Rage as Drive for Epistemology
Sharing rage connects those of us who are older and more experienced with younger black and non-black folks who are seeking ways to be self-actualized, self-determined, who are eager to participate in anti-racist struggle. Renewed, organized black liberation struggle cannot happen if we remain unable to tap collective black rage.
—bell hooks, Killing rage
Having an authentic voice in academic research does not only mean upholding or defying already accepted findings; but, really, it means learning how to gain access and control of the gathering of information processes. The practice of epistemology is often either not accessible nor centered on the Black and Brown experience. Yet, educators are given the task to prepare Black and Brown kids to participate in academia.
Historically, Black and Brown people have been robbed of the power to control how information is handled. It has not been coincidental that this lack of control has become the root white supremacy holds on to in science. Not being able to gather information from within our own communities has meant we no longer know how to find our own solutions. I knew this when I first launched the robotics program at my organization, but I lacked the structures to support my student’s own ways of conducting research. We were also faced with the problem that Paulo Freire had proposed in Pedagogy of The Oppressed; that if we were to strive for mutual liberation we had to learn how to listen to the true needs of our communities. We just did not know how to listen with the tools white supremacy had imposed on us for years.
After many attempts trying to listen to my student’s needs and in my rummage for new structures of collective mourning and restorative justice, I was able to develop a new way of conducting research with young Black and Brown people. I started by defying western epistemology in class and asking my students what non-western science would look like. We learned together about African Cosmovision and its focus on spiritual experience and collective storytelling. We tried to imagine a world where non-western science was the norm. Quickly, we realized that we, Black and Brown people, would have so much more voice in scientific inventions if spiritual knowledge was valued. We questioned how school has taught us to invalidate our personal experiences, spirituality, and all the many things we learned from our own communities. As we grew more and more appreciative of non-western epistemology, I realized many students began voicing their emotions about how hurtful it was to not be able to talk about their own experiences in school. Most of, if not all, the emotionally charged reactions in class exhibited anger.
I had planned to move on to teaching how to conduct research valuing both Western and Non-western epistemologies. However, I noticed this emotional opening and took this great opportunity to learn something new with my students. So, I decided to add a new transition into conducting research. This new development in my curriculum consisted of two simple activities: first, we had to create a list of things we see in our communities that makes us really angry; and second, we had to collect new knowledge of their top three listed things that made them angry. In writing the list, I encouraged them to think far into their first-hand experiences. In collecting new knowledge on these topics, I encouraged them to search within their own families, friends, and other groups they were part of. Many of my students had a really hard time writing this anger list, and others found it extremely challenging to collect knowledge that did not come from googling articles. I encouraged them to talk to people they’d see daily and take those dialogues as pieces of evidence for their own research. Even for me, as I tried to model how to practice these two activities, the challenge of finally affirming my anger was more difficult than I thought it would. I realized that, as bell hooks warns us in Teaching to Transgress, teachers cannot expect their students to show vulnerability if the teacher themself does not take the risk of becoming vulnerable. Bell hooks says:
Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process. That empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks.
After a moment's struggle, we entered the zone of rage against our own dehumanization and stayed there for a couple of weeks. This moment defined a big learning experience for me on emotional drive for the collection of knowledge. It was clear that for my classes, rage was the most powerful and healing tool we had developed as our collective Black and Brown experience began to reclaim its own voice.
I began exploring rage as a constructive tool for the oppressed to survive within academia. Compared to what marginalized communities are told when vocalizing their emotions, specially the Black community, rage is not is not a derailment of the dialogue on liberation. It was more than evident that acknowledging and grabbing onto our frustrations was in fact the primal mode of dialogue when it came to setting a common ground.
