The Long, Arduous Trek To Social Justice

Recently, I stumbled on my first-ever published work, South Africa’s Bondage Ties Us All.  Written and published in a local newspaper in 1989, I argued in that short article that none of us was truly free for as long as South African Blacks remained subjected to the bondage of apartheid. 

When I wrote that article, South Africa was paramount in my mind.  I had become increasingly bothered by the fact that leaders of countries were paying lip service to the concept of freedom as they promoted that idea around the world while actively helping the South African government to sustain its apartheid policy.  I was also angered by the fact that some preachers of my faith were boldly saying on Christian television that South Africa's apartheid regime was God's will and that black South Africans were the cause of their own oppression.  In retrospect, I feel that in my disappointment and intense desire for change in South Africa, I did not look beyond the plight of black people in South Africa to consider the potential that so many in our world would still be subjected to so many forms of social injustice long after Blacks in South Africa became free.  However, I recall that I looked sufficiently far back in history and knew enough about oppressed groups to be able to say in that article that it would only be a question of time before the black people of South Africa became free because oppression in that form was hardly sustainable in an increasingly connected world. 

Well, South African Blacks did become free but injustice continues to survive in increasingly diverse forms around the world.  Also, its varied complexion and multiplicity of forms now make it more difficult to hope for a world devoid of injustice.  That would be a world in which we all recognize that we are not truly free when some of our brothers and sisters are in chains; a world in which some among us do not have to prove themselves to be accepted just because of their pigmentation; a world in which people who possess the same credentials and perform comparable tasks are remunerated equally despite their gender; a world in which people are not judged and condemned because of who they love; a world in which people's freedom of movement is not curtailed just because of what they look like; a world in which people are not profiled for punishment just because they do not come from the dominant socioeconomic class or culture; a world in which we accept our responsibility to care for the sick among us rather than subject that responsibility to heartless political debates; a world in which all are truly equal in the application of law just as we all are in the eyes of God.  Simply, that is the world that we need but it is not the world that we have – and the chances that we will ever have such a world are increasingly diminishing by the day.  We should never claim to live in a just society (or world) if any among us remains a victim of social injustice. 

       

I am inclined to believe that our world will get better because more and more of us will embrace and work for social justice.  Yet, even if I had a crystal ball, I would still consider it foolhardy to make such a pronouncement.  Instead, here is what I can say for sure: The trek toward social justice is long, difficult and sometimes a hopeless journey but there is no guarantee that the destination can ever be reached.  I believe, however, that we can make this a more just world if each of us plays his/her part.  It would require that we join our hearts and hands, raise our voices on behalf of the voiceless, march against injustice on behalf of ourselves and those who cannot march on their own behalf, and lift those in our midst who need a helping hand.  If we give hope to the hopeless, help to the helpless, water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, empower the powerless and not only talk but live the gospel of social justice, then we make it possible for ourselves and those who come after us to hope for a world in which we can convincingly say and believe, as Dr. Martin Luther King did, that “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”.