Psychic Bondage & The Creation of White Supremacy

This past weekend I had the incredible opportunity to attend the 7th annual CA-NAME conference: People's Pedagogy - defining, defending, and developing ethnic studies.

I attended a workshop with Professor Dr. Jabari Mahiri the author of Deconstructing Race: Multicultural Education Beyond the Color-Bind. He discussed the premise of his book and allowed attendees to converse about the topic of race and education. Dr. Mahiri talked about race being socially constructed and reinforced by White society - forcing individuals to become "imprisoned within the limited spectrum of color categories that have been generated by and distinguished from whiteness as they are refracted through the prism of White supremacy" (Mahiri, 2017). This prism encompasses all categories of race but is still formed out of white light. Whiteness does not exist without blackness - therefore it is dependent on blackness and this contrast is at the core of White Supremacy.

I reflected on this statement and thought to myself - why does this hierarchy even exist? Why are they forcing us all into boxes by gender, sexuality, race, religion and more? Why is everything I know reflected back to me through the lens of my own whiteness? More importantly why did my White ancestors feel the need to create these categories in order to exploit and dispossess millions of people? The history books never taught me what was true they only taught me what people in power felt I needed to know about the history of this nation and the people we stole it from.

Even though I have known this fact for quite some time, it was even more salient than ever that the youth we are serving are not being taught the history of their own marginalized people. But instead are being educated and forced into further oppression and subjugation without their consent. School was a pleasant place for me because it was full of stories of my own people and when I learned about the past it showed White people as heroes even though they were riding on the backs of enslaved people of color.

The keynote speaker and professor Dr. Patrick Camangian answered my questions and his words touched my soul to the core. He first discussed his movement titled "Let's Break Free" that seeks to humanize education amidst hegemonic reform. He described the concept of hegemony which is the leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others. This term relates to Dr. Mahiri's term Ameritocracy - which is the justification of the idea that some group has privilege over others (Mahiri, 2017). Basically, the United States of America was founded on this idea and order to achieve this they first had to use "coercive force" which is categorized by violence, genocide, slavery, police brutality and militarism (Camangian, 2018). Secondly, there is consent - where the oppressed become complicit in their own oppression.

He used a metaphor to demonstrate this idea - an elephant one of Earth's strongest and most magnificent animals can be taken as a baby and tied to a post, over time the baby will fight to break free. They will fight until they are broken - and then even as an adult when they have more power and strength they could be tied to a broom stick and they won't fight back. They are put in psychic bondage - where they do not believe they are capable of breaking free because they oppressor has subjugated their mind. Dr. Camangian related this to how we educate our youth in this country - specifically youth of color, who are taught they are objects of history instead of the subjects of their own cultural narratives (Camangian, 2018).

Dr. Camangian, Dr. Mahiri, and others in the field of ethnic studies are doing incredible work with youth and they are working to change the narrative for youth of color in education. It was truly an honor to attend this conference and hear their voices. The energy in that room was infectious, I felt and saw my colleagues of color feel validated in their experiences and my fellow White folk feel inspired to continue learning and growing within this program and beyond. I felt tears welling up in my throat - not because I was sad or angry but because I was profoundly touched and motivated to continue my work with social justice.

Some photos of my incredible cohort at USF :)

References:

Camangian Ph.D, P. (2018). Patrick Camangian's keynote [Video file]. Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lF0ITEpK2nlpOkgkPRSfxs_dNk_w_AB-/view

Camangian, P. (2011, August 28). Subverting the master('s) syllabus. Retrieved from https://monthlyreview.org/2011/07/01/subverting-the-masters-syllabus/

Mahiri, J. (2017). Deconstructing race: Multicultural education beyond the color-bind. CA.