A conflict at the heart of our political disagreements

Why do we disagree about the causes of and solutions to social inequality? What explains our different viewpoints on Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, income inequality, and immigration? Penn State professors John Iceland and Eric Silver join us this week to discuss how the discrepancy between social order and social justice impedes political compromise and progress.

Iceland and Silver, along with Ilana Redstone of the University of Illinois, are the authors of Why We Disagree about Inequality: Social Justice vs. Social Order. In the book, they show how these competing worldviews are preventing Americans from solving their most pressing social problems. Iceland is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Demography; Silver is Professor Sociology and Criminology and recently won the Open

Inquiry Award for Teaching from Heterodox Academy.

In the interview, we discuss how the conflict between social order and social justice played out at different points in history going

back to the French Revolutions. Iceland and Silver also offer suggestions for how to move beyond these divisions to find consensus and common ground.

After the interview, Chris Beem and Candis Watts Smith discuss whether social order and social justice should have equal footing and how looking to history might not be the best approach for how to break out of these silos.

Why We Disagree about Inequality: Social Justice vs. Social Order

‍Chris Beem
From McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University, I'm Chris Beem.

Candis Watts Smith
I'm Candis Watts Smith.

Jenna Spinelle
I'm Jenna Spinelle, and welcome to Democracy Works. This week, we are talking with John Iceland and Eric Silver. Both are professors in the department of sociology and criminology here at Penn State. And they are the co author, with Ilana Redstone of the University of Illinois, have a book called Why We disagree about inequality. And this is one of those books where the title really says it all. And the the framework or the reason that they propose for why we have these disagreements is a conflict between social justice and social order. And this is something that we've talked about in different capacities on the show before, but I don't think that we've ever really taken a dive as directly on these two approaches to how you view the world political and otherwise, and why they so often come into conflict.

Chris Beem
It's an it's an issue that has some pretty thick research elements to it. But it's also incredibly timely, right? Because no one is disputing that political argument seems particularly fruitless right now. And not to mention ugly and just serves to kind of drive us farther apart. And the book is trying to say, you know, this is what's going on. And this is what we do about it. Right? And so this, you know, you you laid it out, well, you know, there's this, there's these two fundamental kind of orientations to how human beings approach these policy questions and social order and social justice, and you know, what we can let them kind of describe them in the interview. But, you know, the, the point is that these intuitions are these columns, strong and relatively stable. And so it's kind of like a way that you perceive the world in a very basic sense, it's kind of like, this is part of your wiring. And, and anyway, that's, that is the right way they say, for us to kind of understand why it is we disagree so much, and then, you know, then we get on to what we do about it.

Candis Watts Smith
So I would say that this book, also kind of its contribution is that it adds to, you know, a conversation where we usually would talk about left or right Democrat, Republican, conservative liberal, and it layers on this notion that perhaps even among those kinds of divisions, we might think about people's perspectives of the world, use the word orientation, and on some level, it seems to help us to understand why we see so much affective polarization and polarization generally, I think the argument here is that on some level, people are talking past each other, in part because they have different values, that some people, you know, ostensibly value social justice, while others value social order. You know, I am not sure that I see this as so cut and dry. But I think it's an important contribution. And the discussion about how we got to where we are today.

Chris Beem
Yeah, I think they don't want to get tied down to, you know, a cut and dried answer of like, you know, is this hardwired? Is it? Is it social? Or does it depend on circumstances? I think they kind of want to say yes, to all that. But the one point that that I think is key for them, is that a society works better, not only when both of these prospective perspectives are operative, but when each side respects the inherent wisdom of the other side. And not to say that, you know, you're not going to fight about it. But But the argument is that it is not good for a society to have either all one or all the other because it's going to end up being either an unjust or or unfree or insufficiently free insufficiently.

Candis Watts Smith
The contribution then is something that kind of reminds me of something that Kimberly Crenshaw talked about, is that it is difficult to pinpoint a problem or pinpoint a phenomenon if we don't have a name for it. And so here, what they make an effort to do is to give us a name for this kind of these two, these two basic intuitions around how we should move forward and What are how we should think about policy and their effects for our, the way we we live among each other. And so for that reason to say, I think it's really interesting that you can look at some number of arguments around racial issues, or perhaps transgender issues, or sexism and racism, like all of the things and you can think, Okay, well, what is how is this person coming at this, and maybe one of the ways that they're coming at this is through a lens of social justice or through a lens of social order. And perhaps putting it that way, giving the label then allows us to have a more constructive conversation about perspectives.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah. And I think, as you said, we'll hear more from John and from Eric about how they define social order and social justice and also how these sort of core belief sets impact the media that people choose to consume and, and how they really impact the other aspects of our political lives. So let's go now to the interview with John, Iceland, and Eric silver.

Jenna Spinelle
John, Iceland and Eric silver, welcome to Democracy Works. Thanks for joining us today.

Eric Silver
Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you.

Jenna Spinelle
So I'm excited to talk with you about your new book, why we disagree about inequality. And I think we'll just start with some definitions. dive right in, I will start with you, John, if that's okay. The whole book is based around this social order and social justice framework, I wonder if you could just tell us what that is, you know, listeners may have some notion of of what those things represent from how those terms are thrown around in the in the media, but from your perspective, what do those things mean? And and how do they fit together in your framing?

John Iceland
Sure, we see these as a distillation of moral and philosophical values that are often in conflict, if not in tension with each other. Essentially, social justice is caring for the vulnerable and freeing them from oppression, whereas social order balances these concerns with social cohesion and social stability. So for those from the social order perspective, they think that these things are necessary for a prosperous society.

Jenna Spinelle
And Eric, in in the the media and other places, these notions of social order and social justice are often mapped onto the political spectrum with social justice being associated more with the left and social order being associated with the right. But in the book, you're clear to say that it's not always as cut and dry as that.

Eric Silver
Right. So the social justice side, tends to emphasize, as John said, the concern for the well being of individuals, in particular, the weak and the vulnerable. And that's a widely shared moral concern. Even those on the on the right, or what you might think of as having a social order concern, also care about people, right, and they're all they have families, and they have friends, and people are important to them. But they balance that concern against the concern for the order and cohesion of groups. And they have an intuitive sense that order is important for the flourishing of individuals. And so that's one of the places where the these two perspectives, diverge, and end up, you know, in conflict with each other and often talking past each other failing to recognize that they have some significant overlap in their concerns.

Jenna Spinelle
And we'll definitely get more into that as we go here. But I wonder if you could talk about the origins of this framework and how you kind of came to think that oh, wow, this I'm picturing like, a light bulb moment for one or both of you like, Oh, this is the thing that explains so many of these conflicts that we have in our society. So I wonder if you could talk more about, you know, how you arrived at it? And of course, I know, it builds on the work of scholars like Jonathan Haidt and others. But yeah, tell us about how you arrived at this framework? Sure.

John Iceland
Well, I think we see this in general, that this balancing act between social justice and social order is not just a contemporary kind of problem that we're facing in the US today. But it's something that we see in other societies. I think we've seen it. Historically, there are a number of people who've written about some of this tension. As you mentioned, Jonathan Hite, Thomas Sol, talked about the conflict of visions as he termed them. But it's about people through history being concerned about, again, freeing people from oppression, caring for those who need help, versus the concern for social stability and cohesion. This is a constant tension through history. and at different times in history, sometimes we have a little more social order, and we could use a lot more social justice. And other times perhaps it's something where we need to, you know, vice versa.

Eric Silver
Yeah. And John has a right as far as what we're concerned with. And the term social order and social justice did come to us as a sort of aha, in the sense that there's a balance between the ideas is captured in the terms, and that they are terms that are easy to grasp, that you don't have to hear them or hear you have them explain before you understand what they mean. And they are more evocative, even then left and right, or other terms that academics have used to describe this, this kind of polarity and people's beliefs. And so part of our goal here is to get these terms out into our field and maybe beyond, because we think that they are a nice heuristic for describing a lot of what's going on in terms of polarization out in the world.

Jenna Spinelle
Well, and speaking of polarization, I know the two of you are not political scientist by training. So this question might not be in your wheelhouse tell me if it's not, but I'm thinking about, you know, the work in political scientist suggests that an effective polarization or the degree of animosity we feel toward people who hold differing beliefs than us has been on the rise for at least the last decade, if not longer, depending on on who you ask. I wonder if how that might play in here. So at times when the there's more space or more distance between social order and social justice? Is that when an effective polarization rise? Or would you correlate these things at all?

John Iceland
Yeah, I mean, I would say, certainly, this book came about because we see this growing polarization, and we saw, saw an urgency to try to talk about it to understand it. And from our perspective, I think it's I've long been interested in issues of social inequality, there's been a lot of discussion of these issues, Eric and I have been discussing these issues also in light of political polarization. So as we discussed, so you know, as we sort of, we'd get together every now and then and talk about them, we felt that we needed to sort of dissect it with this book and talk about it and, and shine a light on it. And not only just from one perspective, but if we want to sort of address polarization, we got to get people from different sides to understand each other better, to have better conversations about these issues.

Eric Silver
And also, I started to realize that each side possesses some wisdom that the other lakhs, and that did a lot also to calm my emotional feelings. And I think part of the motivation for a book like this is to try to spread that kind of experience and enable that kind of experience in our own discipline. Maybe we'll get to this at some point. But this is a very unusual book for disciplines like sociology, which tends to lean very hard left. So just the idea of trying to present both sides, and to suggest that they have wisdom that the other lacks is an unusual thing. But we think an important thing, not just for the discipline, but beyond. And I think it's a way of trying to sue these intense feelings that exist on both sides. Yeah.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah. Before we get to some of those conversations within the academy, let's let's walk through the social order social justice framework with one of the examples that you use in the book. You, you open with the summer of 2020, the death of George Floyd and the in the protests that followed, and then there's a whole chapter about racial inequality. So walk us through what the social order perspective what the social justice perspective is, and those those points of tension and disagreement between them.

Eric Silver
Yeah, so, so thinking of the George Floyd example. So that puts us in the the neck of the woods that is about race and racial inequality and racial injustice. And so the social justice perspective here is, as John said earlier, very tuned into oppression, and tends to view racial inequality through that lens. And so the reason there is inequality that some whites have more than blacks and Hispanics are somewhere in the middle and that Asians the reason that there's a distributed distribution of inequality is from this perspective, oppression. There's some something going on something being imposed on people that's preventing them from achieving the equality they would otherwise achieve. And so that's the the social justice perspective criminalized on the social order side. There's the focus here is on stability and cohesion, group cohesion. And so if you're looking at this from the lens, it says everything is ought to be in in its place, and ought to be balanced against itself. And that you want to create a world that is orderly and stable, well, then you tend to look at inequality as something more natural that people will have different interests, different abilities, different groups will develop and different cultural tastes and preferences and skills over time. And that those things could lead to different outcomes by race. And that's not a problem from a social order perspective, it's to be expected that you won't have complete equality in everything all the time across all racial groups. And you can sense even as I'm saying that that's a way of looking at the world as being orderly, even in its inequality. And so these two, these two perspectives come at the same reality and draw from it very different lessons, and therefore, have very different policy preferences when it comes to how you change things to become more equal, and how far you want to go toward doing that.

John Iceland
And just to build on what Eric said, I think from the social order perspective, it's not that no changes ever needed. But they wanted to see it more incrementally carefully, so that you don't disrupt things too much. So the concern with the protests after George Floyd wasn't all necessarily just said, No changes needed. But as the protests grew, and there were some riots across the country, that's where when you heard a lot of people from the social order perspective, expressing greater concern, it's that, okay, maybe there are some things that need to be done. But this is not the way to do with riots that are creating a lot of chaos in social disorders, destroying property. So you see a different focal concern there. So when they're reacting to the same sets of circumstances.

Jenna Spinelle
So John, you mentioned something at the beginning of the conversation that I that has been going through my mind as we've been talking through this example, and that is, sometimes in history, there's been more social order than social justice, and vice versa. But I think people coming from the social justice perspective would say that there's never been a time in history when we've had more social justice and social order, and that itself is part of the problem.

John Iceland
Well, so I guess, you know, social justice or social injustice manifests manifests itself in different ways in history. So I would say a classic example of when social justice perhaps went too far, you know, again, this is all opinions, let's say in the French Revolution, you take that a time in history, when there was a very oppressive, sort of, essentially kind of a feudal system, a monarchy. And there was a lot of resentment building from below about inequality. And there was, it was essentially a social justice movement, right? It had many aims that we would that we could see why they wanted to fight the oppression from above. But they had a sense of that they could sort of construct a society almost from a knew it had very utopian kinds of visions for the future. And in the chaos that came from this complete upheaval of society, and you had 1000s of people dying. And eventually, social order was only essentially restored once you know, Napoleon came to power, and a monic. monarchy in a different sense, not as oppressive was, was restored. So I think that's an example where people could see that maybe social justice, who was a time when it went too far, when it tries to think that you can reengineer society in such a way and do away with every single tradition, some which may be pernicious and harmful, you know, a feudal aristocracy, whereas some elements that that are necessary for society to function at all.

Eric Silver
Yeah, I did related to what John is saying is that it's, it's tempting to think that social justice has been on the back burner, or something along those lines. But you could look at the last one, I think, John's example starts in this period, look at the period since the enlightenment, as the beginning of a social justice movement, that has been spreading in the West for 300 or so years, and that it has made in an enormous amount of progress in that direction. One of the characteristics of the social justice orientation, you is that it wants change fast. It's never satisfied with the current amount of change. Why? Because people are suffering. People are oppressed. How can we just sit still, knowing that they're suffering around us? And so it never seems like enough. But if you look at it over the longer arc, and I think Martin Luther King said something like, the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. And if you look at it over the Over the period that we would say, you know, beginning in the late 16, and 1700s, that's a story that's very easy to tell. And so there's a lot of success that those on the social justice side could see and claim. But again, there's something in the tendency to hold that position that wants more and wants faster. And so it tends to feel disappointed, even amidst its successes.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah. And we're seeing and certainly have seen all kinds of government institutions wrestle with this right? What is their role in helping to ease some of these tensions or to adjust those ratios between social order and social justice? I'm thinking about the Supreme Court affirmative action decision over the summer. So given what you described earlier about the the racial inequality and the varying perspectives between social order and social justice on that, what do you make of what what the Supreme Court is doing here? Do you see that as their effort to, you know, I don't want to say tip the scales that makes it sound like it's some kind of rigged system, but to intervene in some way to change that the equilibrium here?

John Iceland
Well, I would say the debate about affirmative action, you know, has that we can learn a lot by using the social justice social order framework, in the sense that affirmative action was devised as a way to try to engineer equity, equal outcomes across groups, which is a central concern for social justice. That's how they see fairness, right. So to the extent that we don't have people equally represented in institutions, such as Ivy League universities are highly ranked public universities, you know, the, the defendants, I guess, in the case were Harvard and University of North Carolina. So to the extent that we don't see groups equally represented, that means that we have, we have an unfair system, and so that we we need to actively do try to achieve equity. Those from the social order perspective, though, are wary of attempts to engineer equal outcomes. And also they have a different sense of what fairness is, they don't see fairness necessarily, not just in terms of equal outcomes. But are people treated equally in a process? Because they see this as the way you promote social cohesion, essentially. And so that's why they tend to be against affirmative action, because it's not well, it gives, you know, points to people based on their background in this case, race. So that's where we see the tension between social justice and social order. It's about they perceive fairness in very different ways.

Eric Silver
Right. And And beyond that, the decision are beyond just the details of the decision. policies like affirmative action, while they are aimed at increasing justice by as John said, increasing equity, they do so at a cost. And we may not find it pleasant to recognize that costs, but something like an affirmative action policy is a zero sum game, right. And so some people have to be treated unfairly for other people to be treated better than fairly. And that creates disorder, it creates resentment. It causes people to lose their sense of legitimacy and institutions, if you're the institutions that are supposed to be running things are designed to treat some people unfairly in order to help others. And this is destabilizing from a social order perspective. And the social order folks feel that in the same way the social justice folks feel the the the suffering of those who currently have less for reasons that are historical and outside of their control. So you can look at the Supreme Court decision as if you're thinking of social order and social justice as a way of trying to rebalance this. Now, of course, the decision doesn't produce a solution. Maybe we could talk about that later. But it's it definitely is an attempt to, or one of the results of it could be to increase people's sense of the legitimacy in the system if it's treating everyone fairly, which would promote order the system.

Jenna Spinelle
So one thing that that comes up fairly often when we're talking about these kinds of things in a in a political sense, is the notion of asymmetry. Right? So things are not there's the people are accused of both sides ism, or that's kind of you're you're equating, you know, you're saying that people who rushed the Capitol on January 6 that are on the same plane as people who participated in the riots, the of this in the summer of 2020. So, you know, people, as I said, in the political space are trying to grapple with how much this asymmetry should matter be taken into consideration. I wonder if you thought about that, as you were weighing the you know, social order social justice framework.

Eric Silver
So we're, we're not saying that anything goes right yeah. That's not our, that's not our position. At the same time, I think we lean toward, let's hear it out. You know, I think the idea that some perspectives are too dangerous to hear is itself a very dangerous idea. And so I think we would lean toward, you know, not worrying less about both sides ism and worrying more about suppressing points of view, because they are somehow problematic. I'm using air quotes again. And that would be more of a concern, at least speak for myself, for me, and maybe John has a thought about it, too.

John Iceland
I think you're right, Jenna, that there's a lot of what about ism, you know, in debates, they point to the worst actors on the other side, often, which are, which, again, isn't very helpful and understanding the typical viewpoint of someone on the other side versus the extreme person on the other side. And I think asymmetries occurred in different ways in different spaces. Sometimes you'll have in some spaces where you see sort of, let's say, views on the right dominate, maybe in some state legislatures, and in other places, more social justice voices dominate. So you'll, you'll always have some of that. But, you know, I certainly agree with Eric that we should leave enough room in all spaces, just to hear different viewpoints, and especially you sort of the root reasonable versions of the different sides are out there, you know,

Jenna Spinelle
Well, and one of those places, as you were mentioning earlier, where you might say leans too heavily on on social justice, and your conception is the academy or, you know, obviously, every university is different. And it's difficult to paint them with with a broad brush, but folks certainly have and it's generally that, you know, they they are more oriented toward justice, and I don't think you would disagree, you make the case for more viewpoint diversity. So yeah, talk about about that one. Like what, again, viewpoint diversity is a term that often gets thrown around a lot. So how do you define it? And then, you know, what would you like to see happen within higher education?

John Iceland
Well, I could start briefly, at least part of it is that me and Eric come from the standpoint is that each side has some wisdom that the other can learn from, and actually, the tension between the two is often a good thing. And too much of one or the other, in a given circumstance doesn't necessarily produce the right outcome. So we discussed that earlier on. So I think this is where in the university where it's, it would, it's often useful to have different viewpoints, because if we want to increase our understanding of this world, you need to have people push back on each other. This happens, you know, in the, in the hard sciences, when a new theory comes up. And, you know, we had Einstein's relativity built on challenge something from the past. And then we had quantum mechanics, and not that I know much about these fields that sort of doesn't disprove what was before. But likewise, in the social sciences, when we're trying to learn more about our world, it's important to have ideas challenged, and sometimes they're challenged unsuccessfully, and that's perfectly fine. But I think this is where, if we see one of the goals of the university, is to increase our understanding of our world, this is where different viewpoints is, is helpful and shouldn't be, you know, viewed in in a negative light in that way. And also, just the last thing I'll say is when I teach my own classes on social problems, all I like to have students at least consider different viewpoints, because this helps develop their critical thinking skills. That's what we're all about in the liberal arts. And of course, they might come to whatever conclusion they come to, and that's perfectly fine. And that's what we expect of our students. But I don't like hand feeding them that this is this is necessarily the truth when it could be an issue, which which is contested to some extent.

Eric Silver
Yeah, I to teach the value of viewpoint diversity, I consider it a value. And in fact, I consider it extremely troubling. That the term is troubling, right? Because viewpoint diversity simply means let's allow each other to have different viewpoints. And let's not leave the table because of that. And that some people seem to have recast viewpoint diversity as some kind of Trojan horse for conservatism is, I don't know what to call it. It's a it's a PR campaign that is not grounded in what seemed to me like core values of a democratic society. I don't think you can villainize viewpoint diversity and maintain democratic deliberation.

Jenna Spinelle
So just curious, Eric, do you so you said the word balance several times, but I didn't hear you use the word compromise. I wonder Do you see balance and compromise as a separate and how if at all, do you see them fitting together?

Eric Silver
Yeah, compromise is a fine word to me. I think people don't like it sounds like defeat. So I tend to avoid it. But in the end, if you've got people who are strongly committed to their different points of view, sometimes you have to just trust that each side possesses or wisdom the other lacks and be willing to compromise. And hopefully not see it as as a devastating defeat,

John Iceland
I'll only add to what Eric said that. So it's important to, you know, to come to seeing the wisdom in the different sides. And I think what this can also help, and we've talked about this before, is we're very concerned about polarization in society. So we want to find a way to have good and productive conversations about the social problems. And so we're hoping that our book contributes to that. And again, that doesn't mean that on every issue, the the answer is always in the exact middle. Sometimes on some issues, we do need a lot more social justice, there's too much sort of hierarchy and structure that is not helpful. And then other times, we might, we might find the opposite. But let's have a conversation about these things. That's what we think's important.

Jenna Spinelle
Well, your book is, is very readable, very easy to help understand some of these problems that we face, I hope listeners will pick it up and give it a read. And I thank both of you for joining us today.

Eric Silver
Thank you, Jenna, for having us.

Chris Beem
Well, thank you, Jenna, that was really a really terrific interview. And, you know, there's one point I think I want to get back to, but I wanted to just kind of start with, you know, we mentioned it in the front part about this, this question of where do these differences come from, you know, to talk about them as intuitions, it does really kind of, you know, brings to mind the idea that these are somehow innate, or that we kind of are born with them, or that they are, you know, dispositions, right. But, you know, it's, it's pretty obvious, I think, and I don't think they're going to dispute this, that when you look at people circumstance, in life, you you kind of get a, a, you know, people tend to line up one way or the other, right. So if you are wealthy and well established, and your life is going well, then obviously, you're going to have an incentive to keep things the same to keep things stable. And it would seem to me that that is going to kind of make you more likely to prefer social order. And conversely, if you've experienced society in a way in which you've experienced oppression, you know, whether you'd be, you know, LGBTQ, or whether you'd be, you know, African American, or, you know, some kind of other group, a poor person, you name it, you're going to have a much different experience, of stability and of order. And so of course, you're going to want to be more open to the social order. Ideal. And so I just, I think, this question of, you know, where does this come from? How does what does it mean? And how do we rightly understand it? You know, it's, it is complicated, but I think it's essential to kind of figuring out, you know, what we do about this?

Candis Watts Smith
Yeah, so, I mean, there's a social dimension to this. And the thing is, is that there is no one person who is always located in a position of power or on the top of hierarchies every single time. No, are there are people who are located on every, you know, bottom hierarchy every single time. So, you know, we've all experienced power and powerlessness. But we also know that there are some people who have greater experiences of oppression of exclusion of marginality. And we might expect those people to be more likely to align with the social justice framework. And just as you said, you know, those who find themselves in more powerful positions where the status quo is looking real good for them, we might expect them to feel a you know, be more aligned with have a greater probability of being aligned with the social order. And I just also want to say, though, that this is one of the reasons why higher education is so important, is because college especially and I've really been trying to think about this and I'm looking for someone to tell me, another case or where I'm wrong, is that college is one of the few places where you are shoulder to shoulder with people who are just not like you, where people show up from I mean, I have a good fortune of working at Duke and when I was at Penn State to there are people from all over the world from all walks of life. And so that education component serves to broaden people's horizons and perspectives. I'm only saying this because during the inner Have you there's this kind of notion that academics and academia leans liberal and leans toward the social justice idea. But I think that's partially because when people are exposed to the circumstances of other people's lives in real way and find themselves in proximity, or an ally ship, with people that are not like them are people that have faced marginalization, they are more likely to note and notice the unfairness of it all and the contradictions, of meritocracy of, you know, of liberty and egalitarianism and all of the things that we say that we want, and don't necessarily have, I had a little bit of hard time. When I say this, I really have to wrestle with this kind of idea that social order, and social justice can be put on an equal more moral footing, at least in a real world way I can think abstractly about it. But when our examples are George Floyd, and me too, and the two intuitions here, for me are not morally equivalent. Because one perspective tends to be held by people who are people with power, and the other perspective tends to be held by people without power. So yeah, I guess the last thing I would say, and I don't normally go on like this, but I cannot help myself is that for me, I think actually, this this kind of these two ideas are not social order and social justice, are not as cut and dry.

Chris Beem
I think that's a really good transition to the go. One other point that I really want to get to, and it's something that all three of us kind of highlighted. In the interview, both you and I Candice, were like, Jenna, that's a really good question about when is the social justice, intuition, the IT motivation? Conception? When has that ever been ascendant? Right? I mean, it's all about, you know, structures are about social structures are about power. And people with power, create them, right. And they create them in ways to sustain their own power. I mean, there's nothing weird or you know, I mean, that's not a lefty thing to say, that's just empirical. That's the way it works. And so when when Jenna said, when was it? When was it the social justice conception ever ascended? And they said, the French Revolution, and both of us are like, you know, I mean, like, you know, it's not, I mean, there's an argument there, you know, you could say, Okay, I guess so. But first of all, I'm I'm not sure if it works on its own, because, you know, there was really It mean, is social justice, the same as just this kind of violent and really violent retribution against the ruling class? Is that what social justice is? I'm not sure. But even so even if you just accept it, as 250 years ago, right? And if that's the case, if that's the arc, if that's the shining example, you point to well, then that kind of bespeaks the fact that social justice is really kind of always, you know, a legged out in this kind of, in this world we live in.

Candis Watts Smith
Yes, agree. I think for me, there was an implied notion, and maybe not intended by John and Eric, but the example was one that highlighted notions of disorder. And so then it was my question was, is there an idea that social justice and social disorder go together? And similarly then, on the other side, does social order and social injustice always go together? So I think, for me, there just needed to be a little bit more care and nuance around the subject of social justice and social order and, and the extent to which they overlap the tensions that are there. But I'm not I appreciate the discussion of tension, but I wish for just a little bit more nuance on both sides. I was trying to think of an example of when social justice has been like, ascendant and I thought maybe it would be like reconstruction, but even then, radical reconstruction did turn formerly enslaved people into Congress people, and that was a lot of change and a little bit of time. And, okay, yes, then we ended up with Jim Crow for another 100 years, but my point is, is that there there are moments when a lot of change can be made in a little bit of time. And if people stick with it, right if people have to Stuck with reconstruction, we might be in a totally different place than we are today.

Chris Beem
Well, I mean, I think what you can take away from this conversation is that this book is full of ideas and concepts and, you know, ways of framing, you know, very topical issues that are really thought provoking. And, you know, I mean, I don't know that, that you know, you and I Candice came down exactly the same on anything except maybe the French Revolution. But, but that's, that's to the books credit. Right. So thanks to Eric and John, for, for coming on for and for the terrific book. And for Jenna for the interview. I'm Chris Beem.

Candis Watts Smith
I'm Candis Watts Smith. For Democracy Works, thanks for listening.

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