Social Justice

What is social justice? In one of my graduate classes, we have been discussing how we define social justice and what issues we are specifically motivated to work on. If we were to describe social justice in one word it could be:

• humane


• respect


• equity


• equality


• redistribution


• transformative


• access


• etc.

At my field placement the other day, a few of us talked about how "extreme" we might go to be equally accessible to all people. One issue that we focused on was if a person was unable to read. Would we put up a red sign to say we were closed and a green one to say we were open? Are we right to assume that everyone can read numbers (times of service)?

I think that in all of this it is important for us to look at who our target group is and make changes based on those demographics as well as what suggestions those people may have. As social workers, we want to help people, but we also need to be reminded that community-based ideas may work better in the long run than pushing our personal agendas.