Not Oppressed, But Blessed
I remember a conversation with a gentleman at Georgia State. We had been reading Paolo Freire and bell hooks in a communication pedagogy class. The gentleman, an African-American man older than me, told me I was oppressed. I refused to take that label, that delineation, that world view. "I am middle-class, sitting here in a doctoral program, living in the United States, wanting for nothing, able to vote, express my views without fear of prison, etc. How can I be oppressed." Because I was a woman, just as he was oppressed because he was black. (This is not to say he was unpleasant or radical about it, simply matter-of-fact.) But I wasn't buying that day. "There are women on this planet who are oppressed," I said, "but I am not one of them."
I have recounted that conversation to others over the last few years; some laugh, some nod in agreement, and one, my liberal friend, told me maybe I just didn't realize it and was refusing to see the oppression I was under.
My arguments:
1. If we are going to play the oppressed game, I'm in the oppressor class, if anything. I'm white, American, and middle class; we use up most of the resources, something I try hard not to do but the very fact that I'm blogging says I'm using up electricity I really don't need to.
2. But I don't buy this Marxist delineation in the first place. To call someone like me oppressed obliterates the meaning of true oppression, which I think is primarily lack of political freedoms, not economic ones (although I realize that comes into it). Men and women in Iran are oppressed because of the Islamist-based political system; blacks and whites in Zimbabwe are oppressed because of Mugabe's horrendously corrupt government.
3. Dividing the world so simplistically is nonsense. All it does is prescribe one answer to fixing social ills--anger and revolution. Or it allows white, middle class students and profs in colleges and grad schools to sit around and pontificate and not get their butts out and actually do something.
I have recounted that conversation to others over the last few years; some laugh, some nod in agreement, and one, my liberal friend, told me maybe I just didn't realize it and was refusing to see the oppression I was under.
My arguments:
1. If we are going to play the oppressed game, I'm in the oppressor class, if anything. I'm white, American, and middle class; we use up most of the resources, something I try hard not to do but the very fact that I'm blogging says I'm using up electricity I really don't need to.
2. But I don't buy this Marxist delineation in the first place. To call someone like me oppressed obliterates the meaning of true oppression, which I think is primarily lack of political freedoms, not economic ones (although I realize that comes into it). Men and women in Iran are oppressed because of the Islamist-based political system; blacks and whites in Zimbabwe are oppressed because of Mugabe's horrendously corrupt government.
3. Dividing the world so simplistically is nonsense. All it does is prescribe one answer to fixing social ills--anger and revolution. Or it allows white, middle class students and profs in colleges and grad schools to sit around and pontificate and not get their butts out and actually do something.
Comments