Oppression, sadly, has a big place all throughout the history of America. From the beginning, we started out being oppressed, but as the years went by, we started to oppress others, like females, blacks, and the poor. The United States of America believes in equality for all, but intersectional analysis can bring up the contradiction between that statement, and reality. Intersectional analysis is known as “an analytic mode that does not privilege one side of identification over another, but insists on the importance of race, class, gender, and sexuality as interlocking and mutually constitutive.”(Hong ix-x). This analytic mode was an important contribution to the science of sociology from the black feminists that Grace Hong talks about in her book The Ruptures of American Capital. Using intersectional analysis, one finds that based on different variations of race, class, and gender an individual has, that individual will experience varying levels of oppression from the oppressors, who are usually the ones who hold the seats of power. Oppression usually happens in what Hong would call a “racialized state” (Hong viii) where the nation state takes on a repressive role in “the form of police surveillance and the displacement of impoverished racialized communities” (xi). Using intersectional analysis and bringing to conscious the contradictions one has in the country can help bring the people to change, in the direction that is promised to all men, the direction of equality. To demonstrate how intersectional analysis can be used in the real world, one can look at the world of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.
The world of Django Unchained is full of racism, oppression, and segregation and represents the epitome of Hong’s racializ...
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...n the usual sense, like how slaves are treated, but she is discriminated by the amount of value she actually has or appears to have. In the scene where she is first introduced, Candie yells “Where is my beautiful sister!?” and she comes scampering out of the house. Candie talks about how beautiful and easy on the eyes she is, while she does not even say a word. Candie’s sister just stands there and smiles the whole time while she is being shown off to the whole crowd like an object of beauty. Lara, after being introduced, then adds nothing to the story and is eventually killed off in the end. Because of her lack of any real addition to the plot, Terantino did not need to have her be a part of the story at all. One might see Terantino’s addition of her to the story as a viewpoint the people had of women in a racialized state. They were seen as just objects of beauty.
Historically, the United States has prided itself as the most egalitarian and autonomous nation in the world. Political figures and institutions have attempted to uphold the theoretical ideals of the nation, while in practice often fail to fulfill their promises to the people. This gap between our fundamental values as delineated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and our discriminatory practices such as slavery and gender discrimination can be found in competing political ideologies which purposefully exclude marginalized peoples. The framers built the United States for the white man; every other person’s rights came, and continue to come afterwards. Once one people’s freedom is postponed, the same oppressive strategies
For as long as I can remember, racial injustice has been the topic of discussion amongst the American nation. A nation commercializing itself as being free and having equality for all, however, one questions how this is true when every other day on the news we hear about the injustices and discriminations of one race over another. Eula Biss published an essay called “White Debt” which unveils her thoughts on discrimination and what she believes white Americans owe, the debt they owe, to a dark past that essentially provided what is out there today. Ta-Nehisi Coates published “Between the World and Me,” offering his perspective about “the Dream” that Americans want, the fear that he faced being black growing up and that black bodies are what
“Black Awakening in Capitalist America”, Robert Allen’s critical analysis of the structure of the U.S.’s capitalist system, and his views of the manner in which it exploits and feeds on the cultures, societies, and economies of less influential peoples to satiate its ever growing series of needs and base desires. From a rhetorical analysis perspective, Allen describes and supports the evidence he sees for the theory of neocolonialism, and what he sees as the black people’s place within an imperial society where the power of white influence reigns supreme. Placing the gains and losses of the black people under his magnifying glass, Allen describes how he sees the ongoing condition of black people as an inevitable occurrence in the spinning cogs of the capitalist machine.
In many contemporary spaces, intersectionality is taught and consumed as a static concept of merely listing identities carried by one person simultaneously. It’s used more often as a checklist than a place of analysis or resistance. However, the use of intersectionality as just an apolitical tool, rather than a theory born from the knowledge of Black women experiencing a “triple jeopardy” of oppression and seeking liberation by deconstructing the institutions that bind them, is reductionist at best. In “Intersectionality is Not Neutral”May communicates that intersectionality pushes us to question and challenge the relatively mundane or acceptable norms in society that lend themselves to a continuous legacy of systemic inequality.
Is Systematic Oppression still relevant? An examination into the roots of the Black Lives Matter Campaign and its Validity in Modern Times? Native Son: Essay Rough Copy
On Being Young-A Woman-and Colored an essay by Marita Bonner addresses what it means to be black women in a world of white privilege. Bonner reflects about a time when she was younger, how simple her life was, but as she grows older she is forced to work hard to live a life better than those around her. Ultimately, she is a woman living with the roles that women of all colors have been constrained to. Critics, within the last 20 years, believe that Marita Bonners’ essay primarily focuses on the double consciousness ; while others believe that she is focusing on gender , class , “economic hardships, and discrimination” . I argue that Bonner is writing her essay about the historical context of oppression forcing women into intersectional oppression by explaining the naturality of racial discrimination between black and white, how time and money equate to the American Dream, and lastly how gender discrimination silences women, specifically black women.
The film observes and analyzes the origins and consequences of more than one-hundred years of bigotry upon the ex-slaved society in the U.S. Even though so many years have passed since the end of slavery, emancipation, reconstruction and the civil rights movement, some of the choice terms prejudiced still engraved in the U.S society. When I see such images on the movie screen, it is still hard, even f...
Race is, in fact, reestablished as an intrusive presence in American collective life in the second part of the play when Hwang 's father and other members of the community become victims of the 1996 Congressional investigation into the loyalty of Chinese Americans suspected of espionage and of obscure financial dealings with China, thereby imposing the reality of racism on a post-racial sensibility. (Botelho 92)
Django aside from being a fantasy film, it does show how an older America once was. Set during 1858, is full of racism and violence. Although, the movie stabilizes these characteristic with a bit of comedy. Nevertheless, according to Karl Marx’s conflict theory people of lighter skin would be more dominant whereas darker skin people would be considered more submissive and less powerful. Even Calvin explained how the slaves could have ganged up, or slayed his ancestors prior but instead they did not. Another theory is Emile Durkheim’s functionalist theory. In the movie this concept is present in how there are two groups of society and how one of the groups retains other in order to keep harmony. Even though the other group is not content and often agonize from abuse, and of being treated like objects. We see many other theories during the movies, but these are some of the ones that stand out the most. And should be put more attention too.
Oppression is a term that has been used throughout history to describe the injustices brought upon minority groups. Feminist writer Marilyn Frye shared the definition of oppression, which essentially means to shape or conform certain groups of people (for this paper women will be used as the primary example) into socially constructed ideals through restrictions that mold and immobilize minority groups or females (Frye 11). According to Marilyn Frye, this term is sometimes loosely thrown around and used out of the term’s true context. The misuse of this term often creates a misconstrued view of what true oppression is and how particular groups of people are able to function within
The structure of a society is based on the concept of superiority and power which both “allocates resources and creates boundaries” between factors such as class, race, and gender (Mendes, Lecture, 09/28/11). This social structure can be seen in Andrea Smith’s framework of the “Three Pillars of White Supremacy.” The first pillar of white supremacy is the logic of slavery and capitalism. In a capitalist system of slavery, “one’s own person becomes a commodity that one must sell in the labor market while the profits of one’s work are taken by someone else” (Smith 67). From this idea of viewing slavery as a means of capitalism, Blacks were subjected to the bottom of a racial hierarchy and were treated nothing more than a property and commodity that is used for someone else’s benefit. The second pillar involves the logic of genocide and colonialism. With genocide, “Non-Native peoples th...
In relation to the Critical Race Theory, the idea of the “gap between law, politics, economics, and sociological reality of racialized lives” (Critical Race Theory slides). The critical race theory gives us a guide to analyze privileges and hardships that comes across different races and gender. For example, analyzing how and why a “black” or “indigenous” woman may experience more hardships versus not only a “white” man, but a “white”
‘Intersectionality’ as a concept can be understood as an interaction between diverse factors encompassing race, age, sex, gender, religion, social policies, systemic practices, cultural norms and the resulting outcome of this interplay with respect to power (Davis, 2008). The genesis of intersectional feminist theory followed an organic process whereby it provided an improvement on the traditional approaches and it was also a step ahead of the radical feminist theory. The marriage of feminist and intersectionality concepts provided an explanation for the interconnectedness of systems of oppression that are experienced by a sub-group such as racially marginalized immigrant South Asian women and their resulting experience of violence due to these factors (Sokoloff & Dupont,
Every generation faces new challenges and new problems to which we have progressed, conquered or simply just swept right under the rug. In today’s world we are increasingly facing numerous social problems, such as income disparity, unemployment, political instability amongst many others, but racism seems to have resurfaced in these past years. Although, the United States has come a long way in the issue of racism, it has never completely conquered it. Incidents such the shooting at Ferguson Missouri has raised an upheaval of protesters against the Country’s system that claims equal treatment and equal opportunity for all, regardless of race or gender. Incidents such as the one previously mentioned, clearly depicts that white-power continues
Over the course of about a dozen weeks or so I have been exploring many facets of oppression. From literary work such as Malcolm X’s autobiography to Sherman Alexie’s novel The Absolute True Story of a Part-Time Indian, oppression is an issue for the majority of people who are not white, upper class males. Race, class, gender, sex, religion, all things that the 14th amendment are supposed to protect, seems to only stand for equality rather than enforcing it and educating people of it’s often damaging effects. Gender and sex roles seem to be the most relevant topic for the times, but also one of the hardest to understand. Cholly Breedlove is a prime example of male dominance in society. We know the how, so for now we’re going to focus on the why.