Good Culture Synthesis Essay Essay Example

Selected Prompt: Is an individual or group more likely to be marginalized because of one factor (e.g. race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or socio-economic class), or because of multiple factors at the same time? Depending upon your response, what are the implications for civic engagement and restoring justice for those who have been marginalized? Fully explain your comments including making direct use of the selected course material.
Marginalization is also called social exclusion and it did not have this other name just for the sake of word play. Marginalization is indeed social exclusion because it describes a process wherein one person or group becomes so disadvantaged—often due to a single or a multiple of factors and or reasons that he or she becomes excluded socially . It is a term that is widely used in the west, particularly in developed countries in Europe and developed states in the United States. This does not mean to say that there are no cases of marginalization in other parts of the world like Asia, for example. Marginalization or social exclusion is also fairly common in countries in Asia, in fact. However, they do not often use the same term. Social discrimination appears to be a more fairly common term in countries in Asia.
There can be many reasons why an individual or a group becomes marginalized. Most of the time, this is due to the member of society’s tendencies to divide themselves into classes according to a lot of things—it can be gender, sexual orientation, social class, race, ethnicity, culture, and basically any other variables that can cause division and or stratification, hence the term marginalization which may be interpreted as to draw margins or divisions between two or more individuals or groups.
A marginalized person or group often gets systematically blocked or worse even denied full access to the opportunities, privileges, resources, and even rights that a typical person or citizen of a particular country is entitled to enjoy . Some of the more specific forms of features that marginalized people are often denied access to include but may not be limited to employment, housing, provision of due process during law enforcement procedures, civic engagement, healthcare, and political and democratic participation). The best way to explain this would be by using examples. Suppose there are two people; a White American (Person A) and a Black American (Person B) who both lives in the United States.
Now, typically, within the context of the country’s justice system (i.e. criminal justice and law enforcement), there is a term called due process. Due process pertains to both the privilege and right of every citizen of the country to have the protection of all of his legal rights until he or she is proven guilty of a criminal or administrative charge, in which case, some or even all (depending on the decision of the courts) of his or her legal rights may be stripped off. Due process is meant to protect all citizens from abusive criminal justice and law enforcement agents who tend to misinterpret and often exaggerate the law of the land.
The question now would be between person A and person B, who has the higher chance of being marginalized, particularly when it comes to the honoring of a person’s right and privilege to due process. The answer would be person B. The answer is simple and it is because of marginalization. During the days of the infamous transatlantic slave trade, using today’s social and cultural vocabularies, it can be said that Africans—the salves who were being transported into different European and American territories, are the most marginalized persons in society. In fact, at some point, they can be considered as a societal group who does not have any form of right or mechanism to protect their rights at all. Today, one can still see the cultural and social residues of that unpleasant history for Black Americans. Racism still exists and it can be fairly evident not only in media outlets like television shows, radio segments, and even in everyday life. So, between person A and person B, person B would most likely be the one who will be stripped off of his right and privilege to due process.
Evidences from socio-cultural journals suggest that African Americans are indeed marginalized both culturally especially when it comes to their rights, freedoms, and calls for justice in the United States . So, when it comes to the question whether only one or a multiple of factors can cause an individual or a group to be marginalized, the most correct answer would be it depends. Every group has its own history when it comes to marginalization and no universal law that can accurately determine or even predict whether an individual or group is going to be marginalized by society because of a single factor only or multitude of it. What can be done is to check and study each case of marginalized individual or group and then from the present details and their history determine whether the group got marginalized because of what factors and variables, among other things to consider.
In the case of our example, the Black Americans, they are largely being marginalized today—although to a much lower extent compared to when their race was a part of the transatlantic slave trade, is because of one factor only and that is race. This is, however, a generalization on the entire African American minority in the United States only. We cannot rule out the possibility that there are some African American individuals and even families who are being marginalized because of some other additional although isolated factors like they lie in an even lower social class compared to most members of the African American community, and etc.
However, it is important to remember that almost all factors that have been mentioned above (e.g. gender orientation, social class, race, ethnicity, education level, etc.) can be used by society to marginalize some groups in the society. Black Americans, however, are generally marginalized because of their race. This then creates a cycle wherein their rights and privileges (i.e. due process) gets stripped off to some extent.
Focusing on the perspective of justice, this can only be changed if the negative social stigma against African Americans will be removed—something which of course would take a significant amount of time and a huge amount of cooperation from the African Americans themselves because they really have to prove that they do not deserve to be marginalized, or even via radical strategies such as counter-hegemonic globalization which would require the participation of the countries of the world . Unless these things are fulfilled, the current condition of Black American marginalization would most likely continue.

References

Evans, P. (2000). Fighting Marginalization with Transnational Networks: Counter Hegemonic Globalization. Contemporary Sociology, 230-241.
Eyerman, R. (2001). Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity. Cambridge University Press.
Rudmin, F. (2003). Critical History of the Acculturation Psychology of Assimilation, Separation, Integration, and Marginalization. Review of General Psychology.
Scott, L. (2003). The relation of racial identity and racial socialization to coping with discrimination among African American adolescents. Journal of Black Studies.