After reading a book about the non-profit organization, BRAC, it greatly inspired me to read the works of Freire. Although I had partially and briefly been exposed to his works I had never went into a deep study. But in the BRAC book Ian Smillie thoroughly explained why Fazle Abed, the founder of BRAC, found Freire valuable. With that inspiration I read Pedagogy of the Oppressed and "Teachers as Cultural Workers." In the latter Freire shares the import of writing, its relationship to reading and language, and he challenges readers and affirms that one should at least write three times a week, which I view as doable.
My topic of interest is mythicization. It is a theme that Freire expounds on in Pedagogy of the Oppressed that really resonated with me. A myth is defined in different ways but for my situation a myth will be defined as "a widely held but false belief or idea," also it is, "a misrepresentation of the truth." Some synonyms are: misconception, fallacy, false notion, or fiction.
The dominant and oppressive classes of people in American society use myths and mythicization in order to maintain the status quo, and the current state of economic and social affairs, in America. Again, a myth is something untrue or fictitious; a lie that is widely or broadly held to be, or believed to be true by the majority of a group or society.
Another key emphasis of mythicization is that myths are not self-created or randomly created. Mythicization is a verb and therefore an act committed and planned by someone or some group. Myths do not manifest randomly or spontaneously. Myths serve a need. The myths that I am thinking and writing about serve to oppress the majority of poor and disadvantaged people and to ensure that those who oppress, those in power, are not challenged.
There is a quote by Dr. Carter G. Woodson that illustrates the dangerous effects of oppressive myths governing the thinking (and therefore the self-perception), and behavior of men.
- He stated, "When you control a man's thinking (here with and through myths), you do not have to worry about his actions. He will find his 'proper place,' and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will protest until one is made for his use. His (mis)education (in the form of mythicization) demands it.
The myth that Dr. Carter G. Woodson is here referring to is the inferiority or superiority of men based on their race. This is dangerous firstly because it is a lie. But in my opinion, more obviously, it is more dangerous because it is illogical. How can the inferiority of a man be determined by race alone? How can this be the only measurement? It is a fallacy of the highest order. Greatness has no color. And neither does penury or weakness. Since we are all apart of the human specie something like race or nationality isn't enough to automatically determine a mans greatness.
Myths, although false, function powerfully in society. Myths create expectations in the minds of those who give credence to or who believe in them. So for example, in the case of the myth of inferiority based on race, or the myth that members of the so-called negro, black, or African etc race are inferior, then members of society where that myth is prevalent create expectations based around that oppressive myth. Even those within society that are within that oppressively mythicized group (the blacks, or Africans themselves) create limiting expectations for themselves.
Expectations serve as limitations. People perform based on their expectations of themselves and/or the expectations others in their (immediate and distant) social environment have for them. The lower the expectation, the lower the performance; the nobler the expectation, the more dignified a man or woman will behave. Many oppressive and limiting expectations are placed on the poorest of our communities. These expectations come from the dominant culture's ideas and ideology. But the people who are forced to believe in them and who actually perpetuate them are those that buy into them, embody them, and perpetuate them by teaching them to their children.
Throughout the course of our lives our internal expectations are shaped, influenced by and molded by the expectations of our family, our cultural identity, our social circle and the expectations that are explicitly or implicitly transmitted through media (television, films, radio, music, magazines, etc). Many of our expectations base themselves on myths. Myth-based expectations constrict those that believe in them. Myth-based expectations constrict the imagination, the possible alternate realities, and potentialities of those who believe in them, or those who live in a society where an oppressive myth is imposed upon them.
Ultimately, this is the objective of the dominating oppressive class: to constrict the thinking and behavior, the hopes, the possibilities and aspirations of the downtrodden and oppressed class by promoting myths that serve the powerful, but are self-destructive to the powerless. So if we teach oppressed blacks that they are inferior and we affirm this to be true in every category of human relation: meaning economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex, and war, then they will never be a threat to us or our power structure because their belief in the myth we have created does not permit them to. It paralyzes them. It stifles them. It immobilizes them. In illustration, a black youth will not aspire to become a city controller, mayor, or councilman because that is not apart of the myth he has been taught to believe. He is not GOOD enough. He just isn't SMART enough. It is not his PLACE. And everything in his environment confirms this. Make no mistake, his environment does not affirm this because it was ordained by God or because his race is inherently, innately inferior. No! All the people and things in his environment support this myth by DESIGN, by ORCHESTRATION.
Those in power underfund and dilapidate his schools. Those in control of media negatively portray his race in textbook history, on television, and in every other category of human relation that I have previously mentioned. Those in power trick him into having low-self esteem, a poor and deficient self-perception, to the point where he actually hates himself. With myths like this in place and in practice oppressors can laugh while robbing the people of everything they have. The oppressors can continue to surreptitiously achieve and oppress because their foe, the masses, CANNOT ACT. They WILL NOT ACT, precisely because mythicization paralyzes them. And a PARALYZED foe is not a foe. Mythicization teaches them that they cannot perform on the same and even higher levels as others, in the halls of knowledge and human society. Mythicization teaches them not to act and that their best move is NOT to move; to avoid engaging in thinking because it is not their business to think.
A paralyzed foe with a deficient self-perception will never be competition. The oppressed and in this case the so-called blacks, will never reach the height of their abilities before they dispel the myth of their inferiority. Before this moment of dispelling occurs there will be no contradiction to the myth because they will be the walking myth, embodied and in real form, because they subscribe to it.
Oppressors use myths, whether based on sex, gender, class or ethnicity or race to 1) control and direct the thinking and activity of oppressed people and 2) to protect themselves from the oppressed realizing their true identity, humanity and potential, thereby shifting, transforming and eradicating the dualistic relation between oppressor and oppressed.
The best weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. The goal of the oppressors is to implant myths in the minds of the oppressed and to let oppressed go on thinking it is a reality and to govern their lives based on that reality.
Oppressed people must train themselves to identify myths in order to transcend them and to move towards transforming and creating their unique self-directed reality. It begins with self. What are some of the myths that one personally holds although they may be limiting, self-destructive, and untrue? Where do they come from? How do they shape my self-perception? Whom do they serve or benefit? Is it me?
Peace.
