Injustice For All

Plato said he doesn’t know what justice is but he knows what justice is not. To me that speaks volumes even still today. As I look around I see the immense lack of justice and in it’s vacancy it has become increasingly difficult to define yet the undeniable stirring in the deepest parts of my soul and in every part of my being reaffirms that what I’ve seen is not justice.
Cornell West has been quoted saying “Who wants to be well-adjusted to injustice?” We have all witnessed some gross unfairness; some of us have experienced it first hand actually most of us probably have. We would all leap to answer his question assuming that there is absolutely to explicable way that anyone would want to be adjusted to injustice on any level under any circumstance. Noble indeed but we have been deceived. The word injustice has been used so often and for so many different causes be it political, legal, racial, gender, and so many others that it has become as a tiger de-clawed and sedated. Like a snake with out venom it still has the ability to strike yet can do little more. I’m not saying there are not genuine injustices in each if not all of these areas mentioned but we have slung the term so much that it seems to exist only to propagate a response or to color a speech. In our efforts to fight for justice, to prove and to try to define it have we lost the meaning of what real injustice is?
No one wants to be adjusted to in justice, however that is what true injustice is. Conceding is at the very center of its meaning. Injustice is defined as the opposition to justice as a larger status quo. It is the malfeasance of an entire justice system so much so that the legal status quo represents a systemic failure to serve the cause of justice. Injustice is when a society as a whole accepts the abuse, the neglect, and the unfairness and literally adopts it to its thinking making it part of its norms, saying this is just the way things are. We not only turn a blind eye to the needs of a people but we embrace the incumbent desolation and we do it without remorse. Injustice is the child that will go hungry, orphaned and alone, uneducated and unwanted. Injustice is the village without clean water, families digging through trash, viewing tomorrow with disdain and death as a relief. Injustice is the neighbor hood not far from your home driven through uneasily, writing off its residents. It doesn’t stop there Reinhold Niebuhr said “An irrational society accepts injustice because it does not analyze the pretensions made by the powerful and privileged groups of society. Even that portion of society which suffers most from injustice may hold the power, responsible for it, in reverence.” Injustice is at its most defined when even those who are cast down by it are tolerant of it, welcoming it in the belief that it is acceptable and even ordained and in their suffering they believe that they deserve their fates and that that misfortune is who they are. Injustice is being stripped of your identity and buying into the lie of being less than what you were meant to be.
India operates in a caste system. You have the higher caste with amazing amounts of wealth and influence and you have the lower caste completely engulfed by poverty. The gap between is so wide that it is almost impossible for someone from the lower caste to ever rise above but they account for over 74% of the population. They are clearly the majority yet they have been labeled as worthless, useless, they have even been told that they DON’T HAVE A SOUL and so they are pushed to the side perceiving themselves as useless, unworthy, and unimportant. They have been robbed of their identity. The greatest injustice is being faceless and insignificant.
The desire for significance is one of the most vital needs to our being. It’s no wonder violence has become so predominant in our society. Violence is instant significance. If someone you wouldn’t give the time of day to pulls out a gun and puts it to your head in a split second they have become the most real and important person in your life. They are an undeniable presence. So often we are told how to think, how to feel, how to be. We are told we’re too fat, too thin, too this, too that. We are robbed of our significance and robbed of our identity. The worst part is sometimes we’re the one in the ski mask robbing ourselves of who we are, telling ourselves we’re not good enough, that we’ll never amount to anything, that no one could ever love us and then we believe it to be true. We have forgotten who we are and who we were destined to be and in an effort to remember our significance we have looked down on others causing them to forget who they are and forgetting most of all that we were meant to love, to love with ferocity, to love without any hope or concern for being loved in return. This is the only way we can realign ourselves into our true being. We were made in the very image of God and God is love. Thus we were sculpted in the likeness of LOVE.
We can reclaim our significance; we can take back our true selves by restoring the significance of others. Imagine someone so down trodden being told that the author of the universe and the creator of existence resides within them and after being asleep for an eternity of worthlessness they awaken to find they are significant. And in their awakening we awaken to fully find ourselves. “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” – Matthew 25:34-40.
Plato may have not known what justice was but as for more me in my opinion justice, true justice will always be LOVE.