Philosophy by Betzy Rodriguez
“Social justice,” I've been hearing those words for the last four years already. Before I entered high school, I didn't have the understanding of what social justice meant, nor did I realize how much unfairness there was in our community. Now that I'm older, I have a broader understanding of what social justice means. Over the course of the years I've experienced many injustices. For example, our school would not have been built if it wasn't for the hunger strikers. They had to fight for justice. They wanted a school that showed students how to fight for social justice. The world would be perfect if we had social justice, but we don't all get social justice. From slavery to racial discrimination, there's always been a race that is considered "superior" from the other races. The obstacles we struggle with in our minority community range from the need for parks, schools, and even grocery stores. Many people don't have high expectations from residents of Little Village, Chicago. Throughout history people have fought for social justice. In the 1960's the Black's fought for equal rights. Some African-Americans even boycotted segregated buses and won for integration. Yet, there is still a lot of racism and prejudice. There have been many historical figures that have fought for social justice using a variety of different techniques. In my sophomore year of high school I experienced a sit-in because Chicago Public Schools cut teaching positions, and eliminated many of our AP classes. As students we protested to get our AP classes back. I never thought I would have experienced something like this, but I'm glad I did. I never thought that I would have had to fight for something I wanted. I thought that it was the responsibility of other people. Now I know that if you want justice, you have to fight for social justice. When I get older I would like to be a pediatrician because I have experienced how some doctors don't do their job and since we are minorities. I believe that my issue of self image and the media is connected to social justice because I think that a lot of people believe they have to look a certain way to be liked. The media targets teens. Self image is very important for people, especially for teens. I think that this issue should be addressed because many people are affected psychologically. |
My Philosophy by Isabelle Arce
I have heard the words Social Justice a million times in the last four years. Social Justice can have many different meanings to people based on what they believe. To me Social Justice means being able to have the right to something but not taking advantage of anyone or anything. What I mean by not taking advantage of anyone is that if there is justice don’t try saying it’s injustice. Social Justice is stepping up from our mistakes and fixing them before causing any kind of harm. Social Justice means to consider other people when an injustice has happened. There are a lot of injustices in the world, to some people it doesn’t seem as if they are injustices; we need to act upon those injustices. Before, Social Justice to me was just a regular school. I didn’t find any meaning to the words and to me thats one obstacle we face while struggling to achieve Social Justice. Not knowing what social justice means can cause harm because we won’t know when an injustice has occurred and people would take advantage of that. We need to know when something is wrong in order to fight back. Last year, when I was a junior, seniors stepped up because their AP classes were being taken away, it was an injustice and we understood which is why everyone fought to get the AP classes back. A lot of people struggle for social justice because they don’t know when to fight back because they don’t know what is injustice or what social justice. We need to let others know what it is in order to fight back and support others. My vision for struggle in social justice is that not everyone knows when something is wrong. People are so use to seeing injustices that they have come to believe that that’s the way things around the world should be. People are scared to stand up for injustices that when they do it’s abnormal to some people. I imagine myself contributing to the vision for struggle by helping teens know that it’s not about how you look on the outside. It’s the inside that counts. You are beautiful if you are a nice person, you are beautiful if you respect people, you are beautiful if you have a nice personality. It’s not about how you look on the outside, it’s not about what body type you have, and teenagers should be aware of these kind of things. Teenagers should be aware of what are some negative effects of self-image. My chosen issue which is self-image connects to social justice because students define self-image as body image and we let people or the media influence us to the way we should look. Teens are mostly affected by this because if you see something on the television or you see something on a magazine they start feeling as if they aren’t beautiful, they start seeing themselves and start getting a negative body image of themselves. It takes away a person’s self-worth, which makes this a social justice issue. |