What is rhetoric? Dang i don't even know mija!

I’d like to start this post by quoting Martin Luther King Jr. I took this excerpt from Strength to Love, which is a collection of his most prolific sermons. King writes, “Sincerity and conscientiousness in themselves are not enough. History has proven that these noble virtues may degenerate into tragic vices. Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity” (46). I participated in a panel today at the Albuquerque Cultural Conference. I think in all the panel was successful but I had a very emotional and visceral response to a few things that occurred during the session. This response surprised me because I think of myself as a very patient and logical person but I have this hotheaded Latina side to me as well. I’d like to take this post to contextualize my response and show how I may use it in my scholarship. I think deconstructing my emotional reaction may lead to a working definition of rhetoric.

First here is what happened:

Emotional Response 1: As I sat down in front of the panel audience I realized that I was the only person of color in the entire room. I only attended two panels, the one right before mine and then my own. The panel before me had two people of color but they were not in the room anymore, so it was just me. This happens to me a lot in academic settings and I’ve become accustomed to it. It has been a long time since that has bothered me but in this case because this was a cultural conference I had the expectation that there would be a diverse audience. There wasn’t. I felt a little nervous all of a sudden and so I read through the notes I had taken and took a deep breath.

Emotional Response 2: Early in the discussion I had made the point that it is not up to community organizers to interpret the needs of a community but rather they provide resources to the community to help community members to discover needs, interpret those needs, and articulate those needs. One of the panelists, who agreed with me, expanded on this idea further. She used the curandera as an analogy. The curandera does not heal but rather she provides medicine and it is up to the body to heal. This same panelist took issue with using the word “help.” She asserted that instead we should use the word “serve.” What I wanted to say was “You is loca lady. I do not need to be healed and I do not want you to serve me.” But I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything about that directly mostly because I felt frustrated and angry about it and this was not the time or place to get into an argument over a single word here or there. This thinking frustrates me because it is sincere and comes from a place of wanting to be conscientious. I don’t know how to counter sincerity. What I do know is that my culture and my people are not broken. We do not need to be healed. There is nothing wrong with how our culture functions, but we help with learning how to navigate systems of power that are foreign to us yet control much of our lives. To me using the word help is absolutely okay. Where I come from, help means, “I help you, you help me” “I got your back, you got mine”, whereas “serve” means “I am a missionary who is going to serve you and save you.” Serve continues the savior narrative. I’m not implying that this panelist meant harm with what she was saying, because she didn’t, however, perhaps her choice of words needs to be better situated to her intentions.

Emotional Response 3: One panelist made the point that to be trusted by a community then community organizers must learn the language of that community. Another panelist added that community organizers must also learn as much as they can about the community’s culture. I agree with these two ideas in theory, however, I argued that a community organizer entering a different culture must be careful not to exoticize the culture and turn it into a commodity- financial or emotional (as in I am exchanging a service to make my self feel better). The conversation then shifted to how we must find connections, commonalities, and intersections between our cultures. I agree with this in theory but we also need to be okay with the fact there are major differences. An outsider will never be fully integrated into a culture and they shouldn’t try to be or expect to be. These two sentiments, learning about culture and finding commonalities between two cultures, are problematic. We need to drop the anxiety over being different. I once again did not speak up. I stopped myself from saying anything because I didn’t want to offend anyone. Because I saw on the audience member’s faces that they so desperately want to serve. In contrast however, I also saw an appropriation of culture. I saw their turquoise necklaces and flowy linen shirts with Mexican embroidery. And I said nothing.

So what does this all have to do with rhetoric? Well I ask, were my emotional responses fair? I’m not sure. Maybe not. Maybe I can’t complain about it because I didn’t do anything to correct the situation. But I didn’t feel it was my place to correct anything. I looked at the context I was in, the social setting, the political reality, the sincere faces, the rhetorical situation of the conference and decided that this was not a place to make the arguments I wanted to make. I am not bashing the conference or the panelists, or even the audience. There were good intentions all around. I want to merely look at how I reacted and connect this reaction to my scholarly work. Language is powerful and the ability to use language effectively gives us power. I decided not to use language. I decided that it was better to save that for another day. I think this may be a jumping off point for my research interests this semester. And finally, here is the definition of rhetoric I have so far: The power and ability to discern when, why, and how to use language.