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.
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)
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.
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)