Stages of Identity Awareness: Agents and Targets by Leticia Nieto
Stages of Awareness or Skill Sets are the stages or skill sets that people move through in their growth as Agents of Oppression and Targets of Oppression. Each of us are agents of oppression in areas of our lives (whether your white, able bodied, cis, straight, etc) and generally each of us are targets areas of our lives (whether your a person of color, disabled, LGBTQA, etc). Look through the skill sets/stages of identity awareness to see where you might currently be and where you need to go/grow. Understanding these stages of awareness/skill sets can help us to understand ourselves, and those around us. Knowing where others are at in their stages of awareness can help those of us working for equality and equitability strategize more effectively ways of reaching other potential allies.
To download the .pdf that goes into even greater detail on stages of agent awareness/agent skill sets please go to: https://beyondinclusion.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/ask_leticia_part_3.pdf
First stage: Indifference
The first skill for Agents is called Indifference. When we useIndifference skills, we are able tonot notice the existence of Targetsand their life conditions, and thewhole system of Rank. It can be as innocent as saying, “I don’t know any _____ people.” A person who lives in a small community might have a similar attitude, “I’ve never met any _______.” “There aren’t any ________ around here.” Often, however, a person using Indifference skills will not notice the existence of a person with Target rank, even when they are talking directly to them. Saying, “I’ve never met a _______” while talking to a member of the group being named is an extreme, but not unusual, example of Indifference skills at work.
The physical posture we associate with this skill set is a simple shrug of the shoulders that says, “I don’t know,” “It’s not my problem” or “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The key to understanding Indifference skills is to remember that we all must select a portion of the information and stimuli that we are exposed to. Through condition- ing as Agents in various social areas, we learn which elements “matter” or are “relevant.” These tend to be Agent-related elements. The result is that Target-related elements are out of our consciousness without us even trying to ignore them. It is not difficult to notice that what bolsters indifference is a socially enforced, passive aversion and devaluing of Targets and Target-related aspects of life. Indifference skills require the least amount of energy from us. They are the skills we default to in the areas where we have been assigned Agent membership. When we encounter Target group members and can no longer use Indifference skills, we use the next skill set:
-Second Stage: Distancing
Distancing, which allows us to hold members of the Target group at arm’s length, to keep them “away” from ourselves. Our feeling is that when we do this, we are actually trying to distance the awareness of our own unearned advantage, rather than those who have been labeled “other.” Using distancing skills, we emphasize the difference between the Target group and ourselves. We notice how much they are not like us.
This skill set is more complex than Indifference; it has three different positions. One is “distancing out.” The physical gesture of this skill is holding our arms in front of us, rigidly, as if holding something away from our bodies. The words sometimes verbalized as, “I don’t have anything against _____; and the sometimes unsaid next thought may be, “I just don’t want to live next door to them.” Or it may take this shape: “They can do what they like as long as they stay in their own neighborhood.” The feeling here, sometimes just beneath the surface and often unconscious, is of disgust, perhaps dislike, or fear. “Just keep it away from me” is the message.
The skill of “distancing down” is the one we are most likely to recognize as bigoted or oppressive. The gesture of distancing down is holding our arms rigidly and down, as if trying to push a lid down on something, trying to close a garbage can, or trying to shove something down into a container. This skill set is verbalized with overtly negative messages toward the Target group: “They’re sick,” “they’re dirty,” “they should be in jail.” Sometimes people using this skill set learn not to verbalize these feelings, but this doesn’t necessarily change the underlying attitude. Another ver- sion of this skill set is the attitude of wanting to “help” or “convert” or “heal” the Target away from their Targetship and towards something resembling Agency. The third Distancing skill is “dis- tancing up.” Distancing up allows us to see members of the Target group in a pseudo-valuing way, perhaps as special, beautiful, even spiritual or magical. The gesture is of holding our arms up and away from us with our hands open as if to frame a beautiful view. The verbal messages of such distancing up express appre- ciation for the group’s special quali- ties – but without awareness of the Rank system, the fact of Agent privi- lege – or for the individual qualities of target group members. Verbal messages associated with this skill include “_____ are so spiritual,” “_ _____ seem really close to nature,” “_____ make beautiful music,” or ___ are so amazing, exotic, heroic. Often this skill is accompanied by appropriation of things associated with the Target group, such as col- lecting art or music by Target group members or imitating a cultural style from that group. Like holding our arms rigidly raised for hours, Distancing skills take a lot of energy. They don’t come easily. Organized hate groups, societies organized around oppression and difference, are ways of providing group support for the difficult act of maintaining the distancing posture. But distancing is uncomfortable, especially when we find ourselves interacting with Target group mem- bers a lot. At that point we are likely to shift into the next skill set, which feels like a big relief.
The skill set of Inclusion offers some advantages over distancing. Using Inclusion, we focus on the similarities between Target group members and ourselves. We use ver- bal messages that emphasize similarity and connection, like “We’re all children of God,” “fundamentally, we’re all the same,” “treat everyone as an individual,” and “every human being suffers.” The physical posture associated with Inclusion is arms open, as if to embrace members of the Target group. As Agents, we experience Inclusion as liberating.
It feels like we’ve finally gotten out of the oppression business. We can appreciate members of the Target group. This seems terrific, to us.
It takes a while to notice the limitations of Inclusion skills, and many of us never do. In society as a whole, Inclusion is often seen as the height of intercultural appreciation, diversity and liberation. Yet Inclusion is still an Agent-centric skill. Using Inclusion, we do not recognize the Rank system, the ways we are consistently overvalued, and the consequences of our privilege and of Target marginalization. Without realizing it, we see our own group, and its values and norms, as the standard, and expect everyone to align with Agent-centrism and Agent-supremacy. We want others to meet our expectations. We may host an intercultural potluck, but we will likely feel annoyed if the people who come bring up the topic of oppression. We feel happy to welcome Targets – but we uncon- sciously expect them to conform to our expectations, to make us com- fortable and to avoid issues that we don’t want to talk about, and even to be grateful to be included.
One danger of the Inclusion skills set is that, being very clear that we do not subscribe to or hold negative views about Targets, we can resist the perspective that oppression is essentially a supremacy problem, rather than one of prejudice and discrimination. When we use Inclusion skills we are not conscious of the Rank system, and we can’t work effectively against oppression until we wake up.
Moving beyond Inclusion requires us to move well out of our comfort zone and out of the conventional rules of our culture. It’s a difficult transition that we’re unlikely to make without a powerful moti- vation. Usually it takes a strong personal relationship with a Target group member – a close friend, lover, family member or mentor – to care enough about the issue to confront our internalized Agent supremacy and step into the next, most difficult skill set, Awareness.
Awareness is initially experienced as unpleasant. When we access Awareness skills, we feel cold, paralyzed and even disoriented by emotions such as guilt and shame. We see the reality of the Rank system and realize how much it favors us as Agents, and we notice the workings of oppression and privilege all around us. We realize the many ways we have been overvalued in our lives, and we see the ways that the Targets around us are undervalued. We are likely to remember incidents in the past, situations where we used lower skill sets, where we failed to speak up about injustice, where we took advantage of our privilege. The whole Rank system is revealed to us, and we are rightly horrified, particularly because it becomes readily obvious to us that we are going to continue to use Indifference, Distancing and Inclusion skills for the majority of the time. The physical posture of Awareness is immobile or frozen. We may feel nauseated or panicked, and we may verbalize horror and shame.
“I can’t believe I never saw this before.” “Everything I say is oppressive, because I’m the oppressor.” “I should have done...” Awareness skills are difficult to stay with, because they are so uncomfortable. Usually, when we access Awareness, we will shift back to Inclusion at the first opportunity. Practicing Awareness skills takes determination and support. Most settings in society discourage us from using Awareness skills, so it’s helpful to have friends, allies and colleagues who can confirm the reality of oppression regardless of our perceptions. Awareness skills are, at heart, an opportunity to listen to and learn from the experi- ence of Targets. Using Awareness, we realize that we don’t know what it’s like to experience oppression in this particular Rank channel (even though we may experience other kinds of Targetship). We can practice what writer and priest Henri Nouwen called “learned ignorance” by thinking and, when appropriate, saying, “I don’t know what that’s like. Would you tell me more?” We can notice the discomfort we feel when we use Awareness, name it and stay with it as long as we can.
It’s a good opportunity to pay atten- tion to what Targets have to say about their experience.
If we can tolerate the discomforts of Awareness, listen to the experi- ences of Targets, believe Targets who speak about their experience of oppression (especially when their experiences do not fit with our sense of the world), and delay a shift back into Inclusion, we may be able to access the precious skill set of Allyship. Using Allyship skills we are, for that moment, fully aware of the reality of oppression and of the privilege we receive under the rank system. We acknowledge that we can never fully understand the experience of Targets in that rank area. We see the Rank system operating within us and in others, and we recognize the dehumanizing effect this has on all of us. At the same time, we remain able to think and to act. We are not paralyzed; we can choose to work against oppression, to midwife other Agents in developing anti-oppression skills and to support Targets. The key to understanding Allyship skills is noticing the shift from dreading experiences of Awareness to a stance of welcoming such experiences. Another way to describe this shift is a growing sense of being comfort- able only when being uncomfortable – which signals that Awareness is happening.
Using Allyship skills, we can take on the challenging process of help- ing other Agents wake up to the reality of the Rank system. We can listen to Agents we might describe as bigots and help them move to the next skill set – increasingly without judgment. We recognize the need for, and can support, Targets in creating Empowered Target-Only space. We can use the social agency of our rank to change the system, to challenge the social hierarchies that favor ourselves. Allyship can mean listening. It can mean speaking out on injustice. It can mean gently helping other Agents to gain access to a new skill set. Even if we sometimes can access Allyship, we will not use those skills all the time. When we are busy, distracted or caught up in the dra- mas of our own lives, we probably aren’t doing anti-oppression work. Our commitment to Allyship means a process of waking up, over and over again, to the Rank system and its operation in our lives. As we see that we ourselves don’t always use our best skills, we can practice lis- tening to other Agents and helping them, too, to wake up to the reality of rank and privilege.
For a simplified version of the target skill set, look to the bottom. For a more detailed explanation, please check out the .pdf: https://beyondinclusion.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/ask_leticia_part_2.pdf
Stage One: Survival Skills - Acceptance of Target status
We call the first skill set for Targets Survival. Survival skills enable us to stay alive and in rela- tive safety by conforming to Agent expectations. There are two ways we express Survival skills. The first is to approximate Agency – to move, think and talk like a person who has Agent membership. In doing this, we unconsciously attempt to meet the goal of this skill set, which is to make members of the Agent group comfortable and to meet demands based on the Agent group’s defini- tion of what is normal or okay.
The second Survival skill is to fit the stereotype that the Agent group has of our Target group: to move, think and talk in conformity with Agent expectations for our group. For girls and women, this means meeting the requirements of socially expected “feminine” behavior: to have the right size, the right tone of voice and, especially, the right attitude towards men. In other words, as women using Survival skills, we do whatever is necessary to make men comfortable, including unconscious, though sometimes verbalized, agreement with sexist norms.
Everyone gets practice in Target Survival skills, because everyone
has been a child, and all children are age Targets. For a few people, age Targetship is the only type they ever experience. Most of us experi- ence other areas of Targetship, so we’ve experienced using Survival skills in those memberships too. Although we’re usually not aware that we’re using them, Survival
skills are exhausting because they require us to constantly change our shapes to conform to the expecta- tions of the Agent group and the Agent-dominated environments we encounter every day. Yet, we get so much practice in these skills that we become very good at them, and when we feel threatened or stressed we are likely to unconsciously fall back on Survival skills.
Part of using Survival skills is to be unconscious of Rank dynamics. Using these skills, we may say that there is “no such thing” as sexism or racism or classism, whatever form of oppression operates against our Target group. We might assert to ourselves and others that we have never experienced discrimination because of our Target member- ships, or that we don’t let those experiences affect us or get in our way. As Targets using Survival skills, we will even criticize ourselves or other Targets for failing to meet the expectations for our group. This is sometimes called internalized oppression. For example, as women using survival skills, we may assess and criticize our own appearance and that of other women to make sure we meet the social expectations for our group. Survival skills for Targets can also include horizontal oppression, which is when as Targets we direct hostility, prejudice, discrimination or even violence at members of our own Target group.
The second skill set for Targets we call Confusion. Describing Confusion as a skill may seem strange, but moving from Survival to Confusion takes work. Confusion skills arise when we notice how exhausting it is to use Survival skills, and begin to realize that some- thing is amiss. We might spend a long time going back and forth between Survival skills and the start of Confusion before we notice that some people are valued differently than we are, that we are encountering oppression. We begin to see the Rank dynamics, and in our hearts we know that the subtle and not-so-subtle inequity we experience is real, and that we should not have to conform to it. Yet understanding and respond- ing to oppression is a huge task, one we may not yet be ready to take on. We know that we’re encountering inequity, but we do not yet have the language or the support to make sense of it. This mixture of knowing and not-know- ing we call Confusion. We may still present ourselves in the ways that Agents expect of us, but we also begin to notice, for example, that the leadership at work is white while the workers are Latino and African American, or that the men in our organization earn more than the women.
Using our Confusion skills, we may contradict ourselves and doubt the evidence of our senses. We say things like, “That doesn’t seem fair, but there must be a good explana- tion.” We might even say, “I’m confused,” or “I don’t understand” or “I’m taking this personally.” We admit the possibility that something is wrong, but we do not yet call it sexism, racism or a violation of our civil rights. We might still act in the ways assigned by our Target role, following those rules we internalized earlier in our lives, but sometimes we think or say or do things that do not fit the role. As long as our skill repertoire is limited to only Survival and Confusion skills, we remain sub- ject to internalized and horizontal oppression. We may act in ways that are hurtful to ourselves and to people who share our Target mem- berships, and we will probably not know that, nor why we are doing it. These skills reflect unconsciousness of the whole Rank system and lack of access to our own Power.
-Third Stage: Empowerment
Empowerment, takes an enormous amount of energy from within and without. It can feel like waking up from a deep sleep or responding to a life-threatening situation. To make this big move we must have access to Empowered Target-only space, a place where people who share a common Target member- ship get together to talk about what we face, how it feels and what do to about it. This could take the form of a women’s group, a black students alliance, a GLBT center, a labor union or any space that belongs to members of our own Target group. Those of us who hold multiple Target memberships may need to join several groups to become Empowered in each of those memberships. (For organizations that want to empower Targets, supporting access to this kind of space is a critical step.)
In Empowered Target-only space, Targets listen and talk about our common experience, what happens to us every day, and often we see others nodding in recognition even before we finish the story. We talk about the historical roots of the problem, the social conditions that support the status quo and so on. Using our Empowerment skills, we need to talk about our experience of oppression, especially the subtle but constant marginalizations, sometimes to the exclusion of every- thing else. It’s painful, but it keeps us awake, like pressing on a bruise to see where its edge is and how it hurts. When we speak about the oppression we wake up more and more, which can help us avoid slid- ing back into the unconsciousness of the earlier skills.
Target group members using Empowerment skills will bring up the issue of oppression in many different interactions. We seek out information about our own group and the history of oppression we have faced, and express solidarity with other members of our group. We express anger at Agent norms, Agent institutions and individual Agent members. This constant focus on the issue keeps us activated. The energy of Empowerment helps us mobilize to resist oppression, take action, learn everything there is to learn about the nature of supremacy and how to counter injustice. Yet, constant focus on the dynamics of oppression is often exhausting for the Target and everyone around
us. There’s a sense that there’s no down time. We may bring it up in many environments and at moments that are unproductive, even in situa- tions where we risk our own safety.
As we use Empowerment skills, we may notice that we can’t sustain the energetic demand of constantly confronting oppression head-on. We begin to evaluate what works and what doesn’t, and to make more conscious choices about when to bring up the issue, when to walk away, when to concentrate on other matters. We call these Strategy skills. Using Strategy, we start to choose our battles and sort out the most effective action: when to work with other Targets, when to make demands of social institutions, when to confront individual Agents, when not to act. We align ourselves with the best values and norms of our own Target group and spend less time reacting to the Agent group and Agent expectations.
Strategy skills free us to make choices that support our group and ourselves. We can appreciate other members of our group because of their personal qualities, rather than the Target group membership itself. We find we can selectively appreciate individual Agents who show themselves to be allies in our struggle. Strategy skills conserve our energy and maximize our effectiveness in anti-oppression work.
As we continue to use Strategy skills, we begin more and more to discern our own optimal, liberating norms and values from oppressive, dehumanizing ones, and to support members of our own and other Target groups. We acknowledge the significance and impact of ineq- uity due to Rank memberships and make increasingly congruent and adaptive choices. We find more ready access to our true Power,and are able to bring it to bear on our daily lives.
-Fifth Stage: Re-Centering
Using Re-Centering skills, we collaborate with other Targets and with ally Agents to challenge system of oppression in the most effective, humanizing and streamlined ways. We use our understanding of systems of oppres- sion to move into leadership roles in our social-change work.
Few Targets get to use Re- Centering skills, and even the most wise and skillful Targets use these skills only some of the time. As Targets with access to all of these skill sets, we use each one, depend- ing on the situation and how
much energy we have in a specific moment. The goal is not to always use a certain skill set, but rather to use the skills that are most function- al in a given moment. Each skill set has some value. We can support ourselves and other Target group members best when we have appre- ciation for the value and necessity of each skill set. When we receive appropriate support for the skill set we are currently using, it becomes possible to shift into higher skill sets, and to create more effective solutions to the challenges posed by the Rank system. Anti-oppression work aims to free everyone from the harmful and dehumanizing effects of the Rank system. As we develop better skills, we gain the ability to liberate ourselves and others and to move through the world as whole human beings in spite of the limiting defi- nitions that societal conditioning tends to impose.
Survival Skills… Acceptance of Target status
-Self depreciating attitude toward self, members of one’s own Target group, and Target norms
-Discriminatory towards other Targets
-Tends to identify with Agent (whites/dominate culture) group and Agent Norms
-Tends to deny or minimize oppression and its’ impact
-Focus on survival by blending in
-Tends to express gratitude about being tolerated by Agents and Agent institutions
-Accepts Agent supremacy in messages and treatment without reaction
-Limited self-awareness about difference and dependence upon majority group for sense of worth
-Attitude toward the world and self are determined by majority groups’ logic
-Dislikes one’s own group, emulates majority group
-Accepts stereotypes of own group
-Believes that assimilation is the most effective method for problem solving
A significant event creates receptivity to new identity
Conflicted between depreciating and appreciating attitudes towards self and members of Target group
Conflicted between Agent held views towards Targets and sharing experience with other Targets
Conflicted between appreciating and depreciating the Agent group
Still focused on survival by “passing”
Begins to notice the cost of constantly ‘shape shifting’ in order to fit into Agent environments
Tends to know something doesn’t fit but has difficulty articulating issues of oppression
-Self appreciating and also appreciating of Target group members and norms
-May experience overwhelming feelings when realizing the pervasiveness of oppression
-Openly challenges acts of discrimination against own group
-Intense search for own group history, identity begins
-Reinterprets all events from one’s own group prespective
-Experiences deepen the trauma of discrimination
-Separates self from other minority members who seem to still be in acceptance stage
-May opt to try to limit exposure to Agent group members which can lad to feelings of anger and hopelessness because it is almost impossible to limit this exposure
-Tends to articulate and verbalize their emergent awareness of oppression
-Can be depreciating towards members of Agent group
-Behaves as though the majority group member is not human
-Confronts the system
-Person feels and overwhelming attachment to their own group
-There is a transition from the old identity to a new identity and the emphasis on the destruction of the old identity and glorification of the new identity
-Concerned with the basis of self-apprechiation
-Concerned with the nature of unequivocal appreciation of members of Target group and Target group norms
-Concerned with the basis of group-depreciation of the Agent group
-Begins differentiating between depreciation of Agent group members and the depreciation of the Agent/Target system and resistance to Agent supremacy and Agent dominance
-Begins to “choose battles,” i.e. to strategically assess the likely impact of naming issues of oppression with receptive Agents
-Participates in political action groups, seminars, awareness groups, etc.
-Undergoes a liberation from the majority group’s values, stereotypes
-Gradually both the strengths and weaknesses of majority group and own group become visible
-Appreciating of self, other Target group members and selected Target group norms
-Selectively appreciating of Agent allies
-Tends to see oppression as an Agent problem where Agents have the responsibility to address and change oppression Agent to Agent
-Tend to reallocate energies towards living a Target-centered life and not making compromises in order to fit into Agent supremacist norms and environments
-Selectively willing to assist Agents in learning about anti-oppression
-New identity is incorporated and the individual can renegotiate with the majority
-The person behaves with a sense of inner security
-The person has compassion for all minority people and can transfer values orientation to include all “isms,” differences
-The person demonstrates commitment, active participation in making social change
