True resistance begins with people confronting pain... and wanting to do something to change it.
Bell Hooks
Bell Hooks
Pursuing A Social Justice Major as an Undergrad:
A Reflective Essay
I chose to pursue Social Justice largely because of pain. I sought to heal, and wanted the people around me to heal as well. In reality, I’ve been seeking social justice since I was a kid, seeing people who I loved work hard only to receive unfair punishment by those with the power. By the time I got to Hamline University I had already chosen to contribute to social healing and saw the Social Justice Major as a pathway to that goal. During my coursework, I learned that I wanted to influence the disintegration of the unjust systems themselves, which cause perpetual suffering, in order to prevent further harm to society. I knew that I needed to learn about systemic injustices before I could understand how to change them; how to end them. While studying as a Social Justice major I learned to trust in my own strengths and persist. I learned how to fail ungracefully and still survive. I learned discernment and I learned patience. Probably most importantly, I learned how to be wrong.
The United States socializes us to believe that to be “wrong” is to be “less than”. There is no grace offered for messing up, and there is consistent incentive for getting things “right” the first time. It is an unforgiving system and culture. Because of this it is a difficult environment to unlearn the need to be correct, when that is taught as the goal. But in order to truly learn we must become comfortable with being incorrect and lacking information. The US itself is nowhere near that point of unlearning, teaching us that its own rhetoric on reality is truly “correct” time and again. However this world is messed up, and there is endless evidence that the “correct” viewpoint of the dominant narrative is not working. We are all a part of this connected world, but we are taught that we are separate individuals who do not impact one another. We feel pain and suffering but we are taught that only our own actions determine our success or failure. We are taught that the world is unjust and any pain felt is deserved. These teachings (which we learn from school, media, maybe from people we know) suggest that those who are not doing well socially or economically are “less than” and that they are lazy or failures, while those who have done well are superior. This dominant narrative is not coherent with the stories of people that I know. As I grew older I sought a counter-narrative, which states: humans in the United States do not have their life circumstances because they deserve them (good or bad), but because the country is built to maintain the direction of money, agency, and power to trickle upward toward those already at the top, preventing those at the bottom from thriving or even surviving.
As a Social Justice Major I spent most of my studies building a mental map of how intersecting identities influence one’s position in life in relation to systemic injustice. The building blocks of this map exist in the understanding that humans are complex beings, with complex stories, in understanding systems of power, systems of oppression, the industrialization of schools and prisons, the commodification of the body, and of course learning our history. As a multiracial Black person I brought a lot of life experience and community/family knowledge to this effort, however with the extensive resources and focused time available to me at school I was able to take my understanding so much further. I found that both inside and outside of class, on and off campus, I was in conversations on racial identity, and often it was in the context of Blackness and its intersecting genders, socio-economic classes, and realities. This became my focus.
Social Justice isn’t just a career to me, it’s a life purpose. There are critical skills that I acquired, and a sharpness and perception for what’s lying underneath, which I did not expect to learn during my time in school. I was met with extremely difficult opportunities to hone my abilities to witness, acknowledge, associate to previous knowledge, critically think through connection, if appropriate develop ideas further, and to reflect on connections to me and my community. It is not about appearing smart, I found, or proving anything to anyone, but rather being able to understand the patterns and forces that make up our world, to seek to grow from this new understanding, and hopefully exchange this understanding with those I love.
During my degree I’ve tried to focus my contribution to social change by discovering what specific role I should play. Moving forward I am connecting with initiatives for food justice, a creative method for addressing existing health disparities. Too often people in the Black community are suffering and dying of curable diseases, and throughout my life I will contribute to end this systemic health epidemic. I want to seek nutrition, health, and wellness as a collective--as a community. I came to understand the societal forces that are causing these critical issues in the Black community not just by learning from professors or academics, but by listening to the knowledge and experiences of people in my community. It needs to be acknowledged by the elite (the educated, the white, and the well-off) that there is real knowledge and wisdom here, and y’all need to learn to listen. I hope to be as consistent and present a community member as I can be. I want to play a part in facing our pain, constructively. I will contribute to our healing and growth.
The United States socializes us to believe that to be “wrong” is to be “less than”. There is no grace offered for messing up, and there is consistent incentive for getting things “right” the first time. It is an unforgiving system and culture. Because of this it is a difficult environment to unlearn the need to be correct, when that is taught as the goal. But in order to truly learn we must become comfortable with being incorrect and lacking information. The US itself is nowhere near that point of unlearning, teaching us that its own rhetoric on reality is truly “correct” time and again. However this world is messed up, and there is endless evidence that the “correct” viewpoint of the dominant narrative is not working. We are all a part of this connected world, but we are taught that we are separate individuals who do not impact one another. We feel pain and suffering but we are taught that only our own actions determine our success or failure. We are taught that the world is unjust and any pain felt is deserved. These teachings (which we learn from school, media, maybe from people we know) suggest that those who are not doing well socially or economically are “less than” and that they are lazy or failures, while those who have done well are superior. This dominant narrative is not coherent with the stories of people that I know. As I grew older I sought a counter-narrative, which states: humans in the United States do not have their life circumstances because they deserve them (good or bad), but because the country is built to maintain the direction of money, agency, and power to trickle upward toward those already at the top, preventing those at the bottom from thriving or even surviving.
As a Social Justice Major I spent most of my studies building a mental map of how intersecting identities influence one’s position in life in relation to systemic injustice. The building blocks of this map exist in the understanding that humans are complex beings, with complex stories, in understanding systems of power, systems of oppression, the industrialization of schools and prisons, the commodification of the body, and of course learning our history. As a multiracial Black person I brought a lot of life experience and community/family knowledge to this effort, however with the extensive resources and focused time available to me at school I was able to take my understanding so much further. I found that both inside and outside of class, on and off campus, I was in conversations on racial identity, and often it was in the context of Blackness and its intersecting genders, socio-economic classes, and realities. This became my focus.
Social Justice isn’t just a career to me, it’s a life purpose. There are critical skills that I acquired, and a sharpness and perception for what’s lying underneath, which I did not expect to learn during my time in school. I was met with extremely difficult opportunities to hone my abilities to witness, acknowledge, associate to previous knowledge, critically think through connection, if appropriate develop ideas further, and to reflect on connections to me and my community. It is not about appearing smart, I found, or proving anything to anyone, but rather being able to understand the patterns and forces that make up our world, to seek to grow from this new understanding, and hopefully exchange this understanding with those I love.
During my degree I’ve tried to focus my contribution to social change by discovering what specific role I should play. Moving forward I am connecting with initiatives for food justice, a creative method for addressing existing health disparities. Too often people in the Black community are suffering and dying of curable diseases, and throughout my life I will contribute to end this systemic health epidemic. I want to seek nutrition, health, and wellness as a collective--as a community. I came to understand the societal forces that are causing these critical issues in the Black community not just by learning from professors or academics, but by listening to the knowledge and experiences of people in my community. It needs to be acknowledged by the elite (the educated, the white, and the well-off) that there is real knowledge and wisdom here, and y’all need to learn to listen. I hope to be as consistent and present a community member as I can be. I want to play a part in facing our pain, constructively. I will contribute to our healing and growth.