In this article, David Nurenberg relates his experiences as a suburban high school humanities teacher struggling to engage students with issues of social justice. His story reveals what happens when a teacher works against the resistance of his primarily white and privileged students to reading "literature of the oppressed" on the grounds that it is irrelevant to their lives. Nurenberg draws on Freirean pedagogy, which encourages socially conscious educators to help make learning authentic and relevant by engaging students with curricula focused on issues of social injustice, and asks us to consider what a pedagogy of the oppressed is for students who do not see their lives as such. He reflects on the dynamics of his classroom using applicable theory and speculates about what is possible in teaching social justice in a place of privilege. (Contains 3 notes.)