What is your Opinion on the Social Justice Movement?

[hooksashands]

I don't knock around on tumblr very much, but I know this particular brand of crazy association.

In simple terms, it's a collection of bloggers who are moral activists. A lot of them are hilariously oversensitive. The race people will try to convince you that being white means you're an asshole who takes everything for granted, gay people will hate you for all the perks that apparently come with being straight , and the transgender peepa will especially freak out on you if you don't address them by one of a zillion specific pronouns they've invented for themselves based on which planet their genitals aligned with that particular week. My friend Katelin once described it as "Tumblr's psychotic liberal left to Reddit's ranting homophobic right."

 

[Thaluikhain]

The very idea is absurd. "Social Justice" infers that there were 'social' wrongs that were committed that must be addressed.

This has always been the case going back to antiquity, but I don't hear anyone angry at the Visigoths for sacking Rome.

Social Justice = Whining for the sake of whining. No more, no less.

Wait what? Because social problems have been around for a long time nobody should care about them?

 

[Kaxbe]

As with any group, tumblr social justice has good people and insanely toxic people within them. Sadly, the toxic ones are the ones which people pay attention to the most, leading to some of the weirdest back-and-forth dung-throwing I've ever seen.

There's one blogger I know who everyone immediately attaches to social justice and uses as an example of all social justice bloggers. Their name is Riley and they're absolutely horrible. They're so stuck up in their own business that they can't even see that they're a being an incredibly racist asshat.

I feel like a lot of people on tumblr just adopt the term "social justice" for themselves and don't even bother to actually read up more on the issues themselves, and as a result you end up with complete misunderstandings of the term privilege. It's because of these people that "You can't be racist against white people" somehow turned into "People of Color can't be racist", which is a load of hogwash and automatically undermines everything that critical race theory actually says instead.

EDIT: And by the way, I'm not knocking anyone's right to be angry about these kinds of issues. Fuck, I know that the really extreme ones are most definitely angry. I'm not saying they can't be angry. I'm just saying that how they're expressing their anger alienates people who would be interested in social justice, alienates people who are within social justice movements, and just gives people who are so dead-set against social justice the ammunition they need to discredit anyone who even seriously adopts the label for themselves.

Just, for fucks sake, take a look in the mirror and do some fucking reading.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

The very idea is absurd. "Social Justice" infers that there were 'social' wrongs that were committed that must be addressed.

This has always been the case going back to antiquity, but I don't hear anyone angry at the Visigoths for sacking Rome.

Social Justice = Whining for the sake of whining. No more, no less.

Wait what? Because social problems have been around for a long time nobody should care about them?

I think what he's getting at is that 'social justice' is often justified by saying that its purpose is to right historical wrongs committed by one group against another. So, for example, many people say the US Government should pay all blacks in the US reparations for slavery and that will be 'social justice', or say that affirmative action is necessary to make up for slavery and segregation.

The problem with this idea is that there is no established doctrine for how long ago such a historical wrong needs to have taken place before one can no longer make the argument of the necessity of action being taken. Slavery has been illegal in the US for 148 years, and segregation for approximately 49 years, is that too long ago or not?

I'm of Germanic heritage and my ancestors were enslaved and butchered by the Roman Empire, should I demand that Italy make it up to me? Should Egypt have to make it up to the Jews for enslaving and oppressing them back in the days of Ramses II? How about the Mongols and the horrors they inflicted upon Russia? Western European nations and the cities they conquered during the Crusades?

But again, the problem with the whole idea of "social justice" is that it's a very vague term that can mean different things to different people. So, don't forget about historical wrongs (lest they be repeated again), but embrace that they are just that: history. Look to the future.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I think what he's getting at is that 'social justice' is often justified by saying that its purpose is to right historical wrongs committed by one group against another. So, for example, many people say the US Government should pay all blacks in the US reparations for slavery and that will be 'social justice', or say that affirmative action is necessary to make up for slavery and segregation.

The problem with this idea is that there is no established doctrine for how long ago such a historical wrong needs to have taken place before one can no longer make the argument of the necessity of action being taken. Slavery has been illegal in the US for 148 years, and segregation for approximately 49 years, is that too long ago or not?

I'm of Germanic heritage and my ancestors were enslaved and butchered by the Roman Empire, should I demand that Italy make it up to me? Should Egypt have to make it up to the Jews for enslaving and oppressing them back in the days of Ramses II? How about the Mongols and the horrors they inflicted upon Russia? Western European nations and the cities they conquered during the Crusades?

But again, the problem with the whole idea of "social justice" is that it's a very vague term that can mean different things to different people. So, don't forget about historical wrongs (lest they be repeated again), but embrace that they are just that: history. Look to the future.

Oh that, fair enough.

Personally, I've not encountered much of that mindset, excepting people saying that previous injustices have caused modern injustices, the latter should be acted against.

 

[Archer666]

It's good that they're bringing awareness to things that need it. However, they're doing it in the worst possible way. Slamming death threats and blowing a gasket whenever someone disagrees with them is extremely childish. I try to ignore them and their "outcries" whenever they come up.

 

[Bruce]

There is no one Social Justice Movement, there are a multitude of social justice movements and my opinion varies depending on which one you are talking about.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

I hate this "black and white" morality that people attribute to social justice. You make a statement that can be interpreted as homophobic/sexist? YOU'RE A TERRIBLE PERSON WHO DESERVES TO DIE WHO HAS NO CHANCE TO BE CORRECTED. It's this assumption that these statements MUST be made out of malice and not ignorance. You can properly explain to somebody why their statement is incorrect without attacking them personally. Not only does it makes you look less of an asshole, but it validates your argument all the more as rather then just excluding one person who thinks differently you thoughtfully deconstructed their argument and demonstrated why it was flawed to everybody.

 

[Dragonbums]

snip

You are doing a lot of generalizations that aren't really fair.
Like many people have pointed out in this thread there are good people involved in this mentality and they do good things.
The same way you say the the left stifles anyone with a differing opinion, I can say the same thing for people on the other side of the spectrum.
College is meant to broaden one's perspective. How you handle it and apply it in real life situations is completely dependent on the situation at hand.

When you make extreme generalizations like this you are painting a lot of people in a broad brush that may not even apply to them in the first place.

I consider myself a bit on the left, however I am willing and for the most part wide open to discussions of the opposing viewpoint, and often try to see things in their light.
We are discussing how the SJ movement tumblr wise is increasingly being taken over by oversensitive babies that are more for attention and soapboxing than bringing to light real issues that plague real people on a daily basis.