Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati - In Pursuit of Racial Justice

It’s not always easy to be a diocesan bishop, particularly in times of crisis. Whenever something unusual occurs, something like civil unrest, the local bishop is expected to make a statement, and such statements are expected to be immediate, while the crisis is still going on. They are expected to be brief enough to fit into a thirty second sound bite on the evening news. And they are supposed to explain what is going on in such a way that everybody can understand the situation fully so as not to have to bother with it any more. My presentation this evening is almost the complete opposite of that kind of statement. First of all, it is coming more than six months after our April disturbances. Secondly, it will not fit into a thirty second sound bite. Thirdly, it will not provide final answers, but only a context in which we can all continue to search for the answers.

Before we talk about the racial justice that was promised in the title of my presentation, we need to talk about justice in general.

If this were a lecture in dogmatic theology, we would need, at this point, to talk about justice as a synonym for righteousness and about "justification" as a share in the righteousness of God on the part of human beings. In a dogmatic theology context, justice or righteousness constitutes life in relation to God, human life as God ultimately wants it to be.

But this is supposed to be a lecture in moral theology, and in that context we can define justice as the determination to see that each person gets what belongs to him or her. To each his own, to each her own: that’s what justice is about. This determination to see that all persons get what is coming to them has been one of the goals of civilized society for thousands of years. It has been reflected on and philosophized over by practically every generation of human beings at least since Plato and Aristotle. Traditional western social philosophy breaks down justice into three main types.

First, there is commutative justice. It is the justice of exchange. It has to do mostly with individuals or private social groups and is governed by strict arithmetic equality. It is the justice of purchase and of contract. "I will give you this tube of tooth paste if you give me a dollar and eighty nine cents."

The foundation of commutative justice is basic human dignity and basic human equality. If I owe, I owe, no matter if I am black or white, popular or unpopular. Just because I an a human being I have the obligation to treat others justly and the right to expect to be treated justly myself.

The second general kind of justice is distributive justice. This is not the justice of exchange, but the justice of distribution, the justice of sharing social resources. This kind of justice has to do with society in relation to individuals.

Because we are human beings, we all have the right to share in certain fundamental resources. We all have the right to things like food and water and personal security and education, and other things as well, as we will see in a few minutes. Everyone, each one of us, has a right to these things not because we have earned them or paid for them, but simply because we exist, simply because we are part of created reality. If everyone has a right to expect these things from society, then society has a obligation to see that these things are provided.

Notice, however, that this kind of justice is not governed by arithmetic equality, but by proportion. We don’t all have a right to the same amount of food or water or personal security or education, but to the minimum share that we need in order to sustain our human existence. Notice also that, since society has the obligation to provide this minimum share, society also has the right to see that necessary resources are apportioned and distributed in an equitable way. It generally does this by levying taxes or other obligations on those who have more in order to provide for those who do not have enough, or do not have at all.

Distributive injustice exists in a society in which people are deprived of what they need to live basic human lives. Distributive injustice exists in a society in which some expect to provide nothing to others, but only to receive. Distributive injustice also exists in a society in which there are some who believe that their right to a proper share of the world’s goods excludes responsibility on their part to try to provide for themselves. Improper attitudes about sharing the world’s goods can lead both the haves and the have-nots into injustice.

The third general kind of justice is social justice. This is the justice of participation and is concerned with individuals in relation to society. What is at issue here is neither arithmetic exchange nor the right to have access to what we need in order to live. Social justice deals with the way the social system works and with the rights of individuals to have a voice in the way the social system works.

The foundation of social justice is the same human dignity that underlies commutative and distributive justice. Each one of us, simply because we are human beings, has a right to be treated fairly, i.e., the right to commutative justice. Each of us, simply because we are human beings, has the right to our fair share of the earth’s resources, i.e., the right to distributive justice. So also each of us, simply because we are human beings, has the right to social justice, i.e., the right to have a say in how the social system works. We may not all have the same level of say in the system, but we do have the right, at very least, to have some voice in the way we are governed. These rights are embodied in things like the right to vote, the right to organize in labor unions and political parties, the right to free expression.

Social injustice occurs when this right to participate is violated by de facto or by systematic exclusion. "You don’t get to have a say because you are poor or black or Jewish."

Social justice, the right to have a say, is the youngest branch of justice in that it is only in the last couple of hundred years that human beings have become aware that social systems are man made and therefore are capable of change and that we are, therefore, responsible for the social systems in which we live.

This has been a very rapid and superficial overview of the various kinds or subdivisions of justice, ending with social justice. Now let’s examine racial justice. I do not intend to offer you a detailed account of the problems that face our city, still less do I intend to offer detailed proposals for solving those problems. Instead, I thought it might be more helpful in the long run and more in accord with my own personal resources to speak about racial justice in our society under the rubric of diversity and to try to see what are the relationships and the tensions that might occur between justice and diversity. Note that "diversity" involves members of our society who happen to be African Americans, but it also involves those of European descent as well as Asians and Guatemalans and Filipinos, Christians, Muslims, and Jews. By definition diversity is a relative term. It is not just black people who are different from white people, but also white people who are different from black people.

Diversity means being different and there are lots of ways in which people can be different from each other. We are all individually somewhat different from everybody else. Otherwise we would have no individuality and it would be impossible to distinguish me from anybody else. But there are other ways to be different, too. People can be different because of their race or national background. They can be different because of the language they speak or even because of the way they speak a common language. (Some of us remember the line from My Fair Lady when Professor Higgins says that whenever an Englishman opens his mouth he makes another Englishman despise him.) People can be different because of the level of their economic resources or because of the level of their education or because of the religious faith they profess.

Diversity can be enriching. How dreary our gastronomic existence would be without Italian or Chinese food. Part of the uniqueness of American music comes from the infusion of elements from African-American cultures. I think we all take some pleasure in the rich variety of accents in our country, in appreciating that the English spoken in Maine and in Texas is really the language of a single nation, though not pronounced exactly as God meant it to be. For that you have to come to the mid-west!

But diversity can also be a source of division and even hostility. We experience division and segmentation in our country between rich and poor, black and white, the newly arrived and those who have deeper roots in our country. I would like to spend the next few moments reflecting with you on the foundations of these divisions and on what can be done to turn them into a source of strength.

We all more or less spontaneously experience a degree of apprehension when we are faced with people who are different. Often it’s not even a conscious thing. It just happens. We find ourselves thinking: "Look at those people over there. They talk funny. They dress funny. They seem to laugh at the wrong things. They’re not like we are." And then we draw the disastrously erroneous conclusion: "They’re not like we are and therefore they aren’t as good as we are. They’re different, so they must be inferior." The implication here is that I myself, and people like me, are the norm for human excellence and that the worth of "others" depends on the extent to which these others are like me.

This erroneous conclusion is particularly tempting when the otherness of the others consists in economic differences. "They’re poor. I’m not poor like they are and I’m a respectable person. Therefore they’re not respectable persons. Moreover, if they’re poor, it’s their own fault, and if they’re poor through their own fault, it’s certainly not my responsibility to extend myself for them, or toward them."

These particular economic tensions between "ourselves" and "the others" are often rooted in the great American dream. The great American dream is that, if you work hard enough and struggle consistently enough, you can arrive at an acceptable, indeed a high level of social and economic well-being and thus become a significant, an important human being. The trouble with the great American dream is that it is a dream and not a guarantee and also that it involves some very questionable presumptions. Yes, hard work and struggle are important, but so is luck. If you are born into the right family at the right moment in the family’s history, if you are born in the right country at a propitious time in the economic and political history of that country, and at the right place in the country, if you’ve got all that, then you have a lot better chance of making the American dream come true. If that dream, therefore, has come true in my life, but not in the life of "those others," it doesn’t necessarily mean that I have worked harder or struggled more consistently or am a better person. It may simply mean that I have been luckier than they. This is not to say that work and effort are irrelevant. But it does mean that the goal you reach is determined in large part by what your starting point was. It also means that to think that your worth as a human being depends on your social and economic status is not really very perceptive.

Very often the way in which we deal with diversity involves injustice, not commutative injustice, but distributive injustice. Remember that distributive justice is not some kind of optional social program that was thought up by benevolent political theorists. Distributive justice has to do with rights, with inalienable claims that each of us has simply because we are human beings. According to Pope John XXIII (Pacem in Terris nos. 11 ff.), these basic human rights include the right to life and to a worthy standard of living, the right to education and freedom of information, the right to establish a family and to follow religious beliefs, the right to a job and to a living wage, the right to hold private property, the right to emigrate and to immigrate. These are not benefits that we can claim once we have earned them. They are basic human rights that belong to each one of "us," and to each one of "them," whatever language we/they speak, however we/they dress, whether we/they be rich or poor. The basic dictates of distributive justice are that every human being has the right to play on a level field, that there is a basic set of tools and opportunities that belong to each and every human being, and that it is a fundamental task of society to see that these demands of distributive justice are fulfilled, that if these demands are not met, injustice is being done.

The injustices and tensions as well as the blessings that arise in the context of social diversity can best be understood and addressed, it seems to me, if we strive to be clear about several basic realities.

The first is that we are not morally free to decide that "the others" aren’t going to be allowed their fair share of the world’s resources. Those who enjoy power in a society are in fact, able to deprive "the others" of their fair share but that constitutes injustice and injustice always has a way of getting even. Allowing a whole group of ex professo outsiders and non-participants to develop in a society is simply not an option for thinking people. It’s too dangerous. Ultimately it will boomerang on its practitioners, as all sin does.

The second thing that we have to be clear about in dealing with diversity is that there isn’t just one kind of ideal citizen and that everybody must conform to that ideal or remain an outsider. Who said that you have to be white middle class in order to qualify for human rights? Who said that if you don’t speak English you don’t count? Who said that you aren’t worthy of respect if you don’t have a steady job? Nobody worth listening to ever said any of that, but lots of people act as if propositions like that are civic dogmas on which our country is founded.

The third thing that we have to be clear about is that our country, perhaps more than any other, is an amalgam of diverse cultures and nationalities. If we forget that, we are being unfaithful to the basics that have made us what we are. We have tended to overlook that reality at some periods in our history, but always to our own detriment. If we factor out diversity in our country, what are we left with? White Anglo-Saxon Puritans who distrust everyone but themselves, who insist that everyone believe and behave as they themselves do, who burn witches. Many of our founding fathers were not particularly pleasant people. Thank God that circumstances made it necessary for them to accept some diversity! Diversity has brought a unique creativity and energy to our country. To reject or disdain diversity is simply un-American.

The fourth thing we have to be clear about is that different is not necessarily bad. "How wonderful if everybody were just like me." How terrible, not because I am terrible but because I am so limited: culturally, intellectually, economically, and in dozens of other ways. Humanity can’t be fully expressed in one human being, even if that human being is myself. We need diversity in order to have some idea of the richness of which our human nature is capable. We need diversity to make up for the limitations that each of us brings to our common civic existence. I think that we instinctively shrink from the possibility of human cloning because we mistrust the choices that might be made. Would the world really be better off if there were a half dozen more of me, or, for that matter, even one more?

Fifthly, we need to acknowledge that any society’s response to tensions that arise from diversity cannot be addressed exclusively by legal means. Of course we need laws and programs and mandatory practices that defend the different people who are less powerful from the different people who are more powerful. But that’s not enough. The reason it’s not enough is that law can only address behavior. Law cannot address attitudes and personal judgements, judgements which are often based on inappropriate data, judgements that we call pre-judgements, or prejudice. Because tensions that arise from diversity arise, at least in part, from within, any means intended to address those tensions also have to include that which is within. What’s called for is not just new laws but new hearts, hearts that acknowledge the dignity of each and every human being, hearts that are willing to grant to each other person the respect that his or her dignity requires. These new hearts do not come easily. They involve the intervention of God in the context of prayer, reflection, and self-examination.

If diversity seems to be a threat or a burden, it might be helpful to consider how limited our diversity really is. All of us human beings share all the basics. We all have intellect and will. We all love our parents, spouses, and children. We all want to be secure and productive. We all enjoy eating and drinking. We all need to get a certain amount of rest each day. About ninety-five percent of what makes us what we are is the same in all of us. The other five percent really isn’t that important: color of skin, native language, culinary preferences, modes of dress, levels of education or prosperity. It really isn’t worth getting all excited about stuff that is, relatively speaking, so unimportant.

What I am saying here is that diversity brings a deepening and an enrichment to our human community and that resistence to and rejection of diversity is generally an expression of selfishness or pettiness or ignorance or insecurity in addition to injustice. God made us human beings to be more or less all the same, but also God made each of us, and each group of us, a little different. If you downplay either the commonality of our humanity or its diversity, you are rejecting the handiwork of the Lord and you are going to end up in injustice.

Our Catholic faith teaches us that God wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. The very name "catholic" means universal, world-wide, all embracing and if we find ourselves limiting our attentions to people who are just like us, we are engaging in behavior that can only be called anti-catholic.

I have been speaking of the problems and blessings of diversity mostly in the context of distributive justice. That where most of racial injustice is situated, and that’s where most of the action about diversity is located. But a lack of respect for diversity also has its repercussions in the exercise of social justice, the justice of participation. If people who are different are not going to be able to exercise their rights to a just share of the world’s goods, a just share of their nation’s resources, they’re also not going to be able to exercise their rights to have a voice in the way the system works. The various kinds of justice are not in watertight compartments. One kind of injustice generally begets another. The rejection of others on the grounds of diversity involves more than one kind of injustice.

There’s a lot more we could say about justice and a lot more we could say about diversity. Most of the social questions that face our country are concerned with diversity, and we could spend a long time talking about the implications of education and joblessness and racial unrest and multi-generational poverty. We might also get into the question of how government can best insure the distributive and social justice rights of its people. It would also be interesting to explore the question of perceptions, how different groups in a society look on each other and the extent to which those perceptions are valid. We could also talk about how injustice based on diversity is not just the sin of majorities, but can also be practiced by minorities. I also have not said much about the obligations of individuals to play a role in acquiring for themselves what distributive justice gives them a right to. But we can only do so much in one sitting.

I suspect, however, that some of my audience would be very disappointed if I did not take at least some notice of our specific situation here in Cincinnati. What I have to offer in that context is brief and non-specific, but I hope that it is not for that reason totally unhelpful. What we need to do first of all is analyze the problems. What’s really wrong? Is it a defective police force or an ineffective court system or low quality education or lack of housing or unfair employment practices or self-serving political agenda or all of these things? What role does each of these realities play in our racial unrest? How much of what is wrong is fact and how much is perception? (Note that perception can be just as important an element in society as fact!) What can be done about what’s wrong? I am convinced, as I said earlier that any solution to our problems must involve not only government and law, but also voluntary, "intermediate" associations as well as wider interpersonal relationships and a change of heart. The kinds of problems we seem to face require good will and effort not just from our leaders, but from each one of us. Finally, I believe that long term problems require long term solutions and that we do ourselves and our diverse brothers and sisters a disservice if we think that somehow it can all be taken care of in a couple of months.

Let me conclude by offering us a reminder from Scripture. The Book of Revelation (Rev. 5.9) teaches us that heaven is populated by "those from every tribe and tongue, people and nation." If you’re uncomfortable with diversity, you won’t be happy there.

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