I think I’ve groused up some peeps before with my belief that charity bites. I think we use charity to make the government less responsible to the people. Feel good altruism replaces real progression to a a more just society.

Now this doesn’t mean I think people should stop being kind to each other or helping each other out when situations arise. Lord knows I’ve benefited greatly from the kindness of friends and strangers alike. Those acts have literally kept me and the Kid afloat. But wouldn’t it be better if our government did it’s job of ensuring domestic tranquility by making sure everyone has a safe home and enough food than by relying on the arbitrary nature of good deeds?

Professor What If has a fabulous series on “What if you could buy social justice?” and her latest piece is on Oprah’s Big Give. Oprah may be the best example of how charity is just not enough to make for social justice.

In addition to the celebrified glitz of the show and the emphasis that money can fix all problems, there was a marked lack of social critique. As argued in “The dark underside of Oprah’s Big Give, “by Linda Diebel, “when competitors tried to buy away the problems of two schools in Houston, Texas, “not one contestant turned to another and asked how such bleak Dickensian conditions could exist in American schools in the first place.”

Similarly, the systematic, institutionalized conditions of poverty, homelessness, lack of healthcare, etc, were not examined on OBG. Rather, the show relied on a Horatio Alger model, trying to save the world by pulling up one individual bootstrap at a time.

Those damn bootstraps. You know, if you have over 17 million (and climbing, I think my numbers come from the 2000 census) people in poverty and millions of working families who have to rely on food banks and charities just to make sure their kids can eat, then it is not a problem that can be solved one bootstrap at a time. It is not a matter of massive individual failings but a systemic problem that can only be fixed by changing the system. Currently the system is made up of a patchwork of government programs and private charities. This is not working. And we’ve already tried the all charity route (see anything before 1929) and that didn’t work either.

So you can’t get social justice by giving away a bunch of money. Honestly, I would prefer if Oprah just paid the highest tax bracket she could with no deductions and then lobbied congress for more aid to the poor. That might actually accomplish what charities can’t.