Activism and immaturity
Originally posted on Toward Decolonizing Physics
Within months of leaving undergrad, I vowed to permanently eschew the label “activist.” I had identified as an activist for most of my undergrad, a worldview that (unbeknownst to me) had been slowly destroying me. Along with a small group of other physicists, I had spent my undergrad shifting my physics department from a bastion of bro-hood to a national model for inclusivity, at least at the undergraduate level. But amid my successes of event planning, I found out I was burning out myself and those who should have been my closest allies.
After much reflection, I discovered the truth: I was – like so many students I see today — an immature activist. My process of “growing up” since then has taught me much about what plagues so much of modern-day activism, especially on college campuses.
Immature activism is not a topic I approach lightly. Too often I hear the word “immature” thrown around as a form of tone policing – telling young people, particularly youth of color, that they are being childish for expressing anger or disturbing the status quo, while the status quo is actively destroying their communities and the lives of those they love. By “immature activism,” I’m not talking about tactics – who am I to judge another’s actions in the face of existential oppression? – but rather the attitudes and self-image that underlie them.
Being a mature activist isn’t about shoving one’s feelings or cowing to the mantra of “slower, nicer” demanded by the privileged majority (in fact, I would consider both to be signs of a form of immature activism!). It’s about humility and introspection in a world that wants us to point fingers at other nodes in the kyriarchy rather than consider our own privilege, that wants us to fight to attain the privilege and hegemony white men carry rather than reject privileges attained only through the oppression of those less visible (often Black and Indigenous people).
It’s about owning the truth that, in Steve Biko’s words, “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed” – and realizing my/our mind can be a weapon too. It’s about realizing the extent to which our own minds have been warped from a system that casts so many of us simultaneously as colonizer and colonized, oppressor and oppressed, victim and victimizer. It’s about transforming one’s worldview from that of a victim, to a survivor, to an agent. All in a world – and a physics community – that seeks to define agency as the sole purvey of educated white men.
In writing about decolonizing science, former South African cardiology lecturer Siyanda Makaula writes, “Decolonization is going to happen in the mind.” Of course, there is danger in getting metaphorical – any discussion of colonization in physics should ultimately center the expropriation and exploitation of Indigenous lands in the name of science! – but a mature approach to activism recognizes that we cannot decolonize physics while we refuse to simultaneously decolonize minds (at least our own).
As I have broken out of the bubble of undergrad, I have met more and more examples of genuinely mature activists – and yes, they do badass liberation work! Where immature activism creates strife, mature activism creates healing. Where immature activism aims to redirect shame from the oppressed to the oppressor, mature activism destroys the shame that one realizes only upholds the logic of the settler-colonizer. Where immature activism blames and deflects (often as a defense against white guilt), mature activism listens, loves, and yet somehow grows stronger in the process.
For me, the turning point toward becoming a more mature activist was when I looked inward at my character defects and realized I had been using activism as a form of denial. I had become so quick to blame my marginalization for the struggles I was facing in physics that I failed to critically examine my own character at the same time. Becoming a more mature activist meant taking ownership of my own feelings and behavior (something white male physicists rarely do!). It meant learning to heal myself rather than blaming my trauma on others.
I should be careful what I mean by this “taking ownership.” Often, when oppressors (especially white people) wax about “self-responsibility,” they(/we) mean to accept one’s place in a colonized, white supremacist world and quit complaining about it. This, of course, is the same dangerous fallacy that demands women of color in physics “self-responsibly” display not a hint of anger while white men think it’s ok to put their feet on the desks during a female professor of color’s lecture (yes, I witnessed this not two weeks ago).
Rather, mature activism is about a different kind of self-responsibility – realizing that I am no different than any other individual, and that until I make the difficult and humbling journey of attempting to uproot the oppressor’s conscience in my own mind, who am I to claim I have the answers to decolonizing physics? Who am I to assume I have wisdom (when it’s the foolish who think they are wisest of all)?
At first these notions felt paralyzing – how can I make physics a better place if I must give up the idea that my vision (or that of those I admire) for a decolonized science is the right one? Yet as I have found that with increasing maturity as an activist, my voice is strengthened, not weakened, and I grow more filled with hope.
And while immature activism forces a stifling homogeneity (“define queer exactly as I do or you’re not welcome in my Super Radical Activist Collective!”), a mature perspective on activism breeds freedom. For some of us, decolonizing physics might start with revamping physics education. For others, it might look like leadership in student groups or department affairs. And for yet others, it might look like maintaining excellence in research while dispelling through our presence and actions the toxic and limiting idea of who gets to be a physicist and who a physicist gets to be. Not all of us have the same gifts and skills and interests, and that’s what makes us beautiful!
As an immature activist, using my perceived strengths to fill a giant hole in myself, I felt a constant need to “fix things” by assuming positions of power and leadership. As a more mature activist, it is precisely my knowledge of this vulnerability that frees me to do the work I feel most at home doing – theorizing*, and trying my best to be a healing presence to all around me. May we each develop the maturity to seek our own proper place and do the little bit we can to decolonize physics, one physicist’s heart and mind (or one telescope!) at a time.
* Theorize in the activist sense! I am a die-hard experimental physicist at heart…
[Update 12/13/21: says the girl who would switch from AMO experiment to physics education research 9 months after this post was published …]
