This fall I joined LJIST community member and BWB co-founder, Casey Carroll, as a guest on her Questions to Hold podcast.

Casey invited me to reflect on my relationship to questions, a core theme of the show.

Being curious is an inherent part of our humanity.

We are curious as young people long before we have words to form verbal questions.

Have you spent time with young people, especially 4- to 8-year-olds in what I call the “Why Phase?” Every sentence begins with “why?” “how come?” “what about?”

They, and all young people, remind us that questions—and the curiosity underneath each query—help us know ourselves and our world.

Like most young people, I stopped asking questions. 

It wasn’t because I stopped being curious. It was because of the impacts of oppression, specifically adultism, that came at me from well-meaning and exhausted adults.

In my home and my church community, the concepts of respeto and the virtue of obedience determined that I would stay silent and compliant (even though I was internally indignant or fuming!).

Asking questions would draw punishment, frustration (a thin veil for overwhelm and not having the answer themselves), and disappointment from people I loved and wanted close with me. 

Being tracked as “talented and gifted” in school also impacted by ability to question. The assumption for student’s labeled “TAG” is that we’re “smarter” than other young people. Why would we ask questions when we’re already supposed to have all the answers?

As as a young person, my reaction to the adults I feared was obedience. I was “seen but not heard.”

Today, I struggle when I’m questioned about my thinking, especially if it contradicts dominant or accepted ideas.

Our current society values, believes, and trusts thinking from owning and middle-class, White men by default and often without question.

As an Afro-Latina, raised poor, female, I get questioned. A lot. ❓❗❓

My adult reaction to fear has been to fight–and I’ve learned to use questions as weapons. 🏹 

Questions and questioning have power.  

Questions can be used to make a statement. To assert a way of thinking. To suggest a “better” way to be or behave.

Questions can control, can draw out information from others that can be used against them. Questions can undermine, sow doubt.  

The person who asks the question can use it to assert and maintain power.

As a certified master-level facilitator, trainer, consultant, and coach, it’s important for me to be aware of the power in questions.

To stay in integrity I ask myself: What’s under this question?

Do I really want to know the answer? Do I really want to hear their response? Am I willing to be transformed by their response?

Does this question seek to assert how much “I know?” Does this question want to validate or make invalid what they know?

Am I seeking to change or be with them?

Am I seeking a transactional outcome? 

What questions come up for you as you consider the power in asking questions of others?

Casey also asked me what question I’m putting out into the world.

My answer: What would be different about how we approach the work of ending oppression if we started from the premise that we’re all good?

The episode’s called What do we have to risk to be reconnected?