"It's not fair!"
Every parent has surely heard this grievance from a child (typically expressed in a high-pitched voice accompanied by an exaggerated scowl) in response to anything from being denied a candy bar to being required to clean up her room.
Human beings share an innate longing for fairness and justice. As children, we learn to recognize the power behind our mutual commitment to these concepts – a power that is properly harnessed by society to protect the innocent and to right wrongs, but which may also be commandeered to elicit sympathy for causes that, in fact, have nothing to do with justice.
Merriam Webster defines justice as "the maintenance or administration of what is just, especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments," "the establishment or determination of rights according to the rules of law or equity, or "the quality of conforming to law."
The hallmarks of justice are impartiality and objectivity. Equality before the law. People get what they are due, no matter who they are or where they come from. No person's rights are more significant than those of the next person. In administering the law, no person or group is favored or disfavored.
Today we are lazy, at best, and manipulative, at worst, in our use of value-laden words like "justice." Like overgrown toddlers protesting the "injustice" of being denied a new toy, many adults now slap the handy label of "justice" onto whatever they view as the ideal or preferred state. "Injustice," on the other hand, is used to describe whatever is less than ideal, regardless of whether it actually involves some corruption, unfairness, or the violation of actual rights.
For instance, we often hear the phrase "income inequality" described as an issue of "social justice." In other words, many people today call the mere existence of variation in income levels – even among people who have different education levels, jobs, skills, and work ethics – a form of "injustice." While this is a fairly blatant redefinition of the word "justice," the language issue is generally buried beneath the heated debate over the substantive policy issues at stake.
I recently read, with interest, an article about students who organized a "Food Justice Youth Summit." I scoured the piece, in vain, for some solid link between food and "justice." The Summit was, by all accounts, a great event, showcasing students' ideas for making healthy foods more affordable, improving the quality of school cafeteria offerings and even donating unused food to the needy. All noble goals, but they have nothing to do with "justice."
Now some readers may be wondering what the harm could be in overusing terms like "justice," and "injustice." Well, imagine a child who grows up believing that the slight discomfort he feels in the hour between his mid-afternoon snack and dinnertime is really and truly what it means to be "starving." Now many of us have offhandedly referred to ourselves as "starving," but we do so with full awareness that we are engaging in hyperbole; that we are not actually starving, but merely feeling a desire to eat.
Imagine, however, a population of spoiled children being validated in their perception that to go more than a couple of hours without eating something tasty is to experience starvation. How could such children possibly feel a motivational empathy for the children in Third World countries who are literally dying from lack of food?
Do we want the next generation of leaders to be revolted by a judge who accepts a bribe, an employer who withholds wages his employees have earned, or a position granted or denied solely because of the applicant's race? Or do we want them to lump these injustices into the same category as the reality that some people will have fresh, organic broccolini tonight while others will be relegated to canned beans?
We live in a world where injustice is rampant, and human flourishing depends upon our ability to recognize and resist it. We cannot afford trends that blunt our aversion to injustice by softening and obscuring our conception of it into some vague notion of a situation that is simply less than ideal.
Like most parents, my husband and I hear our fair share of "it's not fair!" Our kids now know the response they will get on the 90 percent of occasions when their complaints have nothing to do with actual justice. We tell them, "Don't say it's not fair. Just say you don't like it."