Blog Post 1

The excerpt from Freire’s “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” that I chose to analyze is the last two paragraphs on page 44.

In this excerpt, Freire is asserting that to move away from oppression, one cannot simply soften the power that the oppressor has over the oppressed. All this does is illustrate “generosity” on the part of the oppressor, between their acts of oppression. The only way the oppressed is to be liberated is through their own weakness. An example of this is in the matter of gay rights, giving homosexual couples legal civil unions while not granting them the legal right to get married is softening the power of the opressor, however only reinforces the power they have over the opressed. 

He also states that, “in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors”. This point really resonated with me, as I think throughout human history you can see examples of oppressed parties finally gaining liberation or freedom from oppression, and in turn using this new found liberation to assert their dominance over another marginalized group. Again, I can relate this back to the LGBT community, which is often marginalized or oppressed by the heterosexual community. However, within the community itself there is a lot of judgement and oftentimes prejudice against intersectional members of the group. For example, Black trans women face a significantly harder time being accepted by the community than white gay men. You would think that a community of people who know firsthand what it feels like to be discriminated against would be free of oppression, however to Freire’s point, that is not the case.

I can agree that softening the power of the oppressor is not sufficient, because as Freire puts forth, in order for there to be generosity, there has to be acts of oppression as well. However, he also states that, “Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.” At first glance, I did not agree with this point. However, in the context of racism I can agree that the burden falls to the oppressed group to educate the oppressive society on matters of oppression and discrimination, and without this dialogue, there would be no liberation of any oppressed groups. I think Freire’s point is that oppressors will always continue to oppress and liberation will not be reached unless the group of oppressed people are active in educating and advocating for their liberation. This is a point that is unfortunate, but I agree with.