In our society today, there is lots of diversity between individuals and between different groups of people. There are many groups of people that are different from one another and create feuds between them simply because they are just different from them. Though, there are many other reasons for this such as maybe there were incidents that have happened between the two to cause diversion. Social Injustice is another main thing that causes lots of diversity between different groups of people. Many people tend to treat the homeless or poor differently because they are considered to be of a different social class and they aren’t considered the same as others. Throughout the movies and books we have read this semester, we have seen many examples of social injustice in specifically the book Of Mice and Men as well as the movie Hotel Rwanda.

Throughout our book that we read, Of Mice and Men, we have seen lots of social injustice. For example, our main characters of George and Lennie don’t have lots of money and they are trying their best to work at getting their own ranch. While talking about the ranch, George says, “No sir, we’d have our own place where we belonged and not sleep in no bunk house”(202). The bad part is that Lennie has a mental disability that causes him to not act as normally as others would. Long story short, Lennie ended up killing someone in the story and there were people trying to find and kill him. Lennie admits to George, “I have done a bad thing” (100). Lennie was different from the others and he was socially unjust so he was treated differently. If other people would’ve known about his disability, they may understand why he could have done this thing. He and George also didn’t have much money so that was also a reason why they were treated differently just as the poor & homeless of our society are treated.

In the movie we watched, Hotel Rwanda, there is lots of diversity due to the different kinds of people. For example, the Hutu rebels were attacking the Tutsi people and there was a mass genocide. On the Hutu Power Radio Station, they said to the Rwandan citizens, “Listen to me good people of Rwanda. Terrible news. Horrible news. Our great president was murdered by the Tutsi cockroaches. They tricked him into signing their phony peace agreement then they shot his plane from the sky. It is time to clear the great brush good Hutu’s of Rwanda.” In the movie, there were many people that were killed just because of the fact they were Tutsi’s. Dube, the hotel manager’s assistant says, “Why are people so cruel?” We can see examples of this in our society today because we seem to judge people that are poor and homeless just because they are different from others. Many people tend to create a mental list of social classes in their mind in which they put those people on the bottom of the list because they think they are worse people than themselves.

We can also see even more examples of social injustice in the movie Hotel Rwanda when the United States didn’t bother to help out the Rwandans during the genocide. Many places didn’t bother to help them due to partial social injustice in thinking that they were better than the country of Rwanda. The hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina says, “General, these are difficult times, we need to help one another.” There was lots of help that was needed for all the Rwandans during this time period. I thought it was really interesting how in the movie, an American reporter says, “I think if people see this footage they’ll say, ‘oh my God that’s horrible,’ and then go on eating their dinners.” I feel this is exactly the same when we see the poor and homeless on the street because a lot of times we see them and not do anything about it and just continue on throughout our day.

Many people tend to treat the homeless and poor people of society differently. As I said before, we seem to make a mental list of social classes and put the poor & homeless on the bottom of the list. As you could see, there were many connections to this in Of Mice and Men as well as Hotel Rwanda. We shouldn’t be judging them as different from us because they are all people too and if anything we should treat them as more important than us due to the fact that they need help in supporting themselves. Every human of this earth is a child of God and we should treat our brothers and sisters equally. Proverbs 31:9 says, “Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” It’s not only just for us to treat them equally, but it is God’s will.

 

Works Cited

“BibleGateway.” Acts 3:9-10 NIV – – Bible Gateway, Bible Gateway Blog, www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs%2B31&version=ESV.

George, Terry, director. Hotel Rwanda. Sony Pictures, 2004.

“Quotes from ‘Hotel Rwanda.’” IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/title/tt0395169/quotes/qt0331935.

Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. Penguin Books, 2017.