Thinking as a Tool for Change
Lucinda J. Garthwaite. ILI Director
In several recent conversations, I’ve been reminded that thinking is not often trusted as a path to change.
This mistrust has come up in critiques of what some call a “Book Club Response” to racial injustice. Writer Tre Johnson spells it out, “when things get real — really murderous, really tragic, really violent or aggressive — my white, liberal, educated friends already know what to do. What they do is read. And talk about their reading. What they do is listen. And talk about how they listened.” Johnson calls that a “slow road to meaningful change.” All too often though, such thinking doesn’t lead to change at all.
Too often thinking, particularly thinking aloud, becomes a camouflage for behaviors antithetical to change. Then thinking is one many call performative, belying a lack of sincere commitment to step up or step aside in substantive ways. One arguably deadly example is the phenomenon of “jumping the line” for a Covid vaccine, using connections and financial resources to access a vaccine ahead of people of color or with fewer financial resources, even after having thought aloud about the very structures that put those people at greater risk.
Such examples support the notion that thinking is not a path to change, but I think it is. It’s just limited and vulnerable to misuse.
What’s generally considered activism; organizing, protesting, policy-making and the like, also has its limitations. ILI advisor Elizabeth Minnich writes, in Transforming Knowledge (2004), “Acting against deep-rooted and massively prejudicial systems is no guarantee that we will liberate ourselves from, rather than just replace, them. They have the capacity to grow again if not ongoingly uprooted.”
Nothing can be uprooted unless we recognize the roots that need to go, and when it comes to “massively prejudicial systems,” thinking is the tool for that job.
Thinking is not to be confused with awareness. Awareness, one colleague pointed out just yesterday, is a state - a noun. Rigorous, committed thinking is defined by learning, considering, self-reflecting, synthesizing, questioning, discovering - all verbs.
Deep equity practitioners invite would-be activists to serious, even painful self-reflection as a critical precursor for change. (See Resources) Formal research has yielded insights that undergird and drive essential changes in policy, curriculum and strategy. Collaborative inquiry can bring together indigenous wisdom with emerging understanding to illuminate new ways forward, and remind us of well-worn paths to change.
I’m thinking right now and writing it down, and someone who reads this may find themselves changed. Or not, because thinking does have its limitations. It doesn’t always get the job done; it can be misguided; it can be self-centered and self-righteous. It can create the opposite effect it purports to desire. Physical action carries the exact same risks.
Thinking can mitigate the risks of action, and action the risks of thinking. Besides, mistaking limitations for uselessness is never a good idea.
Despite their limitations, change requires action and thinking. Thinking discerns a way forward, action puts feet on the path.