DTC social justice Final

Haley Mollotte

DTC 101

5/5/2021

Professor Manis

Social justice paper

The subject of Social justice is not something we are raised getting burned in our brain like the times table in grade school. It is something we are taught but easily forget later on. Social justice is not a definition on google It is the practice for equal rights for everyone, including race, gender, wealth, and freedom to every right we have. Social Justice is something we as a society have to practice frequently because the more, we do, the more awareness we raise, the better our society will become. What does social justice mean to you?

I know there are many people and groups that have taken the right steps towards social justice but one big organization that I am very familiar with is that had taken the right steps towards social justice is the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM). This movement is based off of race equality, there has been many sad incidents that happened in 2020 which brought light to the BLM movement and they did a great job of standing up for themselves and fighting for not only social justice but racial justice to. The BLM movement had rallies and walk-throughs in town with signs and tried to make themselves heard which worked. Since then, it has woken a lot of people up about social justice and many websites were created to help the organizations and many websites were put out to educate people that needed educated about it. BLM movement brought to light 2 different murders from police brutality that happened which was Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. In the reading “Arrest Cops who killed Breonna Taylor” they talked about how that phrase has “The power and the peril of a catchphrase” and I agree, The Black Lives Matter movement has taught me to say their names and post rallies and make a change. In week one of our readings, we read a “Black Lives Matter statement” and the first sentence stated, “DTC affirms this universal truth, and stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.” It also stated “We are committed to revealing, challenging, and changing the inherent bigotry, racist structures, and biased systems (technological and otherwise) that uphold oppressive frameworks in our classrooms, labs, studios, and in the core of our program documents, policies, and procedures. Hate and racism have no place in the dialogue we foster and the world we seek to build.” By just reading this it shows that even schools and professors were so impacted by BLM and we pledged to make a change.

I think if anything that our society should we proud of this past year should has well we can make ourselves heard through social media. Everything that 9 have seen social media go recently has helped a lot of people get their justice and helps them have a voice. With I know there is a totally different side to social media that can be super negative and hateful, and most of us get pulled into that and that can hurt the message behind certain stuff. However, I do not think any big organizations would have done so well without technology. One article we read in class is “How Black Lives Matter uses social media to fight the power.” And it states “If you’re a civil rights activist in 2015 and you need to get some new out, your first move is to choose a platform. If you want to post a video of a protest or a violent arrest, you put it up on Vine, Instagram or Periscope.” While reading that I 100% agree with them. People do not realize how much power they hold with technology or social media and I do not think they know how much an impact they have.

Throughout this semester my thinking has evolved a lot and I think most of it is being open minded and listening to different views. We have learned about so many different things and I think many of them will help me in my future and all of them taught me something different. The book we read “Born a Crime” talked about how Noah grew up in South Africa and he was the first mixed kid that was born in his time with his mom being black and his dad being white. During this time, it was illegal to do so, so it was hard for Noah to live an actual life. Noah had to live at a place until he got whiter. Hearing that and what Noah and his family had to go through makes me sad that they would stop someone from living their life because of their skin tone. And the law tired to make Noah feel like a mistake and not a place for him here just because he was mixed. This book will forever impact me because I am mixed and I cant imagine living in those times as a mixed women.

Social Justice is very important, and it is up to us to either make it known for our future kids and never let it get as bad as it was in 2020 or just sit back and forget to preach to out kids how important social justice is and how badly it needs to be taught and burned into our brains. Make society better NOW and educated yourself and others as much as you can. This course has educated me so much about the power of technology and bias and BLM and a bunch of other stuff and I’m forever thankful for that and now we all can help educate others. One take away I have learned to is to not just believe everything you see on the internet and always look at both sides because my social media feed might be bias.

Work Cited:

Washington state University. (n.d.). https://dtc.wsu.edu/dtc-black-lives-matter-statement/.

Stephen, B. (2020, October 14). How Black Lives Matter Uses Social Media to Fight the Power. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2015/10/how-black-lives-matter-uses-social-media-to-fight-the-power/.

Admin. (2020, August 13). "Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor": The power and the peril of a catchphrase. ICMGLT. https://icmglt.org/arrest-the-cops-who-killed-breonna-taylor-the-power-and-the-peril-of-a-catchphrase/.

Noah, T. (2020). Born a crime stories from a South African childhood. Cornelsen.