{"id":16357,"date":"2016-02-01T12:22:40","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T17:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16357"},"modified":"2016-02-05T10:21:02","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T15:21:02","slug":"we-are-for-social-justice-but-what-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16357","title":{"rendered":"we are for social justice, but what is it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Schools and colleges, daily newspapers and\u00a0broadcast television channels, and certain civic\u00a0associations\u00a0are prone to present themselves as neutral<\/em> about politics. They say that they provide information, spaces for discussion, and\u00a0opportunities to learn skills.\u00a0Their students, readers, or citizen-members are free to form their own opinions.<\/p>\n

Activists in social movements observe that these organizations\u00a0are not truly neutral (but rather full of implicit values)\u00a0and argue that\u00a0grave current injustices require all\u00a0organizations\u00a0to take explicit stands.<\/p>\n

In response, at least some of the\u00a0ostensibly neutral organizations declare that they are actually against specific injustices and committed to a better society. Nowadays, they often name their positive objective as “social justice” (a phrase whose\u00a0deepest historical roots are in Catholic thought). In past decades, they might have talked instead about democracy or freedom.<\/p>\n

But although some things are obviously unjust, reasonable people disagree profoundly about what constitutes a positive vision of social justice, and why. Thus–I contend–virtually all of the valuable debate that occurred under the aegis of self-described neutral organizations recurs within organizations that declare themselves\u00a0for “social justice” without providing a detailed definition of that phrase.<\/p>\n

The return of debate is not in itself a bad thing; politics is about persistent disagreement,\u00a0which\u00a0responsible citizens can embrace and even enjoy. But it is somewhat naive to\u00a0expect\u00a0that a commitment to a vague ideal of social justice will bring consensus. And it is a shame\u00a0if that expectation leads to\u00a0disillusionment.<\/p>\n

In our current time, this is the main pattern I observe: educational, journalistic, and civic associations strongly proclaim neutrality in response to what appears an uncivil\u00a0and polarized political debate, and then activists demand that they take a stand in response (mainly)\u00a0to\u00a0climate change or\u00a0domestic US racism. Those are<\/em> matters of grave concern and they have generated social movements that are particularly effective at influencing schools and colleges, the media, and local associations (much more so than governments or corporations). In decades past, opposition to US foreign policy and war played similar roles in challenges to neutrality.<\/p>\n

But if there is any doubt that people can be committed to something called “social justice,” abhor the same specific injustices<\/em>, and yet disagree about the very definition of “justice,” consider the current debates between #BlackLivesMatter and Sen. Sanders<\/a>, #BlackLivesMatter and Secretary Clinton<\/a>, or\u00a0Clinton and Sanders.<\/p>\n

Those three people\/movements place themselves on the left, but\u00a0the debate about social justice is certainly broader than that, even if the phrase currently has leftish resonances.\u00a0In an interview with Eric Liu for a project <\/a>that Eric and I conducted together, Mark Meckler, who had founded Tea Party Patriots, called the\u00a0police presence in Ferguson \u201coutrageous.\u201d He acknowledged the salience of racism but mainly viewed police violence as an example of a government depriving individuals of liberty.\u00a0\u201cThe state has a lot of power and only recently it is outwardly manifesting that power in costumes and equipment that demonstrate military might. … That is not of society, by and for society; that is against society.\u201d A democratic socialist might agree with much of that\u00a0and\u00a0yet\u00a0read Ferguson more as a story of disinvestment<\/a> in industrial cities and the failure of our economy to value workers. I’ve quoted<\/a> Julius Jones of #BlackLivesMatter as\u00a0a proponent of a third view: that anti-Black racism is\u00a0a fundamental chord in American history. Note that all of these positions could simultaneously be true, yet the proponents must disagree about solutions. More government? Less government? Remedies targeted at race? At class? Any\u00a0of those could constitute “social justice.”<\/span><\/p>\n

To have a theory of justice, you need principles and a\u00a0way of ranking or adjudicating among them. Maybe equality is one of your principles, but equality of what? (Opportunity, status, power, welfare?) Equality for whom? (All the students who are already in your classroom or at your college? All major demographic groups within America? All American individuals? All human beings?)<\/p>\n

And even if equality–defined in\u00a0a particular way–is a very high principle for you, what about freedom\u00a0(which\u00a0comes in at least six different and incompatible forms<\/a>), sustainability, security, creativity, innovation, community, rule of law, tradition, diversity, prosperity, and efficiency? A reasonable view of social justice is surely an amalgam of many of these principles, reflecting tradeoffs and rankings.\u00a0We develop such views in part by reflecting on what is bad\u00a0about the status quo and what we have learned about practical solutions that work. (For instance, we wouldn’t advocate equality of education if we thought that schools were\u00a0a waste of time.) Thus a theory of justice typically rests on\u00a0a narrative about the failures and the successes of our society so far. All of that–the narrative, the assessment of actual institutions,\u00a0the abstract principles, and their ranking–is contestable.<\/p>\n

An organization can claim\u00a0that it is thoroughly neutral,\u00a0just a platform for its members to debate what is right. Or it can assert that it is for social justice, and\u00a0then its members will debate what is right. The difference matters–a bit. A\u00a0claim of perfect neutrality is\u00a0inevitably false and\u00a0distracting. A commitment to social justice can usefully raise the question, “What is<\/em> justice?”<\/p>\n

The choice remains how specifically to define the content of social justice. Organizations\u00a0face choices between ideological\u00a0diversity\u00a0and unity and between\u00a0scale (attracting lots of people) and depth (intensively relating to their members). The more precisely an organization defines its objective, the less hospitable it is to diversity but the more it\u00a0can achieve unity and advance an\u00a0agenda. The smaller it is, the better it can work through disagreements, but the bigger it is, the more influence it can have.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I think that organizations that strive to be ideologically diverse and also relatively big are relatively\u00a0weak and scarce today. Universities and schools and large civic associations can fill that quadrant. It won’t hurt for them to declare themselves for “social justice,” but they would be wise to invite a genuinely diverse debate about what social justice is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Schools and colleges, daily newspapers and\u00a0broadcast television channels, and certain civic\u00a0associations\u00a0are prone to present themselves as neutral about politics. They say that they provide information, spaces for discussion, and\u00a0opportunities to learn skills.\u00a0Their students, readers, or citizen-members are free to form their own opinions. Activists in social movements observe that these organizations\u00a0are not truly neutral (but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-civic-theory","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16357"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16382,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16357\/revisions\/16382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}