Decoding the language of social justice: What do privilege and oppression really mean?

Headnote

We asked 65 mostly White and middle-class college students to share conceptions of "privilege" and "oppression," terms associated with social justice discourse. Data analyses revealed themes reflecting descriptions of characteristics of privilege and oppression, rather than causal explanations of these constructs. We discuss implications of these findings for college courses that focus on issues of social justice.

Multicultural and racially inclusive discourse is often viewed as critical for service-oriented professions such as teaching, social work, medicine, and law. Many colleges now offer multicultural and social justice courses as a basic general education requirement (Alberti, 2001). Although social justice courses are gaining prominence in higher education curriculum, it is helpful to reflect on the purpose of this topic. Sleeter and Grant (1994) argue for multicultural courses to focus on a social justice perspective; that is, the "social structural inequality based on race, social class, gender and disability" (p. 210). Although other perspectives focus on ethnicity, classism, or sexism, a social justice perspective includes all of these as well as other discriminatory practices that involve unequal power distributions (e.g., age, language, immigrant status, and disabilities). In other words, this unequal power distribution is the difference between those with power (i.e., the privileged) and those without (i.e., the oppressed).

Some college students who are enrolled in these multicultural and social justice oriented courses resist the discourse and curriculum by disrupting class, doing the minimum that is required, or not participating in class discussions. Such resistance has been attributed to race, class, and gender of the student as well as race, class, gender, and linguistic accent of the instructor (see Andrzejewski, 1995; Chan & Treacy, 1996; Cochran-Smith, 1995; Farber, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 1996; Sleeter, 1995). The backgrounds and lived experiences may influence conceptions that students have about social justice and society prior to enrollment in multicultural and social justice courses. In other words, students are likely to enter class with preconceived notions about the existence of racism, classism, sexism, and the like, which may contribute to student resistance.

Higgenbotham (1996) suggests that student resistance to social justice discourse in the college classroom is, in part, due to the way educators construct their courses. She argues that instructors' course materials send messages to students about "who is to blame" for...