I’m amazed at how early children grasp the concept of fairness. It almost seems like our brains are hardwired to expect it and when our sense of fairness is violated, we cry foul. Social justice is the fair treatment of all people within a given society with respect to their access to resources and services, life opportunities, law enforcement, and protection from environmental harms. Whether or not a society treats all its members fairly can be determined by observation primarily of its inputs and not necessarily of its outcomes.
I know a lot of people look at outcomes to determine whether a system is fair or not. And in many cases, desperate outcomes raise red flags about a broken distribution model. For example, a mother bakes a pie and slices it, giving each of her twins a slice. However, the twins notice immediately that one slice is much larger than the other. As expected, the child with the smaller slice complains about the unfairness. Mom has a couple choices. She can ignore the protesting child and allow resentment and frustration to fester. Or, if there is more pie, she can easily rectify the situation and add more pie to the deficit slice to make up the difference. However, if the rest of the pie is already distributed to others, she could choose to take some pie from the twin with the larger slice to even out the distribution. This last option might then anger the twin who was perfectly content with the original size of his slice. The problem lies with the imperfect distributor of the pie, not with the twins who are now feeling the uncomfortable stress of unfairness. Thankfully, someone created an equal pie slicer that allows mothers to avoid this problem. But the unfair distribution within our society still needs fixing and the solutions are contested.
Today, we are dealing with social injustice caused by an historically flawed distribution of access to resources, opportunities, placement of environmental hazards, and unfair treatment under the law. Since the beginning, the system in the U.S. favored white males with bigger slices of every variety of pie the country had to offer. White males were provided with the greatest access to education, job opportunities, land ownership, healthcare, and the ability to vote and make the laws. And they were the police of the laws they made. People of color and women were not only given crumbs from the pie but suffered major atrocities at the hands of these self-serving white men. The relative wealth of white Americans today is rooted in this unfair distribution. This is history some white conservatives hope to hide. They want to hide it because, like the twin with the larger slice, they are content with what they have and are fearful that demands for social justice threatens them with the loss of their exorbitant pie slices. This is why they prefer to push a narrative that minimizes a history of slavery, genocide, stolen lands, and state sponsored discrimination in favor of a narrative that blames the lack of social economic progress on a list of character deficits they ascribe to the victims.
The truth is that America actually has more pie available, but the white conservatives want it for themselves. Social justice or fairness demands that the country first rectify the inequity of the past distribution and then moving forward the country must provide fair access to resources, opportunities, and equal protections. Yes, I am in favor of reparations for the descendants of slaves and American Indians because it is the least this nation can do to acknowledge past wrongs. I believe social justice demands mitigating the past wrongs that continue to disadvantage those who were negatively impacted by the systematic unfairness. All Americans deserve a common starting chance in life.
That said, social justice does not necessarily guarantee equal outcomes. I think about the parable Jesus told wherein a father distributed gifts to his sons. One son invested his gift, and it grew while the other took his gift and hid it, producing nothing. The father came back and condemned the son who did nothing with what he was given and then gave more to the son who invested his gift. The point is that unequal outcomes are indicative of individual human capacity and not always an indicator of an unfair distribution. Some can make much from little and others can make nothing of a lot. Think of Oprah Winfrey and how much she made of her life using her extraordinary intelligence, talent, and energy. At the same time, there are countless stories of children who were given everything and squandered their lives. It is a mistake for conservatives and others to make an example of the few extraordinary people like Oprah Winfrey or former President Barak Obama and say that their outcomes represent the fairness of our social justice system today. They don’t.
By the same token, conservatives wrongly point to the disproportionate number of black and brown people in prison and claim that it is because black and brown people commit more crimes. They choose to ignore the fact that whites made laws to criminalize drugs, then over-policed black and brown communities, gave longer prison sentences to black and brown people, and showed leniency toward white criminal behavior. One only needs to watch the different behavior of law enforcement towards armed white suspects versus black suspects (who may not even be armed). If Kyle Riddenhouse was black, he would be dead. If the 15-year-old who just killed four classmates was black, he would be dead. America knows this to be true and yet the injustice continues.
In addition, conservates choose to ignore the fact that hopeless poverty and crime are closely intertwined. It is human nature to ignore laws in favor of survival. Think of how many black and brown children grow up poor and without the love and guidance of fathers because of an unfair criminal justice system. However, the outcome of this unfair criminal justice system plays right into the conservative narrative of dangerous black and brown people. A thoughtful person simply needs to example the root of the system to discover that years of social injustice has yielded the result we experience today.
Better humans must take the lead in exposing the inequitable distribution of resources, opportunities, and law enforcement by concentrating on the broken distribution points and not only looking at the outcomes. Black Lives Matter is about looking at these distribution points where the pie continues to be distributed unevenly. This is precisely why conservatives hate them so much. This is why they fear critical race theory and “The 1619 Project”. History is not on their side. The facts counter the conservative narrative that desperately wants to hide the system of social injustice. Better humans ask questions like: Who gets access to education, healthcare, clean water, clean air, voting, and job opportunities? Who is subjected to harmful chemicals, excessive policing, poorly resourced schools, longer prison sentences, and longer voting lines?
Demanding social justice means demanding reparations for past inequities and demanding equal protection under the law and access to resources and opportunities moving forward. It’s only fair and any child can tell you that.