dtgreene: Let me ask you a question:
Do you believe that minorities should get equal rights and protections under the law (compared to the majority)?
If your answer is Yes, then you support social justice.
If your answer is No, then you are clearly a bigot.
Telika: Let's just point out that many bigots do "believe that minorities should get equal rights and protections under the law" in the sense that these omg oppressive governmental laws should be replaced by the gloriously libertarian rule of the jungle. By this perspective, the minimalist governmental intrusion (instrusion is evil, government is evil) applies the same way to everybody, without "favouring" the dominated at the expense of the dominant. Everybody has the same right to crush his neighbour, and the ethic of social darwinism ensures that everything ends up perfectly moral.
"
Between the strong and the weak, between the rich and the poor, between the master and the servant, it is freedom which oppresses, and law which liberates" (stated a 19th century left-wing dominican, omg the categories). It's true, depending on the perspective. But for a conservative bigot, for whom the Traditional Social Order is to be glorified and preserved as the Way Things Are And Should Be, the important thing is to preserve the freedom of the strong rich master, against the oppression of the weak poor servant, especially when this oppression translates into a restriction of the freedom to oppress.
Ordinary everyday relations of power are deemed normal, natural and saint, when not downright invisibilized. They are not oppressive from the dominant's standpoint. It's when governmental laws start to interfer with them, trying to rebalance social relations and structural power differentials, that the empowerment of the dominated is perceived as an active (and unnatural) constraint, and as a handicap unduly inflicted upon the legitimate dominants. Restrictions to sociocultural "bullying" are seen as state "bullying" in itself, because emerging asymetries are compensated by asymetrical actions (a society that has been spontaneously drifting starboard is reoriented by propellers pushing port, which allow the starboard fans to complain about propellers in general or one-sided propellers).
In short, people can easily "believe that minorities should get equal rights and protections under the law (compared to the majority)" while being strongly opposed to "social justice". After all, a law that demands to pay a fortune in order to access to education is "the same for everyone", while a law that reduces the fees for the poor is a law that "applies inequally to different people"...
You're mistaking the animal instincts of man with man's natural desire and need to trade and communicate. No society can function with predatory Darwinism. To build, to live, to survive, these human needs require compromise and sharing. Sharing and compromise don't have a goddamn thing to do with international arms treaties and 25% income tax laws. Simple problems don't require complicated solutions... nor can a problem be solved with with the tools used to make the problem. But hey, mo money mo problems. Let's give it another tax hike and throw another billion towards public education and whatever's left we'll toss at the prison system.
And minorities have equal protection under the law (at least in western nations). In our glorious American Republic it's one of our founding virtues. It's also part of the reason we have both a Senate and House of Representatives, an electoral college that respects the rights of both large and small states, and a Constitution that puts limits on the power government can have to take away the rights of both the majority and/or minority. But I guess that's all bullshit, right? Screw America, right? The minority complains about minority rights until it's no longer the minority... then minority rights be damned. This is the path of human progress in something as tremendously pedantic and banal as BUREAUCRACY. The more things change... yadda yadda yadda.
