Institutional Oppression: Sammy Martinez

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Institutional Oppression
“Institutional oppression is the systematic mistreatment of people with in a social identity group, supported and enforced by the society and its institutions, solely based on the person’s membership in the social identity group.” ("Read institutionalized-oppression-definitions.pdf." Read institutionalized-oppression-definitions.pdf. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Jan. 2017.) Institutional Oppression is based on a person’s race, gender, class, age, ability and sexuality. Autism is a disorder characterized by difficulty in communicating and forming relationships with other people and have repetitive behaviors. People with disorders are one of the most oppressed. “More than three point five million Americans live with an Autism …show more content…

Martinez wanted to get some experience working, so he was able to get a volunteer opportunity at his local museum. Three weeks later he was fired because he failed to stay at his designated station and attended visitors in an abrasive manor. His mother, in the video clip, states that her son’s actions were misunderstood. Martinez likes to do something called stimming, which means he likes to walk back and forth, which all people with a form of Autism do. His bosses at the museum did not know that he was stimming, they thought that he was leaving his post. Martinez’s mother says she blames the lack of Autism awareness. According to the Autism Society only nineteen percent of people with disabilities were able to find employment in two thousand and fourteen. When Jesse was in fourth grade, he would stim in the same area in front of the outside benches every day at recess, one day a couple of third graders started throwing rocks at him. They said they threw rocks at him because he was talking to himself. People with Autism talk to themselves because they have hundreds of pictures going through their mind. If it was a show they saw or an unusual phrase they never heard before or an event they witnessed or experienced, they replay those things in their mind all at the same time. That’s why they talk aloud or speak in a different voice or flap their hands in the air which shows if they are happy or sad about what they are replaying in their mind. Like Martinez, Jesse was treated in a bad way because the kids don’t know the kind of person he is or why he does the things he does. Martinez’s boss fired Martinez because he was “leaving” his post. His boss had no idea of the kinds of things people with Autism do. Both Martinez’s boss and the young kids do not care if they are unaware about Autism or if they mistreat

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