So many thoughts … but I wanted to share a reflection I wrote for class because it sums up where my head stands with this pedagogical work…

“[Freire’s] concept of dialogue, having and connecting to so many elements made me wonder about the intent of dialogue. Is dialogue, the way the Freire describes it, related to similar elements of what a healthy relationship looks like? I think this is a foundational piece to Freire's other concepts, and his  goals of "[generating]...acts of freedom" and "abolishing the situation(s) of oppression" (Freire, pp. 90). Encompassed in this act of dialogue is love, humility, humanity, and trust. Trust, is the one that I would argue unhinges all the others if not honored. Freire even expresses how "trust is contingent on the evidence" that "one party provides the other", and how truth is built on the action of follow up (Freire, pp. 91). The presentation of honesty is just as important as the act of speaking it. It relates back to Freire's initial idea of liberation being a spoken and active transformative experience (Freire, pp. 87). Trust is what nationhood is built on and thinking back to Fanon's ideas of nationality and culture, it's the similar notion of comfort or knowing. Knowing a culture allows for someone to be more comfortable submitting to, or fighting for the nation in which their culture resides, the trust that builds between a person and the dialogue that exist in a culture, within and among a people. The reverse of this notion, is the lack of trust...like how Black Americans have built culture, dialogue, personhood as a response against the nation in which they reside, or even in alignment with building the liberatory nation in which it initially set out to be. Yet, there is a division of what is and what is not, and trust is the missing link between what is being spoken and what is being done, or lack thereof.”

… “I would argue that activism is a response of failed dialogue... of one side doing what they can to verbalize their needs, followed up with false remission and empty promises, or lackluster action. Freire says that activism is the loss of the reflection and amplifying the pursuit of action, but I think that activism is the result of exhausted reflection. The oppressed don't have the ability to reflect for as long as the oppressors... that is a privilege. To be able to think about your actions and how they affect those around you, is a privilege. The oppressed survive on the making the right decision the first time, it or cost them the ability to choose again...I think about activism as an exhaustive measure, the law straw...when dialogue is not the answer anymore and communication has to endure in another capacity, one that speaks louder volumes...

 

I think about the George Floyd protests and how the activism prompted the dialogue and reflection....and how for decades, Black and Brown marginalized voices had been dialoguing, reflecting, researching, analyzing and dialoging, only to have the same and similar oppressive events continuously  happen upon the oppressed population. Reflection is exhausting...reflection is a privilege... and heavy work of reflection should not weight the heaviest and most burdensome on the shoulders of the oppressed...”


So many thoughts …