FINAL ESSAY

1
Making Sense of this Semester
What I gained this semester is a greater understanding of the curriculum of identity and
social justice and how to deploy it more effectively. What stands out first and foremost to me is
that in order to have conversations on identity and justice, relations must first be formed. To be
honest about their fears and questions regarding race, class, sexuality, gender, and religion people
must know each other well - and it is not enough to sidestep this requirement by providing
sanitized, objective perspectives on these topics. The work must be put in on the front end to
build meaningful relationships that will serve as the foundation to later work on identity.
I do not think that the necessity of relationships in discussing issues of identity and
justice should prevent student affairs practitioners from providing shorter engagements with
these topics. A workshop or class session on some aspect of social identity may be a crucial
access point for some students. However, I think that student affairs practitioners must be more
realistic about the change we are promoting and not call a series of these short-term engagements
enough. If it took a group of graduate students 15 months of knowing each other to get to a point
where honest conversations could begin, how can we expect undergraduate students to do the
same in six hours?
This brings me to my second realization about the curriculum of identity and justice and
that is that it is most effect when given a spiral shape. The same topics and conversations must be
revisited again and again by the same people in order to promote movement and more complex
understandings of systemic oppression. I think it is rare for an individual to accept everything
that is being shared about a group they do not belong to or a problem they do not normally face
the first time they hear of it. There is a somewhat normal process of denial, minimalization, and
guilt that is associated with coming to terms with ones own privilege. I certainly remember

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going through these feelings in my mentors offices during our regular one-on-one visits. In order
to design and provide more effective programs, I believe we need to produce more empirical
knowledge about the necessity of a spiraled shape curriculum. Cohort-based programs and
revisiting the same topics over again are time and resource intensive practices. If we as student
affairs practitioners are going to successfully advocate for these types of programs for our
students and communities, we need to be prepared to definitely and assertively declare their
necessity.
Part of what helped me realize the necessity of a spiraling social justice curriculum was
my group text Acts of Faith by Eboo Patel. In this autobiographical essay, Patel describes how he
came to a more holistic understanding of his familys faith tradition through various encounters
with peers, extended family, community faith leaders, and romantic partners. Each person that
the author interacted with helped him construct a new understanding of one piece of his
multilayered identity and how these layers interact to make a unique individual. It was only
through revisiting the same questions (Who am I? What do I value? How do I encourage
change?) with different people and from slightly different perspectives that Patel ever came to a
momentarily satisfactory answer.
Another aspect of Patels book that makes it so powerful is the fact that it complicates the
commonplace narrative of an individual living their life blindly until a moment of epiphany,
which then leads to a dramatically different set of life goals and daily actions. I think this trope is
very common in much of the Catholic social justice literature with which I have come into
contact. I believe there are several stories of corporate executives living their lives according to
the goals of profit and competition, but then awakening to realize that this life is unfulfilling and
leaving for the clergy. Instead, Patels book demonstrates that the journey is more complicated

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and that the arrival point is always more elusive. He demonstrates that we can live our lives
according to well-defined principles (in his case social justice and pluralism), but still be
completely confused about how to effectively live according to these principles.
I believe that this middle ground of knowing, at least partially, what we believe, but not
yet knowing what to do about it speaks much more effectively to young people of this
generation. While it is still important to expose young people to new identities and communities
with which they are unfamiliar, I think that diversity educators must also better understand how
to prepare young people to be resilient in the face of uncertainty and chaos. I see aspects of this
cognitive skill base currently emphasized in some aspects of diversity and social justice
curriculums, such as the concepts of relativism and pluralism, but I think we often stop the
conversation at this larger, socio-cultural level.
After the initial exercises on recognizing and overcoming bias, we as educators rarely
come back to the much more complex issue of dealing with uncertainty in individuals personal
lives. We rarely cycle what we learn at the abstract levels back through the individual to make
new meaning of personal social identities. In this way diversity and social justice work remains
too safe for allies. Once allies get over the hump of recognizing injustice they become
complacent in their perspective and once again defensive if they are called to self-examine.
Social justice programs must pay more attention to the question of how to balance giving
privileged people who show up to the conversation the benefit of the doubt, while at the same
time allowing the freedom for all entrenched identities and subject positions to be interrogated in
the search for new solutions. Patels story tells us that we can all recognize the problem and the
goal, while not stopping there and remaining open to critique on how to better achieve that goal
in our personal spheres of influence.

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I am currently dealing with this own uncertainty in how I approach my own subjectivity
and actions as a very privileged White, cis-gender, and male currently allied person to
communities that continue to face extreme police violence and systemic oppression - particularly
Black communities, trans communities, and those who exist in the intersections of both. As I
have referenced in class, I am caught between two agonistic thoughts: should we see ourselves as
tools that are building something new (a positive perspective) or as weapons that are tearing
down the old (a negative/detractive/critical perspective). It is obviously overly simplistic to say
that these two approaches are mutually exclusive and that we can only occupy one at all times.
However, I think that our position as educators, as people who have put some level of faith into
the education system, puts restrictions on us. We cannot fluidly move between these two subject
positions because to some extent we will always have to play the game of respectability politics
if we hope to make an impact from within this formalized institution of higher education. As
students and young professionals we are beginning to build a reputation that will follow us and in
some way cement our identities, at least our public/professional ones, and I am fearful of being
held to one of these poles when neither is completely satisfying.
Neither a positive perspective nor a critical one is viable as the only solution to problems
of systemic injustice because there is a danger in becoming complacent in both. In the first
perspective is completely unsatisfying in moments where the grave injustice of our world seems
unbearable - social and cultural moments such as the seemingly never-ending reports of young
Black people being murdered by law enforcement. The second is position is dangerous because
at its extreme it spirals into a cultural and physical violence that burns everyone - even those in
need of the most help. To complicate this even further, no two people can reach the same
decision of what strategy to engage in, to what degree, and at what time in the same way. Our

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individual subject positions and self-reflective processes must guide when is the appropriate time
to take up a constructive or deconstructive strategy.
Overall, I am inclined to state that there has been some serious thought on when
oppressed populations should collectively engage in positive or critical strategies. What I think is
less explored is what strategy allied people should pursue and when. In the past few months I
have found myself caught between two well-known and often-cited quotes from famous Black
authors and community leaders: Audrey Lordes the masters tools will never dismantle the
masters house and Malcolm Xs by any means necessary. I have seen these quotes used to
support and justify different opinions on how to resist and to create an artificial rift between
those who seek different strategies. Often good resistance is cast in the light of Lordes speech
and bad actions are compared to Malcolm Xs more radical position.
What I am left wondering as a White, cis-gendered, man, is what does it mean to resist, to
be an ally, when my entire existence has been built with the masters tools. I am of the masters
house. How can I not help but use its tools? I may co-opt these tools, using them only
momentarily to bring about what I see as positive change, but is that by any means necessary
approach simply reinforcing that the dominant, White, Western, bureaucratic, slow method of
progress is the only acceptable one? I am speaking about these concepts from the panoramic
perspective of a whole career or a whole lifetime and perhaps the only satisfactory answer is to
dismantle the idea that we will all leave behind a single legacy - the idea that our lives will be
presented in a coherent text after we are gone. At times we will be part of a solution and at others
we will an impediment to progress. We will probably never be afforded a holistic view of our
lives, so we may have to move forward with the best information available, constantly trying to
improve upon what we know.

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At the end of this semester I may be leaving with more questions than answers. It is a
complicated time to end this class, as it has served for me as an officially sanctioned and
dependable space to explore topics that are in now way going away any time soon. As the job
search begins, I am continuously asking myself what type of professional I want to be and where
can I make the largest impact. Every day that passes, it seems that there is more and more
evidence about how distorted and unjust our nation is for people of different social identities. For
me, the key will be seeking out and sustaining spaces where I can continue to participate in these
conversations no matter where I end up in six months and no matter what is happening in the
national news. It is sustaining learning and activism that is most important, but also often most
difficult. Since the questions I have are what motivate me to move forward and continue with
this work, perhaps it is not such a bad thing that they vastly out number the answers.