From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_ttmd.com>
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:11:44 -0500

- Tricia's post of Nov 7. Referencing "In education we talk about "teaching for social justice," so when I think about how I define this phrase, I don't think about generic social issues." and the rest of the post.

Advanced the conversation? Certainly added a further dimension. It sounds like Social Justice as it is being taught is the intention to accomplish something (presumably policy support, resources, etc.) on behalf of the consistently disadvantaged against the interests of the consistently advantaged. That would be another category to be added to the two we have already identified (my post of Nov. 7); generic social developmental issues for individuals and national and global political issues for communities. At this point in the conversation we seem to have three lenses of Social Justice - 1) Social Justice as seen from the perspective of the individual struggling with common circumstances beyond their control, 2) Social Justice from a policy and political perspective dealing with particular challenges (poverty, environment, etc.) that can't be addressed individually, and 3) Social Justice from an ideological perspective dealing with group issues (i.e. the injustices are systemic not particular and cluster via
 group identities), more of a philosophical orientation.

I am only broadly familiar with the ideological (and happy to use another word if there is a better description) aspect of Social Justice, I am not familiar with the details. However, the issue of group identity arose on another list-serv a couple of weeks ago and I have been mulling on it. At the risk of sounding impertinent, and that is not my purpose, could you perhaps answer a series of questions as I try and distinguish SJ Ideology from the more concrete SJ of individual and politics? First question is, can you identify who is consistently advantaged and who is consistently disadvantaged? It seems to me that everywhere and always, who is advantaged is constantly shape-shifting, changing, recycling and context specific. I can see where a particular group may be on top for a certain period of time under certain conditions so you can speak of a group being consistently advantaged when you are using very tight definitions of time and circumstance but I struggle with a broad definition.

In thinking about it, and I know I am making assumptions, it seems as if there are four structural challenges around Social Justice interpreted through the lens of groups - Scope, Scale, Hierarchy and Context.

Scope - How do you define the Groups? You identify Race, Class, Gender, Ability, and Sexuality but surely it ought also to include Religion, Caste and Ethnicity at least. Nationality and Culture would also seem good candidates. What about Political or Ideological affiliation, Income, Profession, Education level, etc. What gets defined as a Group is one issue of scope. The other is degree of affiliation by Group, i.e. who gets counted as a member of a Group, who makes that determination and on what criteria? Self-identification, externally imposed identification, some sort of objective criteria (one drop test)?

Scale -Perspective in terms of scale would also seem a critical issue. For example, we can identify the bottom quintile of income earners in the US and define them as being poor or in poverty. However from a worldwide perspective they are in the top quintile of global income earners and even against the OECD they are in the middle quintile. So are they poor (US), middle income (OECD) or rich (World)? Depends on the scale perspective.

Multiplicity and Hierarchy - Every individual belongs to more than a single Group and the membership becomes ever more entangling the more Groups we acknowledge. Is there an ordering of Group identities that establishes precedent? A couple of scenarios. Is a rich blind banker consistently advantaged (rich banker) or disadvantaged (blind)? If the banker were Jewish (disadvantaged as religious minority) or Black (disadvantaged as racial minority), would that change the answer?

Context - This is sort of a question of how the above three issues mix together in real life. More difficult to describe but easy with an example. If I am an upper income black professional in a large urban environment with majority African-American population, am I consistently advantaged because I am in the racial majority (locally), I am rich compared to my fellow citizens (wealth), and I am influential (class), or am I disadvantaged because of my race in the broader context of the nation? Even if I am in the national racial minority but still in the upper income group, am I advantaged or disadvantaged? If I am a struggling gay white male in a majority African-American city, am I advantaged (white national majority and male) or am I disadvantaged (poor, racial minority in my local environment and gay)?

I know these questions probably sound like counting angels on the head of a pin but I am wrestling with comprehending how Group Identity would work without defaulting back to more concrete Individual Social Justice or Political/Policy Social Justice approaches already identified. Depending on the answers to the above questions, it would appear to me to be hard not arriving at the view that everyone is both advantaged and disadvantaged at the same time depending on definitions, scale, scope, hierarchy and context. The tighter and more restrictive we make the definitions in order to have clarity as to who is a victim and who is not, the more divisive it would seem but also less useful. These are as rich issues for we adults as they are for children.

In order to keep this post manageable, let me continue in a second one.

Charles
Received on Wed 09 Nov 2011 01:11:44 PM CST