Unit One – Week Three – Assignment No. 1 – Reflective Analysis

     Unlike bell hooks, I did not challenge the status quo as a child; I went along with it and continued to do so well into adulthood. I feel guilty about that to this day, weighing harmony with my siblings over confrontation.  Navigating that space can be exhausting, as I chose neutral territory to discuss meaningless topics. Reading bell hooks showed me the freedom and space to think and reflect on my lived reality. As a granddaughter of colonists (English settlers, given one hundred and sixty acres), I was indoctrinated early as belonging to a superior culture that conquered the “natives” and built Canada. I learned early to distrust the Doukhobors, the Indians, the French, Jewish people and basically everyone who was not English.   Of course, I didn’t question these facts.  I even chose a career – Accounting -  that certainly did not invite any reflection, theory making,  or questioning.

Oh yes, from my perch of eighty years young, I feel the guilt – the going along, the non-questioning, the acceptance, and, quite frankly, some of my overt actions and self-importance directed towards certain people. Bell hooks speaks of the false hegemony between theory and practice.  (p5) On reflection, I absolutely agree. As a young woman raised in the era of Gloria Steinman, I agreed with her and her theory of feminism, but in practice, I did not change a thing. hooks' conclusion that “it is indeed the purpose of such theory to divide, separate, exclude, and keep at a distance” (p. 5). 

     My last course, Critical Race Theory, was revolutionary for my thinking. The intersectionality of Race and Gender must be a place of terror for many women.  Unfortunately for me, it has been a journey to understand feminism as a constructed theory. Ignorant of the lived reality of the Indigenous and children who were forced off their land by English settlers and then sent to residential schools, I accepted the white English hegemony as necessary for the Indigenous to become civilized and integrate.   IHOP  (yes, the restaurant)  changed that for me.  

     Every day, my husband and I go for breakfast, an old habit from working together for forty years. Our local IHOP is a frequent choice where certain servers have become friends.  My friend, Donna, is Indigenous, and we have been privileged to attend a Smudge with her at her home and several other cultural events. She made a smudge kit for me, which remains a very meaningful gift, and I have heard her husband speak of his residential school experiences – horrific.  In one of my undergraduate courses, I had the privilege of attending an Indigenous Court in New Westminster, where I witnessed Indigenous restorative justice in action, and that was a pivotal life experience for me. It was theory and action in harmony. Restorative justice includes observers in the healing circle. It emphasizes inclusion over punishment, unlike our Justice system, which is hierarchical, with the Judge sitting at the highest level in the intimidating courtroom.

      Theory as a liberatory action is not just words; it is a call that links the two.  It is hopeful as it fosters healing, and for me, bell hooks put words to my life experiences and provided exactly what I needed to make some sense of it all.

Hooks, b.(1991). Theory as liberatory practice.  Yale  Journal of Law and Feminism 4(1), 1-12