What is social justice? a DIY workshop

How would you explain to someone what social justice is?

Imagine that you have whatever time a casual interaction would permit: a few minutes, an elevator ride or just a sentence in the middle of a conversation.

Go ahead… what would you say? (Once again, I recommend finding a friend or a private space and practicing what you have to say out loud, so you can hear not only your words, but your doubts and your conviction.)

I like what Van Jones, the civil rights and environmental activist, has to say: that social justice is when we’d be willing to swap lives randomly with anyone else on the planet with the confidence that we’d would still come out a winner. (You can check out this video of Jones on the topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_-vgtYkJdA, which also features entertaining dissenting conservative commentary on what he has to say.)

I’d qualify that Jones is describing how we’d know we have some measure of social justice, as much as he’s describing what it is. And if it’s helpful, here are some of my thoughts on what social justice is…

• It’s a process. And this is not a cop-out, as if to say “We’ll never get there, but let’s keep trying.” Social justice is a process because people are not equal and our tendency is to be biased, and thus, social justice is an ongoing effort to discern and enact what is fair for each of us individually, as well as for all of us collectively.
• It’s transformative for the individual, the society and its institutions. Social justice is more than the temporary alleviation of someone’s need. It’s a reckoning of my personal biases, cultural norms and the systems we have in place for the distribution of resources that leads to more inclusive and fair relationships and everyday experiences. So in my mind, social justice alters each of us.
• It’s when people thrive. This brings me back to Jones’ idea of a life lottery, where we could all randomly draw lots and walk away with the assurance that the world is, if not our oyster, then an oyster bed where we can sow some seeds.

Protecting bad teachers hurts some students more than others

On Monday 5/14/12, eight CA students, ages 7 to 15, filed a lawsuit against the state for effectively protecting bad teachers from getting fired. The suit, sponsored by the nonprofit education reform group Students Matter, challenges “teacher tenure, dismissal procedures and seniority-based layoffs– three longtime tenets of the teaching profession that have fallen under increasingly sharp criticism in recent years but are fiercely protected by unions” (http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_20628139/lawsuit-attacks-teacher-tenure-rules-alum-rock-los).

You can read the complete filing here: http://studentsmatter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/SM_Vergara-v.-California-COMPLAINT_5.14.12.pdf.

The student plaintiffs are all cited as being, through no fault of their own, “at substantial risk of being assigned to, a grossly ineffective teacher who impedes her equal access to the opportunity to receive a meaningful education.”

And, as the suit argues, all students are not at equal risk:

This problem affects California public school students statewide. In any given school year, any student might be arbitrarily assigned to a grossly ineffective teacher who should not be teaching. Studies show that students who are unfortunate enough to be assigned to two or more grossly ineffective teachers in a row are unlikely ever to catch up to their peers. But the problem is worse for students at schools that serve predominantly minority and economically disadvantaged populations because those schools have a disproportionate share of grossly ineffective teachers. In certain school districts, students of color are two to three times more likely to have bottom-quartile teachers than their white and Asian peers. Thus, the laws at issue perpetrate and widen the very achievement gap that education is supposed to eliminate [emphasis added].

While the language is a little muddled (“students of color” as used here excludes Asian-Americans, who are also not white–and therefore in some “not white or of color” category) I appreciate the suit’s clarity that the current policies regarding teacher retention are both a problem for all students, as well as a particular threat to black and Latino students whose families lack the socioeconomic means to provide alternatives to their local public schools.

Recognizing how race and class matter can only help us think critically about this lawsuit, our own perspectives and how to create equity in education.

Note: I invite you to do your due diligence about Students Matter and consider supporting their work: http://studentsmatter.org/.

“We’re rich!” a DIY workshop

Imagine that a child–yours, or one who’s in your care–makes this declaration loudly one day as you’re driving the carpool, chaperoning a field trip or playing at the park:

“We’re rich!”

1. What’s your gut response? (The unfiltered, internal reaction that you wouldn’t necessarily share with the child, but that races through your heart or head involuntarily.)

2. What could this be about? Why might the child have said this?

Here, I’ll offer a few notes from research (Bisson et al.) on children’s developing awareness of socioeconomic and class identity and diversity. What this research provides is a reference for how children’s socioeconomic and class attitudes and identities develop (because they do, whether or not we say anything explicitly). While these notes may not describe your child’s own specific development, they do trace an arc of growth from noticing to making meaning of differences, with evolving cognitive, affective and moral tools. As always, consider what resonates and is useful to you:

• As toddlers, it’s normative for children to demonstrate a bias for “rich” people as being not only happier, but more likeable. Perhaps that’s why at ages 3-4, they tend to believe the rich should share with the poor.
• Starting in preschool, kids begin to connect money with jobs and develop an understanding of the different statuses and incomes for different jobs. They describe wealth concretely—in terms of the amount of one’s possessions, or the type of home one has—in early primary grades.
• By 10, children still advocate for sharing wealth, although they begin to justify different socioeconomic circumstances with concepts like “motivation” (i.e. if they worked harder, they could make more money).
• It’s notable that during the middle grade years, children develop a social perspective of race and ethnicity, meaning that they understand societal dynamics and socioeconomic patterns across and within racial and ethnic groups. As they are making these connections and beginning to recognize how group identities impact individual experience, adolescents demonstrate a tendency to accept socioeconomic inequality, explaining disparities with concepts like merit (ex. people are poor because they don’t work hard enough), even though they understand structural, systemic inequities.

What I find appreciate about this research is the opportunities it identifies for us to proactively and developmentally supportively engage kids about the complicated topic of money and identity, with an understanding of what attitudes and inclinations are normative for us to develop as we come to recognize that we are not equal.

So…

3. What might you say in response? Give it a shot. Grab someone to role play with or just try it on your own. I find it helps to say what you think you have to say aloud, so you can hear it and get some practice in before you’re driving the carpool one day, and a child–maybe yours–in the back says something that you’re just not sure how to respond to.

This isn’t to guarantee you’ll have the perfect, wisest words in this or any other situation where your child is exploring identity and diversity. And you don’t need to. This is just to practice and notice what you yourself have to explore.

Daters of a feather… flock together

“How do we choose romantic partners?”

Harvard PhD candidate Kevin Lewis is the latest sociologist to try to crack this nut. Using data from on-line dating site OKCupid, he studied data on what identifiers people use to choose or exclude potential mates. His findings? Within his sample pool of single, heterosexual, NY city first time site users (admittedly a very specific demographic to look at “human” behavior):

• preference for partners from a similar social (racial, educational and religious) background
• a female tendency “to seek men with more education and more income”
• a male preference for ”women with a college education, ‘no more and no less’”  (http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/05/mysteries-of-mate-choice)

In other words, women tend to value diversity when that diversity entails social advantage, while men tend toward a fixed model of appropriate female intellectual and economic status.

As for the apparent racial divide, it’s not absolute. According to Lewis:

I’m very, very statistically unlikely to contact someone of a different racial background. But in the unlikely event that someone from a different racial background contacts me first, I’m actually significantly more likely to reply than I would to someone from the same background.

Lewis’ theory is that “when someone steps over social boundaries to connect with us, we’re particularly interested—and that can cause even sturdy boundaries to ‘totally disappear.’” And I find myself wondering how phenomena in face-to-face encounters—like the fear of appearing to be racist (Apfelbaum, 2008) and the converse fear of publicly crossing conventional social boundaries—are mitigated or unleashed by the e-verse.

Lewis also found that white men enjoy privilege in the virtual world, receiving the most initial messages, while black women receive the fewest. It’s an eerie reflection of our real world social hierarchy, no?

While Lewis chose OKCupid for his data in recognition that marriage records are an increasingly limited picture of how people pair up in a time of increasing divorce and cohabitation rates, it appears he could have looked to TV as another reliable source.

Reality TV, to be specific. Let me ask you: what reality TV show has the most successful on-air romantic matches?

1. The Bachelor
2. The Bachelorette
3. Survivor
4. The Biggest Loser
5. The Real World

According to People magazine, if you guessed The Biggest Loser, you are correct! The show has seen 7 couples get together and stay together to date, as compared to no more than 2 from any of the other shows. Lewis’ findings back up what the weight loss program has demonstrated:

[P]eople with traits that are uncommon [in the singles demographic]—those who have several children, for example, or admit to being overweight—are especially likely to flock together. One of Lewis’s favorite examples: people who describe their body type as “jacked” or muscular. “We don’t know if this is just because people prefer similarity in body type,” he says, “or if this is a proxy for people who clearly spend a lot of time in the gym and want a partner who shares that passion. But this is another group that self-segregates.”

In other words, identifying as a minority in the big picture of the heterosexual dating scene seems to correlate with seeking affinity around that identity, whether as affirmation, defense against prejudice or a sense of shared experience and resonance.

And while we do seek certain kinds of diversity, and can be encouraged to open up to others, it appears we tend not to value difference so much when we’re looking for a lifelong partner.

Now is that nature, or nurture? Research done by a colleague of mine who specializes in intercultural experiences demonstrates that after college-age students have an immersive interracial or interethnic experience (like in a study abroad program), they are significantly more likely to say they’re open to or interested in dating across group lines (Nam, 2010). But NYC is diverse, right? So those singles should be up for dating across racial and ethnic lines in their relationships. Well, there’s diverse and then there’s integrated. Personal challenge, support and critical reflection are essential characteristics of the experiences Nam describes as potentially transformative. It’s contact theory, v2012.

So lacking self-reflective, immersive intercultural opportunities, daters of a feather will flock together. But maybe The One is just the next flock over.

Saturday quote

If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

–John F. Kennedy

“No Homo”

Jay Smooth is my new thing.

This is a brilliant explication of the hip hop culture phrase “no homo,” which was new to me. It means “I’m not gay.” Smooth asks us to consider if homophobic language can ever be used “without meaning it like that”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJnlPP7jm5s&feature=relmfu.

I appreciate his position: it’s not about creating a list of Words You Cannot Say. It’s about discernment. And choice.

Here’s an invitation/homework assignment: after you watch the video, pass it along to someone else whom you think will appreciate it.

The White House is not #30

“At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married” (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/us/politics/obama-says-same-sex-marriage-should-be-legal.html?_r=1). That’s President Obama endorsing same-sex marriage yesterday.

A watershed moment. A game changer. A quantum leap in the gay rights movement, according to headlines. The New York Times writes:

The first organizers of the modern gay-rights movement, after the June 1969 raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in New York City, considered themselves bold in hoping they could pass nondiscrimination acts. They did not seriously contemplate a day when members of the same sex would be permitted to marry (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/us/politics/obamas-watershed-move-on-gay-marriage.html).

That was powerful and sobering to read: being equal wasn’t the vision in 1969. Just being less discriminated against.

I was also struck by a note in the Times about Obama’s long-observed reticence on the issue:

The president was at risk of seeming politically timid and calculating, standing at the sidelines while a large number of Americans—including members of both parties—embraced gay marriage. That is a particularly discordant image, many Democrats said, for the man who was the nation’s first black president.

[Note: For now, let's just accept the nation's continuing challenge with acknowledging Obama's biracial heritage.]

Notwithstanding that, as the Times‘ acknowledged, “the issue [of same-sex marriage] remains highly contentious among black and Latino voters,” I have to ask what exactly is discordant about a black man not eagerly jumping into the front lines of the marriage equal rights movement? Is black, in the eyes of “many Democrats,” supposed to mean progressive? Automatically invested in equality for all people of all identities? Why was Obama’s hesitation, more than any white president’s, discordant?

I’m not arguing that Obama shouldn’t have endorsed same-sex marriage; I’m just saying I disagree that on the basis of race, he should have been any more likely, quick or logically inclined to champion the cause. Being black doesn’t trump being Christian or heterosexual. And it certainly doesn’t preclude being heterosexist or homophobic.

Notably, Obama’s made his statement in the first person personal (I’m coining a new class of pronoun here), framing his position as “for me personally”–without invoking his race… or office.