Have you witnessed an Injustice?

 

  This week's topic that we are discussing is Injustice. An injustice can go from being racist to someone to just calling someone out on their attire in a classroom. These all have to with how the idea of oppression is evolving and ever changing. When we think we have conquered an injustice, it has just changed its head so its more complicated than it was before. For example, when we look at an injustice like racial oppression, there can be deeper meanings to it. Racial oppression goes back to slavery because white people of the time put down people who are different than them. This idea of putting down people who look different still reigns true today in many different ways.
     I have personally only seen one injustice and it was when I was in high school. One of my best friends at the time was gay, and every year we took part in the day of silence in support of people who had died because of their sexual orientation. My senior year, there was a group of guys who came up to him and started teasing him because he was gay. He was always the type of person to stand up for himself especially when people put him down, which is one of the things I admire most about him. On this particular day, he did not have that ability. We kept our silence and he stood there and took it. I felt awful, once our silence was broken I happened to get the young men's names and I went straight to the principal with the matter, because my high school had a "zero tolerance bullying policy", which I still don't think those exist but that is besides the point. After a few days, I went back to see if anything had been done about the incident. And to my surprise, not a single thing had been done. This was an injustice to one of my friends and every other person who identified within the LGBTQ community within my school.
     This still angers me to this day, if I had reacted differently I personally would have broken my silence and handled the situation. If nothing still hadn't been done, I would have gone to the Superintendent with the incident hoping that something would have happened. I saw this as an injustice but I wasn't aware of what I could do at the time because I did not have the knowledge base to do such things. Now that I have that knowledge base I can apply what I know to help others to be able to stand up for themselves and see these types of injustices end.