A Personal View of the Real Social Justice
On dictionary.com, the definition for social justice is, “the distribution of advantages and disadvantages within a society”. I agree that this is true although it seems to be quite vague. I think social justice means everyone has the right to say what they believe even if they are the only one thinking that way. I also think that social justice means everyone should learn about issues going on around them or directly affecting them. All of these ideas are what I think social justice is about.
I didn’t really know a lot about the creating alliances group before the presentation 2 weeks ago. I did have the weekend to think about the groups and which group I would be most interested in. I chose creating alliances for a few reasons.
First, I talked to Aaron Bernstein, a senior, about community connections last year. He told me that he was in the creating alliances group and that it was fun, interesting, and a popular topic today. He said that he learned a lot and that Mr. Bigelow was a great leader to have. Since Aaron made the group sound so interesting, I was pretty heavily persuaded. Although there were a few other groups I was interested in so I had to think of at least one other reason to pick the group.
My second reason for choosing creating alliances was actually because of my schedule this year. My 9th & 10th grade history teacher was Mr. Van Natter. Because I had him for 4 semesters, I got to know him very well. This year I have Mr. Bigelow 1st semester. Since I will only have him for a few months, I thought that community connections would be an additional way to get to know him better. After I thought about this I was fully convinced that creating alliances would be the best choice for the year.
Although I had decided on which group I wanted to be in, I forgot to think about the most important reason for picking a group, the topic being discussed. I quickly excluded a few of the groups because of their topics but this was the only one that I didn’t really think about the topic at all. I think this is because I knew it is a topic that is currently being debated in politics in many different ways; although, I feel very comfortable with the GLBT community. When I was younger, my favorite store was on the edge of boys town, and my favorite restaurant was in boys town. I spent a lot of time and felt very comfortable being there.
Almost every year my parents took me to the gay pride parade, and they looked like they were comfortable so I felt comfortable. After many years of being around gay people, I didn’t really think that they were different in any way. I also have a few openly gay family friends so it seems very normal to see gay people. I think the reason that I didn’t really think about the creating alliances topic was because I didn’t feel like it would be uncomfortable.
