What is social justice?

[undergroundpanther]

Social justice is what faces you in the morning. It is awakening in a house with adequate water supply, cooking facilities and sanitation. It is the ability to nourish your children and send them to school where their education not only equips them for employment but reinforces their knowledge and understanding of their cultural inheritance. It is the prospect of genuine employment and good health: a life of choices and opportunity, free from discrimination.

Mick Dodson,
Annual Report of the Aboriginal
and Torres Strait islander
Social Justice Commissioner, 1993

It has become fashionable to blame those who experience poverty and violence for their plight and to insist that if only they took responsibility for themselves, such disadvantage would disappear.

The mantras of self-interest and utilitarianism are daily chanted, exposing a poverty of spirit and an indifference to violence done to others.
Human rights are based on respect for the dignity and worth of all human beings and seek to ensure freedom from fear and want.



Such indifference may also feed on what some researchers label the "just world hypothesis", the belief that people "get what they deserve and deserve what they get", that beneficiaries deserve their benefits and the victims of misfortune deserve their suffering. They subscribe to the view that individuals can control their fates, an illusion which allows people to see their world as orderly and predictable.

People who strongly hold such beliefs are more likely to have negative attitudes toward underprivileged groups and those experiencing injustice.When people who firmly believe in a "just world" witness the suffering of others, they may first attempt to help but, if that is not possible, they will switch to blaming the victim because of their "bad" acts or their "bad" characters.

The wealthy and powerful tend to have such strong "just world" beliefs while those with little power and wealth are unlikely to do so. For the former, this may help reduce feelings of guilt about the obvious injustice and inequality which surrounds them...
http://www.safecom.org.au/social-justice.htm

[LeftishBrit]

1. Great article; and so true

[warren pease]

2. Herbert Spencer lives; more from the article...

"It (rising inequality) can lead to bitter divisions and increase the psychological and social distance between the haves and the have nots. As Galbraith has pointed out it can cause "the comfortable to disavow the needy" and it becomes easier to persuade people - as this government is trying to do - that defects of character or culture rather than economic history cause the gap...

"Inequality is accompanied by increasing pressure to withdraw resources from the public to the private domain - a deliberate policy drive under the current government."


The comfortable disavowing the needy. Character defects cause economic inequality, not social conditions or a rigged system. Increased pressure to privatize. That all sounds familiar...

Must be time to recycle Herbert Spencer, the British philosopher whose thesis that the rich -- most of whom got that way by benefiting from US imperialism, through ethnic and racial oppression and exploitation or by the blind stinking luck of being born rich -- were intellectually superior, more charming and cleverer than the rest of the herd and, therefore, deserved the wealth that came their way.

The flip side of the argument was to discourage any attempts to ameliorate the miseries of the poor because it would be unscientific to tamper with ongoing economic Darwinist experimentation in the real-world laboratory of human experience. This view is best exemplified by Spencer's coinage, "survival of the fittest." In this case, the rich were obviously more fit to inherit the earth, while everyone else, by definition, suffered from some defect of intellect, character or personality -- laziness, lower intelligence, incompetence at business, destructive behaviors -- that kept them from breathing the rarefied air of the ruling class.

Unsurprisingly, Spencer became very popular with the nouveau riche American robber barons of the late 1890s and early 1900s. They found in Spencer solid scientific reasons to believe in their own superiority and confirm their self-images as masters of the universe. And, as importantly, Spencer helped the rich justify themselves to themselves, even as the oppressive working conditions in their factories and mines and oil fields and steel mills were killing hundreds of people every month. But that's OK; survival of the fittest dictates that some have to fall by the wayside so that the economic elite can maintain their proper places at the top of the dung heap. Sound familiar?

Katrina; mining disasters; crumbling infrastructure; a criminal war fought by the poor; a class war fought against the poor; out-sourcing and off-shoring; Chinese landfill for the serfs, Baccarat crystal for the feudal lords; obliterating public education to keep the peasantry ignorant and compliant; gated communities where the masters hide from their subjects; violent sports blowing off anger and frustration that might otherwise be channeled where it properly belongs; massive federal corruption and cronyism and war profiteering; wink-and-nod regulators; plummeting market valuations; record foreclosure rates; government by corporate fiat; a demented, dysfunctional bribeocracy masquerading as a republic; the complicity of the opposition party, who are paid off by the same elites who brought us the worst administration in US history.

Yup, same shit, different century. But it's not surprising to see this pseudo-scientific garbage emerge in times of bi-polar income and wealth distribution. The serfs have to believe they're to blame for their own lack of economic success. The middle class has to believe that they're getting squeezed -- ever so fairly and patriotically -- for the long-term good of the country. And the rich -- those who bother with introspection -- sometimes like to pretend that their activities are of benefit to all humankind, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.


O brave new world that has such people in it.


wp