A different approach to injustice
Happy Friday, everyone.
For the last four years in American cultural-political discourse, for a number of good reasons, there has been a spike of interest in systemic social injustice, specifically systemic racism.
It’s less intense today than it was in, say, the summer of 2020, but it’s still an important topic. It comes up not infrequently with students, parents, and educators. Even aside from discursive trends, it’s perennially important. A major part of the scope of education is moral education, and justice is a major part of the scope of moral education.
We’ve published a number of essays over the last four years on the topic:
These essays have helped develop a distinctive, coherent, mission-aligned approach to racism and adjacent issues, such as how to approach culturally contentious topics, curricular diversity, and how to support healthy identity formation.
But apart from the last essay linked above, we’ve never centered on the distinctive element. Our approach has ended up being quite different from, even significantly opposed to, other approaches to this issue, such as those that typically go under the heading of DEI or ABAR.
But there are many things about those more typical approaches that are, in my view, unhelpful or actively harmful, even just in terms of ameliorating issues of social injustice. Today we made available an essay that does just that, that very explicitly draws out the contrast between our chosen approach and mainstream DEI/ABAR approaches. Here is the essay:
I hope you find it clarifying. As always, feel free to write me with questions, critiques, and comments.
Matt Bateman
Board of Directors, Higher Ground