Why Are We Still Talking About Social Justice?

The problem I have with liberals is that they are flighty. I remember as a child watching public service announcements for UNICEF on television where they would show an African child on the screen. This of course was an attempt to get people to send money, playing on the sympathies of the viewers.

As I grew older, I found that the look of the children was changing. Next, I saw children from India and Bangladesh being featured on the television screen. UNICEF, it appeared, decided to focus on another part of the globe. Either that or the problems of hunger and poverty in Africa had been solved. We know better than that.

A few years later, the children were a little closer to home. Not only was UNICEF now competing with a teary-eyed Sally Struthers, the children were now apparently Latin American. Not only had hunger in Africa been vanquished, but it appears that India had taken care of their caste system and “untouchables” problems and we could now look closer to home to do our charitable work.

By the 1980s, rock and roll stars seemed to have convinced liberals to forget people for a moment and focus on the environment. Since we are here in Latin America, let’s see if we can have Don Henley and Sting save some trees along the Amazon River.

The 1990s saw rock and rollers taking a bit of a break from the “save the world for social justice blah-blah” campaign. It was too hot between Gulf War I, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia, at least until Angelina Jolie became a special ambassador for the United Nations, bringing attention to war torn areas of the world. Let’s not forget Sean Penn’s incursion into Haiti, drawing not only attention to the devastation in the aftermath of a powerful earthquake, but picking up a couple of humanitarian awards along the way.

I won’t insult your intelligence by attempting to soften my cynicism with a “oh, but I appreciate these celebrities for what they do” statement. There have been plenty of people, especially people of color, working on the ground long before these celebrities showed up, and will be there long after the cameras are gone.

That’s the problem with the liberal view of social justice. There is too much focus on the next big thing – the trend – for me to take their view of social justice seriously. The focus shouldn’t be on the fleeting, but on the fundamentals.

It’s the same with technology, especially broadband access to the Internet. We run into the same problems of being fleeting when we equate broadband access to the Internet with social justice. We run the risk of keeping the definition of social justice in flux when that definition should be a permanent, fundamental one. Was access to a pen or chalkboard social justice? Is access to a telephone social justice?

Social justice means establishing a framework that promotes certainty and security in our dealings with each other as individuals while we pursue the necessities for life and liberty.

Access to resources is necessary for pursuing life and liberty, but the resource itself is not social justice.

Two hundred years ago that resource may have been a shovel and a pitchfork. Today, it is a laptop and a broadband connection. Does this mean that social justice has changed? That it has improved because the technology has improved? You tell me.

A broadband connection is a tool. How it effectuates social justice depends on how it’s leveraged. This is the current failing of so called advocacy groups; noise mongers that move from issue to issue. With their feet in sinking sand, they jump from issue to issue, rarely (if ever) addressing the question of how we leverage evolving technology to bring about true social justice, true change. They do us a disservice.

Put it to you this way. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, we have gone from horse and carriage and the Wright Brothers’ wooden aircraft to very fast motorized vehicles and supersonic flight. Alexander Graham Bell would do back flips over smart phones. So why are we still talking about social justice after all these changes in technology?

Alton Drew is a political economist and commentator. In addition to being a contributing writer at Politic365.com, Mr. Drew blogs at Law and Politics of Broadband, Paying for Dodd Frank, and The American Centrist. Follow him on Twitter @altondrew, become a friend at https://www.facebook.com/alton.drew, or visit his website at www.altondrew.com.

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3 Responses to Why Are We Still Talking About Social Justice?

1. Wm_Tucker says:

   1:54am January 7, 2012 at 1:54 am

   It just so happens that social justice — the balance between law and order, the needs of the individual against those of society — is the basis for a small-d democratic republic such as the U.S. Minus the principle, what’s left is a society that resembles North Korea at one extreme or Afghanistan on the other. The technological advances you so conceitedly attribute to American culture might not have come into existence were it not for laws which protect intellectual property rights, freedom of expression, or freedom of association.

   Therefore, the real question is why does a person identifying himself as ‘Black’ consistently demonstrate such a cavalier disregard for human rights?

   Reply
2. Greg says:

   6:10pm January 7, 2012 at 6:10 pm

   Your entire article insults the reader's intelligence, sir.

   Reply
   • Ali says:

     2:03am January 8, 2012 at 2:03 am

     I don't know who wrote it GREG but , you are absolutely rectify in your conclusion.

     Reply