Porch Monkey for Social Justice

Gavin Grayson
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

I’ve been called a “social justice warrior” and the context made clear the pejorative intent. I never got it, I mean, who ain’t for social justice?

Per Wikipedia “social justice” is most basically defined as “the fair and just relation between the individual and society (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice).

As defined by The Urban Dictionary (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=social%20justice%20warrior) a “social justice warrior” is “a pejorative term for an individual who repeatedly and vehemently engages in arguments on social justice on the Internet, often in a shallow or not well-thought-out way, for the purpose of raising their own personal reputation. A social justice warrior, or SJW, does not necessarily strongly believe all that they say, or even care about the groups they are fighting on behalf of. They typically repeat points from whoever is the most popular blogger or commenter of the moment, hoping that they will “get SJ points” and become popular in return. They are very sure to adopt stances that are “correct” in their social circle.”

Rather Orwellian a construct then that a term for a clearly defined high human ideal is malappropriated to describe those with much less motivation than to attain a highly held ideal. So I still don’t get it. I mean, I’m for social justice, and I’m an old warrior, and I don’t take offense when I’ve the words spit at me like an epithet.

Early this morning I was sitting on the front porch talking (“🎶LA, it’s my hometown, it’s a funky town🎵”)Dodgers with a housemate as we took took turns with the rake when an obviously-disturbed woman strode determinedly past on the opposite sidewalk. Muttering seemingly incoherently to everyone in general until she was just past our residence, she turned and stated very clearly out the side of her mouth loud enough for me to hear

“THAT NIGGER NEEDS TO GET OFF THE FUCKING PORCH!” As usual, my housemate didn’t hear her, didn’t believe me at first when I repeated her shouted words, and took many turns before he was convinced that those were the words that’d come out of the brown-skinned woman’s mouth. It didn’t make sense to him, we live in a predominantly hispanic Santa Barbara neighborhood, and he just couldn’t really accept that strangers walking down the street would/could have even thought to scream that at me at 09:23am on a Monday morning.

It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it generally catches me off-guard, and it’s usually screamed at me by humans who don’t know me from a can of ‘Frazee paint.’ My housemate’s a 6'3" beach-blond Volleyball Instructor and NCAA Men’s Basketball Referee, and none of it made sense to him, which was funny to me. I didn’t even try to explain to him the pejorative intent of those that called me “social justice warrior…”

😎