Assignment task: Social Injustice as Illustrated by Denial of Opportunities to Vulnerable Populations
Violations of access to opportunities exist when members of specific vulnerable populations or out-groups get substantially inferior educational, health, job-training, transportation, child care, and preschool services compared with a mainstream population. If members of specific vulnerable populations lack access to these services beneath an acceptable threshold, many of them are condemned to unacceptable life conditions as they move through different stages of life. A low-income child from a racial minority group will find it difficult to better her condition if she cannot obtain quality education and health services, not to mention preschool services and child care. A person with physical challenges cannot expect to meet his survival needs if he lacks access to job training and technology-and if he is not mainstreamed into public schools. A woman who is denied access to science and math programs because of her gender finds her career choices circumscribed.
Lack of provision of opportunities to vulnerable groups can be ethically attacked through an outcomes or utilitarian approach. Low-income persons of color, persons with mental and physical challenges, and ex-offenders who do not receive exemplary education and job training will likely possess lower income than persons who get access to these amenities. Their lower income at the point they receive relatively unskilled jobs will be compounded over the course of their lives by an inability to get promotions and to upgrade their career trajectories. They will be less likely to find jobs where employers fund health insurance and pensions, making them more likely to join the ranks of the medically uninsured and to be relatively poor when they retire.