Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want by Ruha Benjamin

        Nonfiction sometimes serves to inform, sometimes to persuade—but rarely does it serve to excite. In the opening pages of Ruha Benjamin’s Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, you can feel the energy and the push to take action. The doom and gloom despair of statistical realities have their place, but Benjamin’s focus is on creating a vision for what might be otherwise, which seems to be confirmed in the excellent supplementary interview between her and Ibrahim X. Kendi that is added as an appendix to the book.

        Viral Justice is the kind of book we need: a book that looks backward to explain, but looks forward to empower. The book is about social justice advocacy, particularly as it pertains to race, in the wake of the Covid pandemic. In the introduction to the text, Benjamin offers an excellent outline of the project. She begins with the following reflection: “Racism, inequality, and indifference are a juvenile rebellion against the reality of this interconnection, microscopically, and sociopolitically.” Citing from James Baldwin’s address at the National Press Club on December 10th, 1986, she writes, “I want to grow up and so should you.” She then sees the Covid-19 pandemic as “perhaps [...] forcing us all to grow up, exposing that vulnerability and interdependence are our lot, whether we like it or not.” As an aside, there’s an excellent Propagandhi song that expresses a similar sentiment: “There is no me / there is no you / there is all. / There is no you. / There is no me. / And that is all. / A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. / A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of / the Universe is love” (“Duplicate Keys Icaro (An Interim Report)”).

Anyway, Benjamin suggests that “Covid-19 is a social disease” and draws from the work of sociologist Eric Klinenberg, to note that “solidarity is an essential tool for combatting infectious disease and other collective threats. Solidarity motivates us to promote public health, not just our own personal security.” She then notes that he cautious: “It’s an open question whether Americans have enough social solidarity to stave off the worst possibilities of the coronavirus pandemic.” If I retain one essential element of Viral Justice, it is that the myth of independence is seriously overblown and politically precarious. At every turn, collective action and solidarity are required. Even “vaccines” (both literally and metaphorically) “are no magical fix for the kind of pathological self-interest that masquerades as independence.” Benjamin explains, “When we look worldwide, access to a Covid-19 vaccine has widened the gap between those whose lives matter and those deemed disposable” and then notes that “we don’t have to resign ourselves to this infantile individualism-cum-vaccine-nationalism.”

The questions that guide the text are as follows: “What if instead we reimagined virality as something we might learn from? What if the virus is not something simply to be feared and eliminated, but a microscopic model of what it could look like to spread justice and joy in small but perceptible ways? Little by little, day-by-day, starting in our own backyards? Let’s identify our plots, get to the root cause of what’s ailing us, accept our interconnectedness, and finally grow the fuck up.” This passage gives an example of Benjamin’s inviting and direct tone. I appreciate the humour and emotion in her strategic use of expletives as we embark on her vision of a “microvision of social change.”

Essentially, Benjamin brands the text as a selection of lessons we can learn by modelling action after the virality of Covid and crafts the text with a blend of autobiography, statistics, anecdotes, and academic studies. That said, she very specifically notes in the closing interview that looking at problems academically is a privilege of those who do not need to live the realities; academia diagnoses but does not reimagine. The framework for social change presented as an alternative is drawn from the work of Dean Spade; Benjamin notes that there are three types of movement work:

1. Dismantling harmful systems
2. Providing for people’s immediate needs
3. Creating alternative structures that can meet those needs based on values of care, democratic participation, and solidarity.

One of the highlights of Benjamin’s work, for me, is the way she makes discussions more nuanced and truly progressive rather than replicating models that do not serve us. The point is made clear when discussing the carceral systems in an early chapter of the book. A few quick reminders: the prison system is harmful for inmates, but also for the families of inmates—of which there are many in the United States. The impact of that system is far-reaching, including the innocent families of incarcerated people. Benjamin notes that when we see people doing wrong, our knee-jerk reaction is often to want to see them punished or imprisoned. Benjamin notes, though, that this model is fallacious, since it replicates ideas of carceral justice rather than reforming it to better serve us.

As a point of contrast, take the example of Ecuador. Benjamin explains how in 2007, they “began a bold experiment that didn’t cost a lot of money.” She notes that “rather than continuing to criminalize street gangs, the country legalized them, and as sociologist David Brotherton documents, gangs were able to remake themselves as cultural associations that could register with the government, which in turn allowed them to qualify for grants and benefit from social programming, just like everybody else. Some members went to school, started businesses like catering and graphic design companies, or took advantage of grants for job training or setting up community centres. As a result, homicide rates dropped dramatically and gangs began operating more like social movements, even collaborating with their rivals on cultural events.” The approach is simply a reworking of policy in the same way that legalizing drugs is simply a shift in policy that changes policing practices and allows people to seek help and addiction resources. The notion is that over years, “trust and long term relationships had a chance to build up. It wasn’t the policy alone, but how people used the legalization of gangs as an opportunity to transform how they related to one another.”         From the opening chapters, Benjamin then transitions into a discussion of inequities in education. I value those conversations, of course, given my profession. There’s some excellent discussion of hiring practices, the impact of suspensions, the idea of segregated schools (either directly or indirectly), and some of the grassroots initiatives that were supportive of true social change (cf. Cultivating Genius by Gholdy E. Muhammad). In a tangentially connected passage, Benjamin discusses how job descriptions can be rewritten in order to be more inclusive and facilitate more diverse applicants. This, I think, is especially needed for a school system that is significantly, homogeneously White.         I can hear the objections of people who will say “but jobs should go to the most qualified applicants!” I’ll counter that with a fantastic passage from Viral Justice. Benjamin recounts being at a conference and presenting in a majestic place and when they are being praised for their distinction, her fellow panellist interrupts: “Yes, you are worthy—but you are also very lucky.” The conversation Benjamin offers about luck is incredibly poignant. I believe this is a blend of her fellow panellist’s commentary and her own: “Lucky. Not a word one hears often enough in elite spaces. Being lucky doesn’t mean you are not qualified, it just means many others could have been in your shoes, but they were not chosen, and there are many more besides who might have qualified if given the same opportunities.” Summed up in one glorious sentence, Benjamin offers this line: “Luckiness does not negate worthiness, it negates entitlement” and continues that “Luck is the kryptonite of elitist delusions of specialness. And even then, the language of luck doesn’t do justice to the sheer organisation of selectivity, a key dimension of elite spaces, as a process [...] These processes are more often than not obscured.” These kinds of insights allow us to reconceptualize our relationship to power and privilege. Being aware in this way is necessary to take action for change.         Alas, I feel like I’m always waiting for a book that offers a list of ten ways to make the world perfect. That never happens here or anywhere—I guess you could count something like 12 Rules for Life if you want something by an opportunistic hack and political lunatic, but I don’t and I don’t. Viral Justice gives a guideline for making small changes to create opportunities for others, provide for peoples’ needs, and develop new systems. It makes the idea of change manageable and thus offers an optimistic outlook for the world. In short, it embodies that phrase: “Think globally, act locally.” It’s the small actions that matter.         I admit that between finishing Viral Justice and writing this review, I’ve started reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and some of the core concepts are getting jumbled in my head. That in itself is illustrative of Benjamin’s point: we are all connected. These texts are connected. No one is in isolation, for better and for worse.         In this case, I’d really like to think that it’s for the better.               Happy reading!