Thread by @innodim

Reflective 🧵
1/ Oftentimes when asked to give a talk or when writing a paper, there is a significant expectation, pressure even, to also incorporate solutions.
"What can we do to change this problem".
It's like, "Don't leave us with this dreadful feeling. Uplift us.

2/ Help us "feel better".

TELL US WHAT CAN BE DONE!

And I've always felt uncomfortable with this.

Why this rush to ram through a problem so as to jump to solutions. How do you solve what you don't understand. Especially if it is a problem you yourself participate in.

3/ In his work, "Rage and Hope", Paolo Freire argues that without reflection, there can be no commitment to transformation, action is empty. Critical reflection is "critical" to transformative praxis. Reflection/Introspection must form the core of action for sustainable change.

4/ I think this is a missing key ingredient in a lot of this work and why, when I follow up with groups I have spoken to and offered the required "solution(s)", they have done absolutely nothing.
Black and other scholars/activists/experts/professionals/leaders/organizers/

5/ people of color have been shouting the solutions to these problems for millenia.
Who listened?
Who complied?
So, why is it any different now?
The requirement to be told what to do is not because there is an interest in actually applying those solutions,

6/ but it is to escape the uncomfortable feeling of sitting with a problem. Rather than translating that feeling into critical self reflection and then outwardly reflecting on the environment, culture, norms, systems, etc that impact upon that problem,

7/ and challenging oneself and others within one's circle of influence to radically imagine different, folks would rather be delivered of that responsibility by having the presenter/writer do that heavy lifting.

8/ Ta-Nehisi Coates is intentional about this when he told Stephen Colbert in an interview about his book, 'We were 8 years in power', "I’m not the person you should go to for that. You should go to your pastor. Your pastor provides you hope. Your friends provide you hope.”,

9/ when Colbert asked him, “Do you have any hope tonight for the people out there..." This implicit (and sometimes explicit) expectation that, particularly BIPOC scholars, provide answers for the problems they describe, and usually as a means to absolve white audience ...

10/ of their own complicity in white supremacy - is itself a white supremacist expression and is dangerous. Not only that, it is disrespectful and wasteful, of our time, energy, and talents - Especially, when there really is no real interest in actually complying with the changes

11/ we call for - that have been called for since the 17th century and before that.

So, folks need to learn to sit. Just sit. With discomfort. With uncertainty. With confusion. Just sit. Reflect. Process. Then engage in informed action-oriented dialogicals with key actors

12/ aimed first self-transformation and then praxis, and then then systems.

But, quit with the toxic burdening of hopefulness and absolution upon BlPOC backs.

~End~

Typo: "aimed first at self-transformation, then transform praxis, and then transform systems.