Challenging the Hegemonic Police Within: A Lifelong Process of Unlearning

Those who benefit from privilege often fail to understand the inner workings of their privilege. If they do, they can respond in various ways: abuse their privilege, continue to ignore it, become more self-reflexive with their actions, and more. This essay engages my (in)ability to use a standpoint of privilege in challenging everyday acts of oppression. I offer a dominant group methodology that uses dominant group theory as a heuristic to practice critical self-reflexivity through autoethnography. I follow by providing autoethnographic accounts of moments when I complicitly reinforced or attempted to impede communicative behavior(s) that perpetuated prejudice and discrimination. I conclude with practical implications for readers—especially those who identify as dominant group members. More specifically, I invite readers to unlearn oppressive ways of being toward the continual development and enactment of a social justice orientation.