Non Systemic Testimonial Injustice By Miranda Fricker

When people say they “want justice”, what do they want? How can we achieve justice as a community?

The Justice system seeks to prevent crimes and to capture those who have committed crimes. But what are the causes of crime, maybe poverty, or greed, or is sometimes caused by the system. Is the risk worth the reward and is reward the worth risking the punishment? Power and influence is threaded deeply into the Criminal Justice System. Are all offenders caught and processed with the same demeanor and given the same punishment? The system needs to be impartial to all offenders regardless of the offender’s social position, job or yearly income. The general punishment for most crimes is incarceration in most states with a difference in duration to adjust per each crime. This is the deterrent against crime. This is what should be keeping

When I first heard about Sandra Bland’s story, my heart broke immediately. No, I did not know her personally but I had the thought that, that could have been me. On July 13, 2015 social media, the news and the internet were booming with information about the death of Sandra Bland. Sandra Bland was arrested on July 10, 2015 for a minor traffic violation in Hempstead, Texas while she was on the way to accept her new job at Prairie View A&M. Three days later Bland was found hanged in her jail cell in Waller County, Texas. The county coroner classified her death as a suicide, although many believe that she was murdered by one of the officers. Until this day we still question, “What really happened to Sandra Bland?” This incident has affected not only me but others as well.

Lives for Native Americans on reservations have never quite been easy. There are many struggles that most outsiders are completely oblivious about. In her book The Roundhouse, Louise Erdrich brings those problems to light. She gives her readers a feel of what it is like to be Native American by illustrating the struggles through the life of Joe, a 13-year-old Native American boy living on a North Dakota reservation. This book explores an avenue of advocacy against social injustices. The most observable plight Joe suffers is figuring out how to deal with the injustice acted against his mother, which has caused strife within his entire family and within

“Racism is a bad thing, you find it everywhere in the schools, the clubs and also in the streets.”

A Critical Analysis of The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

Imagine being a white lawyer in the 1930s and being asked to defend a black man who has been accused of raping a white woman. This is exactly what occurs in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, when Atticus Finch, a white lawyer, chooses to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, who has been accused of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell, in 1935. Many people may believe Atticus Finch was wrong to have defended Tom Robinson because it put him and his family in harm’s way. However, Atticus was right to have defended Tom Robinson because Atticus knows very well that all people must be treated equally. and Atticus has to set a good example for his children.

There comes a time, in most citizens’ lives when they must stand against their government to produce change. Change can only be acquired if people take the necessary actions for it to take place. Nelson Mandela was a historical revolutionist who helped his people in Africa, to revolt against the government, in order to bring about change. As a result, he was sentenced to prison for 27 years for trying to overthrow the government. Many revolutionist, such as Arundhati Roy and Martin Luther King Jr., explain in their essays how the role of the citizen is to stand against injustice, and how the government labels them as anti-national because of it.

A successful linguistic exchange requires the audience to both “understand the speaker’s words and understand what the speaker is doing with the words” (Dotson 237). A failure to accomplish this, unintentionally or intentionally, is epistemic violence. Furthermore, in testimonial quieting, the audience is failing to hear and understand what the speaker is saying in her testimony. Because the speaker cannot force the audience to hear her/him, there is no reciprocity between audience and speaker, thus, it’s a failed linguistic exchange. This pattern of failing to identify the speaker as a knower is more prevalent to certain groups of people who are systematically silenced (i.e. black women). This form of silencing is because of harmful reliable ignorance (pernicious ignorance) which may cause harms to one’s intellect, epistemic agency, and intellectual traditions of entire groups.

The term justice is used in some of America's most treasured and valued documents, from the Pledge of Allegiance, to the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence. Everyone wants to be treated justly whether it's in the courtroom or the local bar. Most people would feel confident giving a definition for justice, but would it be a definition we could universally agree to? Given that justice is a very common term, and something we all want, it's important to have a precise definition. For hundreds of years philosophers have argued, debated, and fought over this topic. Justice can clearly be defined as the intention to conform to truth and fairness. This is true justice.

Is there structural inequality in the criminal justice system? When we watch the news or read our newspapers, we can see that most of the criminals portrayed are of African American or Hispanic descent. Being a fan of true crime novels, they even depict more Black male criminals than White males. Are African American males committing more crimes than White males? What factors are involved for Blacks to be more involved in crime? How do African American stereotypes play a role with possible racial profiling from the policing force? Are Blacks treated fairly in the criminal justice system? After much research, I hope to answer these questions and determine if African Americans

Though the concept of social injustice is universal in nature, the experience varies with each person. Factors like a person’ race, or gender can further influence the severity of the injustice; victims caught in the overlap between discriminations often go unrecognized by the law and society. Many people recognize the names Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice as African Americans who were murdered by local police. But names like Michelle Cusseaux, Tanish Anderson, and Meagan Hockaday often receive less feedback even though they are also murdered African Americans. The only distinction between the sets of names is gender. Even within racial injustice, discrimination is present between genders as some cases get national

In Miranda Fricker’s article Testimonial Injustice, she highlights the significant effects for the connection of ethics and epistemology. Ethics is one of the philosophies’ branches that asks the question, “What is a good life or how to live a good life?” Epistemology is the theory of philosophy that ask the questions, “What do you know?” and “How do you know it?” Fricker basically, combines the two subjects at the matter and produced the concept of epistemic injustice. According to Fricker, epistemic injustices comes in the form of testimonial injustice.

Over the years in our country’s history it has been apparent that the idea of same sex marriages is becoming much more popular, however in most states there is still one thing stopping them. That one thing stopping two people from the pursuit of happiness which they desire is a social injustice. Social injustices are situations where a person or group of people is treated unfairly due to certain factors for example discrimination, prejudice, racism, heterosexism, sexism, and so forth. In the case of same sex marriages, the factor playing a major role in this social injustice is where most people believe that opposite sexes attract, but in the case of a same sex couple wanting to be married, this brings about many topics to be discussed by

Across all nations and cultures, the enduring pursuit of equality in life seems global and timeless. Some would believe that their own country has achieved a true democracy with no residual inequalities of which to speak, while others know they are at the other end of the spectrum, enduring unjust laws that should not be bestowed on any human. Through the course of history many countries have fought for that democracy and all the equality that it implies. While some believe they have reached that goal, others continue to fight for the most basic human rights, even in this time of enlightenment. The journey each country takes on its road to that place may vary by origination, length, severity and outcome, but the goal seems to be the