What is Social Justice?
An Interview with Social Justice Advocate
and Kent BSW Student Barbara Martin
and Kent BSW Student Barbara Martin
Part 1 of 2: Barbara's background advocating
for the Deaf Blind and various other oppressed groups;
Defining social justice; Virtue, deontological and utilitarian
ethical frameworks as applied to social justice
Transcript:
Jon Snyder: Barbara, thanks for taking the time to conduct this interview today. Would you like to start us off by saying a few words about yourself and your background?
BM: Good afternoon, Jon. I'd love to! So, in approaching my work at the Kent School of Social Work, and in the field of social work, I'm what you would consider a non-traditional student. I came into the program with more than 29 years of experience in social work-related fields. I've been working deaf and deaf-blind students, and the deaf and deaf-blind communities, for some 33 years. And, whether you know that or the audience knows that or or not, this is a group of highly oppressed people in society. There is just a deep history of itself and [a] rich culture that I would encourage anyone to study, and certainly research, if one were to find oneself in any setting working with someone who is deaf or deaf-blind -- ethnographic research would be warranted (National Center for on Deaf-Blindness, N.D.).
I have spoken before local, state, and national legislative bodies; I have been an advisory on many different levels with regard to policy reform and social justice on a number of different levels. Not just for deaf and deaf-blind, but on issues related to education, aging, anti-bullying, anti-gang, gang prevention, and programs that work with at-risk teens. So, it's pretty varied.
JS: I see. One thing that I've had to learn in the course of studying with you as a student, is that the deaf and deaf-blind are two very distinct populations, even though it can be tempting to sort-of lump them together under the category of deaf people. There's really a whole different set of needs that goes with the deaf-blind condition, correct?
BM: Yeah, that's absolutely correct, and so distinctly different, in fact, that there is a current law that's in committee called HR 35-35. It's the Anne -- sorry, the Alice Cogswell-Anne Sullivan-Macy Act. So, what this proposed piece of legislation does is it reauthorizes the designation for specialized service providers and, specifically, the communication needs of deaf, but it also creates a category that's much-needed and long-overdue for deaf-blind. Some folks think that taking services for the deaf and services for the blind, such that for the blind, you might think, "oh, Braille, large bold print with high contrast". Okay, some of that works, but honestly it's piecemeal, because deaf-blind is unique, and it's rare, even though it is low-incidence, it's not one to be excluded, or pieced together to create some sort of a service provider that has a piece of each deaf and blind access. It's truly specialized.
So, the HR 35-35 proposed legislation, which is gaining momentum even since the last legislative session and has bipartisan support, is such that the deaf-blind need a specialized service provider category that will carry over into revisions and reauthorizations of the Americans With Disabilities Act -- the ADA -- and the Individuals With Disabilities In Education Act -- IDEA, as they're referred to. So, these particular categories, for example in Kentucky, there are 128 deaf[-blind] children in Kentucky in schools that, recently there was an exit poll done where it shows that deaf-blind children entering preschool and aging out of high school go through this entire career in education entering and exiting the system in the same exact place in terms of communication. And the reason for that, as devastating of a reality as that is, is they've not been given appropriate access to auditory, visual, and environmental information -- and that's what makes deaf-blindness unique. It's not just providing auditory information, there's just such a detailed way in which these kids need to be given access -- not just kids, but all the way on through their adulthood.
JS: Right. Well, thanks for breaking that down. And speaking of history, that bill you mentioned is named for the teacher of Helen Keller, correct?
BM: It is -- actually it's named for two teachers, or two individuals. Alice Cogswell was Thomas Gallaudet's first student. So, she was deaf. And so, it goes back to the education of the deaf in that area. Anne Sullivan Macy was indeed, seen to be ... Helen Keller's quote-unquote "teacher". Now, Anne Sullivan barely finished high school herself. She graduated from the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Massachusetts. She was somewhat of a rebel, somewhat of a Ms. Spitfire, so to speak.
JS: I didn't know she was blind.
BM: She was... Uh, "visually impaired", but the politically correct term today would be "person with vision loss." The term "impaired" carries a stigma with it, whether you're talking about someone who's deaf [or not]. Historically, there've been terms associated with a person with hearing loss, being "deaf", "hearing impaired", "deaf and dumb", "mute"... you know, all of these terms, the current "politically correct" term for someone with a hearing loss that is significantly affecting them to the degree that they need an alternative mode of communication. There's deaf and hard-of-hearing. For someone who has a combination sensory hearing loss and vision loss, they would be, the term would be "deaf-blind." And that has gone through, uh, it's own...
JS: Metamorphosis?
BM: It has. It's had a dash in the middle, deaf-dash-blind. Now it's "Deaf-Blind"; capital D, e, a, f, capital B, l, i, n, d, but it's a compound word. So, that's kind of the designation that's it's going through now. And it does have it's own culture as well, even in setting up interpreters for conferences, providing accommodations for workplace and educational settings. It's just so vastly different that it requires, in an educational setting, a specialized teacher: a teacher of the deaf-blind. Not a teacher of the deaf and a teacher of the blind but a teacher of the deaf-blind. Orientation and mobility specialists... And the communications specialist takes on three different modes: it could be an interpreter, specialized in deaf-blind interpreting, it could be service provider (which is known as an SFP in the deaf-blind culture) that provides access to the community with regards to communication and environment. And then there's the deaf-blind intervener who works with students and individuals in the community who have emergent language -- they provide auditory, visual and environmental access. Environmental access is huge for someone who's deaf-blind.
There's two extra sense we often don't think about: you have proprioception, which is -- a quick explanation -- knowing where your body parts are in space. And, have you ever been asleep, and then, like, right before you're waking up or right before you're falling asleep you get that jolting response where you feel like you're gonna fall off the bed?
JS: Uh huh...
BM: That's proprioception. It's not knowing where your body is in space. That happens to deaf-blind people all day, all night long. It's... I mean, just to tell you to close your eyes and plug your eyes and figure out where your hands are, and then on top of that what's happening in your environment -- you don't know. And you are just constantly in that state of jolt.
And then you have the other sense being vestibular, and that's your sense of balance. Oftentimes people who are deaf-blind may have some sort of internal balance issue. And it's related to proprioception, and it's also related to vestibular -- sometimes there's a middle ear defect. There may be only one out of your three semicircular canals that are working, so your balance is affected.
JS: That's fascinating -- it sounds like a rich subject for research, indeed. Let's go ahead and get down to the business of talking about the concept of social justice. One of the six core values of the social work profession, as outlined in the Preamble to the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers (or NASW) (NASW, 2008). In my Introduction to Social Work Course at U of L, the concept of "social justice" was defined very simply as "the amount of fairness that exists in society." Yet, in today's hyper polarized political culture, there are many (particularly on the Right) who reject the term "social justice" altogether, even to the point of using the term "social justice warrior" as an epithet.
It seems perplexing that people could be so against a notion as seemingly agreeable as the idea that society should be fair. So my question to you really has two parts: Do you think that those who reject the concept of "social justice" do so because of a lack of understanding, out of a different paradigm altogether or some other reason? And, what does "social justice" mean to you?
BM: Okay, so, in answer to your first question, I believe that people reject certain issues out of an intrinsic belief, or a difficulty in [coming to terms with the] reality that faces all of us: the need to change. [To] change what isn't right, change... you know, I hate to use the term "right", or "right" and "not-right" and "wrong" -- all of those terms are a dichotomy. And, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
For social justice issues, social justice is... you know, there are simplified terms that "social justice" is defined [as], but let me look to the National Association of Social Workers's definition of what social justice is, and what social workers need to do about that:
"Social workers pursue social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people. Social workers promote social change efforts, and they're focused primarily on issues of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and other forms of social injustice. These activities seek to promote sensitivity to and the knowledge about oppression and cultural and ethnic diversity. Social workers strive to ensure access to needed information, services, resources, equity, equality of opportunity, and meaningful opportunity in decision-making for all people." (NASW, 2008)
Now, that being said... when people lash out, saying that a person is a "social justice warrior", for example: perhaps it's a person [they're lashing out at] who's challenging the status quo, who's so incredibly passionate for whatever reason. It could be a personal connection, or it could be just a heartfelt connection and a need to be an ally for a particular group of people who are so oppressed, who are suffering beyond anything that we could personally contemplate. There's a level of empathy, and then there's a level of "look, I'm gonna be your ally; I'm gonna stand behind [or] beside you, my friend -- even in grade school, and we're gonna stand up to this bully on campus. That's kind of a social justice thing!
And these are things that have been written about forever. My goodness -- the story of Helen Keller has been around for ever! And the... complexity, for which people have to access their environment, yet there are groups of service providers who truly, don't have knowledge and information, and apply what they believe is their education in a certain field to be set in stone. And.. as a lifelong learner myself, I can tell you that there is no such thing as a finite education. Once you get the piece of paper, that's not your license to go out and continue to oppress people if you don't have the information enough to make an educated decision about something. Lack of knowledge and information and education is something that social workers, even, in working within the realm of cultural competency -- we're encouraged to provide and perform ethnographic research in working with any client with whom we may not understand the social and cultural paradigms.
This is the work social workers are faced with in aligning ourselves with allies, with colleagues, peers, mentors -- it runs the gamut. So, even as a mentor myself in certain situations in which I may have expertise in one thing, I'm gonna seek a mentor in something I don't understand. Or, ethically I need to pass the buck and let someone else do that work and provide a referral to a client, if I'm not understanding or I feel that I have a bias. Of any sort!
JS: It seems like there's two very important values that I hear in what you're saying. One is courage, to take a stand against that schoolyard bully and say, "hey, this is wrong, you need to leave this person alone, they've done nothing to you. And the other is humility: as you've said, the importance of being a lifelong learner and recognizing your limitations and reaching out to others for help, to learn, when they know more than you do in a given area.
BM: So, that's kind of interesting that you see those as values, and if you look in, beyond our study of ethics -- deontological, utilitarian, Rawlsian ethics -- you have the virtue ethics as well. And two of those virtue ethics are, indeed, courage and humility.
JS: I'm somewhat unfamiliar with the area of virtue ethics. Are there any writers, that you could mention, perhaps, for the sake of further research to learn more about that?
BM: Sure. Pojman (2005)? I actually took a full course in ethics at another institution, and it was an unbelievable professor that I had the pleasure of being placed with. At first I thought, "Oh, okay, as an interpreter for the deaf, we have a professional code of conduct. And as such, I have had to, since being licensed in Kentucky as an interpreter for the deaf -- one of the requirements in Kentucky to maintain licensure is to we need to take three to eight hours of ethics-related training every year. And I'm thinkin, "Okay, well, I've -- ha! I've been an interpreter for 29 years, and for 13 here in Kentucky. So, do the math: I've had quite a bit of ethics training with regard to, you know, boy, there's all kinds of scenarios -- we can look directly at the Professional Code of Conduct, but we can also look at different models of approaching ethical decision-making.
So, there's all of that that's behind and I'm thinking "Easy, done, done deal, I'm gonna ace this class. I can do this one with my eyes closed. And get college credit for it, right?" Wrong. There's always something to learn. Ergo, I was introduced to this professor, who was unbelievable, highly -- just a high critical thinker, and encouraged us all to be the same. And one of the books used was, indeed, Pojman (2005), and I can provide you the reading reference for that.
JS: Yes. We'll provide provide a list of references when we post this interview, also. Speaking of ethical frameworks -- of course, this is really a huge topic we could spend hours on, but there a few that we covered in our coursework at the University of Louisville that underlie much of the ethical decision-making in social work, as well as the ethical justification ranging from micro level practice with individual clients to macro level social justice intervention. Two of the most important of these are deontology and utilitarianism. Deontology basically says that actions are inherently right or wrong, no matter the circumstance (Alexander and Moore, 2012). Utilitarianism, on the other hand, claims that what makes an action right or wrong is the amount of benefit it can bring to society as a whole (Driver, 2014). Now it does get quite a bit more complicated than that when you start looking at all the variations and applying the frameworks to various scenarios, but between those two frameworks is a good place to start unpacking the concept of social justice a bit more.
So, my next question to you, Barbara, is which of those ethical frameworks -- deontology or utilitarianism -- do you feel is more important for understanding social justice?
BM: Jon, I know that you and I have had conversations about this, and I love these conversations and encourage all of us to engage in them. "Deontological framework" also includes one's duty to do what's right. And that requires courage, sometimes, when you have to take on that duty to do the right thing: because you have knowledge, about... let's call it cultural competency. Those issues that are surrounding an oppressed people. "We have a duty" to be an ally as social workers to be able address issues related to social justice. Typically, oppressed people are in the minority. So you're not dealing with... "overall, on the whole."
Now, that being said, you could framework of the utilitarian standpoint, and you can say that... "it is the greatest good for all concerned, to make things better for society as a whole, if we were to engage society, and the most people in society, and hold hands across the planet, and say "we're gonna make this a better place." Musicians surely have tried that; politicians surely have tried that, social workers have tried that; and the oppressed people themselves rise up in some sort of a power move that says, "I'm not gonna take this anymore, and you're gonna find out about my world and you're gonna know about it," and trying to get the message out to the world. And then to get the world to accept the view is yet another thing. But yes, indeed, all of those related acts will, hopefully, as we believe (if we're optimistic), it will be the greatest good for all concerned. We can only hope and pray that happens. If you're a praying person. *chuckles*
JS: One more ethical framework which particularly relates to the conception of social justice as the amount of fairness existing in a society is John Rawl's theory of justice-as-fairness regarding how to structure a just society (Wenar, 2013). To summarize broadly, Rawls' criteria for a just society includes two principles: One, each person is entitled to an equal set of basic liberties. Two, any social and economic inequalities should be attached to positions available to all citizens under conditions of full equality of opportunity, and those inequalities should be structured in a way that is beneficial to everyone, and particularly the least-advantaged members of society. This is known as the Difference Principle. For example, higher wages can cover the costs of training and education, and can provide incentives to fill jobs that are more in demand. This leads to a better educated, better trained and better balanced society, under which all citizens do better and those who least-advanced, in particular, do much better than they would otherwise.
This concludes Part One of my interview with Barbara Martin. Check out Part Two to learn about her work with at-risk youth in a region of Southern California containing hundreds of gangs within a 5 mile radius, and for a discussion of opportunities for learning advocacy skills within the Kent BSW Program.
References
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 ed.). Retrieved from
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/ethics-deontological/
Driver, J. (2014). The History of Utilitarianism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Winter 2014 ed.). Retrieved from
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/utilitarianism-history/
Pojman, L. (2005). How Should We Live?: An Introduction to Ethics. 1st edition. Cengage
Learning.
National Association of Social Workers. (2008). Code of ethics of the national
association of social workers. Retrieved from:
https://www.socialworkers.org/pubs/code/code.asp
National Center on Deaf-Blindness (N.D.). NCDB Library. Retrieved
from: https://nationaldb.org/library
Wenar, L. (2013). John Rawls. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Winter 2013 ed.). Retrieved from
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/rawls/
