Doctorow, injustice polarizes society by racism and murder. Racism is defined in the Encyclopedia Britannica's dictionary as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and those racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. A clear example of this is how the police dealt with Coalhouse's (an African-American) car. Not only did they make the car dirty and torn, they also defecated on it, too. Now, it is fairly obvious that only reason that the cops damaged Coalhouse's car like they did is because of his skin color. In the time that this novel takes place; racism is at an all time high and even "America's finest- had their part in it. It doesn't stop there though. Another example is Coalhouse's fiancée, Sarah (who is also African-American), tries to intervene on her fiancée's behalf by petitioning the government on the matter of Coalhouse's treatment. Apparently, Sarah assumed that the man she was petitioning to was not President Roosevelt as she thought; it was his Vice-President, James Sherman. Nonetheless, a militiaman hits her hard in the chest with the butt of his rifle and a Secret Service man jumps on top of her. Clearly, this demonstrates that racism not only is held by the public and the police but also the U.S. government. It can be inferred that if Sarah was a white woman, she probably would not have been attacked the way she was, if at all. In the end, she dies an innocent death.
Murder is another injustice that polarizes society in Ragtime. Murder is defined in the Encyclopedia Britannica's dictionary as the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought. A clear example of this is the murder of the firemen by Coalhouse. Six firemen had been playing poker when the alarm rang. They had reacted quickly, piling into the engine and setting off into the road, where they had encountered shotguns yielded by someone standing in the engine's path.
