The Self-Critique of a Social Justice Warrior

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I am a social justice warrior. I mean that in the strictly pejorative sense of the term. Calling myself a warrior of any kind is utterly laughable. What I mean is that I interpose myself into other peoples’ struggles as an ally with a mixture of good and bad motives. I don’t think “social justice warrior” as a term applies to people who are directly fighting their own oppression. It’s a legitimate and important critique of privileged people like me who need to be humble and self-critical when we jump into battles where we are never operating out of purely altruistic solidarity.

I guess it started in sixth grade for me. I don’t know how many other nerdy middle-class white kids bought NWA’s Straight Outta Compton that year, but I have a feeling that we provided a large percentage of the funding that made gangsta rap successful. It gave me a way to fight back the middle school bullies wearing my walkman headphones in my bedroom at night, because I was down with Ice Cube and I had memorized the first three songs on his biggest album.

Despite the fact that I score 100% in privilege on every axis of identity politics, I’ve always self-identified as an outsider because of the way I never fit in socially as a kid. I’ve had a lifelong beef with the popular kids. So when I discovered political activism in college, the popular kids from my youth became the cigar-chomping rich white men against whom I defined myself as a radical who was down with the blacks and the gays and the feminists. I also learned about injustices that made me legitimately angry and met marginalized people from very different backgrounds whom I came to love personally. But part of my “social justice warrior” identity will always be a way of living out my beef with the popular kids.

The urban dictionary offers the following definition of a “social justice warrior”:

A pejorative term for an individual who repeatedly and vehemently engages in arguments on social justice on the Internet, often in a shallow or not well-thought-out way, for the purpose of raising their own personal reputation. A social justice warrior, or SJW, does not necessarily strongly believe all that they say, or even care about the groups they are fighting on behalf of. They typically repeat points from whoever is the most popular blogger or commenter of the moment, hoping that they will “get SJ points” and become popular in return. They are very sure to adopt stances that are “correct” in their social circle.

Is that true about me? Partly yes, partly no. I don’t think I’m completely cynical about scoring social justice points. I’m legitimately passionate about trying to help other white people see the systemic racism in the world around us and trying to help Christians stop idolizing heteronormativity and capitalism. I feel a sense of prophetic duty to name the injustices that are happening in the world, especially the ones that my people are trying to shut their ears to. But I also really like seeing myself as the white guy who “gets it.” When I was the youth pastor for a bunch of working-class Latino kids, I was in progressive white boy heaven because they told me I had a “brown heart.”

Allies need to operate with a tremendous amount of self-suspicion because it’s so easy to turn any social justice cause into our personal ego trip. When we do that, we undermine the cause by being gratuitously self-righteous assholes with other privileged people whose genuine ignorance does not make us any better than they are. Whatever liberation I’ve received from being defensive about my privilege is a complete gift. It’s God’s grace. Nobody pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps in escaping the sinful socializations of our world. I have been mentored and educated by some very patient, gracious people throughout my life. As a campus minister, I have a huge opportunity to mentor and educate others in the same way.

So I have a choice. I can get off on my solidarity and jeer at all those other stupid white dudebros who aren’t as infallibly intersectional as I am. Or I can try to figure out how to speak in a way that invites reflection. I can heap shame on others to make myself feel awesome or I can frame my words with enough humility that they have a chance of being received.

Everybody has a different role in the struggle. Some people need to carry the bullhorns. Some need to produce biting satire. Some need to be mean and confrontational. Some need to be kind and patient. It’s not appropriate for me to tell people who are fighting their own oppression what tactics they should or shouldn’t use in their struggle. But it is my responsibility as an ally to figure out how my particular access and social position can be used strategically to help others. If I burn bridges to feed my appetite for self-righteousness, then I’ve betrayed the movement.

For me to be of any use to anybody, I have to be self-critical. If you identify with some of the underlying ego issues that I have, then you can work on the same things I need to work on. If not, then go about your business because what I’m saying doesn’t apply to you.

The Rev. Morgan Guyton serves as director of the NOLA Wesley Foundation, which is the United Methodist campus ministry at Tulane and Loyola University in New Orleans, LA. He blogs at Mercy Not Sacrifice on Patheos.com. This article is reprinted with the author's permission.