January Blog Post

Natalie Perdew

Professor Ivey

Comm 160

February 2, 2017

Old people vote because they are the only ones who have the time. The new generation always wants change. Nothing is ever good enough. Why can’t things stay the same? Not once growing up did I hear any of these things from my family. I was always shocked when someone said that I couldn’t do something, or that I should be happy with the progress others were making for me. I had never considered letting another speak for me, because I saw it as demeaning. I did not believe silence could improve my communication for any issue regarding oppression. Although I understood that listening to the other side was important and you had to know where other people were coming from, I thought if you shared labels on issues, your story was the same. There only needed to be one advocate, and why not me? What if some part of my story was missed!

Russo changed my view on silence and power in her text when I read: “It didn’t occur to me at the time that my taking up space, my sense of ‘authority,’ and my comfort with speaking in generalities could be connected with my race, class, able-bodied, and citizenship privileges located in the predominately white middle-class university setting, or could serve to marginalize and/or silence women with disabilities” (35). A big part of my drive to be the leader in many cases, was that I feared not having power. I believed that people were “safer” following me than if we worked as a collective. I am guilty of Custodian’s Rip-off, Enthusiast’s Infatuation, and Curator’s Exhibitionism. Not once did it occur to me that I was reinforcing the very system I was so desperate to tear down.  Looking back, all the times I marginalized the differences in others’ stories, and used their problems to better my cause or situation, it seems so obvious that I was wrong. That I became worse than many of whom I believed I was fighting against. I used my gender to gain power over men. I largely ignored those whom were disabled, because it would not further my own purposes. When attempting to use my race and class as a way to voice others’ opinions, I believed I was using a privilege to their advantage instead of ignoring and overwhelming those with a higher inequality. I honestly thought I could make their situation better by taking over. I used everything in my arsenal to gain power, and deluded myself into thinking I was using this power of mine, to empower others. By attempting to be take power from some and share it with everyone, all I really did was take someone else’s struggle and marginalize it.

Listening is the key to communication. It is the most difficult part of communication for many of us. How can you trust others when you do nothing to speak up for yourself? Giving everyone the space to feel that they can talk and listen in their own measure of comfort makes the most sense to me. Although it requires a sense of security, the more we listen, the more we will accept each other. Russo concludes that by bridging gaps in equality, and learning to listen, we can create paths to destabilize systemic oppression. This needs to be a collective movement, but also a point of growth for as many individuals as possible.