Oppression

The definition of oppression is “cruel or unjust treatment or control.” Nobody likes the idea of being treated like a lesser, but when it comes to fighting oppression people do what they’ve always done and split up into groups and prioritize their own agendas while devaluing or even ignoring those of other oppressed groups. The worst part is that a lot of the time other oppressed groups contribute to the oppression of people in other groups or even their own! People’s opinions on one particular side of dichotomous scale which are presented as opposites effects how they treat others, further more these opposites are organized in a social hierarchy that is only necessary for people who like to treat others as inferior. Within the past couple of years I’ve learned that this is so deeply ingrained in us that  parts of our language has been built around making “the other” feel insignificant such as terms that default to being male like “Mankind.”

  The article “There is no Hierarchy of Oppression” sums up how I feel about the oppressed separating themselves from the suffering of other groups. As a person who is a member of multiple racial groups, I can confirm that all oppressed groups are connected- if not by our need to fight oppression then by the members of our groups that transcend these abstract ‘boundaries’ we’re made. A person cannot be only black, they’ll be black and male or female or even non binary with their own sexual preferences and political opinions and etcetera, meaning cooperation is desperately needed to fight oppression.