The Concept of Social Justice
Even though it is a widely discussed subject, there is still some confusion about the concept of social justice. As a concept, social justice is based on the principle that all individuals in a society have equal rights and duties in all aspects of social life. This means that all basic rights, such as health, education, justice, work and cultural manifestation, must be guaranteed to everyone.
Justice and the welfare state
This idea assumes that it is not possible to talk about the development of a society considering only economic growth. In this sense, the notion of social justice is linked to the construction of what is called Welfare State, that is, a type of political organization that provides that the State of a nation must provide means to guarantee social security to all individuals under its tutelage, which means that access to basic rights and social security actions must be extended to all
Justice and the values of a society
From a legalistic and institutional point of view, justice follows the path of laws, as they define the scope of our actions in civil society. However, as we well know, the laws considered "
fair” can become “unfair” given the constant historical changes of each society. The infamous cases of "legitimate defense of honor" in which husbands who murdered their wives claimed they did so in defense of their their own honor and had their sentences reduced or were completely irresponsible, as in the cases that are portrayed in the article 'Legitimate Defense of Honor', Illegitimate impunity for murderers, A critical study of Latin American legislation and jurisprudence”, by authors Silvia Pimentel, Valéria Pandjiarjian and Juliana Belloque, are proof that even laws can be unfair.Therefore, when dealing with the concept of justice, we must be careful to note that this is a normative concept, that is, it refers to the norms and established rules. Hans Kelsen (1881-1973), Austrian jurist philosopher, presents the idea of justice as something beyond cognitive apprehension, that is, something beyond our sensory capabilities, as it is a value judgment completely dependent on our constitution moral. This means that the concept of justice depends on the morals and values that exist in a society, unlike notions such as "equality" or "freedom", which, although they are abstract objects and theoretical concepts, can be verified empirically within a given context. Therefore, justice is not a concrete object, but a construction for which we are all responsible.
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social justice versus civil justice
THE social justice, however, differs from the idea of civil justice, that is, the justice of the courts and the image of the blindfolded statue. While civil justice seeks impartiality in its judgment, always starting from the legal apparatus to justify its actions, social justice seeks the remediation of inequalities through the verification of the particular difficulties of each group and the implementation of actions that will remedy the situation.
Actions that seek to establish Social Justice
Social justice starts from the precept that, in order to reach a point where social coexistence becomes "fair", it is necessary to establish a certain compensation for those who started their social life in disadvantage. It is from this principle that actions such as the institution of a minimum wage, unemployment insurance, racial quotas and other social security actions depart.
Racial quotas, for example, are among the most recent actions that seek social justice. The action is based on the observation that the vast majority of the needy population in poverty is composed of blacks and browns. In contrast, the highest scales in the socioeconomic hierarchy are mostly composed of people who identify themselves as white. IBGE data from 2010 showed that the illiteracy rate among people who identified themselves as white was 5.9%, while, among the population of people who identified themselves as black, it was 14.4% and, among those who identified themselves as brown, 13%.
Actions that seek to facilitate the inclusion of the poorest population or who have impaired access to education are necessary due to the educational and economic inequality that victimizes the subject also in their social position, a fact that makes the social scale in which we live.
Social inequality is the main problem that social justice actions seek to solve. It is a fact that, although our society is constituted, in its majority, by people who declare themselves black or brown, as demonstrated by the 2010 IBGE Census, average wages are lower among populations self-declared as black compared to the population self-declared as black. White.
Even though the problem of racism still persists, it is necessary to realize that there are advances, albeit timid, in important aspects of the problem. The criminalization of racism and social inclusion programs for low-income people, for example, are all social justice actions that help us grow as a fair and democratic society.
by Lucas Oliveira
Graduated in Sociology
