Oppression is the unjust treatment of power under the guise of governmental authority, relating to class society and punishment. Oppression can be expressed as overt depending on how it is practiced. Referring to discrimination is when the injustice does not directly afflict everyone in society but instead targets specific groups of people. America practices many oppressive behaviors that include low wages, forced labor, and employment/ sex discrimination based on race.
There are numerous faces of oppression that exist in America today, my top three are Exploitation, Marginalization, and Violence. Exploitation refers to the use of people’s labors to produce future profit with no compensation towards them. Exploitation is shown through social media, celebrities, government and so much more. Marginalization refers to an incarcerating a group of people to a lower social standing. For example, America expresses Marginalization by preventing transgender people from using restrooms that match their gender identity. Lastly, Violence, violence is everywhere a lot of people think violence is the answer to everything when in reality it makes problems worst.
The five known faces of oppression are exploitation, marginilization,powerfullness, cultural domination, and violence. We experience exploitation by the higher social class because they have the opportunity to benefit economically, but the lower class due to them working at lower positions, while the higher class has the ability to get higher position jobs. We experience marginalization in the workplace genderwise, dealing with most men getting higher position jobs than women getting higher quality job positions. In this world, we experience powerfulness through violence, discrimination, racism, and also financial instability dealing with inflation and fewer people being financially stable brings negative effects to us socially, politically, and economically. We also experience cultural domination, due to the beginning of the 17th to 18th century, when Africans were being enslaved and forced out of their homeland by the Europeans. Therefore, this led to a negative effect dealing with Africa not truly recovering from their loss of cultural domination by the Europeans culturally. We experience violence by innocent black, and white young women or men, even families being killed by the younger generations of men.
Therefore, all these 5 faces of oppression negatively affect us as a whole socially, culturally, and economically. Socially, it leads our population to decrease significantly, by people wanting to move out and also find a society where they don’t have to face these faces of oppression. Economically, it also leads us to struggle financially dealing with introducing the issue of exploitation due to the higher class having higher financial opportunities including higher job positions than the lower class. Politically, the less address and help from the government regarding solving these oppressions leads us to have less trust in the government. That is why it is time for us to use justice and public difference regarding solving our social problems.