Jump for Social Justice!

Abstract

The Journal of Underrepresented and Minority Progress (JUMP), a scholarly refereed journal, is founded against the backdrop of colossal political upheavals further marginalizing the lives of minorities around the world. United States, on the cusp of being a nation of many minorities is troubled with tensions about whether it respects and welcomes minorities and immigrants at all. The 28th annual world report by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned that the surge of authoritarian populists worldwide seems increasingly inevitable, with the United Kingdom preoccupied by Brexit and United States led "by a president who displays a disturbing fondness for rights-trampling strongmen." The report warned against the tendency of demagogues who rose to power by "demonizing unpopular minorities, attacking human rights principles, and fueling distrust of democratic institutions" (HRW, 2018, p. 15). We are truly at a precarious juncture of human civilization because the US and the UK, so far looked upon as the "defenders of human rights" globally have been beleaguered by nationalism. We must keep our hopes that governments' actions will align more and more with various interest groups advancing civil rights and democracy. There is some hope in the policies adopted by Germany, France, and their European Union partners, even though they too have been bedeviled by groups driven by racism and bigotry. Such democracies as Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, and South Africa exist, but their voice for human rights is not the loudest always (HRW, 2017). There is, thus, an urgent and critical need for a scholarly discourse that identifies and describes the problems, provides a forum for analysis and solutions, and serves as a vehicle for sharing statistics and research nationally and internationally. As Bourdieu (2003, p. 11) reminded, we as social scientists "cannot stand aside, neutral and indifferent, from the struggles in which the future of the world is at stake." We have no option but to jump for the advancement of social ...