Box 1.1 Lead-in

“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

Often attributed to Lilla Watson, an Aboriginal visual artist, activist, and academic from Queensland, Australia, this quote comes from the work of an Aboriginal Rights group in Queensland, which Lilla was also a part of.

What are your thoughts and reflections on this statement? In what way might your liberation be bound up with Indigenous people's or anyone else’s?’

Introduction

Social justice is an elusive and politically charged term, open to multiple and diverse interpretations. Its complexity and fluidity result from the social, economic, political, and cultural contexts that shape its definitions and interpretations (Fook, 2014). As Hytten and Bettez (2011) state, “the more we see people invoking the idea of social justice, the less clear it becomes what people mean, and if it is meaningful at all” (p. 8). Social justice has become a widely appropri-ated buzzword, making the term vulnerable to negative connotations, backlash, anger, and defensiveness. Social justice warrior, for instance, has become a pejorative term to refer to those who support equality and diversity only for the sake of personal validation, rather than to achieve social, political, and economic goals through advocacy and activism.

Social justice education has also been defined, described, and actualized in myriad, often ambiguous ways, to the extent that the term has become “diluted, trivialized or co-opted” (Cochran-Smith, 2010, p. 445). It is not within the scope of this book to provide a comprehensive account of the political and philosophical roots and history of the terms ‘social justice’ and ‘social justice education.’ I do, however, want to describe my own understanding of these two terms and how I am using them in this book. The following issues will, therefore, be explored in this chapter:

• • Ideology, hegemony, and oppression as key concepts

• • Social justice as politics of recognition and redistribution with intersectionality at its core

• • Social justice education: An individual, institutional, and collective journey

• • The social justice educator