What is Social Justice,
anyway?
- Social
justice isn’t just charity. Social
justice tries to change the way things are organized in order to make everything
fair for everyone.
- “Social
justice, therefore, tries to look at the system (political, economic,
social, cultural, religious, and mythical) within which we live so as to
name and change those structural things that account for the fact that
some of us are unduly penalized even as others of us are unduly
privileged. Thus, social justice
has to do with issues such as poverty, inequality, war, racism, sexism,
abortion, and lack of concern for ecology because what lies at the root of
each of these is not so much someone’s private sin of some individual’s
private inadequacy but rather a huge, blind system that is inherently
unfair.”
- “Charity
is appeased when some rich person gives money to the poor while justice
asks why one person can be that rich when so many are poor.”
- “There
can be no peace, universal prosperity, equality, harmony between sexes,
and proper respect for the environment until there is universal justice,
that is, until the systems we live within are made to be fair to and
respectful of everyone and everything.”
- “To
practice social justice is to examine, challenge, refuses far as possible
to participate in, and try to change those systems that unjustly penalize
some even as they unjustly reward others.”
- Social
justice is seeing the truth in something and if it is unjust, doing
something to change it.
- Social
justice is making everything equal for everyone. In order to change that inequality you
must see the truth, challenge things, question it, and be fair about
things. If you are trying to fix
something unjust you must have an open mind and be just. Treat others how you would want to be
treated. Eventually, if everyone
treats everyone fairly and justly then we will have social justice.
- Quotes from The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian spirituality by Ronald Rolheiser
- Works Cited:
Rolheiser, Ronald.The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian spirituality. New York: Doubleday, 1999.