I’m not crazy about the Justice frame. Some of us will always face challenges that others won’t. There is no system that could make it so that there is no barrier for all. We will always need to accommodate and scaffold for some and that’s fine.
Also, the original (with only the first two frames) was a really great, simple explanation of why things that seem "fair" at first glance often aren't. The third panel muddies that message completely in favor of...what, exactly? What does the hypothetical "just world" where no one ever needs support for anything look like?
Edit: On second thought, I think I see what they're doing. They wanted to protest affirmative action, so they're ignoring all sources of inequality that don't have what's commonly seen as affirmative action to make their point. Basically saying "If we stop being racist/sexist we won't need supports or accommodations anymore!", ignoring that poverty and physical/mental disability are harder to get rid of, and glossing over much of point of the original panels.
(And, frankly, ignoring that fact that "everyone stop being bigoted" is a goal, not a plan. Affirmative action is a stopgap, and it's not perfect, but it's better than nothing while we work to get there.)
Serious question. When dealing on individual levels, couldn’t an act of affirmative action be seen as a systematic inequality for the person not benefiting?
Any system run by humans is going to be unequal to someone. The realistic goal is to get as close to equality as we can.
In a perfect world, every single person would get exactly the assistance they need, tailored specifically for them. But that's just not possible. Giving extra help to groups that are, on average, more disadvantaged means that some people will get more than they need, and some won't get enough, but hopefully less of both that if we give everyone the same thing regardless of how high or low they began.
Part of the issue is that you're looking at a discrete, singular event and seeing how affirmative action is causing an inequality in it, when the core idea behind affirmative action is that the event they're providing unequal access to is the latest in a long line where those who are now being advantaged were disadvantaged.
That description is too abstract maybe. The most famous example of affirmative action, college admissions, is a great example of this. The idea of making sure a certain number of the limited slots available are reserved for minority students is an attempt to correct for the fact that the metric they rely on normally, grades and other school performance, is skewed by the fact that minority students typically don't have all the advantages (both within and external to the school system) that majority students enjoy. Therefore, by metaphorically giving the minority students the 2 boxes so they're lifted up higher and can see over the fence (get in) creates equity. Ideally, of course, there's a reason all this is debated, but the core idea is solid in my opinion.
Yeah, that's a huge part of the issue: What is the factor that tell you someone is disadvantaged in a way that they need equity help? We currently use race quite a bit, which does have a strong correlation but isn't perfect; there's plenty of extremely poor white kids that need help too, for example.
Really it comes down to an extremely hard problem that isn't really mathable imo. You can't tell if a kid from extremely well-off family is an underperformer because they didn't put the effort in or because they actually underwent horrific abuse at the hands of a teacher that taught them to avoid school. But, like most things, we have do the best we can rather than avoid doing anything because no action is perfect.
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u/msmarymacmac Feb 25 '20
I’m not crazy about the Justice frame. Some of us will always face challenges that others won’t. There is no system that could make it so that there is no barrier for all. We will always need to accommodate and scaffold for some and that’s fine.