Structural/Systemic Injustice

I'll start by acknowledging that I took SludgeFuss-ery's feedback about tone into consideration when writing this (and I appreciate the perspective). I also ran this through Copilot before posting to help ensure clarity.

I've been reading about structural injustice and wanted to hear others' thoughts. Iris Marion Young, a political theorist, gave a lecture on this topic at KU in 2003. She defines structural injustice as the unintended, cumulative result of many individuals and institutions acting within existing rules and norms—actions that, over time, create systematic disadvantages for certain social groups.

Here’s a quote from her lecture:

quote:

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"Structural injustices are harms that come to people as a result of structural processes in which many people participate. These participants may well be aware that their actions contribute to the processes that produce the outcomes, but for many it is not possible to trace the specific causal relation between their particular actions and some particular part of the outcome. Some upper income urban dwellers, for example, may be aware that their decisions to buy condominiums in renovated center city buildings contributes to processes that displace lower income renters like Sandy. No one can say, however, that their decisions and actions have directly caused Sandy's landlord to sell the building to a condo developer, thus necessitating Sandy's apartment search."

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According to this framework, no single individual or demographic is solely responsible for systemic injustice. I know there’s been a lot of discussion here about whether structural or systemic injustice exists at all, so I’m genuinely curious to hear what others think about this particular argument.

Here's a link to her entire lecture.