Essay On The Role Of Social Change In Nursing

Most people have witnessed a scene such as this: a child sees something they do not understand. Confused, they ask their parent the inevitable question: “Why?” The adult tiredly replies, “That’s just the way things are.” If the majority of the people in the world had this defeated attitude, movements for social change would be nonexistent. The qualities essential to making an enduring difference to society are time, dedication, and sacrifice.
Time is a massive factor in social change -- being patient is often the key to success. Nearly 150 years after the composition of the Declaration of Independence, American women were granted suffrage in the United States (Roberts 1). Women of other races and ethnicities fought a while longer due to loopholes in the law that still hindered this right, but it was a feat for women still. Suffrage opened doors for more laws passed that freed women from the suffocating confines of misogyny and sexism. There never has been a time in history when it was not a widespread and common belief

that women were inferior to men. An innumerable amount of women have fought for suffrage and other rights for themselves but did not live to see it. Violence against women and suppression of women’s voices made this fight last thousands of years, a relentless battle women still fight today. In relation to this situation, the Civil Rights movement faced a very similar circumstance. Almost a century after the abolition of slavery, there was still evident and lawful racism in the American South (Foney and Garraty 3). Racism was still an extremely heavy weight in the South, before and after abolition. It stemmed from the hundreds of years of racism that took place on plantations on that same land. But, unlike a slave can be relieved of his shackles, a deeply rooted belief can not just as simply be freed from the boundaries of the human superego. Racism continued to be as much as a problem as it was when slavery was lawful. Because of the perpetuation and acceptance of racism, it took an absurd amount of time for equality between races. Time is one of the biggest obstacles blockading beneficial change to the world because after a long while of waiting for a change to happen, impatience sets in. Impatience leads to either recklessness or dejection, both volatile to a campaign. There are billions of people in the world, billions of minds to sway. And human nature has always and will always remain stubborn. Complete erasure of perpetuation of an immoral or oppressive belief is a battle that seems inherently unwinnable, making time to change a belief take hundreds or possibly thousands of years.
Staying true to one’s cause and one’s self is a difficult thing to do when one suffers brutality, hardship, and opposition, but the survival of a campaign for change depends heavily on it. A perfect display of dedication lies in now eighteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai, an education and women’s rights activist from Pakistan, who suffered an assassination attempt by the Taliban after speaking out on the importance of education for women. Since her life-threatening injury, Malala has recovered quickly and remained as revolutionary as ever. At just seventeen, she met two important world leaders, President Obama and Queen Elizabeth II, addressed the United Nations, and became the youngest recipient of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize for her activism (Walsh 1). Malala has been passionate about her cause, even from before the incident. She mentioned in an interview that at the age of fourteen, she used every news outlet possible to spread her philosophy, and she still does, most recently delivering a speech at the Global Citizen’s Festival in New York City in September of 2015. Without Malala’s raw dedication, perhaps the Taliban would have never made an attempt on her life, but girls in the Middle East and all around the world would not have been changed by the incident. International inspiration stemming from hearing this triumphant story could lead to a shifting of thinking, and eventually positive legal change for women’s rights in conservative countries. About fifty years prior to this, those involved in the Civil Rights movement also are referred to as prime examples of dedicated activists. Black civil rights campaigns have accomplished much throughout history. Witnessing abolition, Brown v. Board of Education Topeka, the Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act required hundreds of years of hardship, oppression, violence, and suppression suffered by all people of color (Foner and Garraty 1). The people involved in the Civil Rights movement faced brutality, threats, discrimination, and other obstacles trying to change America’s laws and its peoples’ bias and prejudice. If not for the marches, protests, and year-long boycotts, laws protecting minorities would not have been passed. The suffrage, civil rights, and all other successful movements will forever have one recurring characteristic: dedication. The courageous people at the forefronts of these campaigns could not have achieved their goals if they had given up, become hopeless, or uninspired. Change takes not just the strong, but the many, and without the cohesion and passion, these movements largely would have lost momentum and eventually failed.
Tragically, even patience, dedication, passion, and peaceful protest can not always institute change. In some instances, it must be accomplished through sacrifice. On August 28th, 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, a black Chicago boy visiting family in Mississippi, was brutally and sadistically murdered by two white men for allegedly flirting with their white female relative. He was stripped naked, severely beaten, had one eye gouged out, shot in the head, and thrown into the Tallahatchie River attached to a 75-pound cotton gin (August 28, 1955: The Death of Emmett Till 1). If pre-Civil Rights Act American South was an old towel, racism would practically drip from its frayed edges. Extreme racially charged brutality, degradation, inequality, segregation, and abhorrence of blacks-- or any people of color-- was acutely apparent. Even in many southern states’ laws and legal systems, blacks were discriminated against for decades, so it would not be obscure to infer that blacks were attacked often, especially those advocating racial equality. Emmett’s mother was devastated, but used Emmett’s open-casket funeral to show the public the uninhibited reality of the frightening time in which they lived. Death, especially that of a young person, can work as a catalyst for change, spurring the community to stay passionate and continue the fight for the change they wish to occur. Emmett’s death in particular sparked national outrage, highlighting the ugly truth about racism in the South. Likewise, Malala Yousafzai faced violence for attempting to gain rights for women in her home country of Pakistan. In October of 2012, a Taliban gunman fired a bullet into Malala’s head on a school bus. Roberts mentions that “a girl with a book” is what terrorists fear most, and Malala is exactly that. She became popular in 2009 after documenting her life in Pakistan when Islamic extremists shut down girls’ schools and invoked terror among the public. So many minorities have fought to be educated, respected, and protected under the law, but a number of those have also not lived to see their wishes fulfilled. Whether by natural cause, accident, or incident, many courageous men and women have died in the name of equality. People today fight to continue this battle fought by their predecessors, so that their efforts do not go in vain. Violence against an innocent by bigots awakens the public with outrage for those whose lives were lost, and those who took them. Whether these martyrs were recognized or not, their deaths still remain significant, contribute to their movements, and social change as a whole. Death is the one universal misfortune that often sobers the human heart and allows society to realize to what extent a problem is becoming.
Imagine every successful movement for social change was translated into one enormous Venn diagram.

No matter the cause or the people for the cause, every one of those campaigns would have three overlapping traits: their success is attributed to time, dedication, and sacrifice. Those three qualities are to a movement as water, sunlight, and air is to a plant. Without these essentials, a plant simply can not live. There would be a bit of growth at the start, but inevitably the plant will become weak and will never fully prosper and reach its peak of potential. Social change is a living, breathing, force that is constantly developing, evolving, and simmering just beneath the surface. It can require hundreds or even thousands of years, up to millions of people, and regrettably, hurt and pain to flourish. It would take no effort to notice this in the examples stated. These traits keep a movement rooted and give it brawn, and only the strong

survive.