"Power As a Source of Power" by Sierra-Marie Gerfao

Tue May 6 13:26:04 EDT 2008

R E L I G I O U S   E D U C A T O R’ S   M E M O

“Power As a Source of Power”
“All people have a major task, from cradle to grave, of defining who they
are” -- Na'im Akbar

My son Marcus woke up wanting to wrestle this morning. He walked over to me
not with blinking half-awake eyes as he sometimes does, but instead with
wide open eyes, and a giddy grin on his face. “Arh!” he growled as he jumped
onto me, indicating his playful initiation of our “mama lion-lion cub” game.
My wife Gina commented the other day that Marcus has been something of a
“class clown” lately. “Remember when he was just six months old and we were
writing down his personal strengths for that developmental assessment?” I
asked her. “We did write that his number one strength was his sense of
humor. It’s part of his identity.”

In 1982, B. Harro created a “cycle of socialization diagram” that I find
useful. It is printed in the book Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice:
A Sourcebook by Maurianne Adams. If you have internet access, plug "‘Cycle
of Socialization Diagram’ +Harro” into Google, and it will bring you to
Google Books (last link) where you can see the diagram in the book.

In this diagram, Harro postulated that we are “born into a world with
mechanics in place. We have no blame
no guilt
no choice
limited
 information.” Through our lives, we are socialized, that is, taught on a
personal level by parents, relatives, teachers, people we love and trust. We
are shaped by their expectations, norms, values, roles, and models of how we
should be. This is our lens of identity.

However, Harro went further to illustrate that we also have a lens of
socialization and teaching, in which we are bombarded on conscious and
unconscious levels with messages from institutions such as churches,
schools, television, the legal system, medical and mental health systems,
and businesses, as well as from the practices, lyrics, language, media, and
patterns of thought of our culture. Through this, our lens of identity is
enforced, sanctioned, or stigmatized. We receive positive and negative
feedback about ourselves. We receive privilege and persecution,
discrimination and empowerment. This is our lens of experience.

Before Gina and I were foster licensed in Washington State, we were required
to take a thirty-hour foster parent training called “Parent’s Resource for
Information, Development, and Education (PRIDE).” During this course, we
were asked to name the sources of our socialization: the people and
institutions in our lives that have served to either shape us, or reinforce
us. Participants in the class called out names: “Uncle Juan,” “my mother,
Glory,” “Mrs. Smith, my third grade teacher,” “Dr. Narayan.” They named
schools they’d attended, jobs held, employers, clubs, sports, and faith
communities. They even named foods and drinks and the social settings for
these, sources of media, and hardships or privileges they could count on. As
we did this, our facilitators wrote our responses on a dry erase board. We
indicated the power of each source, and accordingly, our facilitators wrote
the items we named closer to or further away from the center of a circle.
Current sources were indicated by a solid line to the center. Sources from
the past were indicated with a dotted line. Then we were asked to identify,
in sequential order starting with parents and siblings, the losses that take
place when a child comes into foster care. Soon, the whole board was altered
beyond recognition.

Our lens of experience results in a variety of internal experiences that may
include among other things dissonance, silence, anger, dehumanization,
guilt, collusion, ignorance, self-hatred, stress, and internalization of
patterns of power. From here, we have a pathway out of the cycle which
involves consciousness raising, interrupting, educating, taking a stand,
questioning, or reframing. Or, we do nothing. We don’t make waves. We
promote the status quo. And in this case, the cycle begins again at the lens
of identity, only now, this lens is shaped by “misinformation 
 history

habit 
tradition 
prejudices 
stereotypes 
biases.”

This cycle is in constant relationship with our fear, ignorance, confusion,
and insecurity. Renowned scholar, educator, and author (among his other
books he wrote Is God a White Racist?), Dr. William R. Jones says that when
we talk about “oppression,” it brings up negative connotations. In part
because our own identity is in a constant relationship with fear,
insecurity, and dissonance, we are unconsciously defensive and can’t
associate ourselves with the notion of “oppression.” The work becomes
especially intense when we begin to unpack our own bags of privilege: the
way we oppress others on a daily basis (and we all do) in order to preserve
our privilege. Whew! That’s tough work. It helps to know this: power is
being able to say “what the norm is.” It threatens something as precious and
fragile as our identity to step out of the cycle and empower others. The
power of setting the norm gives us the power of being the norm. And yet, I
believe we have something even more powerful to gain by engaging in
empowerment of others as we practice being gentle and loving with ourselves.
That is, a move from that fear, ignorance, confusion, and insecurity, into
the strength of an identity that is more fully integrated, more fully whole.

As uncomfortable as recent political tensions have been, and as much as I
may not agree with some particular things that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has
said, I find myself thankful that “liberation theology” has received some
attention in the national dialogue recently. Whether or not this is a part
of your own theology, and absolutely regardless of what you think of the
Rev. Wright, the act of studying liberation theology can be a part of a
journey toward wholeness.

Warmly in Faith,

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