Doing Justice

Next week, we'll discuss what came to be known as the "John/Joan" case, i.e., the story of David Reimer, who, as an infant, was subjected to sex reassignment surgery. I'd like everyone to read this article, originally published in Rolling Stone; and I'd like the debate teams to also read the "Doing Justice to Someone" chapter from Judith Butler's Undoing Gender, which is on Blackboard, in the "Content" folder.

In class, instead of staging a head-to-head debate, I'd like for each team to propose a research/action agenda, based on the readings. When developing your agendas, the teams should seek to address these questions:

• What urgent social justice issue (or issues) does the Reimer case raise for you?
• How can we formulate that issue as a theoretical or philosophical question? What are some possible lines of argument we might pursue in answering that question? How does this question relate to other theoretical/philosophical questions we've discussed this term and last? And how can we push our thought further, through research?
• How might we address the social justice issue here practically, i.e., how might we take meaningful action? Who are some other groups or individuals acting on this issue, and what are they doing?  What would you propose activists like ourselves do to make still more meaningful change?

Our next "debate:" Embodying Social Justice in Education

Mel asked a perceptive question near the end of class, which I’ll paraphrase here: If, by definition, a commitment to social justice involves making practical changes to the world, then why devote time to theoretical debates, i.e., to intellectual exercises that don’t lead — at least not directly — to action?

One response to that question goes something like this: While pursuing social justice certainly involves taking action on urgent and very concrete issues, it isn’t only, or even primarily, about “fixing” what’s wrong with our community in light of our accepted ideals. Rather, it’s about inventing new and different ideals. It’s about discovering new and different ways of understanding ourselves and the world that we share. It’s about radically re-imagining what our community can and should be. In other words, the work of social justice isn’t only reparative. It’s also a profoundly imaginative act — one that demands not only a capacity for nitty-gritty, real world engagement, but also the full range of our critical and creative powers. So while it may be true that theorizing becomes an arid academic exercise when divorced from practical action, it’s also true that forms of action that don’t aim to radically transform how we think aren’t very likely to change the world much, either.

Judith Peck, Veiled Identity, from the show 

Original Position, inspired by John Rawls's 

Theory of Justice.

For some time now, feminism has grappled very directly with both sides of this conundrum. On the one hand, gender injustice has been embedded so deeply and for so long in our cultural DNA that to try to imagine a world without it involves rethinking all of the core ideas by which we understand that world. On the other hand, feminists are keenly aware that ideas take on meaning only by virtue of how they’re embodied.

So, in our next class, we’ll have a different kind of debate (hence the scare quotes in this post's title). Rather than assigning propositions for the teams to affirm or deny, I’m going to ask each team to develop an original argument in response to a question. Then, as a group, we’ll see if we can’t generate a third, still more original argument by putting the first two into dialogue.

Here’s the question: If working for social justice means both building a better world by imagining it anew and imagining a new world through the process of building it, then what should an education in social justice be?

Please be really concrete in your arguments. For example: How should classes be conducted (if at all)? Where? About what? With whom? According to what (if any) rules and involving what (if any) roles? What should we be doing outside of school (if we even want to make the distinction between "inside" and "outside")? How could we make this new notion of education real? And so on and so forth. In short, take this as an opportunity to re-imagine what a social justice education can and should be, and take responsibility for figuring out how to embody that idea in reality.

To assist you, I’ve posted two pieces of feminist writing in the Content folder on Blackboard, each of which explores what it means to imagine and to work to realize a new and different social world: Susan Moller Okun’s “Justice as Fairness: For Whom?” and Cherríe L. Moraga’s “From Inside the First World” (the foreword to an anthology titled This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color). Neither is about education per se, but both pursue provocative and potentially inspiring lines of argument very much relevant to questions of education; so please draw on them as you develop your own ideas.

A more perfect union? part II

This past Saturday, Lee Siegel published an essay in the New York Times titled “What’s Race Got to Do With It?” in which he argues that, “for the many Americans who find the thought of a black president unbearable, [GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney] is an ideal candidate,” because Romney, according to Sielgel, “is the whitest white man to run for president in recent memory.” By “white,” Siegel explains, he is “not talking about a strict count of melanin density;” rather he is referring to what he takes to be

the countless subtle and not-so-subtle ways he [Romney] telegraphs to a certain type of voter that he is the cultural alternative to America’s first black president. It is a whiteness grounded in a retro vision of the country, one of white picket fences and stay-at-home moms and fathers unashamed of working hard for corporate America.

For Siegel, then, as for many cultural critics, race is not merely one social fact among others, and racial difference is not merely one among the many forms of difference that our political institutions attempt to mediate. Rather, race is also a symbol. Terms like “black” and “white” signify a whole range of social, cultural, and economic meanings. Race constitutes the fundamental framework within which the rest of our politics makes (or fails to make) sense.

In our next debate, we’ll test that proposition.

• Debate Team 1 will argue that race is the fundamental issue in American politics, the one that frames and defines all the others. The struggle for social justice in America, then, is first and foremost a struggle for racial equality. 
• Debate Team 3 will argue that race is a vitally important issue in contemporary American politics, but it doesn't fame and define the others. The struggle for social justice in America certainly involves the struggle for racial equality, but there are other, equally compelling struggles, and we should address each separately and on its own terms.

To prepare for the debate, everyone in class should read these brief, recent news pieces:

• Siegel’s opinion piece.
• John McWorther’s rebuttal to Siegel
• And these articles about recent controversies involving GOP candidates Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich.

Debate Teams 1 and 3 will draw upon two book chapters, both on Blackboard (in the folder labeled “Content”): Cornell West’s “The New Politics of Cultural Difference” and Dinesh D’Souza’s “The End of Racism.”

Our second debate: A more perfect union?

In the weeks and months after Barack Obama’s election, many members of the punditocracy opined that America had now become a “post-racial society,” i.e., that while there were still individual racists among us, and while isolated incidents of racism would persist, the country as a whole had “transcended” the legacies of slavery, of Jim Crow, of segregation, of racism more generally. Of course, many others were quick to point out that the notion that a single presidential election might somehow signal the definitive end of the vexed history of race in America is, at best, naïve or, worse, an attempt to whitewash that history from present memory.

In this next debate, we’re going to examine the topic of the race and democracy from an angle somewhat different than the pundits did. Rather than asking “Is America a ‘post-racial society’ or not?” (Answer: It isn’t. — Ed.), we’ll ask: Should it aspire to be? That is, does creating a more just democracy (or, as Obama might put it, “a more perfect union”) require that we “transcend” race?

If your team is arguing “yes, a perfect union would transcend race,” then you’ll need to define what you mean by transcend. If you’re arguing “no,” then you’ll need to propose an alternative to transcendence.

Debate Team 3 will affirm the proposition that a just democracy would “transcend” race; Debate Team 2 will deny it. (The teams will find pertinent info about the debate format here.)

To get up to speed on a contemporary version of this issue, everyone in class should read this brief blog posting and this one after watching this video of Obama's "A More Perfect Union:"



(If you prefer to read, a transcript of the Obama speech can be found here.)

Members of the debate teams should develop their arguments by reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (as well as the statement by white clergymen that prompted it) and reading and/or listening to Malcolm X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet.” (For some background on these texts, you might consult the Wikipedia article on King’s letter and on Malcolm’s speech. For a little background on "A More Perfect Union," click here.)

Here are the Wednesday debate teams

Here are the debate teams for the Wednesday section. I was able to put everyone one of the team debating their top choice of topics, and many on teams debating a second or third choice, too.

Debate Team 1: Bella, Alissa, Sonora, Keaton
Debate Team 2: John, Makayla, Susanna, Christina
Debate Team 3: Suzi, Bram, Rachel

Teams 1 and 2 will debate the Occupy movement on Wednesday. The info is here. Description of the debate format is here. You can see when/what your team will debate throughout the term by consulting the calendar on the last page of the syllabus.

Here are the Tuesday debate teams

Happily, I was able to put everyone on one of the teams debating their top choice of topics, and many on teams debating a second or third choice, too. Here they are:

Debate Team 1
Julia, Janay, Mel

Debate Team 2
Cody, Riley, Marin

Debate Team 3
Wendy, Emma, Kate

Teams 1 and 2 will debate the Occupy movement next Tuesday. The info is here. Description of the debate format is here. And you can see when/what your team will debate throughout the term by looking at the calendar on the last page of the syllabus.

Our first debate: The Occupy Movement

Our first debate will focus on what's come to be called "the Occupy movement," which emerged this past September when a thousand or so protesters, heeding a call from Adusters magazine, staged a march on Wall Street that then turned into an occupation of nearby Zuccotti Park. Since then, the movement has spread to hundreds of cities across the country and around the world (including Denver).

Although the Occupy movement is very new, the ideas that inform it (and the ideas that inform the arguments of the movement's critics) have a long history. At the heart of that history is the question: What kind of economic system is most compatible with the values of a just and democratic society? More specifically, is capitalism compatible with justice and democracy? And what, if any, are the alternatives?

Debate Groups 1 and 2 will take up this cluster of questions in class next week, focusing on the Occupy movement specifically but drawing also upon the ideas of two texts central to the ongoing debate over this issue: Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine (widely read and highly influential in Occupy circles) and Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom (a classic text in the conservative circles critical of the Occupy movement). Selections from both texts are available on Blackboard (in the folder labeled "Content").

Debate Group 1 will argue from the side of the Occupy protestors: i.e., Group 1 will contend that capitalism as it's now practiced in the US and globally is incompatible with -- indeed, hostile to -- the values of a just, democratic society. Group 2 will argue from the side of the movement's critics: i.e., Group 2 will argue that, for all its ups and downs, free-market capitalism is ultimately the fundamental basis of a just, democratic society. Group 3, Catherine, and John will serve as the audience for the debate, listening, responding, and posing questions of their own. (You'll find more info about the format of the debate here.)

If you are not in Debate Groups 1 or 2, you do not need to read Klein or Friedman (part of the challenge for the groups is to make the ideas in these texts clear and accessible to an audience unfamiliar with them). However, everyone in class should read the brief articles below, to familiarize themselves with the Occupy movement and the controversies surrounding it.

• Guardian article on the Occupy movement 
• Opinion piece by an Occupy supporter 
• Opinion piece by an Occupy critic 

(If you'd like to do a little extra reading about the Occupy movement, you might take a look at their main website, this tumblr of testimonials from supporters, and this tumblr by the movement's critics.)