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Respect Differences?
Challenging the Common Guidelines in Social Justice Education
Özlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo
Abstract
In social justice education, it is common to establish guidelines for classroom discussions. We exam-
ine the limits of these guidelines in achieving the goals of social justice education, arguing that they
are not responsive to power relations. Rather than creating a supportive space for dialogue, these
guidelines actually can interfere with achieving social justice education goals. We also describe our
eorts to engage alternative strategies for responding to power in the social justice classroom.
Creating a democratic atmosphere in which everyone participates
means both putting ourselves forward and including others. To do this
we must understand the dynamics rooted in issues of power, and do
things which counter them. (Adair & Howell, 2001)
Imagine...
You are teaching a required teacher education course on social
justice in one of its many forms (e.g., cultural diversity and social
justice, multicultural education, or diversity in education). Typical
of the teacher education student demographic in the United States
and Canada, the majority of your class of 30 is White women who
grew up in liberal, middle- class suburban contexts. Only a small
percentage of the class represents other identities along lines of race,
class, gender, ability, etc.
Knowing that the majority of students are new to discussions of
social justice and seeking to create a supportive and democratic space
that will encourage participation, you introduce a few standard
discussion guidelines:
• Speak for yourself instead of generalizing— use I statements.
• Respect dierences— everyone’s opinion matters.
• Challenge ideas not people.
• Stay open and engaged— be responsible for your own learning.
You ask students if they would like to add any additional guidelines to
the list, and they suggest the following:
• Don’t judge.
• Assume good intentions.
• Don’t attack people who disagree with you.
• Treat others as you would like to be treated.
• Don’t take things personally.
• Laugh with anyone, but laugh at no one.
Aer some discussion and clarication (e.g. “treat others as you
would like to be treated” is modied to “treat others as they would like
to be treated,” and “don’t judge” is modied to “hold your judgments
lightly”), everyone votes in agreement with the guidelines, and you
post them on the wall or course website.
In subsequent weeks, several dynamics familiar to social justice
educators begin to manifest. Students in dominant group positions
(e.g., male, White, cisgender, able bodied) repeatedly raise a range of
objections to scholarly evidence that they have privilege by virtue of
their social positions. Further, these students dominate the discussion
and continue to use terms and phrases that you have repeatedly
explained are problematic (e.g., colored people, Orientals, that’s
retarded, and that’s ghetto). In response, other students are becoming
triggered or withdrawn. From week to week, you notice that tensions
increase in the classroom. And if you— as the instructor— represent a
visibly minoritized group within academia (e.g., female, transgender,
person of Color, person with a visible disability), you sense that
dominant students are invalidating you in ways they would not
invalidate other instructors, and you are struggling to maintain your
legitimacy as you try to facilitate these dicult dynamics.
is an associate professor in education at Simon
Fraser University. Robin DiAngelo is an associate professor in
education at Westeld State University. Together, they are the
authors of Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key
Concepts in Social Justice Education (Teachers College Press, ).
Submit a response to this article
Submit online at democracyeducationjournal.org/home
Read responses to this article online
http://democracyeducationjournal.org/home/vol/iss/
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Questioning the Common Guidelines
We teach courses with a social justice focus, primarily for teachers
or those who are becoming teachers in K– contexts. In addition
to classroom teaching, we consult, conduct research, attend
workshops and conferences, and contribute to social justice
scholarly literature. From these sessions, research, and the litera-
ture, it is clear that building trust through an open, accepting, and
safe space is an oen taken- for- granted goal in our discipline (as an
online search of syllabi will show). For example, almost every
social justice– oriented education forum presents guidelines for
discussion. ese guidelines are either pre- formed and shared with
the group, or elicited from the group and posted in the room.
Guidelines typically include: Listen respectfully, don’t judge,
everyone’s opinion counts, share the airtime, respect the right of
others to disagree, and assume good intentions.
Guidelines are oen viewed as fundamental to building the
community and creating the democratic climate necessary for
discussions of social justice content (Goodman, ; Adams, Bell,
& Grin, ). Indeed, so central is the goal of a supportive
community that it is presumed that without it, the goals of the
discussion cannot be achieved. ese guidelines and the norms
they engender are also embodied in assignments that invite
students to connect personally to readings or other texts (e.g.,
What part of the reading did you relate to? What resonated for you?
What didn’t? Where have you seen these dynamics in your own life?
What feelings came up for you as you read?). is indicates that the
sharing of opinions and personal feelings and connections— and
the elevation of this sharing through guidelines to respect, validate,
and protect them— is a perceived cornerstone of social justice–
oriented education.
Having used such guidelines ourselves, we have come to
believe that rather than creating an equitable and open space, they
actually increase unequal power relations in the classroom. ey
do so through an embedded assumption that it is possible to create
a space that is experienced by all students as respectful, validating,
and protective, regardless of their social locations. In recent years
we have found it helpful to strategically constrain several of the
most familiar community- building guidelines including: sharing
opinions, arming everyone’s perspectives, assuring everyone
feels heard, eliciting personal connections and feelings about the
course material and emotional responses to course texts, co-
constructing the curriculum, and sharing airtime. We refer to these
familiar guidelines and community- building practices as common
guidelines. In this essay we critique these common guidelines and
explore four interrelated social justice concepts relevant to our
critique. ese concepts are:
• knowledgeconstruction,
• positionality,
• internalizedoppression/internalizeddominance,and
• safety.
Our argument is that the interests and needs of dominant
groups usually drive the common guidelines (Lee & Johnson-
Bailey, ; Leonardo & Porter, ; Sensoy & DiAngelo, ).
us, these guidelines run counter to the goal of interrupting
unequal power relations in service of social justice practice. We
base our argument on scholarly work in the eld as well as years of
trial and error in our own struggles to set the most constructive
context for social justice education in classrooms that are situated
in an inherently inequitable sociopolitical context. Our goals in
problematizingthecommonguidelinesaretwofold:toexplicate
how these guidelines function to reproduce dominant relations
and to unsettle the discursive authority that they hold.
Critical Social Justice Pedagogy
In mainstream discourse (in contrast to critical discourse), the
term social justice is oen employed loosely, devoid of its political
commitments. For example, many who profess to support social
justice do not acknowledge that all of us are complicit in systems of
oppression and privilege. Indeed, being for social justice oen
seems to function as a disclaimer of any such complicity. Given
this, we want to clarify that we dene social justice as a recognition
that:
• allpeopleareindividuals,butwearealsomembersofsocially
constructed groups;
• societyisstratied,andsocialgroupsarevaluedunequally;
• socialgroupsthatarevaluedmorehighlyhavegreateraccess
to resources and this access is structured into the institutions
and cultural norms;
• socialinjusticeisrealandexiststoday;
• relationsofunequalpowerareconstantlybeingenactedat
both the micro (individual) and macro (structural) levels;
• weareallsocializedtobecomplicitintheserelations;
• thosewhoclaimtobeforsocialjusticemuststrategicallyact
from that claim in ways that challenge social injustice; and
• thisactionrequiresacommitmenttoanongoingandlifelong
process.
Anchored by these principles, social justice educators guide
students in commitments along at least three fronts (Banks, ;
Cochran- Smith, ; Kincheloe, ; Sensoy & DiAngelo, ).
First, social justice educators guide students in critical
analysis of the presentation of mainstream knowledge as neutral,
universal, and objective. For example, many social justice educa-
tors engage their students in examinations of various accounts of a
given historical event, such as rst contact between colonial
settlers and Indigenous peoples (school accounts versus news
media accounts versus pop culture accounts). e goals of this
analysis are to uncover how the meaning given to various historical
events always reects a particular perspective and set of interests,
and to understand how knowledge is socially constructed and
never neutral or free of the social context that produced or
circulates it (Banks, ; Loewen, ; Zinn, /).
Second, social justice educators guide students in critical
self-reectionoftheirownsocializationintostructuredrelations
of oppression and privilege. ey may do this through popular
social justice exercises such as My Culture Chest, Act Like a Man/
Act Like a Woman, and Step Forward/Step Back. ese exercises
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help identify our placement in a matrix of unequally valued social
groups and the messages received through those placements.
Educators then ask students to examine how their positions in this
matrix inform their action and practice (Adams, Bell, & Grin,
; Johnson & Blanchard, ).
ird, social justice educators guide students in developing
theskillswithwhichtosee,analyze,andchallengerelationsof
oppression and privilege (Ayers, Quinn, & Stovall, ;
Goodman, ). For example, many educators encourage their
students to participate in cultural events, work with case studies,
and brainstorm strategies for working with youth on social
justice action projects in their schools and communities (Nieto
& Bode, ).
us, critical social justice pedagogues develop strategies in
their classrooms that are responsive to omitted histories, posi-
tionality, and inaction. However, history has taught us that any
resistive practice can come to serve the very interests it was
developed to oppose (DiAngelo & Allen, ). In practice the
common guidelines purported to be important to building the
kind of classroom climate that can support the commitments
discussed above do not address the deeply patterned social and
structural dynamics that are brought into the classroom itself. In
other words, these guidelines can run counter to social justice
pedagogical commitments. For example, assuming good inten-
tions only goes so far when White students repeatedly use terms
like “colored people.” How do you respect dierences and arm
everyone’s perspectives when a student of Color claims that racism
doesn’t aect him? How do you challenge a White student’s claim
that she didn’t get a job or a scholarship because of “reverse”
racism or sexism when she is speaking from her own experience?
Does everyone’s opinion matter when some people’s opinion is
that reverse racism is a valid concept? In the following sections,
we explicate the limits of the common guidelines in relation to
social justice education.
Common Guidelines and Knowledge Construction
One of the key strategies of domination in mainstream society is
thenormalizingofparticularknowledgeasuniversaland
applicable to all. Yet critical social justice pedagogues understand
that knowledge is rooted in and shaped by specic positions and
interests; in other words, knowledge is socially constructed.
Further, these positions are constituted through relations of
power (Banks, ; Dyer, ; Fiske, ; Frankenberg, ).
Making those specic interests visible is a primary goal of the
social justice classroom. To this end, educators work to reveal the
values and interests embedded in dominant knowledge claims
and to bringing alternative knowledge claims to the fore. Meaning
is constructed through the stories we tell and are told; we ascribe
value by naming and, just as profoundly, by not naming. In light
of this, many social justice educators invite speakers from
minoritizedgroupstoshareexperiencesthataretypically
marginalizedinthemainstreamclassroom.
Imagine you have been invited to a course on diversity as one of
several queer- identied speakers representing a range of positionali-
ties within that social identity. Along with the rest of the panel, you
provide students with information, statistics, and research. You also
share your experiences with oppression (transphobia, homophobia,
parental rejection, school bullying, etc.). At the end of the presenta-
tion, the instructor asks the class for insights, connections, and/or
questions. A student raises her hand and is called upon. She states
that she disagrees with your lifestyle choice and believes it is immoral.
She goes on to say that she should not be asked to accept homosexual-
ity. e instructor allows her to nish and thanks her for sharing her
perspective, then moves on to the next comment. You leave feeling
very upset and angry— you did not volunteer your time and expose
yourself only to be subjected to oppressive dominant narratives and
microaggressions you already experience on a daily basis. You feel
frustrated with the instructor for allowing that to happen.
In our view, this is exactly the type of context in which
dominant knowledge claims must be silenced. e social justice
classroom, because its goals include revealing and understanding
marginalizedvoicesandperspectives,isararesetting.But
when— in service to “fairness”— instructors give equal time to
dominant narratives, we reinforce problematic discursive eects
bylegitimizingtheideathattheconversationisequalizingonly
when it also includes dominant voices. is is why we have come
to deny equal time to all narratives in our classrooms. Our
intentions in doing so are to correct the existing power imbal-
ances by turning down the volume on dominant narratives. To
make space for dominant narratives in order to be “fair” assumes
that these imbalances don’t already exist or that equality of
airtime is all that is needed to correct them. Because of this, we
believe that restricting dominant narratives is actually more
equalizing.
Makingspaceformarginalizedperspectivesisalsoastrategy
to make visible the dominant narratives that are unmarked
(Kincheloe, ; Loewen, ). When nondominant perspectives
are amplied (as is oen the strategy in the social justice class-
room), student demands to hear “the other side” obscure the reality
that we get the other side in everyday mainstream media and
schooling, unmarked and thus positioned as universal and neutral
(Applebaum, ).
If the instructor is a woman of Color and/or identies as queer,
there are additional layers of complexity and power relations at play
in this scenario. For these reasons the common guidelines or other
eorts dened as fairness and equality are not suciently construc-
tive strategies. We believe that the socially just pedagogical move
would be to stop the student from subjecting your guests (and other
LGBTQ- identied people in the class) to this microaggression in
the rst place.
Eorts to make space for all views are oen rooted in the
desire for teachers to create an “open” dialogue that makes room for
nondominant points of view and allows students to “unpack” or
politicizetheirperspectives(Boler,2004;Saunders&Kardia,
).Given this, an educator may ask, “But isn’t it important to
raise these issues in the classroom so that we can work through
them and dispel these problematic ideologies?” While we agree that
it is important to surface these perspectives so that they may be
critically reected upon, we do so only in controlled and structured
ways (we oer an example of this strategy in the next section). We
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see at least three problems, in addition to those we have discussed
above, related to openly raising these views in this context:
First, most students— regardless of their social identities—
enter our classrooms attached to dominant ideologies (e.g.,
society is free from racism or sexism, the only thing preventing
people from success is their lack of hard work, etc.). is attach-
ment is extremely dicult to dislodge. Because of this, from the
very rst class session we work to unsettle the invisibility and
authority of dominant ideologies. us, it is not likely that the
student making homophobic comments can be moved without
substantial and ongoing engagement, which the above scenario
does not allow for.
Second, these narratives can have the eect of hijacking the
discussion. For example, were the instructor in this case to carve
out time in that moment to challenge the student’s claim, it would
give it more airtime and hence more authority in the limited class
period. Further, this homophobic and heteronormative comment
is likely to trigger other comments, both of support and of rebuttal,
which now have the eect of setting the agenda for the rest of the
discussion time and further subjecting the panel (and any LGBTQ
people in the class) to a debate on the morality of their lives.
Allowing the student to nish her erroneous claims (errone-
ous because they are not supported by social justice scholarship)
has an equally problematic impact. In our view, the best way to
handle this situation (based on our own trial and error) would be
to halt the student as soon as what she is saying becomes clear (“I’m
going to stop you there. is is an opportunity to hear the panelists’
perspectives, so let’s move on to another insight or question.”)
ird, the common norm that everyone’s opinion matters
actually stands in the way of addressing the microaggression of the
student’s comments. e closest common norm for handling this
moment might be to challenge ideas not people, but this norm does
not help us once the microaggression has already occurred.
While we may be able to point to another common norm—
assume good intentions— to cope with this comment, it is the
impact of our actions that are most relevant in these moments. All
too oen claims of good intentions (or their converse, claims to
have meant no oense) allow members of dominant groups to
avoid responsibility for our transgressions. In the example above, if
assuming good intentions is the rationale for not intervening, the
homophobicvoiceisprivilegedabovetheminoritizedvoicesofthe
panelists. While both “sides” are allowed a say through common
norms such as everyone’s opinion counts and assume good inten-
tions, there is institutional weight, a history of violence, the
ongoing threat of violence, and the denial of social rights behind
the dominant narrative, making the impact of that “side’s” voice
very dierent.
Student eorts at the reinscription of dominant knowledge
claims within the context of social justice education call forth two
other related discourses: First is the discourse of uninformed
certainty— a kind of willful ignorance or refusal to know. deCastell
() has described this not knowing as a “right to be ignorant
and the right to speak ignorantly” (p. ). Resistance to the
presentation of alternative knowledges is oen embedded in the
demand for further, better, and more “neutral” evidence. Dei,
Karumanchery, and Karumanchery- Luik () state, “ere is
usually little expression of humility in such ‘knowledges’ and, as a
result, the power to ‘know’ oen mutes the recognition that there is
also power in not knowing” (p. xi). If new knowledge does not
support existing knowledge, students oen respond in one of
several ways. ey may:
• invalidatetheevidencebasedonideologicalgroundsor
personal anecdotal evidence (such as the student to the
queer- identied panel described above);
• invalidatethemessengerofthatevidence(theinstructor,the
author, the presenters) as having a biased or special interest or
simply being a bad teacher (“He is so mean” or “She doesn’t let
anyone talk who doesn’t agree with her”);
• callforbetterormoredata,expressingdoubtatthesmall
amount of evidence or isolated case presented (“is book is
old. e dropout rate for Aboriginal students must be less
today because there’s so many programs to support them.”);
• defendoneanother(“IthoughtBobwasreallyputtinghimself
out there by sharing his belief that gender roles are natural.”); or
• framepush-backasapersonalassault(“You’reattacking
me!”).
ese responses are not simply the result of a lack of enough
information or critical thinking skills; they are specic discursive
movesthatfunctiontocounterthechallengetoinstitutionalized
relations of power. Arming everyone’s perspective as equally
valid supports the strategy for not- knowing (deCastell, ,
; Schick, ). Everyone’s perspective is not equally valid
when some are uninformed, unexamined, or uphold existing
power inequities.
e second discourse that is called forth in the social justice
classroom is the language of experience. e discourses of
personal experience and speaking from experience have gured
prominently in a number of educational practices oriented
toward social justice (Chor, Fleck, Fan, Joseph, & Lyter, ).
eseemergeincommonnormsviaaguidelinetopersonalize
knowledge, wherein students are asked to speak for themselves
and from their own experiences. is guideline is meant to
preventstudentsfromuniversalizingtheirperspectivesvia
platitudes such as “Everybody knows that...” or “We should all
just...” and to encourage awareness of positionality and the
social locations from which they each speak. Although encourag-
ing the use of experience was developed as a critical practice to
undermine elite expertise (Schlegel, ) and to situate claims
within the matrix of group identity positions in which they are
located, the discourse of personal experience also can function to
protect dominant voices (DiAngelo & Allen, ). is protec-
tion is accomplished by positing dominant participants’ perspec-
tives as the product of a discrete individual (outside of group
socialization),ratherthanastheproductofmultidimensional
social interactions. e individual is then responded to as a
private mind in the Cartesian sense.
Allen and Cloyes () identify the assumptions underpin-
ning the discourse of personal voice. ese assumptions are:
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(a) only the individual has access to hir
own mind, and (b) s/he
cannot be mistaken about what is going on in hir own mind (or, at
least, there is no way to verify what occurs in someone else’s mind).
ese assumptions function to make experience a kind of sacred
text and to close experience- based claims from interrogation; how
could one possibly question the personal experiences of others?
e discourse of personal experience has particularly signicant
consequences for dialogues in which the stated goals are to gain
understandingofminoritizedperspectivesandtointerrogateone’s
own privileges and complicity in upholding oppressions of others.
e claim of personal experience removes the political dimensions
and preserves conventional arrangements (Levine- Rasky, ).
Similarly, the right to my opinion discourse (e.g., “I have the right to
think and say what I want, and you don’t have the right to challenge
what I think and say”) is another strategy that closes o “personal”
experiences and perspectives. While the guideline to speak for
oneself may be intended to prevent dominant groups from
negatingtheperspectivesofminoritized,ineect,itoenprotects
dominant perspectives from critical analysis.
Common Guidelines and Positionality
Understanding the concept of positionality is a specic dimension
of understanding knowledge as socially constructed. In social
justice practice, the concept of positionality is an assertion that all
knowledge is partial knowledge and arises from a web of cultural
values, beliefs, experiences, and social positions (Haraway, ;
Harding, , ; Kincheloe, ; Luke & Gore, ). us,
who a person is (as knower) is intimately connected to that person’s
socializationintoamatrixofgrouplocations(includingrace,class,
gender, and sexuality). As such, practicing seeing knowledge
through the concept of positionality is a key pedagogical goal in the
social justice classroom.
Consider the following examples of the complexity of posi-
tionality:
Manyinstructorswhoteachsocialjusticecontenthaveminoritized
group identities that they tend to name and acknowledge and thus
face challenges not faced in other contexts (Acosta, Moore, Perry, &
Edwards, ). For example, an Asian female teaching biology will
likely be viewed as more legitimate than an Asian female teaching
social justice. While the biology teacher will still experience
dynamics of racism and sexism, she will likely not be seen as
fundamentally biased or personally invested in her content area if it
is (thought to be) objective science (a dominant knowledge
paradigm). Conversely, a White male teaching biology or social
justice, because of his positionality, will not have the same chal-
lenges related to how students read his identity in either context. In
the social justice class, even though he is teaching a nondominant
knowledge paradigm, his dominant group identities (as a White
male, especially if he is cisgender) will be read by most students as
not biased but instead as objective and legitimate. erefore the
We use the terms “hir” and “s/he” in order to be inclusive and challenge
normative gender binaries.
strategies these two instructors take must account for how their
bodies are read in the social justice classroom.
In our work we are oen asked whether an instructor’s
positionality matters, given that that person has ultimate authority
in the classroom. In thinking about instructor authority, there is a
helpful distinction between rank and status (Nieto et al., ).
Rank refers to social membership, which is not temporary and
impacts all aspects of one’s life (examples of rank include race, class,
gender, sexual orientation, and ability). Status refers to a temporary
position/job and is contextual. For example, research shows that
women and people of Color in positions of leadership are scruti-
nizedmorecloselyandjudgedmoreharshlythanWhitemen
(Elsass & Graves, ; Green, ). Further, people of Color are
oen assumed to be the recipients of special programs rather than
to have earned their positions and are oen perceived as being
biased, having special interests, and/or being troublemakers
(Bonilla- Silva, ; Calliste, ; Pierce, ). In the context of
schooling, female professors and professors of Color oen receive
lower evaluations, impacting their tenure process and ultimately
their wages and job security (Huston, ; Merritt, ). e
common guidelines do not allow all instructors to take actions that
are responsive to the interplay of rank and status in instructor
positionality because they push instructors to arm all perspec-
tivesasequallyvalid.Insodoing,theydon’tprovideminoritized
instructors the structure and control they need to counter (rather
than arm) the extra resistance they receive as they push students
pasttheircomfortzones.
e majority of higher education students are White and middle
class, and the vast majority of teacher education students are White
and middle class (Picower, ). is means that most educators
are teaching a relatively homogeneous population with a specic
racial, gender, and class positionality. When the social justice
course is a required one as opposed to an elective, there are key
implications for positionality. For those students with rsthand
experiences with marginality via their race, class, sexuality, ability,
or other positionalities, the course can be transformative in
providing a language and framework through which to make sense
of their lived experiences. As such, providing the time to reect, to
practice applying the concepts, and to grapple with the impact is an
important part of the process. Simultaneously, for students in
dominant positions, they may experience deep paradigm shis in
encountering concepts such as privilege and internalized domi-
nance for the rst time. ey too need time to settle into the
ideological, psychological, and emotional challenges occurring in a
dual space of awakening. Because of these dynamics, the instructor
in the social justice classroom bears additional layers of responsi-
bility that are unique to teaching this content (Gallavan, ;
Kincheloe, ) and as such is obligated to anticipate and be
responsive to the inevitable disruption of traditional power
relations and shiing paradigms that will occur. Developing the
skill to dialogue across dierences that are not directly addressed in
other educational spaces is a central commitment of the social
justice classroom.
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Yet, the common guidelines do not take into account the
dierent positionalities of students in relation to one another.
Consider an assignment one of us (DiAngelo) uses in an education
program that is White as a concrete example of both position-
ality and why we do not arm the free sharing of perspectives and
experiences. On the rst day of the semester students are asked to
write anonymous reections on the following questions (adapted
from course materials developed by Hidalgo, ):
Discuss what it means to be part of your particular racial
group(s):
• Howraciallydiversewasyourneighborhood(s)growingup?
• Whatmessageshaveyoureceivedaboutracefromyour
family, friends, schools, and neighborhoods about race?
• Howhasyourrace(s)shapedyourlife?
e following responses (reproduced in their entirety) are repre-
sentative, both in content and in length. ese students are in their
third and fourth years of post- secondary education and will be
going on to be teachers:
My rst neighborhood, racially, was pretty (not meaning nice) diverse.
ese being apartments, you could nd dierent races. My second
neighborhood, where I live now, is not very racially diverse. Messages?
Not really any. Impact? I don’t know.
My neighborhood was not racially diverse at all growing up.
Maybe freshman year of college was when diversity appeared, yet still
very small. I am not sure [how race shapes my life]; I am White, and I
feel like I am constantly hearing racial slurs or people using the race
card, that it just makes me thankful for who I am, and don’t have to
deal with that.
My neighborhood wasn’t very diverse at all, mostly White, middle
class. From my parents and schools, I have been taught to be tolerant
of other races and to accept others for their dierences.
My neighborhood wasn’t diverse at all. In my school of 500- plus
students there was only a handful of non- White students. My family
hasn’t sent me messages on race. I guess my schools have sent the
message that the non- White students have behavioral problems.
Overall, race doesn’t mean that much to me or my life.
ese answers are not an anomaly; most White people live,
love, worship, study, play, and work in racial segregation. is
typical insistence that race doesn’t matter comes from White
students sitting in a virtually all- White classroom, who grew up
in primarily White neighborhoods and attended primarily White
schools, who were and are currently being taught by a virtually
all- White faculty (including us). Given this starting point, these
students do not have the skills yet to understand their racial
positionality or to articulate a critical racial perspective
(DiAngelo, a).
Nothing in mainstream society supports students to enter our
classrooms with the ability to think critically about these issues, so
their opinions are necessarily reective of dominant paradigms.
Given that the majority of our students are from dominant groups
in key identities, their opinions, perspectives, and personal
connections— taken at face value— are not constructive, as they
only reinforce oppressive narratives. is is one reason why we
restrict free sharing and armations of everyone’s perspectives as
equallyvalid.Whilewerecognizethatitisimportanttoraisethese
perspectives (as this assignment does), we nd it much more
eective to do so in controlled ways. We then return to them aer
we have laid enough groundwork, via study of key concepts and
literature, and begin to apply a critical analysis.
People practice internalized dominancewhentheyinternalizeand
act out (oen unintentionally) the constant messages circulating in
the culture that they and their group are superior to whichever
groupisminoritizedinrelationtotheirsandthattheyareentitled
to their higher position. Conversely, those who exhibit internalized
oppression believe and act out (oen unintentionally) the constant
messages circulating in the culture that they and their group are
inferior to whichever group is dominant in relation to theirs and
that they are deserving of their lower position (Freire, ; Frye,
; Sue, ).
As social justice educators may well understand, much of
oppression is invisible to and denied by those who benet from it; a
room that seems perfectly comfortable to dominant group
membersmaynotfeelthatwaytominoritizedgroupmembers.For
example, given Whiteness as the status quo, the more comfortable
a space is for White people (oen articulated as a “safe” space), the
more likely it is to be harmful to people of Color. Dominant group
members are necessarily deeply invested materially, psychically,
socially, and politically as the producers and beneciaries of
particular forms of privilege, and the system depends on our denial
of these investments. us— and especially for the well- intended—
the very behaviors we believe are supportive (and make us feel
comfortable and “good”) are likely to be the behaviors that are so
toxictominoritizedgroups;ouridentitiesasmoralpeoplereston
not seeing our own oppressive patterns. In other words, dominant
group members work hard not to see our privilege, which is a key
way we keep it protected and intact. As noted earlier, willful
ignoranceisadynamicofinternalizeddominance;forthosein
dominant groups, the refusal to know protects power.
Conversely, there are several key reasons why members of a
minoritizedgroupmayattimeschoosesilenceinaclassdiscussion
including: (a) responding to resistance or hostility expressed
(consciously or not) by dominant participants; (b) feeling a lack of
trustbasedonwell-foundedexperiencethattheywillbepenalized
for challenging dominant perspectives; (c) feeling hopeless in the
face of dominant denial; (d) risking vulnerability by sharing their
experiences and perspectives and then being met with silence,
argumentation,orrationalization,allofwhichfunctionasformsof
invalidation; (e) being outnumbered by those in the dominant
group and not seeing any allies; or (f) being acutely aware of the
power dierentials and choosing to protect themselves in the face
of inevitable hurt (Nailah, ). Given these and other dynamics,
therearecoststominoritizedstudentsforspeakingtotheir
positionality. A lifetime of schooling that has denied
, ,
-
acknowledging the signicance of positionality and built on a
collective history of denial is dicult to counter in a single course.
edynamicsofinternalizedoppression,layeredwiththepersonal
knowledgeofminoritizedgroups,canalsofunctiontoupholdthe
dominant framework the course is seeking to unsettle (Acosta et
al., ).
Anotherdimensionofthedynamicsofinternalizeddomi-
nanceandinternalizedoppressionistheright to speak discourse.
is is the unspoken assumption underlying norms that encourage
and arm everyone’s voice that all voices have been granted the
right to speak and be heard equally in dominant society. However,
as Boler () notes, all speech is not free or equal, for institution-
alizedinequitiesinpowerensurethatnotallvoicescarrythesame
weight. Given that inequity in weight, she asks, “If all speech is not
free, then in what sense can one claim that freedom of speech is a
working constitutional right?” (p. ) Yet the right to speak
discourse— which is a central feature of the presumed democratic
classroom— assumes that the only reason some voices are not heard
is that some students are exercising their rights by choosing not to
speak (Applebaum, ; Chinnery, ; Li, ).
Whendominantandminoritizedgroupscometogether,the
pattern is that dominant group members will speak rst and most
oen and will set the agenda where their dominant identities are
salient. Yet this pattern is contextual— for example, Whites who
typically dominate discussions oen choose silence when the topic
is racism. Or, dominant group members may take up a lot of
intellectual space but leave the emotional (or self- reective) work
tominoritizedgroupmembers.us,minoritizedgroupmembers
oen experience dominant group silence, regardless of what drives
it, as hostile (DiAngelo, b; DiAngelo & Sensoy, ). Silence
fromminoritizedgroupmemberscanbeanactofresistance,but
silence from dominant group members can function as a power
move and needs to be interrogated. ese are examples of the
complexities inherent in facilitating discussions across dominant
andminoritizedpositionalities,andguidelinesthatseektoequalize
the weight of all voices or ensure everyone’s comfort are not
adequate for navigating those complexities.
Guidelines and Safety
In the social justice classroom, many educators try to not only
establish a democratic space, but also a “safe” space. According to
Adams, Bell, and Grin’s () well- known sourcebook for
teaching social justice education, “Establishing a safe environment
in which students can discuss ideas, share feelings and experiences,
and challenge themselves and each other to reevaluate opinions
and beliefs is one of the primary facilitation responsibilities”
(p. ). Similarly, in Beverly Tatum’s classic article (), “Talking
about Race, Learning about Racism,” she explains, “Many students
are reassured by the climate of safety that is created by these
guidelines and nd comfort in the nonblaming assumptions I
outline for the class” (p. ). In approaches that are similarly
informed by an anti- oppressive social justice framework (e.g., femi-
nist pedagogy), there is also an embedded assumption that
instructors should create a caring as well as safe environment (Lee
& Johnson- Bailey, ).
As a response to the expectation that safety be a prerequisite
forsocialjusticediscussions,somescholarshaveproblematizedthe
very denition of safety and questioned the premise that these
spaces can or should be safe to begin with. For example, in the
context of cross- racial dialogues that are explicitly about race and
racism, what feels safe for Whites is presumed to feel safe for people
of Color. Yet for many students and instructors of Color, the
classroom is a hostile space virtually all of the time, and especially
so when the topic is race.
e dominant perception that social justice discussions are
dangerous pressures facilitators to respond with discussion
guidelines. us, the history of extensive, brutal, and explicit
physical violence perpetrated by dominant groups against minori-
tizedgroupmembers—slavery,lynching,genocide,internment,
forcedsterilization,andmedicalexperimentation,tomentiona
few—istrivializedthroughdominantgroupclaimsofalackof
safety when in the rare situation of merely talking about relations of
powerbetweenthemselvesandminoritizedgroups.eexpecta-
tion of safety for dominant group members can be a symbolic form
ofviolencetowardminoritizedgroups,intensifyingthereal
violence— physical, as well as structural and discursive— that they
already bear in society at large.
Forminoritizedgroupsthesocialjusticeclassroomhasthe
potential to be one of the few environments in which they can feel
somewhat protected, given their numbers and/or support of the
instructor. While the feelings may be real for dominant group
members struggling with a sense of safety, it may be useful to
consider what safety means from a position of social, cultural,
historical, and institutional power. Scholars have raised questions
about whether, for example, antiracism education that does not
perpetuate discursive violence toward students of Color is even
possibleincross-racialsettings(c.f.Chinnery,2008;Crozier&
Davies, ; Jones, , ; Leonardo & Porter, ; DiAngelo
& Sensoy, ). eir argument is that such spaces ultimately
foreground the needs of White students and position students of
Color as “native informants and unpaid sherpas” (ompson,
, p. ), guiding White students into a racial awakening. is
is why we do not believe that common guidelines intended to
ensureageneralizedsafespacearearealisticgoalatall,norcan
they ever be a prerequisite for a democratic outcome. In practice,
the expectation that safety can be created in the social justice
classroomthroughuniversalizedproceduralguidelinesisalways
about the dominant group’s safety.
Conclusion: Beyond the Common Guidelines
ecapacitytorecognizetheneedforandengageinsocialjustice
activism is part of what it means to participate in a healthy democ-
racy. Preparing students for active participation in a democratic
society requires the development of specic skills. To this end,
educators must guide students in:
• engagingconstructivelywithalternativeperspectives,
• thinkingcritically,
• grapplingwithmultipleperspectives,
• buildingstaminaforengagingwithnewandchallengingideas,
, ,
-
• engagingwithresearch,
• raisingcriticalquestions,
• toleratingambiguity,
• recognizingthepowerrelationsembeddedinpositionality,and
• valuingcollaborationovercompetition.
Without these skills, we are ill equipped to cultivate a just and
democratic society. Further, the kind of space required to develop
these skills oen appears counter to commonsense notions of
democracy. Because schools are among the most powerful
institutions wherein social stratication is reproduced, they are
also where it must be challenged. To do this, we must be willing to
interrogate our notions of what fairness, safety, and participation
look like.
As we have argued, social justice educators are facilitating
deeply complex issues and dynamics. ese dynamics are not
purely theoretical— they are occurring in every moment in and out
of the classroom, and social justice action depends on recognition
of them. We won’t always make the right call in all moments for all
students, but using the common guidelines as a starting point, we
have found the following less- orthodox adaptations to be more
constructive to our goals:
• Striveforintellectualhumility.Bewillingtograpplewith
challenging ideas.
• Dierentiatebetweenopinion—whicheveryonehas—and
informed knowledge, which comes from sustained experi-
ence, study, and practice. Hold your opinions lightly and with
humility.
• Letgoofpersonalanecdotalevidenceandlookatbroader
group- level patterns.
• Noticeyourowndefensivereactionsandattempttousethese
reactions as entry points for gaining deeper self- knowledge,
rather than as a rationale for closing o.
• Recognizehowyourownsocialpositionality(e.g.,race,class,
gender, sexuality, ability) informs your perspectives and
reactions to your instructor and those whose work you study
in the course.
• Dierentiatebetweensafetyandcomfort.Acceptdiscomfort
as necessary for social justice growth.
• Identifywhereyourlearningedgeisandpushit.Forexample,
whenever you think, I already know this, ask yourself, How can
I take this deeper? Or, How am I applying in practice what I
already know?
We design controlled opportunities for students to practice
articulating a social justice framework (vocabulary and concepts)
that moves them into humility, openness, and analysis rather than
certainty, rebuttal, or refusal. For example, in addition to the
guidelines above, we oer a list of Silence Breakers (adapted from
course materials codeveloped by DiAngelo and Anika Nailah,
2013).eseareintendedto:recognizeandrespondtounequal
powerrelationsintheroom,helpmanagepatternsofinternalized
dominanceandinternalizedoppression,andguideopenand
humble entry into the conversation (DiAngelo & Sensoy, ).
We also regularly ask students to turn their claims into the
form of questions by oering Question Starters. For example, turn
the claim, “We had a student with a disability in my school, and no
one treated her dierently” into a question, “We had a student with
a disability in my school— what kind of privileges did I have that
she didn’t?” e intended eect of this is to engender a stance of
humility, develop critical thinking skills, interrogate what students
think they know, identify dynamics of oppression and privilege,
and continually seek out new information.
e following are discussion starters that accomplish these
multiplegoalsandoperationalizetheguidelinesabove.Asmaybe
noted, many of these are intertwined:
• I’mreallynervous/scared/uncomfortabletosay[X],but...
• Frommyexperience/perspectiveas[identity],...
• I’mafraidImayoendsomeone,andpleaseletmeknowifI
do, but...
• Itfeelsriskytosay[X],but...
• I’mnotsureifthiswillmakeanysense,but...
• Ijustfeltsomethingshiintheroom.I’mwonderingifanyone
else did...
• Itseemslikesomepeoplemayhavehadareactiontothat.Can
you help me understand why?
• CanyouhelpmeunderstandwhetherwhatI’mthinkingright
now might be problematic?
• isiswhatIunderstandyoutobesaying:....Isthataccurate?
• I’vebeenwonderingabouthowweareusing[term]inthis
discussion...
• Ihavealwaysheardthat[X].Whatareyourthoughtsonthat?
• eauthorisarguingthatonly[e.g.,mencanbesexist].Can
you help me understand that?
• Is[X]agoodexampleofwhattheauthorwassaying?
• Howwouldyourespondto[X]fromasocialjusticeframe-
work?
• Iamhavinga“yeah,but”moment.Canyouhelpmework
through it?
• Giventherealityofinequitablepower,woulditbebetterif...?
• Howdoes[X]eectrelationshipsbetween[Y]and[Z]?
• Whatisanotherexampleof[X]?
• isperspectiveisnewtome,butI’mwonderingifitis
accurate to say that...?
Again, our goals are not to create xed, rote formulae for
engaging with the materials via these limited prompts. Rather,
these prompts are strategies to help students lean into rather than
away from dicult content. Leaning into a social justice frame-
work does not require agreement or disagreement; it is simply—
but powerfully— a way to practice critical engagement.
We share the goals of our social justice– oriented colleagues to
create supportive, engaging, and transformative classrooms, and
we do give guidelines in service of these goals. e development of
our particular approach is adapted from those who have gone
before us, as well as from our own struggles as educators who oen
have felt ineective and unable to respond constructively to power
relations in the classroom. We have found our guidelines to be
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helpful responses not only to the challenges of student positionality
but to our own regarding dynamics of rank and status. For example,
when we need to interrupt dominant power moves, these guide-
lines oer us the backup to take unpopular measures that oen
appear unfair to dominant groups and thus elicit push- back.
All instructors channel their authority, but only some peda-
gogical strategies are read as authoritarian. Similarly, all curricula
are political, but only social justice curricula tends to be marked as
such. As instructors, we are embedded in and facilitate complex
relations of power in the classroom, and we want to address that
power in intentional, strategic, and critical ways. We do acknowl-
edge the “master’s tools” dilemma (Lorde, ) inherent in the
academic setting related to social justice education eorts. An
academic course whose primary goal is to challenge social strati-
cationisnotwithoutirony.Asinstructors,werecognizethatour
courses are ensconced within an institution whose default eect is
the reproduction of inequality. In many ways we are a part of the
very system we seek to challenge. Still, we stand in solidarity with
others who choose to work within the constraints of academia in
order to equip the elite that it produces with perspectives and tools
that might ultimately challenge social inequality.
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