In his book, David Diamond invites us to think beyond the binary concept of the oppressed and the oppressor. For reasons I’m still unpacking, I kept finding myself drawn to the perspective of the oppressor whenever an opportunity arose.
The exercise began with an image created by the participants. It consisted of three people: one on the left, appearing angry and looking toward the right; another on the right, who seemed helpless with her head down; and a person in the middle, acting as a mediator with his arms extended toward both sides, eyes on the angry figure. To me, the angry person was easily identifiable as the oppressor.
I asked the group: What do you see? What might the story be? Who recognizes themselves somewhere in this image? Everyone raised a hand. I then invite them to stand with the character who they recognized. Most went to stand beside the mediator; two stood next to the helpless figure. No one chose to stand with the angry person.
Then I invited each participant to speak one sentence beginning with “I want…” I left the angry character for last. When her turn came, she said, “I want others to stand with me.” I asked her to restate it—not what she wanted others to do for her, but what she herself desired. After a pause she said, “I want to be powerful and strong.” The shift caught my attention, and I pointed out to the group that these sounded like two very different statements. Many people nodded.
When I asked her what made the difference, she explained, “Because I felt so lonely here; no one wanted to stand with me. I felt the only way to make people notice me was to become strong and powerful, so they might finally want to stand by my side.”
I then turned to the group and asked, “Does anyone recognize this feeling? The feeling that when no one stands with you, the only option is to make yourself more powerful and stronger?” Many hands went up, and people began sharing their own experiences of feeling this way.
No one wants to self-identify as an oppressor, just as no one initially wanted to stand with the angry person in the image. But when we explored the oppressor’s perspective more deeply, we discovered that we could understand it, and at times had even inhabited something similar ourselves. As David Diamond reminds us, the oppressor is not an alien to us. We can try to understand them if we choose. This doesn’t mean we condone oppressive behavior that harms others. However, by examining the motivation behind and perceived needs and desires beneath those behaviors, we understand that these are the product of our life experience. From there, we may be able to locate a starting point to change the pattern that sustains them.
*The content of this article was conceptualized by the author, with AI assistance for some of the editing and translation.
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