Misremembering

In the wake of news that the Trump Administration will be putting a citizenship question back on the US census, I have been considering the implications of this decision. While this consideration could lead to many, widely varying, trains of thought, I have been focusing on the psychological implications in particular. In his keynote speech at the California Name Conference Peoples Pedagogy: Defining, Defending, and Developing Ethnic Studies, Dr. Patrick Camangian introduced the Trifecta of Psychological Bondage, consisting of self-hate, dividing and conquering, and sub-oppression. This census decision enacts a form of psychological bondage, “aimed at shifting the balance of power -- and… that runs the risk of significantly undercounting immigrant, minority and low-income populations” (Schoichet, 2018). Through the advocacy of fear, this decision marks a backslide in the acknowledgement of competing narratives and our understanding of ethnicity, mimicking the destructive act of making the oppressed “invisible.” By playing on the fear of others, and consistently sending the message to an entire group of people that their voice, opinions, and needs do not matter to our country, we engage in this psychological bondage, which works to control the minds of the oppressed.

For decades, scholars, theorists, and activists have highlighted the profound psychological power of the oppressor. Steven Biko, for instance, stated, “the most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” Similarly, Camangian discussed the act of breaking an elephant. He explained how baby elephants are taken from their mothers and tied up. They struggle to get away until ultimately, the ropes are no longer necessary, as the elephant convinces itself it can’t break free… “so why even try?”. Isn’t this what we are doing with actions like changing the census? Do we not deny the progress we’ve made in enacting a gesture which will make people, once again, invisible?

A particularly interesting aspect of the mind is the idea of memory and how the act of remembering plays into power dynamics. “The Foucaultian approach puts practices of remembering and forgetting in the context of power relations, focusing not only on what is remembered and forgotten, but how, by whom, and with what effects” (Medina, 2011, p. 9). As a nation, in many ways, people in power control what is remembered and through what lens. In adding just one question to the census, we are essentially, writing the forgetting, or at least the mis-remembering of this group into our history, through what is, arguably, our most powerful data.

This willful forgetting exists, perhaps most significantly, in much of our school curricula. At the California Name Conference, various speakers and educators addressed the importance of including ethnic studies in the mandatory curriculum for public schools. The continuing, blatant marginalization of ethnic studies, leaves many schools teaching a, “culturally hostile and community irrelevant curriculum” (Camangian, 2018). Students learn to see themselves through the eyes of the oppressor, and teacher education programs lead to the reproduction of this ideology. Camangian suggests that the best way to combat the self hate that contributes to psychological bondage is through knowledge of self, and in order to achieve this, students must become the subjects of history, rather than the objects. According to José Medina (2011), “In the battle among power/ knowledge frameworks, some come out on top and become dominant while others are displaced and become subjugated… What Foucault calls subjugated knowledges are forms of experiencing and remembering that are pushed to the margins and rendered unqualified and unworthy of epistemic respect by prevailing and hegemonic discourses” (p. 11). In controlling which information is part of the dominant discourse, policy chooses, in a sense, what we as a society remember of our history.

References

Camangian, P. (2018, March 24). Keynote. Speech presented at California Name Conference

Peoples Pedagogy: Defining, Defending, and Developing Ethnic Studies in CA, San

Francisco.

Medina, J. (2011). Toward a Foucaultian Epistemology of Resistance: Counter-Memory,

Epistemic Friction, and Guerrilla Pluralism. Foucault Studies, (12), 9.

doi:10.22439/fs.v0i12.3335

Shoichet, C. E. (2018, March 27). Why putting a citizenship question on the census is a big deal.Retrieved March 27, 2018, from https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/27/politics/census-

citizenship-question-explainer/index.html