Freire ch 4 Reflection
In the final chapter of Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” the author expanded upon some important ideas that very strongly reminded me of current events and social issues. I feel like a lot of people are really desperate for change but don’t totally understand the most effective way to fight for it.
Over the summer, when people were protesting, rioting, and advocating for their respective social and political movements I always felt like the motives behind these movements greatly varied from person to person. Some people weren’t even advocating for the cause, but merely wanted to stir up discourse and turmoil. As I’ve read and thought about Pedagogy of the Oppressed I have found words to describe the unease I was feeling in regard to some of these movements and the way the individuals conducted themselves. In many cases, it felt like the leaders and the doers of the cause were not aligned with one another, which jumbled the whole purpose of doing anything. Freire describes this very issue by saying “The revolutionary effort to transform these structures radically cannot designate its leaders as its thinkers and the oppressed as mere doers…”, explaining that leaders of a movement must also be doers, while the doers must also lead. Instead of a select few claiming leadership for themselves and ultimately fulfilling the role of a new oppressor, the roles and responsibility of leadership need to be decided by the doers. This helped me understand why I was off-put by the inauthenticity of the people who were claiming to lead these social movements; Their power and purpose behind the movement wasn’t solely focused on change and growth as they claimed it to be. It instead felt like a cheap claim for clout or social media recognition but when it came time for legitimate decisions to be made it was like the balloon was popped.
Throughout chapter 4 Freire repeatedly emphasizes how important it is for leaders and doers to be aligned in their goals and I think that if we actually want to see change the doers must gradually evolve into leaders. A leader who inserts themselves into a movement once it picks up recognition is not a real leader for the cause, and therefore cannot be trusted to fight for what the doers actually want. Freire sums it up perfectly by saying “If they are drawn into the process as ambiguous beings, partly themselves and partly the oppressors housed within them — and if they come to power still embodying that ambiguity imposed on them by the situation of oppression — it is my contention that they will merely imagine they have reached power”. Basically, a leader who is not fully liberated from the oppression they seek to eradicate cannot effectively lead without being at risk of becoming another form of the oppressor.
The leaders that have claimed power over recent social movements are ineffective and detrimental because they feed into the very system that they are supposed to support the dismantling of. They benefit from the system and gain self-worth from the system because those in power have trained the oppressed to seek validation and success from the oppressor. They themselves are still under the control of the oppressed and working to please the oppressor, which in turn means that their understanding of power is also oppression. This means that the self-appointed leaders who have claimed the cause are really just tools for the oppressors to use against the cause itself. This is why I have been so off-put by recent events and the inauthenticity within the people who lead them; it is the same way I am weary of people who champion Socialism and Communism yet seem to forget that there will always be someone in charge of them deciding what and who is actually equal. In reality, we cannot just depend on leaders to make the decisions for things that impact all of us. As Freire says, the leaders must originate from doers and the doers must possess the drive to lead in order for any kind of revolution to succeed in its true purpose.
