7.4: Articles and Essays

AFL-CIO. (n.d.). Bayard Rustin: Trade union and civil rights organizer and activist. Social Welfare History Project.

Bayard Rustin served the trade union and civil rights movements as a brilliant theorist, tactician and organizer. He conceived the coalition of liberal, labor and religious leaders who supported passage of the civil rights and anti-poverty legislation of the 1960s and, as the first executive director of the AFL-CIO’s A. Philip Randolph Institute, he worked closely with the labor movement to ensure African American workers’ rightful place in the House of Labor.

Hudson, P. J. (2016, March 14).The Racist Dawn of Capitalism. Boston Review.

Unearthing the economy of bondage.

Johnson, W. (2016, October 26). To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice. Boston Review.

The idea that enslavement “dehumanized” enslaved people suggests that their humanity needs to be proven again and again. Much of the scholarship on slavery has relied upon a pat liberal notion of human rights as its moral paradigm. The version of human rights that dominates contemporary discourse is not significantly inflected by the history of slavery, although it would be better if it were. What if we use the history of slavery as a standpoint from which to rethink our notion of justice today?

Tuck, E. & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1-40.

Our goal in this article is to remind readers what is unsettling about decolonization. Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to “decolonize our schools,” or use “decolonizing methods,” or, “decolonize student thinking”, turns decolonization into a metaphor. As important as their goals may be, social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches that decenter settler perspectives have objectives that may be incommensurable with decolonization. Because settler colonialism is built upon an entangled triad structure of settler-native-slave, the decolonial desires of white, nonwhite, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people, can similarly be entangled in resettlement, reoccupation, and reinhabitation that actually further settler colonialism. The metaphorization of decolonization makes possible a set of evasions, or “settler moves to innocence”, that problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity. In this article, we analyze multiple settler moves towards innocence in order to forward “an ethic of incommensurability” that recognizes what is distinct and what is sovereign for project(s) of decolonization in relation to human and civil rights based social justice projects. We also point to unsettling themes within transnational/Third World decolonizations, abolition, and critical spaceplace pedagogies, which challenge the coalescence of social justice endeavors, making room for more meaningful potential alliances.

Sabzalieva, E., Gallegos, D., Yerovi, C., Chacón, E., Mutize, T., Morales, D., Cuadros, J. A. (2022). The right to higher education: A social justice perspective. UNESCO.

This conceptual paper advocates for the RTHE (right to higher education) by developing a framework that takes a social justice perspective on this issue. Using a social justice lens, it highlights the unfair distribution of and lack of equitable access to higher education and the need for systems and institutions of higher education to change to accommodate students’ diverse backgrounds and needs. The RTHE social justice framework takes a systemic and structural approach to the issues facing students in higher education today. It embraces four inter-related dimensions: the 5As framework, inclusive excellence, equity deserving groups, and intersectionality. Under the social justice lens, each dimension attracts important considerations relating to the RTHE.

Johnson, C. & McPhailcmaadmin (EDU). (2021, April 26). Fostering Social Justice in Higher Education. Diverse: Issues In Higher Education.

In this brief article, I argue that recognizing and shifting expectations is vital in addressing social injustice in higher education. With an ever-increasing diverse student population, higher educational leaders must step away from traditional approaches to education and recognize that addressing political issues involving race, class, gender identity, sexuality, and ability are not optional.