Freire also never accepted the poststructuralism tendency to translate diverse forms of class, race, and gender based oppression to the discursive space of subject positions/7 He always appreciated the theoretical complexity of multifactor analyses while never underestimating the role of class. For example, he resisted the essentialist approach of reducing all analysis to one monolithic entity of race. For instance, African functionaries who assimilate to colonial cultural values constitute a distinct class with very different ideological cultural values and aspirations than the bulk of the population. Likewise, it would be a mistake to view all African Americans as one monolithic cultural group without marked differences: United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is black, after all (and conservative). Somewhat similar gulfs exist between the vast mass of African Americans who remain subordinated and reduced to ghettoes and middle-class African Americans who, in some sense, have also partly abandoned the subordinated mass of African Americans. Excerpt from Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 17:31:02 +0000
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