The Long Fight for Social Justice

It is a delightful sight to sit in a large room surrounded by the ethnic, racial, gender fluidity, religious, generational, and sexual orientation diversity that represents America.  In early December, I had the pleasure of attending the NASPA Multicultural Institute in New Orleans.  At the conference were student affairs professionals, chief diversity officers, campus mental health providers, faculty, researchers, diversity experts, and graduate students hoping for a career in student affairs.  Since its inception, I have attended all but one of the Multicultural Institutes.  But this one, because we are in the age of Trump when the values and tenants of multiculturalism are under attack, this conference made me realize why social justice work is so exhausting.I was sitting in a session facilitated by Dr. Jamie Washington.  He was talking about  how we must deal with context before content in our work.  Context deals with who is in the room at a particular time and place and what each person brings with him or her into that meeting space.  If the context isn’t acknowledged and brought into balance, then the content won’t get the attention it deserves.  And as a consequence, the outcome or end product will be substandard. For example, I came home one Friday evening and began questioning my husband about some item on my agenda and was met with a blank look.  He then described to me the trauma he experienced with a friend’s health emergency at the golf course that day.  Had I persisted with my agenda at that time, he wouldn’t have been able to proffer his best ideas.  Context before content. So, we spent time talking about his friend and making some calls to ensure his friend was okay before proceeding with my very important agenda item: the purchase of a new exercise bike.

Another presenter, Dr. Shaun Harper (now at USC), talked about how outraged we all were at the Alt-right march in Charlottesville by the young white supremacists.  He talked about the many ways white supremacy shows up in our everyday work on our college campuses.  It is much easier to openly condemn the white supremacy that marches with torches than to deal with the white supremacy that produces policies and practices on our campuses that do real harm to campus members of color.  We see harmful policies and practices that were on the way out being resurrected in society with the Trump administration.  Pay attention to the district and federal judges he  appoints.  Pay attention to the Justice Department and the laws Jeff Sessions pursues.  Pay attention to fiscal policies.  Dismantling systems of oppression based in white supremacy is challenging work and is not for the faint of heart.  Especially now.

In her closing plenary, Dr. Sumun Pendakur, also at USC, pointed out the multiple generations of social justice workers attending the conference.  Those of us with more than 20 years in the field were applauded as she reminded the youth in the audience that this work began long before they arrived on campus and that they are standing on our shoulders just as we were standing on the shoulders of those who fought before us.  Young people sometimes forget that and ignore the “context” in which the current content now must be addressed.  In this case, it’s the institutional history, culture and politics that gets ignored when pushing for social justice on any campus.  Students and young faculty arrive on campus and thankfully demand change.  They aim to push our institutions forward, but invariably, the changes are much too slow for them.  They have no idea of the battles that were fought and won for them before they ever arrived or the battles raging behind the scenes.  They act as though no progress is being made.  And then they attack.  As the Chief Diversity Officer at her previous institution, Dr. Pendakur was personally attacked by the very students she was advocating for because the students didn’t understand anything about context.  They didn’t think she was doing her job because change was too slow for them.  Moving to content without understanding context becomes counterproductive.  The students lost a powerful advocate by emotionally destroying a person who had been working behind the scenes towards the equity and inclusion they sought.  They knew nothing of the progress that had been made before they arrived or of the battle scars the CDO had from those fights.  The point is, we must form a multi-generational coalition.  The elders have the history and political savvy and wisdom and the youth have the energy.  We need each other.

Justice work is hard work, but it is righteous work.  It is slow persistent work.  Change does not come fast, nor does it come easily.  Martin Luther King, Jr once quoted abolitionist minister Theodore Parker who said in a published sermon: “Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”