Out of the Five Faces of Oppression, the face of oppression I chose from Young is powerlessness. Young speaks about powerlessness in three ways. The first way young spoke about powerlessness was acquiring and practicing a profession with an expensive progressive character. Secondly, Young stated while many professionals have supervisors that cannot directly influence many decisions or the actions of many people must know nevertheless have considerable day-to-day work autonomy. Lastly, the privileges of the professional extend beyond the workplace to a way of life. Several injustices associated with powerlessness include lack of decision-making power and working life, inhabitation in developing one’s capacities, and exposure to disrespectful treatment because of the status one occupies.
When working in the work place, many people have been mistreated. When someone is being mistreated or treated unfairly in the work place it is called discrimination. According to USA Today, their workers were asked who is most likely to be treated unfairly in the workplace. The responses may not come to a shock to you, but here they are: African-Americans were 21% likely to get mistreated, Arab-Americans were 18%, Hispanics were 13%, Muslims were 12%, and Women were 8% possible. Referring back to the newspaper article, “WE HAVE unfair discrimination in the workplace despite a wonderful Constitution and much legislation since 1994.” Due to the discrimination faced in the workplace, the Employment Equity Act was created. Discrimination in day-to-day work autonomy stretches further than just the workplace and in schools like Yale, allegedly discriminating against white and Asian-American applicants. “The lawsuit accused Yale of racial balancing, similar to following quotas, saying the school keeps the annual percentage of admitted African-American applicants to within one percentage point of the previous year’s class, and that it conducts similar balancing for Asian-American applicants.” This is very outrages to see, and I hope one day we can all fix these issues!
