An Analysis Of Robin Diangelo's Essay

In the article “Leaning In”, Robin DiAngelo, Ph.D., and Özlem Sensoy, Ph.D. guides students to a greater perspective when it comes to social justice. Social justice is a sensitive subject for many. DiAngelo and Sensory explain how we can become shut off to opinions or perspectives other than our own due to emotional reactions, personal experience, our culture, or simply what we hear on media or social groups mentioning throughout our lives. Students are encouraged to shy away from striving for achievement through their GPA and rather engage in the content at hand to enhance both their learning and understanding. By doing this, students become more open minded and available to apply their own educated critical thinking on subject matters. In order for students to
They have this idea that when we are emotionally charged because of what another person says, we can take that as a cue to explore the subject for a better understanding. DiAngelo and Sensory make it very clear that understanding is not the same as agreement. A person can explore why someone thinks something and see their point of view, but stick with their personal opinions. No one can take a student’s opinion away, but they have to be open minded to not overlook knowledge or ideas from others. This helps students grow as individuals and realize who they are by having the hard discussions with others on sensitive subjects. By exploring the perspectives of others and seeking to understand them, we gain more knowledge as individuals. In social justice, there is no black and white, and we as students can discover how there are actually so many gray areas. DiAngelo and Sensory show that we are all effected by inequality and bias in one way or another and at some point in our lives. By following our open mind and silencing offense to our own biases, we can then put ourselves in the shoes of the individual before us and gain knowledge and perception from