Social Justice and Race in the United States: Key Issues and Challenges for Couple and Family Therapy

• Date: 01 March 2019
• Published date: 01 March 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12427
• Author: Marlene F. Watson

Social Justice and Race in the United States: Key

Issues and Challenges for Couple and Family

Therapy

MARLENE F. WATSON*

Social justice tends to be narrowly defined as equality without due recognition of human

dignity and respect for those whose daily lives continue to be adversely impacted by race.

This article seeks to explore key issues and challenges at the intersection of social justice

and race for couple and family therapy. These include: (a) defining social justice; (b) diver-

sity and inclusion; (c) power and privilege; (d) witness; and (e) personal responsibility.

Keywords: Social Justice; Diversity and Inclusion; Race; Power and Privilege; Witness;

Personal Responsibility

Fam Proc 58:23–33, 2019

Social injustice impacts both quality of life and life chances (Shultz & Mullings, 2006),

indelibly marking the lives of millions of people. Constructed on difference, social

injustice dramatically shapes the psyche of individuals, groups, and nations (Stevenson,

2014). At its most basic level, social injustice is about the distribution of wealth, power,

resources, and opportunities (Rothenberg, 2007), resulting in marginalization, disenfran-

chisement, and exclusion.

Socially constructed systems of inequality based on differences are mutually consti-

tuted, interrelated, and vary as a function of each other, which may make it difficult to

establish the contribution of a single factor. For instance, gender and class may take on a

different meaning when raced (Shultz & Mullings, 2006). Although awareness of systems

of inequality as interconnecting entities that affect all individuals and groups is necessary

for social justice, this paper is primarily focused on race and the expression of racism

despite claims of social justice.

To build wealth and power in the United States, newly settled European whites imple-

mented the system of slavery, whereby race was used to enslave and deny black people

their humanity. Thus, racism is a complex problem in the United States tha t persists from

slavery, preserving the established distribution of power and privilege based on race.

Racism is perpetuated in many ways. Despite calls for social justice to ameliorate the suf-

fering caused by racism, social justice, like racism, is complicated. Along with varying per-

spectives on social justice, each racial group has a personal stake in the way it is considered

and represented. Consequently, one racial group may attend to aspects of social injustice

ignored or denied by another. Moreover, social injustice may go unnoticed or accepted as

“the way things are” because of institutionalized and/or unconscious racism. Institutional-

ized racism is evident in the current immigration policy of President Donald J. Trump,

*Department of Counseling and Family Therapy, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Marlene F. Watson, Department of Coun-

seling and Family Therapy, Drexel University, 1601 Cherry Street, Mail Stop 71042, Philadelphia, PA

19102. E-mail: mfw24@drexel.edu.

The author thanks the students who provided witness to their inequality and injustice.

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Family Process, Vol. 58, No. 1, 2019 ©2019 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12427