Arelia Johnson, PhD - HIJACKING EQUITY & THE FIGHT FOR JUSTICE

Join Dr. Arelia Johnson at Brazos on Wednesday, October 14 at 6:30 pm for a discussion on her book Hijacking Equity & The Fight for Justice. Dr. Arelia R. Johnson has spent her career inside the rooms where "equity" gets decided—in local government, higher education, and boardrooms—and she's noticed something curious: the word is everywhere, yet almost no one agrees on what it actually means. Hijacking Equity & The Fight for Justice is her invitation to figure that out together, in public, out loud, without the defensiveness that usually shuts these conversations down before they start.At the heart of the book is her original theory of Distributive Justice, a framework she positions within sociology, tracing how institutions absorb the language of justice while resisting its practice. Johnson writes from the vantage point of a practitioner who has sat inside the institutions she critiques, translating dense theory into a clear-eyed account of how equity gets hijacked: diluted in policy, performed in training rooms, and abandoned the moment it demands redistribution and representation. Copies of Hijacking Equity & The Fight for Justice will be available for purchase at the event. _______________________________________________________________________________Dr. Arelia R. Johnson is a scholar-practitioner, author, and theorist whose work sits at the intersection of sociology, law, and justice. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Criminology from Howard University, where her dissertation examined how policy shapes the identification of transgender murder victims. She is the architect of Distributive Justice, a theoretical framework she positions as a fourth paradigm within sociology, and the creator of several trademarked frameworks — including Joy Is Strategy™ and Language Matters by Arelia Johnson™ — that translate critical theory into applied practice. Dr. Johnson is the author of Hijacking Equity & The Fight for Justice, and is currently developing a second academic book, Not Wolf Nor Sheep: An Exploration of Race, Language, and Gender Identity. A native of Houston's Sunnyside community, she most recently served as the inaugural Chief Officer of Human and Civil Rights for Harris County. She writes and speaks at the crossroads of scholarship and lived experience, insisting that rigor and joy are not opposites.