Discussions about such topics as gender, race, class, and ableism are difficult. They raise essential questions about privilege and disadvantage and can leave many feeling that they are immediately being placed in an overly simplistic position of either complicity or innocence in the deep injustices of today. The conversation thus immediately opens a floodgate of emotions. Inevitably, one will find themselves thinking of their past experiences and choices. The potential for triggering traumatic memories for some or provoking in others feelings of guilt, shame, resentment, anger, or a sense of superiority vis-à-vis those “who don’t get it” is always present. In our classroom, it is quite possible that someone who has been harmed by these deeply rooted forms of injustice will be sitting next to another who has participated in them either through their actions or inactions. There are thus a multitude of minefields to be considered for any educator hoping to create a constructive and inclusive space for discussion.
Exploring these very minefields is a central concern of the Resist Violence Community of Practice. Each of us involved has at times wondered not only whether we had positively shaped our students’ ideas and values (or whether they were just telling us what they thought we wanted to hear), but more disturbingly, whether sometimes we had ended up doing more harm than good. When drawing particular examples from other societies to explore the problem of violence and its related issues, had we reinforced for some the perception of the superiority of their people over others? Unwittingly had our focus on the interlocking problems of our age worked to increase a sense of cynicism and hopelessness? Had we succeeded in building a sufficiently deep understanding of the complexities involved, helping to foster a compassion for our shared human fragility, or ended up simply reinforcing simplistic binaries and a thoughtless embrace of punitive responses?
Recently, new challenges have come up. When one of our members tried to involve her students in a creative form of nonviolent action that sought to respond to George Floyd’s killing in a manner similar to Bob Dylan’s writing in 1962 of his song, “The Death of Emmett Till,” one of her students balked, suggesting that this was not really appropriate as it was just a creative writing exercise (which might seem trite) and, well, the teacher and most of the students were white. The questions the student was raising about whose voices should be prioritized and in what contexts are important, yet the implication is disconcerting. As Dylan’s lyrics note, “If you can’t speak out against this kind of thing. A crime that’s so unjust…. you’d let this human race [s]ink so God-awful low.”
These concerns have led us to reflect repeatedly on how we can frame these discussions in ways that can effectively engage at least a significant majority of our students in a real exploration of these divisive issues – one that may be uncomfortable and indeed take them into places where they would rather not go. In the next section you will find a brief overview of some of the conclusions we have drawn as we have discussed the difficulties and successes we have had in the classroom and mulled over the insights offered by the theory of nonviolence – its call for us to find connections across divides, its promotion of a process of social change that engages us intellectually, emotionally and creatively, and its emphasis that changes in our hearts and minds become most likely during moments where the unexpected happens.
The challenge for educators, of course, is huge, but one not to be avoided. In her recent book, On Violence and on Violence Against Women, feminist and literary critic Jacqueline Rose defines violence as essentially a crime of thoughtlessness, arguing that “violence will not diminish, let alone cease, if violence continues to be something which people turn away from, blot from their minds, prefer – at least as far as they personally are concerned – not to talk or think about” (2021: 367).
The Resist Violence Framework
Provide the larger context
Despite the many politicians refusing to accept the notion that racism or sexism is systemic, the idea that these forms – and indeed all forms — of violence have been deeply rooted both historically and in the contemporary period in the institutions and cultures of a society is deeply revealing. Although not a new perspective – it was fleshed out decades ago in the pathbreaking work of Norwegian sociologist and peace studies scholar Johan Galtung, it not only helps us understand why it is so very difficult to eliminate the visible and less visible forms of violence in our society, but also identifies the multiple spaces in society where the work of nonviolence needs to be done. When an instructor includes both a deeper analysis of the contemporary ways forms of violence are normalized and a historical perspective that touches on when and in what social and economic contexts these harmful ideas and values developed, ideally with references to examples of resistance, students begin to gain an appreciation of how social change – both negative and positive – happens. But perhaps most significantly they find a psychologically safe starting point to reflect on how their own perhaps problematic ideas developed.
We will also benefit our students when we draw out connections between different forms of violence. In this way, not only do we draw out important insights into the roots of violence, as we see in the tendency for mass shooters to have a history of domestic violence and misogyny, but we also create even more entry points for our students. This call echoes the one by renowned political activist Angela Davis, who emphasizes the need to keep in mind the intersectionalities not only of “bodies and experiences,” but also of different struggles for social justice, such as the ones to abolish slavery and abolish prisons or the militarized responses in Ferguson against Black Lives Matters protesters and against Palestinians in Gaza. Tracing connections between different forms of violence draws our attention not only to common root causes and a diversity of individual and historical experiences of injustice, but also to the “symbiotic relationships between struggles abroad and struggles at home” (2016: 114). Davis recalls:
In fact, I can remember growing up in the most segregated city in the country, Birmingham, Alabama, and learning about South Africa because Birmingham was known as the Johannesburg of the South. Dr. Martin Luther King was inspired by Gandhi to engage in non-violent campaigns against racism. And in India, the Dalits, formerly known as untouchables and other people who’ve been struggling against the caste system have been inspired by the struggles of Black Americans. More recently young Palestinians have organized Freedom Rides, recapitulating the Freedom Rides of the 1960s by boarding segregated buses in the occupied territory of Palestine and being arrested as as the Black and white Freedom Riders were in the sixties. (114)
All this may seem rather daunting, but the idea is that there are a multitude of possible connections that can be pulled out, and without overwhelming the students with complexities, the more we do this, the more openings we find. Much care though is needed when we provide diverse stories of injustice to ensure that we don’t open the door to comparisons of who has suffered the most. This leads us into spaces where some will justly feel that the full significance of wrongs that matter to them are being denied. It is also important to keep in mind that, while witnessing the suffering of others can activate our empathy like little else, ultimately our capacity to fully appreciate the pain of others is very limited; our minds, as Elaine Scarry pointed out in her famous work, The Body in Pain, simply does not allow itself to go there.
Choose your terms carefully
“Privilege,” “white supremacy,” “settler,” and “rape culture” are widely used concepts today. In academic discussions, these are valuable tools that help us gain a clearer picture of the continued violence inflicted on historically disadvantaged peoples. But there are risks to using them too early in a classroom discussion. One of our CoP members vividly remembers what happened one day when she made an explicit connection between harmful forms of masculinity and the term “rape culture.” A young man at the back of the class blurted out, “There is no such thing as rape culture, come on….” As she pressed him further to explain his comment, he walked out, never to return.
We have a deeper understanding today of the power of language — the emotional impact for many of hearing a word uttered in a classroom that they have heard in other contexts where it was meant to do harm. We can also think of the diversity of euphemisms used by perpetrators and their supporters to hide the truth about the horrors being inflicted. But perhaps we should give more consideration to terms that can, particularly if not used carefully, be seen as identifying an entire group’s complicity in centuries-old systems of injustice. When this suggestion is perceived, psychological defenses go up and constructive dialogue and learning becomes impossible.
There is a choice to be made here by the educator, and it is not an easy one. We want to provide our students with an accurate picture of the status quo and remain true to our academic disciplines and the concepts and terminology currently in use. Not using such terms can also seem to be pandering to those who harbour the harmful ideas that uphold systems of injustice. But changing our worldviews is never easy, and care is needed to ensure that the nuances needed to create openings for self-reflection are clearly articulated. In thinking about teaching about complicity, Michalinos Zembylas makes an essential point, arguing that we need “to stop treating complicity as a problem to be solved and start treating it as a fact of our civic life to learn to live with.” He adds this “implies, for instance, that rather than structuring our lives in ways that focus on avoiding complicity altogether, we should recognize that this is an inevitable aspect of political life and we are all already complicit, in all kinds of ways, to unjust acts” (2020: 322).
Find the interconnections while prioritizing those harmed
Zembylas’ remark identifies a more complicated reality for those of us caught in the inherited webs of privilege and/or disadvantage in today’s interlocking systems of exploitation. For those more privileged than disadvantaged, this reality comes with a responsibility to recognize the human suffering inflicted daily by the still very entrenched systems of colonialism, patriarchy, militarism, white supremacy, and ableism, along with the ethical responsibility to find ways to resist and reduce our often-habitual cooperation. As noted above, challenging simplistic binaries of guilt and innocence with our students creates openings for critical thought and self-reflection. In my many years of teaching about violence against women, I have on numerous occasions acutely felt the tension leave the classroom when it is stated early on that women, albeit many with very little choice or even awareness, have also played roles in maintaining patriarchy and that they are quite capable of being perpetrators in their own right.
There is no question that the focus of our exploration must remain on the harms being inflicted. Students need to be motivated to make changes to their ideas, values and behavior; they must therefore be convinced of the moral imperative that we try. While horrific statistics, which are too numerous to count, and specific examples of abuses have a place in informing us about the problem of violence, we should also provide space for those harmed to be heard. This can come through victim testimonials, storytelling, and the delving into the work of nonviolent activists, including those who use their art to provoke change.
If we want to effectively confront the problem of violence in our teaching but do not allow the voices of the silenced to be fully heard, our students are left with incomplete pictures of the people we hope they will care about. If we know nothing of the richness of their previous lives, the full significance of the harms done are easily denied. We can see this by the impact women speaking out against sexual assault have had on the deepening societal understanding of the issue. So often viewed as a victimless crime – a little relevant consequence of “boys being boys,” we are coming to recognize the devastating psychological legacy it leaves on many survivors. Jaqueline Rose perhaps offers the best statement of the harms inflicted; referring to sexual harassment, a violation of personhood that many would not even characterize as violence, she argues its aim is “not only to control women’s bodies but also to invade their minds.” It is a “sexual demand, but it also carries a more sinister … injunction: ‘You will think about me. Like sexual abuse, to which it is affiliated, harassment brings mental life to a standstill, destroying the mind’s capacity for reverie” (37).
Victimhood though is a risky status and, arguably, if our discussions focus exclusively on what Indigenous studies scholar Eve Tuck refers to as damage-centered research, we are doing little to challenge the inequalities that make violence against long-marginalized groups possible. Such scholarship may support calls for justice, but our notions of “the victim” are embedded with assumptions of powerlessness and passivity and, since we ourselves never want to be “a victim,” our ability to identify or empathize is limited. But if the voices brought into the classroom are rich, revealing peoples’ resilience and resistance even in the darkest of times, we will have more success. Such stories foster genuine human connection; they inspire us as we wonder and hope whether, in similar situations, we would have the strength to do the same.
There are still further challenges that need to be considered when speaking of victims. If we want to present rich human lives in all their complexities, we do a disservice if we romanticize victims into the perfectly pure beings that we might prefer them to be. If this notion strikes you as odd, consider the difficulty of erasing the myths of the perfect rape victim or the common sentiment that privileged allies in social justice struggles should not criticize any of the choices peoples fighting for their rights might make. Philosopher Trudy Govier untangles the risks of this myth of perfect victimhood in her book A Delicate Balance: What Philosophy Can Tell Us about Terrorism, concluding that while we owe victims our respect and must honour their suffering, about which they have complete expertise, this doesn’t mean they have all the answers about what to do next.
Govier adds that no one is a victim or a perpetrator in an absolute sense, but rather we are victims or perpetrators in reference to some particular act or event – not ignoring, of course, that in institutionalized systems of injustice, we should be speaking of series of events that occur over and over and cross generations. Her point, though, is that the status of being a victim, as well as perpetrator, bystander or even rescuer is not fixed. In her article on the moral psychology of rescuers, bystanders and perpetrators during the Holocaust, political psychologist Kristen Renwick Monroe gives us a sense of the extreme degree to which this slippage can occur, pointing to the “bizarre phenomenon” of perpetrators “who save one member of a group while massacring others” (2008: 702). This of course brings us to the possible connections that can be drawn between victims and their perpetrators. One may not wish to go here, but ultimately it is necessary if we want our students to gain a real understanding of the human capacity for violence. Rose puts it eloquently in her book by concluding that if we have any hope of reducing the violence that seems to be “spreading with added virulence across the globe,” we must “resist the deadly temptation to make violence always the problem of someone else” (368). She views violence as an ultimate expression of a sense of entitlement, and it is important to note that so often it is precisely a sense of victimhood, held by individuals, and possibly reinforced by the wider culture, that provides the justification needed for committing acts of destruction. And, when both sides to a conflict share these feelings of being victims, the difficulties of breaking the cycles of violence are obviously immense.
Focus on our collective potential for change
Students learning about their complicity in the suffering of others may experience a sense of guilt for their own blindness or the choices they have made thoughtlessly. Equally, they may feel a collective shame for what their people have done. Both of these are strongly ethical responses, but students must come to them on their own. Any efforts on the part of the educator to provoke these kinds of emotional responses will likely fail and frankly do seem like a violation of each student’s autonomy. Instead, our goal should be to foster a shared sense of collective responsibility. Michalynos Zembylas puts it well: “if the issue is how to handle white students’ denial of complicity, the pedagogical question at hand is not ‘What can I, as a teacher, do to reaffirm students’ moral agency so that they admit their complicity?’ but rather, ‘How can I, as a teacher, move my students to take action in their everyday lives to refuse being complicit in social harm’?” (326).
This leads us to the value of bringing the practice of nonviolent action into the classroom, both in terms of thinking about its theoretical value, but also by introducing students to the creativity of the work itself. To get a sense of the latter, we encourage you to take a look at the website beautifultrouble.org and its wonderful toolbox of stories and tactics. As you will see, there is much to inspire – and inspire is the right word to use. It is not easy to change our ways of thinking, and most significantly, confront the harms that we or those we identify with have done. Efforts to shame or coerce us into doing so will never work well; they leave far too many bitter feelings in their wake. In contrast, nonviolence, while having the coercive capacity to break the power of governments through acts of noncooperation and defiance, brings subtle and unexpected processes into play that seek to persuade the opponent to, as feminist nonviolent activist Barbara Deming expressed it, “consult their consciences.” One of the key tenets of nonviolence is the value of distinguishing between a person and their ideas or actions. In the midst of a political struggle, this respect for the personal safety of the opponent helps depersonalize the situation to allow the real issues to come to the fore; in the classroom, it calls for a gentler touch.
In this context, I am reminded of the approach of lawyer Bryan Stevenson, who, when speaking of the failure of white Southerners to confront the United States’ history of slavery, emphasized the value for whites to learn of the white abolitionists and anti-lynching activists of the past: “The fact that we [emphasis added] don’t know their names says everything we [emphasis added] need to know. If those names were commemorated, the country could turn from shame to pride” (2019: 276). The consideration shown in these comments from a man who has devoted his life to seeking justice for the victims of racial violence and whose great grandparents were enslaved in Virginia Is striking. Given the far greater number of Southern whites who were participants in slavery, the suggestion that we should celebrate the few white people who openly resisted seems to offer an unwarranted revision of history, but Stevenson’s gesture is, as Philospher Susan Neiman notes, “less a question of history than morality.” He understands the need for us all to see that “it’s not only possible to use our freedom to stand against injustice, but that some folks have actually done so” (276). Neiman shares a similar outlook, stressing that in a world “saturated” by victims, “we’re far more likely to be inspired by admiration for heroes” (371).
Calling for a pedagogy that moves beyond discomfort, educational philosopher Megan Boler highlights the words of an angry, defensive white male student, who told her at the end of the semester that he wished she had told the class that “all these screwed up things in the world could possibly change” (2004: 124). The challenge in front of us is indeed complex and it calls on the Resist Violence pedagogue to uphold a balance between delving into the suffering inflicted on so many by the actions and inactions of others, ourselves included, and highlighting the potential for resistance and the choices each of us do have. Similar to nonviolence theory and practice, the pedagogy strives at the same time to inspire students to engage however they can in the difficult but creative work of disrupting the status quo, while at the same time constructing a more just alternative.
Works Cited
Boler, Megan, “Teaching for Hope: The Ethics of Shattering World Views.” Teaching, Learning and Loving: Reclaiming Passion in Educational Practice. Eds. Daniel Liston and Jim Garrison. RoutledgeFarmer, 2004: 114-129.
Davis, Angela. Freedom is a Constant Struggle. Haymarket Books, 2016.
Deming Barbara. “On Revolution and Equilibrium.” Nonviolence in Theory and Practice. Eds. Robert L. Holmes and Barry L. Gan. Waveland Press, 2012: 138-151.
Dylan, Bob. “Death of Emmett Till.” https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/death-emmett-till/
Galtung, Johan. “Violence, Peace and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research. 6.3 (1969): 167-191.
Govier, Trudy. A Delicate Balance: What Philosophy Can Tell Us about Terrorism. Westview Press. 2002
Neiman, Susan, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil. Picador, 2019.
Rose, Jaqueline, On Violence and on Violence Against Women. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2021.
Renwick Monroe, Kristen. “Cracking the Code of Genocide: The Moral Psychology or Rescuers, Bystanders and Nazis during the Holocaust.” Political Psychology 29.5 (2008): 699-736.
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford University Press. 1985.
Tuck, Eve. “Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities.” Harvard Educational Review. 79.3 (Fall 2009): 409-427.
Zembylas, Michalinos. “Re-Conceptualizing Complicity in the Social Justice Classroom,” Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 2020: 317-331.
