Social Justice in a Nutshell

a collaborative piece

The talented Chanel Pfahl offered to turn my video “Social Justice in a Nutshell” into a written piece, and here is the result. This is not a mere transcript but a polished up version of my spoken words that, while slightly different, captures the essence of what I tried to convey. Thank you, Chanel- nicely done. You can find more of her writing here:

Intimidation Masquerading As Virtue Is Chilling Free Speech

Social Justice in a Nutshell

Let’s take a dive into the topic of social justice – about what it means, what I thought it meant, when I entered my counseling graduate program at Antioch University, and what I’ve learned about it over the last couple of years. 

I’ve had a couple of criticisms in the comments under my videos asking why, if I wasn’t on board with social justice ideology, did I choose a school with such a strong social justice mission statement? I want to respond to that. 

I did not know. I was naive to the true meaning of the phrase ‘social justice’ when I began this program.

When I thought about what “social justice” meant, what I imagined was a beautiful ideal, in which we strive towards equality of opportunity, for the most people possible. A world in which most - if not all - people, can access the essential goods, services and opportunities they need in order to live a good life. That’s a value that I think is wonderful and worth striving towards.

What I did not know – and could not have known at that time – was what this term has now come to mean. “Social justice” is now but a perversion of itself, and it refers to Critical Social Justice Theory. A system of thought that overtly and explicitly seeks to ‘deconstruct’, ‘dismantle’ and replace Western cultural norms and values with a system of social hierarchy. We can look at this as sort of a social ledger in which we can think of ourselves not as individuals, but as an intersectional package of identities.

Intersectionality is the idea that our belonging to certain demographic categories comes with either inherent power or inherent lack thereof. We can assign ourselves a value of privileged or marginalized for each of the given oppression categories (race, gender, etc.) and see how we stack up against other people that we relate to socially.

The more marginalized you are, the more entitlements you have – because society owes you something that you have not yet received. Inversely, the more privileged you are, the more encumbrances you have, because each privileged identity represents unearned benefits that you must in some way give back to society, or to marginalized individuals.

In this way, it's a hierarchical system of power in which the marginalized individuals actually have more power because they have more social currency – more entitlements – than the so-called “privileged” people who are basically offensive in their very existence. This is all based on real but misguided and weaponized empathy for people who have suffered oppression or unfair discrimination in a variety of ways. 

The intention to achieve an endpoint of perfect fairness and equality of outcome, or “equity”, for all might be a laudable one, but it is unrealistic: our individual experiences and attributes are vastly different. Equalizing all outcomes across the population is an impossible goal, and social justice activism can not and will not bring us there. The real goal of social justice ideology is to change your mindset. To cultivate what they call a “critical consciousness”, which is not to be confused with “critical thinking”.

We are talking about a critical consciousness whereby you're performing a perpetual interrogation of social dynamics in search of inequities and places where you imagine that someone, or a group of people, is presumed to have been wronged. You are resentful at the injustice you believe you have discovered, and that resentment is used to wield power, and to obtain what you believe is owed to you. It is the new social currency. In this way, social justice thinking is a philosophy of anti-resilience and victimhood. 

Indeed, if you want to drive social justice people into an absolute fit of rage, you can say a phrase like “whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger”. More often than not, what they hear is you saying that the marginalized or oppressed person, the victim of discrimination, should just “suck it up” despite any injustice as they will be better for it. Of course, this is a perversion of what is meant as a statement of encouragement towards building resilience and ego strength.

Another thing that is incredibly offensive to the “social justice” people is the concept of colorblindness. When a person of my generation refers to “colorblindness”, we're not saying that we don't recognize racial and ethnic differences, or that we are unaware that a person's background and ethnicity and race will likely have a lot to do with their formation and the experiences that they will have had in life. What we're saying is that we don't automatically attribute personality characteristics, experiences and world views to each other based on what we can observe physically in each other. We wait for the person that we relate to to show us who they are. In whatever capacity we know one another – whether it’s as friends or whether it's counselor to client – we don't jump to conclusions about a person based simply on observing their skin color.

At Antioch, this approach is actually considered racist. In fact, I have been told that my videos, or at least the first one I released, have been discussed during classes since my departure. As one familiar with the ideology could have predicted, my objections to social justice ideology have been framed as an expression of my “white fragility”. To them, my pleas for objectivity are literally calls of violence against marginalized people. My calls for preserving ideological neutrality in therapy space are seen as nothing more than an attempt to “center whiteness”. According to their philosophy, in which marginalization equals power, it would seem that failing to acknowledge the social justice hierarchy would rob the marginalized of an asset.

The way that we are taught to see the world through the social justice lens is foundational and absolutely fundamental to the way that they interpret human relationships and reality. It's inseparable from their worldview – it is not a way of seeing things, it is the way of seeing things. It is truth.

For the young people who have adopted this mindset, it has colored their entire understanding of human relationship dynamics. It makes me think of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, in which the young people were charged with destroying the “four olds”: ideas, customs, habits of mind and culture of the generations that had come before them. I believe that what we are facing is absolutely a cultural revolution and that it is incumbent upon all of us who see this for what it is to stand up and say: No. We will not accept this. We will not accept this in our education system. We will not watch our culture, our norms and our values – the way that we think about gender and the nuclear family – be completely dismantled and replaced. I hope that everyone who is seeing this takes this message very seriously, and understands what is at stake here. This is absolutely what is happening, and we have an opportunity to stop it. I think. I hope.

Ironically, one of my fears is that this is going to force a backlash. I'm afraid that there is only so much that the culture will be able to handle of this “anti-racism”, which is a code word for retributive racism, before some very dangerous characters on the other side become inflamed and we are in the midst of intense chaos - potentially even a Civil War. I don't think this is going to end well.

I think that the response we should have as concerned individuals who recognize what's happening needs to be measured and calm, above all. Rather than returning resentment and hate with more resentment and hate, we should see this as a call to connect, to unify, to open our hearts, to find understanding and love. Many of these kids, or young adults, are simply buying into this stuff because it's what they've been taught, and we must remember that. And there's a core of truth in all of it, because of course people face lots of difficulties that are unfair, and of course there is discrimination. Life is not fair, and yes, that sucks. And it is hard. 

Social justice ideology offers one way to think about the tragic elements of life that could be very tempting because it answers a lot of questions. I can understand why activists see things the way they do. However, it is a very dark ideology that engenders division, resentment, hatred and a constant deconstruction. We have a choice here – and we need to make the right choice, as a culture.