CJ Trowbridge

2018-11-06

SOC 110: Social Justice

Topic Paper: Social Justice Pedagogy

The concept of liberation is interesting and counter-intuitive to me, based on the name. I expected to hear about the liberation of self, but interestingly, as the author puts it, if black people could liberate themselves from racism then they would have. It is in fact the responsibility of the people with privilege tio interrupt systems of oppression through careful observation and analysis of the situations they encounter. It is an uncomfortable process which causes us to reject things we take for granted.

In this way, a liberation mindset is closely linked to the cycle of socialization. The default role we are socialized into is one which accepts the status quo with regard to systems of oppression. We may notice things that don’t seem right, but we ignore them and the cycle continues. Only by consciously rejecting this default role can we take on a liberation mindset and actually look for those things that aren’t right, and then actively reject them in our minds and personal culture. This liberates the formerly oppressed through acts of justice and breaks the cycle of socialization of systems of oppression.

One interesting concept which was new to me is the idea that the oppressed are not responsible and should not be expected to defeat their systems of oppression. This is an interesting idea which I had not considered in the past. It seems obvious on reflection that they can’t do this, and shouldn’t be expected to.

It feels weird to restate these items as a list, but it seems like that is what the instructions for the assignment want me to do. I would be interested in learning more about the ideas I mentioned at the beginning and end: that oppressed people can not interrupt their own oppression, and that they would not be responsible for doing that even if they could. I accept these conclusions, but they seem counter-intuitive. I will explore them further.