In the present essay I introduce the general notion of“roundabout” as a mechanism of conflict avoidance used by privileged socialjustice activists. I then contrast this pseudo-liberation activism with theneeded true liberation activism of Malcolm X, which I argue to be consistentwith the model of liberation of Freire.

INTRODUCTION

The now familiar concept of “pacifism as pathology” wasintroduced by Ward Churchill as the central characteristic of First-Worldmiddleclass so-called social justice activism. Churchill argued from historythat all liberations were leveraged through violence and proposed that pacifismas cowardice was pathology. [1]

Gandhi stated that it was better to practice armedresistance than to use pacifism as an excuse for cowardice [2]. Both men(Churchill and Ghandi) saw acceptance of and self-justification for one’s(legal or circumstantial) slavery as pathology.

Paulo Freire’s work showed that all hierarchies, no matterhow cushioned in comfort, are violent and oppressive and argued that we couldonly fight our own oppression – that “solidarity” meant standing side by sidewith those fighting our same oppression. Freire advanced that all liberationshad to be rooted in and driven by the struggles of the oppressed themselves nomatter how underprivileged and that inter-social-class “solidarity” wasinsignificant and limited to rare individuals who joined in battle on the frontlines. [3]

Churchill concentrated on the use of pacifism as an excuseto avoid the needed direct confrontation with the oppressive system. He andothers have deconstructed and exposed First World pacifism as avoidance;including mainstream life-style environmentalism, ecological or economicisolationism, love ideologies, and so on, when taken to be activisms inthemselves. These authors did not explore the main creative active strategieswhereby pacifism can be enacted.

I explore the latter strategies of evasive action(roundabout) used by the most activist-minded sector of concerned citizens.

EXAMPLES OF ROUNDABOUT

Education and progressive legislation

Here is an example. A visible minority suffers racism. As away of avoiding effective direct challenges to this racism, members of thisvisible minority ally themselves (in “solidarity”) with privileged socialjustice activist whites in order to train the majority societal group away fromovert racist behaviour using social engineering managed by the establishment -using sponsored “education” and progressive legislation.

As a result, a privileged class of educated and integratedwhites become self-conscious about racist behaviour and self-sensor theirracist expression, the establishment strengthens its illusion of fairness, andthe minority looses its ability and perceived legitimacy for effective direct dailyconfrontations against now-more-covert racism.

A victim in this particular roundabout is the collaboratingvisible minority because it puts its efforts in collaborating and its hopes inthe social engineering rather than practice its liberation. It denies itselfpraxis (in the sense of Freire) and instead integrates itself more fully withthe oppressive dominant hierarchy, thereby becoming more oppressed and more ofan oppressor. Other victims are the lower social class individuals of thevisible minority who loose actual solidarity with the now more integratedhigher social class individuals of the visible minority and who are saddledwith a stronger establishment more able to deflect their legitimate andpersistent interests. 

The above described roundabout is common as a general modelfor any oppressed group in a “free and democratic” First World setting: women,queers, blacks, language or cultural minorities, working class, working poor,homeless, disabled, non-status, elderly, disease-infected, professionalworkers, students, migrant workers, colonized aboriginals, prisoners,consumers, wage earners, tenants, home owners, single fathers, single mothers,and so on.

The above example involves a social class divide of theoppressed group but the class divide is not an essential feature because theroundabout is equally effective when there is no underclass of the oppressedgroup.

The essential feature of this roundabout is that thecollaboration with the establishment, with the hierarchical system of control,is a conscious or unconscious diversion (in terms of personal psychology andpersonal resource allocation) away from effective direct confrontations, awayfrom the praxis of liberation and away from Freire’s needed revolt andauthentic rebellion.

The dominant group partner in this roundabout also avoidsits own immediate oppressions, instead of its members practicing theirliberation. As a result of this dedicated exercise of avoidance, members of thedominant group partner in the roundabout are perpetually depressed, in searchof “hope”, and routinely experience “burn out” despite self-identifying asprivileged. This is because the authentically concerned dominant group partners(as opposed to the cynical higher-hierarchical-level dominant group partnerssuch as law and policy makers) are attempting to removed themselves from theirown pain and have denied themselves any possibility of directly and effectivelyaddressing their own immediate oppression.

Organizing and politics

Another example of roundabout is when a concerned andsensitized individual, often burdened with survival guilt associated withhis/her relative privilege and damaged by an institutionalization (school,work, etc.) against which he/she has no personal experience of effectiveresistance, identifies an injustice needing to be redressed and launches into“organizing” as a substitute for immediate and direct action, as a substitutefor initiating a praxis of liberation focussed on one’s own oppression.

This type of organizing is based of recruiting membership,education regarding the issues, building a growing pool of progressive opinion,and so on, but it guards itself against “radical” actions that would scare offpotential allies and clings instead to the mythology of a critical mass ofopinion as a motor for societal change. [4][5]

In contrast, organizing that supports liberation is drivenby the need for efficient learning, protection and power amplification in agroup of individuals already joined in solidarity via their practices ofliberation. It is an organizing that is an organic part of the praxis, not aholding pattern of risk and confrontation avoidance.

Deferring societal agency

In another roundabout the concerned and sensitizedindividual makes a conscious decision to temporarily sacrifice himself/herselfto fully integrate the system and to seek advancement within the hierarchy withthe rationalization that he/she will be more able to make positive change oncea sufficient degree of power and influence is achieved.

The nature of a hierarchy is of course such that this isimpossible. The rare individuals who break free from the top layers areexpelled from the establishment. The other climbers serve the systemastonishingly well or blame themselves for failure and drop out if they cannot.

The sacrifice of willing integration is a large price to payif the individual does not discover rebellion and creative anti-hierarchicalsabotage as methods to change the system from within. Workers and students playthe system to survive and their suffering is evident in absenteeism (bothphysical and mental), indifference, detachment, cynicism, escapism,self-destruction, and so on. 

This process and these difficulties are described by Schmidtfor the case of professional workers [6]. Adapted to our schooling, this is thestory of our institutionalization into the hierarchy, into an economycontrolled by concentrated power. In this sense, student liberation during thedevelopmental years would be a most fertile ground for societal transformation[7]. This is why schools are guarded from outside influence and fromideological divergence as rigorously or more than prisons. [8]

Anytime the individual substitutes direct self-defence usinghis/her body, language, personal influence in community and personal power atschool or at work for some indirect or circuitous make-work near-zero-riskscheme that involves going along or convincing others to also not act, then theindividual is practicing roundabout rather than liberation activism. 

MALCOLM X ON LIBERATION SPYCHOLOGY

The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Partyfor Self-Defence) was founded in 1966, one year after the murder of Malcolm X.The spectre of such an organized and focussed resistance was the main concretedriving force which led to significant civil rights gains for blacks. The BlackPanther Party was eliminated by the white state’s (FBI) political assassinationunit known as COINTELPRO which was also involved in the Malcolm Xassassination. Today US blacks disproportionately populate the lowest economicclass and US prisons.

In the words of Rev. Albert Cleage [9]:

“MalcolmX was tremendously important, beyond our comprehension today … Malcolm laiddown certain basic principles that we can never forget. He changed the wholecourse. The first basic principle that Malcolm laid down that we can’t forgetis this: The white man is your enemy. That is a basic principle, wecan’t forget it. I don’t care what else they drag in from wherever they drag it– remember one thing, Malcolm taught one truth: The white man is our enemy. Wecan’t get away from it, and if we accept and understand that one basic truth,his life was not lived in vain. Because upon that one basic truth we can builda total philosophy, a total course of action for struggle. Because that was thebasic confusion which distorted the lives of black people, with corrupted themovements of black people.”

“Hedidn’t just say it … he went out and he lived it. He asked for moments ofconfrontation. He said we have got to break our identification, we can’t gothrough life identifying with the white man or his government. … We must breakour identification with the enemy, we must confront him, and we must realizethat conflict and violence are necessary parts of a struggle against an enemy –that is what he taught. Conflict, struggle, and violence are not to be avoided.Don’t be afraid of them…”

This foundational principle that in the hierarchicaloppression of blacks your enemy is your enemy can be generalized to anyparticular hierarchical oppression and to all oppressions by hierarchies.

The oppressor by nature is your enemy. You cannotcollaborate with your enemy devoted to your oppression and come out ahead. Atbest, you will be used and transformed into your enemy.

Malcolm X’s psychology of liberation is one where yourecognize that the oppressor is an enemy that you cannot integrate, where youknow that this enemy can only be deterred by your strength and your willingnessto defend yourself.

In this psychology, like in Freire’s, you do not fight theenemy in order to replace him in a hierarchy. You fight for liberation, not foran opportunity to create your own system of oppression. But you fight. Youunderstand that this is an enemy and that all hierarchies can only violentlyoppress.

If it’s not clear that you are oppressed or that youroppressor is your enemy, then not only are you trapped and confused but youalso protect and serve the oppressor. And you act against all those who areoppressed by the oppressor. You collaborate.

One does not like to live during a time of war and one doesnot like to have enemies. But this is a time of war and you are harmed by thesystem, denied your full humanity, as surely as the million directly killed inIraq and as surely as those held in the open air prison known as Gaza andillegally maintained by Israel.

By not fighting your own oppression directly as anindividual person you protect the same system that practices these war crimes.By not understanding in your pores that this system and those who sustain,protect and project it are your enemy until they stop, by not understandingthis, you are co-opted into collaborating and into denying yourself your ownliberation.

You can’t even start a praxis of liberation until you startto recognize the enemy. And you can’t sustain the struggle without knowing whothe enemy is and that he is the enemy.

There is an us and them. You are oppressed and you have anoppressor. Indeed, you are oppressed by an entire hierarchical system ofoppression. You target where you can best defend yourself, where you willinflict the most punishment. Call it punitive justice.

As soon as you loose sight that you are dealing with anenemy, then you are part of the oppressor. All the internal and external forceswill make every attempt to confuse you on this point and to buy or to forceyour cooperation. In particular, those who invest in roundabout will vehementlypressure and coerce you to follow them because you represent a threat to theirpsychological investment [4][5].

CONCLUSION

If I keep my individual personal agency, my direct abilityto have influence, my direct bodily ability to defend myself against myoppressor understood to be my enemy, at the point of my strongest connection tomy oppressor, then I will not partake in roundabout. I will have all myavailable resources for my praxis of liberation which will naturally includeorganizing and community.

Endnotes:

[1] “Pacifism as Pathology” by Ward Churchill, 1986.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism_as_Pathology:_Notes_on_an_American_Pseudopraxis

[2] "Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict: What wecan learn from Gandhi" by Norman G. Finkelstein, 2009.

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/resolving-the-israel-palestine-conflict-what-we-can-learn-from-gandhi/

[3] “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Paulo Freire, 1970.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed

[4] “On the racism and pathology of left progressiveFirst-World activism” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.

http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-racism-and-pathology-of-left.html

[5] “The Activist Wars” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2009.

http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2009/08/activist-wars.html

[6] “Disciplined Minds” by Jeff Schmidt, 2000.

http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/

[7] “Need for and Practice of Student Liberation” by DenisG. Rancourt, 2010.

http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/06/need-for-and-practice-of-student.html

[8] “The Student as Nigger” by Jerry Farber, 1969.

http://ry4an.org/readings/short/student/

[9] "Myths about Malcolm X" by Rev. Albert Cleage,speech delivered in Detroit, February 24, 1967.

See many RELATED POSTS on the Activist Teacher blog

http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/

Denis G. Rancourt was a tenured and full professor ofphysics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas ofscience which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationallyrecognized laboratory. He published over 100 articles in leading scientificjournals. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic ofthe university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights.He was fired for his dissidence in 2009 by a president who is a staunchsupporter of Israeli policy. [See rancourt.academicfreedom.ca]

http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/

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