Oppression Of Real People, By Dorothy Allison

In today’s day and age, social and racial injustice has become incredibly relevant. But, protest does not spur out of thin air. It has been deeply rooted into our society for years, and this is evident through The Street by Ann Petry. The novel encompasses multiple scenes where injustice, both social and racial, take place. Petry emphasizes these injustices with scenes where a black man is willing to find any way out of the draft and also when a child is framed for a crime out of spite. Displays like these, along with the tone, affirm the necessity for protest novels such as The Street.

In the 5th wave, by Rick Yancey, technology is a heavy iron-clad suit, prohibiting the communities' feeble attempts for liberty as often seen in our society. As Cassie runs through her life as a child, we see the first theme of oppression through technology. She and her family were sent to a camp to protect them from "the Others” when a bunch of soldiers showed up and bombed them, confidently declaring, "The eye will take care of her”(Yancey, 98). The “Eye” is a very advanced bomb, that kills everyone and everything with a super-sonic sound wave. Others are working to eradicate the human race.

FIX IT -In this article is about the writer who is a poverty young white child who was not wasn't privileged as a kid. Gina Crosley grew up in the poor of poor and was taken back when she was reading an article we have read earlier by Mcintosh about how we all have white privilege. Crosley felt as if how someone who grew up with her certain circumstances had any White Privilege but after reading the Mcintosh article she understood. Crosley has said, ‘it's impossible to deny that being born with white skin in America affords people certain unearned privileges in life that people of another skin color simple are not afforded”. This is something that was an interesting fact to me that even a person who is less privileged than most can see the White Privilege they still have even at the lowest of the privilege scale.

Have you ever felt like you have been judged or classified based on how you look, what you do or where you come from? Put yourself in someone else’s shoes, think differently for a second and realize how status affects others. Being categorized based on clothing, religion, or actions is hard to go through but eventually we make it. Our status more times than not, is defined by what we look like, how we dress and where we come from.

Before using her Facebook as a means to connect young minds about civil rights movements and issues that still plagues the nation today, Sandra Bland used her social media like every other citizen. That is until just after Christmas of 2014 when she made the decision to speak up about “the economic crisis burdening young African Americans,” trying to, in her words, inform her readers about black history, or American history as she liked to describe it (Nathan). Sandra Bland, a 28 year old African American, had just received a job interview from her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University. Her life seemed to be going smoothly, just received a job offering, rekindled her relationship with her mother, and seemed optimistic about the future to

“As the left, I found myself crying. No sound came, just tears. I couldn’t afford to be heard; still, I cried. I knew a part of my life was passing now, a part of my life I would never know again, the part of my life that was my daddy.” The Land by Mildred D. Taylor, is full of hate, love, hardship, and racism. Do you enjoy post Civil War historical fiction books? I don’t, but you might.

In Killing the Black Body, Dorothy Roberts describes the history of African-American women and the dehumanizing attempts to control their reproductive lives. Beginning with slavery, to the early beginning of birth control policy, to the sterilization abuse of Black women during the 1960s and 1970s, continuing with the current campaign to inject Norplant and Depo-Provera along with welfare mothers, Roberts argues that the systematic, institutionalized denial of reproductive freedom has uniquely marked Black women’s history in America.

The first section of reading assigned for the sixth reflection was the article “Oppression and Privilege: Two Sides of the Same Coin” by Diane Goodman. This article spoke about the differences between oppression and privilege, and how privilege leads to oppression. Her main points included how the minority groups are given less opportunities or even looked down upon by the majority groups. She also pointed out the differences between prejudices and oppression, which I found interesting. Prejudices are assumptions made about an individual based upon a social group they are a part of. Oppression is different but can be caused by prejudices. Oppression is the outcome of prejudices from a group and the social power they contain (Goodman, 2015). This section of the article was interesting to me because it allowed me to see things from another perspective. As

White privilege is the societal privileges that specifically benefit white people. White privilege is why white people can get pulled over by the police and escape a ticket with just a smile and apology. White privilege is also why whites are in charge of a company and they see a black person, they bypass the application. Whites carry a certain privilege not available to people of color. Marilyn Frye describes how whiteness is a form social and political power.

In Marilyn Frye’s piece, ‘Oppression,’ the author seeks to define ‘oppression’ in such a way that entails that women are oppressed as women. Women face restrictions, barriers and limitations in her freedom. When it is about women as a gender they are restricted in not being permitted towards several things in life, and also in having less opportunities in the industry and having a job. Women basically have an absence of personal freedom and less economic freedom.

Slavery was common in the eighteenth century. Slaves were seen as property, as they were taken from their native land and forced into long hours of labor. The experience was traumatic for both black men and black women. They were physically and mentally abused by slave owners, dehumanized by the system, and ultimately denied their fundamental rights to a favorable American life. Although African men and women were both subjected to the same enslavement, men and women had different experiences in slavery based on their gender. A male perspective can be seen in, My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass. A female perspective is shared in Harriet Jacobs’ narrative titled, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Upon reading both of the viewpoints provided, along with outside research, one can infer that women had it worse.

Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl allows Harriet Jacobs, speaking through the narrator, Linda Brent, to reveal her reasons for making public her personal story of enslavement, degradation, and sexual exploitation. Although originally ignored by critics, who often dismissed Jacobs ' story as a fictional account of slavery, today it is reported as the first novel narrative by an ex-slave that reveals the unique brutalities inflicted on enslaved women. Gabby Reyes

If one is a member of a category that experiences racism, sexism, etc., they are kept from being treated like others who are not oppressed and live an everyday, normal life.

The racial inequality in the US in the 18th and 19th century is a commonly discussed topic around the world. The US’s racial hierarchy –a social pyramid– reflects the belief that some social groups are viewed as superior whereas others are looked at as inferior. People having white skin and the most power and influence at the same time are at the top of the social pyramid. The inferiors, mainly black slaves, are far down at the hierarchy’s bottom. Phillis Wheatley’s poem On being brought from Africa to America broaches the issue showing the inequality between black slaves and white people. The racial hierarchy in the history of American society incorporates an exceedingly asymmetrical association of power.

In "Oppression" by Marilyn Frye, Frye discussed how a bird cage symbolizes the systematic oppression of women. Frye explains that if you look at a single wire in a bird cage you cannot understand why the bird, is unable to simply fly around the wire and be free. But, when you step back and look at the cage as a whole system of interlocking wires you realize that the bird has no chance of escaping because of all the barriers put in their way (Frye). This is exactly the same case for women. When somebody tries to see the oppression of women. they look only at one problem women face, refusing to step back and see there is no one cause for their oppression. If instead they looked at all the barriers women face at once, they would finally see that women have no way of escaping oppression without continuous efforts of every person involved in the oppression, including the woman being oppressed and the sexist men doing the oppressing.