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Monday 25 February 2019

Defining Social Justice And Social Injustice

By Sarah Ward


If you are born in today's world financially and socially disadvantaged, upward mobility is a difficult hill to climb. In many areas of this world, the United States included, opportunities for wealth and a life of ease are the prerogative of just a few. This is totally contrary to the concept of social justice, which is the idea that privilege, wealth, and opportunity should be available, equally, for everyone.

This concept did not emerge on the world scene until the mid-nineteenth century. This was the time of the Industrial Revolution and of other civil rebellions occurring throughout Europe. The focus during this period was on property, capital, and the fair distribution of wealth.

It took another hundred years for the concept to expand. This time it included gender, environment, ethnicity, and race. It was also expanded from primarily a governmental issue, creating an atmosphere conducive to an equal society, into the responsibility private citizens have for human victims no matter where in the world they are.

The drawbacks to establishing a truly equal society are broken down by experts into two basic parts. One is the way individuals in mainstream society treat others based only on personal bias, prejudice, fear, and misinformation. Examples of this are people who are treated unequally because of their gender, age, race, religion, social status, education, nationality, or mental and physical disabilities.

Unequal government regulations is the second part experts cite. This is when a government, knowingly or not, creates conditions that deny, limit, or make it difficult for certain segments of society to have access to opportunities given to other segments of the same society. This can be voting laws that allow redistricting and require voters to have certain forms of identification. It might be labor laws that limit the rights of workers.

It can also include environmental laws that favor industrial conglomerates by not restricting how they pollute the air a community breaths or the water it drinks. In the United States, some schools are still segregated by race. In some regions of America, people of a certain race or nationality are more likely to be stopped and harassed by law enforcement.

Unjust treatment by societies is divided into two categories, the direct and the indirect. Direct inequality comes about when individuals within a society deny rights and opportunities to certain individuals and not to others. An example might be the owner of a public restaurant who refuses to sit individuals in the dining area because of what that owner perceives is their sexual orientation. Direct inequality is also segregating schools and public facilities based on race.

When the government enacts laws that do not directly inhibit the rights of individuals, but in fact do, that is indirect inequality. An example might be laws that restrict mail in voting and require specific voter identification. When you buy clothing manufactured in sweatshops, you are supporting people who victimize laborers.




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