Blog # 5

When I hear the word oppression, I think of a powerful dictator who is subjecting a group of people to do something in an act against their own will. While this may be the case in some instances, oppression can take power in different forms. In the article titled "Five Faces of Oppression", the term oppression is defined and then explains the different forms of how, when, who, and where is becomes effective.

 Exploitation can basically be broken down to mean the utilization of something or someone in an unfair manor. The most common form of exploitation, that I have experienced, exists when pay wages are involved. Business owners or companies hire people to preform a task or produce/create a product for them and then that worker will not be justified in their pay or the conditions that they are forced to work in can be detrimental to their health. All in the name of increasing the profit for the business owner or company. For example, the shoe company Nike, has admitted to using child laborers in underdeveloped countries in order to manufacture their shoes. As many of us know, Nike is a powerful company and are able to retail their shoes up to $200 as well as indorse popular athletes to promote their company. So the fact that Nike can bestow the power to exploit their workers, especially children is a prime example of dehumanization. Marginalization is a form of oppression because it allows for a society as a whole to dismiss a group of people that are not considered within the norm. For example, the other day I read an article that stated the central government in Indonesia would be removing Balinese, a dialect of language, from the educational curriculum within this year. This would mean that the language would no longer be taught within schools. This arises the issue for people who are only familiar with Balinese as well as students who are currently studying the language in hopes to become teachers. Another example of people not being considered the norm are those that are obese. Society generally will look down upon the obese and they are often subjected to having to pay extra on airlines when traveling whether or not they can control their health issues.

Powerlessness as a form of oppression is considered exceptionally powerful because it allows for people to oppress themselves as well as others. The example given in the article summed the definition of powerlessness up for me perfectly. In the article, Harriet Tubman is quoted as once writing, "I would have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves.". When a person believes that they are powerless they often do not realize or see clearly the negative effects that are happening to them, they only understand it as how it should be. Cultural Imperialism is a form of oppression that involves taking the culture of the dominant class, separating it, and establishing it as the norm. For example, the article references that although America has no official language, English is the dominant language. This allows for other languages to be looked down on, which is sad because America  is virtually a cultural melting pot of cultures which does not stop people from saying hurtful things, such as 'This is America, we speak English here'. Something that can be considered just as terrible is expressing these thoughts via bumper sticker, nothing says getting your point across like promoting it on the back of your car.

The sticker reads: "Speak English or go back to the sorry ass country you left."

Violence is the most visible form of oppression. Besides the fact that it can be observed in the form of physical harm it can also exist verbally as well as be self inflicted. All people should be allowed to pursue how and any which way their lives pan out. No single person, group, or form of government should be  allowed to oppress others into thinking otherwise or use physically use force in order to make them do such.


In 1961, a man named Stanley Milgram devised a test to see if ordinary law abiding citizens were able to administer an electric shock to other people in the name of science. The test included 12 participants who were led to believe that this experiment was about conducting a memory test, while it actually was created to test the power authority holds. The participants were designated as a teacher, the one giving the shocks, or the learner, the one receiving the shocks. The volts that the participants were to receive were between 15-450 volts, 450 surpassing the limit within the U.K. Within the video, the teacher was portrayed as the participant while the learner was an actor pretending to also be apart of the experiment. The teacher and learner were able to greet each other in the waiting room before the experiment took place as well as have the teacher witness the learner being strapped into the chair where the voltage would be initiated. This allowed for the teacher to have a first hand perspective of the situation the learner was being subjected to. To reinforce the severity of the test, the teacher was exposed to a 45 volt shock in order to understand what the learner was experiencing. The point of this experiment is ultimately to show if the teacher will stop the test or obey the professor who is advocating the test, even after the teacher is able to listen to prerecorded screams from the learner.

One of the first participants shown is a man who I thought that I identified with the most. He was apparently only 1 of 3 participants who could not continue on with the survey after hearing the screams from the learner. He compared the study to the Nazis in the sense that he was told to obey an authority figure while his morals would not allow him to obey the professor, thus putting an end to the survey. One of the other participants of the survey, a woman who was a personal coach, kept reassuring herself before pushing on to the next button/voltage. She would say something like "the participant signed a release form, right?' or 'We should stop before it continues up to the lethal voltage, right?' but then continue on once the professor insured her that it was all in the name of science.  When I was watching this video, I could not understand how or why the participants could allow themselves to continue. I understand that the professor was there to tell them that the survey was 'essential' to science, but if they were randomly selected then they could have easily found other participants to partake within the survey. After being confronted the participants who continued on with the survey were looking to blame the instructor while they themselves were the ones who allowed for the button to be pushed, controlling the voltage. There was no coercive power involved within this experiment, no would would have been punished, they were only helping out in the name of science. I think the power that was expressed was legitimate in the sense that they wanted to obey the scientists orders above all else, even if it constituted harm to another human being.