Combating the Politics of Silence, Beyond the Walls of Academia

Scholars focus on the language used to pathologize global societal conditions, overlooking that most North Americans do not understand what influences global oppression. In Henry Giroux’s Burden of Conscience and Todd McGowan's Universality and Identity Politics, they identify ways to prevent the perpetuation of the politics of silence from an academic perspective. I contend that the frameworks of The Combahee River Collective build on the past to inform current cultural and political conditions and combat the politics of silencing through practices outside of academia, as they understand that the freedom of the most marginalized results in freedom for all.