Michael Brown's Theory Of Oppression

Sandra Bland, Mike Brown, and Tamir Rice – these are just some of the names of the unarmed Black people whose lives were taken by police officers in the last year. The alarming rate at which young Black men and women are being killed is evidence that their lives are not held with high regard. Police brutality against young Black men and women has been perpetrated at alarming rates. Yet, we have not seen much, if any, consequences or responsibility taken by the policemen committing these crimes. Often times, the families of these young men and women who, because of their race, have been killed by police officers have not seen any justice, instead the names of their loved ones go from headlines to outdated hashtags. Not only do young Black men and women face the chance of being criminalized on the street, but also such targeting begins at a young age in institutions that are typically regarded as “safe places”, such as the classroom. We see evidence of this in the way students are racially profiled and in the growing number of protests that are currently being held on college campuses nationwide. While it may seem as though we live in a post racial society, since overt racism, such as legalized segregation, is a thing of the past, institutionalized racism, a system that distributes opportunities based on the racial hierarchy, still remains and is deeply rooted in our education system, which inhibits any potential academic success by restricting resources and criminalizing

Women and men are born equal. However, females are receiving unequal judgement and unfair treatment in the society, and thus Marilyn Frye brings up the notion of “oppression”, claiming that women are oppressed. Throughout the essay, I will first give the definition of Frye’s oppression and then list 5 critical qualifications to be considered oppressed. After that, I will explain my appreciation on Frye’s perspective on elaborating oppression using the “bird cage” analogy. I will support Frye’s “double-bind” argument for sexism followed by flaws in the argument. Furthermore, I will point out some social group are mistakenly placed inside or outside the parameters of oppression, once the theory of oppression extends over other marginal groups.

Before the second segment begins, where a modern case study is applied to Marilyn Frye’s theory of oppression; it seems necessary to briefly mention a few ways that Frye believes that oppression can be surfaced unknowingly between men and women. The first example touches on the simple actions that men do for women such as opening a door, “The arresting of vision at a microscopic level yields such common confusion as that about the male door-opening ritual. This ritual, which is remarkably widespread across classes and races, puzzles many people, some of whom do and some of whom do not find it offensive. Look at the scene of the two people approaching a door. The male steps slightly ahead and opens the door. The male holds the door open while the female glides through. Then the male goes through. The door closes after them” (12). This particular quote receives a lot of backlash, as many people feel that this act is simply a helpful gesture between a man and a woman. This type of gesture is often times defined as chivalry. Frye argues that these “chivalrous” gestures are condoned oppressive behaviors, “The gallant gestures have no practical meaning. Their meaning is symbolic. The door-opening and similar services provided are services which really are needed by people who are for one reason or another incapacitated – unwell, burdened with parcels, etc. So the message is that women are incapable. The detachment of the acts from the concrete realities of what women need and do

How would you feel if the outcome of your interaction with authority depended on whether you were black, Latino, or white? Unfortunately, police brutality is the sad reality that many black and Latino boys experience in their childhood. The disadvantages of their upbringing results to the reinforcement of societal restrictions on their success. On a positive note, education becomes salvation to marginalized group because it provides them means to escape the system that prevents them from becoming successful. However, Charles M. Blows and Victor M. Rios reveal that black and Latino boys are at a disadvantage in the school to prison pattern. Therefore, the recent death of Michael Brown only heightens public awareness of police brutality on colored males. According to Charles M. Blow, bias educational system is a major factor in criminalization of black and Latino boys. But we cannot disregard that a significant perpetrator of racism is ignorance and false media representation. Therefore an increase of awareness of the existence of discrimination and improvement on media depiction of black and Latino characters would render racism defenseless.

On August 9th 2014, an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. A day following Brown’ s death, a riot broke out in Ferguson which caught the attention of the entire country. The fact that black people suffers disproportionally from police violence isn’ t uncommon given that deadly use of force by the police towards blacks under 21 years of age is 20% compared to 8.7% to whites (Johnson et al., 2014). Perhaps what is surprising is the speed of organization and the intensity of young people in Ferguson to use the death of Michael Brown as a final straw in the injustice and racism blacks suffers to this day. For this paper, I shall analyze the Ferguson riot under the #BlackLivesMatter

In the United States, studies have shown that minority citizens, particularly African Americans, are the primary victims of police brutality. This use of excessive force, when utilized by law enforcement officers, encompasses a wide range of abusive practices – racial slurs, profanity, unnecessary searches, physical abuse, and even murder. According to a report by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, 313 African Americans were killed without trial by police, security guards, and vigilantes in 2012. In other words, one extrajudicial execution of a black person occurs every 28 hours. This tension between law enforcers and minorities is hardly new, as evident by the prevalent racial discrimination between blacks and whites throughout history – slavery, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement. Although many Americans today believe that our nation is progressing into the “age of colorblindness,” blacks are three times more likely than whites to engage in police contact that result in the use of excessive force (Eith & Durose 12). The following pages will analyze how impoverished neighborhoods, negative stereotypes, and mass media contribute to the mutual antagonism between police and African Americans, ultimately setting the stage for violent conflicts. Furthermore, this paper will also investigate real-life examples of Rodney King and Michael Brown, as well as examine how American citizens have resisted against this racial oppression through both violent and peaceful campaigns.

Aymer wrote an article named “I can’t breathe,” the last words that Eric Garner was saying before he died. Aymer goes through the whole experience of this court case and how a huge protest took over the U.S. by storm called “Black Lives Matter.” Aymer brings up almost all of the cases of unarmed black men that were not recognized to all the most famous cases. Aymer’s last half of the article speaks of how black men engaged in psychotherapy will explicate how racial profiling by the police triggered race-based traumatic stress, as well as talks about the Black men who have been affected by race-based traumatic stress stemming from "living while Black." (2016). This gives the paper the one side of how the victims of police brutality are being affected. With this being a such a recent issue there was a bit of a confusing situation that is similar is Cha-Jua article. Cha-Jua writes an article called “We believe is Murder,” that talks about how a Champaign police officer Daniel Norbits shot and killed fifteen-year-old boy named Kiwane S. Carrington. Three governmental investigative units ruled the killing accidental. Cha-jua believes that critical social capital needs to be

Essay on ”Race, Class, Violence and Denial: Mass Murder and the Pathologies of Privilege” by Tim Wise

Numerous human beings of the African descent in the United States are being prejudiced against by law enforcement officials. During the shooting of Michael Brown, this learner doesn’t believe that race or perceptions had an impact in this shooting. According to the report, Michael brown was the suspect in a robbery that occurred prior to the shooting. The report states that Officer Darren Wilson's went to question Michael Brown but words were exchanged between the two before officer Darren Wilson could investigate about the robbery. While the two were exchanging words, Michael brown then reached into the SUV that Officer Darren Wilson was in and started assaulting him. As Michael Brown was assaulting him, Officer Wilson

In 1986, Brent Staples wrote a prose essay writing about his experiences because of his color. To this day, his essay is still relevant towards black people, but America is finally starting to change their perspectives on African-Americans. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it an official day for African-Americans to have their rights, but caucasians became aware of such freedom the blacks had and became frightened by them. As a result, white people, especially cops, took action by using weapons against blacks when the blacks were innocent in some cases. In Staples’s prose essay he wrote “Where fear and weapons meet--and they often do in urban America--there is always the possibility of death” meaning when an African-American man would come

It is not a secret that black Americans are at a larger economic, political and educational disadvantage, yet so many white Americans believe that the black American is as successful as a white (Embrick 2015, 838). So in cases of police brutality, minorities are portrayed to be offenders and violent, while the police are given the role of a protector in media (Embrick 2015, 839). Although it does not mean that such publicized cases of police brutality are not thought provoking for white Americans, many do understand the situation and the existence of this violence (Sigelman et al 1997, p. 789). It is simply that majority believe it is outside of America’s racist history instead, and based more on criminal behaviour (Sigelman et al 1997, p. 789). This impacts society to split into two, the world those who are privileged live in and the world that the poor and marginalized are forced into (Embrick 2015, 837).

In June of this year it was recorded that there had been 490 people killed by the United States police force and a concerning amount of 138 of those citizens were African-American. Compared to the twelve percent that make up part of the U.S. population, thirty percent of the citizens killed by police is disarming. This study was broken down with the inclusion of fatal police shootings by race, ethnicity and region (Joseph). Since the 1992 there has been a great deal of awareness brought to the fact that the black population are the victims most affected in these police brutality instances. It seems imminent that African Americans in particular face this racial injustice compared to white people like myself who are exposed to privilege. For example, in comparison to the media coverage of Michael Brown being justified because he was labeled as a thug and “struggling with an officer, Trayvon Martin who was labeled as “ a kid suspended three times from school”, or 25 year old Derrick Varner who was labeled as “ having a history of narcotics abuse and tangles with the law” (Wing). On the other side of the spectrum a person of Caucasian decent can commit a crime and be treated humanely by police and covered by the media in a good perspective. For example, Jared Michel the Oregon school shooter was labeled as “ fascinated with guns but was a devoted Mormon”, or Elliot Rodger, the Santa Barbara mass shooter who was labeled as “ soft-spoken, polite, and a gentleman”

The shooting of the young teenager Michael Brown earlier this week was an event that should cause everyone to feel sadness and remorse for both him as well as his family and friends. Although the reports of the killing give varied stories of what actually happened, this entire situation has led many people to call both race and stereotyping into question. Police reports say that Brown was violent and shouted before running at the police officer in question, who then fired at least six shots at Brown. Other accounts as well as the official autopsy found that some of the shots had occurred while Brown had his back turned towards the officer.

“There have been some tragic events lately involving black men and the police. While the jury is still out on some of those incidents, some appear to have been real travesties of justice” (Matthews & Wendell 4).

Back in February, Michael Dunn was tried for the murder of Jordan Davis, a seventeen year old student, who happened to be black. “It was Jordan Davis who kept escalating this to the point where I had no choice but to defend myself,” Mr. Dunn said.2 There was no firearm found in Jordan Davis’ car, and the medical examiner testified it was unlikely Davis was standing when he was shot.3 It appears that this young man was posing no threat to Dunn, he was just playing loud music, as many teenagers do, when they are with their friends in a car. After Dunn shot at the teens ten times he left the scene of the incident, it is shocking how little regard this man has for the life of a group of young people. His actions were unjustified, so why did this happen? The facts of this case are undeniable, Davis was a young black man that was profiled by Dunn to be as a kid that was doing something wrong and Dunn acted on his anger quickly and with little or no provocation. Afterwards, he was so indifferent to what he had done he did not call the police but instead fled the scene. What causes an individual to believe that it is acceptable to treat other human beings with so little regard? Cases such as these paint a picture of the opinions and thought processes of the general public. They tell us, the life of a young boy is lessened because of his ethnicity. How can we, as a nation, even consider racism as a declining issue when there are occurrences such as