Trust and Power: How to Avoid Unprotected Intercourse with the Powerful
By Nimi Wariboko
Eight Everyday Laws of Resisting Power
1. Do not trust anyone who has power over you, who has the power that can hurt you.
2. Do not trust anyone who has power over you when you have no countervailing powers of your own or you are not part of a group that can effectively stand up against the power over you.
3. Do not trust anyone who has power over you and he/she/it is not willing to democratize such power or to disarm.
4. Never forget that wherever there is power differential there is a huge potential for injustice, so says the ethicist (Niebuhr).
5. No power is in your best interest when it is in the hands of others who want you to believe that they have no self-interest in keeping that power out of your hands.
6. If power can hurt you, it will eventually do so unless you protect yourself against it.
7. When any or all of the above conditions are present you have an Us-Them situation. Do not be under the hegemonic ideology of the powerful and believe that there is only a monolithic “Us” or you are part of the “Us.” Protect yourself!
8. Love and not hate the powerful, but always work to defang them, rending their powers over you.
I wrote the eight principles down in the first week of November 2013. My colleague at Andover Newton Theological School, Professor Carole Fontaine, an eminent scholar and feminist, and I were having conversation about power and oppressions of women and I expressed views along the lines of the everyday laws of resisting power. She then challenged me to collate them and write them out so she could send them to feminists. After reading them, she said to me: “Nimi, given your principles women should never trust men.”
Should Nigerians trust persons who have power because they say they hold such power to the glory of an ethnic group or God? Should Americans trust anyone who has immense power because he/she says he/she holds such power to the glory of Almighty God (faith) or hints that he/she holds such power to the glory of a race? I hope all of you out there exchanging stuffs and inter-coursing with the powerful are protecting yourselves, your faith, and your race or ethnicity.
Nimi Wariboko
Boston University, USA
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