Power: From Denial to Recognition

[admin]

Racedoctor: How can I help folks (especially from historically dominant groups) see how much power and authority they hold (People often deny their own power)

There are a number of strategies that can work here. One is to frame the issue with respect to scientific studies. There some social research that demonstrates that people systematically underestimate their own power. Being able to that finding and perhaps a few example studies it helpful. Illustrating the point in circumstances different thant the white males in the coporate world strategy is also helpful. And self-modeling helps a lot too. It is also great if you can think of a setting in which hyou had power, but tended to underestimate it until your eyes were opened.
My comments reflect my approach, which is to call out problematic behavior as the situation warrants, but to tend to avoid labeling individuals or groups as inherently problematic. I think too much diversity work in the 70’s to early 90’s took a “shame and blame” approach, which was largely a reflection of the frustration of diversity trainers toward the hypocrisy of society in general and institutions that wanted to get moral credit for doing diversity work but not go sufficiently beneath the surface to the structures that keep things inequitable. So in the name of fiercely telling truth to power, too many diversity consultants created settings where the focus was how certain folks are inherently wrong, instead of settings focused on how we might all use our differential powers and skills to create better functioning organizations and communities.