Social Injustice
In one of our Social Science classes, we’ve learned to accept that equality is difficult to achieve and accomplish, and that inequality is actually normal in society. However, injustice, is something that shouldn’t be considered as natural, and is greatly maintained by believing in beliefs that propagate it. There are 5 Tenets of Injustice:
Elitism is efficient.
Exclusion is necessary.
Greed is good.
Prejudice is natural.
Despair is inevitable.
And although we can collectively agree that injustice is never good, we still see it happening around us, even in big and powerful social institutions. They manage to inject these beliefs subtly, yet not many of us can be fooled.
Here are examples of pictures/articles promoting injustice:
1. Belo advertisement promoting colorism and elitism by implying that being lighter is correlated to you being more sosyal and having the luxurious or better things in life.
2. MMK, a popular show on ABS-CBN, using “Blackface” and hiring actors that are fair skinned and not of Aeta descent to represent Aeta characters.
3. Schools excluding children with disabilities, even when they promote themselves as being inclusive to all children, such as this article from Lebanon.
As I was looking around for these articles and images, I remembered just how many mistakes big companies made in creating advertisements in general. Usually, these mistakes were addressed as being racist or sexist, and these mistakes gave these big names some backlash. Then I remembered just how corrupt and greedy some Philippine government officials could be, and realised that injustice can really hit close to home. I thought about how privileged I actually was in some areas - there were many injustices done and directed towards other people that I certainly wasn’t completely affected by. For example, since I am not a farmer or a close relative of a farmer, I am not directly affected by the Rice Liberalisation Law that eases entry of imported rice and leads to the possible lowering of the rice prices of our own struggling Filipino farmers. However, even when I’m not directly affected, I could still detect the injustice in these issues and feel angry about it.
When that happens, that is my human agency speaking. I don’t necessarily have to be directly involved with certain forms of injustice - there’s just something in me that notices and realises that this is a form of injustice, and it doesn’t feel right. Speaking up for those who feel like they cannot speak up, and allowing myself to be heard is one way to utilise my human agency for the greater good. Even being vocal on social media about issues that I feel strongly about could help in informing other people who are not aware of these issues. Our thoughts just remain thoughts if we do not do something about it, and in this day and age, I think that it’s about time that we call out injustices that we are exposed to everyday.

















