What is Social Justice?
In my perspective
“social justice” is the demand for all people in society to have equal rights
and opportunities to succeed in life. Social justice is all about fighting for
fairness to those who are given the same chances to other individuals that to receive
chances or opportunities. This holds essence and symbolic value seeking justice
for all groups of people to helps balance the greater good of mankind. Specific
examples of social justice issues are unequal treatment due to personal or bias
belief on certain groups that result into racism, sexism, hetero-sexism and
ageism. The issue also leads into other social justice issues such as poverty,
environmental issues or access to healthcare and education. Examples from life,
the 19 hunger strikers fought to build the school known as today Greater
Lawndale High School Campus. This is an example of social justice because the
community member and the hunger strikers wanted to build a community base high
school for their children to have access to a closer education. This shows
social justice because the community fought to give their children the
opportunity in order to succeed in life.
What obstacles do we face while struggling to achieve social justice?
There are many barriers of obstacles that we face that prevent us from achieving social justice. For one thing, people are not willing to agree or fight for the same social justice issue due to controversial conflicts such as a religious, cultural, economic or social conflict. This delays the struggle for action and prevents the social issue to be resolved. Social justice cannot be achieved due to powerful government authorities that prevent change. An example of a historical obstacle towards social justice is the women’s right movement. This movement was a struggle for women because they had to seek justice and earn their rights. An example from life is struggling to provide fair treatment to all groups, such as fighting for fair trials in juvenile justice system. I learned from classes is that juvenile who were put through the justice system they struggle to manage their self- image due to the labeling theory. People label them into what they perceive by their actions or behaviors. This is a struggle because juveniles are placed into the system and the stigma follows them and their future decisions. This is social justice because the labeling theory enables juveniles to obtain their education or have a secure job, this affects their future and it’s not fair preventing someone to have the same opportunities to succeed.
What is your vision for struggle?
The type of techniques used to achieve social justice is strikes, foundations, boycotts and people volunteering to fight for change. I think social justice will advance during the time because people will influence each other to change the world and to fight for equal opportunities. Many social justice issues are related to discrimination towards gender, race, and sexuality.
What is your role in the struggle?
My role in the struggle for my social justice issues is to change the foundation of the juvenile justice system. The juvenile detention system focuses on punishment rather than rehabilitation of teens. This is a problem because physical reinforcement is being used and it affects the juveniles by following back to the same habits or criminal behavior. My fire project will focus on how teens are placed as a juvenile delinquent and how the system wants to dissocialize behavior by using physical punishment. In the future I want to study psychology in order to understand the human mind development process. My future will reflect the struggle to this social justice issue because I want to cause change and help young teens are place into the juvenile justice system to have equal opportunities. When I earn my degree in psychology, I would want to study more about social psychology and how the environment affects human behavior, which leads to understand the outcomes of juvenile delinquency.
How is your chosen issue connected to social justice?
My issue is connected
to social justice because juveniles place in the justice system are not given
the same chances and opportunities. The juvenile system degrades youth by using
punishment as rehabilitation. This is a problem because punishment is not
effective, therefore more teen return to their deviant behavior. The issue
shows that we need to help youth and reach a higher goal rather than label or misjudge
them. This project is to focus and change the foundation of the juvenile
justice system because it will bring fairness and equal opportunities for
juveniles.