Social Justice Or Claptrap?

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) - Maybe I’ve been laid-up a little too long from my stroke, but without the ability to read well I’ve been left with only two options to keep me busy: watching TV and thinking.

TV loses its appeal the third time you see the same rerun or the sixth time you are force fed your most unfavorite commercial. Since football is almost over, and watching the news raises my blood pressure higher than my doctors want it to be, I’ve reluctantly turned to thinking.

But thinking is not my first choice, since it hurts my head. I think it is because I have a four-cylinder brain while trying to do some eight-cylinder thinking.

So to stave off boredom, I decided to risk the effects of severe brain damage to try to delve into some of the major societal and philosophical questions of the day.

But grappling with these problems is harder than it looks and I still can’t solve the problem of plain vs. peanut, which has perplexed me for some time, even though I have to admit that I am partial to almonds.

But on the less significant questions of the day, I think I have made some progress. And on one I am prepared to announce my decision: I do not believe that “social justice” really exists.

Now, before you start calling me names and sending me nasty emails citing St. Matthew’s Gospel, Leo XIII, Pius XI, members of the current crop of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, or worse yet, Nancy Pelosi, give me an opportunity to explain.

Justice is a concept that I think most Christians and Americans understand. My dictionary defines it as “the principle or ideal of moral rightness; conformity to moral rightness in conduct or attitude.” While there may be slight differences in how we define the term, I think they all mean the same thing: giving to each person his due and living accordingly.

Understand, please, that this is not to be confused with charity, which my book defines as “an act or feeling of benevolence, good will, or affection; forbearance in judging others,” or more simply providing for the needs of others, especially the less fortunate in both bodily and spiritual means.

While the two terms are separate concepts, both are valuable concepts for society and for Christianity.

But they are separate concepts and they should in no way be confused or treated as synonyms. Of course both can be used to manipulate others, such as the phony charities that pop up every holiday season that are only rackets disguised as humanitarian enterprises. Just as claims of charity can be used for nefarious ends, so can justice; but true charity and justice are, in and of themselves, pure and true.

Hearing no objections (or booing) at this point, I’ll move onto my thesis: There is no such thing as “social justice.” In fact, the term is an oxymoron, it is self-contradictory and thus is a perversion of the term “justice.”

You see there is only one justice; there is no special justice. There is only justice and its lack: non-justice, or injustice, anything else is a false justice.

The examples that usually crop up are in the area of civil rights where they often involve attempts to use so-called social justice programs as remedial action to correct racial or gender imbalances in workplaces and college admissions. That corrective action almost always creates winners and losers by favoring some individuals over others according to their race or gender — and that now includes racial and gender identity.

So do the losers, the folks who watched others jump the line in front of them, get any justice in this situation? Of course not. And while there was no justice for the loser, what justice could the winner claim, for his “rigged” victory was truly undeserved.

And yet the “social justice warriors” will claim that this affirmative action was necessary to even the playing field for the “disadvantaged.”

Are they right? Of course not. If they were looking for true justice in education, for example, they would level the playing fields by fixing the inferior schools that the poor and minority students overwhelmingly populate, and provide remedial assistance to those found left behind. But certainly not by denying another the opportunity that was rightfully earned.

If they want true equal opportunity in employment, rather than juggling the numbers to an artificially arrived outcome, why not make a recruiting trip to Grambling, Alcorn State, or any number of other traditionally black and minority colleges, or to one of those high schools populated by the “disadvantaged” that liberals are always complaining about where there are eager minority students looking to land that first job on their own and not by a weighted system.

The point I am trying to make is this: Those who espouse “social justice” should think hard about what that means in the particular circumstance in which they are involved. Advocating for a certain quota system by marginalizing some students, for example, does nothing to solve the problem of inferior inner city schools, and it surely does nothing for the student himself marginalized by the artificial manipulation of the system.
The bottom line my feeble brain is suggesting is that the term “social justice” is too often used as a quick fix remedy, or charitable endeavor, rather than an attempt to permanently fix the problem at hand.

Once I represented a young lady who had bought a house only to find that the previous owner had paneled over and painted its basement walls to cover up water damage that posed a significant threat to the house’s foundation.

Social justice, it seems to me, is a lot like what was done to that house: the problem, hidden from sight, only appeared fixed. But, of course, it wasn’t. The water damage was still there festering out of sight.

Think about that the next time you hear someone put an adjective before the word justice. Maybe, just maybe, it’s because they are blind to the true problem or just don’t have the will to tackle it.

And finally, don’t ever confuse it with charity. It is not that, either.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday morning at 9:30 on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)