What is Social Justice?
While talking with a friend the other day, I used the term “social justice.” When she asked what that meant, I really didn't have a good answer. I'm a member of the Social Justice Committee of the local Catholic church, a member of the League For Social Justice group on MySpace, and I could probably talk about social justice all afternoon. But I couldn't define it in just a sentence or two.
I did a little web searching, and asked everybody I thought might have a good definition of social justice. Wikipedia says, “Social justice refers to conceptions of justice applied to an entire society. It is based on the idea of a just society, which gives individuals and groups fair treatment and a just share of the benefits of society.”
At the website of the Social Justice Training Institute, I found this: Adams, Bell and Griffin (1997) define social justice as both a process and a goal. “The goal of social justice education is full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs. Social justice includes a vision of society that is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure.”
A friend from the Social Justice Committee gave this definition for social justice: “Social policies that allow all people to live with dignity, including access to adequate food, clean water, shelter, security, healthcare, meaningful work, and the freedom to participate in government.”
According to Rachel Brewer at The Centre for Social Justice, “Social justice involves the struggle to create societies where income, wealth and power are collectively shared rather than concentrated in the hands of a powerful few.”
H.G. Wells and friends, in their Declaration of Rights, tell us: “Every man is a joint inheritor of all the natural resources and of the powers, inventions and possibilities accumulated by our forerunners. He is entitled, within the measure of these resources and without distinction of race, color or professed beliefs or opinions, to the nourishment, covering and medical care needed to realise his full possibilities of physical and mental development from birth to death. Notwithstanding the various and unequal qualities of individuals, all men shall be deemed absolutely equal in the eyes of the law, equally important in social life and equally entitled to the respect of their fellow-men.”
Erika Nonken, Public Information Assistant at the Unitarian Universalist Association, says social justice is working to [or actions that] make society more just.
All these are good definitions, but this quote from Archbishop Helder Camara really helped clarify social justice for me, distinguishing it from charity: “When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist.” Social justice means asking the hard questions. Merely feeding the poor is charity. Charity is fine, but it doesn't address the question of why the poor have no food. Social justice asks the question, finds the answer, and works to see to it that, from now on, the poor will always have food. Social justice asks why some schools have 30 year old text books while others have the latest texts and a computer for every student, then works to make sure the latest texts and computers will always be available in every school.
There's an old story that takes place in a village on a river bank:
One summer in the village, the people in the town gathered for a picnic. As they leisurely shared food and conversation, someone noticed a baby in the river, struggling and crying. The baby was going to drown! Someone rushed to save the baby. Then, they noticed another screaming baby in the river, and they pulled that baby out. Soon, more babies were seen drowning in the river, and the towns people were pulling them out as fast as they could. It took great effort, and they began to organize their activities in order to save the babies as they came down the river. As everyone else was busy in the rescue efforts to save the babies, two of the townspeople started to run away along the shore of the river.
"Where are you going?" shouted one of the rescuers. "We need you here to help us save these babies!"
"We are going upstream to stop whoever is throwing them in!"
Social justice means going upstream to stop whoever is throwing babies in the river.
I did a little web searching, and asked everybody I thought might have a good definition of social justice. Wikipedia says, “Social justice refers to conceptions of justice applied to an entire society. It is based on the idea of a just society, which gives individuals and groups fair treatment and a just share of the benefits of society.”
At the website of the Social Justice Training Institute, I found this: Adams, Bell and Griffin (1997) define social justice as both a process and a goal. “The goal of social justice education is full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs. Social justice includes a vision of society that is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure.”
A friend from the Social Justice Committee gave this definition for social justice: “Social policies that allow all people to live with dignity, including access to adequate food, clean water, shelter, security, healthcare, meaningful work, and the freedom to participate in government.”
According to Rachel Brewer at The Centre for Social Justice, “Social justice involves the struggle to create societies where income, wealth and power are collectively shared rather than concentrated in the hands of a powerful few.”
H.G. Wells and friends, in their Declaration of Rights, tell us: “Every man is a joint inheritor of all the natural resources and of the powers, inventions and possibilities accumulated by our forerunners. He is entitled, within the measure of these resources and without distinction of race, color or professed beliefs or opinions, to the nourishment, covering and medical care needed to realise his full possibilities of physical and mental development from birth to death. Notwithstanding the various and unequal qualities of individuals, all men shall be deemed absolutely equal in the eyes of the law, equally important in social life and equally entitled to the respect of their fellow-men.”
Erika Nonken, Public Information Assistant at the Unitarian Universalist Association, says social justice is working to [or actions that] make society more just.
All these are good definitions, but this quote from Archbishop Helder Camara really helped clarify social justice for me, distinguishing it from charity: “When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist.” Social justice means asking the hard questions. Merely feeding the poor is charity. Charity is fine, but it doesn't address the question of why the poor have no food. Social justice asks the question, finds the answer, and works to see to it that, from now on, the poor will always have food. Social justice asks why some schools have 30 year old text books while others have the latest texts and a computer for every student, then works to make sure the latest texts and computers will always be available in every school.
There's an old story that takes place in a village on a river bank:
One summer in the village, the people in the town gathered for a picnic. As they leisurely shared food and conversation, someone noticed a baby in the river, struggling and crying. The baby was going to drown! Someone rushed to save the baby. Then, they noticed another screaming baby in the river, and they pulled that baby out. Soon, more babies were seen drowning in the river, and the towns people were pulling them out as fast as they could. It took great effort, and they began to organize their activities in order to save the babies as they came down the river. As everyone else was busy in the rescue efforts to save the babies, two of the townspeople started to run away along the shore of the river.
"Where are you going?" shouted one of the rescuers. "We need you here to help us save these babies!"
"We are going upstream to stop whoever is throwing them in!"
Social justice means going upstream to stop whoever is throwing babies in the river.
posted by Jim Allyn at 11/15/2006 04:18:00 AM
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