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.)
