The theme that seemed to bring the
readings and the video together for me this week, was inequality and the way it
has changed over the years but never gone away. This ever present inequality is
what makes social workers pursuit of social justice so important. Somehow
people have forgotten that human beings have differences but that those differences
should not make us unequal. As Therborn points out, there is a dissimilarity
between inequality and differences. While we can never change the existence of
human differences, we as social workers can fight to change inequality everyday
(whether it’s a futile fight or not). One example of the inequalities that
Therborn talks about is the inequality of life and death. There are multiple
factors that contribute to this inequality but socioeconomic status is an
important one. People who have little money or even those born into the wrong
country have very limited options when it comes to healthcare. Things like
basic checkups, emergency care, and dental are often times not available. As
someone who grew up on Medicaid and currently has no health insurance, this
inequality has affected my life personally and I can speak to how difficult it
is to take care of yourself when you don’t have the right financial support.
Just like I cannot change how much
money my family has, no one can change their race or their ethnicity and yet
this difference continues to cause inequality in a myriad of ways. Johnson and
Diaz both speak on privilege, specifically white privilege. Junot Diaz explained
that the colored population that he refers to as “New America,” represents a
large percent of the population and yet they were still being domineered by
white Americans.
I believe that white privilege has
never been as prominent in the twenty-first century as it is now, in Donald Trump’s
America. Since Trump has taken office he has made what Therborn called exclusion the new precedent. Trump has
taken away the rights of Middle Eastern people by denying them access to the
United States. This is especially detrimental to Middle Eastern refugees who
are seeking asylum in the United States. It seems that Trump is able to get
away with this by convincing certain Americans that we have to focus on American
issues and that the rest of the world can deal with their own problems. This is
the exact opposite of the social justice solutions that Johnson talks about. Johnson
talks about needing to see that privilege is everyone’s problem and that is supersedes
race, ethnicity, and SES. He goes on to say that when those with privilege
recognize that there is a problem and take responsibility for it that they can
change inequality. In America today that would require Donald Trump to take
responsibility for the inequality that he is causing, which I do not see
happening. In light of this, I would argue that it is more important then, for
those of us who value social justice to fight for it in ways that we deem
possible.
