Liberation for All: How We Can Talk

Differently about Power and Privilege

by Miki Kashtan

I have been engaging with the topics of power and privilege, in one form
or another, since 1989. Over these years, I have been to many workshops,
I have engaged in academic study, and I have also led many workshops
on these and related topics. Over these many years, the terms have
changed and some of the approaches have changed. For the most part,
almost everywhere and every time, I have found conversations across
power differences repeatedly unsuccessful. This is true of conversations I
have seen others facilitate that I was witness to or when I participated in a
led group; those conversations that I have facilitated over the many years
that I have done so myself; and those conversations that I have been part
of where I myself am party to a challenge related to power differences, on
both sides of the power difference.

What I mean when I say “unsuccessful” is quite specific. I haven’t seen

people who have experienced impacts across power differences to be
heard across those differences, only within their own groups. I haven’t
seen people with access to resources, relational power, or societal
privilege leaving such conversations with growing capacity or insight.
Instead, what I have more often seen is people leaving with righteous
indignation, full of guilt or shame, hopeless, angry, defensive, or
dismissive of the whole effort, and this isn’t an exhaustive list.

I recently wrote an article called “Grappling with Our Own Power” which
touches on some of the reasons for these outcomes. They are all systemic
and very rarely about anyone’s individual failings. While this
understanding is shared by many, the ways that the conversations
happen don’t systematically address those challenges, and thus they
continue.

The key dilemma that I see is that from any position within the power map
of the world, or the power map within any organization, we have obstacles
on the way to holding together the reality of how difficult it is to come
together and make change together when we have power differences.

It’s very difficult for all of us, when we are in a position that confers any
privilege to us, to see that this is happening and is systemic. Instead, it’s
easy to fall into one of the four negative ways of relating to our privilege
that I describe in a blog post called “You’re Not a Bad Person: How Facing
Privilege Can Be Liberating: denial, guilt and shame, defensiveness, and
entitlement. Instead, we can support ourselves and each other to shift
from denial to owning our privilege, from guilt and shame to
understanding the systemic context that gives us the privilege, from
defensiveness to learning through feedback, and from entitlement to
stewarding our resources for the benefit of all.

It’s also very difficult for all of us, when we are in a position with less
power and privilege than others, to see the degree to which we
internalize, usually through trauma, the systemic messages about us,
about people with more power, and about life as a whole. This then means
that we can easily fall into an either/or: we either silence ourselves or we
speak about these topics without capacity to care for those who have
more power or privilege.

Here’s a short summary of some of what I believe can support us all in

transforming this predicament.

Understanding of patriarchal roots

Studying the Perpetrator by Lorraine Bonner

Lorraine Bonner is a Black woman sculptor, writer, and retired physician.

Her work investigates trauma, from the personal to the ecological, in the
belief that it is the role of art to help us see through the delusions of
scarcity and supremacism in order to bring about change. She likes to
think that at some point we will move beyond the trauma saturated social
definitions of Black and White, and see ourselves as the beautiful
multihued species that we are, accepting with gratitude our place within
the interconnected web of all of Earth’s beings. You can find her work at
www.lorrainebonner.com and at www.MultiHuedHumanity.com.

Any analysis of power, privilege, oppression, or anything else that divides

people remains incomplete without tracing it to its patriarchal roots of
scarcity, separation, and powerlessness. Without it, we run the risk of
making racism, for example, be about white people, sexism about men,
and so on and so forth. In my deep exploration over decades, I have found
there is nothing essential about any group of people that makes them
more or less capable of oppressing others. Let us not forget that, for the
most part, it’s women who pass on patriarchal conditioning to their
children.

Without conscious and active attention to the patriarchal roots of

oppression, we are more than likely to use patriarchal methods (blaming,
shaming, separation, fighting against, harshness, urgency, overstretching,
and more) in our attempts to liberate ourselves and each other.

A framework of liberation

My three sources for understanding liberation in this area are Paulo Freire,
Erica Sherover-Marcuse, and Victor Lee Lewis. The gist of the liberation
perspective is that the only liberation possible is liberation for all.
Anything less than that is within patriarchal separation.

This has different meanings for any of us when we are in a position of

privilege and when we are in a position of lack of access to power and
resources. For those of us with access to power and resources, or any
dimension of our existence where that is true for us, the invitation of
liberation is to disentangle ourselves from the comforts that privilege
affords us and to come to a place of being able to actively feel the cost of
our comforts to others and the planet. It is often a long and hard journey
that is impossible, as far as I can tell, without pain and discomfort. Coming
to see that our needs are met at the expense of others is something that
goes directly against the training we receive in relation to whatever
privilege we have that makes it possible for us to not see it in the first
place.

For those of us with little access to resources, or along any dimension of

our existence where that is true for us, the invitation of liberation is to
step into the fullness of our power as agents of liberation for all, possibly
the only ones capable of it. As Paulo Freire says,

“This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to
liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who
oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this
power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only
power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently
strong to free both.” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Penguin,
Harmondsworth, 1972, p. 21)

This means freeing ourselves from any messages that we took in that we
don’t count, we are stupid, our ideas don’t matter, no one will listen, we
can get in trouble, and a host of other debilitating messages, so we can
take our position as active shapers of global liberation. It simultaneously
means that we find pathways to mourn and mourn and mourn and mourn
the impacts of millennia of patriarchy and all forms of oppression that
arose from it, so that we can engage in nonviolent, loving confrontation of
others even as we continue to suffer. This is an immense, lonely, and
overwhelming task for which the conditions are almost never in place.

Erica Sherover-Marcuse’s (Ricky) work has remained unfinished for

decades since her death. She published a book that contains the seeds of
her later work and is rooted in a Marxist analysis called Emancipation and
consciousness: Dogmatic and dialectical perspectives in the early Marx.
This book would only be useful to those interested in deep theory. She
was married to Herbert Marcuse, one of the central figures of the
Frankfurt School. She also has a short piece called “Liberation Theory”
that is highly relevant. My current definition of liberation is taken directly
from this essay: “Liberation is both the undoing of the effects and the
elimination of the causes of social oppression.”

Victor Lee Lewis has an article posted on my blog called “The Future of
Social Justice Education: A Liberation Perspective” that provides a succinct
and dense introduction to some core aspects of the liberation perspective.
Victor was a student of Ricky’s and is directly responsible for her work
being available now.
 Paulo Freire (1921-1997)

Erica (Ricky) Sherover-Marcuse (1938-1988)

Victor Lee Lewis

At present, because of systemic conditions, only rare individuals, both

those with privilege and those without, would have the capacity to step
into the degree of rigor, commitment, and discomfort that the liberation
perspective confronts us with. Along any dimension where we have access
to privileged resources, this means relinquishing comfort, confronting
shame, and learning to embrace vulnerability, humility, and many other
qualities that are systemically rooted out of us so that we can accept
having our needs met at the expense of others. Along any dimension
where we have been systemically disempowered and where we don’t
have access to resources, this means confronting anguish, shame, and
exhaustion in order to find liberation rather than righteous indignation,
sarcasm, dismissal of those in power, and other forms of separation.

Because it’s so unlikely for this to happen as individuals, having

communities of practice that embrace the liberation perspective is where I
find hope. These could be either individuals that come together to form
communities of practice, or existing communities with their own ties and
relationships that take this on as a core practice in support of individual
and collective liberation within their already existing community.

One of my core concerns about the way that current conversations unfold
is that they require so much personal evolution for people with power or
privilege that I don’t see how that capacity will be there without changing
how those conversations happen. It takes enormous personal liberation to
be able to participate in those conversations because of the degree of
shaming and blaming that happens routinely, even in how these
conversations or articles are framed, even when there is an explicit
commitment to not shame and blame. To be able to hear the framing and
the terms used, do the translations, maintain our sense of our own
humanity, and hear the other person and the impact on them is
something I personally aspire to with all my might, and I don’t see it as a
path that many can take.

The dilemma is huge, because when we are in a position of privilege, I

never want us to expect anything from people with less power who
already have so much struggle. Just surviving is an accomplishment with
all the continued oppression that unfolds. Even as some small numbers of
us are actively trying to undo the effects and eliminate the causes of this
continued oppression, the people who are absorbing the impacts continue
to be exposed to them. At the same time, when I look at it systemically, I
see it as suicidal to talk about something as precious and important as
finding our way out of the deep mess that engulfs all of us in the ways
that are now common, because it requires all of us with any degree of
power to be already bodhisattvas before the conversation can begin.

This matters to me because I believe that if we don’t figure out how to

have these conversations well, we are doomed to having cycles of
revolutions that fail to deliver a changed world, and almost none that walk
towards nonviolent transformation. This, again, points to the need to do
this work collectively and not individually, so that the growing small
islands of trust we develop can support discovery we can then share with
others.
Loving confrontation

I’m searching for ways of having these conversations that are at once
confrontational and loving. When we are confrontational without being
loving, we re-create what is already happening in the world. When we aim
to be loving and understand love to mean an absence of being
confrontational, we are unlikely to expose what is happening sufficiently
to create the intrinsic motivation in all of us to move in the direction of
liberation. Most specifically, the belief that if only people with power
receive enough empathy and tenderness they will spontaneously open
themselves to see the systems that govern our lives rather than just the
individuals within them is simply not borne out in actual experience.

Confrontation is tricky, especially when trust is low, as it usually is across

power differences. Simultaneously, the situation is not symmetrical.
Upward confrontation that is loving is both difficult and necessary. It is
likely a key aspect of what Freire was referring to. Downward
confrontation is extremely delicate and profoundly unlikely to succeed at
all in the absence of trust. It means confronting people in terms of their
own internalized oppression. I do not recommend doing it without years of
building active and conscious relationships of trust and intimacy with
people who have less power, so that we have a deep understanding that
is at least in part visceral.
Studying the Perpetrator (top view), by Lorraine Bonner

This is the same sculpture presented above. This view captures for me in
a wrenching way the inescapability of internalizing the view of the
perpetrator even as we aim to liberate ourselves in full. This sculpture has
haunted me for the near 20 years I have known Lorraine.

One of the specific areas of asymmetry is that it’s much easier to see the
system from a position of disempowerment, marginalization, or being
oppressed. When we don’t have access to the comfort that comes from
privilege, it’s easier to see it for what it is.

As a child, for example, it was very clear to me that there was something
going on that wasn’t a specific problem with my own parents. I didn’t have
an accurate picture as a child, and still I knew that it was systemic without
knowing the words. When Black people tell their children to watch out for
white people, it’s a systemic orientation, not an individual orientation to
white people. Given the degree of trauma and suffering, the systemic
awareness easily bleeds into hatred, which isn’t systemic. There is a
reason for this blurriness: fundamentally, people with more power
are systemically untrustworthy regardless of who they are as an
individual. This is why we need to gain individual trust so that those
without power would trust us as individuals even when the systemic
mistrust and the conditions that give rise to it persist.

if we learn to bring tenderness to anyone, both with more and with

less power or privilege than we have; and if we learn to listen deeply,
always, without ever thinking we are right; we can then walk the path
of becoming loving agents of fierce liberation practice.

One way that I frame this intersection of love and confrontation is that
moving towards liberation is unavoidably painful and I want us, when
confronting others, to rigorously distinguish between necessary and
unnecessary pain. If we stick to the former and learn all we can to make
that possible; if we learn to bring tenderness to anyone, both with more
and with less power or privilege than we have; and if we learn to listen
deeply, always, without ever thinking we are right; we can then walk the
path of becoming loving agents of fierce liberation practice.

Language of liberation

One of the significant areas where the question of loving confrontation is

important is what language we use. My own commitment is rigorous: I
want to use language that is least likely to be filtered through any lens
that would bring about unnecessary pain, shame, guilt, defensiveness,
humiliation, or anything else, regardless of who I am speaking with. I also
want to use language, especially when I have more power than someone
else, that invites co-holding of dilemmas, co-shaping of outcomes, and
putting everything on the table.

This means at least the following:

 I want to speak in language that is as descriptive as possible, with

as little interpretation or evaluation as possible. This includes
positive evaluations, which are also separating.
 I want to speak about impacts on me without attributing intent to
anyone else, directly or implicitly. This becomes particularly tricky
when someone else may be replicating systemic patterns they may
be fully unaware of. In those instances, while there may be systemic
and historical intent, the individual in front of me is still acting as an
individual, without the intention to perpetuate patterns of
oppression. This one is key for being able to speak with people who
have more power, and important regardless of power differences.
 I want to speak only about what I fully know, with humility about
systemic patterns. I want to remember that every social pattern has
exceptions and I never know whether or not what’s in front of me is
one of those exceptions, even if they are rare.
  I want to make requests that would be as easy as possible to say
“no” to, especially if the other person has less power.
 When I listen to others, I want to hear the descriptions, the impacts,
and the needs behind what they are saying.
 Even when they do use evaluative language, I want to
discover what specifically they may be referring to that
actually happened.
 Even if they attribute intent to me, I want to focus my
attention on hearing what the impact was before I focus on
whether or not I am being seen for my intentions.
 Even when I hear a demand and imagine consequences for
saying “no”, I want to hear and connect with the needs of the
other person and seek a collaborative outcome.

Co-holding of dilemmas about privilege

This is perhaps the only destination currently available that is within

capacity. If and when a group of people reaches this stage, I believe that a
deep shift can occur, creating trust beyond what is commonly available.
This is when we hold everything about this tough topic together.

Here are some of the things that can happen when this level of trust is
present:

 Along any dimension, those with more power can bring forth in full
their immense challenges and stuckness, including shame,
numbness, and confusion. This supports togetherness, deeper
understanding about how oppression functions, and, at least within
the community in which this happens, smoother continued learning.
 Along any dimension, those with less power begin to thaw their
mistrust and can bring forth impacts on them with some degree of
anticipation that they will be heard, held, received, considered, and
taken in. This means that expression of impacts can actually
influence what happens, in terms of changed agreements, new
liberation edges for anyone (including sometimes for those who are
the ones bringing forth the impacts), new insights, and more.
 Along any dimension, everyone can mourn together the immense
gap between how we want things to be and how they actually are.
This, also, makes it possible to exit the field of struggle and have
islands of simple, childlike joy and play.

Increasing collective capacity

Although few of the thoughts I wrote in the previous section are brand
new to me, this is the very first time I have put them all together in a
coherent way. It helps me have even more tenderness for all of us in how
rarely we reach the level of capacity that would allow these conditions to
be in place so that these conversations can be effective. I want to see
many more of us, myself included, more able to both participate in and
facilitate such conversations.

If you, the reader, are finding yourself longing for such learning, I have a
few pathways to offer you.

Skills for holding difficult conversations

Anyone who actively wants to learn how to lead or hold such

conversations could take the Convergent Facilitation (CF) online training,
either live or on recordings, and to join the CF community, which offers
weekly coaching calls on a gift economy basis. The live courses are
offered every few months. There is also a set of recordings. All are offered
on a gift economy and are thus available to all.

In addition to growing capacity in the specific skills for having difficult

conversations, the CF training increases overall capacity in the area of
integration and of making collaborative decisions, which are helpful
beyond specific conversations in these areas.

Engaging with Victor Lee Lewis

Victor is a long-time friend and colleague who is, in particular, a co-thinker

and co-mentor in the area of liberation, and an active social justice
educator for many decades.

Victor was working with Patti Digh for years offering courses on Hard
Conversations. Their collaboration has recently been completed, and he is
planning to continue to offer such classes on a variety of topics. Following
him is one option. Another one, for anyone who is truly motivated, is to
gather enough people and engage Victor in offering a course to an already
existing group – either through organizing or as part of an existing
community, organization, or movement.

Other learning

There is a huge amount of material available in this area all over the
internet, only small parts of which emerge, fully, from a loving, liberation-
for-all perspective. Despite this drawback, I consider it essential to do the
learning and acquiring actual information about the history of oppression,
especially racism, and the ways that power differences reproduce
themselves. No amount of conversation, including moments of great
mutual understanding across lines of difference, is a substitute for
knowledge.

A preliminary project that aims to eventually curate such resources with

discernment is the website Facing Privilege which I started some years
ago. The site hasn’t been maintained in a long time. It includes, in
addition to the seeds of a curated list of resources by others, a number of
articles and blog posts by me, a list which is also out of date.

Collaborative research about a liberation perspective on the topic

I have been in conversations with a number of people over the years,

mostly from the US and also from the UK, mostly of African ancestry,
though also from Latin America and Asia, about developing and putting
out a perspective on these topics that is fully grounded in a liberation
perspective. (Conversations with Victor Lewis over thirty years are a deep
part of the evolution of this perspective.)

In the summer of 2021, during the inaugural Vision Mobilization course

(still available in recordings), with the support of Emma Quayle and with
feedback from a number of participants in the course, I began developing
a vision mobilization structure for this perspective, collecting much
material from what happened during the course itself, including
transforming much hard-edged feedback, both on the course and on the
document itself, into pieces of what’s currently within it.

In the past few weeks, I have found a colleague and new friend to co-hold
the project that this document points to, and we have begun
conversations to see how to make it into a full project, co-held by a larger
team over time. Anyone reading this who is actively interested and sees
the potential of this perspective to contribute to the field is welcome to
engage with it in one of several ways.

 You may choose simply to review the document (there’s a lot

there!), take in the information, integrate whatever is meaningful,
and apply it anywhere that you are actively engaged with these
topics.
 If you are called to do so, you are welcome to offer feedback and
comments on the document (whenever it’s open for that, which
changes from time to time) that those of us fully holding it will then
engage with, within our limited capacity.
 If life calls you to become an active participant in stewarding this
document, you could learn the VM framework through the course
itself, join the Nonviolent Global Liberation community (NGL), and
come to observe the calls that we are holding as we engage with
 the document and the larger questions. As of the time of writing
this, we have not yet developed criteria for full participation in the
project, as we are still in early exploration. If you come to observe
the calls, then you will likely know when we have this clarity.

Embedding learning systemically through

agreements
No amount of conversations will transform systemic patterns that have
been around for millennia. Without embedding whatever shifts and
integration happen within conversations into how communities actually
function, change remains unlikely. This, in itself, is one more reason why
so many conversations have led to little change: whatever temporary
gains happen get re-absorbed into the usual patterns because there isn’t
enough collective capacity to do anything with them. Power differences
affect every system and every function of any collectivity of humans, from
mega-corporations and states to the tiniest communities and families. The
reason is that power differences dramatically influence whose needs,
perspectives, concerns, ideas, and impacts are known and prioritized.
Without shared understanding, no agreements can be made that would be
entered into willingly. Without agreements, no amount of shared
understanding would change outcomes in perceptible ways. Although
none of us knows how to change the larger systems that shape all our
lives, we can gain enormous learning and create shifts that may ripple
beyond what we believe is possible. I remain deeply and humbly clear that
shifting how we all function systemically in these areas is key to human
liberation. And I hold human liberation, at this stage of late capitalism, as
key to sustaining life on our planet.

PHOTO CREDITS
Paulo Freire – public domain

Erica (Ricky) Sherover-Marcuse, courtesy of the family

Victor Lee Lewis, courtesy of the author

Studying the perpetrator – Lorraine Bonner, photo by Dana Davis