“Social justice” has come to mean redistribution of wealth. It didn’t happen in a day.

The organized practice of good deed-doing in this nation began with no indebtedness to higher education. By the end of the 19th century, social work agencies started training programs. Then they hitched their wagons to universities, and undergrad programs in social work sprang up. These soon took it upon themselves to define professional standards. In 1952 a single accreditation agency was presiding over all social work education programs.

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) saw what was happening: “The upsurge of political activism during the 1960s increased the NASW’s (National Association of Social Workers) involvement in issues such as civil rights, a guaranteed income, birth control, and welfare rights. This trend was accentuated in the 1970s.”

The camel’s nose slipped further under the tent when the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) started promoting what looked like a litmus test for national education programs—evaluation of students’ “dispositions” toward such vague ideas as “social justice” and “diversity.” The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) complained to the federal Department of Education, and NCATE dropped the language.

Blink your eye and “the term ‘social justice,’ which once meant the obligation to offer charitable help to orphans, widows, the poor, and the homeless, has become a roomy term that encompasses a set of political mantras about racism, sexism, and the rest” (Ashley Thorne, NAS).

http://www.worldmag.com:80/articles/16683