Social Justice

Rocket To The Moon

2011-11-14T10:56:00.000-08:00

Romare Bearden was a famous African American artist, and this is one of his well known collages "Rocket To The Moon". It is a collage that depicts people living in the slums, at first it looks like many have happy faces and it looks like they are having fun. But then you can see the grim worried faces of the other people in the collage. And at the top, almost like it should not be there, you see a rocket ship. What this collage represents is how the country, in the past, spent all of its efforts into advances in technology and warfare. All the while leaving the problems the people of society faces behind.

Is it racist?

2011-11-14T10:24:00.000-08:00

Now Tosh.0 isn't exactly high brow comedy, but it does surprisingly have a plethora of material related to social justice. Here is a link to one that I did not believe was a real advertisement, for an election no less!

http://tosh.comedycentral.com/video-clips/is-it-racist----alabama-political-ad

(Honorable mention) The Irack and Iran. Just a funny MadTV satire on President Bush and his actions and decisions. Here is a link to the video on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw2nkoGLhrE

Death sentence can be swayed by race

2011-11-14T10:18:00.000-08:00

The topic of the death penalty is something that leads to a lot of heated debates and questions of ethics. One statement posed in this article http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/opinion/09dow.html, is that the decision to use the death penalty is swayed by race. This article gives stats and previous examples of court decisions that show a long standing trend of colored people receiving far more death sentences than their white counterparts who commit the same crimes. The fact that, when it comes to something as serious as the death sentence, the current American justice system is biased can be a scary thought. Rightfully so, nothing else could show how broken the system is, at least in the court decisions on using the death penalty, if this proved to be true.

Having taken criminal justice classes in the past, this topic has actually been brought up quite a bit. And so far, it would seem that what is stated in the article is the truth. To not see the clear relation between the color of skin and the sentence given (of death) and to brush it off as mere coincidence seems like blatant ignorance. However, of course people cannot now say that they have proved the courts to be broken, as that can lead to quite a bit of turmoil, but they cannot let this “trend” to continue.

No patience for a stutterer

2011-11-14T09:40:00.000-08:00

In this article http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/education/11stutter.html, a 16 year old student at the County College of Morris, had been repeatedly discouraged from speaking in class by the teacher. Phillip Garber Jr. who had been attending Ms. Snyder’s class, had first received an e-mail from the teacher stating that he ask his questions before or after class to save the other students time, after she realized that he stuttered. If this was the extent of the teacher’s discouragements, it could be seen as somewhat understandable, extremely rude but still understandable.

However, later she tells Philip “I believe it would be better for everyone if you kept a sheet of paper on your desk and wrote down the answers.” Philip’s treatment gets even worse as Ms. Snyder states that “Your (Philips) speaking is disruptive”. It gets to the point when the teacher completely ignores and refuses to interact with Philip. Philip and other students comment on how Philip would hold his hand up the entire class, with the teacher ignoring him.

This is a clear example of intolerance for a student’s disability. For a teacher at a college to behave in this manner is unacceptable, it would be understandable if this happened to a student that was purposefully disturbing the class, but not for someone with a speech disorder. Philip does however state that up until that point in his life, he had never been bullied or discriminated against for stuttering, which can show that people are becoming much more aware and accepting of these conditions.