Social Justice And Diversity Research Paper

Ryan Glover
4/15/2010
Social Justice and Diversity
Final Research Paper

If you ask a lot of people to define social justice you’re going to get many different definitions. Personal experiences and individual views on society play a major role in our interpretation of social justice issues. A person’s take on a particular issue may vary but the overall idea of social justice stays the same. Social justice is concerned with equal rights, in all aspects of society. The poorest to the wealthiest people in the world should all have equal opportunities. What they make of the opportunities given is a completely different story, but they still need to be readily available. Education and healthcare are just two examples of services that
Initially the black men were ok with their “unconventional” gender roles created by white society. Whites begin to critique black family structure and begin to question the black man’s masculinity. “White social critics looking at black life have continually emphasized the notion that black men were symbolically castrated because black women were often the primary breadwinners.”(P. 9) this takes a toll on the black man and he begins to become very self-conscious about his masculinity. As a result of this many black men go to fight in the military as a way to regain their patriarchal status. The exploitation of black labor effected black men involvement in the military. It was purposely done this way by whites. During the civil rights era “black men declared that they were connected to white men, brothers under the skin, bound by masculinity, by a shared allegiance to patriarchy.”(P14) With the civil rights movement black men began to become obsessed with the idea of patriarchal masculinity. It was at this point where black men started to move the blame from white men to black women. Here is where black gender roles began to look more like white gender
In Jeff Chang’s Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation it stated, “Regan’s recession had bloated unemployment levels to the highest since the Great Depression-30 million searching for work. The official black unemployment rate hit 22 percent. Poverty rates were soaring to” (Chang 177). “It was much worse for young people. One estimate was that only 1 in 5 New York City teens had a job, only 1 in 10 African Americans, the lowest ratios of youth employment in the country” (Chang 178). The only light shinning from the darkness Regan and deindustrialization created was the development of hip-hop. The developments of hip hop in the late 1970’s to early 1980’s led to young black men having taken on a new identity. Black men now had a means to express themselves and the ability to earn money for something they enjoyed doing. It started off with graffiti, break dancing and DJ’s and as a result of the multiplier affects it spread to a number of different industries. Young black men found a way to assert themselves into their communities and in society on their own terms. The bigger hip-hop became, the more money they earned, and the more confident black men found themselves. As they began to earn money, they were once again able to