“Blind” Justice / Be Anti-Establishment, Go On, You Won’t

Anoushka:

Is justice really blind? I mean, they say that it is, but lowkey I think justice can see just fine. When a country is as diverse as Aotearoa, it is also important that we are accepting and unbiased in our judgements. I don’t think this is reflected in our justice system. The phrase “justice is blind” implies that justice is based on facts and evidence, but then you take a look at the disproportionate rates of incarceration of Māori and Pasifika in Aotearoa and it seems this isn’t the case. So where is the discrepancy coming from? Bias. We live in a society where we inherently view many ethnic minority groups as greater threats to the community than Pākehā. It is natural to have biases; after all, cognitive biases and heuristics have helped humans to survive for so long. But when these biases end up having horrible impacts on the lives of others, maybe we should take a step back and try to address them. Part of the problem is that we also may not value non-Pākehā lives as much as Pākehā lives, and this means that as a society, we don’t really care if those lives are harmed or not. Maybe if we valued all lives equally, then we would see that reflected in our justice system and we would be able to rid society of the crippling flow on effects discrimination has. 

Laurelei:

The news bombards us with horrifying statistics everyday. At most, we acknowledge the injustice for as long as it is on screen and then move on with our daily lives. Instead of learning about the actual human lives behind every wrongful death and arrest, we only learn to distance ourselves completely from situations unless they directly affect our communities. Desensitisation is a luxury that apparently many can afford. I can only hope that you, dear reader, will take this week’s Salient as a reminder to take action. 

Indigenous and POC activists don’t want to be activists—being born into marginalised groups means that our very existence is an act of rebellion in itself. The same goes for every other marginalised person—activism is something born out of a survival mechanism in a world that is rigged only in the elite’s favour. Not only are we constantly at odds with Eurocentric, patriarchal institutions, but we also tend to battle ourselves in deciding which issue is “more deserving” of our attention. When the struggle of one is used to erase the struggles of another, oppression turns into an ugly competition that defeats the purpose of any calls to action around it. Instead of falling into an individualistic mindset, try to focus on the parallels between each struggle. If we can’t have each other’s backs, then how can we expect those in higher positions of power to relate and advocate for us too?

Justice is a tricky thing. How can we use our privilege to advocate for others without tapping into a white-saviour complex? How do we prioritise which struggle to care about the most when there are an infinite number of injustices circulating at any given moment? Why do we have to spend so much energy fighting against problems that should never have existed in the first place?

I wish there was a way to answer all of those questions succinctly without cutting out all of the nuance, but ultimately it does come down to the fact that the world has always and continues to turn at the hands of rich, white men at the expense of essentially everyone else. It’s the reason why a lot of the words in my portion of the column are recycled from our previous issues - since we started writing Rice To Meet You at the start of last year, racial injustice continues to spike despite a perceived increase in intersectional awareness. Awareness is one thing, but actually taking steps to be anti-racist and anti-establishment is another.