Exploring Barriers in Social Justice Education: Myths and Identities

This essay delves into the crucial topic of social justice education (SJE), particularly within urban environments, highlighting the impact of globalization and the concept of a 'global village.' It examines the challenges of teaching SJE, focusing on the influence of myths and subordinated identities, especially among white students who may hold a sense of superiority. The essay references key literature, including works by Dyan Watson and William Ayers, to illustrate how urban students' experiences and identities shape their understanding of social justice. It emphasizes the importance of addressing racial biases and creating educational methods to dismantle myths and challenge negative connotations associated with racial status. The author, aspiring to work in SJE, aims to facilitate critical thinking about racism and diversity-driven biases prevalent in urban settings, ultimately seeking to find answers to questions of equity and inclusion within both grassroots and higher education levels. The essay underscores the potential of SJE to foster a more just and equitable society by confronting these complex issues.

The barriers of myths and subordinated identities in Social Justice education
Social justice education in the USA or any other urban part of the world has become necessary
because the world is heading towards globalization where all the individuals will become a part
of a global village. While thinking in terms of designing a method or pedagogy to teach social
justice the first question that strikes our mind is related to the term “urban.” The query deepens
even further when we think that why they have given it the name of “Global Village” and not
“Global city.” Do we have different parameters of social justice in rural and urban areas?
Dyan Watson in his write up explained about it when he said that “To me, urban students come
from an environment where they can value their education (Watson, 2011)”. This observation
can be further elaborated with the help of the concept of subordinate identities. Urban students
may have a different subordinate identity in comparison with a student studying in a village.
While imagining myself as a teacher dealing with the topics of social justice, I cannot deny the
presence of a sense of superiority among the white students. While attending one such class in a
nearby school I realized that a big section of while the population has lost a grip on reality. They
are living under the myth that people from the white clan are superior humans. I confirmed this
fact when I read the article under the title “City Kids, City school edited by William Ayers and
his team. This article clearly states that “It is the American white man who has long since lost his
grip on reality (Baldwin, 1996)”.
While thinking about the concepts of the global village and social justice education, it is
important to explore the fundamentals of an urban locality. Most of the sociologist agrees to the
fact that primitive human beings developed the concept of community living because they were
seeking security from the animals. An increase in the density of the population and the complex
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nature of the dependence on each other force them to bring in some laws to become civil in
nature. Later on, when the process of diversification on the merits of caste, creed and skin color
started, it gave rise to many myths and subordinated identities. As an aspirant in the field of SJE,
I always want to eliminate these myths from the mind of my students. I would like to mention
the findings of Maurian Adams and his team where they say that “Those who have multiple
subordinate indemnities often bring a different world view (Adams, 2014).”
The specific case of the white students in an urban setup can be studied for the superficial
connotations caused by a subordinate identity. In the coming future, while providing SJE, I want
to create certain methods where I can bust these myths and percolate the subordinate identities
out of the wrong connotations caused by the racial status of a person (Batruch, 2015).
With the help of my teaching skills, I want to raise some pertinent questions related to racism
and other such biases which are prevailing in the urban setups related to racism. Urban setups are
more vulnerable to diversity driven biases because they are divided into small and powerful
clusters and each cluster is trying hard to impose its identity and methods on the others. SJE at
the grass root levels and higher levels have this potential to find an answer to some of these
questions.
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References
Adams, M. (2014). Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice. Abingdon: Routledge.
Baldwin, J. (1996). City Kids, City Schools. London: New Press.
Batruch, A. (2015). Social justice in education: how the function of selection in educational
institutions predicts support for (non)egalitarian assessment practices. Frontier
Psychology, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00707/full.
Watson, D. (2011). What do You mean When you say Urban. Rethinking Schools, 49.
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