"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral"

Freire warns that abstention in a struggle marked by deep asymmetry is not an innocent stance. When one party holds institutional, economic, and cultural power while the other is marginalized, withdrawing from engagement leaves the existing order intact. Because the status quo already advantages the powerful, nonintervention functions as tacit support for them, regardless of the bystander’s intentions.

The phrase “washing one’s hands” evokes a desire for moral purity, an attempt to avoid complicity by refusing contact. Yet social conflicts are not laboratories; the choice to do nothing has consequences. Silence protects the dominant order, and “neutrality” becomes a shield that deflects responsibility onto those with the least capacity to bear it. Freire’s point is not that all conflicts demand the same response, but that where oppression structures the terrain, neutrality is structurally partisan.

This insight challenges habits of both-sides-ism in classrooms, newsrooms, and workplaces. Presenting unequal claims as symmetrical, or treating harm as a debatable perspective, normalizes inequity. Critical rigor does not require withholding judgment; it requires examining how power shapes whose voices are heard, whose pain is legible, and whose interests are coded as common sense. Fairness is not the equal distribution of attention, but the equitable distribution of concern and agency.

Taking a side here means siding with principles, dignity, equity, freedom, rather than uncritical allegiance to any group. It implies actions that shift power: listening to those closest to the problem, sharing resources, challenging policies that entrench disadvantage, and accepting the risks that come with solidarity. It also rejects the comforting myth that harm arises only from what we do; harm also arises from what we allow.

The moral of Freire’s claim is practical: in conditions of oppression, refusal to choose is a choice. To honor justice, one must engage, not to impose a victory, but to transform the conditions that make neutrality a cover for domination.