Rant of the Exiles

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been around for a long time. I pursued an education minor at UC Berkeley during the mid-1990s and Paulo Freie’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) was required reading in my ED190 class. Power dynamics is the bedrock of critical theory - the broader belief system for various types of oppression including racial, gender, socioeconomic, cognitive, disability, and sexual orientation. I vividly recall a class session where my instructor, a female graduate student, dressed in black leather, barked commands, and marched around the classroom, slapping a black riding crop on students’ desks. Her cosplay was exhibit A on the oppressiveness of traditional education. I remember classmates rolling their eyes at one another and taking it all in with amusement.  The non-role play class sessions were stimulating in other ways. We had good discussions and our instructor worked hard to treat us as peers and engage us in dialogue. This emphasis on dialogue as both a mea...

Image courtesy of Jada Wong [1546 words] I am a racist.  At least that’s what I thought for years. I have long carried in me prejudice against black people. And not only black people but also bias against Latinx, white people, and Asians as well. A couple years ago, I discovered my definition of racism is outdated. Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility confirms this. I am longer considered a racist. As a person of color, I can only have prejudice because my racial group is not in power.  DiAngelo is a professor and diversity trainer. Her book points out a phenomenon she’s experienced hundreds of times during her seminars. The phenomenon consists of encounters with white people who exhibit a strong defensiveness and refusal to talk about race and racism. She uncovers deep-seated insecurity about addressing unconscious forces of socialization that have deluded white people into thinking racism and white supremacy no longer exist.  One of the many things that make racism difficu...

This article was originally published at SOLA Network on June 4th, 2019. In a previous post , I took issue with Brene Brown’s definition of shame and examined how we often overlook how shame occurs in the context of relationship and is the pain of disconnection. I defined shame as the exposure of a relational rift caused by one’s party misalignment with another party’s stated values. It can (and often does) result in thoughts of being worthless. And yet the act of incurring shame can also be a redemptive gift because of what Jesus has done. The shame of Jesus has two purposes: First, the misalignment of values rebukes the injustice embedded in the religious system at the time. The Messiah’s disgrace exposes the self-seeking nature of the Jewish ruling authority. Second, the shame of Jesus is evangelistic. It indicates to the world there is no person who falls so far in disgrace that Jesus is unwilling to fall deeper to catch. In other words, Jesus suffered shame to heal the rif...

I often hear complaints from Asian American that roughly go like this: “I’m a victim of low self-esteem because of how my Asian immigrant parents shamed me during my childhood. The way forward is to resent my parents and their shaming tactics and to avoid shaming experiences in the future.” According to American's society’s leading shame popularizer, Brene Brown, shame is the "intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” It’s not that this definition is 100% incorrect rather that it’s incomplete, vague, and subjective. It focuses only on the individual’s emotional experience of shame. Before shame became public emotional enemy #1, there were Asians. Eastern cultures have been centered around honor and shame for thousands of years. While it's likely that most Westerners have a different understanding of shame, the consequences for this knowledge gap are more severe for those who are bicult...