Justice for All

[dukealien]

Justice for All


When you know few men of color
are looters, arsonists
even potentially
you must know few police
are racists, sadists
even potentially:
to think otherwise
that all are or could be
does many great injustice.

Since we're all flying our flags today...

[CRNDLSM]

You're paralleling a group of people who are born into an already disadvantaged state, to a group of people who choose to promote the institution that maintains that disadvantage.  I think your scales are too off balance to start, like comparing the value of wares and goods with the life of the men who were murdered.

[dukealien]

@JaggedEdge - Repetition can help nail down the comparison, maybe.  Or not.

One is said to have done someone an injustice when one has accused him of something he didn't do; not sure where that idiom originated, and it is admittedly somewhat archaic.  And denied, as a concept, by the woke.

@CRNDLSM -

You're paralleling a group of people who are born into an already disadvantaged state, to a group of people who choose to promote the institution that maintains that disadvantage.  I think your scales are too off balance to start, like comparing the value of wares and goods with the life of the men who were murdered.

Although you are free to interpret the work according to your lights - that's the nature of critique, and interpretation generally even when using the lens of critical race studies - what this work actually compares (or parallels) is attributing bad qualities of some members of a group to all members of the group, to attributing bad qualities of some members of another group to all members of that group.  The parallel is exact, though the closing lines do contain the ethical assertion that refusing to accept that parallel, exact as it is, constitutes an injustice.

Thanks for the read, and your interpretation.

[Mark A Becker]

I know fewer and fewer, the older I get

[CRNDLSM]

Although you are free to interpret the work according to your lights - that's the nature of critique, and interpretation generally even when using the lens of critical race studies - what this work actually compares (or parallels) is attributing bad qualities of some members of a group to all members of the group, to attributing bad qualities of some members of another group to all members of that group.  The parallel is exact, though the closing lines do contain the ethical assertion that refusing to accept that parallel, exact as it is, constitutes an injustice.

Sorry, I'm not quite convinced it is exact because of the specific groups you mention.  Men of color (vs?) Police.  Accepting that either group can contain members of both groups, I've already considered them as opposites, one color (blue? White?), vs. criminals.  While youve addressed that both groups can have negative attributes (looters, arsonists vs racists, sadists) you're much more likely to have racist and sadist people of color than looting, fjrestarting police, maybe.

---

On second thought, racist and sadist seem like characteristics that can be attributed across any group of people fairly uniformly, while looting and rioting are more circumstantial, not limited to people of color, but not really attributed to police at all. And the title being justice for ALL while only comparing two groups, sets the two up even more as opposing. I think if you included a third group, maybe women, it would enhance the poem

[dukealien]

@CRNDLSM - It may be that I've chosen these particular two groups as examples of if-not-all-A-are-B-then-A-is-not-necessarily-B  in order to demonstrate (or even tempt readers to think about) the special pleading its logic demolishes.  I am not about making it easy here.  Reality is hard;  there is no collective guilt or innocence, much as they would simplify everything.  It's the simplification, not the complexity and individuation, that cause injustice.  Racism and sexism are prime examples of bad simplification, but not the only examples.

Thanks for your continued exploration of the topic.