Embracing Struggle for Critical Hope Against Despair in Antiracism Education

• In Event: 31.060 - Critical Hope and Social Justice

Abstract

This philosophic essay explores Paulo Freire’s insight that “hope is an ontological need” (Freire 1994b: 8) and argues that critical hope is grounded in struggles for justice and provides the best antidote to despair about the persistence of oppression. It critiques some false hopes that contribute to a despair that can limit the social and political commitments of white antiracism educators. The essay shows that an understanding of critical hope, a hope without a definite object, strengthens the resolve needed to keep social justice reformers moving toward their dreams.

This essay argues that critical hope is forged in a way of life. To live critical hope means to take up the immediate task at hand in the struggle for justice and also to let go of the certainty that it is the right or only thing to be done. Living critical hope is acting to overcome situational limits, but in a way that is tempered by humility and critique, by a provisional commitment that nonetheless holds nothing back. Every transformative project that resists the dominant ideologies and renews the community’s wellsprings of meaning contains its own fundamental limits; every revolution is incomplete and every radical action has conservative elements embedded within it. We are all to some degree implicated in the evil we deplore and seek to overcome. Because our knowledge of the world is mistaken and limited in certain ways, because conclusions derived from any moral calculus can be ethically questioned, because the character of every warrior for justice is flawed and contradictory, living critical hope means to embrace the striving toward justice more tightly than the goal. It also means to accept the inward aim and difficult psychological struggle necessary alongside the outer battles. There is no final deep authentic self beyond ideological taint, so any celebration of exceptionalism is based on a false imagining of one’s purity and on a divorce from the history of struggle against racism and other forms of oppression.

Living critical hope forges communities of purpose and meaning that provide an effective innoculation against the despair often induced by the dominant ideologies. It is a vital force, a tenacious historically-informed way to struggle to make history and culture serve the aims of democracy and justice. Critical hope does not depend on some ultimate redemption or reconciliation, but rather accepts the virtue of the striving for justice as the measure of our humanity. Love is foundational to critical hope as we seek to embody a commitment to a moral life (despite our shortcomings), a devotion to others (despite their flaws), and a dedication to the dream of justice (despite its obscurities and the obstacles to its realization). Only this kind of critical hope endures as communities move beyond the brutalities and suffering imposed by injustice to build an alternative future, step-by-step and hand-in-hand, through hard work and struggle. This is the critical hope of liberation struggles that is the most certain antidote to despair in the struggle against racism and unjust schooling.

Author

• Ronald David Glass, University of California - Santa Cruz