The following OP is me trying to make sense of flaws I see in the way justice is applied to different groups of people in the US. I also explore ways of going beyond the current paradigm into something more progressive, and, hopefully, more humane.
I begin with a somewhat daunting explanation that should make some sense in context: the term “values” in this post can best be thought of as meaning-laden “measures” associated with a person’s identity that can be referenced against a group of internally hierarchical, or at least graded, categories to determine whether or not a given criterion applies to the person being considered - specifically with regards to criteria dictating the applicability of justice or just treatment. Thus, these measures, although of ambiguous dimensionality, correspond with any theoretical connections between justice and identity when those connections determine the applicability of justice. That is, justice is value-specific. There could be some dirtiness where the logic doesn’t line up perfectly, but I don’t think that really matters too much to the main thrust of the post. Hopefully this more technical explanation is sufficient for understanding how I approach the topic of justice on a descriptive level. If not, please just ask for more elaboration.
I do not think that the enacting of justice is as straightforward as society treats it. It seems that many would say that the application of justice should be done uniformly, and in some ways this position is tenable: if we are each freely choosing agents, standards of justice can reliably be applied to individuals based upon their choices, and if we are products of causality we can still administer a similar justice if we are willing to temper it with compassion. However, since the more fortunate are afforded more opportunities to avoid the challenges those less fortunate must deal with that may lead to disparities in consequences along group lines, I think the application of justice on a group level according to static criteria is not truly justice at all. Rather, it is a de facto expression of privilege because of the way white aggrievement currently reinforces power structures, i.e. justice is, and needs to be treated as being, contextual. This contextuality enables group-level double standards and, simultaneously, implies a more robust version of justice in the form of going past pre-existing group boundaries to correct for mistreatment. I say we should embrace this version of justice.
I know that my thesis might seem overly complex, but I promise that the meat of the post will be rather simple to understand once the type of contextuality (spoiler: it’s value-specificity) I’m commenting on is elaborated. Please just stick with it.
I contend, more specifically, that justice is applied in value-specific ways. An example would best illustrate this. Consider US veterans that have killed enemy combatants or given the order to do so in illegal, immoral wars. Do we prosecute them for that? No, that would be absurd: we pay many of them a disability percentage because we value them and their honorable service above trying to hold them to account for enforcing American hegemony in not-so-good ways (even ignoring all the difficulties that doing that would entail). Clearly the values assigned to an agent or actor are part of what determines the applicability of some criteria of justice to their situation - and I’m not saying there is always something wrong with that, e.g. veterans - but it could clearly lead to disparities in treatment of differently valued groups of people. That is, if people want to embrace this form of contextuality, they must acknowledge that this difference in valuation means that the same, immutable standards of justice will affect different people differently potentially according to group identity. If parity in consequences for different groups matters, this mechanism matters.
To that point, this mechanism is reflected in a sort of recursive process by which, in the face of social progress, many of those with advantageous valuation, and thus privilege, have a tendency towards attempting to invent value-attributing grievances to maintain a semblance of control over those that they judge to be less deserving of justice short of implementing actual segregationist policies. The purpose of this weaponization of privilege is to reinforce stratification and, thus, one’s in-group’s privilege over others, even if the grievances cited are petty, spurious, irrational, etc. While the claim that a white genocide - or some such tripe - is occurring in the US is not explicitly held by all conservatives, those that justify policies to keep minorities down in ways recently seen act similarly to any nascent fascist regime one might consider, and the fact that neo-Nazis can openly attend notable political conferences indicates that that avenue is not entirely blocked off. So, according to the logic of aggrievement built on value-specificity, the continued wellbeing and just treatment of minorities and vulnerable groups is not by any means guaranteed, but that people like Nick Fuentes have freedom of speech (insofar as they aren’t cancelled everywhere) to engage in white supremacist rhetoric is. If that isn’t an expression of privilege, I don’t know what is.
What is to be done, then? I think the right thing to do to interrupt, or at least counter, the process is to level the playing field by allocating extra resources towards rectifying historical inequities and bringing about continued justice for minorities - even if we cannot budge people’s general tendencies toward tribalism; furthermore, we have an opportunity to counteract the misvaluing of groups based upon irrelevant or arbitrary criteria that could be preventing valid grievances from being seriously considered. I know that very last part might be viewed as a strong, and perhaps not totally supported, claim, but I think that any truly just system would implement such a dynamic to try to achieve parity.
In conclusion, the solution to all of this is pretty simple on a strategic level: we listen to what groups of people say they want and need and evaluate if it is situationally reasonable and also if we think that it would be reasonable largely independent of who is asking for it, if at all possible. Thus, if a white supremacist says white people are being systematically affronted by non-white immigrants, for example, they do sometimes need to be countered with an assessment of the validity of their claims - but I think we also need to keep in mind that these are almost certainly attempts at cementing the status of one group over another and are not actually serious. Indeed, I contend that taking these (potentially veiled) white supremacist assertions and arguments as anything other than an explicit threat to the wellbeing of everyone - but especially minorities - is erroneous and will lead to injustice if those making these arguments are allowed even a modicum of power by generalization of pertinent values to large groups of non-white people. This is the reality of the contextuality of justice, and I think that it should be acknowledged as such by those interested in promoting actual fairness.