Lorde - Schacter -- point comparisons

Connections: Audre Lorde's "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House"

Steven P. Schacht "Teaching About Being an Oppressor: Some Personal and Political Considerations"

Lorde insists that "the primary tool of the oppressor is to keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns." Schacht tells us that:

" . . . much of my life has been spent being opressive to others. Accordingly, much of my privilege and status has been purchased at the expense of societal subordinates, as they were the real estate and obvious requisites for me being superior and doing masculinity: it was through the humiliation and degradation of others (sometimes in the form of their bruised and bloodied bodies), the resultant terror and pain in their eyes, and the typical powerlessness and helplessness of their response that I cam eto experience and fallaciously believe myself to be superior to so many others" (25).

I want to think about these two in relation to each other:

STRUCTURAL IGNORANCE -- "We live in a society where ignorance truly is bliss, especially for those with unearned male privilege and status" (Schacther 28).
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MICROCOSM (WHAT ANY INDIVIDUAL DOES OR DOES NOT KNOW, DOES OR DOES NOT DO -- HOW WE ARE AWARE, CONSCIOUS/CONSCIENTOUS OR UNAWARE, UNCONSCIOUS/UNCONSCIENTOUS, HOW WE REACH OUT OR DO NOT REACH OUT) AND MACROCOSM (HOW WE ARE STRUCTURED TO KNOW OR NOT KNOW, DO OR NOT DO
TENDNENCY TO UNIVERSALISE WHAT WE KNOW/DO, HOW WE SEE/ARE, AS "NORMATIVE" AND HENCE "GOOD" -- SO "OTHER"/ "DIFFERENT" = ALIEN, BAD, LESS THAN, INFERIOR
AND FEELING/EXPERIENCE OF "SUPERIORITY" STRUCTURALLY DETERMINING -- THAT IS:
". . . the reason that women, people of color, the poor, and so forth are truly disadvantaged is that certain individuals, such as myself, are truly over-privileged in our society . . .
. . . certain people are categorically oppressed and exploited . . .
. . . much of the privilege that has been conferred upon me has been un-earned, how I have benefitted from others' oppression, the often unjust nature of the rewards I have received, and what I am personally trying to do to change this" (25)

so that, for Lorde, to have something OTHER THAN an academic conference getting token black women at the last moment -- i.e., a tool of the racist patriarchy that allows only a "vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression" (23), NOT any REAL change -- we need to MOVE BEYOND THE NARROW REALM OF WHAT WE FIND COMFORTABLE, OF OUR SAME-NESS - OUR SAME COLOR SAME RELIGION SAME CLASS SAME LOOKING-DRESSING-EATING-SMELLING "FRIENDS" -- AND EMBRACE DIFFERENCE!!

In Schachter's terms, we have to see ourselves from outside of ourselves; only in this way can we really examine -- and then do something about? -- our NEGATIVE ADVANTAGES (26) -- those "privileges that not only subordinate and oppress people but that also often further reinforce and enhance the status of the dominant party who is exercising them" (26).

Ex: Keep Statesboro Beautiful

So that:

When Lorde says "I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep lace ofknowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears" (24)

we can relate it to Schachter:

through feminist pedagogy, "what emerges are the lived images of the opressor and oppressed. These 'faces' demonstrate how all too common oppression is, how harmful it is for so many, and why each of us -- women and men -- should join together to bring about its end" (29).

" . . . descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with the visions of our future, along with the concommitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being"