describing how oppression came about and how it is held in place. Her emphasis on individualism and binary thinking matches mine on individualism and dualism. I have adopted ahistorical thinking as my third cultural barrier; that is, Western culture’s failure to understand how history has shaped structures that continue to operate, giving privilege to some at the expense of others. In order to overcome oppression, the past must be confronted and healed, at both the individual and collective levels.
Okun and I have carved up the concepts and named them a bit differently but we are talking about the same educational task. My feeling while reading Tema Okun’s work was delight and recognition, not only at this similarity in our understanding of the cultural underpinnings of oppressor thinking, but in many other aspects of our teaching practice as well. I think that The Emperor has no Clothes should be required reading for every educator working against oppression.
Returning to the three key ideas that block people from becoming an allies as I have named them, individualism, dualism and an ahistorical worldview, I feel that leading potential allies past these barriers requires that they grasp the concept of a structural worldview. The next question, obviously, is: how?
What is the process of “Unlearning” Oppression?
My years of teaching would-be (and wouldn’t-be) allies has given me many opportunities to observe how we think as oppressors. In Part Four of the fourth edition of Becoming an Ally, I explained how my colleague Valery Carvery and I divided our unlearning racism workshop participants’ responses roughly into three groups; “backlashers,” “guilty” and “allies.” The number of categories has expanded and contracted over the years since, reaching as many as twelve at one point. Currently I work with seven categories which I have arranged in chart form.
See Racism version of the chart here.
See Oppression version of the chart here.
Each group represented in the chart requires a different teaching approach.
Teaching People with Attitudes with Bigoted Attitudes
People in the “bigotry” category have a great deal of their identity invested in being superior to people different from themselves. They like to repeat the worst stereotypes of oppressed groups and insist they are true, that they have seen the behaviour in question personally or others close to them have witnessed it. They are deeply committed to individualism. Their approach to anyone different, let alone belonging to an oppressed group, boils down to what American anti-racism writer jona olsson calls “the three crown jewels of U.S. social propaganda: the Rugged Individual, the Level Playing Field and the Bootstrap Theory.”5 Their thinking is also deeply dualistic: “us” and “them,” “normal” and “other,” “natural” and “unnatural,” “good” and “bad.” In order to take even the first tentative step out of bigotry, they first need to have this binary approach to the world broken down and their view the oppressed and the oppressor groups expanded to see the humanity and complexity in both. This is very difficult for them, because their own sense of “rightness” often comes from seeing themselves as “us” in opposition to “them.” They need to see the complex web of oppression and privilege and understand their involvement in it. For that, they need to see the structural nature of oppression. In order to get around their extreme resistance and familiar “logic,” these learning tasks must be accomplished by surprise, including humour, which they do not expect in these circumstances (other than the nasty, aggressive form of humour they use to control the room). People in the “bigotry” group will also usually distrust your leadership and, since they have not chosen to be present, they will resent being forced to attend. Humour and surprise help overcome their resistance. You must also pass the test of being honest, knowledgeable and completely unflappable.
Teaching People in Denial
The “denial” group are those who think structural oppression doesn’t exist, either because they think that it happened only in the past or because they believe oppressed people are making it up or trying to get more than their share by complaining. Information is sometimes what they need, stories of the current experience of people who experience structural oppression. Sometimes even statistics help. If the session is mandatory, the “denial” group will sometimes resent being forced to attend because they don’t feel they need it and have other pressures on their time. Very early in the session, they must be surprised by what they don’t know. Some of the same exercises that catch the attention of the “bigotry” group with surprise and humour also work to pique the interest of the “denial” group, letting them know there might be something for them to learn from the session.
Teaching Well-meaning Liberals
The third group on the chart are those who see oppression functioning around them, but through a liberal lens. They understand the world to be made up entirely of individuals. They can see common humanity and unfair treatment, but not the ongoing impact of history. A liberal worldview is so strongly individualistic that the systemic structures of our collective life, particularly wealth and power, are invisible.
A liberal worldview is also dualistic, with much focus on “good” and “bad” individuals, strongly identified with “good” and “bad” intent. When they come to see themselves as part of an oppressor group, their response can be that they are, therefore, “bad” people, or being labelled as such, which can lead to anger and defensiveness. They will emphasize their good intentions: “I’m a good person; I didn’t mean to hurt anyone; therefore I can’t be racist/sexist/heterosexist/etc.”
This group also needs to have its dualistic notions replaced with a more complex worldview. They often also need to learn how much of human action is based in unconscious biases and attitudes, so that they can grasp how little intention has to do with it and take responsibility for their own privilege without seeing themselves as “bad” people. This group, in particular, cannot move forward without grasping the structural nature of oppression. Without this understanding, they will be promoters of token change and likely to become defensive and contribute to backlash when they meet actions that will lead to true structural transformation.
Teaching those Who Take Tolerance Stance
The “tolerance” group have been on a journey already, trying to balance a contradiction in their belief system. For example, they may be deeply rooted in a faith tradition that tells them 2SLGBTQIA+ people are sinful while also having a strong commitment to a human rights approach to oppression. If they have found a good balance for themselves, they are often effective allies. If they are struggling with it, expression of their thoughts can be helpful for them and enlightening for the rest of us. Sometimes putting their approach in the context of other beliefs about oppression helps. They also need to see the structural nature of oppression. I always learn something interesting from this group, although I have not found them to be common. Most of those I have met who fall into this category I encountered during my years as a leader in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
Teaching People Who Feel Guilty
People in the “guilt” category are also seeing structural oppression through a liberal lens. Instead of saying “I’m not racist or sexist or whatever other form of oppression,” their individualism takes the form of too much personal responsibility, an overblown sense of their own power, or rather, the power they think, in theory, they should have. This group suffers from a feeling of helplessness. They need to grasp the structural and historical nature of oppression to get a more realistic view of their place in it. This will aggravate their sense of helplessness, because the centuries-old dance of oppressor and oppressed can be overwhelming. In order to accept themselves as actors in a more realistic way, they need to see that our task is to do what we can in whatever realm of influence we have, joining with others for impact and support. They need to separate guilt, which rightfully belongs to the realm of conscious choice, from responsibility, which includes action to change circumstances handed to us by history and structures outside our personal control. They need to know that the struggle toward a more humane and compassionate world has gone on before them and will continue after them. They need activist role models.
Teaching Those Who Have Learned Humility
People in the “humility” group have reached the point where they recognize that most of our behaviour come from our unconscious attitudes, beliefs, values and stereotypes. Often they have already set out on a journey of learning and change. They understand that they have to work against a constant stream of external messages about the superiority of their group and the inferiority of others. People in this group are usually good listeners. They still see the world through a liberal lens and think of change as something that happens to and through individuals, but they are poised to take the next step and grasp the structural nature of oppression.
Teaching Those Who Are Becoming Allies
The goal of teaching people in each of the above categories is to bring them to a structural understanding of oppression. The final group is those who already have a structural worldview. When they take their understanding into action, they are on the path of becoming allies. These are people who are already engaged in reflection and action, on a journey of liberation from their own experiences of oppression while taking responsibility for their privilege in the areas where they have it.
They are, however, a small group of people. As I said in Becoming an Ally, of the approximately 5000 individuals I taught during five years of leading mandatory employment equity courses for provincial civil servants, I met five individuals who fit into this category, although many others, particularly if their education was in the field of nursing or social work, knew the language of “structural oppression,” “privilege” and “allies,” but did not firmly grasp the concepts. Many were excited to understand how structural oppression works. It made the world come together in a clearer picture for them. Many were also, like I was when I first met the concept of structural oppression, relieved that I could leave guilt and defensiveness behind and put that energy into making change.
Working with Unwilling Participants
There are people in a number of the categories above who will not want to take part in ally education. These include most people in the bigotry and denial categories. Most people in the personal response or liberal category are willing to learn, but some will have had their defensiveness triggered by past diversity or equity sessions, feeling that they have been accused of being bad people; that is, racist, homophobic or another form of oppressive attitudes. Among the tolerance group, some will have closed the door on any further wrestling with the contradictions in their own thinking and some in the guilt group will be immobilized by their feelings of hopelessness. As I discussed earlier, when talking about mandatory equity education, popular education strategies and other methods meant for willing participants simply do not work with resistant participants. They can even put vulnerable people at risk. In particular, learners who fall into the bigotry and denial categories and are angry at having to attend the session sometimes look for opportunities to control the room and threaten vulnerable colleagues. The participant-directed nature of popular education and other voluntary approaches gives them that opportunity. They have internalized “scripts” filled with stereotypes about “us” and “them.” Unstructured discussion gives them an opportunity to insist on these beliefs as “the truth” and prove it with stories of their own experience or what they have heard from others. More recently, they come up with what they have read on the Internet.
An important principle of popular education and other approaches designed for willing learners is that the teacher or facilitator is also a learner. It is typical for a facilitator to share the agenda before beginning and negotiate the process along the way. Research has demonstrated that life-changing learning can result from leaders making themselves vulnerable and expressing their own struggle with their role as oppressor or oppressed.6 Making yourself vulnerable in a session where resistant participants are present however, is not appropriate. At best, it causes confusion, defensiveness and leads to unproductive arguments and tangents; at worst, it can be a disaster. Participants with a “power-over” mentality can take advantage of the leaders’ vulnerability and use it to control the session and bully vulnerable colleagues.
I have come in for some teasing and also some serious questioning by colleagues who are, like I was, completely committed to an open, vulnerable, collaborative style of facilitating adult education. They are amused, and sometimes slightly horrified, at the approach I take in mandatory equity sessions because I have learned to be manipulative. There is a lot of discussion, but it is carefully structured within certain limits and shaped by questions I have discovered are effective. Above all, I have come to rely on surprise and humour. When the group begins to laugh, there is openness to learning, to whatever degree. I have watched a friend who left us far too soon, Candy Palmater, a Mi’kmaw woman and professional stand-up comedian, give presentations on Indigenous history.7 This may sound completely contradictory, but she could tackle the painful tragedy of Indigenous history and have her audience doubled up with laughter. Her gift for comedy is not something I have, by any stretch, but I have learned to rely on simulation exercises to surprise participants and get them to laugh. I have included some in the toolkit below; for example, the “Barga” simulation, “Step Forward, Step Back” or simulated reversals, such as“Blue Eyes Brown Eyes,” “The Poverty Game” and guided fantasy simulations.
The main purpose of mandatory equity education is to communicate to everyone in an organization that it is moving toward equity in a clear and consistent manner and they will be held accountable to that goal. It is essential, of course, that the message be true, with firm commitment from the top levels of its hierarchy and solid mechanisms for accountability at all levels. If so, the mandatory education needs to communicate those expectations and mechanisms, but can also answer questions, challenge myths, introduce respectful language and hopefully break open some space for real learning.
Working with Willing Participants
Lucky is the educator who has the opportunity to do ally education with open, willing, committed participants. This includes, of course, the group that is already working at becoming allies. They do not need to overcome the barriers that prevent them from thinking structurally and taking action for change. Rather, they need to further develop their analysis and strategies. This is the group that can be most effectively moved forward by the classic collectively-led process of popular education. It can also work well with other willing participants; for example, people who are still seeing the world through a liberal worldview but are open to change and will not become defensive, people who take a tolerance stance but are willing to wrestle further with their internal contradictions, people who are ready to leave guilt behind and replace it with a responsibility approach and, of course, those who have already accepted a humility approach.
The Basic Structure of Popular Education
The basic structure of popular education includes: naming ourselves (Who are we?), reflecting on our experience (What’s happening?), analysis (Why is it happening?), strategy (What are we going to do about it?) and, finally, action. The next round begins with naming experience again (What happened as a result of what we did?), analysis (Why did it happen that way?), strategy (What are we going to do next?), the next action, and so on. The process can be illustrated as a spiral:
Naming Ourselves
Popular education does not assume that we are individuals on a “level playing field,” as liberal education does. We come to our gathering with different genders, skin colours, ability, age, education, backgrounds, genetic heritage, class and class origins, ideologies and beliefs, sexual orientations and access to power and resources. Popular education is never impersonal or “objective.” In a short learning experience, a workshop for example, there may not be time to do much reflection on who we are, but our differences will have an impact on our collective learning experience nonetheless. In a longer time frame, a course for example, it is important to build in reflection on who we are, coming back to it from time to time, deepening the exploration with each round. In a shorter time, it is important to at least learn everyone’s name and something about that person—why they are there, what they are looking for from the session, some hopes, fears and expectations. Even the act of hearing each person’s voice breaks the ice for his or her contribution later.
In any session longer than a day, and many educators would say any session regardless of length, it is important to discuss ground rules. What do people expect from one another? What does respectful interaction look like? What is the line between honest self-expression and disrespect? What will happen if someone is not keeping to the agreed-upon ground rules?
In the Toolbox you will find a small selection of exercises appropriate for “Naming Ourselves.” Many others can be found in the resources listed at the end of the Toolbox section.
The “Naming Ourselves” part of a session is especially important for participants in the middle three groups in the dominant group concepts of oppression chart, “denial,” “tolerance,” “the personal/liberal lens,’ and “guilt.” These groups need to deepen their analysis of who they are in their structural context.
Reflecting on Experience
In popular education as it was originally conceived, the subject of reflection is the experience of oppression. Although capitalism and colonialism do not teach us to recognize our experience of being oppressed, it is there to be observed, because oppression can be seen, heard and felt by those who are its targets. The experience can be hidden under layers of fear, shame and denial, and making it visible can be painful, but the end result is relief, healing and new sources of power and support.
Our experience as a member of a dominant group is much more difficult to see. For one thing, a basic feature of the oppression is that we are cut off from our ability to empathize with those we oppress. If we are aware of it at all, we tend to get defensive or write it off as not very serious—“They are just whining” or “playing the race card.” For another thing, the privileges that we obtain from oppressing others are invisible to us. For a third thing, oppression is structural. We derive benefits from being male or white or straight or able-bodied without taking any personal action against a woman, a racialized person, an 2SLGBTQIA+ person or a person with a disability.
In order to discuss our experience as members of a dominant group, it helps to see oppression structurally, so that we understand ourselves to be inheritors of a history, not guilty of it as individuals, but something we need to take responsibility for if we believe human survival depends on transforming our society. We also need to learn how to see it, through exercises like naming our privileges, in the way Peggy McIntosh did in “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.”8 In Becoming an Ally, I quoted Augy Jones’ definition of privilege: “If you don’t have to think about it, it’s a privilege.”
Analysis
After reflecting on the experience as members of an oppressed or dominant group, it is important to move on to exercises designed to examine oppressive structures, and how and why they were put in place, how they are maintained and why they work. There are many tools for this process: drawing diagrams, making human sculptures, acting out skits, doing research, putting yourself in the position of someone responsible for creating an oppressive society (as in the example used in Becoming an Ally).
In my experience, there is a temptation to skip over analytical work, perhaps because it is a critical, intellectual process, and we live in a society where many people have been put down and shut out by those who use only this method of teaching or make it into a competitive activity in our schools and universities. Do not skip over it. Analysis in small groups can be exciting and revealing, and provides an essential basis for the steps that follow. I have described two of my favourite exercises for analysis in the Toolkit and there are good instructions for many others in resources such as those listed at the end of that section.
If you plan to present content – a talk, video or some other form of presentation – the analysis segment of the process is the place to do it, building on the participants’ discussion during the naming, reflection and early analysis pieces of the process. It is at this point in an educating allies workshop that I make a presentation on the structural nature of oppression. By this time I always have a great deal to work with, picking up on the usually liberal analysis that participants have produced and using their own words to expand their understanding. The Toolkit section includes “The Iceberg,” my favourite handout and talk for accomplishing this.
Strategy and Action
Popular education, is not complete without action. The Toolkit includes a handout with steps for planning a strategy for action. Participants who will be taking action together can work through all or part of it and bring their plan back to the rest of the group. At the very least, look at what changes people want to make, who has the power to make those changes, who should be involved and what leverage points are available to the participants to move the process forward.
If people take part in a session as individuals, they must work out their action plans on their own, but they can share them and make contracts to call one another at some point in the future to ask how each other’s plans are coming along. When people take part as members of groups or are all part of one organization, the process of building a strategy for action is a more complex, satisfying and powerful one, hopefully ongoing. The plan can be very specific and can include determining different roles for different people and setting meetings in the future to evaluate progress and adjust the plan.
Skills
Part of the strategy and action component of a session can include teaching participants skills for identifying and responding to oppression. Sample exercises can be found in the Toolkit and Resource sections. If participants are working toward specific action, this is an opportunity to learn the skills they might need to carry it out. If the session is more general and participants will not be taking specific follow-up action together, the strategy and action component of the workshop can consist almost entirely of skill-building exercises followed by reflection on how the skills might be applied in their life, organizations or work.
Reflection, Evaluation, Closure
When the time available for a workshop or course is very full, as educating allies sessions always seem to be, it is tempting not to save enough time to close properly. This is a mistake. The closing process ties together the loose ends, gives a sense of completion and helps participants become conscious of their learning and take the experience away in a useful form.
Reflection is a time for participants to go back over the session and talk about what they have learned.
Evaluation means collecting feedback from the participants, aloud or in writing, that will help improve the session the next time it is offered.
Closure should be quick and energetic, something to get people on their feet, say a final word, and feel a clear ending to the process. There are many tools for this.
A Note on Academic Settings
Most of my work as an educator has taken place in a context of movement toward equity in organizations. That is the kind of ally education I have been discussing here. The other setting in which I have observed effective ally education is academic courses. All my warnings about not taking on this kind of education without the appropriate level of skill apply. Attempts to do it without that can still do great damage. Also, in my experience as described in Becoming an Ally and in more depth in Beyond Token Change, effective ally education in academic courses can be seen as a problem by academic institutions, even trigger resistance. Academics teaching in this way sometimes need to call on the defenders of their right of academic freedom to protect themselves, and sometimes even that has not been enough. However, with the supports in place in the institution and the right facilitation skills in the teacher, an academic course is long enough to create real transformation in students’ thinking and even move them toward action.
A Note on Emotional Responses
As explained in Becoming an Ally, at the core of our roles both as oppressor and oppressed is the unhealed hurt of our own experiences of oppression. As a result, any educational activity designed to unlock these experiences, no matter how academic, will also arouse strong feelings. For those who experience the oppression under discussion, the frustration comes from the defensive, angry or guilty reaction of those who don’t. It can be yet another experience of oppression. For those who are in the dominant group in relation to the oppression under discussion, there is frustration because of their difficulty in seeing the oppression.
In “Teaching About Diversity: Navigating the Emotional Undercurrents,” Kate Kirkham of Brigham Young University talks about this source of emotional response on the part of dominant group members when race or gender are discussed in a university classroom:
Individual majority group members do not hear or see in their day-to-day interactions the very examples the minority person offers as proof of the existence of racism or sexism. Certainly majority group members do not pass on stories to each other about what they did to contribute to sexism in their organization. The research on sexual harassment, for example, has recorded that it is a few of the men who do most of the harassing. The problem is that the behaviours of many of the men may not make it obvious who is the one who will later harass. Several men may “enjoy” a sexist joke but only one may continue his “enjoyment” of sexism by harassing women he works with in the organization. However, the men that allow the joke, all “look” like potential harassers. The men may individually (i.e., personally) dismiss or tolerate the joking without seeing how it fuels the one or two men who will continue to bring inappropriate sexual conduct into the workplace. The women who hear or hear about the joking may be weary of all those who allowed it. The men who allow joking, language or inappropriate discussion of women’s appearance to occur at one point in time will not be present later when the behaviour of other men becomes even more severely sexist.9
Kirkham’s example illustrates the frustration of a discussion on gender or race for members of the dominant group, particularly if they understand human relationships to be personal only and fail to see the structural elements. Another of her examples shows this gap in understanding even more clearly:
When asked to respond to the question who really is racist and/or sexist, many majority group individuals, in my research and teaching experience, assume: “If I didn’t intend something as racist or sexist then it is not racist/sexist.” In other words, the general criteria they use in testing for racism/sexism is an overpersonalized one. They believe that personal motive determines the presence of racism or sexism in interactions.
An example of this assumption is present in the pattern of reactions of a majority group member in a graduate organizational behaviour course during a discussion of racism and sexism in the workplace. Every comment made by a woman or minority student in the class was responded to by him (as soon as he had a chance) as if they had been directing their comments to him personally therefore indicting his intentions. He resented this and kept saying so with increasing emotional intensity. With some assistance, he identified the core reason for his reactions. He became aware that he was using what he thought was intended as the only legitimate criteria. If the point someone was making did not fit what he thought was intended in an example, then it was not an example of racism or sexism. Because he was emotionally defending what he thought were personal and unfair accusations, he could not broaden his understanding of racism and sexism. Once he realized that others were using criteria that included intended and unintended outcomes of behavior, he could better understand their examples.
An additional insight came from the above class discussion and indicates the usefulness of surfacing underlying assumptions that trigger emotions in a discussion. Many of the majority group members, who had been quick to label a minority group member as over-sensitive, became more aware of how their own version of over-sensitivity was showing up with just as much emotional conviction behind it.10
I once asked a colleague how he became an ally to women. He said: “I finally understood that I may not be a perpetrator of violence against women, but I’m a perpetuator.” Many others have not yet taken this step from understanding oppression in personal terms to understanding it as a structural reality. The result is that they cannot hear the structural reality discussed without feeling accused of something terrible and reacting with either guilt or anger.
When the setting is one in which deep feelings are expected, the framework and skills will most likely be in place to deal with emotional responses when they emerge. For example, in Margaret Green’s work with women exploring their racism, described in Becoming an Ally, the setting was a therapy group and Green herself is a therapist.11 This is an ideal situation, with concepts, tools and skilled facilitation specifically designed for exploring the emotion and painful memories that underlie oppressive behaviour.
In other settings, the emotions connected with the topic may not be as easily integrated into the discussion. As Kate Kirkham illustrates in her article quoted above, she uses academic classroom discussion to explore the underlying assumptions students have about the legitimacy of the subject, their definitions of racism and sexism, their concept of what constitutes “proof” that racism and sexism exist and their methods for defining what is a problem and how big or small a problem it is. As she says in her article: “Ferreting out the core assumptions … enables the emotional intensity to be more richly explored for all involved in a discussion.”12
Whatever tools you have for processing the emotion in your educational setting, you will be called upon to use them when you enter the arena of educating allies. If you are not confident of your skills in handling emotional response, get some training before trying any experiments. As explained above, you can easily do more harm than good by venturing into ally education without the proper tools.
Knowing What to Say
One of the issues for facilitators of ally education is knowing what to say when participants make comments that come from a guilt or denial perspective, and even more so when the comment comes from a hostile participant with bigotry assumptions. With experience, you develop a collection of effective responses that are appropriate and comfortable for you and specific participants.
For example, when working with people, particularly men, who come from an outdoor, hunting and fishing culture, the target of attack is often Indigenous people because of conflict over hunting and fishing rights. The specific stereotypes in their negative comments are based on the symptoms of poverty and cultural destruction in Indigenous communities. I found an image that worked very well in this situation, borrowed from Malidoma Patrice Somé, a teacher, author and Elder of the Dagara people of Burkina Faso. In The Healing Wisdom of Africa, he says:
Readers may be wondering how this harmonious picture of villagers chanting and singing together as they shape pots or grow yams fits with the more common picture they have been shown of African children starving and of the grim specter of death bearing down upon tribal communities. What I must emphasize here is that the energy required to sustain the harmony we are talking about is so delicate that it can easily be destroyed by the slightest intrusion, and such intrusion has clearly taken place through colonialism. Africa today is not what it used to be. … These images have cemented a certain stereotype of Africans, a stereotype created by the destruction wrought through colonialism. When colonialism, old or new, disrupts the energy working like an umbrella to protect people, the people under the umbrella will be exposed to the elements. Like fish in a lake whose water has suddenly evaporated, the fish will die. The great problem is that the fish have been brought to public attention after the drying of the lake; beholders may not remember the fish as it was or could have been in a full lake.13
The image of fish dying in a drained lake resonates so well with people used to the outdoors that I have had participants refer back to it, interrupting their own negative stereotypes, half expressed, with a comment like, “Oh yeah, the fish in the empty lake.”
Another example comes from the fact that I am a lesbian. When the target of participants’ hatred is 2SLGBTQIA+ people, I can sometimes stop the attack in its tracks and bring about a more positive learning discussion simply by coming out. Occasionally this does not work and the rest of the session can then be a difficult challenge.
In learning how to respond well to negative comments, I appreciate the work of Dr Ishu Ishiyama, who teaches education and counselling psychology at the University of British Columbia. He has developed a workshop model called “Anti-discrimination Response Training.” It’s purpose is to build participants’ skills in what he calls “active witnessing,” or responding constructively to remarks and situations of racism, discrimination and disrespect. During the workshop, participants watch vignettes and practice responses. I have never had the privilege of attending one of Dr Ishiyama’s workshops, but there is an introduction to the program online14 and a friend shared a workshop handout with me. What I find useful is the organization of different possible responses into categories. For example:
Assertive Interjections (“I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but I can’t remain silent.”);
Personal Emotional Reactions (“I don’t feel comfortable with what you just said.”);
Naming the Racism or Discrimination (“Maybe you don’t mean it, but that sounds like a racist remark.”);
Disagreement (“I disagree.”);
Questioning the Validity of the Statement (“Always? Everyone?);
Pointing out the Hurtful or Offensive Nature of the Comment (“If you said that to me, I’d be really upset.”);
Putting the Offender on the Spot (“Are you really saying that women aren’t as smart as men?”);
Empathic Confrontation (“Would you mind sharing with me what led you to say this?”);
Supporting the Victim (“I want you to know you’re not alone.”);
Approaching External People (“We need your advice and guidance. This is what happened today…”)
Approaching Co-witnesses (“Did you hear what I heard?”).
For someone like me who does not think quickly on my feet, having these categories in my head helps me select a response I think might be effective in the circumstances.
A Note on Homogeneous and Mixed Groups
It makes sense that members of an oppressor group should work together to overcome our problem. We should avoid taking any energy away from the group we oppress by making them listen to our ignorance or asking them to teach us. Some have used such settings very effectively, particularly because being away from those we oppress allows for completely open exploration of attitudes without fear of hurting someone. Margaret Green in her method of working with women to unlearn racism demonstrates such work at its best.15
The pitfall of all-oppressor groups, however, is that they can easily slip into being too comfortable. Good education treads an important line between being too comfortable and too threatening. The facilitator of an all-oppressor group must be careful to create an educational design that presents challenges to the participants.
When I first decided to deal with my own racism and contribute to the struggle against racism by developing a workshop, I began by talking with several African-Nova Scotian colleagues and friends about the idea. All but one opposed the idea of a white facilitator leading an all-white workshop on racism. They felt that the misconceptions white people hold about Black people and our tendency to deny racism would go unchallenged. It is hard for us to see our own racism, no matter how long we have been working at the process of unlearning it. As the idea of dominant group members teaching each other about privilege has become more common in the years since, opposition has decreased.
Because of these tendencies to develop blind spots and too much comfort in oppressor-only groups, mixed groups work well for educating allies. However, it is very, very important that the members of the oppressed group present understand the purpose and process of the workshop and agree to take part. If possible, they should be paid or honoured in some way as resource people.
Another way of dealing with the inequalities between oppressor and oppressed in a workshop is to design two parallel processes that interact. Members of the oppressed group work on the questions from their point of view; for example, “What are the stages you have gone through in coming to understand your oppression?” Members of the oppressor group work on the questions from their point of view; for example, “What are the stages you have gone through in your process of becoming an ally?” Later both groups report and reflect together. Robin DiAngelo works this way and describes some of her sessions in Nice Racism.16
A third method is to design a session intended to look at several forms of oppression and how they interact. Small groups or individuals reflect on their oppression, all using the same questions. Later they make presentations and all reflect together on the relationships among oppressions. The “Oppression/Privilege Workshop” in the Toolkit is an example of such a process. Years ago a group in Halifax planned to test a two-day version of such a workshop, but could not find enough resources or participants.
When a workshop is reflecting upon an invisible form of oppression, there is no way at the outset to tell who is or is not a member of the oppressed group. In this case, always assume you are working with a mixed group and make sure your language is inclusive. It also works well to make a rule at the outset that members of the oppressor group must hide their identity. In a heterosexism workshop, straight people learn a great deal from having to hide their wedding rings, use gender neutral pronouns when talking about their partners and refrain from saying, “of course, I’m heterosexual, but.…” It is very important to reflect on this experience later in the workshop.
Homogenous or Mixed Leadership Teams?
The questions that come into play when deciding about homogenous or mixed groups of participants all play a part in decisions about the leadership as well. There is a spectrum of opinion, from those who believe the leadership should be made up only of those who experience the form of oppression in question, through those who prefer mixed teams, to those who believe that the oppressor group should be working on their own problem separately. There are advantages and disadvantages to all of these options.
Leadership by the oppressed group in question can be limited by lack of understanding of the processes potential allies must go through and the risk and pain involved. Also, there is always the question of whether the energy required could perhaps be better used in the struggles of the leaders’ own people, rather than in educating allies. It is easy as well to put participants in a position of “damned if they do, damned if they don’t.” For example, when I participate in heterosexism workshops, I want participants to express their oppressive attitudes so that I can work with them in the learning process, but sometimes I do not want the pain involved in hearing those sick old clichés once again.
On the other hand, leaders from the oppressed group have direct experience of the oppression to communicate, and the experience in a workshop of reversing the usual roles of oppressor and oppressed can raise responses which provide rich opportunities for reflection.
Leadership by and for an oppressor group has the same problems as a homogenous group of participants—the facilitators can reinforce misconceptions and the process can become too comfortable. However, it is very important for members of the oppressor group to take responsibility for the oppression and to push one another to make changes without asking the oppressed group to spend energy on them once again.
Mixed leadership has the benefits of both—the communication of experience and challenge of having members of the oppressed group in leadership; and the comfort and knowledge of becoming an ally that members of the oppressor group can provide. A mixed team can model a respectful working relationship for participants. One potential drawback is that the leadership team can become so involved in their own struggle to maintain a good working relationship across divisive histories that attention to the participants’ needs can suffer.
Reflections on Educating Allies
I have done many different kinds of adult education in the past fifty years. No two sessions are ever alike, but I have found nothing as unpredictable as educating allies. Even if the sequence of exercises is exactly the same, the workshops are totally different experiences. Difficult emotions are involved: hostility, guilt, denial, fear, embarrassment, pain. The experiences being communicated are powerful. Both of these things can also be said for sessions where people are working on their own form of oppression, but for some reason the mix in a group of allies is more complicated and explosive. As I have experimented with ally education, the process has gradually become more predictable to me, although there are still many surprises.
Educating allies is also a very satisfying form of education. Bridges are built, goodwill and risk-taking are obvious, communication takes place across the barriers of centuries and experiments are initiated which have immediate importance in the process of building a new, more cooperative society. According to my analysis, this is exactly what we must do if we can hope for a future on this planet. Any degree of new learning or successful experimentation that unfolds during these sessions gives me great hope.
Endnotes
1. Tema Okun, The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don’t Want to Know (Charlotte NC: Information Age, 2010).
2. The story of this migration and a great deal of information about the educational approach can be found in Rick Arnold, Bev Burke Burke and Deborah Barndt, A Popular Education Handbook: An Educational Experience Taken From Central America and Adapted to the Canadian Context (Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,1983) and A New Weave: Popular Education in Canada and Central America (Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1985).
3. The basic principles of popular education can be found in the work of Paulo Freire, particularly Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury, 1970).
4. See endnote 1, above.
5. jona olsson, Detour Spotting for White Anti-Racists: A Tool for Change (Questa NM:Cultural Bridges, nd). www.wcucc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Detour-spotting-for-white-anti-racists-Article.pdf.
6. I participated in research on this aspect of teaching as part of a group of graduates from the program where I learned my popular education skills. See Gwyn Griffith, Images of Interdependence: Meaning and Movement in Learning and Teaching, EdD Thesis, University of Toronto, 1982.
7. Candy wrote an autobiography before she died: Candy Palmater, Running Down a Dream: A Memoir (Toronto: Harper Collins, 2022).
8. Peggy MacIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Independent School 49, 2 (Winter 1990). Available in many places on the internet, including www.nationalseedproject.org/key-seed-texts/white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack.
9. Kate Kirkham, “Teaching About Diversity: Navigating the Emotional Undercurrents,” Organizational Teaching Review 13,4, 1988/89: 53.
10. Kirkham, “Teaching About Diversity”: 51.
11. Margaret Green, “Women in the Oppressor Role: White Racism,” in Sheila Ernst and Marie Maguire (eds.) Living with the Sphynx: Papers from the Women’s Therapy Centre (London:Women’s Press, 1987).
12. Kirkham, “Teaching About Diversity”: 49.
13. Malidoma Patrice Somé, Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman (London: Penguin, 1995): 69.
14. Ishu Ishiyama, “The Anti-Discrimination Response (A.R.T.) Training Program: An Active Witnessing Method for Prejudice Reduction, Human Resource Enhancement and Organizational and Community Development,” University of British Columbia Faculty of Education. iamantibullybc.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ishiyama2014artprogramintroduction7-pagebookletv2014.pdf
15. Margaret Green, “Women in the Oppressor Role.”
16. Robin DiAngelo, Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm (Boston: Beacon Press, 2021).