Charity-ing your way toward Justice?

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who 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. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
― Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings

I was once complimented by a former colleague of mine for ‘turning a phrase’ in a way that brought clarity to a situation. We were talking about the place of wealthy donors (Gates Foundation etc.) in creating a just society. Because we are both from within the Catholic Moral tradition we spoke in terms of what is the place of charity for building the Reign of God. In simplest terms we were rehashing the age old debate of the relationship of Charity and Justice. I said that in recent years I have become much more suspicious of the wealthy class desire to get into the philanthropic arena. I didn’t believe that their desire was grounded in anything that can be a called an authentic desire for justice. I said, ‘you can’t charity your way into justice’. I still very much believe this to be the case. To the degree that Justice is understood as ‘right relationship’ and Charity is necessary precisely as a response to an unhealthy relationship. We can speak of these two modes of existence as actually have an uneasy ‘alliance’ at best, and diametrically opposed goals at worse. In other words to the degree that one becomes ‘satisfied’ in ‘giving charity’ (and looks forward to it) one is attached to maintaining the conditions necessary which gave rise to such a need.

I have recently been reading the wonderful book by Anand Giriharadas entitled; Changing the World: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. It speaks precisely to this issue. In many ways it has verified much of what I had intuited from my work/studies. His argument is basically that the ‘new’ found desire on the part of the elites (wealthy, powerful etc.) is ultimately a subtle (and not so subtle!) desire to maintain control of the current social order. It is paradoxically the manner by which to ‘change’ the world without sacrifice or foundational/structural movements. As Brother Douglas articulates above they want ‘crops without plowing up the ground”, “rain without thunder”, “ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”

I was impressed by so much of what Giriharadas said, but I wish to focus on just a couple of points. In the text he speaks of the difference between Critic and Thought Leaders. The sharp distinctions is found in how thought leaders are allowed to do a critique of ‘the system’ (even to the very creators of said system!!) without asking them to cop to their place in creating the problems found within said system. He speaks of a wonderful way in which the critic becomes a thought leader by slowly ‘compromising’ certain elements of their analysis. He terms this the thought-leader three step. I would like to briefly introduce the three steps and then end with elaborating on how my research and most importantly my teaching has been impacted by the desire within me to stay in the place of critic and not surrender to forces that lead to becoming a thought leader.

The thought-leader three step is composed of three ‘shifts’ that occur on the part of analyzing, and articulating an unjust situation, and more importantly proposing solutions for the situations. Remember that the fundamental project is to create ‘solutions’ that allow those in power to not only continue to maintain power but to feel as though they are actually doing ‘something’ towards eradicating the pain and suffering found in the given situation (poverty, racism, sexism etc.). This has to be done in a way that will in substance not impact the current arrangement of power, resources, material life of any community.

The first step is to make certain that one focus on the victims of injustice rather than the perpetrators. I remember hearing about an article that was entitled something like ‘Sin without Sinners”. If you think about the horrible tragedies in the world you will notice that frequently the signifiers that express these realities are expressed in ‘passive’ or at best ‘neutral’ terms so that they seem to occur out of ‘nowhere’? So we speak of The Poor not The Impoverished. The term impoverished is defined as “reduced to poverty” or ‘deprived of strength, vitality, creativeness etc.” It is not just that people are poor. Which is profoundly sad, but any analysis that doesn’t speak to how people are made poor by exploitive systems allows people who create these conditions to talk about them without being held accountable for their existence. A Critic will be much more forthright in ‘connecting the dots’ that show a causal (even if it is a very complex web of causation) link between wealth accumulation of the few and the impoverishment of the many. This can also be seen in the shift recently from speaking of this abstract thing called Racism (which honestly, no body seems to like or be!!) to White Supremacist Ideology. Which not only has some specific implications for who ‘benefits’ from Racism but also how it functions within larger systems of exploitation and oppression.

The second step is essentially to do a complete reversal on the foundational insight made (among other places) by the Feminist Movement which help popularize the phrase “The personal is political“. In this way it sought to locate the origins of some of our pressing personal problems within the arena of the larger social/political/economic/cultural schema of our existence. The second step which transforms a Critic into a Thought Leader is the step made when one reverses the order and seeks to caste the issue as “The political is personal“. I wish to give an example here from my own life. Part of my experience growing up in the United States is to experience myself as a very insecure, low self-esteem, somewhat ‘not good enough’ person. I have done some major healing in this area. I have been blessed to use a multitude of healing modalities (therapy, 12 step work, body work, self-help books, spiritual practices etc.). Two areas that I had a strong negative self image (and lack of self-acceptance) was in feeling embarrassed about my parent’s accent, and also my physical appearance (particularly hair and size of my nose). I always figured I was just a guy who had ‘self-esteem’ issues. Which was no doubt true. I also don’t wish to discount the importance of personal/psychological/ inner work. But at one point when I was working with children at a day care I noticed that the vast majority of children who were my Chicano/Latinx Sister’s and Brother’s had similar psychological issues!! I got to thinking….”Wait a minute, we can’t all be personally neurotic in the same way!! How can we all have the same personal psychological wound!!” I also noticed that certain ‘accents’ were not treated with a kind of ‘disdain’. Hugh Grant has a charming accent. Diego Luna has an accent that seems to not be as ‘charming’ certainly not as versatile in the avenues that his characters can inhabit. I remember feeling like my nose was ‘too big’. When I teach this concept now I remind my students that ‘large and small’ is always a contextual assessment. So something is large or small relative to ‘something (or someone) else. Now when I was looking at myself (by myself!!) in the bathroom mirror and assessing my nose as ‘too big’ who/what else was there/their with me?!! Years later I began to realize the effects of White Supremacist’s Ideology as one of the ongoing ‘companions’ of my journey. That this enemy was located first and foremost outside of myself. It was not just ‘little Rene’ that felt bad because he was ‘neurotic’ but that little Rene was very specifically wounded by forces outside of himself that had a vested interest in wounding him and continuing to wound him in a very particular way. These forces or enemies are clearly of a political/economic/social/cultural nature. Remember I am in no way discounting the place of personal/psychological healing but to paraphrase a phrase I have heard attributed to Mao Zedong that in order to win revolutions you must ‘identify the enemy accurately’. I now realize this must include naming names and calling systems/people out who benefit from very specific patterns that do in fact cause injuries that are made manifest within the ‘personal’ life of people. This is precisely what the Thought Leader can never do if he/she wishes to ‘hang out’ with the owning class.

The final step is to always propose solutions for any of the structural injustices which must are addressed in ways that are immediately actionable. This is obviously a very important step. However, the danger is that the solutions must fit into ‘prepackaged’ solution slots. What Giridharadas’ calls plans that are ‘constructively actionable.’ In one sense this manifests in creating a ‘strategic plan’ that can be executed within the current social arrangements or in other words, to change the world without actually altering in any foundational or fundamental way the way the world is currently arranged. It is simply changing without change. I am again, reminded of the wonderful quote found at the beginning of this entry.

There are many things wrong with this final step which is offered by the Thought Leaders and sanctioned by those in power. The first is that it is speaks to the existence of a virulent and unhealthy form of anti-utopianism. It is unhealthy precisely because it surrenders to the atrophied and distorted social imagination which is offered within any system. This is especially pernicious in our current situation because one of the ways that the project of Neoliberalism continues to hold sway in our world despite all material evidence against it is because of the ‘naturally fallacy’ which holds sway among so many people. Essentially the ‘natural fallacy’ can best be summarized by the the line made famous by Margaret Thatcher that “There is no Alternative.” I believe it is Slovoj Zizek who said that the tragedy of our current climate crisis is that so much of humanity can envision the end of human life on the planet more easily than the end of Capitalism. This surrendering our ability to imagine and envision outside of the reality we currently inhabit asserts that if we cannot immediately create the solutions to our problems from where we stand than this problem can never be solved. This lack of social imagination is caused by our reliance on a certain type of cognitive methodology. In the dominant system we have long ago destroyed or effectively rendered mute our artists, mystics, visionaries etc. This is not an accident. By effectively erasing all members of the community that connect us to the ‘transcendent’ element of reality and the human experience we automatically render certain options unavailable by default. It is not that I am against a solid analysis (see my entry on anti-intellectualism) but rather that we must have available to us the very important human faculty of imagination. The second problem with this way of understanding solutions is that it renders all critique impossible because it asks those making the critique to come up with the ‘alternative’ without giving proper space (both temporal and geographical) for solutions to arise as part of revolutionary praxis and struggle. The nature of dialectic movements and social change is that there is always going to be an ‘unknown’ or even an ‘improvised’ element. So to demand an ‘answer’ to the questions posed by a critique as a criteria for taking seriously the critique is to render all criticism unacceptable. When the U.S. revolution was beginning the owning class new very little about what the new ‘nation’ would look like as a fully realized entity. Much of the clarity of their vision was expressed in what they were ‘against’ (“No taxation without representation”). It took some time to deal with the formulations of what this ‘Republic’ would finally look like. Some might even say that the ‘final form’ has not yet been fully realized? All new ‘creations’ will go through a period of chaos or confusion prior to any type of ‘stability’ or ‘resolution’. This is the nature of dialectical development.

I want to close this entry by speaking about how I have tried to maintain the ‘critic’ perspective in my pedagogical methods. The most obvious thing that has changed is that I have tried to introduce much more the ‘victimizers” that create the victims. This includes showing the ways in which the ‘system’ is very much a product of human agency. There really are perpetrators that actually damage and wound people. I have moved away from the ‘we are all part of the problem’ paradigm. At some very abstract level this is of course true. I have found, however, that this phrasing (and the thinking which it creates) functions in a very ideological manner. I use the term ideological here in the way that is used frequently within the Marxist traditions. It is actually used to obscure and obfuscate reality rather than reveal it. I recently saw an interesting little internet meme (I think that is the term?) which illustrate more clearly how I view our predicament. While far from an exact quote it basically says ‘We are not in the same boat. We are in the same storm and some of us are in luxury yachts and some are in life rafts” This to me more accurately reflects the reality. Furthermore I think we have to be honest about who in fact is in charge of the ‘weather patterns’ that created these ‘storms’. For me one way to understand this shift is by grounding myself much more in the Materialist philosophical traditions (of which Marxism is the most well known).

In my classes (particularly those dealing with morality, ethics and social justice) I used to show a lot of the images, perspectives etc. of the victims. What I have been doing much more lately is showing how the perpetrators live, exist. There is something mind-blowing about showing how a billionaire can buy an entire stretch of beach front property (with cash!!) while there are houseless people (many who actually have jobs!!) living in close proximity. This in fact is precisely why the life of the wealthy, owning class is a sin, abomination, and a betrayal of all of the values that the majority of people (including of course, the wealthy) espouse. This change of focus has left me open to many critiques. In another entry I will address some of these. For now it is sufficient enough for me to say that I will continue to seek to move in the direction of a Critic and not a Thought Leader. I am aware that this type of authentic critique poses a much more existential threat to the material conditions of the wealthy, owning class and those that serve them.

I will end with a line I first heard said by Richard Rohr. He said, “The truth will set you free, but first, it will make you damn uncomfortable”….here is to more authentic discomfort which comes at the service of our search for truth, mercy and ultimately love.