Social Justice Issues Surrounding Discrimination

Since the time of federation the Aboriginal people have been fighting for their rights through protests, strikes and the notorious ‘day of mourning’. However, over the last century the Australian federal government has generated policies which manage and restrained that of the Aboriginal people’s rights, citizenships and general protection. The Australian government policy that has had the most significant impact on indigenous Australians is the assimilation policy. The reasons behind this include the influences that the stolen generation has had on the indigenous Australians, their relegated rights and their entitlement to vote and the impact that the policy has had on the indigenous people of Australia.

The rights and freedoms of Aboriginals have improved drastically since 1945 with many changes to government policy, cultural views and legal rules to bring about a change from oppression to equality. Unfortunately on the other hand, some rights and freedoms have not improved at all or have even worsened.

“However, Aboriginal people still struggle for more than words on paper. They require the enactment of visible justice, where aboriginal people have a pride of place and heritage that can be shared as well as respected.” (king, 2010, p.216).

When European colonists settled in Australia they treated the Aboriginal people extremely different to that of their fellow white men. The Aboriginals were not seen as first class citizens through the European eye and as a result were victims of extreme oppressions and had nearly no rights or freedoms. Since then Aboriginal people have fought to be treated equally to the white men through various different ways. I will discuss the previous struggles faced by the Aboriginals, the Australian strife for equality and finally the level of success and degree of rights and freedoms given to Aboriginals in modern Australia.

In 1901 when the Constitution was first written, Aboriginals were mentioned in it twice and Torres Strait Islander not at all. The federal government could not make laws for Aboriginals in section 57 of the Constitution. Also, Aboriginals were not counted in the Census in Section 127 of the Constitution. Life was very difficult for Aboriginals for several decades because of these two sections.

The referendum campaign effectively focused public attention on the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians were second class citizens with all sorts of limitations - legislative and social - on their lives. This decade-long campaign to change the Constitution came to symbolise the broader struggle for justice being fought during these years. Activists presented the case for a Commonwealth government

On 27th may 1967, Australians voted in one of the most vital referenda in the nation’s history. The 1967 referendum is one of the many important key developments in aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples struggles for rights and freedoms .This is referred as the 1967 referendum which means a vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to change the constitution and is about Australians voting significantly to change the Australian Constitution. Requirements which

The inherent malleability of section 51(xxvi) of the Constitution, also known as the ‘race power’, suggests the continuing historical and institutional racism against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. To overcome discriminatory laws to be passed against Indigenous Australians and to allow the advancement of their situation, it is necessary to amend the race power. This article will propose the amendment of s 51(xxvi) to only allow beneficial laws to be passed with regards to Indigenous Australians, the replacement of s 51(xxvi) with an anti-discrimination power and the replacement of s 51(xxvi) with a new head of power with respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. These proposals will be analysed considering the judgements in Kartinyeri v Commonwealth and the recommendations made by the Referendum Council.

Whilst Indigenous Australians make up a mere 2.5% of the Australian Population (ABS 2001, pg. 9), they make up 11 percent of discrimination complaints and account for almost 50% of the complaints that fall under the Racial Discrimination Act (Henslin, J., A. Possamai and A. Possamai-Inesedy 2010, pg. 278 – 288; Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission 2008).

Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people are considered to be one of the most disadvantaged groups in Australia (Aboriginal Disability Network, 2012, p. 10). This disadvantage is further enhanced if an individual has a disability (Aboriginal Disability Network, 2012, p. 10). As a result of this disadvantage, disabled Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people face many complex disability and exclusion issues. For the purpose of this essay education and access to culturally competent services will be discussed, along with social marginalization and the continued denial of basic human rights despite Australia ratifying the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Aboriginals have faced histories and centuries of oppression. From a system of state sanctioned apartheid, institutionalized racism, and de facto discrimination, aboriginals across Canada have been marginalized, victimized and alienated. Treated unjustly by federal and provincial governments, and by the legal system, aboriginals faced de jure segregation through policies of assimilation within residential schools, land reserves, and potlatch bans for the intention of dissolving aboriginal cultures into Canadian society. Moreover, under the doctrine of discovery, doctrine of occupation, and doctrine of adverse possession which elevated the rights of Canadians, aboriginals were forced out of their native lands and disenfranchised. To this day, although significant improvements to Aboriginal rights have been made, the tradition continues, as aboriginals still face systemic prejudices and stigmas within greater society and kept out of the bastions of opportunity. Since the affirmation of the Constitution Act in 1982, the court has acquired massive roles within interpreting and concentrating the broad texts of what necessitates aboriginal rights.

At the point when the Australian Constitution was being drafted Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people groups were rejected from the talks concerning the production of another country to be arranged on their inherited grounds and regions. The Australian Constitution additionally explicitly victimized Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people groups. The Australian Constitution did not – and still does not – make satisfactory arrangement for Australia's first people groups. The Australian Constitution has neglected to secure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights as the principal people groups of this country. For instance, the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, has been traded off on three events: every time it has included Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues. As of late, the Constitution did not keep the suspension of the RDA for the Northern Territory Emergency Response. Hence, it was incapable in shielding people groups from the most major of all flexibilities, the opportunity from segregation and discrimination. Recognition of laws custom to the Indigenous through common law rules for the recognition of local custom or communal native title is very brief and underwhelming, and is incompetent to face the questions raised by the Commission’s Terms of Reference. Arguments in

In the United States today discrimination is still an issue in society. As a society progress has definitely been made, but it has never fully gone away. Some of the most discriminatory action takes place in the American justice system. Young minority males between the ages of 25-29 are subject to being treated the most unfairly while whites of the same age are still being treated better than any race in this country. African American and Hispanic males are being incarcerated at higher rates than white males in America. Not only are minorities being incarcerated more, but also they are subject to harsher sentencing terms, fall victim to police racial profiling, and have disparities in the war on drugs. Also whites are still the dominant

There are so many issues surrounding civil rights today that it would be hard to pinpoint just one. One significant discrimination problem we still battle today takes place in the workplace. Living in the twenty-first century you would think there is no way this is still an issue and that\ women are treated as equal individuals to men socially and economically. Unfortunately, that is not the case! Women, who are as equally trained and educated, and with the same experience as men are not getting equal pay, Women should have equal pay to men for the same amount of work that they do because it is not only their right but they have the education to support their position in the workforce.

When I first got introduced to this essay in my English class we were given three broad topics to choose from: discrimination, social justice and technology. Immediately I knew I wanted to pursue an area related with social justice because technology did not interest me one bit and I have already written copious amounts of papers on discrimination. However, I was not opposed to writing about something that could be deemed discriminatory and socially injustice. So with this notion in mind, it lead me to recollect a time I was at home listening to spoken word poetry (as I usually do) and I came across a poem entitled, “If Gentrification Was a Broom Then..” performed by a New York resident locally renown for her poetry, Crystal Valentine. I remember listening to her speak with so much passion and anger about her city being gentrified that it intrigued me to learn more about what gentrification actually is being that I knew nothing about it. Upon my research I found article after article describing the horrors of gentrification, what it is, what it does and I could not help but feel angered as well seeing as though I was born in the same borough she was speaking so firmly about: The Bronx. From then on I have always had the urge to write about this issue just never given the chance to, until now. In her poem she willfully stated that, “You cannot renovate a borough without burying the people already living there,” which then begs the question: why is this still taking place if