People have always craved for equality in the world
People have always craved for equality in the world. Every debate in all sectors of society such as in church, school, government, or in the workplace is geared towards advocating for some semblance of equality. The most sought after equality is equality in the distribution of resources among people in society. People always feel like the haves have too much while the have-nots never have enough. They fight for a society where the rich give their surplus to the poor so that all people can have an equal share of resources. The fact that this analogy is impossible because there will always be people who work harder than others brings about the rollercoaster of the fight for social justice. The advocates of social justice use the term to engineer a fight that would result in the redistribution of resources. They make it seem as though the concepts they fight for are right and the people who speak against them are evil and inconsiderate. This research paper seeks to prove that advocacy for social justice is impossible because nobody knows what the term means. Its meaning changes depending on who is using it. Questionnaires and interviews were used to determine where society stands concerning the definition of social justice. Reference was also made to secondary sources to determine the history and evolution of social justice. At the end of the day, social justice is a term used to take resources from one party and give it to another without expecting resistance.
Methods and Setting
This research paper was fueled by the belief that social justice is an unattainable concept because it does not have an actual definition. Social justice advocates for the equal distribution of resources yet some people are not willing to work as hard as others in amassing these resources. Equality in the distribution of resources is impossible as it is to have the same length of fingers and toes. The field research included the distribution of questionnaires to people from different social and economical backgrounds, people in different professions, and levels of education. There was also the consideration of how people of different age groups perceive social justice and equality in society. A forum was also conducted to gather information from different people on their stand on social justice and what social justice means for them and their situations. These people also gave their stand on what an ideal world would look like if the battles for social justice got their way. The study was limited to people in urban areas because they are more liberal and understand the current affairs much better than people in rural areas. The results of the field research were compared to the information available in secondary sources such as history books, journals, and articles online. The evolution (or lack thereof) of the advocacy for social justice was evident because the main similarity between the people who fought for social justice in the past and those who fight for it today is that the definition of the term changes depending on the cause that people are fighting for (Sensoy et al.). The social justice advocates determine what the term means every time they fight for it. The results from the research done clearly show how impossible it is to attain social justice in any society around the world.
Evidence
Social justice means different things to different people. The advocates of social justice fight for different causes that sometimes have nothing to do with one another. Some of the causes they fight for are equal access to education, universal healthcare, child welfare, right to housing, income equality, gender equality, gay rights, equal distribution of food, dignity, and racial equality. The questionnaires issued to the population had all these causes aligned and the people were asked which of the causes constitute social justice. One of the choices was “all the above.” The interesting part about the results was the fact that nobody picked “all the above” as an answer and all the answers were different. Nobody had the same answers. There was room for them to expound on their choices and explain their stand. The explanations were very different. People came from different schools of thought in the matter and they argued from different perspectives and personal life situations. Parents thought that equal education and child welfare was the definition of social justice because the topic affected them personally. People with nonconventional sexual orientation thought that gay rights were the most important aspect of social justice because the matter affected them on a personal level. The questionnaires and interviews proved the unattainability of social justice because people can never quite agree on the definition of the term.
The field research entailed issuing soft copy questionnaires, holding telephone interviews, hosting virtual discussions with people from different backgrounds, and social media discussions. These methods were ideal because they solicited people’s viewpoints on the subject matter. The virtual discussions were especially important because people got to interact with one another and discuss their various standpoints when it comes to social justice. Some people agreed with the thesis statement, whereby, they agreed that social justice was a term used to impose certain schools of thought on society by giving them a noble name. The participants agreed that some things are worth fighting for because they affect everyone. In the virtual discussion, the participants agreed that causes such as universal healthcare and child welfare are important and do not point towards redistribution of financial resources. All children deserve access to the vital resources and services they need to grow healthily. Indeed, children should not suffer because of their social backgrounds. The participants in the interviews and virtual discussion eventually agreed that all other causes are a result of the frustration people face when people from a different school of thought or situation do better than them. People fight for gay rights and women’s rights because they feel like people from different sexual orientations and gender are doing better than them. The interaction with the population involved in this research proved that social justice is unattainable because it is unstructured and unregulated.
False Consciousness
Karl Marx discussed the false consciousness that exists in the fight for social justice. His theory gives evidence to the fact that social justice is unattainable if people continue to go about it the way they do (Jones). The advocates of a certain cause have a false sense of consciousness and feel like the rest of the population is wrong or backward. For instance, people who fight for gay rights feel like they are right to want equal rights to be with the people they are attracted to just like the heterosexual people are. Their mindset is not wrong, but they feel as though people who have a heterosexual orientation are backward in a way and refuse to understand that people can love whomever they want to love (Rosen). They feel attacked by the rest of society because their beliefs are different, even though they are not being attacked. Feminists advocate for gender equality (Fletcher et al.). They believe that if the genders were given the same opportunities, they would all prosper and be as successful as the men in society. They do not realize the fact that the genders cannot have the same opportunities because of the difference in responsibilities. Women are natural caregivers. They take care of families and children much better than men ever will. They chase careers but have to slow down at some point because their families need them. Feminists advocate for men to also be staying at home dads but the reality on the ground is that men also need to be cared for, just like children. Women who choose their careers over their families wind up rebuking themselves when they either see how far their families have drifted from them or how badly their families turned out. They fight for gender equality instead of gender equity. They advocate for the same opportunities for men and women, which is not practical in the real world. The advocates of social justice have a false sense of consciousness like Karl Marx said, and never realize the error in their ways (Thompson). The fact that they do not think their ideas through fuel the fact that social justice is unattainable in the current state of affairs.
Ideology
Karl Marx discusses the concept of ideology in the fight for social justice. The advocates of social justice fight for the causes they choose because of the ideologies they have depending on how they were brought up, where they grew up and what they were taught in school (Jones). Society has taken the habit of teaching children concepts that are deemed right by the majority of society (Ikkos). In a Christian country, children in school are largely taught Christian doctrines and examined them. They grow up knowing that Christianity is right and all other religions are lost because they do not conform to their ideas of right and wrong. In the same light, advocates of social justice fight for causes based on their ideologies. For instance, people who fight for racial inequality do so. After all, they live in a foreign land where they are segregated because they are different. They demand to be treated equally in that geographical location yet they would probably treat the same people differently if they were in their own home. Everyone is treated differently when they are away from home. Racial inequality can only change if the whole world agreed to treat everyone else the same. This concept may be unattainable because of the different aspects of culture around the world (Rosen). People do not agree on what is right and wrong, and because of this, they may never be able to treat visitors the same way they treat their people.
Many people believe that the rich have too much and the poor do not have enough. This ideology causes a lot of controversies because such people demand that some of the wealth owned by rich people should be given to the poor, even though they have worked for what they own (Ikkos). The concept of taxation is geared towards taking from the rich and giving to the poor because the rich are heavily taxed while the poor barely pay any taxes. In an ideal world where there was income equality, all people would be taxed the same. The concept of the rich having too much that should be shared with the poor beats the logic of income equality. The fight for income equality is a conspiracy coined to take from the rich and handing to the poor while giving the act a socially acceptable term.
Suggestions for Future research
Future research needs to be done to ensure that the term social justice is well understood and utilized fairly for all people. There needs to be clarity in the concept of social justice so that people fighting for selfish gains can stop hiding behind the veil of social justice. Some causes are just and need to be implemented but most of them are stunts by people who are either lazy or frustrated to take from those who have what they want. Researchers need to craft a clear meaning of social justice as they did with the concept of crime. All people agree on what is right and wrong when it comes to crime, making it very easy to implement civil justice. The same needs to be done with social justice to stop the abuse of the term.
Conclusion
Social justice should be a noble cause. It has causes that would benefit society as a whole but people who do not want to work hard enough for what they want or people who want to force their decisions down the throats of the rest of society have abused it. Researchers need to clarify what qualifies as social justice and the matters that are, for lack of a better term noise. In such a world, governments can get behind social justice movements and help see them through for the best of all people in society.