Perspective of a Majority Student

Abstract

This chapter examines the importance of social justice courses from a majority student's perspective and outlines some of the difficulties in offering these courses. It discusses the benefits of social justice courses for both minority and majority students and focuses on the challenges of understanding and acknowledging the impact of the types of privilege and power that majority individuals experience. The concept of intersectionality, the compounding of injustice for individuals who have multiple minority identities, is explored. Finally, a four-phase model is proposed that can be used to describe the journey that majority students experience as they begin to understand the impact of privilege both on a personal and societal level.

Citation

Kanz-White, K.M. (2013), "Perspective of a Majority Student", Boyer, P.G. and Joy Davis, D. (Ed.) Social Justice Issues and Racism in the College Classroom: Perspectives from Different Voices (International Perspectives on Higher Education Research, Vol. 8), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 229-241. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3628(2013)0000008015