Social Justice - A Conversation

Unknown Speaker 0:00
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Unknown Speaker 0:24
Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College of UNLV. And the Boyd School of Law.

Unknown Speaker 0:31
Hi, I'm Gabriella Tam. I'm a fourth year accounting student. And welcome

Unknown Speaker 0:34
to social justice, social justice, our conversation,

Unknown Speaker 0:39
a conversation.

Unknown Speaker 0:42
Well, good evening, everybody. And welcome back to our program. I'm here with my partner, Gabriella Tam. And we have a few things to talk about tonight. A very famous philosopher one time said that the more things change, the more they remain the same. And I think we're obviously seeing that in the Middle East. And, you know, the continuation of this horrific situation doesn't seem to be really progressing anywhere. President Biden, you know, has has, you know, visited the Middle East, and he's, he's been trying to get humanitarian aid for, you know, the Palestinian people. And he's trying to also get a, you know, involvement from Egypt, and a number of the other Arab countries. And, and hopefully, and hopefully, and hopefully, that will occur. Because there is a tremendous human suffering problem that exists there. You have a tremendous amount of people who are, you know, basically, without basic resources, and I think I think it's incumbent upon the world, the outside world to try to help these people. As to where the long range solutions to this problem goes, that is the that is the conundrum that continues to continues to confound everybody. You know,

Unknown Speaker 2:35
I mean, yeah, cuz especially, you have two sides that are very, very angry. And it's gonna be difficult to find a middle ground of find a place where they're both satisfied.

Unknown Speaker 2:49
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think what they need to try to do is they need to try to bring together all those people of goodwill, on both sides, along with all the countries in our region, have all the representatives of each country in that region, plus the plus the plus the representatives of Israel, and the representatives of, you know, the Palestinian people. And there needs to be there needs to be a dialogue between the two sides, that not only will address the issues between Israel and the Palestinians, but that basically the future of the rest of that part of the world, whether this is going to be continuing with the danger now that other countries will get involved in it. And see, this is the great fear that, you know, they've been having, they've been having problems and Lebanon, which is a country which, you know, always had a strong support for the Palestinians, and other countries as well. Plus, of course, the the war now is threatening the attempt to normalize relations between Israel and the rest of the Arab nations. It was always the idea, I think, on the part of President Biden and people in his administration, that they could broker a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, in which in which they there would be an acknowledgement of Israel from the Saudis, and the United States would work, work collaboratively with Saudi Arabia. I think now, that's going to be very, very difficult. Yeah, I agree. I was talking to a friend of my mind The other night, and he said, The Hidden player in all this is Iran, that all these countries in the Middle East who are, you know, who could be disposed to normalizing relations with Israel have to worry about what the reaction of Iran is going to be. Because Iran, Iran is not in any way inclined to, you know, normalize with Israel, and Israel is not really ready to normalize with Iran, but Iran's behind the scenes, you know, basically, in a sense, sort of moving the pieces around on the board. Yeah. Now, what, what the United States can do there? I really don't know. I mean, there's been so many different iterations of this conflict, that, you know, I was watching the other night, a movie called Black Sunday. And it was about these people who were going to attack the Superbowl. Oh, but But what was fascinating about it was you could actually move that ahead since today, and that was like 50 years ago, really, as the same thing going on. It's like the same issues the same, the same hate the same discord the same, you know, ideologies. And I think a lot of it has to do and you could talk about this a little bit was we talked about it in the class, in all these enroll these conflicts, the dehumanization, I think,

Unknown Speaker 6:53
yeah. So, you know, no, I like, I've seen like stuff on like social media and the way that, like, news outlets are, like news outlets here are portraying this whole thing. They're just humanizing like Palestinian Palestinians, like to be honest. And just, they, like, I saw a clip of like, Anderson Cooper, he said something about like, like, all these civilian like lives, and then he took out he was like, oh, sorry, I meant, like any took out, like civilians. And he, it was weird.

Unknown Speaker 7:32
Well, I think I think I think it I think it's both unfortunately, yeah, I think that there's there is there's a segment of people who will blame the Palestinian cause. There's a segment of people that will blame the Israeli cause. In the case, in the case of Israel, of course. There's a there's, unfortunately, has always been, I guess, historically speaking, a bunch of people who, you know, are anti somatic. Yeah. And that's not going to change. Yeah. So So when any of these things happen? Obviously, we know who the villain is and who the hero was. But But I think I think at this point, it was we've got to move beyond that. Yeah. You know, in other words, we can't be going back to the history. And, you know, we have to deal with what is absolutely actually happening today. What can we do as a nation? And what can world leaders do to get this thing resolved? And you know, what, and I'm a funny person in that way. I mean, I understand the history and all the rest of those things. Yeah. But at a certain point, you can't keep looking backward, you got to look forward, you got to say, Listen, these things have happened. There was the invasion, there was the hospital bomb, and we're slowly these things, but what are we going to do to restore normalcy in the area? And I don't know. I don't know if there's the really the appetite to do it. It's interesting to me, that, you know, a lot of the Arab nations who, you know, obviously, have had strange relations with Israel, but particularly, particularly the oil producing nations. Yeah, they could have gone into the West, they could have gone into the West Bank and Gaza, and use a lot of their resources to try to make the place more habitable. You know, the Saudis have tons of money. Well, these countries.

Unknown Speaker 9:42
You're actually kind of right about that. Yeah. No, I didn't even think of it like that.

Unknown Speaker 9:46
Yeah. I mean, you figure out like, Saudi Arabia. They make 10s of billions of dollars. Yeah. With the oil with the oil money. So you figure like maybe if they took 10% of that money, went into Gaza, and collaboratively works with with with with the aid organizations, humanitarian organizations, even even the United States and Israel, where everybody could come together and say this is, you know, we need to we need to, you know, improve the lives of these people. Yeah. And I think if if, if these people saw that if these people saw that, that there was that, that interest and energy, I think that would do a lot to defuse, the terrorism and the hatred, especially like, if you had people like that you always considered your enemy. And they came into a place like that, you know, you consider them to be against you. And they said, Well, you know, we could fix this, or we could do this so we can make this better. I think it would be I'd be very important, especially a country, like Israel, which is very technologically savvy. They're big in the drug industry and everything. And a lot of good could be done. No, yeah. And once and once, and once the people, and once the people start to work together, you could have hoped for some kind of, of a future, because the way things are now basically, each each groove is basically in their own fiefdom. And nobody ventures out of it, you know, they everybody's in their own, they use the word that's become very common silos, everybody's in their own silo. But the ultimate, the ultimate move for peace has to come to communication. Yeah, you know, I mean, I mean, there's just like, so many things, like, I mean, look at our own country. Now, look at our own country, we had we had the history of slavery, and, you know, the mistreatment of people of color, and, and the mistreatment of the American Indian, and all those different things which we, which we should justly be ashamed of, but, but now through a lot of programs that have been developed through affirmative action through, you know, trying to encourage and enhance the opportunities for people of color, and level of playing field academically, and, and otherwise. I think that's done. A good a good deal to help. The amount of respect between people. Yeah, I agree, and the ability for people to work together, I think one of the most important things in our country that I think is an essential is the fact that we encourage diversity. Yeah, I think that is really important. I think it's important. First of all, it's important, because obviously, every segment of our society, every race, ethnicity, should have the equal opportunity to, you know, have higher education. But but but even more than that, it's the it's the interactions between, say, in our University, students, people who maybe never, you know, hung around with people of color, or hung around with Asian people or hold, hung around with Indian people. And now, of course, because you know, you're in the same class with him, you get to know them, etc, etc. I think that's tremendously important

Unknown Speaker 13:40
is I agree, yeah. No, cuz you like, there are people, like in America who don't get like the same benefit of like, like, growing like, I grew up in a, like, my classroom when I was in high school is very diverse. We were like, known as, like, the most diverse class. So I did have the benefit of like, growing up with, like, people who didn't look like me and stuff. And I do think that's like, a reason why I care so much about like, different like, other like, other people of color, right? Cuz like, oh, like, see a person like, oh, like, they're like my friend. You know? And then like, also, like, going to UNLV, like UNLV is, I believe, like, one of our, like, main points is like, Oh, we're the most diverse like university. Right? Yeah. So, yeah, I think students here like do have a big benefit coming here. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 14:39
no, absolutely. I mean, I think the reason why a lot of these racial tropes and all the stuff perpetuated for so long, was the fact that there wasn't that interaction. Yeah. You know, back when you had the big crisis over busing, and And busing was one of the ways whereby people of color got to go to school with white children. Because even after Brown v Board of Education in 1954, education was still highly segregated. Yeah. And it was only true to you know, bossing to a degree, and also to the Kennedy administration and what they did, trying to get, you know, black students admitted at University of Mississippi and in other places, but it is it is the idea, it is the idea that all people are equal. And when you interact with people, when you have classmates and you you get to know people who, even though they may be different ethically, they may have some of the same experiences that you have. Yeah. So you can identify with that. And you say, Well, you know, that happened to me that, you know, different things that are commonalities between people. And what's the shame in our country to a degree is that there's a lot of people who, I don't know whether the whether it's it's just racism, or it's stupidity, or it's, or it's I don't know what to say about it, but they want to go backward? Yeah, well, let's take the clock back and say, you know, we like we're gonna take the books out of the libraries. We don't want a we vote, there's all this cancel, cancel culture stuff and everything. Yeah. But when you get when you get right down to it, the history of the country has already been written. You can't deny it. You can't go back in time. Yeah, you can't. You can't say, Well, you know, the slaves. There was no slavery. There was no prejudice. There was no this weather was there. Yeah. But the reason the reason that you educate people, the reason you educate people, and this is the thing that I think, I think progressives need to stress more than they don't stress. And I always, I always try to stress it. You teach not to make anybody ashamed. That's not why you're teaching. Yeah. It's not to say, Well, you were bad, you're evil. Because these are young people. They had nothing to do with it. The reason that you teach, the reason that you want to learn is to create a world where those things don't happen again, yeah, exactly. That you learn from your mistakes that you made as a nation. And, you know, the things that you went through and the things that people were deprived of that now that you, you realize that now you say, Well, we did wrong, we made mistakes, but we're gonna make the country we're gonna make the country better, we're gonna make the country better, we're gonna make the

Unknown Speaker 17:50
game make sure it doesn't happen again.

Unknown Speaker 17:52
And to make sure it doesn't happen again. And I always amazes me and I, and I think I mentioned this. And when I teach, and I always say this that people want to remove diversity, inclusion and equity. And I'm saying myself, well, how do you remove diversity? When we have probably on this campus, the representatives of like 80 countries, every state, every ethnicity, every gender, etc. It's like denying that the sun is out today. I mean, it's like, it's like a denialism. So that's one out. That's one aspect of it. The second thing that they want to get rid of his equity. Well, equity in the dictionary is defined as fairness. So if we're all Americans, if that's that's our aim, that we all are together as Americans. We should be fair to everybody. Yeah, the fact that a person doesn't look the same as we look, shouldn't put shouldn't allow them to be mistreated. And then the third thing is inclusion. Well, inclusion is the heart of any successful not just country, even business community. Yeah, is that you bring people into the fold. And you use their talents and abilities to make things better for everybody. And you know, what's, what always strikes me as really crazy. Is America has this enormous brain power storage. We have people from every, every walk of life, and from every nation, and we have we not just have their intelligence, we have their experiences. Yeah, we have their cultures, all coming over here to be part of our nation. And people should see that as this tremendous gift that we've been given that as the United States of America, it's also the United States of the world, because we're bringing all these people in, they come from China, they come from Japan, they come from India, they come from Africa, and they all have their talents, and then put Bring them here. Why? Because they believe the United States can help that can help. That. It's the hope it's been the hope for so many people.

Unknown Speaker 20:09
Yeah. I mean, we literally have the American like, it's the American dream. Yeah, yeah. It's something that brings so much hope to people that they can live a better life.

Unknown Speaker 20:17
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And it's funny how the people that oppose that, in so many ways don't realize they're limiting what America can be, because they want to exclude all these people. But you grow, you grow, not just through diversity, of ethnicity, but you grow through diversity of opinion, that you can have a nation of just one subset of people that were doing the same thing for so many years, they never really basically wanted to change that. And then people come from other lands. Yeah. And we don't also understand or appreciate. So many of our people that come here have come from not only deprivation have come from tyranny, they've come from anti democracy, they've come from all these different countries, where the things that we take for granted as people were not available there. And we should be so happy that they are these people have shown their faith in us that they would come here, because they know that what where they were living was not a healthy way to live, that their voice their their it didn't matter. Yeah, no, it's interesting. It's interesting. And I think, I think that if we can, if we continue to believe in our principles, that will continue. But we have to continue to believe in that. And it doesn't mean you know, it doesn't mean like that, we're not going to make mistakes, we're not going to do things that are wrong, because governments and people will always do that. But it's our intention, though, what is our intention, our intention has to be that we want to reach out to people Yeah. And an n also on an individual level, you know, as as visa vie. Our personal our personal life or personal life, visa vie, reaching out to help other people to reach out to the homeless to reach out to do whatever even little thing that we can do to be kind. I think it's kindness, compassion.

Unknown Speaker 22:32
We have a I feel like, like recently, like, there's not a lot of people that are kind nowadays,

Unknown Speaker 22:38
why do you think that is?

Unknown Speaker 22:42
I think maybe people feel like their kindness is taken for granted. And they're like, I don't want to I don't want to be a nice person anymore. Like, I don't want to be taken advantage of.

Unknown Speaker 22:53
But it's lack of trust.

Unknown Speaker 22:56
Yeah. Lack of trust. And then I feel like, there are a lot of people that are very transactional, if that makes sense. Yeah, sure. Like, they believe, like, okay, like, I'm gonna be kind to them, then something good has to happen to me, and then something bad happens to them. And then they're like, I don't want to be kind anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 23:14
No, I think that's I think you hit the nail on the head there. I really do. I think that people don't understand about what goodness and kindness are. Yeah. You don't you don't do an act of goodness, or an act of humanity or an act of compassion. Because of what somebody will give you back. Yeah, you do those acts, because of what doing doing for that person will give to you, inside of yourself, the satisfaction that you help somebody that you took care of somebody that you looked out for a person that was less fortunate than you are? Yeah, and what you say about transactional behavior is very true, because we have transactional behavior. And then we have a society in many ways that's indifferent. You see a lot of stuff, but we tend to turn our heads. And then the other thing is that so much of our society revolves around me.

Unknown Speaker 24:24
Yeah, it's very me, me, me, me,

Unknown Speaker 24:26
I want my needs, etc. And we have a lot of people like that. It's sad. And I wonder, you know, I think, in some ways, although I'm not gonna say that, that's the entire reason. I think social media in the sense can lead to that.

Unknown Speaker 24:46
I agree. I do agree with that. Yeah, you know,

Unknown Speaker 24:48
I think what's happened is social media is interesting, the, you know, the internet and all those things are interesting, because in a one in one sense, you know, if you're if Yeah, if you're an influencer or a person like that, you know, doing that kind of work of, you know, okay. In a sense, you reach out to a lot of people, but who follow what you say, which of course raises the issue of being responsible. Yeah, that's another issue. That's a subject for another show. But But the other thing, the other thing about it that I was thinking about was, in a sense, in a lot of ways, Wally's modernizations in a sense, create a false intimacy. Oh, 100%. You know, like, when I was when I was growing up, and computer was just in its infancy and sometimes as as, as a tool. I used to use the phone. Now, even today, as you can attest, I still use the phone. Well, I mean, obviously, you know, you have to email and stuff like that. But there is something to be said, for people talking to one another. Visa be person to person? Yeah, that it's not just, you know, be a tap your fingers message, the message that I get a message? You know, I think that's important. You know, I think that's important. One thing I wanted to one thing I wanted to kind of try to introduce to the show, you know, and, you know, taking a look at the world, and you know, all the things that are going on that are bad, that there's a lot of good out there. And that there's a there's a, I guess a saying or prayer and in Jewish that really, that really sort of sort of exemplifies that when a person has died. And people say, may their memory be a blessing. Oh, so in other words, may their memory be a blessing, meaning, let us remember all the good that they had done, and try to learn from that, and try to do as they would do, when they I think that's I think that's as important.

Unknown Speaker 27:14
I feel like we as like people as well have a tendency to look at the bad things. Like, like, even if we're like talking to people, we always point out the bad things. And if we point out the good things, like I'm taking a science of happiness class. Oh, no. Like, we like say like, if we talk about good things and stuff that brings us a better sense of well being Yeah, yeah. Life or life improves.

Unknown Speaker 27:45
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. Well, listen, it's been as always a great pleasure to work with you on the show. And we hope all you out there received all the goodness and worth that we desire to bring every broadcast to you. And we we look forward to speaking to you again next week.

Unknown Speaker 28:09
Yep. Thanks for listening. Good night. Good night. Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at tangi one that is T A N G, one at UNLV thought nevada.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles satin at charles.stanton@unlv.edu See you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai