Chapter 12: Off-Loading Self/Other/World Responsibilities: Confronting Questionable Ethics in Youth Engagement in Social Justice Activism

Darren: After spending the better part of the last 3 decades fostering youth engagement in social justice activism, I have started to wonder about a new and troubling feeling regarding the ethics of how I have been doing this work. To be frank, there have been some particular instances during the many years since I first stumbled into anti-oppression work in the 1980s wherein I experienced an uncomfortable sense that something, in my and others’ practices of social justice work with youth, was not quite right. However, across these same years I also acquired a wealth of experience as a White, academic male in living well with denial. So, let me introduce the source of my newfound interruption and, thus, curiosity about my professional work.