Author: Shoshone Odess
Awareness-raising is a crucial process in social activism and change. Yet using the phrase “awareness-raising” is often one of the most impotent and miserable ways to effect change. “Genocide Awareness Week” is the most recent of these efforts at Oxy. But has anybody considered the possibility that awareness weeks are useful only insofar as they make people feel as though something is being done? Or that they expose an implicit fact: that the rest of the weeks at Oxy are concerned with denying the issue (whether it be date rape, genocide, or AIDS) rather than acting on it?
One of the most active symptoms of the stupidity, blindness, and white liberal arrogance of our institution is the idea that we can easily be aware of issues and act to change them without reevaluating our methods, social positions, and assumptions. “Awareness” and “action” are not terms we should throw around carelessly. They make us appear both unaware and inactive.
It is important for us to remember a scene from Spike Lee’s film Malcolm X, which was adapted from an excerpt from the Autobiography of Malcolm X. A young blond woman approached Malcolm X one day and asked him what she could do to help him. He said “nothing,” and walked away. Although he would later regret making this statement in such a blunt way, wishing he could tell her more in later years, his point is crucial: nobody should assume that they necessarily are in a position to “act,” that they can dismiss with theory, that they are already ready to change the order of things without re-evaluating their approach.
I hear the voice of this young woman at Oxy all the time, connected with young, fresh, idealistic faces of people who tell me that they aren’t sure what they want to study but they want to do something active rather than theoretical, that they are tired of talking and want to start acting. I have felt the same way many times in my life. But it is important to remember that talking (or theorizing) is absolutely necessary for responsible social action, because it affects action directly and cannot be fully separated from it. Speech is action. And, perhaps horrifyingly, in the words of the author Slavoj Zizek, “liberation always hurts.” This is because we have so much built-in resistance to liberation: this is the price of becoming “civilized,” wealthy, and privileged. Therefore, whenever we engage in true radical action, we are waging a war on the part of ourselves that polices our actions to keep us in line.
Far too often I hear people talk about how much fun it will be to go to a protest and what a great time they will have changing the world. If you can enjoy activism, great, but I want to tell them that when you become an activist, you put yourself in harm’s way. However, this is no reason not to become an activist. You should absolutely put pressure on the administration of Oxy, because no matter how much they talk about diversity, those in power are eerily white, male, and wealthy. If the trustees and administrators who control the flows of capital in this institution continue to blatantly deny the students a true learning experience, as when they released Prof. Mindry, dissolved the Women’s Studies Dept., denied living expenses to people receiving financial aid who live off-campus, allowed Campus Dining to price-gouge as a monopoly, and tried to allow Prof. Pillich’s contract to expire for a lack of publications, you must put pressure on them at the risk of your careers and reputations. For too long, we have talked about (and studied) change at this school, without actually addressing the enormous injustices which lie right under our noses. Want to know how the “other half” lives? You don’t need to fly to the Third World to see the working class-walk down Eagle Rock Blvd. for a few miles or drive down the 110.
As Frederick Douglas said in 1857, “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Shoshone Odess is a senior CTSJ major. He can be reached at shoshone@oxy.edu
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