Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the burden placed on marginalized groups to educate those in power about their humanity, emphasizing the need for self-definition and proactive change.
Audre Lorde's quote addresses the expectation that marginalized communities, such as Black individuals, women, and LGBTQ+ people, must take on the responsibility of educating more privileged groups about their experiences and humanity. This dynamic not only perpetuates oppression but also diverts energy that could be better spent on self-empowerment and active efforts to reshape society. Lorde urges these groups to focus on redefining themselves and creating practical strategies to change their circumstances rather than continuously trying to prove their worth to those who oppress them.
In practice
In a speech at a protest advocating for racial equality.
The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.
The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer’s farce is almost done. My son is home.
That night I lie out under the stars again. The Pleiades are there winking at me. I am no longer on my way from one place to another. I have changed lives. My life now is as black and white as night and day; a life of fierce struggle under the sun, and peaceful reflection under the night sky. I feel as though I am floating on a raft far, far away from any world I ever knew.
Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
I who am in the night will move into the day.
Everything will change when your desire to move on exceeds your desire to hold on.
A change fell upon all things. Strange brilliant flowers, star-shaped, burst out upon the trees where no flowers had been before. The tints of the green carpet deepened; and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, there sprang up, in place of them, ten by ten of the ruby-red asphodel. And life arose in our paths; for the tall flamingo hitherto unseen, with all gay glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. The golden and silver fish haunted the river.
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