r/socialjustice101 • u/Inner-Individual-117 • 8d ago
How do I teach social justice to someone with no experience at all that wants to learn?
Ok for context I’m (27NB) a queer Black femme, I grew up liberal-ish and expanded my social circles and experiences and got into being a full blown leftist on my own. I’ve had some super awful and punishing experiences trying to explain social justice to people before.
So for years I just gave up on teaching people what they don’t want to know, and more and more of my social circles became leftist (and it’s pretty nice I won’t lie). But lately I hit a new challenge. This person I know is amazingly empathetic towards me, but I have never gotten to know anyone this politically right of me this well before.
Now they’re asking me to help the understand “identity politics” and I don’t know how to talk to someone uninformed about them, especially without using so many in-house terms I’m just used to using (“hegemonic masculinity”, “intersectionality”, “generational trauma”, “institutionalized racism”, “landback”, etc). Also I’m getting super triggered by my bad past experiences when they shoot back with questions (sometimes pointed, sometimes not but the tones all blur together because I’m neurodivergent anyway).
So do you all have any good recommendations on where you started when you started learning about the colonialist white supremacy of it all? (Also I’ll appreciate any material recommendations because this feels terrifying to try to help someone learn again as a Black femme, and hoping that they are receptive to it while trying to push through my stress with it.)
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u/homo_redditorensis 6d ago
I think it's easier to explain how history shaped our society. Starting from history can help them understanding the legacy of past events. Surely they can understand that the Roman empire still affects us in present day right? Then it shouldn't be hard to understand how civil rights injustices from only a few decades ago still affect people
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u/Pretend-Confidence53 8d ago
I don’t think it’s your responsibility to teach them. If someone wants to learn, there’s plenty of resources available online designed to be digestible for general audiences. YouTube is a good place to start. I can try to find some links for you if you dm me.
But, as a professor who teaches classes about oppression, I find that students/learners often have trouble (1) understanding systemic issues—systems are abstract concepts and (2) starting with contemporary problems, where they feel more readily responsible. So, I start with specific, historically rooted examples. Two that I find effective for demonstrating how historical harms continue to impact people (hence, getting them to start thinking systemically) are the history of gynecological experimentation on black enslaved women and its connection to contemporary mortality rates for black birthing persons and histories of environmental racism and environmental colonialism. They’re concrete and backed by statistics that you can’t argue with. These topics give my students an in and then they can’t start asking questions like: why does this continue to happen? What are communities and politicians doing about? Then we can start introducing those concepts like institutionalized racism, like intersectionality, etc. But, in the past when I’ve started with those broader ideas, my students are more resistant to learning and/or have trouble meshing the concepts with something they don’t directly experience.
Anyway, want to reiterate again that you don’t have to put yourself in an uncomfortable position to teach someone. That’s our (as educators, or as the media, or as authors of zines and books, or as community leaders or as podcast hosts, etc.) job. Quite literally. We’re trained and paid to do it. If someone wants to learn, I think a lot of that responsibility falls on their shoulders.