A One-Sided Conversation about Justice
By: D. David Kim
Tags: Post Truth, American Dream, Christian, Justice, Equality

“Truth and justice and the American Way.” Values that Superman held to and upheld as the righteous orientation towards peace and a super-villain-less world. Comic books have the easy task of framing moral ambiguities in clear-to-understand terms. No matter how morally ambiguous a situation may be, Superman is never in doubt of his hero-ness. Justice is written in bold ink across the volumes and we are given hope packaged and bowed and hand-delivered to our nearest comic book store. Truth is merely a given, if you read long enough to the end of the arc.

However, life is not that simple, and neither are the relationship between the trinity of the Supermanic ideals. Ten years ago, I would have said that America was moving towards these goals rather well, having dealt with the most dangerous forms of racism and moved past injustices as a nation (though pockets of exceptions might remain). However, even in the last year — and oh, what a year 2020 has been — I have seen that this very much is not the case.

In the last seven years, I have moved to and back from a rural college town in South Texas, my political and social views have been irrevocably opened like a Pandora’ box that I didn’t know existed. A wave of the deep U.S. American racial tensions that I grew up wading through as an Asian American in progressive Dallas hit me hard in the face as I started to engage folks in conversations throughout the Obama presidency and nearly drowned me spiritually and emotionally. What was snorkeling deviously under the surface has reared its ugly head and dragged me under.

The goalpost is ever-moving, and not everyone can agree which goalpost they are looking at in any given moment.

Justice and Truth have become subjective. Or perhaps they were always subject to the whims and fancies of the authorities who molded the courts and systems in their image. Whatever the case may be, Justice and Truth are no longer articulable ideals that one can, without refutation, say that they hold to. The goalpost is ever-moving, and not everyone can agree which goalpost they are looking at in any given moment. This frustrating state of affairs did not begin in earnest in the last four years with the Trump presidency (though I would say that the Trump presidency has not been kind to Justice and Truth), but is a result of the erosion of trust between human beings within the United States — and, I would argue, the world at large. I’ll get to how I feel like this happened, at least in part, in another post (hopefully) but right now, I would like to focus on delineating what I perceive to be the problem and hopefully arrive at the end with some kind of semblance of a solution; if not a warning.

The problem laid out before us is a distinction between the three Supermanic ideals. That is, we have separated Truth, Justice, and the American Way as three distinct ideas that are not indelibly intertwined with the others. They are allowed to coexist, but only as much as Superman and Batman — or dare we make this comparison, Lex Luthor — coexist in the DC canon. The aims of Truth and Justice are placed on orthogonal trajectories that somehow subsist apart from the American ideals of economic and social success.

This is no more apparent than in the case of economic injustice among people of color; specifically Black Americans. The American dream was never offered to the enslaved brought over to American some four hundred years ago or even to the newly freed after the Civil War. The Civil Rights act righted some wrongs, but did not give any sort of equalizing support to those who finally were able to be treated like human beings. In other words, they were equal in name only. Economically and socially, nothing had changed. According to the myth of the American dream, that was up to them. While they weren’t responsible for the centuries of suffering and enslavement, they were responsible for “picking up themselves by their own bootstraps” (a physically impossible feat that was meant to reveal how ridiculous this responsibility was, by the way) and overcoming their economic condition.

The aims of Truth and Justice are placed on orthogonal trajectories that somehow subsist apart from the American ideals of economic and social success.

Justice was removed from them as well. When George Floyd died after an excruciating 7 minutes and 46 seconds, there was not a bone in my body that did not tremble with guilt and anguish. Years of hearing about brutality against Black bodies had washed over me. But this death broke me in ways that I could not ignore. I am ashamed that it took video of a Black man’s breath being squeezed out of him to make me realize that the injustice inherent in not only our system, but in our very selves and identities as Americans, was still very alive and very fatal. And the whole world shook and the histories of Black suffering and anguish arose and voices once silenced were given volume and freedom. I learned and I continue to learn. Not about Justice. But of its failings and shortcomings in the American Way. Not detached from it. But because of the failings of both.

But this is not just a issue of race or of culture. The poor — yes even the white poor — are entrenched in systems that placate their anxieties but do nothing for them practically. It is not an uncommon sight to see the politically conservative poor living day to day in their trailer homes, complaining about the liberal left and their excessive and grotesque handouts. This is not an abstract example for me, I have seen this face-to-face in rural Texas. “Support the large corporations, and they will give us jobs!” they cry, working overtime to make enough to survive on. “If we take away their money, they will take away our jobs!” Billionaires that run these corporations could pay a living wage to nearly half their workforce out of their own pocket and still be considered billionaires. And yet they don’t. And this is seen as justice done, justice preserved. The health of a corporation is decided by the lining of the pockets of the investors, and not the survivability of their workforce.

We have commoditized Truth and relegated Justice as a servant of a lobotomized American Way™

Now, I do not condone the flat distribution of wealth, but I do think that rampant capitalism is inherently unjust. Capitalists raise the balm of charity and philanthropy as a signal of virtue (a phrase that has been inhumanely abused) while ignoring the homeless they fly over on their private jets. Money is the ultimate incentive, and not the love of neighbor. Unambiguous scripture (“You cannot serve both God and Mammon”) is set aside for more unique interpretations of the metaphorical (“Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”). We have commoditized Truth and relegated Justice to a servant of a lobotomized American Way™. “Think not of anything but your wallet and your own well-being,” it whispers, “they will get what they deserve. And it’s not much.”