Empowerment and President Obama

We were teaching about empowerment today on our Masters course in Public Health – Health Promotion here at Leeds Met. My colleague Dr. James Woodall was, as part of the session, asking students to critique a paper he and two other colleagues had written. The paper questions whether ‘empowerment’ has lost its radical roots and is now used too casually and without precise definition. (Woodall et al 2011)

Power is a key concept that we dissect when we discuss empowerment, and this inevitably leads to a discussion of powerlessness. Powerlessness, according to Solomon (1976) comes from three potential sources: firstly there are systems which systematically deny powerless groups opportunities to take action; secondly there are the negative images which oppressed people have of themselves, a form of self-oppression, and thirdly there are the negative experiences which oppressed people undergo in their everyday interactions with systems, institutions or the media.

In this week where Barack Obama has been re-elected (Hurrah!) it’s interesting to think about the effect of such an election on power structures and empowerment. When he was elected first time around, black people all over the world were delighted – what a message – to see a black man as the President of the world’s most powerful country, meaning that for the first time, a black man was the most powerful person in the world. (That depends, of course, on how much power you think a President can have, given the forces of capitalism and conservatism in the USA). In terms of the second of Solomon’s sources of powerlessness, Obama’s victories have had a huge impact on positive images and thus on dismantling self-oppression.

Marginalized people – and health promotion is principally concerned with those who are marginalized – have been able to use the election system to their advantage. This doesn’t happen often. In the election that took place this week, for once, the white, male majority did not get their candidate of choice. Exit polls show that 45% of men and 55% of women voted for Obama; of white men, 35% voted for him and 42% of white women. 87% of black men and 96% of black women and 65% of Latino men and 76% of Latino women voted for Obama. In terms of ‘race’ alone, 39% of white voters voted for Obama, 93% of African Americans, 71% of Latinos and 73% of Asians. Those earning less than $50,000 were more likely to vote for Obama – 60% as opposed to 44% of those earning over $100,000.

So all in all, poorer, female, black, Hispanic and Asian people were able to make their vote count and to elect someone who they felt would represent their interests. This is essential if one of the key outcomes of empowerment – systems change – is to happen. It also resonates with the first of Solomon’s points about sources of powerlessness, that systems operate to exclude certain groups in a systematic way. There is a good chance, with a second term, that Obama will be able to bring about permanent systems change. The implementation of the reform of health services must be a major plank of this systems change. One thing which seemed to make a difference this time around was persuading those who don’t normally vote, to get out and make sure they did.  They stopped Mitt Romney doing what he had pledged to do in cutting after school programmes, job training programmes, Head Start, Planned Parenthood and other social projects which primarily target the marginalized. Now, we have a President who has pledged to invest in education, tackle climate change, reform immigration policy; this means for example, that the eleven million undocumented immigrants might be able to gain a path to citizenship. I don’t agree with all aspects of America’s foreign policy but I’m certain it will be a lot more enlightened than it would have been if a Republican had got into the White House.

No doubt Obama will not be able to be as radical as he’d like, given the opposition of Republicans, but in terms of empowerment, it’s a great stride forward.

The change of leadership in China, also happening this week, gives hope that the two most influential countries in the world could take us into a different era of politics.

References:

Solomon, B.B. (1976) Black Empowerment: Social Work in Oppressed Communities, Columbia University Press, New York

Woodall, J., Warwick-Booth, L., Cross. R. (2012) Has empowerment lost its power? Health Education Research. 27 (4), 742-745.