Before acting in the world, we need to move away from behaving like privileged white educated western people. Blacks have made a great effort to explain all the ways we discriminate against them, even if we should view ourselves as their allies. Paulo Freire described what white privileged people who want to ally with the oppressed must understand. When we join liberation struggles, we generally act like colonizers. Oppression does not cease by just wishing it away. We do not stop acting like an oppressor just by acknowledging our privileges.
Freire describes what he calls the marks of an oppressor, behaviors of privileged white people wanting to free others of oppression. Looking backward, I see these marks within my social change work and in the social change work of other white privileged people.
White privileged people believe we must lead the social transformation. We believe we hold the revolutionary wisdom and vision that we must bestow upon the oppressed and fully expect them to follow our lead. As a result, we act for the oppressed rather than with them in the struggle. Unsurprisingly, we find it hard to relinquish power to others.
