Racial Oppression
Today, a serious problem exists all over the world. Racial oppression takes place in the poorest and the richest countries, including America. Racial oppression is characterized by the majority, or the ruling race, imposing its beliefs, values, and laws on the minority, or the ruled race. In most areas, the ruling race is upper class whites that run the “system”, and have a disproportionate amount of power. In other areas, it may not be the white race, but it is still the race that is comprised of the majority, makes the laws, or has the most money. These are the keys to domination over the weaker minorities that don’t have the power to thrive under the majority’s system according to their own cultural beliefs, values, and laws.
One of the countries in which oppression is apparent is South Africa, a country that practices apartheid. “Drought”, a sort of parable written by Jan Rabie, addresses this very issue in a compelling way. A white man and a black man are working together in the midday sun on an arid plain. Not long after the white man instructs the black man to work outside because he has black skin and can stand the sun better. He tells the black guy that, “You are cursed…Long ago my God cursed you with darkness…we want to build houses and teach you blacks how to live in peace with us” (685-86), yet the house they are building is designed to separate them. The black man counters by pointing out that his “ancestors dipped their assegais in the blood of your forefathers and saw that it was red as blood” (686). He is linking himself to the white man by their blood, which of course is the same color regardless of the differing amounts of melanin in their skin and their different backgrounds. The white ...
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Temporary inequality exists as a means of “improving” a subordinate to the level of a dominant. After the period of inequality is over, the two view each other as equals. The other form of inequality, permanent inequality, exists solely because of an ascription of inferiority to a subordinate that is inherent and unchangeable. Unlike temporary inequality, there is no possibility of improvement for the subordinate; they are, in the eyes of the dominant, inferior and impossible to “fix.” The dominants, who view themselves naturally superior to the subordinates, begin to take advantage of the subordinates. “Out of the total range of human possibilities, the activities most highly valued in any particular culture will tend to be enclosed within the domain of the dominant group; less valued functions are relegated to the subordinates” (Rothenberg, 112). Moreover, the subordinates, who by this point are under the total control of the dominant group, may begin to internalize the value of the dominants. “[Subordinates’] incapacities are ascribed to innate defects or deficiencies of mind or body…More importantly, subordinates themselves can come to find it difficult to believe in their own ability” (112). This theory of domination and subordination are clearly mirrored in race relations in the United States. Whites, who are the dominant group, make all of the fallacious errors involved in race-based thinking; they are prone to, like Miller describes, hoarding superior roles in society and practicing systematic cruelty towards the subordinates due to their sincere belief that the subordinates are inherently incapable of rising to the level of the dominant. This internalized belief on the part of the dominants, that the subordinates
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A lack of power is the most notable characteristic of a subordinate group because it’s what separates them from the dominant group. This power held by the dominant group is the result of their history of where they reside and their effect on the world nationally and even globally. The relationship shared between white people (dominant group) and black people (subordinate group) is racism. Specifically, racism built into every level of our society and expressed in the practice of social, political, and economic
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