On Educating Oneself

This is a really good post from Boldly Go on the positive and negative reactions to being told to "google it," i.e., educate yourself rather than ask someone to educate you:

My first problem with this argument is the assumption that social justice (and by social justice, I mean discussions about racism, sexism, cissexism, disableism, sizeism, heterosexism, etc.) are beyond the reach of individuals who haven’t been to academic institutions. And this because, aside from some moments in my liberal arts university that attempted to focus on diversity, most of what I know about social justice (in terms of both privileges I have and marginalisations I deal with) has not come from academia. It’s come from the internet.

For me, this is also true. Nearly everything I know about social justice, I learned online, and while I'd argue that the language used in the SJ blog world is pedantic, it is insular. But insisting that working-class or people without the "correct" education "just can't understand" is rooted in classism. (And is usually brought to discussion by someone with class privilege.) Plus I grew up before computers -- surely before social networking -- were part of every household, so running to google something is a blessing compared to digging through piles of microfiche at the library.