Charity and Social Justice: Differences

In plain terms, generosity and social justice

In plain terms, generosity is thought of as the virtue of providing aid to the poor. Any sort of help is acceptable, including monetary aid, clothing, food, and shelter. Contrarily, social justice is described as the promotion of fairness in society. It specifically entails the creation of a culture that is marked by generosity, equality, and unity. Eliminating structural variations that encourage social inequality and stratification is the main objective (Hassan, 2015).

Differences between charity and social justice

These definitions make it clear that the main distinction between the two is that charity focuses more on helping individuals, making it more of an individual-oriented strategy. On the contrary, social justice examines and neutralizes the underlying societal mechanisms that have the likelihood of discriminating or rather treating individuals as per their social standings. Thus, unlike charity, whose target is to provide help at a personal level, social justice establishes the causes of those problems to develop a lasting solution.

Examples of charity and social justice

For instance, charity will involve providing food to a hungry person to sort out the problem at hand. On the other hand, social justice will work towards unfolding possible solutions to the underlying case so that a particular group does not have excess to feed on, whereas others languish. Another case is where individuals live with others in harmony, offering a helping hand where necessary. From the same perspective, social justice will work towards establishing solutions for the mysteries surrounding prejudice.

Conclusion: Importance of social justice

Conclusively, the rationale behind charity is to provide instant solutions to individual problems. However, some of these solutions are temporary, even though they are immediate. Thus, social justice has to intervene by finding the root causes of societal problems for a possible development of lasting solutions.

References

Hassan. (2015, October 8). Difference Between Charity and Social Justice. Retrieved from differencebetween.com: http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-charity-and-vs-social-justice/