Day 66: Social Justice

Went to the presentation on the Scandal of White Complicity in Hyper-incarceration (of Blacks and Browns) from the perspective of religion being a leading contributor. Now before you get uncomfortable and start trying to smooth that over, take some time to think about it and you just might agree that religion (the organization itself being a separate entity distinguished from any spiritual beliefs) along with its moral code have long been wielded to criminalize, imprison, disenfranchise, marginalize, and demonize the group(s) without true economic power. It has been so since the dawn of organized religion...our society is no different. Today we are just more PC about how we cook up our prejudices so they are easier to swallow when washed down with a swig of arrogance. Thing is that we are in a powerful vantage point to have conversations with both the minority about our contributions to the stereotypes and our role, responsibility, ability to influence perception; as well as with the majority about their creation of this condition, ongoing denial of culpability, and the systemic perpetration of injustices under the auspices of doing good. My law school BFF once said to me "there is no atrocity that can't be normalized through custom or tradition". Think about that for a minute and when you are sufficiently horrified, join me in the hope that one day soon, the alarming rate of minority incarceration will be relegated to the ranks of ridiculed history right along with Japanese interment camps, Jewish concentration camps, and Communist labor, death, and re-education camps because surely we can do better than this.