The Pros And Cons Of Oppression

Oppression is the flip side of privilege,like privilege, oppression results from the social relationship between privileged and oppressed categories. Thus, in order to have the experience of being oppressed, it is necessary to belong to an oppressed category.For example, whites cannot be oppressed as whites and heterosexuals cannot be oppressed as heterosexuals, because oppression only exists whether is another group there to oppress them. Oppression as Mullally states, “…is by virtue of being a group member of a group or category of people that is systematically reduced,molded, immobilized”(Mullaly,253). By living, everyday I reinforce both my oppression and my privilege. It is interlocking, which means it cannot be taken apart. As Baskin

Being born into this class made it easy for me to pursue an education. Someone who is of less means has to overcome poverty to gain access to good education and technology. This does not mean that I did not have to work hard for the things I have, I just have to recognize that these things were simply more accessible to me. In Jamie Utt’s article , So You Call Yourself an Ally: 10 Things All ‘Allies’ Need to Know, he lists the things that we as privileged people who call ourselves “allies” of a certain marginalized group, need to do more of, he also address certain issues and conversations that need to be either altered or stopped altogether. In order to to break the cycle of oppression, it is important that we recognize the power we have and remember that what do with our privilege has an impacts others lives. We can choose to push back against your privilege and to use it in a way that challenges oppressive systems instead of perpetuating them. As Jamie Utt notes, “And in the end, part of the privilege of your identity is that you have a choice about whether or not to resist oppression.”(Utt,

Being races in an upper middle class does not mean that I have not experienced racism. It means that I simply have more tools to cope with it. The reality is that we love in a world where I am seen as Black first and a woman second. We live in a society that still judges and defines me by my race. It is still important to recognize that the success of a few people does not mean that the problem of racism is solved or that privilege no longer exists. For example, having a black politician or powerful figure does not mean that racism is over. The BlackLivesMatter movement sparked under the regime of Barack Obama, and if someone where to say that racism is over because we had a Black president that would be ridiculous. A situation occurred in my personal life where my manager stated that she didn 't believe that “Only Black Lives Matter, because All Lives Matter”. In that moment, I wished that I had access to Kevin Roose’s article, The next time someone says that ‘all lives matter’, show them these 5 paragraphs. In it he states, “The phrase “black lives matter” also has an implicit “too” at the end: it’s saying that black lives should also matter. But responding to this by saying “all lives matter” is willfully going back to ignoring the problem. It’s a way of dismissing the statement by falsely suggesting