What Is Justice? African American Youth As Theorists of Social Justice

Background and Purpose:

Scholars have identified multiple forms of justice (Murphy, 1994), including distributive (Rawls, 2001), retributive (Wenzel et al., 2008), rehabilitative (Forsberg & Douglas, 2020), restorative (Wenzel et al., 2008), and transitional (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, n.d.). However, the ways justice is understood and enacted by youth experiencing systemic marginalization remain underexplored.

Recently, scholars and participants have been engaged in testimonial justice -- enabling persons to describe injustices they experience (Fricker, 2013; Fine, 2016; Tavara, Lykes, & Crosby, 2017) – which advances epistemic and political justice since those experiencing marginalizations have expertise about justice and social action that differ from those in privileged positions (Collins & Bilge, 2016; Fine, 2016; Torres et al., 2024; Sue, 2016).

Grounded in the premise that epistemic justice is essential to social justice (Fricker, 2013; Smith, 2012), this project engages urban youth marginalized by income and race to explore their interpretations of social justice and their experiences as agents to advance social justice. Despite growing attention to justice frameworks, limited research centers on how marginalized youth themselves define and enact justice in their everyday lives.

Methodology: This project uses transcendental phenomenological methodology

(Husserl, 1936) within critical realist (Bhaskar, 1991; Lewis, 2000) and critical race theory (Delgado & Stefancik, 2017) frameworks. The transcendental phenomenology approach enables researchers to bracket preconceptions to illuminate the distinctive perceptions and meanings of interviewees (Neubauer, Witkop, & Varpio, 2019), describing individual experiences and identifying shared patterns within them. The sample consists of 114 interviews with youth about their experiences acting as agents of social justice; 24 participants contributed photovoice data illustrating their experience of enacting justice. Participants were recruited through multiple community and educational sources, ranging in age from 15 to 20 years old.

Results: Three themes emerged. Youth regarded justice as a large concept, “not just about what’s right” but rather about human relationships and “what’s better in the world in general.” Second, they saw examples of injustice in many places, such as on social media, immigration enforcement (e.g., ICE encounters), and racial profiling, and believed acknowledging injustice is essential to preventing recurrence. Third, actions to bring about justice were compassionate and peacebuilding, e.g., stopping fights, helping a fellow student who was being bullied, and providing food for a homeless person. Notably, justice was also understood as a personal practice, reflected in values such as loyalty and fairness in everyday interactions.

Conclusions and implications: Young persons experiencing multiple systemic marginalizations articulate expansive, compassionate, and personalized understandings of justice, and with urgency describe the importance of being persons who identify and prevent injustices. These findings suggest that aligning social interventions and policies with youths’ understandings of justice may improve their relevance and effectiveness in addressing youths’ needs and priorities.