Justice Sensitivity Is The Cure, Not The Sickness
We are pathologising giving a sh*t.
The term ‘justice sensitivity’ was first discussed in 1995 by Schmitt, Neumann and Montada as a ‘personality disposition’ and meant to explain differences in reactions to unfair situations. It was studied from three dimensions - unfairness towards self, unfairness towards others, and profiting from unfairness. We have been raised in a reality where people do experiments to find out to what extent people give a sh*t.
Our reality has been shaped by those who, by necessity, do not give a sh*t about others, and do not give a sh*t about exploiting others for material gain. They do give a sh*t about themselves, but not about their true selves. They give a sh*t about their power and status and comfort, but not their growth, their humanity or their wholeness. They teach us to value these same things and to neglect our true selves and our true needs. Being unbothered by (or not even noticing) the mistreatment of ourselves and the mistreatment of others is essential to upholding the interlocking systems of oppression that make up our colonial existence. Profiting from unfairness, is how you can reach the top of the tree within our unfair system. It’s why some people envy billionaires and covet their lifestyles, instead of being enraged that they exist while people are living and dying in poverty. Sensitivity to the injustice of profiting from unfairness would produce a desire to change the system that produces billionaires, whereas insensitivity to it produces envy and drives competition, individualism and ruthlessness - fuel for the beasts of white supremacy and capitalism.
In recent years, justice sensitivity has been discussed as a feature of both ADHD and Autism, with studies claiming to show heightened sensitivity to perceived injustice in ADHD and Autistic populations. As with all research, we should be scrutinising the makeup of the sample population. Of the studies I was able to find in my research for this article, all of them took place in countries with majority white populations. Race was not listed as a variable in any of them, so it is fair to assume the populations were majority white. What if we were to do the same experiments with a population of Black women who do not experience any of the common features of ADHD? Are you seriously telling me that we wouldn’t see evidence of sensitivity to injustice? Come on now. And where are these studies? Why don’t we have this data? Perhaps this would reveal a level of knowing that colonial research is not interested in uncovering - that justice sensitivity is likely to be higher in those who have experienced oppression, and lower in those who benefit from it.
The term ‘justice sensitivity’, like many of the terms we use around mental health and neurodivergence, has come from the research of white, cishetero men and been carried out on populations that mirrored the lived experience of the researchers. We need to challenge these concepts because they come from a limited perspective of unearned advantage and by those who benefit from constructed colonial oppression. One website claiming to educate on ADHD describes a theory of ‘an overactive sense of morality’. We are living in a world where multiple genocides are going on while billionaires destroy the planet by flying around the world in private jets to watch people throw a ball around. We live in a world where if you can’t make enough money, you die. We live in a world where being who you are can be met with being abandoned by your family, imprisoned, attacked, murdered. The actual pathology at play here, and it is a pandemic, is an underactive sense of morality. It is justice insensitivity.
The three aspects of justice sensitivity are important to reflect on, because to be truly liberated from the oppressive construct of normal we must experience all three. If our experience of justice sensitivity is that it only activates when we feel unfairly treated, we are likely suffering from the individualism brought on by the combined affects of white supremacy and capitalism, a condition necessary to the survival of these systems. Only giving a sh*t about ourselves isn’t helpful, we are a social species and we have lasted as long as we have through cooperation. We are literally entering into an extinction phase of our existence because individual aims have been pitted above the needs of the community and our wider earthly kin for the last 500 years or so. We need to be aware of our location within intersectionality in all this - how much we benefit from these systems will impact how successful colonial conditioning has been on us and how much work we have to do to reclaim our sensitivity to injustice, and to return to our true selves, to our wholeness.
If you experience justice sensitivity, you are not unwell or disordered, you are simply aware of the fact that the way the world currently operates is deeply, unnecessarily unfair. If we fall for the line that this is a ‘feature of neurodivergence’, we may be inclined to ‘manage it’ by focusing our attention on soothing our discomfort, because we believe the problem lies within us. This pathologisation of reasonable responses upholds the systems that harm us by directing energy on fixing ourselves instead of fixing our reality. If we can instead focus on listening to what our mindbodies are trying to tell us, we can channel that frustration, that distress, that rage into action for change.
—AJ
Today’s Neuro-Embodiment Prompts:
Suggestions and questions to help you engage with mindbody decolonisation:
How are you channeling your reaction to injustice? Are you focusing too much on ‘managing it’ and if so how can you redirect that energy to impactful action?
Reflect on the three lenses of justice sensitivity - unfairness to self, unfairness to others, profiting from unfairness - as a framework for growth. Which one do you experience the most sensitivity to? Which one do you experience being least sensitive to? Liberation involves sensitivity to all three.
Consider your location within intersectionality and use this to contextualise your experience of justice sensitivity. Your perception of whether you or someone else has been treated unfairly is shaped by your lived experience of the world, and this may need to be adjusted before you act from it. Centre the needs of the most oppressed, use it to guide you.
How can you nurture your sensitivity to injustice? How can you nurture it in those in your community?
How and where can you interrupt, name and call in justice insensitivity?
Ohhh I needed to read this, thank you so much AJ. You've given words to something I've felt instinctively but not understood well enough to articulate. I'm reading and re-reading this passage in particular:
"If you experience justice sensitivity, you are not unwell or disordered, you are simply aware of the fact that the way the world currently operates is deeply, unnecessarily unfair. If we fall for the line that this is a ‘feature of neurodivergence’, we may be inclined to ‘manage it’ by focusing our attention on soothing our discomfort, because we believe the problem lies within us. This pathologisation of reasonable responses upholds the systems that harm us by directing energy on fixing ourselves instead of fixing our reality. If we can instead focus on listening to what our mindbodies are trying to tell us, we can channel that frustration, that distress, that rage into action for change."
This is brilliant. Thank you for writing it. While I believe your point is true that - as a group - people who are marginalized are more likely to have a high level of justice sensitivity, my experience has been that this is true primarily regarding unfairness to self, and not necessarily the other two types. One thing that has constantly distressed me about participating in social justice actions and movements has been what I've perceived - even among dedicated activists - as a general disinterest in, and often minimization of and disregard for, forms of oppression that do not target them directly. In spite of intersectionality being oft discussed as a critical component of social justice, it seems that many - maybe even most - activists ignore it in favor of elevating their chosen cause(s) above others. This is not to say that I disagree with your point about the white supremacist perspective informing research on the topic - I believe you are spot on regarding that. I just mean to say that I am thankful for you and your writing, and greatly appreciate your emphasis on there being 3 equally important categories of "justice sensitivity." I feel a bit of relief just from reading such an eloquent explanation of a thing that has been a jumbled, unarticulated stressor in my mind for so long. Your writing gives me hope because you are so skilled at both clarifying very complicated topics and also offering practical self-work prompts. Thank you.