The Pros And Cons Of Oppressors

oppressors and it is not possible for them to understand the oppressed community and their

The Nazis used different methods to control the German population. The SS became the main means of terrorising and intimidating Germans into obedience. The SS had almost unlimited power to arrest and imprison people without trial, search houses or confiscate property. The SS had undercover agents in every town to snoop on political suspects and potential troublemakers. The SS also ran the concentration camps.

As civilization has evolved, economic inequality has existed since the feudal era and has made its place in modern society. It is a dilemma that examines the gap between the low wealth of the middle-class worker and the profitable earnings of the monopolizing upper-class business owner. It is a socio- economic issue that can best explored through the lens of the conflict theory; thoroughly explaining as to how the wealth gap came to exist and the consequences of such an economic state on the interaction between the middle-class worker and the wealthy businessman.

Typically, a government or political organization that is in power places these restrictions formally or covertly on oppressed groups so that they may be exploited and less able to compete with other social groups. The oppressed individual or group is devalued, exploited and deprived of privileges by the individual or group which has more power" (Barker, 2003).

Supposedly, both the individuals with ascribed statuses with hereditary wealth and the poor and homeless have equal chances to become successful although, Orestes Bronwnson in The Laboring Classes, pointed out that this is not true. “Do the young man inheriting ten thousand pounds and the one whose inheritance is merely the gutter, start even?” (219). As a result, the harsh separation of the rich and the poor, where capitalism thrives and,” the division of the community into two classes, one which owns the funds…the other provides the labor” (216). The inhumane apprehension of a capitalist society that keeps its workers “in a permanent system, [has] given preference to the slave system” (214) says a lot about the evils of capitalism corresponding with the false American Dream. An outcome of capitalism is the frustrating rivalry between the poor. “There’s more people! That’s what’s ruining the country. The competition is maddening”

In this course we learned about many different types of oppression, from the time America was first “discovered” and the discoverers began oppressing the Indians, to slavery, to the oppression of the mentally handicapped, all the way to more “modern” times in schools were students are being oppressed.

They would use harsh words, beat, and even kill Jews. These were clear actions of immorality shown by the SS officers. Furthermore, in the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel states, “An icy wind was blowing violently. But we marched without faltering. The SS made us increase our pace. ‘Faster, you tramps, you flea-ridden dogs!’”(Wiesel 85). This shows the lack of sympathy they had; the SS officers were in high command, allowing them to abuse their power and show nothing but immorality towards Jews. Therefore, possessing great amounts of power had lowered the SS officers’

There are some who may argue that oppression is a concept of the past and that it does not exist in our modern society; however, oppression it not always an overt power one person or group exerts over another. It can come in more subtle forms, many of which that have become such normative aspects of our society that some oppressors and oppressed individuals alike may not immediately recognize its impact. In

Martin Luther King Jr. expressed the sentiment, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” This statement implies, that if the oppressed are not willing or empowered to take their freedom from the oppressor, the oppressor is not going to offer freedom on their own accord. This statement will be assessed according to the concept of ordinariness from the critical race theory and Dahrendorf’s concept of the struggle for authority from the conflict theory.

Because of this, those that utilize this form of oppression are able to take advantage of individuals and isolate them in society. For example, “racialize groups in the United States, especially Blacks and Latinos, are oppressed through capitalist superexploitation resulting from a segmented labor market that tends to reserve skilled, high-paying, unionized jobs for whites.” (pg. 51) It is here where we see the injustice of exploitation by the ability of one group to “transfer energies to another, and therefore enabling social institutions to help few accumulate while constraining many more.” (pg. 53) As the amount of people that are constrained continues to increase, exploitation begins to take the form of marginalization.

In our Society, we deal with many form of oppression in our daily lives. Unfortunately, different groups of people are more oppressed than others. Oppression is the unjust treatment of a group of people. I believe, our government is a major culprit as they are responsible for oppressing most of society. This involves many groups, such as single mothers, the working class, African Americans, gays and lesbians. In my paper, my personal views will be addressed incorporating ideas from several readings pertaining to different forms of oppression. A summarization of each article will be provided as well.

The oppressor is dominant, powerful, and unified. The oppressor is disadvantaged, weak, and divided. Often times in the healthcare system, the oppressor appears to be the for-profit corporations, investors, and government to name a few. Similarly on the other end of the spectrum, the oppressed are regularly identified as the poor, minorities, and those that are underprivileged. Sadly, these descriptors are typically accurate in the United States and the world abroad. Freire identifies characteristics of the oppressor as selfish, manipulative of others, abusive of power, and fails to recognize others as humans. He describes characteristics of the oppressed as denying the self, prevented from being authentic, and as being exploited and manipulated without realization (Butts & Rich,

In any case, individuals within society become oppressed as higher-ranked groups control their lower class counterparts. The five characteristics that pertain to human oppression become defined in Plumwood’s essay as: radical exclusion, homogenization, denial, incorporation, and instrumentalism. Radical exclusion refers to the separating of men as the “One” and women as the “Other.” Furthermore, this term means that the qualities of women become

“Five Faces of Oppression” by Iris M. Young tries to create an idea that we can critique the reality and stages of oppression of different groups. She argues that oppression is structural in the sense that injustices arise from systematic everyday activities, and not from policies or how people act. Since oppression is systematically reproduced and thus ingrained into culture, politics and economics, therefore it cannot be simply removed from our society. She separates the condition of oppression into five different forms: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. Young states that exploitation is where oppression occurs in the transfer of one social group’s products of labor to benefit the wealthier class. She also argues that women are also exploited to through this from of

One major link includes the fight between an oppressed group and their persecutors. Whether it’s the proletariat and the bourgeois in “The Communist Manifesto,” or the inequality of genders in “The Second Sex,” or the flight of the African Americans in the “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. In all of these texts we are shown how easy it is for one group to abuse their power and create unfair rules and regulations only imposed on the more inferior members of society. Each group of oppressor thrives off of alienating, and subjugating their inferiors.