Fight the Wrong to Make It Right: Social Justice Now!
The Imbalance In the People’s Rights
During his Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony speech, Elie Wiesel emphasized the importance of protest even in challenging times: “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there never must be a time when we fail to protest.” Wiesel’s words reveal the importance of standing up against social injustice. He tells us to stand up for honesty and equality even when it seems impossible to change anything. Even if it looks as if we cannot change anything, protesting and fighting when we see injustice is crucial. As a 10th grader, I often see social injustice not only online but also in my daily surroundings. It could range from subtle signs to outward discrimination, however, it is always important to stand against any wrongdoings. The injustices I see are frequently discrimination against race, gender, or even cultural background. People who are different from others due to circumstances beyond their control are mocked and persecuted, this issue is social injustice. Because social injustices run rampant around me and the world, we should uphold the responsibility of everyone to spread awareness that deters discrimination to truly make a social change for equality and bring social justice.
Injustices are prevalent everywhere, even in our literature, for example, in the book When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago. The book When I Was Puerto Rican is about a young Puerto Rican girl named Esmeralda facing racial discrimination as she grows older. Throughout the book, racial discrimination is made apparent everywhere. These injustices affected my conviction of social justice as the book highlights the problems that Esmeralda has to face as a marginalized population. Esmeralda's mother, Mami, struggles financially and has to visit a welfare office to provide food for her family while she is unemployed. However, while at the welfare office, the workers would discriminate against Puerto Ricans by ignoring them, refusing service, or even disregarding any respect. This flagrant mistreatment by the workers against the Puerto Ricans made Mami feel as if she was being dehumanized (Santiago 250). This reflection in the book reveals the discrimination against Puerto Ricans, it resonated with me as the book emphasizes how people could be degraded simply for their race. Mami’s treatment showed me the inequality that affected the characters and how it made them feel in the book. The flagrant mistreatment of Puerto Ricans simply for their race made me understand how we need to bring awareness to racial discrimination. Spreading awareness of this mistreatment can help uphold justice and improve the quality of life for victims of racial discrimination, as it deters any more discrimination from prejudiced individuals since their actions would be acknowledged and confronted in their community.
Injustices can also be seen everywhere in the world, an example is the global gender pay gap, where female workers are paid less than male workers from the same job. Based on research, it can be noted in studies, that women are paid 16% less than men on average by their employers with the same job. These disparities can be even more seen in certain fields like real estate, where female real estate agents are paid an astounding 60% less than male real estate agents (Haan). This pay gap highlights a serious form of social injustice as it punishes and discriminates against women for their gender. The disparity in pay can harm women not only financially but also emotionally since it causes them to not value their hard work as much as men. I see many women who are hard workers and it is immoral and injustice for them to be paid less than a man simply for their gender. Thus, to combat this issue, awareness about the gender pay gap should be spread, so women can be fully paid for their work by employers as more awareness being spread will force employers to receive backlash if they try to pay people less for their gender.
At the personal level, I have also seen people being discriminated against for their backgrounds. According to Wesley Cheung, “Accent discrimination is a universal yet socially accepted form of prejudice.” Wesley Cheung’s words reveal how people from diverse backgrounds could be discriminated against for uncontrollable traits like having a foreign accent, which leads to unjust treatment. I have personally witnessed people being discriminated against for their accents, an example is my Chinese mother. My mother is from a Chinese background and had a noticeable Chinese accent, which would lead to her being discriminated against. The discrimination against backgrounds could be shown from the reactions toward my mother’s accent. I often see people ignore her or try to put her down when she speaks. They try to discriminate against her for her accent, which is something she cannot control displaying social injustice. Background discrimination is also one of the least known forms of discrimination as it is very subtle and not spoken about. Hence, to conquer the social injustice of background discrimination, spreading awareness about relatively unknown discriminations of background as accents would prevent any more social injustice.
As a 10th grader, I can see all social injustices are preventable by spreading awareness as it would lead to a branching effect that would counteract it. Whether social injustice is discrimination of gender, race, or background. I trust in the certainty that if social justice awareness was spread more strongly, it would stop social injustices time after time, and eventually social injustice would be truly eradicated
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I think social injustice may never truly be eradicated, I think it’s a good thought mindset to think eventually it can be eradicated.
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Here, you talked about social justice and injustice, and how it affects many people, whether it be subtle things or straight-in-your-face things. One thing you mentioned was how women often get paid less than men. I feel like that this reflects on the idea people have that “men are better than women”. As a female myself, I find this idea sometimes affecting me. When I was younger, I thought I couldn’t do certain things just because I was a girl (mostly due to the fact that other boys would push that idea that they are better, even if they subtly implied it). Now, after you stated that they get paid less, you mentioned how you believe that there shouldn’t be a difference in payment just because of their gender which I full-heartedly agree with. Aside from that, I found myself agreeing with most, if not all of your views regarding the topic of social justice and injustice.
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I liked how inclusive this essay was to injustices in all senses. The variety in the examples and evidence made this article a lot more understandable and relatable.
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