Calling Out Injustice: Youth from Differently Privileged Backgrounds Narrate About Injustice

Abstract

Our perceptions of the world are lastingly shaped by our sociocultural and political place in the world. Social positionalities provide epistemic means through which social processes are perceived, experienced, and articulated. This paper explores how the contrasting social worlds in which adolescents from differently advantaged positions within a society live, inform, and shape their sense-making about social justice. Sixty-four adolescents from multiple neighborhoods around New York City partook in the study. Participants were invited to read a hypothetical vignette describing an ambiguous social situation that plausibly involves instances of unfairness. Upon reading the vignette, they were invited to retell the story multiple times from the positions of the self, of the likely victim, and the perpetrator of unfair deeds. Adolescents’ narratives were analyzed by looking at the way they understood the situation described (e.g., as an instance of exclusion, or misunderstanding, or else) and at how explicitly they narrated about injustice. Findings indicate that youth from less privileged backgrounds were more likely to see unfairness happening in the story they read, when compared to their more privileged counterparts. Additionally, less privileged youth narrated more openly about unfairness, using the language that is more saturated with expressions addressing exclusion, lying, and deception. The findings support the notion that people coming from backgrounds that carry less power in society (e.g., being of color, poor, immigrant) are more likely to have access to more sophisticated and articulated narratives of social conflict, endowing them with a more critical perspective over situations involving power dynamics.