On Justice Power And Human Nature Quotes & Sayings

In reality there are two, and only two, foundations of law; and they are both of them conditions without which nothing can give it any force: I mean equity and utility. With respect to the former, it grows out of the great rule of equality, which is grounded upon our common nature, and which Philo, with propriety and beauty, calls the mother of justice. All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they may alter the mode and application, but have no power over the substance, of original justice. The other foundation of law, which is utility, must be understood, not of partial or limited, but of general and public, utility, connected in the same manner with, and derived directly from, our rational nature: for any other utility may be the utility of a robber, but cannot be that of a citizen, - the interest of the domestic enemy, and not that of a member of the commonwealth. — Edmund Burke

But if your strategy for racial justice involves waiting for whites to be fair, history suggests it will be a long wait. It's not that white people are more unjust than others. Rather it seems that an aspect of human nature is the tendency to cling tightly to one's advantages and privileges and to rationalize the suffering and exclusion of others. This tendency is what led Frederick Douglass to declare that "power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will. — Michelle Alexander