Tools for achieving equity in people and institutions

Tools for achieving equity in people and institutions

Allies are people who recognize the unearned privilege they receive from society’s patterns of injustice and take responsibility for changing these patterns. Allies include men who work to end sexism, white people who work to end racism, heterosexual people who work to end heterosexism, able-bodied people who work to end ableism, and so on. Part of becoming an ally is also recognizing one’s own experience of oppression. For example, a white woman can learn from her experience of sexism and apply it in becoming an ally to people of colour, or a person who grew up in poverty can learn from that experience how to respect others’ feelings of helplessness because of a disability.

I learned about patterns of oppression through my experience as a woman and a lesbian, then encountered my privileged position in the world as a white person. This experience led me to recognition my other privileges, from being educated, English-speaking, healthy, a Canadian citizen, etc. I found a wealth of books and other resources to help me understand my position as a person experiencing oppression, but very few to help with understanding privilege. Those I did find were oriented toward a specific form of oppression—men writing about sexism, white people writing about racism and heterosexual people writing about heterosexism. There did not seem to be a resource about living on both sides of oppression/privilege, and how to learn from both sides about ending all forms of oppression. My search led to years of keeping a journal, reading, discussion and conducting workshops on these issues. Eventually, two books emerged from this process: Becoming an Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression in People (first edition 1994, second edition 2002, third edition 2015) and Beyond Token Change: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression in Institutions (2005). Both books are published by Fernwood Publishing, Black Point, Nova Scotia, Canada.

This website contains a brief introduction and sample chapter from each book. I have also written a section for adult educators on educating allies with an annotated collection of further resources. If you are interested in the struggle for equity, in people and institutions, I am delighted that you have found this website. I hope it is useful to you in your work.

Anne Bishop

Becoming an Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression in People

Becoming an Ally is a search for the origins of racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, and all other forms of oppression that divide us. The book examines history, economic and political structures, and individual psychology looking for the roots of discrimination. It attempts to answer such questions as: Has oppression always been with us, part of "human nature"? What does individual healing have to do with social justice? What does social justice have to do with individual healing? Why do members of the same oppressed group fight one another, sometimes more viciously than they fight their oppressors? Why do some who experience oppression develop a life-long commitment to fighting oppression, while others turn around and oppress others? What can we do to change oppression? The book looks for solutions by examining the process through which we come to recognize ourselves, first as people who have experienced oppression, then as members of oppressor groups. In particular, it lays out guidelines for becoming allies of oppressed peoples when we are in the role of oppressor.

 First Chapter of Becoming an Ally   (from Second Edition 2002)

Why Write a Book About Becoming an Ally?

My first reason for writing this book is a dream. This dream is a deep, driving force in me, and I know many others share it. The dream is a vision of the world I would like to live in, a world based on cooperation, negotiation, and universal respect for the innate value of every creature on earth and the Earth herself. This is a world where no one doubts that to hurt anyone or anything is to hurt yourself and those you love most, a world where everyone works to understand how everything we do will affect future generations.

I am what is called an "activist." I like to live my commitment to my dream. I often distrust language, because I am tired of hearing the same words I use-"respect," "cooperation," "justice," "equality," "the people"-with their meaning co-opted by exploiters. However, it is time for me to converse with a wider network than those I can know face to face. I have something I want to say.

I have a vision of how my dream can come about. It is not detailed, because it is not for one person to predict the path of consensus. In general, though, I long to see all of us who are giving our work, ideas, energy, and lives to a society which benefits the rich and powerful, rise up together and say: "No more. We can develop social, political, and economic structures that benefit everyone, and we will. We want to take on the challenge of moving towards equality, and we will. We are by far the majority; we can change things."

Between me and my dream stands a high wall. Its name is "Divide and Conquer." We have learned all too well to despise and distrust those who are different from us. Ironically, we have also been taught to despise and distrust people like us. This is because we have been divided even from ourselves. We distrust ourselves. Rather than looking within, to our own thoughts and experience, we accept the word of "the experts."

The second reason for writing this book is anger. Again and again I see examples of division among oppressed people, as in the images at the beginning of this chapter. Incidents like these rob me of hope. How can we take back our world and reorganize it to benefit everyone if we cannot even talk about our different forms of oppression without getting tangled up in the net of competition?

When I see people competing, claiming their own oppression as the "worst," or attacking the gains made by other oppressed groups, I see us all running on a treadmill. As long as we try to end our oppression by rising above others, we are reinforcing each other's oppression, and eventually our own. We are fighting over who has more value, who has less, instead of asking why we must be valued as more or less. We are investing energy in the source of all our oppressions, which is competition itself.

The truth is that each form of oppression is part of a single complex, interrelated, self-perpetuating system. The whole thing rests on a world-view that says we must constantly strive to be better than someone else. Competition assumes that we are separate beings-separate from each other, from other species, from the earth. If we believe we are separate, then we are able to believe we can hurt another being and not suffer ourselves.

Competition also assumes that there is a hierarchy of beings. Those who "win" can take a "higher" position, one with more power and value than those who "lose." It is a short step from accepting hierarchy as natural to assuming that exploitation is just. It becomes right, even admirable, for those who have more power and value to help themselves to the labour, land, resources, culture, possessions, even the bodies, of those who have less power and value. The result is a class system, where power and privilege increase as you go up the ladder, and those standing on each rung take for granted their right to benefit from the labour and resources of those below them. Class will be discussed further in Chapter Five.

As long as we who are fighting oppression continue to play the game of competition with one another, all forms of oppression will continue to exist. No one oppression can be ended without all ending, and this can only happen when we succeed in replacing the assumptions of competition, hierarchy, and separation with cooperation, an understanding that each being has value beyond measure, and the knowledge that we cannot harm anyone or anything without harming ourselves.

The connection between different forms of oppression is often seen in the liberal sense which denies differences, ignores the continuing presence of history, and blames individuals-"We're all the same, all equal, everyone has problems, let's just decide to get along." I have found it difficult, when speaking in public, to say that all oppressions have one root without my audience hearing me say that all oppressions are the same, or equal. People often feel that their oppression has been belittled. But I am not saying that all oppressions are the same or equal; equality means nothing in this context, for how would you measure? I certainly am not saying that we all have problems and should just learn to get along; this denies a long, complicated history and all the terrible scars that need healing, collectively, before we can live together in peace. What I am saying is that all oppressions are interdependent, they all come from the same world-view, and none can be solved in isolation. We can either perpetuate a society based on competition, where some win and some lose, or we can work toward a society based on cooperation, where winning and losing become irrelevant. In the first scenario, oppression will continue to exist for almost everyone. In the second, it will fade away, because it serves no purpose.

The idea that one form of oppression, or even one person's oppression, can be solved independently, is of great benefit to the rich and powerful. This belief is enough to keep oppressed people fighting and jostling in competition with each other, never reaching a point of unity where we can successfully challenge those with more than their share.

Reverend Martin Niemöller, a Nazi prison survivor, recognized this:

"First they arrested the communists-but I was not a Communist, so I did nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats-but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then they arrested the Trade Unionists-and I did nothing, because I was not one. And then they came for the Jews, and then the Catholics, but I was neither a Jew nor a Catholic, and I did nothing. At last they came and arrested me-and there was no one left to do anything about it." (Bartlett 1980:824)

I regain hope every time I see someone reach out past the boundaries of their own oppression to understand and support someone else's struggle. Hope is my third reason for writing this book.

I have a fourth reason for writing about becoming an ally. Through my own journey of recognizing first my oppression, then my role as an oppressor, I found written work that helped me understand my own oppressions and the process of liberation from each one. I found excellent literature on unlearning racism, and good workshop materials for unlearning heterosexism. I also found a few writers who are working to understand and communicate the complex interrelationship of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and class, and a growing literature of personal accounts by individuals coming to grips with their role as oppressors.

What I have not found is a critical analysis of the relationships among all forms of oppression, or of the journey from fighting one's own oppression to forming an alliance with others. Not everyone who is active against his or her own oppression breaks out of the competitiveness and learns to support others. For those who do, what is the process?

In Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics, bell hooks asks for more discussion of the roots of racism in white people, and the process of becoming anti-racist:

"One change in direction that would be real cool would be the production of a discourse on race that interrogates whiteness. It would just be so interesting for all those white folks who are giving blacks their take on blackness to let them know what's going on with whiteness. In far too much contemporary writing-though there are some outstanding exceptions-race is always an issue of Otherness that is not white; it is black, brown, yellow, red, purple even. Yet only a persistent, rigorous, and informed critique of whiteness could really determine what forces of denial, fear, and competition are responsible for creating fundamental gaps between professed political commitment to eradicating racism and the participation in the construction of a discourse on race that perpetuates racial domination. Many scholars, critics and writers preface their work by stating that they are white, as though mere acknowledgment of this fact were sufficient, as though it conveyed all we need to know of standpoint, motivation, direction. I think back to my graduate years when many of the feminist professors fiercely resisted the insistence that it was important to examine race and racism. Now many of these very same women are producing scholarship focusing on race and gender. What process enabled their perspectives to shift? Understanding that process is important for the development of solidarity; it can enhance awareness of the epistemological shifts that enable all of us to move in new and oppositional directions. Yet none of these women write articles reflecting on their critical process, showing how their attitudes have changed." (hooks1990:54)

Knowledge of this process is crucial to overcoming all types of oppression. If we understood how and why some people choose to give up privilege and become allies, we would have an important insight into social change.

The need to understand this process is behind my effort to generalize from my own experience, and that of others around me, and begin to create a theory of how one becomes an ally to other oppressed people. Becoming an ally is a liberating experience, but very different from liberating your own people and, in some ways, more painful. I want to provide a resource for, and open up a conversation with, others who are traveling this road with me.

In my experience, there are six steps involved in becoming an ally. They are:

1. understanding oppression, how it came about, how it is held in place, and how it stamps its pattern on the individuals and institutions that continually recreate it;

2. understanding different oppressions, how they are similar, how they differ, how they reinforce one another;

3. consciousness and healing;

4. becoming a worker for your own liberation;

5. becoming an ally;

6. maintaining hope.

The remaining chapters will expand on each of these steps:

Chapter Two: Step 1: Understanding Oppression-How did it come about?

A Journal Entry: "They Wouldn't be Able to Pick Us Off One by One"

Chapter Three: Step 1: Understanding Oppression-How is it held in place?

Chapter Four: Step 1: Understanding Oppression-The personal is political

A Story: Racism and Sexism

Chapter Five: Step 2: Understanding Different Oppressions

Two Quotes: Breaking Silences, Healing

Chapter Six: Step 3: Consciousness and Healing

Chapter Seven: Step 4: Becoming a Worker in Your Own Liberation

A Journal Entry: Racism and Sexism

Clipping: Moving Toward a New Emancipation

Chapter Eight: Step 5: Becoming an Ally

A Journal Entry: How Not to be an Ally, An open letter to the young man who spoke at our memorial rally on December 6th

Chapter Nine: Notes on Educating Allies

Chapter Ten: Step 6: Maintaining Hope

Beyond Token Change: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression in Institutions

Beyond Token Change: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression in Institutions is the sequel to Becoming an Ally. In it, the author examines the patterns of oppression found in organizations and institutions. Using a case study as her starting point, she considers the nature of institutions beyond the “sum of parts” of the individuals that participate in them. She defines the difference between token change and transformation of institutional structure at a deeper level. She explores twentieth-century physics for clues about how large, complex entities like institutions change. Finally, she looks at the implications for the tactics we employ to achieve equity in our institutions. In particular, she proposes a method of focusing attention on the institution and its dynamics that goes beyond putting individuals within the institution “on trial” for discrimination.

First Chapter of Beyond Token Change

Introduction

Over a period of many years, I came to understand that there are extra hurdles I must jump in my life because I am a woman and a lesbian. I found literature on oppression and liberation and explored these processes in my practice as an adult educator and community development worker. I also became involved in work against poverty and racism and discovered my role in others’ oppression. I found more literature, written by and about allies; for example, men working against sexism, white people opposing racism, able-bodied people supporting those with disabilities, people from more privileged classes striving to end poverty and straight people working on behalf of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. I often experienced people putting different forms of oppression in competition with one another, mostly in the form of “our oppression is worse than yours.” This disturbed me, because I found the dual processes of learning about myself as both oppressor and oppressed to be very complementary. When I looked for literature on the larger jigsaw puzzle of oppression, I found very little. I began to write about it myself. It started as a journal but, over a period of years, became a book-length manuscript.

In May of 1994, Fernwood Press published Becoming an Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression, followed by a second edition, Becoming an Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression in People, in 2002.

I summarized the heart of my argument against competition among those who experience different forms of oppression in the opening chapter:

When I see people competing, claiming their own oppression as the “worst,” or attacking the gains made by other oppressed groups, I see us all running on a treadmill. As long as we try to end our oppression by rising above others, we are reinforcing each other’s oppression, and eventually our own. We are fighting over who has more value, who has less, instead of asking why we must be valued as more or less. We are investing energy in the source of all our oppressions, which is competition itself.

The truth is that each form of oppression is part of a single complex, interrelated, self-perpetuating system. The whole thing rests on a world-view that says we must constantly strive to be better than someone else. Competition assumes that we are separate beings—separate from each other, from other species, from the earth. If we believe we are separate, then we are able to believe we can hurt another being and not suffer ourselves.

Competition also assumes that there is a hierarchy of beings. Those who “win” can take a “higher” position, one with more power and value than those who “lose.” It is a short step from accepting hierarchy as natural to assuming that exploitation is just. It becomes right, even admirable, for those who have more power and value to help themselves to the labour, land, resources, culture, possessions, even the bodies, of those who have less power and value. The result is a class system, where power and privilege increase as you go up the ladder, and those standing on each rung take for granted their right to benefit from the labour and resources of those below them.
As long as we who are fighting oppression continue to play the game of competition with one another, all forms of oppression will continue to exist. No one oppression can be ended without all ending, and this can only happen when we succeed in replacing the assumptions of competition, hierarchy, and separation with cooperation, an understanding that each being has value beyond measure, and the knowledge that we cannot harm anyone or anything without harming ourselves.

The connection between different forms of oppression is often seen in the liberal sense which denies differences, ignores the continuing presence of history, and blames individuals—“We’re all the same, all equal, everyone has problems, let’s just decide to get along.” I have found it difficult, when speaking in public, to say that all oppressions have one root without my audience hearing me say that all oppressions are the same, or equal. People often feel that their oppression has been belittled. But I am not saying that all oppressions are the same or equal; equality means nothing in this context, for how would you measure? I certainly am not saying that we all have problems and should just learn to get along; this denies a long, complicated history and all the terrible scars that need healing, collectively, before we can live together in peace. What I am saying is that all oppressions are interdependent, they all come from the same world-view, and none can be solved in isolation. We can either perpetuate a society based on competition, where some win and some lose, or we can work toward a society based on cooperation, where winning and losing become irrelevant. In the first scenario, oppression will continue to exist for almost everyone. In the second, it will fade away, because it serves no purpose.

The idea that one form of oppression, or even one person’s oppression, can be solved independently, is of great benefit to the rich and powerful. This belief is enough to keep oppressed people fighting and jostling in competition with each other, never reaching a point of unity where we can successfully challenge those with more than their share.

In other chapters of Becoming an Ally I analyzed how oppression came about and how it is maintained. I reflected on how the oppression we experience becomes internalized so that we reproduce it in situations where we have a degree of power. I did a comparison of the similarities and differences among different forms of oppression and I defined some steps for breaking the cycle of oppression in individuals: breaking the silence, consciousness and healing, becoming a worker in your own liberation, and Becoming an Ally . I wrote guidelines for Becoming an Ally and a chapter on education of allies. Finally, I wrote a chapter on maintaining hope.

In the process of condensing my experience into Becoming an Ally , I developed an understanding of the patterns of oppression as they exist in, and are reproduced by, individuals. I answered my own questions as far as those questions went at the time.

When Becoming an Ally was published, I was working at a Canadian university. Because of my practice of acting as an ally, I became known as a supporter of Black, Native, and gay/lesbian students and faculty on campus. This reputation lead to my involvement in a difficult and painful situation in one of the University’s departments. At one point, I sat in a room of people deeply embroiled in conflict. We were discussing the possibility of asking a mediator to work with both sides. I looked around me, thought about my own experience in facilitating conflict resolution, and thought, “Where would you start?” The sides were very polarized and their power in the institution was very unequal. Also, the dynamics of oppression as they function in and through individuals did not fully explain what happened. I began to see that institutions have patterns resistant to change despite the will of the individuals that live or work in them.

I knew then that I needed to examine institutional oppression, beyond the “sum of the parts" of the individuals within them. Because the situation at the university involved an allegation of racism, I began to study the particular dynamics that come into play when an institution is accused of racism, the processes it uses to protect its interests and return life to "normal."

I am not abandoning the analysis I wrote about in Becoming an Ally . I believe that as individuals we unconsciously internalize the injuries done to us, both personally and as a result of belonging to oppressed groups. As long as the damage is unhealed and unconscious, it comes back into play when we achieve a measure of power. We sometimes project what we have experienced on to others and then act on it, behaving oppressively towards them.

Beyond this, however, there are patterns that belong to the institutions in which we participate. I can imagine it as an accumulation of all the individual decisions and actions that have ever taken place within that institution since its founding, but it is even more than that. The institution itself takes on a character. It is not a living being, but it can sometimes behave as if it is one. It is, in the words of theologian Walter Wink, an “entity.” (Wink 1992) It can put pressure on individuals—choosing, forming, punishing and rewarding them, shaping their attitudes and framework of understanding. As a result, certain patterns tend strongly to hold true, even when many individuals within the institution want them to change.

If individuals wish to change an institution, they must work together, taking action aimed at gaining power and influence over those basic patterns, and they must plan to work at it for a very long time. Too brief or shallow an effort to change an institution can act as a “vaccine,” making things worse than they were to begin with. Change strategies aimed at individuals can go only so far. The strategies required for institutional change must be directed toward transforming the institution itself.

An institution is like an elastic band. When people take collective action to change the basic patterns, the institution has a powerful tendency to snap back into its original shape. At this level there are another set of patterns, the strategies institutions use to return to “normal.” We must understand and expect these “second level” patterns, often called “backlash,” and be prepared to counter them from the beginning.

Most of our methods for dealing with discrimination in institutions are modeled after our court system. They involve accusations, investigations and a trial-like hearing where it is determined whether or not discrimination occurred. If the hearing finds that discrimination occurred on a “balance of probabilities,” a remedy is ordered. These procedures, typically focussed on the behaviour of individuals, mask the characteristic patterns of the institution’s behavior and its power to shape the behavior of the individuals within it.

This book begins with the experience that made me conclude that being an ally as an individual isn’t enough. The account is based on interviews with the four students and one faculty member who were at the heart of the events. After transcribing the interviews, I wrote a draft of the story. That first draft was shallow and disconnected. I realized that I couldn’t base my account on the interviews alone, because I was the one writing the story and it was my own experience that tied everything together. I re-wrote it with my own account as the central thread. Once the second draft was written, I began a process of negotiation. Drafts went back and forth with the interviewees. I incorporated all of their edits and suggestions until I had an account that we could all live with.

I would love to have also included the viewpoints of those who became the “other side” in the conflict. Curious about how they perceived the events and particularly their reasons for their actions, I tried to talk with three of them. However the situation had become so polarized that they didn’t want to speak with me about it, let alone participate in an exercise of collective story-telling. This is the nature of conflict. As a result, the story is told from one side only.

I have tried my best to be disciplined about simply telling the story. I have included as much detail as possible about what happened with as few general labels and judgements as possible. I have tried to avoid language that implies judgement. However, I have not tried to be objective. I don’t believe any such thing is possible, even if I had access to the thinking of people on both sides of the conflict, which I don’t.

There is precedent and reason for telling a story about what I see as misuse of institutional power from the point of view of the victims. Those with less power can usually see the situation more accurately than those with more power because their survival depends on understanding and being able to predict the situation. Power and privilege obscure the view of those who benefit from them. I quote from Becoming an Ally :

Part of the oppression is that we are cut off from our ability to empathize with the oppressed. If we are aware of it at all, we tend to get defensive or write it off as not very serious—‘They are just whining.’ For another thing, the privileges that we obtain from oppressing others are invisible to us. For a third thing, oppression is structural. We derive benefits from being male or white or straight or able-bodied without taking any personal action against a woman, a person of colour, a gay/lesbian/bisexual person, or a person with a disability. (Bishop 2002:128)

In her book Is Nothing Sacred? When Sex Invades the Pastoral Relationship (1989), Marie Fortune explains her choice to tell a story of sexual abuse from the point of view of the victims. She says:

I will tell this story as truthfully and carefully as I can. I will tell it from the perspective of the women, because when considering the question of whose perspective should be taken as definitive in an ethical situation, ‘the one against whom power is used has the more accurate perspective on the situation. (xvi-xvii)

Fortune’s internal quote is from Karen Lebacqz, Professional Ethics: Power and Paradox 1985). Here is the full quote:

All of this suggests that ethical issues related to the existence, use and abuse of power should be at the core of an analysis of professional ethics. Yet while sociologists have long touted the autonomy and power of the professions, most ethical analyses have ignored this dimension and focused more narrowly on issues of trust. For instance, Sissela Bok argues that deception is akin to force or violence. She thus hints that analyses of power would be relevant for making decision about truth telling. Yet in presenting and refuting arguments for lying, she fails to develop any explicit norms in response to the implications of this kinship between deception and power.

Nonetheless, Bok does give us a helpful beginning point. She suggests that we should look at lies from the perspective of the one who is deceived rather than from the perspective of the one who tells the lie. This focuses attention on the question of whose perspective on the situation should be taken as definitive. It suggests that the one against whom power is used has the more accurate perspective on the situation.

Now this is a startling suggestion in a professional context. Since professionals profess—that is, claim to know what is wrong and what to do about it—to suggest that someone else’s perspective is more accurate is to turn the tables upside down. Yet this may be precisely what we need if we are to take seriously the questions of power that arise in a professional setting. (p 128-129. Internal quote from Bok, Sissela, Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation New York: Pantheon, 1982, p 214)

As someone involved in these events but not central, hurt but not incapacitated, connected by friendship and common values with those whose stories I felt should not be lost, witness to much of what happened and holder of a great deal of information, I was, I felt, in as good a position as anyone to figure out what happened, why it happened, and propose a model for institutions to deal with conflicts of this nature. Others involved in these events have written and published their perspectives on it, of course different from mine. I can’t provide references because of the need to protect anonymity, but their work forms part of a growing literature on issues of institutional injustice and change.

The five women interviewed for the story chose pseudonyms. All other actors are identified by their institutional title or role. I know titles can be confusing. To help keep track, there is a list of actors and a chart of the university and its departments on the pages preceding the story. Also, because the story is not written in a strictly chronological fashion, there is a timeline included for the reader’s reference.

In the chapters that follow the story, I have given my own analysis of what happened, in terms of the institutional patterns displayed. I have also explored other writers to find documentation of institutional patterns in circumstances like these. Finally, I propose some methods that would improve the way we go about solving the problem of oppression in institutions. Like Becoming an Ally before it, this book is part of an ongoing conversation. May it lead us toward justice.