Albert Camus once said: "Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness." To me, this means that in order for us to be just as a people, we must face and identify where injustices may lie. It has become a topical word this year, in the sense of changing and exploring aspects of history that have otherwise been either ignored, or have been ultimately whitewashed for political purposes. In context, justice should come from the fact that we as people have the intellectual capacity to be able to pass judgement, and through the passing of judgement, we can for ourselves see what is justice and what is injustice. A separation of the two is not always possible. Take war for example: if a war criminal were hiding munitions inside of a hospital purposefully and crammed hundreds of innocent civilians inside of it, and the only way that a threatened area could deal with such problem was to obliterate the hospital, potentially killing the people inside, would it be right to save thousands of lives as a result? This is the Bentham principle of Utilitarianism ethics, and one that John Stuart Mill and David Hume would be proponents of in their later life. The relation to this of identity, and one's way of being able to find themselves, comes from ideas of whether or not identity is tied up with the legalities of justice.
First, I take a view of balancing what is 'good' with what is 'right'. One can seek what they assume to be justice by doing what is 'good' with not always doing what is legally 'right'. 'Rights' and 'wrongs' are ultimately formed by laws that are meant to function society and set the course of justice on its way. Now, as a libertarian, I take issue with what government can consider to be 'right' and 'wrong' when pursuing justice. In the US, for example, the death penalty is a legal means of execution, which they see as something that is 'right' in the pursuit of justice. Iran thinks the same way when it comes to executing homosexuals, but we in the West would mainly consider that to be 'wrong'. For an Iranian lawmaker, this is not the case. Instead, it is pursuing the justice that they as a society deem is correct, morally and legally. Western values may never be necessarily always 'right' or even 'good', but it is more accepting than that of many Islamic areas of the world, but that is due to a differing code of ethics that we have grown accustomed to. Seeing homosexuals getting legally married in Western nations is seen as unjustifiable in the Middle East, and the ideas of identity, justice and legality work well into this idea.
Take this as a principle with some examples of what I consider to be the moral code for justice:
Good-Right: Morally 'good' with legally 'right' - normal human behaviour. Showing displays of everyday ethics.
Good-Wrong: Morally 'good' with legally 'wrong' - freedom fighters in Nazi Germany (the White Rose).
Evil-Right: Morally 'evil' with legally 'right' - the setup for many ruthless dictatorships
Evil-Wrong: Morally 'evil' with legally 'wrong' - mass murderers, rapists, child molesters, etc.
Identity can be a complex notion, especially as it is being talked about a lot over the past decade or so. Identity and identity politics, another term that has been thrown around inconclusively the past few years, are separate issues, and both I will address. Identity is what makes human behaviour and what human beings are. In biological and moral terms, everybody has identity. And identity is not a brand new notion as it is one that has existed since the dawn of time, and once human behaviour came to develop for survival and adaptation, identity becomes important. It is what helped the strongest defeat the weakest and what helped development of technology during the early days of farming in ancient civilisations. If you worked as a farmer and controlled the supply chain that all peoples needed, and that of course being food, then you became the strongest and the most important. That was the identity that you created. Of course, identity means so much more than that now. It goes along racial and sexual lines that can mean so much more than just name, age and gender. Identity is deep rooted within societal expectations for certain people that during the past decade, we have seen a radical new idea that identity can simply be changed to suit the needs of the individual. I believe in individual liberty over social justice because individuals in a group of people act differently and have different ideas and abilities that come with biological identity. If we were to have a group of women in a room, each one would have different needs based on socio-economic status, education status, marital status, etc. Grouping people based upon one identifiable trait can lead to allegations of racism, sexism, homophobia and general bigotry.
This is why social justice is an oxymoron and why identity politics is a disaster for society. Social justice could be perceived as morally 'good' by those who propose it, because it looks like one cares for a large group of people without thinking of the consequences of actions. We've seen this with the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter - identity politics being used to assume that all women should be believed regarding their sexual assault allegations and the assumption that all black people are underprivileged and at risk of being killed by police officers. Identity politics isn't even a left vs right issue. For the far-right, the alt-right and white supremacists, identity politics is at the heart of their campaigning too. Just like Black Lives Matter, white supremacists such as the KKK, neo-Nazis and the Proud Boys use white identity to seek dominance over minorities and assume that all minorities are treated better than whites in the eyes of the government and will use tactics to intimidate their opposition. Flip the races and you have the foundations of black supremacists such as those in the Black Lives Matter movement. Getting into arguments about horseshoe theory, something that I am an advocate for, can be saved for another time, but it is interesting that in the pursuit of social justice for these particular groups, how close the comparisons can be.
Identity politics is also a dangerous path to tread down. It is deep rooted within society in the pursuit of social justice to create a society that can be 'good-right' at all times, though it is not intellectually feasible and ends up actually being morally corrupt. It is something that the left likes to play into, to create a utopia where the 'deplorables' from society can be purged to allow those who need to be 'liberated' to flourish. In the battle between equality and equity, the two terms can often be muddled in order to further confusion and seek to make the argument sound 'good-right'. I will take my personal identity to put into a sense of what identity politics has done to make the argument easier to follow. Following the recent George Floyd protests, social media was flooded with misinformation from Silicon Valley to highlight the problems of what is perceived as an 'unequal' society. Whilst this fed into mainstream media, the misinformation that was purposefully transmitted through social media to create divisions within society. In the pursuit of social justice, left-wing Black Lives Matter protestors created social media posts such as #JewishPrivilege to purposefully attack Jewish people and make themselves look like the victims of some aggrandised conspiracy that Jewish people were suppressing black voices and people. It was then latched onto by white supremacists using social media to push their own agendas. Both very different ideologies using their own sense of identity politics to be prejudiced against another race of people. Accusations of who has 'privilege' or not is also not quantifiable as most who pursue social justice normally take this view based upon one particular trait, or one might see this as one particular identity. Seeing a white man and thinking that he has inherit privilege based on one identifiable trait is intellectually inept, but is one that is gaining mainstream attention and acceptance. Likewise, seeing a black woman and thinking that she has no privilege is also intellectually inept.
We've heard a lot about what 'white privilege' means by people who claim to be intellectuals without actually using statistics or quantifiable reasoning. 'White privilege' is normally defined as being white and therefore, in the eyes of those in charge of our justice system, must be prioritised over minorities. Minorities are treated differently and their is a sense of injustice against them. When we look at crime rates in certain areas of the country, mostly in urban areas, young, black men are more likely to commit violent acts, but are also more likely to be the victims of violent crimes. It is a problem not of group or social justice, but that of individual circumstances, liberty and responsibility. It is not due to open discrimination from government or society as a whole. You would therefore think that as a society, in the eyes of those who promote social justice, that an unjust society would be one that favours whites over minorities, or those who identify as BAME. So, what kind of society allows it? Ours does, and in a very subtle way. In a UCAS end of cycle report from 2015, it was discovered that white working-class men were the most discriminated against when it came down to those wanting to go into tertiary education. 9% of white working-class boys went to university compared to over 30% of black working-class girls. 24% of white middle-class boys entered further education in the same year too. Is this down to some sort of discrimination? The answer is that there is some empirical evidence to suggest this, but it can also come down to individual liberty too. In the pursuit of social justice, we have seen white boys in particular be off-rolled more frequently than those from ethnic minority backgrounds. There are more incentives and opportunities than ever for BAME students to go to university, which is a very positive thing for our society, but has come at the expense of white working-class boys missing out. This is the danger of 'equality' and what it can lead to.
So, what can we learn from this? Privilege is not synonymous with one particular trait or identity as it can be found in many differing individuals in so called 'underprivileged' groups. There are some white people who are more successful than black people and there are some black people more successful than white people. Individuals who like to push the agenda that there is inherit 'white privilege' within people are unlikely to show statistics, nor are they able to conclusively prove that such privilege exists without using anecdotal evidence. They also like to backtrack and often say 'this does not mean that white people do not suffer hardships', but in the case of the education system in the UK, there is evidence that there is discrimination often against white boys of all socio-economic backgrounds that means that they are less likely to succeed in further education. If it were the case that white people are more privileged than other minorities, then why is it that Asian people are higher earners than their white counterparts? A 2019 government finding by the Department of Work and Pensions found that 42% of Indian families take home more than £1000 a week, compared to 26% for White British. This still isn't a case for privilege by racial identity, though. It is an indication of individual privilege by choices made. Good choice and decision making leads to better privileges. Economic privilege is more important as this is done by an individual basis, rather than through social justice of seeing every person within the group as being monolithic in some way. Nobody on the left would dare suggest that there is inherit bias in the system towards Asians.
'Check your privilege' is a term that can be thrown around ad nauseum without seeing people as individuals and understanding that identity is more than just skin colour or genitalia. It is used by those often referred to as 'Social Justice Warriors' (SJWs), a term of ridicule by those who are generally against ideas of social justice and progressive values. It is the same SJWs that use identity as a means to change the agenda, change definitions and pervert the concept of freedom of speech whilst simultaneously demanding that legislation be passed through that supports their worldview. The other view of this is that identity politics can be used as a way to absolve one from criticism based on traits of biological identity. That is to say, BAME politicians, for example, can use their identity to deflect from their own misdemeanours and their white knight saviours will defend them to the hilt. SJWs will often say that this means that white people who criticise BAME politicians are 'afraid' of them, rather than seeing criticism for criticism's sake. This is not the same as open racism, which is morally reprehensible. What racism can do is shut down debate, and uses identity politics to defend those who make incomprehensible statements or make awful decisions. Recently, former First Lady Michelle Obama stated that she and her husband were held to a 'higher standard' based on their race compared to former Presidents and First Ladies. The example used immediately uses the standard of identity politics to absolve criticism based upon race, which is especially dangerous considering the power position that Mrs Obama has. Simply, nobody is absolved from criticism based on race, gender or sexual orientation. Identity politics becomes the new censorship, and creates a new liberal bigotry that imposes a new morality that is just as oppressive and authoritarian as the last. Having people arrested for social media posts in the name of 'social justice' is counterproductive to solving, combating and challenging racism, sexism and homophobia as it only emboldens those who use it for their own gain. Likewise, accusing people of certain races, genders and sexual orientations of being bigoted with no evidence also hurts further causes in combating the aforementioned prejudices.
I am an individualist, in the sense that it is impossible to see society as a collective, which some libertarians may identify as, but does not work in the sense of knowing what is 'good' and what is 'right'. Individual liberty is more important than social groups, and identity of the individual should be taken into consideration when dealing with issues of justice. Prevailing justice, whether it be for a man, woman, black, white, gay, straight - should be done on an individual basis, rather than the use of identity politics to demean another group. Individual liberty has always been the way since the days of the Enlightenment, and cannot be lost to progressivism and social justice.
References
http://archive.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2011/04/17/high_achieving_asian_americans_are_being_shut_out_of_top_schools/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0038-4941.2004.00284
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1311735249651597313/photo/1
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/work-pay-and-benefits/pay-and-income/household-income/latest
https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/516885-michelle-obama-we-couldve-never-gotten-away-with-what-the-trump
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