What is Social Justice?

"Social justice is understanding "relations of power, resource inequities, and disparate opportunities and explicit discrimination among different social groups based on race, class, gender, language, and other differences" (Stinson 79). For those who are marginalized by social justice issues, it impacts their daily lives, families, and communities. Social justice issues affect individuals on both global and local scales. Here are just some of the issues listed for each.

Global Social Justice Issues:

• Climate Change
• Slavery
• Child Labor
• Starvation 
• Women's Rights
• Water Rights
• Rights to an Education 
• Sex trafficking 
• Immigration 

Local Social Justice Issues:

• Water Rights
• Native American Rights
• Racial Profiling
• Affordable Housing 
• Women's Rights
• Sex trafficking
• Gender and Sex Discrimination 
• Immigration 

Defining social justice is complex.  Addressing social justice issues is part of the critique and agency that takes place in the composition classroom and way for students to apply rhetoric theory in meaningful ways. David W. Stinson, Carla R. Bidwell, Ginny C. Powell who wrote “Critical Pedagogy and Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice” discuss the complexity of the definition with teaching. One that it’s multilayered, “teaching for social justice are complex, multi-layered, and often contradictory … social justice, emphasizes the multifaceted and relational aspects of different conceptualization about social justice but resists presenting a delimiting, unifying theory with the hope of provoking more questions and stimulating new discussions about the many meanings of teaching for social justice.” (Stinson 79). Two, social justice is dependent of its cultural surroundings and rhetorical situation and it is a ““sliding signifier,” which suggests that defining what social justice teaching “actually means is struggled over, in the same way that concepts such as democracy are subject to different senses by different groups with sometimes radically different ideological and educational agendas” (79). Social Justice issues can be applied to any subject area like in math class for statistical outcomes for racial profiling, or service learning for marginalized groups for a psychology class, or even a environmental biology class for understanding water rights. 

Social justice is not just writing about how people that are oppressed; it's working towards empowering those who are marginalized and creating real life application of critical thinking methods of problem solving for real life issues. Lauren F. Lichty, and Eylin Palamaro‐Munsell who wrote “Pursuing an Ethical, Socially Just Classroom: Searching for Community Psychology Pedagogy” explains, to create an ethical, socially just classroom, it is important to have processes for collaborating that encourage shared language, shared talking space, and valuing all members of a community.” Both professors understand the need to teach from social justice lens to help students prepare as community psychologist to fight oppression, reduce social inequalities, and work towards empowerment for marginalized people. 
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​Work Cited
Lichty, Lauren F., and Eylin Palamaro‐Munsell. “Pursuing an Ethical, Socially Just Classroom:
Searching for Community Psychology Pedagogy.” American Journal of Community
Psychology, vol. 60, no. 3-4, WILEY, 2017, pp. 316–26, doi:10.1002/ajcp.12199.

Stinson, W. David, et al. “Critical Pedagogy and Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice”
International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, Vol 4, no. 1, 2012, pp 76-94