Assignent Solutionnurs

Advocating for Social Change
Social change is needed to address issues of racial and ethnic inequality such as those that you considered in Week 5. In Reading 56, Allan G. Johnson discusses Gandhi’s Paradox which questions whether or not one person can make a difference in bringing about social change. This paradox suggests that one individual cannot make a difference, but that it is still important to make the effort. Social change requires the work of many people doing their parts. Recommendations for creating talking points are included in the reading. These strategies and recommendations can help you advocate for social change.
To prepare for this Discussion:
• Review the constructs related to race and ethnicity that you have explored throughout the course in your Learning Resources. Pay particular attention to the dialogue between Myles Horton and Paulo Freire.
• Identify a racial or ethnic issue that is of interest to you or even a passion for you and for which you might advocate.
• Think about what strategies that you might use to best advocate for your issue.
• Craft one main talking point that you would use to advocate for your issue. For instance, the Black Lives Matter movement’s platform includes equality for everyone.
With these thoughts in mind:
Post a description of the racial or ethnic issue for which you might advocate and explain why this issue is important to you. Explain how you would advocate for your issue, including the strategies you might use to advocate for it. Be specific. Also, articulate one main talking point that you might use to advocate for your cause.
Be sure to support your postings and responses with specific references to the Learning Resources.
Learning Resources
Required Readings
Rosenblum, K. E., & Travis T. C. (2016). The meaning of difference: American constructions of race and ethnicity, sex and gender, social class, sexuality, and disability (7th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
• Section IV, “Framework Essay”
• Section IV, Reading 56, “What Can We Do? Becoming a Part of the Solution
• FRAMEWORK ESSAY
A book such as The Meaning of Difference runs the risk of leaving students with the feeling that there is little they can do to challenge the constructions of difference. Having recognized the power of master statuses and the significance of our conceptions of difference in everything from personal identity to world events, it is easy to feel powerless in the face of what appear to be overwhelming social forces.
But we did not write this book because we felt powerless or wanted you to feel that way. For us, the idea of looking at race, sex, social class, sexuality, and disability all together opened up new possibilities for understanding and creating alliances. When we first started to talk about this book, comparing our teaching experiences in a highly diverse university and our personal experiences of stigma and privilege, we were amazed by the connections we saw. That impression grew as we talked with students and friends who were members of other groups. Over time, we learned that understanding the similarities across groups opened up new ways of thinking: experiences could be accumulated toward a big picture, rather than being suffered in relative isolation; people could be different but still have had the same experience; people who never had the experience might still have ways to understand it. We believe the world is more interesting and hopeful with the realization that the experience of being in “the closet” is generally the same irrespective of which status brought you there, or that a variety of race and ethnic groups are subject to racial profiling, or that white women often experience the double consciousness that W. E. B. Du Bois described for blacks. When we realized how readily people could generalize from their own experience of stigma and privilege to what others might experience, we were energized.
That energy led to this book. But what should you do with your energy and insight? Or if you are feeling beaten down and depressed, rather than energized, what can you do about that?
Let us start with the worst-case scenario—that is, the possibility that you feel powerless to bring about social change and hopelessly insignificant in the face of overwhelming social forces. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon outcome in higher education, nor is it distinctive to this subject matter. The emphasis in higher education is more on “understanding” than “doing.” Most university coursework stresses detached, value-neutral reasoning, not passionate advocacy for social change.
• Paradoxically, however, education is also the source of much social change. We all know this almost instinctively. Educational institutions teach us our rights and our history, sharpen our thinking and decision-making, and open us to others’ Page 483lived experience. Learning changes us, and higher education is explicit in its intention to produce that effect. The university is, after all, “an educational institution. As such, it is expected to have an impact on the society of which it is a part…. [T]he task of the university is not only to explore, systematically, the nature of the world, but also to scrutinize the practices of everyday life to see if they can be improved.”2
Recognizing the paradoxical nature of higher education, that it can both empower and disempower, means, in truth, that an element of choice—your choice—is involved in whether you are discouraged or inspired at the end of a course.
There is, however, another reason you might leave this material feeling powerless. This has more to do with the nature of society than with the nature of education, but it again involves paradox and personal choice. Eminent sociologist Peter Berger called this the “Janus-faced” nature of human society. The Roman god Janus, for whom January was named, symbolized beginnings and endings, past and future, change and transition, and was depicted as having two faces looking in opposite directions. Berger used that image to convey that just as individuals are rarely wholly powerful, neither are they wholly powerless. In this analogy, Berger found a visual image for the truth that we are both the authors and victims—architects and prisoners—of social life. We both make society and are made by it. (And in our own spirit of powerfulness, we have edited out the sexism in Berger’s prose below.)
No social structure, however massive it may appear in the present, existed in this massivity from the dawn of time. Somewhere along the line each one of its salient features was concocted by human beings, whether they were charismatic visionaries, clever crooks, conquering heroes or just individuals in positions of power who hit on what seemed to them a better way of running the show. Since all social systems were created by [humans], it follows that [humans] can also change them.
Every [person] who says “I have no choice” in referring to what his [or her] social role demands of him [or her] is engaged in “bad faith.” … [People] are responsible for their actions. They are in “bad faith” when they attribute to iron necessity what they themselves are choosing to do.3
While you do not have the power to change everything, you certainly have the power to change some things. Gandhi’s paradox, discussed by Allan Johnson in Reading 56, captures this point: “Gandhi once said that nothing we do as individuals matters, but that it’s vitally important to do it anyway.”
So we urge you to move beyond your sense of being powerless and get on with the work of social change. We offer some suggestions here for that process, much of it drawn from work we have found both inspirational and practical.
• Section IV, Reading 56, “What Can We Do? Becoming a Part of the Solution”
• READING 56
What Can We Do? Becoming Part of the Solution
Allan G. Johnson
The challenge we face is to change patterns of exclusion, rejection, privilege, harassment, discrimination, and violence that are everywhere in this society and have existed for hundreds (or, in the case of gender, thousands) of years. We have to begin by thinking about the trouble and the challenge in new and more productive ways….
Large numbers of people have sat on the sidelines and seen themselves as neither part of the problem nor the solution. Beyond this shared trait, however, they are far from homogeneous. Everyone is aware of the whites, heterosexuals, and men who intentionally act out in oppressive ways. But there is less attention to the millions of people who know inequities exist and want to be part of the solution. Their silence and invisibility allow the trouble to continue. Removing what silences them and stands in their way can tap an enormous potentifjkal of energy for change….