Social justice as a moral concept

By Noelle Lopez

What comes to mind when I say "social justice?"

When I asked this question to various fellow Santa Clara students earlier this year, I received a wide range of responses -- Fairness. Equality and equal rights. Immersion trips. Liberals.

I don't suppose the assortment of reactions is all that surprising given the variety of ways and frequency with which we're exposed to the term "social justice" at Santa Clara.

Business decisions and sustainability initiatives, theatre productions and art exhibits, immersion trips, fellowships, clubs, committees and coalitions all incorporate social justice in some way or another. And social justice will become even more visible this coming fall with the implementation of the new core curriculum and its Experiential Learning component, of which one learning goal is social justice.

But the popularity and prevalence of social justice at Santa Clara comes with certain costs. In fact, the combination of attractive moral connotation and widespread usage seems to coincide with a certain vagueness surrounding the meaning of social justice on campus.

What do we actually mean when we talk about social justice at Santa Clara?

I've been attempting to answer this question in some meaningful way over the past year as a Hackworth Fellow with the Markkula Center for Ethics. Challenged sophomore year by one of my professors who learned I was going on an immersion trip to Mexico ("Why are you doing that?"), I've been troubled with the "why" behind the endeavors we undertake in the name of social justice ever since.

Why was I going to Mexico? What did I hope to do or learn there? Why is social justice so present in our education at Santa Clara? What do we even mean when we talk about social justice anyway? Social justice, and the reasons why it is so valued, seemed veiled in vagueness.

As a Hackworth Fellow, my most surprising finding was that, for all our talk, we don't actually discuss social justice all that much at Santa Clara. For all the curricular requirements and calls to action on behalf of social justice, there's an alarming lack of conversation about what social justice actually is and why we engage in activities for its sake.

If you've ever attended an Arrupe placement reflection session, for example, you could probably testify there's not much in the way of explicit reference to social justice.

Granted, time is limited to one hour for these reflections. The sessions tend to focus on the more quickly accessible topics of one's concrete experience in the community and the vocational meaning of that experience to the individual.

What's not discussed is how such experiences contribute to our understanding of the moral concepts, like social justice, that structure our ethical thought and discourse in general.

Certainly the type of experience-based reflection that occurs at Arrupe reflection sessions is a vital part of our education. We have much to learn from reflecting on our contact with the "gritty reality" of the world, as former Superior General of the Jesuits, Rev. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, once put it. But the absence of critical discussion alongside this experience-based reflection undermines the potential substance of social justice as a conceptual source of ethical orientation.

Instead, for some reason or another, we seem to have stopped discussing a moral concept that, historically, has been central to the ethical dimension of our Jesuit education. Perhaps we've become so intensely focused on taking action to promote social justice that we've grown disillusioned with discussing it as a moral concept.

Perhaps we don't want to hear the objections and other perspectives. Perhaps we're convinced our understanding is just plain true. Or perhaps social justice is really no longer that important of a moral concept for us.

Yet given the many manifestations of social justice on campus -- in courses, clubs, etc. -- there is good reason to think that social justice still has a significant role to play in our ethical education. The absence of discussion seems more negligent than intentional. We can restore the ethical significance of "social justice."

Reflecting on our experiences in the community has great educational value, but that kind of reflection alone won't shed light on the importance of social justice as a moral concept foundational to our ethics. That kind of reflection alone won't transcend the vagueness such that we are finally able to articulate what social justice means to us as individuals and as a community.

What we need is critical engagement with social justice as a moral concept. Maybe an Arrupe placement reflection session isn't the time or place for this. But we must set aside a time and place to discuss what social justice means and how and why it should feature so prominently in our ethical framework.

Noelle Lopez is a senior philosophy and religious studies double major.