HOW IS JUSTICE EARNED?

 

Earning Justice©

George G. Epp

The broad, North American culture seems to have settled down to accepting the normality of oppressor/oppressed, victim/victimizer consciousness, seems to me. In feminism, it has the character of a glass ceiling; in colonizing history, it’s about indigenous/settler conflicting interests; in race relations, it’s about majority vs. minority rights and responsibilities; in religion, Christian/Jew/Muslim/Sikh etc. consciousness. Even sexuality and gender have provided occasion for majority/minority, oppressor/oppressed scenarios.

                To me, this observation points toward the need for a new way of viewing victimization in North America. A new way that doesn’t begin and end with an apology and momentary feelings of empathy that pretty much go away when the next work-week begins. Are there possibilities for new approaches, or is being either conquered or conqueror, victimized or victimizer built inescapably into human nature?

                People talk a lot about “playing the victim card,” of the phenomenon of shifting blame for one’s own unsatisfactory life on persons and groups that appear to be living more-than-satisfactory lives. Not to say that there aren’t persons and groups that deliberately victimize others for their own gain, or that there aren’t persons or groups that are targeted for victimization. Far from it. What seems more relevant to this discussion is the remedy for victimization and exploitation, and the clear historical evidence that screaming “I/we, is/are victims of _________ (fill in the blank) appears to have limited utility.

We need just to look at the experience of coal miners in Great Britain after the industrial revolution, men who were basically held in slavery to hard, dangerous work by the threat of starvation. Until they banded together and withdrew their labour, little progress toward de-victimization occurred.  Or we could look to the peasant revolts happening across Europe in the 15^th and 16^th Centuries for an opposite outcome; pitchforks and shovels were no match against the palace guards and armies of the ruling classes. So what do our histories teach us that would be useful in the Americas today?

The loud clamour about being a victim along with finger pointing at the supposed victimizer—often seems, in the end, to be little more than frustratingly futile noise. By Old Testament standards, justice is the foundation on which progress must be based. Justice has very practical and very discrete components; it’s not an abstract concept. What’s required is the insistence on discrete policies and practices that are just.

Do Pride Parades, Black Lives Matter marches, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women inquiries fall into the category of raising awareness without fostering a direction toward remedies? Oft repeated slogans and declarations of victimizations seem to make little difference in fact, and predictably turn into white noise in the ears of the intended audience. Is the reason for this the fact that actions too often demand the whole enchilada rather than setting goals on discrete components of justice: equality in law, equal pay for equal work, equal access to education, equal access to health care.

There are exceptions, of course. “Defund the Police” was a more specific, more creative effort than most and resulted in a still-ongoing reassessment of police practice. To me, that suggests that demonstration that is too general leaves neither the victim nor the victimizer with a handle to grasp, even when awareness and empathy are awakened. The Truth and Reconciliation Report, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples appear to be monumental steps forward in remedying the victimization of Canada’s indigenous peoples, but are they more than documents that are easily given lip-service while the legislating of actual, detailed change is easily postponed … time and again?

So what are some characteristics of actions that actually precipitate change? Recognizing that members of a preferred and privileged demographic have little interest in change, do victim-cultures, individuals and groups need to abandon the accusing strategy and reach for something else? As I’ve already mentioned, most successful campaigns for change historically were guided by victims, not by the victimizing entity. The formation of unions, for instance, has always been anathema to the corporate machine. To this day, large corporations fight tooth and nail to prevent workers organizing; their interest is in the status quo where some glaring similarities exist between the current labour situation and the British coal miners way back when. The right to exploit labour on the wage side continues in the campaigns of the corporate, business sectors to keep the minimum wage as low as possible. Labour exploitation has long been an engine driving the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. In North America, the attack on unionization has been persistent and largely successful; only 30% of workers in Canada belong to a union that bargains for their wages and working conditions.

Many white, settler-class Canadians have expressed deep disgust with prevalent forms of victimization: indigenous poverty, police discriminatory behaviour, low-wage McJobs, Quebec’s “secular society” laws, etc. But does my sympathy for children growing up in the bad water, bad housing, second-rate education opportunities of many northern reserves do these children any good? If I empathize with Syrian refugees attempting to adjust to Canada and hear that a woman has been fired from a school staff for wearing a hijab, does my empathy get her her job back? How frustrated do I need to get with my inability to effect positive changes before I look for a new way? 

∞

In order to win a game, a soccer team needs to assemble on the playing field and carry out a strategy whereby each player fulfills a distinct role. No games will ever be won if the defense has slept in, the goalie has decided to stay home and watch TV and the centre and right/left wingers are fighting on the bench over who gets to do what.

                Similarly, change is most often driven by movements of same-goal-oriented people … in large numbers, people who may individually have felt helpless, like a person trying to win a soccer game by him/her/themselves. Movements form around leadership, they thrive by organization and goal-directed activity. They give each member a role in their efforts. They don’t take no for an answer. Imagine how things would be different if there existed an All-Black Union, with striking as the way to assert their need for equality rights and practices.

                Although you’d hardly know it now, Saskatchewan used to be a model of social democracy, a province where you could get medical treatment even if your means were limited. The active leaders who turned the tide included J.S. Woodsworth and Tommy Douglas, and the movement they centered was called the Canadian Commonwealth Federation, or CCF. Against fierce opposition, they fought their way into political power and made first Hospitalization Insurance and later broader Medical Insurance happen. This model eventually led to Medicare as we know it across Canada.

Starting a new political party is probably too lofty an aspiration for most of us. At the same time, protest parties’ record of forcing change is not good and they generally don’t last long. What makes more sense is what’s called, “Rational-instrumental social action, actions that are carried out in order to achieve a specific result.” The action Max Weber speaks of centers on one specific objective, like clean water for one reserve, maybe, or a new school for one town. It may, of course, include political action, like running pro-objective candidates for town council or tribal council, but everything it does politically is tailored to further one objective at a time.

You’d be right in wondering how, for instance, rational-instrumental social action could formulate a movement against discrimination and prejudice. Can you remember a time when argument changed anyone’s mind about, for instance, racial supremacy? And if tackling the big human, attitudinal issues that underly both victimizer’s and victim’s worldviews doesn’t work, can we hope that rational-instrumental social action will bring us closer? And what would be an example, say, of such an action that would answer our horror over the residential schools issue in a way that would relieve their victims?

I repeat: the impetus for meaningful change seems historically to be driven by the victims. First Nations are demanding the Pope’s apology for the Catholic Church’s role in Residential Schools on the one hand, and the locating of burial sites and the identifying of the children buried around Residential Schools on the other. These two demands can represent the initiation of two rational-instrumental social action projects that need to be sustained with persistent and vigorous effort, such that the body of victims and the culpability of the victimizers are made clear and graphic until these two discrete goals are met.

The danger is, as always, that the two rational-instrumental social actions will degenerate into a fuzzy, general diatribe against white and/or Christian racism, and as I said before, projects to simply change people’s attitudes—even when accompanied by much loud protest—seem always to be futile. That’s why an action needs to be rational—which racism is not—and it must be instrumental, describable and with a measurable outcome. The road to equality and fairness for minorities will likely only be achieved in the accumulation of rational-instrumental social actions. To make these actions persevere and succeed, the victim/minority must find a way to act in unity of purpose; they must, in effect, adopt the union model.

This is one example. The progress of civilization toward what the prophet Isaiah saw as a peaceable kingdom (where the lion and lamb lie down together) and which Jesus pointed toward in the Sermon on the Mount and which Hindus find in the Bhagavad Gita will be earned and won in steps of rational-instrumental social action, seems to me. In a world that more and more reveres independence, social action is an uphill battle. Furthermore, even though the victims are driving an action for change, they find themselves—almost by definition—as the weaker one in the victim/victimizer struggle. The only way to balance this equation is in numbers, in unity and in clarity of purpose.

For those who lament residential schools victimization of indigenous Canadians but are most easily associated with the oppressor culture, getting out of the way is sometimes the best strategy. Facilitating the movement (providing food and drink to protestors, for instance) might be another way. To show solidarity with a cause is best demonstrated with action that proves our words are sincere.

This leaves one question for me: how can I—who am often numbered with the privileged oppressor but who recognizes the injustices others bear—engage in the bringing about of the necessary changes so that a certain case of victimization is mitigated? Ought we churches and social progressives form a league and ourselves begin to emulate the rational-instrumental social actions that would move us closer to justice and fairness? If, for instance, the plight of the people of Gaza were the issue, would our united, clear goals for justice for them sway government to take helpful action? And if we were to agree in this league to strike until such action was taken, would that succeed?

Or should we continue—as now—to send out our thoughts and prayers for them to chew on?

Politics as a word means the social/fiscal arrangements we devise in order to live peaceful, fulfilled lives as citizens. We place our confidence in elected politicians to enact laws and policies that will have this effect. Unfortunately, lawmaking, policy making are tainted by calculations of electability—why consider the basic needs of a minority who represent only 10% of the voters, for instance? This phenomenon dashes any hope of a political party ever forming a cohesive “league for change.” At election time, parties come out with lists of policies geared to resonate with their base and after the election, promises made become negotiable because one eye must remain fixed on the next election.

However we choose to be catalysts for justice, this weakness of democracies should be kept in mind. We can easily be wooed into membership in a party and be caught up in the propaganda, the zero-sum game of winning/losing as if it were all like a football game. Such loyalties to even badly-flawed political forces means that we’re better off setting goals and organizing around particular, specific issues and working hard enough to influence political parties, even if their objective, originally, was simply to get our votes.

Here’s a final thought. What if large numbers of Canadians would join in a voting strike until a reasonable form of proportional representation in parliament was written into law? Promised by Justin Trudeau in the 2015 election, we now know that that promise was never intended to be kept. An election artificially skewed in the Liberals favour by first-past-the-post election rules kept them in power in 2019.