Wednesday, February 8, 2017

RACIAL OPPRESSION

In Peggy McIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," many good points are brought up regarding white privilege, including the underlining denial of white privilege from white people.  As McIntosh states, "I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege-- I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions that were passes unto me a a white person-- I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms.  Begin of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely."  What is so beautifully executed in how McIntosh writes, is that she writes from the perceptive of a white women, which shows white feminist women, what is also important.  There is no hierarchy of oppression, and McIntosh makes that abundantly clear in how she writes.  She also uses white male privilege as the example to help put the importance of the end of racism just as important as the end of sexism.  In my own daily life, the idea of oppression has been around in many different ways growing up.  I've learned that even silencing someone who feels oppressed (regardless of claiming oppressed) is still oppression and its been happening for too long.
In an article by Iris Young, "Five Faces of Oppression," shows a descriptive list of the different types of oppression, that some may be aware of and some not.  As Young states, "oppression is when people reduce the potential for other people to be fully human--this could mean treating then in a dehumanizing manner.  But, it could also mean denying people language, education, and other opportunities that might make them become fully human in both mind and body."  The first type of oppression is exploitation, which if applied to capitalism, it creates classes of the wealthy and poor, and exploitation come from how the wealthy takes advantage of the poor.  In other cases, whites will exploit people of color, men will exploit women, etc.  Marginalization is another type of oppression where types of people get totally excluded from the majorities ideal society.  For example elderly people, people of color, single mothers and their children, and mentally or physically disabled people are massively marginalized.  This involves a sense of unfair powerlessness where some people are being oppressed and think its normal, which makes sense in comparison to Peggy McIntosh's statement that claims whites are taught not to recognize their own privilege as people of oppression aren't necessarily taught to recognize their won oppression.  This leads to a Culture of Silence, where the oppressed believe they are truly inferior to the privileged and a kind of acceptance takes over.  But Freire has a concept called conscientiousness which is gaining critical consciousness, and comes after the acceptance.  This then forms a Cultural Imperialism where the ruling class establishes norms that turn people xenophobic.  In modern culture, I see this the most in media, where a lot of lookism take place in the oppression, but also creates violence.  As Young states, "a;; forms of sexual violence and hate crimes are prevalent examples of violent oppression." 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you are interested in some punk feminist music, you should take out:

The Punk Singer (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUYxV4rECt0&list=PL2AlWBNwJLSVOSOy1pgY1GHNAmUW0lrFN 

If anyone is interested in punk feminist movies then you should take out:
The Punk Singer. 
"The Punk Singer is a 2013 documentary film about feminist singer Kathleen Hanna who fronted the bands Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, and who was a central figure in the riot grrrl movement"

No comments:

Post a Comment