Ceeboo wrote:by the way - Among other things, one of the most destructive things that has happened to America is that we no longer think/behave/act like Americans (From many one - one of the most valuable foundational things that made America what it is - the greatest country on the planet) Rather we are now divided into countless hyper conscious groups. . . Asian Americans, African Americans, Latin Americans, Chinese Americans, etc, etc. . . What the hell was wrong with simply American? And the very same thing has happened with social justice - It has had significant and serious negative impacts on this country. Justice ought not have a modifier and when you add one, you dilute, distort and destroy real justice.
This seems simplistic, and it ignores history. There has never been a time in the U.S. when we simply viewed each other as “Americans” without regard to race. From the beginning, black folks were not treated as “Americans.” And even after they were granted citizenship, many areas of the country did not treat them as “Americans.” As folks of other races migrated here, they were identified by race, and not in polite or favorable terms. Through redlining, restrictive covenants, and similar practices, white Americans kept those of other races out of their neighborhoods. They clearly did not see them as just “Americans.”
I think all of these -American designations are a vast improvement over what many white folks used to (in some cases still do) call those groups. In each case, although there is a racial identifier, there is the word “American.” We are all reminded that the guy down the block isn’t just Mexican — He’s a Mexican American.
Frankly, fussing over what other people call themselves seems pretty petty to me.
As for justice, it’s a word like most other words. It has no single meaning and it’s meaning may differ depending on the context. Hell, we’ve used the term “criminal justice” forever, and I’ve never heard that using it somehow “weakens” the word “justice.” Criminal justice is justice in the area of crime and punishment. “Economic justice” is justice in the realm of wealth and income. “Social justice” is justice in the realm of relations between people. None of these terms effect the strength of the word “justice,” whatever you think that means in a vacuum.
This sounds a lot like Dennis Prager. Is it?
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951