Social Justice: The Black Lives Matter Movement
In our society, social justice is becoming a lot more important and valuable. Social justice has inspired holidays, started movements, and even changing the way that people view social issues. However, as we get further into the future, social justice has begun to earn a bad name. A nickname has even been created for the most radical supporters of social justice: Social Justice Warriors (or SJWs). People are beginning to get sick of what modern social justice is doing; believing that everyone in our society already has equal opportunities to accomplish certain tasks. Social Justice has changed over the years for the worse, triggering (joke completely intended) angry modern feminists and nonsensical movements.
Social Justice has changed over …show more content…
the past few years. Social Justice is the belief that every single person should have an equal opportunity and shot at careers, rights, and privileges no matter your race, age, gender, or religion. The term social justice seems fairly new, but it really is based off of the golden rule. The first time the term ¨social justice¨ was used was by D’Azeglio during the Industrial Revolution (Everett). Social justice really took off when some very influential people used the concept of social justice in a peaceful manner. Many famous people who worked for social Justice were Martin Luther King Jr., the man who fought against racial discrimination and segregation in Alabama, Gandhi, a peace activist from India, Nelson Mandela, the South African president, Cesar Chavez, an American labor leader who helped Latino Americans to get jobs, and Vandana Shiva, an Indian environmentalist who believed in biodiversity (Everett). These movements really helped to add steam to social justice movements and let other social groups speak up. For example, women. First wave feminists were concerned with achieving basic political rights. The main right that these women were fighting for was the right to vote. It was also known as the age of reason and was mainly driven by women such as Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote books about feminism and how men and women needed equal rights. The second wave, which started in the 1960s, wanted to focus on achieving ALL political and civil rights. This movement took place with the civil rights movement and was driven by women such as Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique. Social justice has since inspired holidays for their achievements and goals. In 2007, the United States of America declared February 20 the World Day of Social Justice. On this holiday, people in the U.S. would try to reach their goals of achieving social equality. This includes ending extreme poverty, slowing down the pollution rate, and aiding newly founded countries so that everyone can have an equal shot (Everett). Since then, social justice has rapidly changed from a peaceful strive to live in a better society to a more less peaceful or useful movement. The third and current wave of feminists began talking about issues in the 1990s and trying to become more inclusive to women of separate minorities. Third wave feminists were driven by women such as Rebecca Walker. In 2017 however, an argument is starting to sprout up. Do we need feminism anymore. Women complain that sexism is alive and well in our country while others say that men and women have equal rights and feminists are just trying really hard to look for issues (Gale). Speaking of third wave feminists, some of the choices they make do not make much sense. As of now in 2017, men and women have equal rights. Some feminists have gone pretty far to say some pretty strange things. A female author wrote an interesting book. “In it, she argues that women will only achieve truly equal status as men in society when they are freed from what she considers to be the biological tyranny of procreation. Because only women can bear children, she argues, they will always be relegated to secondary status. Firestone envisions a future where science advances to the point of artificial wombs and where the responsibility of raising children is shared by all” (Gale). Actually, feminists are concerned with other issues concerning the female body and their womb, namely abortion. “Since the legalization of abortion in 1973, over 58 million unborn children have been killed, more than the entire population of Spain. That's 155 babies per hour. About 1 every 24 seconds”. Some major concerns that people have with abortion include the following examples. Life begins as soon as a baby is conceived. Just because it hasn’t developed completely doesn’t mean that it isn’t a life form. Abortion goes against our human instincts to protect each other. Killing an innocent baby is completely unnatural. Abortion is also unsafe. Legal abortion has killed 347 women since 1973 and has raised the chance of breast cancer in women who have aborted a child by 50% compared to women who didn’t. Abortion also breaks one of the most basic and important bonds in life: Mother to child. This rips a giant hole in what should be a happy family. Abortion claims to be pro choice, but really it has been 44 years of murder that’s on par with the actions of Hitler and Stalin since the Roe v. Wade case. Also, you have to think about the emotions of an abortionist. How could you go through life knowing that your job is to kill babies according to the law? (TFP Student Action). Feminists have a slogan about abortion. The saying goes “My body, my choice.” People say in response that it isn’t your body and is in fact, another body growing inside of you. There are plenty of other better actions to take instead of taking the life of an innocent child. Feminism has been around for a long time, but social justice has started more recent movements that seem nonsensical.
An example of one of these movements is the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM). The movement began when an African American man was shot by a policeman. Other African Americans gathered to protest police brutality against blacks “peacefully.” Some people will tell you that you are allowed to support the BLM movement along with supporting the lives of the police. However, other sources say otherwise. You are not capable of supporting the Black Lives Matter and the Blue Lives Matter movements at the same time (Riddell). “This month, Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn and other Republican senators introduced the Back the Blue Act, which would increase penalties against violent criminals who deliberately target police” (Riddell). “Shooting deaths of law-enforcement have spiked 78 percent in the first half of this year, including a 300 percent increase in ambush-style killings. And Friday, an officer was fatally shot and another was injured in San Diego as they tried to make a routine stop” (Riddell). These violent crimes are suspected to be related with Black Lives Matter. At the same time, the people who support Black Lives matter have not been able to forgive the police brutality of the past and can’t stop thinking of the large amounts of tear gas in the streets, black men getting more jail time, and in general just more police brutality toward their race. Ms. Jackson, a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, said in an email that crimes against police aren’t hate crimes and that saying that blue lives matter is offensive to the people who fought so hard for their rights. “‘Here’s the problem: being a police officer is an occupation, not an identity. This is a slap in the face to the decades of fighting advocates have done to procure hate crime protections for marginalized groups, and as we’ve seen in recent protests, police are known to
embellish their claims of confrontation with Black folks’” (Riddell). While this movement is violent, it does seem to want to work for a good cause. However, another movement endorced by the SJWs in the USA does not do this and in fact promotes an unhealthy lifestyle. This of course would be the “Fat Acceptance” movement. “Sally E. Smith is the executive director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, a Sacramento, California, organization that works to reduce discrimination against obese people. In the following viewpoint, Smith argues that the health risks of obesity have been exaggerated and that attempts at weight loss, including diets and drug treatments, are usually unsuccessful and are often medically dangerous. Rather than attempting to make obese people thin, she asserts, researchers should focus on finding ways to maintain and improve their health” (Smith). The weight loss industry is beginning to grow more and more. It started all the way back in the 19th century and has only gotten stronger up until today. Many companies that are trying to sell weight loss products to overweight people such as pills, syrups, diet plans, and specific food items in a condescending and bias fashion. Many diet plans claim to be permanent, but after a few months or years of losing weight, the weight comes back. This also goes for the different types of medicines which are claimed to work permanently but then wear off incredibly fast. The government has only helped stop these problems as late as the 1990s and even then still promote a healthy diet to the people of America, making obese people lose self esteem (Smith). “As evidence, he points to the 1985 National Institutes of Health (NIH) consensus conference, which not only proclaimed obesity a "killer disease," but arbitrarily redefined it in such a way as to affect millions more Americans” (Smith). Despite all of this, these weight loss companies make about 30 billion dollars revenue by making obese people feel bad for not trying hard enough and don’t have any self control. This lowers obese people's’ self esteem and makes them feel depressed (Smith). In conclusion, social justice has made multiple Americans upset with seemingly bias issues. The third wave feminists, the weird social movements, and just the overall shift of focus in the social justice community combined makes people less interested in an issue that actually needs attention. The thing is that social justice has been around for so long and has indeed helped our society to become more aware of issues and fix them, but the modern SJWs have corrupted the meaning of the word. Social justice can help our society again by making rational arguments about a topic that is truly important. Social justice is important to our society; but the modern interpretation of the word will just tear us apart instead of pulling us together.
Social Justice has changed over …show more content…
the past few years. Social Justice is the belief that every single person should have an equal opportunity and shot at careers, rights, and privileges no matter your race, age, gender, or religion. The term social justice seems fairly new, but it really is based off of the golden rule. The first time the term ¨social justice¨ was used was by D’Azeglio during the Industrial Revolution (Everett). Social justice really took off when some very influential people used the concept of social justice in a peaceful manner. Many famous people who worked for social Justice were Martin Luther King Jr., the man who fought against racial discrimination and segregation in Alabama, Gandhi, a peace activist from India, Nelson Mandela, the South African president, Cesar Chavez, an American labor leader who helped Latino Americans to get jobs, and Vandana Shiva, an Indian environmentalist who believed in biodiversity (Everett). These movements really helped to add steam to social justice movements and let other social groups speak up. For example, women. First wave feminists were concerned with achieving basic political rights. The main right that these women were fighting for was the right to vote. It was also known as the age of reason and was mainly driven by women such as Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote books about feminism and how men and women needed equal rights. The second wave, which started in the 1960s, wanted to focus on achieving ALL political and civil rights. This movement took place with the civil rights movement and was driven by women such as Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique. Social justice has since inspired holidays for their achievements and goals. In 2007, the United States of America declared February 20 the World Day of Social Justice. On this holiday, people in the U.S. would try to reach their goals of achieving social equality. This includes ending extreme poverty, slowing down the pollution rate, and aiding newly founded countries so that everyone can have an equal shot (Everett). Since then, social justice has rapidly changed from a peaceful strive to live in a better society to a more less peaceful or useful movement. The third and current wave of feminists began talking about issues in the 1990s and trying to become more inclusive to women of separate minorities. Third wave feminists were driven by women such as Rebecca Walker. In 2017 however, an argument is starting to sprout up. Do we need feminism anymore. Women complain that sexism is alive and well in our country while others say that men and women have equal rights and feminists are just trying really hard to look for issues (Gale). Speaking of third wave feminists, some of the choices they make do not make much sense. As of now in 2017, men and women have equal rights. Some feminists have gone pretty far to say some pretty strange things. A female author wrote an interesting book. “In it, she argues that women will only achieve truly equal status as men in society when they are freed from what she considers to be the biological tyranny of procreation. Because only women can bear children, she argues, they will always be relegated to secondary status. Firestone envisions a future where science advances to the point of artificial wombs and where the responsibility of raising children is shared by all” (Gale). Actually, feminists are concerned with other issues concerning the female body and their womb, namely abortion. “Since the legalization of abortion in 1973, over 58 million unborn children have been killed, more than the entire population of Spain. That's 155 babies per hour. About 1 every 24 seconds”. Some major concerns that people have with abortion include the following examples. Life begins as soon as a baby is conceived. Just because it hasn’t developed completely doesn’t mean that it isn’t a life form. Abortion goes against our human instincts to protect each other. Killing an innocent baby is completely unnatural. Abortion is also unsafe. Legal abortion has killed 347 women since 1973 and has raised the chance of breast cancer in women who have aborted a child by 50% compared to women who didn’t. Abortion also breaks one of the most basic and important bonds in life: Mother to child. This rips a giant hole in what should be a happy family. Abortion claims to be pro choice, but really it has been 44 years of murder that’s on par with the actions of Hitler and Stalin since the Roe v. Wade case. Also, you have to think about the emotions of an abortionist. How could you go through life knowing that your job is to kill babies according to the law? (TFP Student Action). Feminists have a slogan about abortion. The saying goes “My body, my choice.” People say in response that it isn’t your body and is in fact, another body growing inside of you. There are plenty of other better actions to take instead of taking the life of an innocent child. Feminism has been around for a long time, but social justice has started more recent movements that seem nonsensical.
An example of one of these movements is the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM). The movement began when an African American man was shot by a policeman. Other African Americans gathered to protest police brutality against blacks “peacefully.” Some people will tell you that you are allowed to support the BLM movement along with supporting the lives of the police. However, other sources say otherwise. You are not capable of supporting the Black Lives Matter and the Blue Lives Matter movements at the same time (Riddell). “This month, Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn and other Republican senators introduced the Back the Blue Act, which would increase penalties against violent criminals who deliberately target police” (Riddell). “Shooting deaths of law-enforcement have spiked 78 percent in the first half of this year, including a 300 percent increase in ambush-style killings. And Friday, an officer was fatally shot and another was injured in San Diego as they tried to make a routine stop” (Riddell). These violent crimes are suspected to be related with Black Lives Matter. At the same time, the people who support Black Lives matter have not been able to forgive the police brutality of the past and can’t stop thinking of the large amounts of tear gas in the streets, black men getting more jail time, and in general just more police brutality toward their race. Ms. Jackson, a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, said in an email that crimes against police aren’t hate crimes and that saying that blue lives matter is offensive to the people who fought so hard for their rights. “‘Here’s the problem: being a police officer is an occupation, not an identity. This is a slap in the face to the decades of fighting advocates have done to procure hate crime protections for marginalized groups, and as we’ve seen in recent protests, police are known to
embellish their claims of confrontation with Black folks’” (Riddell). While this movement is violent, it does seem to want to work for a good cause. However, another movement endorced by the SJWs in the USA does not do this and in fact promotes an unhealthy lifestyle. This of course would be the “Fat Acceptance” movement. “Sally E. Smith is the executive director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, a Sacramento, California, organization that works to reduce discrimination against obese people. In the following viewpoint, Smith argues that the health risks of obesity have been exaggerated and that attempts at weight loss, including diets and drug treatments, are usually unsuccessful and are often medically dangerous. Rather than attempting to make obese people thin, she asserts, researchers should focus on finding ways to maintain and improve their health” (Smith). The weight loss industry is beginning to grow more and more. It started all the way back in the 19th century and has only gotten stronger up until today. Many companies that are trying to sell weight loss products to overweight people such as pills, syrups, diet plans, and specific food items in a condescending and bias fashion. Many diet plans claim to be permanent, but after a few months or years of losing weight, the weight comes back. This also goes for the different types of medicines which are claimed to work permanently but then wear off incredibly fast. The government has only helped stop these problems as late as the 1990s and even then still promote a healthy diet to the people of America, making obese people lose self esteem (Smith). “As evidence, he points to the 1985 National Institutes of Health (NIH) consensus conference, which not only proclaimed obesity a "killer disease," but arbitrarily redefined it in such a way as to affect millions more Americans” (Smith). Despite all of this, these weight loss companies make about 30 billion dollars revenue by making obese people feel bad for not trying hard enough and don’t have any self control. This lowers obese people's’ self esteem and makes them feel depressed (Smith). In conclusion, social justice has made multiple Americans upset with seemingly bias issues. The third wave feminists, the weird social movements, and just the overall shift of focus in the social justice community combined makes people less interested in an issue that actually needs attention. The thing is that social justice has been around for so long and has indeed helped our society to become more aware of issues and fix them, but the modern SJWs have corrupted the meaning of the word. Social justice can help our society again by making rational arguments about a topic that is truly important. Social justice is important to our society; but the modern interpretation of the word will just tear us apart instead of pulling us together.