To make a point that is on-topic to the post though... There's these two sentences from your post: "To me, then, identifying some injustice as systemic is actually great news. That means that we don’t have a bunch of people on the other side! We just need to change the laws; we don’t need to change public opinion."
That assumes (almost) everyone agrees with your morality, or at least an allied morality (allied, in the sense that it agrees with judging the system-in-question as injustice). But is that really the case? It depends on the specific issue, but in general I'd be skeptical. This assumption is further complicated for people who are bound to a morality by personal intuition, in which case agreement with a declaration of injustice isn't a binary yes/no but a sliding scale of emotion.
I suppose one could turn around and classify dissent from, or even insufficiently enthusiastic support for, one's moral judgments as "personal injustice". But well... it's not hard to see why that won't go over well with those who aren't already on one's side.
Again, the question of alignment on the definition of injustice is still a problem or not independently of the nature of the entity perpetrating the injustice. My point is that relative to injustices perpetrated by people, injustices perpetrated by systems might be easier to reform.
I see... Well, my point would be that I'm skeptical there are that many examples where one can say most of the injustice is perpetrated by systems (as opposed to perpetrated by people) because:
- If (almost) everyone really agreed with the declaration of injustice, reform would have already happened.
- The fact that it hasn't, and the (stuff-classified-as-)injustice is still ongoing, implies that lots of people, or at least a powerful/influential portion, disagree with the declaration of injustice.
- Disagreeing with a declaration of injustice is itself likely to get classified as personal injustice (although I suppose your mileage may vary here)
Could I be wrong? What are counterexamples? Well there was the bipartisan criminal justice reform bill under Trump, as you said. It's pretty obvious Democrats and Republicans have very different classifications for what counts as injustice; but they managed to come together for the bill despite that. The Democratic case for the bill is obvious. The Republican case for the bill... I have to admit I'm not familiar with that, sorry.
Low-hanging fruit is indeed often surprising, but that doesn't make it impossible. Often the systems we're talking about were set up by prior generations. Sometimes their ideas of morality were substantially different from today, but often they were just less informed or aware of what the effects of those systems would be, possibly because we needed to more time to see how it played out.
Hi Sam. If I may give my own take... I think it's a mistake to think of "systemic injustice" as a one-system "game" (i.e. the system being called 'unjust'). Instead, I think of it as a two-system game:
1) The system being called unjust
2) The system condemning 1) as unjust
1) is, as you say, typically a law, institution, infrastructure, etc.
2) on the other hand, is a morality
and "systemic injustice" is the phrase that 2) uses when it disapproves of 1)
The word "system" indeed has many uses, which is why there is so much confusion around this term. But I don't think it sheds too much light to identify that everyone identifying injustice operates from some system of morality. This would be true whether the unjust actions were performed by either an individual with harmful views or an impersonal system. The former would be personal injustice and the latter systemic injustice independent of the presence or absence of a system of morality undergirding the accusation.
Well everyone declaring injustice doesn't necessarily operate from the same morality. For instance, some may be coming from a religious morality, and others from a non-religious morality. But all do have to come from some morality.
I don't agree with your last sentence. "Unjust" is a moral judgment; as such, it exists only within the context of a morality. No morality ==> no injustice.
Certainly injustice is a moral claim. However, I don't think it's particularly interesting to distinguish whether the person identifying the injustice is using a system to make that call as opposed to their personal intuitions. After all, there are many systems of morality and even more personal intuitions and there isn't any clear trend of what would be identified as injustices by those reasoning from systems of morality versus intuitions.
Ah, I think there's some confusion about terminology here. I'm using "morality" in a broader sense: An organized and consistent set of positions on what's right and what's wrong. The threshold for what counts as "organized and consistent" is kind of vague, my apologies. But I'd say "chosen by coin flip" is too low, while "able to write a paper explaining it for an ethics class" is too high. You need far less than that to build a unified social movement, or to talk about a morality's rise/fall/transmission/change. If two people hold mostly similar personal intuitions, and the reason for this similarity is that they were taught the same moral principles and examples by the same educational system, I'd count that as falling under the same morality.
I think my definition of morality would largely be similar. But then I don't understand your original comment -- why do you think the form of the morality used to identify the injustice is relevant to whether it is systemic or personal?
It wouldn't affect the systemic (as opposed to personal) part in "systemic injustice". One can say that law X leads to consequences Y without making assumptions about what's right and what's wrong. It would however affect the injustice part. If you go in with a different set of moral assumptions, or no moral assumptions at all, then "systemic injustice" becomes... pardon the clunkiness... "systemic oh-well-that's-how-the-cookie-crumbles"
This post's main point is about the difference between systemic vs personal, so my original comment wasn't strictly on-topic, sorry. Just wanted to to take the chance to make my point that the way "systemic injustice" is usually written about leaves out half the story.
To make a point that is on-topic to the post though... There's these two sentences from your post: "To me, then, identifying some injustice as systemic is actually great news. That means that we don’t have a bunch of people on the other side! We just need to change the laws; we don’t need to change public opinion."
That assumes (almost) everyone agrees with your morality, or at least an allied morality (allied, in the sense that it agrees with judging the system-in-question as injustice). But is that really the case? It depends on the specific issue, but in general I'd be skeptical. This assumption is further complicated for people who are bound to a morality by personal intuition, in which case agreement with a declaration of injustice isn't a binary yes/no but a sliding scale of emotion.
I suppose one could turn around and classify dissent from, or even insufficiently enthusiastic support for, one's moral judgments as "personal injustice". But well... it's not hard to see why that won't go over well with those who aren't already on one's side.
Again, the question of alignment on the definition of injustice is still a problem or not independently of the nature of the entity perpetrating the injustice. My point is that relative to injustices perpetrated by people, injustices perpetrated by systems might be easier to reform.
I see... Well, my point would be that I'm skeptical there are that many examples where one can say most of the injustice is perpetrated by systems (as opposed to perpetrated by people) because:
- If (almost) everyone really agreed with the declaration of injustice, reform would have already happened.
- The fact that it hasn't, and the (stuff-classified-as-)injustice is still ongoing, implies that lots of people, or at least a powerful/influential portion, disagree with the declaration of injustice.
- Disagreeing with a declaration of injustice is itself likely to get classified as personal injustice (although I suppose your mileage may vary here)
Could I be wrong? What are counterexamples? Well there was the bipartisan criminal justice reform bill under Trump, as you said. It's pretty obvious Democrats and Republicans have very different classifications for what counts as injustice; but they managed to come together for the bill despite that. The Democratic case for the bill is obvious. The Republican case for the bill... I have to admit I'm not familiar with that, sorry.
Low-hanging fruit is indeed often surprising, but that doesn't make it impossible. Often the systems we're talking about were set up by prior generations. Sometimes their ideas of morality were substantially different from today, but often they were just less informed or aware of what the effects of those systems would be, possibly because we needed to more time to see how it played out.
Hi Sam. If I may give my own take... I think it's a mistake to think of "systemic injustice" as a one-system "game" (i.e. the system being called 'unjust'). Instead, I think of it as a two-system game:
1) The system being called unjust
2) The system condemning 1) as unjust
1) is, as you say, typically a law, institution, infrastructure, etc.
2) on the other hand, is a morality
and "systemic injustice" is the phrase that 2) uses when it disapproves of 1)
The word "system" indeed has many uses, which is why there is so much confusion around this term. But I don't think it sheds too much light to identify that everyone identifying injustice operates from some system of morality. This would be true whether the unjust actions were performed by either an individual with harmful views or an impersonal system. The former would be personal injustice and the latter systemic injustice independent of the presence or absence of a system of morality undergirding the accusation.
Well everyone declaring injustice doesn't necessarily operate from the same morality. For instance, some may be coming from a religious morality, and others from a non-religious morality. But all do have to come from some morality.
I don't agree with your last sentence. "Unjust" is a moral judgment; as such, it exists only within the context of a morality. No morality ==> no injustice.
Certainly injustice is a moral claim. However, I don't think it's particularly interesting to distinguish whether the person identifying the injustice is using a system to make that call as opposed to their personal intuitions. After all, there are many systems of morality and even more personal intuitions and there isn't any clear trend of what would be identified as injustices by those reasoning from systems of morality versus intuitions.
Ah, I think there's some confusion about terminology here. I'm using "morality" in a broader sense: An organized and consistent set of positions on what's right and what's wrong. The threshold for what counts as "organized and consistent" is kind of vague, my apologies. But I'd say "chosen by coin flip" is too low, while "able to write a paper explaining it for an ethics class" is too high. You need far less than that to build a unified social movement, or to talk about a morality's rise/fall/transmission/change. If two people hold mostly similar personal intuitions, and the reason for this similarity is that they were taught the same moral principles and examples by the same educational system, I'd count that as falling under the same morality.
I think my definition of morality would largely be similar. But then I don't understand your original comment -- why do you think the form of the morality used to identify the injustice is relevant to whether it is systemic or personal?
It wouldn't affect the systemic (as opposed to personal) part in "systemic injustice". One can say that law X leads to consequences Y without making assumptions about what's right and what's wrong. It would however affect the injustice part. If you go in with a different set of moral assumptions, or no moral assumptions at all, then "systemic injustice" becomes... pardon the clunkiness... "systemic oh-well-that's-how-the-cookie-crumbles"
This post's main point is about the difference between systemic vs personal, so my original comment wasn't strictly on-topic, sorry. Just wanted to to take the chance to make my point that the way "systemic injustice" is usually written about leaves out half the story.