Durable Emergence
By Dr. Leticia Nieto and Candace Tkachuck
Many of us are drawn to create anti-oppression culture. And yet, how often do we find ourselves in groups or gatherings that do not seem to possess the qualities that we recognize as distinct to liberatory relating?
The pitfalls can seem plentiful. Perhaps we are in a space where only one form of oppression can be acknowledged, and we must invisiblize important parts of ourselves or others. Or maybe we experience a very defined way to be anti-oppressive among our colleagues, and with this, we instinctively know that we need to conform to belong. And some of us might experience contexts in which the reality of oppression receives more vivid focus than the possibility of liberation does, creating a group culture that isn’t the refuge from dominant culture we have longed for.
As we grow our consciousness and accountability in areas of social membership where we carry unearned advantage and privilege and as we deepen our strengths and self-determination in areas of social membership where we experience marginalization and obstruction, we hunger for a world of equity and connection. Whatever the pathway to our sense of alienation, the experience of feeling tight and fearful with the people we should feel most at home with can be a wrenching one.
In these times, writers and thinkers such as adrienne maree brown, ALOK, and Báyò Akómoláfé are offering us pictures of more spacious angles. They, along with other liberatory voices, remind us that we are a dimensional human collective, capable of emergence and expansion when faced with pressure to reduce and contract.
As we thought about how we might add our voices to those who are speaking so clearly for an untamed, widening liberatory culture, we thought it could be useful to shine a light on three patterns (among many) that we notice in social justice spaces that have the potential to threaten liberatory relationship and culture-building: scrutiny, weaponization, and enmeshment.
Scrutiny of others who are in anti-oppression work with us can appear to be a beneficial element of our collective culture. Our desire to build an alternative to supremacy culture seems so naturally to lead us to vigilance. And yet, many of us have seen how our drive to hold accountability in ourselves and others can create a form of relating that is at a minimum corrosive, and at worst, a way of operating that can impact mental health, livelihoods, and remove all possibility for creating a liberatory collective. (For a deeper exploration of where scrutiny can take us as a society, we recommend reading “The New Puritans” by Anne Applebaum.)
When we have an anti-oppression code that we are imposing on ourselves and others, we often have specific tools that we use to do this. We may weaponize resources that were originally created out of an intention to bring wholeness and humanization. For example, most of you might be familiar with a resource that outlines characteristics of white supremacy culture that was created by Tema Okun and others. This resource has benefited anti-racist discourse, and yet, when used without nuance, this tool can become a distorting, single lens that potentially undermines the purpose it was created for. (A recent piece that features Sendolo Diaminah, Scot Nakagawa, Sean Thomas-Breitfeld, Rinku Sen, and Lori Villarosa explores the varied impacts of this resource.)
Patterns of scrutiny and weaponization tend to replicate mimetically in a collective. Once these patterns take hold, authenticity and self-sovereignty can be hard to sustain. Instead of supporting one another’s right to be ‘at choice’, we may instead fuse in coercive enmeshment. When the sacredness of individual and collectively self-determined choice is sacrificed in the name of liberation, alternatives to supremacy culture are less available. (Juniper Cameryn offers this useful and concise post about this dynamic. Also, this piece by Ari Felix offers an electrifying view of what it might mean to exchange entanglement for authenticity.)
We would like to offer glimpses of responding that can disperse patterns that are legacies of the dominance-based culture we want to actively move away from. We offer these, not as solutions, but as instances of how nothing is lost when scrutiny recedes, weaponization relaxes into cultural humility, and authenticity gains ground on enmeshment.
Scrutiny has a fierce quality, like a surveillance camera, like an unblinking eye. But human perception is not compatible with vigilance. We are much more likely to be able to notice and learn when conditions align in a specific moment to help us see what we are now ready to see. What if we could refine and tailor our invitations to counter the supremacy in the room to be like a light that gets turned on to illuminate only and precisely what is emergent?
We find ourselves in many conversations with people in social movements who have experienced social and emotional violence from people they largely agree with. It is true that tools and even weapons have a place in our work. Loretta J. Ross invites us to consider whether we are mistaking ‘problematic allies’ with ‘actual adversaries.’ She suggests we take time to decide on the best course of action: calling out, calling on, or calling in.
Calling out: Weaponizing. A potentially potent naming, appropriate when there is little time, insufficient relationship, or when an actual adversary’s actions should be marked.
Calling on: Care informed. Contributed by Sonja Renee Taylor. A time to remind a person with whom we have a relationship that we notice incongruity, in their exhibiting oppressive behavior, from who we know them to be. This is an invitation to be our best selves.
Calling in: Relational, decolonizing, labor and time intensive: a well-crafted intervention designed to support growth through precise and attuned listening and responding.
In respect to alternatives to enmeshment, both of us had the opportunity recently to attend a reparative action retreat created by June Wilson of the Compton Foundation where there was a foundational welcome for a multiplicity of action shapes. In this space, people with varied backgrounds, genders, nationalities, and orientations to the work of anti-racism and anti-oppression were present; white people and BIPOC people; some who knew each other and some who did not. The skillful co-facilitation by Mariah Rankine-Landers and Jessa Brie Moreno of Studio Pathways, a racially mixed team, and the wide menu of activities contributed to spaciousness. Each person in the space was carefully selected, even vetted, for readiness. No one was on probation, nor did anyone need to demonstrate their commitment to social justice. In this welcoming multiplicity, there was plenty of dissonance that could have derailed the gathering, and yet, this was not a problem. The group had a shared sense that the type of discourse we were having could hold the tensions and the unresolved edges. It was as if the reality of our interconnectedness removed the pressure to conform to each other to a distorting degree.
As we all seek to build ways of being that we have not seen before, it makes so much sense that we would be vulnerable to how ingrained patterns of supremacy might hide in the ways we reach for liberation with each other. For us, there is something tender and endlessly compelling about what it means to so radically remake ourselves and our collectives. Not only because of how central liberatory collectivity is to a better future, but also because it can transform the present, bringing repair, ease, and clarity to new places.
We are grateful to the spacious voices mentioned above and also Orland Bishop, Resmaa Menakem, Rev Angel Kyodo Williams, Erica Peng, Patrisse Cullors, Monica Sharma, Mia Mingus, Ashton Applewhite, Jaya Ramesh and Priya Saaral, Dolores Huerta, Helen Zia, Hilary Klein, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Megan Red Shirt-Shaw, and many others.
About Dr. Leticia Nieto
Leticia Nieto, PsyD, LMFT, TEP is a psychodrama trainer, leadership coach, and psychotherapist. Her book, Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment: A Developmental Strategy to Liberate Everyone, is an accessible analysis of oppression and supremacy with skills to promote social justice.
About Candace Tkachuck
Candace Tkachuck has aligned with liberatory culture shifts in education, writing, community engagement, and philanthropy. After working in educational environments for some years, she now enjoys collaborating with others who are drawn to emergence and relational repair.
