Social Justice Efforts Research Articles

The Future is Now: Archaeology and the Eradication of Anti-Blackness.

Building a new anti-racist archaeology will require an unprecedented level of structural changes in the practices, demographics, and power relations of archaeology. This article considers why this iteration of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement is proving to be unique in terms of its potential to transform the field. We discuss how anti-racist archaeologists arrived at this juncture prepared to meet the challenges now before us, and how members of the Society of Black Archaeologists are collaborating with others to enact change. We acknowledge the significant social justice efforts of others and suggest how archaeologists can get involved to keep this critical momentum going.

Why personal values matter: values, colorblindness, and social justice action orientation

The extent to which individuals prioritize different personal values may be conceptually linked to endorsement of racial colorblindness beliefs as well as orientation toward social justice. The present study examined how personal values predicted racial colorblindness and social justice action orientation in a sample of undergraduates (N = 325; Age, M = 20.38, SD = 2.78). Results supported the hypotheses: Self-transcendence and openness to change values predicted higher social justice action orientation, mediated by lower colorblindness beliefs, whereas self-enhancement and conservation values predicted lower social justice action orientation, mediated by higher colorblindness beliefs. Hence, motives that emphasize others’ well-being and openness to change may be linked to less racial colorblindness and a greater willingness to address social inequalities. To encourage social justice efforts, institutions and social networks may benefit from considering implicit and explicit messages that promote the well-being of others and the value of openness as opposed to values that prioritize individual status and prestige and maintaining the status quo.

Supplemental Material for Mobilized or Marginalized? Understanding Low-Status Groups’ Responses to Social Justice Efforts Led by High-Status Groups

Supplemental Material for Mobilized or Marginalized? Understanding Low-Status Groups’ Responses to Social Justice Efforts Led by High-Status Groups

Examining Athlete Ally Through Resource Mobilization Theory

Social movement organizations have played an important role in athlete activism. Countless athlete activists have all benefited from having organizations supporting their social justice efforts. One such organization, Athlete Ally, partners with today’s athletes to create an inclusive athletic environment. Due to their relationship, both Athlete Ally and the athletes provide each other with resources to enact change through sport. The purpose of the following study was to examine the resources exchanged between the two entities through resource mobilization theory using qualitative interviews. Resources are divided into five categories: moral, cultural, social-organizational, human, and material. Results revealed moral, social-organizational, and material resources are shared between the two entities but not human and cultural resources. Practical and theoretical implications are expanded upon in the article.

“I Want to Leave ASAP”: Black Women Teachers Discuss the Role of Administrative Support and Teacher Turnover

This article utilizes a qualitative case study methodology informed by a Black feminist theoretical lens to explore the experiences of Black women teachers, administrative support, and teacher turnover. Five self-identified Black women teachers discuss the impact that school leaders have on their decisions to leave their schools. Three common leadership practices emerged as contributory factors that influence teacher turnover: (a) arresting social justice efforts, (b) insufficient support for discipline, and (c) relationships with administration. This article concludes with a discussion about the requisite school leader philosophical orientations that support the unique needs of Black women teachers.

Helping student leaders engage as allies

IN FIGHTS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE, ALLIES AND THEIR EFFORTS RECEIVE A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF ATTENTION. This attention can be justified, as allies serve essential functions in efforts to eliminate inequities present in social systems, through the pursuit of social justice (Russell & Bohan, 2016). “Allies are a crucial group in the work of social justice” (Munin & Speight, 2010, p. 249). Add to this that higher education is increasingly looked to as a critical source of leadership development (Dugan & Komives, 2007; Hastings & Sunderman, 2019), and the need to address allyship among student leaders is especially poignant. Embracing action as allies is one avenue to aid students’ learning to integrate social justice into their approach to leadership, which is a key aspect of developing as socially responsible leaders (Dugan & Komives, 2010; Irwin, 2015).

“My Story Is My Activism!”: (Re-)Definitions of Social Justice Activism Among Collegiate Athlete Activists

Despite the recent re-emergence of the athlete activist into public consciousness, activism among athletes continues to be viewed as nonnormative behavior. Drawing from interviews with 31 National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I collegiate athlete activists from across the United States, this study examined contemporary definitions of collegiate athlete activism for advancing social justice efforts. Five different conceptualizations of social justice activism emerged during the interviews: activism as social justice action, mentorship, authenticity, intervention, and public acts of resistance. Findings document changing notions of athlete activism and reveal nuanced forms of situational activism that do not rely on public expressions of resistance but rather are woven carefully into the fabric that makes up the athletes’ everyday lives. For these athletes, the image of an activist is not so much that of one walking in the streets but rather that of one using the social power they have as an athlete to promote strategic change in everyday situations. Limitations, directions for future research, and implications for praxis are discussed.

Where We Go Wrong in Equity Work: Separating Social Justice Efforts from True Movement of Healing

This autoethnographic commentary includes anecdotes along with scientific background, ending with suggestions to do your best work as an equity warrior. It examines how, when working to dismantle racist systems, there are many setbacks that equity warriors face time and time again. The author suggests that "warriors" face re-traumatization when listening to the radio, watching the news, even viewing comedy shows—hearing triggering stories from the heated political climate repeatedly. She cautions about the very little attention given to the effect this has on our bodies as equity work is happening.

Incorporating the Protests: The NFL, Social Justice, and the Constrained Activism of the “Inspire Change” Campaign

On January 11, 2019, the National Football League (NFL) launched “Inspire Change,” a campaign for the league’s social justice efforts. The campaign, which would serve as the umbrella under which the NFL’s US$89 million social justice partnership with the players would be housed, launched with its own website, hashtag, commercial, and documentary series. This article textually examines the “Inspire Change” campaign and its associated media materials, contextualizing it against the kneeling protests carried out by Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players as well as the NFL’s reactions to those protests. In doing so, I argue that NFL’s response to its players’ call for social justice is at once a strategic expansion by the league that seeks to capitalize on the emergent activist power of professional players to build the league’s brand as an authoritative and inclusive American institution contributing to social good. At the same time, however, under withering criticism from President Trump and conservative media, it reestablishes league control over the voice of rebellious Black players by subsuming their social justice efforts under the auspices of a campaign that evades the ideological confrontation of the kneeling protests in favor of a more positive, market-friendly version of “justice” based in calls of unity.

Acceptability of racial microaggressions among Asian American college students: internalized model minority myth, individualism, and social conscience as correlates

ABSTRACTHow much someone finds a racial microaggression to be acceptable can vary. We focus on the acceptability of racial microaggressions among Asian American college students, in relation to cultural and religious variables. We predicted that internalized model minority stereotype and individualism will be associated with being more accepting of microaggressions. We predicted that social conscience, or the belief that the church should be active in social justice, will be associated with being less accepting of microaggressions. Results based on 102 Asian American students indicated that vertical individualism predicts greater acceptance of microaggressions, and results based on 77 Christian individuals out of the 102 participants indicated that social conscience predicts less acceptance of microaggressions. Excessive individualism may lead one to ignore the impact of racism and have a greater tolerance for microaggressions, whereas social conscience may support participation in social justice efforts, which may lead to a greater awareness of microaggressions.

The Productive Citizen

This paper argues for analyzing the systematic invisibility of persons living with disabilities by temporalizing their oppression within a framework of “productive time,” which I posit as a normative sense of time by which cultural products and practices appear within capitalist economies. I argue that productive time is employed in cultural evaluations of actions that render persons with disabilities as “non-productive agents” who cannot partake in historical processes. My hope is that a theory of productive time will assist social justice efforts in analyzing the oppression of particular minority groups by identifying and combating harmful social values.

Navigating activism within the academy: Consciousness building and social justice identity formation

AbstractThe academy can provide rich opportunities for the scholar activist through critical discourse within the classroom, consciousness building via community engagement, and leveraging diverse connections. However, the academy often upholds systemic roadblocks, at times enacting policies that further perpetuate inequities. This qualitative study takes a narrative approach to exploring the life course histories of 15 activists occupying diverse yet intersecting dimensions in the spectrum of privilege and oppression. Interviewees are uniquely connected to the academy engaging in a variety of roles and anti‐racist social justice efforts within the northwestern United States. Applying a critical consciousness framework, results highlight key functions of critical reflection and critical action as interviewees engage in critical consciousness raising (i.e., systemic root cause analysis), social justice identity formation (i.e., the politicization of one's identity), and adapting individual theories of social change. Barriers within the institution are also identified concerning the mainstreaming of service learning and university‐required diversity courses, limited structural supports for activists of color, and the institutionalized co‐opting of social change efforts. Lastly, implications for activism, scholarship, and critical pedagogy within the academy are discussed.

Disrupting narrow conceptions of justice: Exploring and expanding ‘bullying’ and ‘upstanding’ in a university honors course

The term ‘upstanding’ encompasses actions and behaviors grounded in one’s defense of their own beliefs and others. While such broad application of the term has merit, from a critical education perspective it lacks direction. To efficaciously address injustice, upstanding action must go beyond one’s beliefs. A directional application of upstanding behavior, or the notion of ‘upstanding for justice,’ frames upstanding as action to address chronic social victimization via systems of oppression. In this article, we describe the development of a new heuristic to support students’ understanding of upstanding and detail the university honors course in which we used the heuristic to explore the phenomena of ‘bullying’ and historical injustice to expand ideas of ‘upstanding’. Results indicate that students in the course broadened their conceptions of justice and the use of historical cases aided in their understanding of the interplay between individual agency and social structure in social justice efforts.

Asian American College Student Activism and Social Justice in Midwest Contexts

AbstractThe Midwest regional context complicates Asian American college student activism and social justice efforts; so understanding these dynamics can equip higher education practitioners to better support these students.

The Other Side of Inequality: Using Standpoint Theories to Examine the Privilege of the Evaluation Profession and Individual Evaluators

Social justice evaluation approaches advance antioppressive and culturally responsive methods to mitigate societal inequalities. However, social justice efforts will fall short if they focus solely on one side of inequality: oppression. Accordingly, this article argues that the other side of inequality—privilege—needs to be scrutinized. This article offers standpoint theories as a lens on privilege to reveal how the knowledge achieved from marginalized groups can be useful to make privilege more visible and enhance the objectivity of inquiry. In addition, a concept inspired by standpoint theories, privilege-cognizant scripts, is offered to help evaluators rethink and discover the privilege carried by the field of evaluation and our individual identities. Standpoint theories awaken evaluators to the idea that although privilege can have negative consequences for evaluation practice, it can also be used productively to advance social justice.

Reflecting on Efforts to Design an Inclusive Citizen Science Project in West Baltimore

Citizen science (CS) has been an increasingly utilized means by which scientists leverage members of the public to increase the amount of data collected and analyzed. However, the underrepresentation of individuals from certain socio-cultural groups can have consequences that can manifest in the scientific outcomes of those CS projects such as biases in the data. Additionally, this underrepresentation can potentially affect long-term viability and support of CS as a community of practice. CS programs that promote greater inclusivity would likely provide opportunities for communities to define, investigate, and address pressing issues in collaboration with professional scientists. In this paper we discuss a CS project that sought to include underrepresented communities in Baltimore, Maryland using Pandya’s framework for inclusive CS. While the project met all of its scientific research goals, translating the CS for broader social outcomes in the community proved challenging. Here we highlight perspectives from local community members and research personnel about the barriers to CS engagement, challenges in translating scientific outcomes to social justice efforts, and opportunities to address these barriers in CS program development and design.

The Case of Windy Lake by Michael Hutchinson

Reviewed by: The Case of Windy Lake by Michael Hutchinson Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor Hutchinson, Michael The Case of Windy Lake. Second Story, 2019 [160p] (A Mighty Muskrats Mystery) Paper ed. ISBN 978-1-77260-085-8 $10.95 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 4-6 Dubbed the Mighty Muskrats, cousins Sam, Otter, Atim, and Chickadee spend their days exploring their Windy Lake reservation home and visiting various members of their First Nations community in this Canadian import from Cree author Hutchinson. When their police officer uncle starts investigating the disappearance of an archaeologist hired by a nearby mining company, the kids decide to do some sleuthing of their own, using their knowledge of the land and their access to local gossip as starting points. Meanwhile, their older cousin Denice has chained herself to one of the mooring posts at mining company’s pier in protest of their environmental abuses. While Denice’s social justice efforts never quite meet up with the mystery, the subplot does give an opportunity to familiarize readers with Indigenous/First Nations politics and the legacy of colonization in a direct, accessible fashion. The hunt for clues keeps the pages moving and a few red herrings keep it interesting, but the book also focuses on the kids’ finding of wisdom through both their own experience and the guidance of the elders of their community. Their makeshift fort in a rusted-out school bus has the appeal of the Boxcar Children’s titular boxcar, and in fact there’s overall an old-fashioned classic mystery feel along with a look at contemporary rez life in this first installment of a series. Copyright © 2019 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Neoliberal Ideologies in Outdoor Adventure Education: Barriers to Social Justice and Strategies for Change

Outdoor adventure education utilizes expeditions and experiential education to provide students with opportunities for personal growth. However, by selling the possibility of adventure and character development, outdoor adventure education organizations unknowingly entangle the field with neoliberal ideologies. Neoliberalism is a political and economic ideology that promotes decentralization of governance, the rule of law, individual rights, and a free market. Despite its prevalence in the literature of related fields, outdoor adventure education scholars seldomly address neoliberalism, especially its effect on the field’s social justice efforts. In this paper, we examine how outdoor adventure education’s subscription to neoliberal principles, most notably individual rights and the free market, inhibits the field’s attempts to contribute to social justice. Social justice is a process that seeks to unearth the institutional and systemic roots of injustice to work toward greater social equity. Institutions working toward social justice must disentangle from elements of a dominating neoliberal system that actively perpetuates social inequities. By understanding neoliberalism’s influence, the outdoor adventure education field can become a leader for social justice by identifying the problems, and subsequent inequities, associated with neoliberalism. However, if outdoor adventure education hopes to progress beyond the oppressive structures imposed by neoliberal ideologies, we argue that the field needs to critique its current political, economic, and pedagogical practices. Outdoor adventure education organizations must embrace their role in developing citizens for a more just society by taking systematic and collective action. In an effort to make a tangible contribution, we offer potential strategies for mitigating the effects of neoliberalism and advancing social justice efforts in outdoor adventure education.

Affirmative action challenges keep on keeping on: responding to shifting federal and state policy

ABSTRACT In response to disparities in postsecondary access, governments have enacted policies to facilitate the admission of traditionally underrepresented students. Known as affirmative action in the United States, the legal justification of this approach has varied. This article describes the legal and political history of affirmative action, the social justice and then diversity rationales, and the importance of state policies and institutions. The article focuses attention on the responses of three highly diverse US states – Texas, California, and Florida – to postsecondary affirmative action bans affecting their public flagship institutions. Each developed race-neutral achievement-oriented percentage plans intended to promote socioeconomic and racial diversity in their states' institutions; these approaches did not meet their intended aims. While inequality shows no sign of shrinking, US institutions and administrators must continue to adapt to a shifting landscape of state and federal policies poised to further curtail these diversity and social justice efforts.

Advocates and Allies: The Succession of a Good Idea or What’s in a Meme? (Dispatch)

In this two-part Dispatch we first trace the evolution of three interdependent terms – advocacy, allyship, and accountability – as a means to highlight their changing roles in driving impactful social justice efforts, then explore how this triad is manifested in a gender equity advocacy program fashioned at a Midwestern United States university, the Advocates and Allies (A&A) initiative. In Part 1, we describe a memetic theory of culture to situate the findings of an Internet term search that reveals a mutable progression of meaning(s) for our threesome. This framework provides grounding for discussion in Part 2 of the wider social milieu reflected in the evolution of A&A. We then offer an outline of central features of the initiative along with reflections from the field, and point out resources for learning more about how the program is being utilized. By surveying the succession of A&A within this culture-as-memetic context we intend to acknowledge what’s been done by others whilst furthering the important and unfinished work of gender equity in academia. We close with interpretations and conclusions.