United We Stand: Social Justice for All: A Study of Social Justice and Power Through a Bona Fide Group Perspective

Abstract

"In an increasingly abrasive and polarized American society, a greater commitment to social justice can play a construcive role in helping people develop a more sophisticated understanding of diversity and social group interaction, more critically evaluate oppressive social patterns and institutions, and work more democratically with diverse others to create just and inclusive practices and social structures." The importance of social justice is to "help people identify and analyze dehumanizing sociopolitical processes, reflect on their own positions in relation to these processes so as to consider the consequences of oppressive socialization intheir loives, and think proactively about alternate actions given this analysis. The goal of social justice education is to enable people to develop critical analytical tools necessary to understand oppression and their own socialization within oppressive systems, and to develop a sense of agency and capacity to interrupt and chnge oppressive patterns and behaviors in themselves and in the institutions and communitites of which they are a part" (Adams, Bell and Griffin, 1997). Utilizing bona fide group perspective during an ethnographic study of a student group, this study examines how an individual's perception of their self-constructed and group identity(ies) are manifested through social justice behavior - as memebers of a group whose purpose is to engage in social justice.