0:01
Good evening. This is Radio
Free Beszel. I am

0:04
Alphonse. Tonight: the case
for social justice.

0:09
There is tremendous
injustice in the

0:11
world. There's a lot of
evidence for that.

0:14
On average, women in
many fields are

0:16
paid substantially
less than men.

0:17
The most striking data I
have seen is from 2008,

0:21
showing that for creative
class jobs the average

0:24
wage for a woman was 41
percent less than for a

0:26
man - despite equivalent
levels of education, and

0:29
only a small five-hour
difference in weekly hours.

0:33
In health care and law,
it showed that women

0:35
on average got paid less
than half as much.

0:40
The median net worth of black
families in America

0:43
is a tenth of the median
white family. A black

0:46
man in the U.S. is over
twice as likely to be

0:48
killed by police than a
non-Hispanic white man.

0:51
In Canada, where indigenous
people make up

0:54
only five percent of
the population, they

0:57
are 30 percent of prison
inmates. I'm not going to

1:00
continue on. There are plenty
of statistics like

1:03
this that you can find.
While some of them may

1:05
be more nuanced than they
might at first appear,

1:08
we have seen enough incidents
of sexism racism

1:11
and other forms of prejudice
targeting women

1:13
and minority groups to
make it clear that our

1:16
societies do suffer from
systemic injustice.

1:20
By systemic, I mean we're
not just talking

1:23
about a few bad apples:
these injustices are

1:26
the result of structural
factors. We can't

1:29
fix them by simply changing
a few minds.

1:34
It is no exaggeration
to say that much

1:36
or most of the wealth
and power of our

1:38
societies originated
in the oppression of

1:40
groups that are still
marginalized today,

1:43
and many practices
that we believe to

1:45
be objective and independent
of politics

1:48
turn out to be entwined with
and implicated in injustice.

1:52
We live under a founding
myth that conceals the

1:55
violent origins of our
wealth and privileges.

1:58
That myth is that we have
neutral institutions

2:01
and procedures - science,
the market, law,

2:04
democracy - that treat people
equally, and that

2:07
this equal treatment will
result in fair outcomes.

2:11
The reality is that
these institutions

2:14
were primarily created
by the powerful

2:16
for the powerful. Science
for instance has

2:19
never been a neutral
instrument, from its

2:22
creation by Sir Francis
Bacon, a member of the

2:25
Virginia company founded
to colonize America.

2:28
The purpose was to understand
nature in order

2:31
to control nature - and
ultimately to control

2:34
human beings. When Western
corporations conduct

2:37
research on traditional
medicines in India,

2:40
then patent the results,
they are

2:42
appropriating knowledge
for their own profit.

2:44
Pharmaceutical firms employ
impoverished research

2:47
subjects in Africa. The
subjects take the risk

2:50
but the firms make the
profits - and those

2:53
research subjects often
cannot even afford

2:55
to buy the life-saving
medicine they helped

2:59
create. Finance too is
rooted in domination.

3:03
The first bonds in America
were secured with

3:07
slaves as collateral,
not real estate. The

3:10
South grew cotton, but the
North got rich on the

3:13
cotton trade. More recently,
in the 20th century,

3:16
redlining sent black families
who wanted to buy

3:19
homes to loan sharks who
engineered terms that

3:21
would bankrupt the families,
lose them their

3:23
homes, and often lose
them their families.

3:28
The lion's share
of America's

3:29
founding wealth, from
money to land,

3:31
was stolen from the labor
of enslaved millions

3:34
and from the indigenous
inhabitants of the land.

3:38
These practices erase
what existed before.

3:42
Countries that suffered suffered
the depredations

3:45
of slavery hundreds of
years ago still lag

3:47
economically today. The
division of what

3:50
was once indigenous land
into owned plots

3:53
destroyed the economic
social and

3:55
spiritual basis of
whole societies.

3:58
Even when indigenous people
own the land today, it

4:01
is nearly impossible to
reconstruct what was lost

4:04
under a regime of ownership
that is alien to their

4:07
traditional cultures. In
fact, there are no such

4:11
things as neutral institutions
- no such thing as

4:14
neutral science, neutral
markets, neutral laws.

4:18
These are systems that
white European men

4:21
(for the most part) imposed
on everyone else,

4:24
and that to this day favor
most of all the

4:26
wealth and power of
white European men.

4:30
If science, the market
and so on are in fact

4:33
instruments of power
that fuel injustice,

4:37
how is it that we see them
as neutral? The answer

4:40
is one of the core ideas
of social justice.

4:42
It is the reason for the term
"woke," meaning that

4:45
one was previously asleep
to the dynamics of power

4:48
but has now woken up. To
get to that answer, I

4:51
need to talk about language.
We experience the

4:55
social world primarily through
language. Language

4:58
defines categories. Consider
"black" and "white."

5:01
The skin of black people
is not literally

5:03
black, nor is the skin
of white people white.

5:06
In fact skin color alone
cannot tell us whether

5:08
someone is what we would
call black or white:

5:11
you can find white people
with skin color

5:13
darker than some black
people. Sometimes when

5:16
the bureaucrats in the racist
apartheid government

5:19
of South Africa had to determine
a person's race,

5:21
they would apply what they
called the "pencil

5:24
test." Pushing a pencil through
a person's hair,

5:26
they would see how easily
it passed or

5:28
whether it fell to the
floor. And on the

5:29
basis of that they
would determine

5:31
the person's race
and their rights.

5:35
Yet we think of people as
actually being black

5:37
or white, as though that
is a feature of who

5:39
they are rather than
a category that

5:41
we are using language
to put them into.

5:44
But when we see someone as
"black" we do not see

5:48
the word, we see the person.
The word defines the

5:51
category - but then it
disappears, leaving

5:53
the appearance that the
category is simply

5:56
something that nature gave
us, not something

5:58
that we created. Language,
in other words, does

6:02
not simply describe reality.
We use language to

6:05
organize reality, and then
language organizes us.

6:10
The magic of language, in
other words, is it it

6:14
reveals and it conceals.
What it conceals is the

6:18
work that it does to create
an image of reality

6:21
- not the true reality,
but a kind of myth.

6:24
It also conceals the work
that people with

6:26
power do when they use
language to create a

6:29
myth that benefits them.
Then we, believing

6:32
the myth, think that it
is simply reality.

6:35
We do not question
it, or whether

6:37
things could be
different.

6:40
There are many ways that
language shapes our

6:43
perception of what is natural
and what is not.

6:47
One is through words that
create categories

6:49
like black and white.
But some of the most

6:51
subtle ways language
influences us is

6:53
through assumptions
that remain unsaid.

6:59
Notice that when a person
is black we are likely

7:02
to say so. When a person is
white we often do not.

7:06
This silence is a clue that
being white is normal.

7:10
We expect people to be
white. By implication,

7:14
to be black is abnormal. Black
people deviate from the norm.

7:20
Language is a powerful
force for determining

7:22
what we think of as normal.
In traditional

7:24
English one might say, "man
is a social animal,

7:26
he lives his life in the
company of others."

7:30
Here "man" stands for humanity
and "he" stands for

7:32
a generic individual who
might be male or female.

7:36
But this way male is categorized
as normal,

7:39
while female is implied
to be not normal.

7:43
Language thus implicitly
places white

7:45
people and men at the
center of society,

7:47
with black people and women
at the margins. So

7:50
language and institutions
built around language

7:54
contain biases that
create the illusion

7:56
that the reality they
describe is natural,

7:58
and that power and injustice
do not exist - even

8:01
as language treats different
groups unequally.

8:05
How can we learn about
reality in a way

8:06
that is not filtered
through language?

8:09
One way is through personal
experience, without

8:12
language standing in the
way. Our experience of

8:15
life and of injustice is
something that language

8:18
cannot hide away in unstated
assumptions.

8:23
If your image of reality
comes only

8:25
through experience or
through language,

8:27
then those for whom
experience does not

8:30
correspond with language
can see society from

8:32
a second perspective - that
of their experience

8:36
and that of the dominant
language. The mismatch

8:40
provides them with two points
of view. Those who

8:44
experience a life that
matches their language

8:49
would not have their illusion
burst. They'd only

8:52
have the single experience
confirmed by both.

8:54
This double experience
of those on the

8:57
margins can give them
a deeper insight

8:59
into society than those
who are comfortable and

9:02
privileged. The dominant
language in society is

9:06
powerful. We are immersed
in it our whole lives.

9:09
We do not just hear it, we
speak it. We therefore

9:13
reproduce the ideas and
illusions and myths

9:16
that are implicit in
the language we use.

9:20
Those who are part of unjust
institutions or whose

9:23
social lives are conducted
through language that

9:25
conceals reality, in effect
promote the values

9:28
and aims of those institutions
and that language,

9:32
whether they want to
or not. This is the

9:35
is the reason that language
is so powerful:

9:38
because it acts through
us, which means also

9:41
that power and injustice
act through us.

9:47
Putting this all together,
the injustices

9:49
of the world have been
concealed beneath a

9:50
blanket of institutions
that seem neutral,

9:53
but that in fact favor
privileged groups.

9:56
This apparent neutrality is
established through language,

9:59
which creates an
illusion that an

10:01
unjust state of affairs
is natural.

10:06
What i have said by no
means describes the

10:08
entire social justice movement
but it captures

10:11
some of the key motivations and
reasoning and makes what for me

10:15
is the strongest case for
the movement and for

10:18
its understanding of the world.
I hope whether you

10:22
are convinced of social justice
or not, this has

10:26
helped you understand it.
In Islam a person who

10:30
is ignorant of the message
of Muhammad may still

10:33
be admitted to heaven when
she learns the truth.

10:37
But one who learns the truth
yet turns away one

10:40
of al kafirun, the rejecters,
is doomed to hell.

10:46
I am doomed to social
justice hell. This

10:50
has been Radio Free
Beszel. Good night.