Social Change And The Five Faces of Oppression

I wholeheartedly believe Iris Young’s statement of how tyranny is used to oppress marginalized groups, of her five faces of oppression I would like to highlight three of them. The first I would like to highlight is marginalization. Marginalization is when a certain group of people is forced into a lower social and economic standing based on race, gender, sexuality, exc… Marginalization is alive and well in todays America. Many African American populations live in places that do not have access to healthy food options and are often promoted cigarettes’ and alcohol at every corner store by big companies. Transgender people are targets of marginalization too, with certain laws being passed too which they can not use the bathroom of the gender in which they align with. Marginalization is a direct result of capitalisms with one group benefiting over the others misfortune.

The second one I would like to talk about is Cultural Imperialism. Cultural Imperialism is when the ruling class takes another groups culture and uses it as their own. African American people have been the biggest victims of this with things like Music, Art, and Dance being stolen from them. The ruling class in America often uses these aspects of culture for financial gain often getting money from it.

The third and final one is Exploitation. Exploitation is when a ruling class exploits the regular person to labor to profit, while not compensating them to what they deserve. This is obviously evident in modern day American capitalism as capitalism is the essence of exploitation as it has everything to do with profit over everything with phrases like “its just business” when doing someone dirty for financial gain.

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