Red–Bottom Shoe Activism: Privilege, Power, and Pedagogy

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: N/A

Room: Plaza B

Floor: Lobby Level

A young African-American woman sat on an elevated stage. She spoke about her activism with Black Lives Matter. Visibly noticeable to the audience below were her red-bottom French Christian Louboutin shoes. An older Caucasian woman in the audience sneered. “How can she be an activist with expensive shoes?” This scene from a social justice conference challenges our notions of activism and where the locus of social justice activism should reside. It creates an opportunity to consider assumptions about the nature of activism and our role in educating future lawyers. The shoe narrative demonstrates how race, privilege, class, and gender impact our perceptions of who has authority to speak on behalf of others. The shoe narrative is a tool to help us deconstruct the privileges we wear, the multiple identities we bring into the classroom, and how power dynamics impact our work. We will interrogate how shopping at Whole Foods, working out at Soul Cycle, participating in high end hot yoga, and attending expensive conferences in luxury hotels impact any perceived authoritative role we might have in being the change we wish to see in the world.
Panelists believe that knowledge is socially constructed and individually integrated. Accordingly, this deconstructed panel turns the “sage on stage” model on its head. Attendees in groups will engage with interactive learning models to: understand how the Johari Window can help to unearth unconscious and conscious beliefs that contribute to our pedagogy and activism, and start to develop a self–awareness of how to manage the polarities of power in our voices while remaining conscious of the limitations of lawyering. Attendees will think critically about what they bring to teaching during divisive times and the role our law students may have in addressing the divisive America in which we reside.