Social Justice on College Campuses:

Building Critical Communities

Dr. Silvia C. BettezDepartment of Educational Leadership &Cultural

FoundationsUNC Greensboro

scbettez@uncg.edu

Diversity Education WeekUNC Wilmington

4-21-14

Goals

1. To define inclusion and diversity as it relates to the UNC Wilmington context and pose questions that inspire critical thinking related to issues of equity.

2. To define social justice and related concepts in efforts to raise critical consciousness.

3. To provide strategies for building critical communities as a tool for social justice.

4. To inspire you to continue discussions about community building during Diversity Education Week and ideally take actions toward building critical communities in your lives.

Social Justice• both a process and a goal • full and equal participation of

all groups • mutually shaped • equitable distribution of

resources• all members are physically and

psychologically safe and secure

• involves social actors who have a sense of their own agency

• responsibility toward and with others and society as a whole

(Bell, 2007, p. 3).

Rendón (2009) explains that social justice involves:• Having a “critical

consciousness”• Taking action to transform

institutional structures to ensure that people from all social group memberships have equal access to resources and opportunities

• Acting with love and compassion

• Working to heal and provide hope for all people (p. 10)

Critical questions related to Inclusion

Inclusion: the action or state of including or of being included within a group or structure.Include: to make part of a whole or set

• Who is defining inclusion?• Who is being included in what?• Who has the power to make decisions about who gets included

and how?• Who has the power to include?

If we have to work to “include” certain people, who is already at the unnamed center?

Context Matters

Who is at the center?How is the center

determined?

Sexuality

Gender

Race

Socio-economic

status

…

Recap Definitions• Social justice – equitable participation• Critical consciousness• Taking action• Acting with love and compassion• Working to heal

• Equity – justice• Power – ability to control• Prejudice – learned prejudgments• Discrimination – action based on

prejudgments• Privilege - Unearned advantage and

conferred dominance• Oppression - prejudice and

discrimination of one social group against another, backed by institutional power

Who is at the center?

Reflection RequiresConscious Self-Questioning

• Who am I?• How am I privileged?• How can I work in

solidarity with people who are being oppressed?

• What knowledge do I consider legitimate? Discard?

• Who do I pay most attention to? Ignore?

Knowledge of Inequities

CRITICAL COMMUNITIES: WHY WE NEED THEM AND WHAT THEY ARE

Critical Community Building definition revealed

Interconnected, porously bordered, shifting webs of people who through dialogue, active listening, and critical question posing, assist each other in critically thinking through issues of power, oppression, and privilege (Bettez, 2011, p. 10).

Critical communities are not necessarily fixed in location or even in present time; they are dynamic, fluid, and shifting.

To practice critical community building

• Think of the web: be open, inviting, allow shifts, and accept change.

• Engage in dialogue through active listening and critical question posing that interrogates issues of power, privilege, and oppression.

• Commit and be accountable to the well-being of the whole.

Closing Questions

1. How will you make a conscientious effort to operate with an attitude of openness and inclusivity within your social justice work?

2. What is the promise that you are willing make regarding active listening?

3. What is the promise that you are willing to make that constitutes a risk or major shift for you?

4. What is the promise that you are postponing?5. Where and how might you continue conversations about

critical community building?6. What does what you have learned today mean for the work

that you do as a student, educator, activist, or simply a citizen of the UNCW community and of the world?

Social justice Teaching Resources

• EdChange• http://www.edchange.org/who.html

• Critical Multicultural Pavilion• http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/

• Culturally Responsive Teaching Website (based on Geneva Gay’s work)• http://www.intime.uni.edu/multiculture/curriculum/culture/Tea

ching.htm

• James Banks Video• http://www.uwtv.org/video/player.aspx?mediaid=16209170

• WISE Website – Working to Improve Schools and Education • http://www.ithaca.edu/wise/

• Five Ways to Analyze Classrooms for an Anti-bias Approach• http://www.nncc.org/Diversity/sac26_anti-bias.analyz.html

Social justice Teaching Resources continued • Electronic Magazine of Multicultural Education• http://www.eastern.edu/publications/emme/

• Teaching for Change• http://www.teachingforchange.org/

• Understanding Prejudice• http://www.understandingprejudice.org/

• Teaching Tolerance• http://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do/teaching-tolerance

• New Horizons for Learning• http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/

• Project Implicit (Harvard)• https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/takeatest.html

• Edutopia• http://www.edutopia.org/

• Changing Education Paradigms TED Video• http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/ken_robinson_changing_education_para

digms.html

Lgbtq community resources• GLSEN• http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/home/index.html

• Think Before You Speak Website• http://www.thinkb4youspeak.com/

• The Trevor Project• http://www.thetrevorproject.org

Disability issues resources• People First• http://www.health.ny.gov/publications/0951/

• Disability is Natural• http://www.disabilityisnatural.com/

• Disabled Students’ Program• http://dsp.berkeley.edu/TeachStudentsWithDisab.html

• Disabled World Toward Tomorrow• http://www.disabled-world.com/

References• Adams, M., Bell, L.A., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). (1997). Teaching for diversity and social justice: A

sourcebook. New York: Routledge.• Bell, L. A. (1997). Theoretical foundations for social justice education. In M. Adams, L. A. Bell, & P.

Griffin (Eds.), Teaching for diversity and social justice (pp. 1-15). New York & London: Routledge.• Block, P. (2008). Community: The structure of belonging. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler

Publishers, Inc.• Darder, A. (2002). Reinventing Paulo Freire: A pedagogy of love. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.• Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed, 30th anniversary edition. New York: Continuum.• Hinchey, P. (1998). Finding freedom in the classroom: A practical introduction to critical theory.

New York: Peter Lang.• Johnson, A. (2006). Privilege, power, and difference (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.• Kincheloe, J. (2007). Critical pedagogy: Where are we now? (2nd ed.). New York: Peter Lang.• Kumashiro, K. (2004). Against common sense: Teaching and learning toward social justice. New

York: RoutledgeFalmer.• Rendón, L. (2009). Sentipensante (sensing/thinking) pedagogy: Educating for wholeness, social

justice, and liberation. Sterling, VA: Stylus.• Sensoy, O., & DiAngelo, R. (2012). Is everyone really equal? An introduction to key concepts in

social justice education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. • Wahl, S. T. (2014). Instructors corner #1: Are diversity and inclusion efforts in higher education

working? An intercultural communication perspective. Communication Currents, 9(1). http://www.natcom.org/CommCurrentsArticle.aspx?id=4683

• Weber, L. (2001). Understanding race, class, gender, and sexuality: A conceptual framework. New York: McGraw-Hill.

• Zinn, Howard. 2004. “The Optimism of Uncertainty.” Pp. 63-72 in The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear. Edited by Paul R. Loeb. New York: Basic Books.

Bettez References• Bettez, S. C. (2012). But don’t call me white: Mixed race women

exposing nuances of privilege and oppression politics. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense.

• Bettez, S. C., & Hytten, K. (2013). Community building in social justice work: A critical approach. Educational Studies, 29(1), 45-66.

• Bettez, S. C. (2012). Navigating the guilt vs. innocence dichotomy in teaching social justice. South Atlantic Philosophy of Education Society 2011 Yearbook, 169-181.

• Bettez, S. C. (2011). Building critical communities amid the uncertainty of social justice pedagogy in the graduate classroom. The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 33, 76–106.

• Hytten, K., & Bettez, S. C. (2011). Understanding education for social justice. Educational Foundations, 25(1–2), 7–24.

• Bettez, S. C. (2011). Critical community building: Beyond belonging. Educational Foundations, 25(3–4), 3–19.