Leaders within Each Group
There will be real difficulties to be overcome in creating leaders for every section of the population. Oppressed people will find great subjective difficulty in responding to the challenge to become leaders, because of the internalized oppression. They will need consistent challenge, much sincere validation, and confident expectation for them to move against the internalized oppression; to follow a confident, powerful model.
As a leader developing additional leaders, trying to bring members of particular oppressed groups into leadership, you can be most effective by helping them move out of their internalized oppression. You are outside of that oppression (usually). You can see how wrong it is that they have been hurt and forced to accept the oppression’s negative judgments of them and their abilities. You can remember our basic theory that every person is enormously intelligent; able to be completely aware; completely free to decide anything they want to, any way they want to, anytime they want to; and completely powerful. You can firmly not buy into [accept] the internalized-oppression judgment of themself on the part of the person, no matter how persistent or insistent they seem to be in accepting this attitude.
Because the internalized oppression which you do not share seems so ridiculous, you will be pulled to treat it lightly. Instead, you need to remember how insistent it is, how sticky and clinging. You need to write yourself memos, that in all your relations with this person that you are bringing into leadership you express pride and affection in the fact that this person is a Wygelian (“Wygelian” standing for whatever kind of group the person is a member of). You make it clear always that you love these persons because they are human, because they are smart, because they are attractive, because they have such great potential, but also that you love them because they are Wygelians.
At the same time, your underlying attitude needs to be based on the fact that all humans are 99.99% similar. The differences, even between genders, let alone races and ages and classes, are very, very surfacy and minimal. These differences need to be paid attention to because they have received so much attention, because they have had so much distress stuck to them by the operations of the racist, sexist, in-every-way-oppressive society, but, basically, “all men are sisters.” With this as your fundamental knowledge, you will treat each person’s culture with respect, but you will not buy into the cultural patterns; nor the individual patterns; nor, particularly, the patterns of internalized oppression.
One will need to check that associates and other leaders are reminded to express respect and delight in each person’s Wygelianism. Otherwise the operation of the oppression of racism, for example, will go on unawarely and persistently. The group which should be a support and inspiration for the person will instead become oppressive. Great difficulty is created simply by unaware ignoring of a Black person by white people, or persistent condescension or uneasiness patterns of which the carriers may not even themselves be aware. Aware expression of appreciation, love, and delight to an oppressed person makes it almost impossible to unawarely be oppressive to them at the same time.
People from groups that have been made to play an oppressor role (such people have always been oppressed, too, of course) will often “seem” to be more ready for leadership. Men, on the average, will “seem” to be bolder about taking initiative, about being courageous, about working on their own, than women, on the average, will seem to be. Owning-class people “expect to be in charge of everything” in a rigid way which may seem a relief to a leader after experience in trying to push working-class people to take initiative. Remember that these people who have been made to operate in oppressor roles have great hurts binding them into these roles. Their motivations are numbed. They will often have difficulty with policy. They’re likely unawarely to act as if “what’s good for the oppressor is good for everybody.” You must be kind and understanding of their difficulties, but nevertheless aware and firm that these dramatizations are not allowed to discolor their leadership.
From pages 25 to 28 of The Enjoyment of Leadership
(Present Time 210, January 2023)