Doing Anti-Oppression Work in HarmSpace
It's been a few weeks since I wrote a blog and of course there is a reason for that. The main reason is because I have been trying to work through my thoughts about this particular thing, and week after week more things happen to add to my thoughts about this particular thing. Those of you who have written dissertations probably know that feeling- the when do I stop reading all the things and start writing all the things because the stuff to read will honestly never end.
So I decided that I really needed to get this out because I cannot carry these thoughts in my head any more. This blog is going to be about something that many people have already thought about and discussed which is: is it possible to do anti-oppression work in systems that exist and continue to thrive because of oppression? I am going to use the word HarmSpace here as a nod to pal sarah madoka currie [links to sarah's Twitter] who is really great at making clear the kind of spaces we engage and experience often together, HarmSpace, CareSpace, etc.
This blog is probably not going to be helpful for people who are already doing this work and have for years. I am not saying anything groundbreaking here for you. This is however for those that I know troll my public and private facing work for nuggets of things they can pretend to know and care about so that they can maybe stop and reflect on the harm they are causing and the work that they need to do.
As those of you who know, anti-oppressive practices means first acknowledging and knowing the systems of oppression that enact on you and you enact on others. This is the first step. If you can't stop and realize the power you enact on others you are right away leading with harm and engaging in a non-trauma aware way. It is also the realization that there is context to this and depending on who you are interacting with, those folks' lived experience, that power dynamic will be different. Sadly I see so many people who have not done this work and do not realize it is on-going work, so they literally barge through classrooms, meetings, inboxes, with their lack of awareness.
If you have managed to do that deep work and realize the power and oppression you can enact, when you know when it is time to just listen and reflect, when you know when it is time to speak up and be in community with someone who needs support, this also means that you have taken the time to think about the systems of oppression that are being enacted on the folk you are engaging with. You will of course never know their exact lived experience, and folk do not owe you disclosure, but you can certainly take time to think about the many intersectional oppressive forces that make HarmSpace for them.
If you have already gotten to this part, fantastic, that is great! So now your responsibility is to build community and facilitate spaces of empowerment. This is also where some are not sure what to do and can quickly fall into the trap of a checklist. Maybe if I add texts from non-white, queer, and disabled folk on my syllabi that is good enough. Maybe if I share resources outside of the space that I normally work in that will help. These are things that could happen yes, but the real real problem we are having in education right now is that folk think this is it, that is the work. I am here to tell you this additive approach is the reason why we are in so much trouble when it comes to talking about equity in education.
Right now folk are taking away books and resources from education spaces because they also think that the key to ending equity discourse is to simply get rid of the books and resources. We trained them to think this is the only thing because the systems refused and continue to refuse thinking of equity as a foundational consideration that should be part of any engagement, or CareSpace design from the start. FROM THE START. As Lainey Feingold notes on this page [CW for food and discussion of food, opens on new page] when she references Cordelia McGee-Tubb, you can't bake blueberries into a muffin that is already cooked. You need to think about the ingredients needed to make CareSpace and inclusive spaces before you start baking. Asking for that labour to be done after or as an addition shows that you did not think about the oppressive power dynamics from the beginning. And to make it very clear, asking folk to do that after-thought labour is actually a form of extractive labour. It tells the person, you were not considered valuable enough to be part of the original conversation, but here fix my mess.
As you can probably tell from the tone of this blog I am pretty upset and angry. I am also the kind of person who is told often from different places to not be angry. I have talked about this many times before, so instead I am just going to quote Audre Lorde from her 1981 Keynote to NWSA Convention because she of course says it better than I ever dream of saying it:
"My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, on that anger, beneath that anger, on top of that anger, ignoring that anger, feeding upon that anger, learning to use that anger before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence , afraid of the weight of that anger. My fear of that anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also."
For those of you who have made it this far into the blog, I thank you for your time and attention. I mean maybe some of you are taking notes to bring back to your spaces and pretend that you have emerged from the weekend more aware than you have ever been. I know this sounds sarcastic, it is meant to be, I am very tired, I can't mask my anger anymore. Because my anger, my disappointment comes from a place of deep fear and trauma. Fear of the HarmSpaces that are being perpetuated each day due to lack of awareness and taking meaningful time to engage. Fear for my own safety as the spaces I am in become more and more hostile, folk being more and more tokenized, all in the name of checklists and metrics. People talking things they know nothing about because they heard a few of these words on the Internet. That is also why I chose to use the word HarmSpace here, because if I hear someone else use it in the spaces I am in, I will know they read this, but probably didn't take the time to do the work to acknowledge that using a word they randomly found on the Internet is also HarmSpace. And if you don't know why... I am sorry I can't do any more of your homework and ghost labour. Ask ChatGPT.
Reference
Lorde, A. (1981). The Uses of Anger. Women's Studies Quarterly.
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