Macedo, Donaldo and Bartolomé, Lilia I. (1999). Dancing with
Bigotry: Beyond the Politics of Tolerance.
N.Y., N.Y.: St. Martin's Press
Pp. 192
$35 ISBN:0-312-21608-4
Reviewed by Donald S. Blumenfeld-Jones
Arizona State University
October 8, 2000
The Dance of Alienation and the Politics of Invitation
or
What Does Love Have to Do With It?
In the introduction to Donaldo Macedo's and Lilia I.
Bartolomé's new book, Dancing with Bigotry: Beyond the Politics
of Tolerance, Christine Sleeter writes that Macedo and Bartolomé
"challenge us to ask: How can we prepare young people, as well as
teachers, to analyze events around us using a political
consciousness? They ask how we can teach people to see through
the ideological fog of mainstream interpretations of pluralism"
(p. vii). Macedo and Bartolomé, in their opening chapter, write
that "as the end of the century draws closer, one of the most
pressing challenges facing educators in the United States is the
specter of an ‘ethnic and cultural war,' which constitutes, in
our view, a code phrase that engenders our society's
licentiousness toward racism" (p. 2). As a response to these
conditions and possibilities, Macedo and Bartolomé offer an
analysis of the situation rooted in how language is used by
educational policy makers, the media, and teachers to think about
education, language which, in numerous ways, enacts oppressive
situations which damage children and their futures. Their focus
is on ideology critique in which they lay out the ways in which
our culture is based on bigotry, and they move from critique to
solution approaches to this major social issue. In this essay
review, I want to respond to the ways in which Macedo and
Bartolomé go about the work they lay out before us. Before doing
this, however, I should like to situate my project in this
review.
My main interest resides in opening up a dialogue between
myself and their work, a dialogue situated in the critical theory
tradition. I have a twofold purpose is doing so. First, I want
to model a form of reading which I think may be helpful in
contributing to the ongoing efforts in which they and I are
participating, that of achieving greater social justice for all.
(This is as opposed to the usual review approach which tells you
whether or not their work is good.) Achieving social justice is
extremely important and too often I have seen the community of
critical thinkers being fractured by internecine arguments which
only expend our energies in the wrong places and for the wrong
reasons (in my opinion). We must learn to help each other
through constructive dialogue. In my case, while I do not
thoroughly agree with everything that is going on in this text,
this does not mean that I would disavow the text or the work of
the authors. I do not believe that we must either excoriate or
celebrate the work, as if it were a finished object presented for
our approbation or disavowal. Rather I hope that they and I can
meet on the ground of common concern and help the project move
forward. Second, and coordinated with the above, I want to
respond to what I think is a problem in their approach. This
problem is situated in exactly their site of activity, the use of
language in creating oppressive situations. Because of these
interests, I will not rehearse the content of this text in a
complete way but will, hopefully, leave the review reader with
the desire to know more about Macedo's and Bartolomé's project.
I will, here, merely briefly recount their concerns and then
focus my attention on suggesting strategic initiatives.
Macedo and Bartolomé focus their attention on multicultural
and bilingual education through a series of chapters entitled
"Dancing with Bigotry: The Poisoning of Racial and Ethnic
Identities," "Tongue-tied Multiculturalism," "Racism as a
Cultural Factor (A Dialogue with Paulo Freire," "Insurgent
Multiculturalism (A Dialogue with Henry Giroux)," and "Beyond the
Methods Fetish: Toward a Humanizing Pedagogy." Their concerns
revolve primarily around how language and identity are mutually
interdependent and they argue that by preventing children from
learning in their first language, but being forced to adopt
English entirely, much of the carrier of valued heritage and life
is lost to these children. This is a powerful argument, worthy
of further airing and exploration. While I was aware of this
issue, Macedo and Bartolomé truly made it clear in a way I had
not previously encountered and their discussion of this issue
deserves a wide readership for the book. They are also concerned
with issues of pedagogy which leave so many children out of
educational experience and which prevent teacher's from becoming
"political" in the sense of aware of the dimensions of oppression
which inform and shape school life. I would say these are two of
the major themes of the book.
While I am in accord with the substance of their arguments I
am concerned, as I have already written, with the way in which
they go about their work. I would characterize my concern as
"strategic" with the proviso that "strategy" is understood to be
not merely about "rhetoric" or be concerned with how to
"manipulate" a situation but, itself, carries substance. As I
see it, form and content are deeply interrelated. I parallel my
concern with the long-standing disagreement in the field of
critical work around what Henry Giroux and others have labeled
"the politics of clarity" about which Giroux and others have
written so extensively. I am, through my response to Macedo and
Bartolomé, opening up what I call "the politics of invitation."
My concern is with thinking through how we invite others into the
projects of social justice in such a way that they see them as
their projects also. Lest I be misunderstood, I certainly
recommend this text to the reader for I think they are doing
important work which deserves, nay, needs our attention. I
simply wish to open up a dialogue about how we go about our work.
To begin with, in the title to their book, Macedo and
Bartolomé present us with an image of bigotry as a dance we
perform. This metaphor appears in the chapter involving Paulo
Freire in which Macedo writes,
In the dialogue that follows we attempt to understand
how ideological manipulation of history hides the racist
fabric of our society behind the façade of democracy that,
in turn, enable us to maintain some form of dignity in our
eternal dance with bigotry. (p. 84)
This metaphor is of great interest as it casts ideology
differently from its usual image. Often ideology is thought of
as a mental state possessed by an individual and our desire is to
eradicate the state of negative ideology from that individual.
By presenting the metaphor of dance, Macedo and Bartolomé afford
us a view of bigotry and ideology as something we do together.
That is, by likening bigotry to dance they suggest that bigotry
(as ideology) is a coordinated effort among members of our
society just as dancing together requires cooperation from both
partners in dance. If the dance is to change both partners need
to participate in that change.
Out of this metaphor the question arises: Who are the
partners in this dance? Macedo and Bartolomé clearly suggest
that the partners are those who are bigoted and those who are the
objects of that bigotry. This echoes Paulo Freire's dichotomy,
in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), of the oppressed and the
oppressor. In that work, Friere teaches, as I read him, that the
oppressed and the oppressor are inextricably linked. He further
teaches that the oppressed cannot be oppressed except that, in
deep ways, they are allowing the oppression to proceed. The
oppressor, of course, gladly oppresses because he or she
perceives personal gain out of the situation. He or she does not
understand, however, that through the oppression of others he or
she, too, is oppressed. Oppression is, inevitably, a reciprocal
relationship. This is not to say that the oppressed are to be
blamed for the situation but, rather, emergence from the
situation requires an understanding of how he or she has
internalized the rationality whereby his or her oppression seems
reasonable. Further, the oppressed must come to an awareness of
the mechanisms and results of oppression, if oppression is not to
be revisited in new social situations. To put it more
succinctly, as W.B. Yeats put it in a brief poem:
The Great Day
Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on
foot.
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places, but the lash
goes on.
(Yeats, 1956. p. 309)
If the oppressed do not understand oppression they are more
likely, if they gain the power seat, to act in similarly
oppressive ways themselves. "Revolution," in this case, doesn't
mean change but, rather, the constant revolving of a wheel in
which all positions become the same position.
Freire's idea about the relationship between the oppressed
and the oppressor finds voice in the critical theory use of
dialectical thinking. Dialectical thinking, in my estimation,
involves the holding of two diametrically opposed ideas which
are, simultaneously, inextricably linked such that one cannot be
thought without the other. In one sense the two terms are
absolutely necessary to each other. To eradicate or move beyond
the opposition we must understand how one term cannot be
privileged over the other. If such privileging prevails we get
Yeats's notion that the dichotomy remains in force rather than
being transcended. In these senses the above discussion of the
oppressed/oppressor relationship represents a dialectical
approach to thinking.
It is in this strategic area that I have some difficulties
with how Macedo and Bartolomé have gone about their work. As I
have indicated, they dichotomize the world, dividing it between
victims and victimizers but in what I feel is an undialectical
manner which I fear maintains and even strengthens the opposition
as a life-structuring mechanism, thus leaving the situation in
place rather than changing it. For instance, in writing about
the conservative attack upon bilingual education they assert as
follows:
Many educators will object to the term "colonialism" to
characterize the present attack . . . some liberals will go
to great length to oppose our characterization . . .
rationalizing that most educators who do not support
bilingual education are just ignorant . . . This is
tantamount to saying that racists do not really hate people
of color; they are just ignorant . . . [But] one has to
recognize that ignorance is never innocent and is always
shaped by a particular ideological predisposition . . . the
attack on bilingual education or a racist act due to
ignorance does not make the victims of these acts feel any
better about their victimization. (p. 40)
This dichotomizing of the world into an evil set of victimizers
(including educators) and innocent objects of victimization (as
opposed to victims who are not innocent but also participate in
the oppressive situation) misconstrues the interconnected
character of these two groups. In fact, the whole notion of
"victim" seems problematic to me, carrying with it the cultural
weight of passivity and weakness. While Macedo and Bartolomé
strongly criticize educators and policy makers for dehumanizing
children of color, in an ironic twist I perceive them to
dehumanize teachers through demonizing them as enemies. Such
dichotomizing will, I believe, alienate the very people they seek
to convince. They do so through language usage as well as ideas.
Their language is replete with war metaphors, calling hegemonic
intellectuals such as Charles Murray and his colleagues "cultural
legionnaires" (p. 88) and Dinesh d'Souza as a "cultural
commissar" (p. 80). They consistently talk about "attacking"
conventional multiculturalism. In other words, they are
utilizing the same rhetorical tactics of which they are so
critical.
We are admittedly caught in a dilemma here. In Civilities
and Civil Rights (1980), William Chafe writes that the civil
rights movement in the U.S., following the Brown v. Topeka KS
Supreme Court decision, was stymied in the most progressive city
in the South, Greensboro N.C. The black leadership of that
community was consistently told by the white leadership that they
would have to be patient and allow the white leadership to
implement the court mandate in a methodical and measured way if
progress was to be made. This came to be understood, by the
young Black college students at N.C. A&T; University, as a way of
doing nothing. Eventually they became disgusted with the
situation and enacted the Woolworth's sit-in and took to the
streets in protest marches, led by Jesse Jackson, a student
leader at N.C. A &T; at the time. Chafe tells us that this was
the galvanizing moment for the development of the movement,
sparking protests across the South. However, he also tells us
that while these protesters demanded immediate change (an uncivil
act in Southern culture) they did so without rancor, loudly and
calmly simultaneously. In Jesse Jackson's subsequent history, as
far as I know, he has not resorted to war-like language although
he has been clearly firm and principled. Chafe further recounts
a much later incident in Greensboro in which, in 1979, members of
the Communist Worker's Party, calling for a "Death to the Klan"
rally in Greensboro, were gunned down in the streets by Klansmen
although the U.S. government had informants in the Klan who were
aware of the intentions of the Klan to bring weapons to the
protest. The Communist Worker's Party also came armed, although
they called for a peaceful march. Clearly the Klan and the U.S.
government were terribly wrong in this situation and the CWP had
a right and obligation to march. But it seems also clear that
incendiary language, which matches the language of the
opposition, only stimulates the kinds of divisions that we are
seeking to transcend. As I have said, the situation is complex
and there are no easy answers.
With this in mind, I am trying to make clear reasons why we
should be concerned with whether or not this discourse is
alienating educators by creating war-like conditions. Even
though educators have not been concerned with the alienation
children feel when separated from their first language and even
though we are in a battle for the lives of children and even
though Freire himself, in his chapter in this book, uses the
metaphor "battle" to characterize what is happening, we must be
cautious. I recall that Freire has been often concerned with
alienation as he writes about changing oppression through love.
Indeed, in this text he puts it this way:
When I am confronted with the problem of racial
discrimination . . . my first reaction is one of anger mixed
with pity. By pity I am not referring to the victims of
discrimination. I pity those who discriminate. I pity
their lack of human sensibility. I pity their exaggerated
arrogance . . . and their lack of humility. . . . I prefer
the humanism and humility that exist in my position. . . .
[for] there is no other basis on which to judge one another,
than upon the basis of membership in the human race. (pp.
85-86)
Freire moves, in this series of statements, from anger to
humility and humanity. It is this move which seems to me to be
so central and, also, difficult to achieve. It does not, I
think, necessarily fit with today's temperament. To argue
against building walls of anger is not, however, so that
educators should be exonerated from complicity but, rather, that
they must be helped to understand their own oppression even as
they benefit from real social, economic, and cultural oppression
of others. And it is not simply a matter of empathy. Educators
must be brought up against their own racist inclinations learned
at the knee of their culture. However, it is one thing to help
them see this and another to accuse them of actively and
consciously supporting it.
In this wise I think it is necessary to acknowledge how each
of us (including Macedo and Bartolomé) is mired in the hegemonic
complex and, to some degree, complicitous with its ends. What do
I mean by this? Remembering that hegemony is the way in which
the dominant social fraction maintains power by accessing the
consciousness of the people and remembering that hegemony, while
an active force is also an invisible force, I find it difficult
to understand teachers as conscious purveyors of the bigotry
dance. Indeed I would argue that in an important way teachers
are as much subject to hegemonic consciousness as anyone else and
there has been little in their education to counter this. We can
hardly position them as co-conspirators without recognizing that
we are all hegemonized beings and each of us, in our own way, may
be doing the bidding of the hegemonic social fraction. By
dichotomizing the world in the way that they do, Macedo and
Bartolomé may be reinforcing the hegemonized and dangerous
position which teachers hold and disable those teachers from
thinking in new ways. If we would have, as Macedo and Bartolomé
would have, particular groups of children treated with greater
respect and if we would have, as they would have, positive
political action taken, then we must treat with care and concern
those who are, I would argue, unconsciously doing the work of the
dominant social fraction. We must invite them in, not isolate
them.
Macedo and Bartolomé write that bilingual education must
"constitute and affirm the historical and existential moments of
lived culture" (p. 54). I would argue that no less needs to be
done with educators. It is always surprising, when discussing
issues of culture with young teacher preparation students, that
they do not recognize, if they are Anglo, that they, too, have a
culture. Rather everyone else has a culture. This is due to
their education in the belief that "culture" equates with
"exotic" or different from Anglo culture which becomes the
unmarked norm. Do we, in our teaching, fight with our students
as to their mistaken ideas or do we help them uncover why they
would be so positioned and what are the outcomes of such
positioning? I am arguing for the latter. While Macedo and
Bartolomé are undoubtedly correct when they write that even
bilingual educators must be implicated in ignoring class issues
and reproducing social inequity and in practicing the privileging
of middle-class and elitist standards, thereby ostracizing whole
discourse communities, they should recognize the ways in which
those educators lives are also diminished thereby.
It may be that Macedo and Bartolomé and I have different
views of what it means to be critical. By "critical" I mean the
uncovering of that which is hidden and a notion that everyone
lives hidden lives and ideologies. This means that critique and
the critical does not stop with those who seem to be on the other
side. Critique and the critical must be turned upon ourselves so
that we do not overstep our boundaries and engage in acts of
hubris, which can only mean, I believe, the failure of our
project. From a dialectical perspective, the maintenance of the
polarities as interconnected and the use of those polarities in a
wide-spread manner, even turning them upon ourselves, is an
analytic necessity for coming to more warranted critical
conclusions. Therefore, my concern with dialectical analysis is
not a mere intellectual concern, but is central to a critical
cast of mind. And to be more clear, I am not arguing that Macedo
and Bartolomé do not recognize this necessity but in the present
work I do not find that it is sufficiently featured.
As I wrote at the beginning, much of Macedo's and
Bartolomé's work focuses upon ideology critique: critique of
underlying assumptions and beliefs which then animate social
action. Social action takes the form of policy formation, idea
development and dissemination, and pedagogical practice. Another
way to describe their work is as critical hermeneutics as they
unpack the meaning of legal and policy language and the language
of teaching. One important aspect of critical hermeneutics is
historical reference. By "historical reference" I mean that we
must understand how legal language, policy language and the
language of practice have come to be, whose communities
contributed to their development, how they are connected to other
aspects of their times and, perhaps most importantly, how they
fulfill the logic of the times, expressing in functional terms
how to get through the day. Is there anyone that does not "want
to get through the day?" Only be understanding, historically,
how this language and these practices are supportive of the
users' lives and make sense to them can we begin to offer
alternatives that are more life-affirming. While Macedo and
Bartolomé certainly engage in historical discussion, I do not
find it to be in a sufficiently full way but rather a recounting
of the events without contextualizing.
Without such historical reference, ideology critique becomes
ideological (in the negative sense) and does not help us see how
our own conditions may be tempered or altered. That is, we must
be helped to understand how a particular ideology does not come
into being de novo but only within a context. In so
understanding, we may be able to note more fruitfully our own
contexts which are continuing to support the existence of that
ideological structure. I would have liked to see, in this book,
more attention paid to many more of the social forces at work
which coalesce to bring about a particular cultural formation
(such as a policy initiative). Such understanding by no means
validates the event but it does allow us to make it more
understandable and provide ways of responding more authentically
to the situation at hand. As an example, in Arizona bilingual
education is presently under strong political attack and there is
increasingly wide-spread support for its demise. While this turn
of events is reprehensible we should try to understand the
economic and cultural forces at work to focus our attention away
from a thorough-going, intelligent response rather than in the
presently rabid way in which both sides of the issue are berating
each other and, once again, the conservative right seems more
able of connecting with the voting constituency than those groups
who seek to maintain bilingual education. We must see the ways
in which the public has been made economically and socially
fearful of non-English speaking people and combat that fear with
honest talk about it without either demonizing the opposition or
threatening the public. Since, in this case, voting is based in
part on strong visceral reactions, we must acknowledge the
salience and meaningfulness of those reactions (you cannot simply
wish them away through reasoning) and not merely dismiss the
opposition as misguided fools. Alienation of the potentially
understanding voting public only serves to crystallize
opposition.
One way in which we might work would be through the
hermeneutic practice of play in which we ask the linguistic
question, "What happens when we change language? How is meaning
altered and how are new visions of possibility offered through
such play?" In so doing we get a better understanding of how
language functions, an understanding which I believe is that the
heart of Macedo's and Bartolomé's work. What we want is such an
understanding in order for each reader of the work to more
effectively recast their own thinking.
Let me give an example of playing with language by focusing
on the term "illegal alien" which is both implicated in the fear
which I think animates much of the public policy initiatives of
which Macedo and Bartolomé are so rightly critical and is used
throughout their text. We can start by substituting other
language for it, moving from "Illegal alien" to "uninvited
guest." Further we might specify, rather than "guest," a
nationality such that the term becomes "uninvited Canadian,"
"uninvited Columbian," "uninvited Cuban," "uninvited Mexican,"
"uninvited German" and so forth. What happens when we attach a
specific to the term? We can suddenly see the negative prejudice
which exists against certain peoples versus other peoples. In
this country we would not picture an illegal Canadian when we
hear "illegal alien" and we would be hard pressed to interpret
that person as being an "illegal alien." We reveal that not all
our guests, uninvited or otherwise, are equally welcome or
desirable. Our illegal aliens come from more than merely outside
our political borders but from black, empty spaces, dangerous,
cold and death dealing. Such are connotations of the term
"alien." And just as the spaces from which such people come
carry those qualities, so too the people from those places are
made other, strange, different, dangerous and fraught with
inherent criminality. It seems as if being an "illegal" is
equivalent, ideologically, with being "alien."
When we think of "alien" we may also think of "alienated."
We may ask: "From what are such people alienated? From civilized
humanity? From being human (think of the film "Alien")? Does a
confrontation with alien-ness cause us to feel differently from
ourselves, so that the alien-ness presents us with a personal
possibility from which we shy? If we stopped thinking of our
so-called "illegal aliens" as the empty-handed, criminal evil ones
that the language and daily media coverage may portray but,
rather, as people seeking employment in what they perceive to be
a more economically helpful environment, then we might understand
how valuable they are. For many of us, our own ancestors were
equally "illegal aliens." Just as with our ancestors these
present day immigrants render service to our communities doing
work needed by all (indeed some border state governors are
talking of re-establishing the category of "guest worker" to
allow such people to work here legally). But it is not just that
they participate in the community by providing that which is
needed; they partake of the life of the communities in which they
live. They contribute, as any guest would, in order to repay the
host for kindness. What are their contributions? They bring
their ideas, hopes, and ways of doing for both themselves and
their children. And, if we were to conceive of them as guests
and us as hosts, then we, as proper hosts, would want to bring
kindness to bear in order to comfort the guest. A host takes
responsibility for her/his guests. In the case of these guests,
those kindnesses take the form of health care and education which
enable people to focus on the service they are rendering to the
community because they do not have to worry about such
necessities. Perhaps some people do not enjoy drop-in guests.
Even in this case would they turn those guests from the door? I
think not.
Without the kind of re-reading of language enacted above and
with the consistent use of such offensive language as "illegal
alien" I believe that the difficulties are actually
substantiated. That is, if we do not teach others how to read in
inviting ways that help them connect with the difficulties we may
actually be substantiating the prejudices against which we fight.
One point of this analysis is to suggest that the power of
language is such that we can re-conceive our situations and, in
some limited way, help change to occur. I write "limited"
because an underlying assumption of ideology critique is that it
leads to such change, that "things" of the mind lead "things" of
the body. While I am extremely sympathetic to this perspective
(indeed have practiced it in my own writings) I have become
increasingly concerned with a lack of an opposite perspective:
material change affects ideological change and that the usual
perspective draws upon, in an inverted way, Marx's notion of base
structure and superstructure in which the superstructure, which
includes ideology, is epiphenomenal to the base structure. In
reverse fashion ideology critique assumes that the superstructure
contributes to a determination of the base structure, of
practical activity. I find both perspectives lacking in
dialectical analysis.
I wrote, at the beginning, that the trajectory of the text
was toward solutions to the problems. I find these solutions to
be strongly embedded in the two interview chapters with Freire
and Giroux and Macedo's and Bartolomé's final chapter on
pedagogy. The solutions to which I am referring aren't so much
laid out in "things to do" but, rather, in casts of mind which
can identify that which will answer the dilemmas at hand.
In Freire's work I have always been struck by the sheer and
huge humanness of it and that can be strongly found here. Freire
sees, through his phenomenological and existential lens, the ways
in which people live mystified and confused lives and he, as he
says even in this book, pities the racist. He demands humility
on the part of the oppressor (and the oppressor's workers, such
as teachers) but he also demands love, for if there is no love
there will be nothing to love and the revolution will be based on
hate, exactly the emotion which motivates the oppressor. The
above analysis of "illegal alien" is layered with hate and fear
on the part of those who readily use such terms. I am not
convinced, however, that they understand how the term encloses
and promotes hatred. If we cannot reveal to them, without
sending them away from us, this fact then we will not succeed in
achieving change.
In the interview chapter between Giroux and Bartolomé, I
believe that Giroux offers a way out of the demonizing tendency
of the book. Bartolomé writes that caring of teachers is
problematic because in seemingly creating a comfort
zone under the pretext of caring, they sloganize that
we need to love our students, even though they don't
critique the very structures that generate devaluations
of subordinated students. (p. 103)
Giroux responds as follows:
I am not supporting a notion of caring that
promotes this type of abuse and escapism. On the
contrary, I am simply arguing that all forms of caring
cannot be reduced to this ideological position. Caring
for students matters, and I think it is essential that
any decent pedagogy make it a condition for becoming a
teacher. . . . we need to appropriate those critical
elements in a pedagogy of caring that do not lend
themselves to the kind of narcissism you are talking
about. . . . caring . . . linked to the issue of social
justice . . . (p. 103)
In this, Giroux is dialectically revealing how caring possesses
both the characteristics of being enabling and disabling. We can
not easily dismiss caring as always wrong but must understand it
in its complexity. In so doing we can, I would argue, perhaps be
able to show teachers the multi-dimensional (rather than
conventional) way of thinking about caring so that they might
understand how a conventional mode of caring may be anything but
caring. This approach begins with the notion that these are
well-meaning people who do care for the children in their
classrooms but they have not been allowed, due to education and
culture, to find out what that means. I realize such thinking
will not, necessarily, invite teachers into the social justice
projects, but I would argue that not thinking in this way is more
certain to alienate more teachers from the project.
Giroux goes on to state: "The struggle over literacy is
fundamentally about the ability of people to narrate their own
histories and experiences within a politics of cultural
difference and recognition . . . the struggle over language, in
part, is about the battle over identities (p.109)." Sharon
Welch, in Communities of Resistance and Solidarity (1985), writes
about "dangerous memory." She means, by this, that as we
remember our own lives we also come to remember the lives of
others and we find that the lives of oppressed others are always
implicated in our own. How can we do this if we do not offer
opportunities for teachers, in this case, to narrate their own
lives in a critical way that cares for them as it reveals them?
In my experience as a qualitative inquirer I have found that
teachers, like many people, are desirous, after so many years of
isolation in their stand-alone classrooms, of telling their own
stories. This is the first step to rewriting those stories.
In the final chapter Macedo and Bartolomé , while discussing
various pedagogical forms and the necessary political
consciousness which should accompany them, state what I think of
as an extension of my argument. They write, "Schools of
education should . . . create spaces where the development of an
ethical posture informs . . . one's position vis-à-vis the human
suffering that certain populations of students face in their
community and in their school" (p. 151). They go on to argue for
keeping justice, equality, democracy and fairness in the
forefront of our thinking. I would suggest that our task is to
enact an ethics in which those who seem to be benefiting come to
understand how, when even one member of their community suffers
unjustly in an anti-democratic, unfair condition, then we all
suffer. We must admit to our own weakness in this regard and not
think about raising up the oppressed. We must, in a certain way,
stop seeing them as the oppressed (as if they are different from
us) but as people, like us, who are worthy and filled with
dignity but who can teach us something about human dignity
precisely because they have suffered. This, in turn, requires a
cast of mind that is not filled with anger but with love, even
against all odds. As an example I suggest looking to the South
African reconciliation movement which ensued upon the coming to
political power of the ANC. Bishop Tutu understood that there
could be no peace in the country unless all members of the
community talked publicly about how they participated in
apartheid. The very fact that the transfer of power was
essentially peaceful and emanated from a sense of love for all
South Africans, even those who did not want love (the
Afrikanners) testifies to the ways in which change can occur more
surely in such an atmosphere.
Lastly, I would not want the reader to think that I am
denying the suffering which takes place, presently, in many
cities across our nation and the world. This suffering cannot be
borne in silence nor can it be supported. It is not a matter of
politely waiting for things to change. What is needed, however,
is a lessening of the fractures between groups. This can only
come about, I think, through a politics of invitation and this,
in turn requires a language that is inviting rather than divisive
and alienating. We must help each person to a creative reading
which reveals the hidden potentials of language and humanness and
brings us from what Paul Ricoeur (1970) has called "a
hermeneutics of suspicion" to "a hermeneutics of the restoration
of meaning." These, too, are dialectically related and empty
when only one or the other is privileged.
In sum, my concern is with developing a "politics of
invitation" enacted through love and reconciliation. What does
love have to do with it? Everything, I think, if we are to
invite those alienated others (who may not even be aware of their
own alienation) into activity which will better the lives of
children and their own lives as well. This is not a sentimental
love, nor "tough love," but, rather, a love based on seeing the
other as fully human and hoping that s/he can see her/his other
as fully human as well (not as somebody needing to be made into a
full human but not human yet). It is a critical love but it is
love nonetheless.
References
Chafe, W. (1980). Civilities and civil rights: Greensboro, North
Carolina, and the black struggle for freedom. Oxford Eng.:
Oxford University Press.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra
Bergman Ramos. New York: Herder & Herder.
Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud & philosophy: an essay in
interpretation. Trans. Denis Savage. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Welch, S. (1985). Communities of resistance and solidarity: a
feminist theology of liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Yeats, W. (1956). The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. NYC: The
Macmillan Company.
About the Book Authors
Donaldo Macedo is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and
Education and Lilia I. Bartolomé is Associate Professor at the
Graduate College of Education, both at the University of
Massachusetts, Boston.
About the Reviewer
Donald S. Blumenfeld-Jones is an Associate Professor of Curriculum
Studies at Arizona State University. His main research interests are
critical social theory and education, the application of
hermeneutics to curriculum research, and the place of authority
in education as a curricular issue. He has a book chapter in a
forthcoming book in which he enacts a critical hermeneutic evaluation
of dance curricula. He has also been participating, as program
evaluator, in a curriculum development project at a school on the
Navajo Reservation. He has presented a Bourdieuean analysis of
this work at various conferences and is also writing a chapter of
poetry and other literary forms as a form of analysis of the
experience for a forthcoming book on alternative approaches to
educational research.
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