Why Do These Specific Negative Perceptions of Social Justice Supporters Exist?
I recently began reading bioethicists to see how scholars in that field address the subject of social justice. One of the first books I skimmed in was a treatise by the famed bioethicist Tristam Engelhardt, Foundations of Bioethics (2nd Ed) (1996). In a chapter titled “Rights to Health Care, Social Justice, and Fairness in Health Care Allocation,” he wrote:
“Appeals to ideas of social justice in framing health care policy can be dishonest in suggesting a canonical agreement in secular moral reflection. Such agreement does not exist. They can be demagogic in inciting the coercive use of unjustified state force.” (p. 376, ¶ 2).
The term "dishonest" there struck me.
In reading another accomplished bioethicist, Mark Cherry, the charge of dishonesty in a context that included social justice also came up. The first section to Cherry’s article “Religion without God, Social Justice without Christian Charity, and Other Dimensions of the Culture Wars” was titled “The Dishonesty of Secular Bioethics” (Christian Bioethics , 2009, 15(3), 277–299).
And this reminded me of other such statements in other fields by those critical of the pro-social justice position. For example, Rob Hunsaker, a professor of counseling psychology wrote:
“After reading a great deal of social justice material, I’m forced to conclude that its authors have a problem being straightforward. They constantly fail to state the implications of implementing a social justice agenda, opting instead for half-admissions. For example, it is rather inane to say that social justice is ‘highly political’, when, in fact, it is entirely political. What else does one call activism on behalf of minority issues at the group level?” (“Social Justice: An Inconvenient Irony,”Counseling Today OpEd, April 2008, available at sjirony.blogspot.com/.../social-justice-inconvenient-irony.html).
Hunsaker concluded that the academic proponents of social justice are evasive on the subject because to admit social justice’s inherently political nature would be to admit that promoting it involves its own discrimination and oppression, discrimination and oppression directed at contrary political views. He wrote:
“Why don’t social justice activists, who are by-and-large academics, present the explicit political nature of social justice? I suggest that it’s because of the movement’s most inconvenient irony: while claiming to fight against oppression, social justice actually perpetrates its own form of oppression by seeking to impose a far-left political agenda on all mental health professionals. Social justice’s most ironic turn, then, is that it seeks to erase difference, impose its values, and proclaim only one standard of ethics” (“Social justice: An Inconvenient Irony,” Counseling TodayOpEd, April 2008, available at sjirony.blogspot.com/.../social-justice-inconvenient-irony.html).
A similar claim came from the anthropologist Peter Wood, who in criticizing a paper by a pro-social justice professor, Barbara Applebaum, who was trying to explain away the charges of left-wing bias in social justice education, said:
“Applebaum’s article is so rich in rhetorical sleights-of-hand that it is like watching a professional magician at work” (“Bias Isn’t Bias If Its Ours,” Feb. 18, 2009, www.nas.org/.../Bias_Isnt_Bias_If_Its_Ours, accessed Sept. 18, 2013).
The Nobel Prize-winning economist, Friedrich Hayek, wrote:
“What I hope to have made clear is that the phrase ‘social justice’ is not, as most people probably feel, an innocent expression of good will towards the less fortunate, but that it has become a dishonest insinuation that one ought to agree to a demand of some special interest which can give no real reason for it. If political discussion is to become honest it is necessary that people should recognize that the term is intellectually disreputable, the mark of demagogy or cheap journalism which responsible thinkers ought to be ashamed to use because, once its vacuity is recognized, its use is dishonest” (The Mirage of Social Justice, 1976, p. 97).
In summarizing the three-year long debates occurring on AOTA's social justice forum in OTConnections, Dr. Christopher Alterio, who opposes the social justice requirement in AOTA'sCode of Ethics, referred to the children’s fable The Emperor’s New Clothes ( see his summary here: http://abctherapeutics.blogspot.com/2014/02/on-distilling-three-year-professional.html). The fable is about people who are scared of exercising their independent judgment and go along with what others think because they do not want to be thought of as simple-minded; they don't tell the truth as they understand it because doing so, they believe, would reflect poorly on them.
The criticisms of pro-social justice supporters, as can be seen, follows certain themes: they are evasive or dishonest, out of touch or close-minded, even ignorant regarding the nature of social justice and its implications, as well as regarding those perspectives that are opposed to it.
It would be interesting to have supporters of the social justice requirement in AOTA’s Code of Ethics address the question: Why do you think the perceptions of pro-social justice advocates described above exist?
I understand that those making these claims believe that they are true. But I also assume that pro-social justice advoactes would find them to be false. Assuming that is the case, it would be incredibly enlightening to hear social justice supporters explain the existence and widespread persistence of these perceptions.
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