Civil Rights Violations and Segregation Laws As The Most Pressing Social Justice Issue
The most pressing concern for any community is undoubtedly civil rights violations and the laws that support further segregation of society based on the differences in race, sex, ethnicity, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation. Every nation had to develop its own respective ways of dealing with this issue over the centuries. However, "built on the genocide of the Native American and the enslavement of the African American", as Mamdani pointed out in his essay, America still tries to "memorialize other peoples’ crimes and to forget its own – to seek a high moral ground as a pretext to ignore real issues" (Mamdani 2004).
This inequality is reflected in both ethical and political aspects of our lives. Its moral ramifications derive from everyday bigotry – from racism, sexism, homophobia, misogyny and rape culture. It starts with simple school bullying only to later develop into something scarier and institutionalized. Discrimination comes a terrifyingly short way from "dog whistle" politics and slurs to hate crimes, gun violence, religious fanaticism, and genocide. Politically, various human rights discriminations often serve as the basis for an entire legislation system to be adopted. As a result, people are force-fed an unconstitutional wage gap between sexes, immigration bans, women denied access to reproductive healthcare, police brutality, the biased judicial system and mass people of color incarcerations (Gutiérrez 24). According to Kimmel, the invisibility of underprivileged is political (Kimmel 2017).
This primeval fear of unknown is still rooted deep within the human core. It is only logical to presume that is what lays at the beginning of any socio-economic polarization. Intolerance, therefore, could be the primal reason for the unequal distribution of resources.
Works Cited
Gutiérrez, Lorraine. "The Top 5 Social Justice Issues Facing Social Workers Today:
Celebrating Diversity". Social Work Today. Vol. 7, No. 2, 2007, p. 24.
http://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/marapr2007p24.shtml
Accessed 14 May 2017.
Kimmel, Michael. "Introduction: Toward a Sociology of the Superordinate". Privilege: A
Reader (4th edition). Westview Press, 2017.
https://westviewpress.com/sample-privilege/ Accessed 14 May 2017.
Mamdani, Mahmood. "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of
Terror". Social Science Research Council Essays. 2004
http://essays.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/mamdani.htm Accessed 14 May …
