Smoke and Mirrors: An examination of factors affecting an individual’s development of awareness of the role of oppressions in U.S. society
Robert F. George
Smoke and Mirrors: An examination of factors affecting an individual’s development of awareness of the role of oppressions in U.S. society
Introduction
The right is relatively untroubled by American life; the right knows a proper lifestyle and wishes to maintain it. The left is caught between the knowledge of what constitutes comfort and the knowledge that much Western comfort comes at the expense of the poor and minorities. The result is a left that sometimes sounds like the right, and a right that can say and do anything that strikes its fancy. (Stuckey, 1991, p. 113)
Most of the world perceives the United States as the most affluent and most powerful country in the world today. If we examine the published per capita income statistics, the U.S. average is a very impressive $30, 271 (State Of Michigan, 2002). It undoubtedly possesses the greatest military might in the world. Other statistics would also reinforce the economic strength of this society but at what cost both now and in the future? What of the individuals that comprise the data; what about their positions within society? What about the masses within the less advantaged countries throughout the world that are the “rungs” on the ladder of “success” as reflected by one of the interviewees for this paper:
. . . basically for 90% of the people, it’s about material goods . . . or a good way of life which basically is having the house, the kids, the food, the cars, . . . all the play toys. (Saul, personal communication, November 4, 2002)
Those holding the power within this country, primarily multinational corporations who have bought the necessary political influence (Hazen, 2002b), provide institutional identities (Gee, 2002) to all members of society as willing or unwilling participants in the creation of an “imagined” and “constructed” nation (Foster, 1991), allowing continued elitist exploitation and oppression of those who possess the resources and human capital needed to sustain their hegemony.
This paper will discuss the factors that affect the development of awareness regarding oppressions within the U.S. It will also examine the progression within the individual from an awareness of individual oppression, acts of one individual directed toward another individual who is seen inferior in some way i.e. race, gender, class, etc., to awareness of institutionally/socially initiated acts of oppression and finally to awareness that oppressions have developed from an epistemological foundation. This analysis will be based on the article entitled, Coloring epistemologies, by Scheurich and Young (1997) and will use Janet Helms’ six stages of White racial identity development(1990) to examine the perceptions of two interviewees who will be referred to as Sandra and Saul. An attempt will be made to associate comments from these interviewees with specific stages in this model.
Sandra is a 29 year old, single, White female who is college-educated and works as an office administrator. She is currently working toward a Masters degree. She was interviewed on November 12, 2002. Saul is a 50 year old, single, White male who has completed approximately six years of college-level coursework but has no degree. He has worked in several jobs in the service area and plans to go back to school. Saul was interviewed on November 4, 2002. Both Sandra and Saul consider themselves lower middle class people.
Factors affecting the formation of awareness of oppressions
Lack of understanding of the types and reasons for oppression can hinder a person’s development of an awareness of the existence of oppression and can be attributed to some extent to the person’s position in society. For example, Janet Helms when discussing racism, uses the term, “color blindness”, meaning little or no understanding of race as an immediate social experience and no understanding of individual role in institutional racism (1990). Being White, college-educated and middle class in the White-dominated U.S. usually positions the individual to receive a greater measure of power and privilege than people of color, those with low socioeconomic status, non-English-speaking individuals, or those having little or no education. It also restricts those dominant individuals’ ability to see oppression in action. Tate, in discussing critical race theory, quotes Delgado [1988, p. 407], “’White people rarely see acts of blatant or subtle racism, while minority people experience them all the time.’” As Saul says, “ . . . I just don’t think there’s a lot of discrimination that goes on.”, referring to the U.S. society. However, a few minutes later, he says,
. . . and a lot of people are still dying in this world . . . maybe more now than before. Actually to tell you the truth, we just don’t hear about it . . . and that’s . . . that’s in Asia, that’s in Africa . . . that’s just everywhere . . . and there’s still a lot of oppression in the world, too . . .
From this comment, it seems that he is unable to recognize “discrimination”, oppression, within the U.S. society yet readily acknowledges its occurrence in other countries. When Sandra discusses opportunities to participate in society, she says that “. . . there’s a lot of measurable factors that make it inequal but there’s a lot of immeasurable ones. . . like the. . . uh. . . basically I think things that people don’t want to acknowledge, like race or religion or. . . creed. . . “. She makes it clear that oppressions often go unmentioned yet still exist in the actions of individuals toward others. In the article, Project Censored 2001, Peter Phillips, director for Project Censored, is quoted as follows,
“Corporate media in the United States is interested primarily in entertainment news to feed their bottom-line priorities. Very important news stories that should reach the American public often fall on the cutting room floor to be replaced by sex-scandals and celebrity updates.” (Chossudovsky, 2001, para. 4)
Combined with this “entertainment factor” is media control of the news that goes unnoticed by many who lack the time needed to find the real story. Saul described this flood of information,
. . . now we’re flooded with more information than we’ve ever been before at an instantaneous level. I mean you can go to the Internet sites now and just pick up stuff that . . . but unless you go and look for it, you don’t get it. . . . mainstream media still gives us out the same stuff . . . you turn to 5 different stations, you’re gonna get the same information . . . almost always. As far as news reporting, when it comes down to analysis and commentary, there’s a little bit of difference but not a whole lot and if you rely strictly on like the media, even . . . even the print media, you get the same stuff almost all the time so you have to dig for information now . . . but there’s that much out there, it’s a matter of who do you trust. . .
Sandra also reflected distrust for the mainstream media and its omissions in reporting,
Before I started to read the news I was out of it you know. . . and I knew that and I had no expectation of really knowin what was goin on because how could I expect it if I didn’t try?. . . then you start tryin and you start to realize that. . . you get this huge amount of information but how much is being left out. . . and how much is selective. . . the whole thing with Croatia, Serbia, and Chechnya. . . those are just like points on a map. . . you know they really don’t have any meaning until you start to read about the people who were killed in mass graves and buried you know. . . shot with their hands tied behind their backs and stuff (crying). . . we hear all kinds of stuff about the holocaust which happened what?. . . 60, 70 years ago now or somethin? And yet. . . you don’t hear anything about the massacres in Serbia. . . I mean you barely get a little hint once in a while and that’s it.
This control at the institutional level is often not visible by those affected most by it but rather is seen as valid since it is authorized by the “laws, rules, traditions, or principles. . . that allow the authorities to ‘author’ positions [of power]. . . “ (Gee, 2002, p. 102). This becomes a part of the overall structure of a society that perpetuates the epistemology of the dominant White society. This is easily seen within the school system as “discourses of power and privilege and social practices that have epistemically mutated into a new and terrifying form of xenophobic nationalism in which there is but one universal subject of history – the white, Anglo, heterosexual male of bourgeois privilege. . . “ (McLaren & Gutierrez, 1997, p. 214). One needs only to read the current social studies textbooks being used in public schools to understand the messages that are being sent to the youth in the U.S. In the social studies text, The American Nation in the 20th Century (Boyer & Stuckey, 1998), Alexis de Tocqueville is quoted in the opening paragraph to Chapter 24 as follows: “No enemy could deprive Americans of ‘that fertile wilderness which offers resources to all industry’, nor would the Americans be denied ‘their climate or their inland seas, their great rivers or their exuberant soil’” (p. 647). These attitudes and beliefs are carried over into a society that is largely motivated by fear generated by an institutionally controlled⎯mainstream⎯media that promotes “. . . the nation as a collective individual. . .” (Foster, 1991). Chao Gunther refers to the current campaign of fear regarding the threat of terrorism, showing an application of Foster’s “collective individual”, “’With a national injury people are hurt and the politics of fear is being practiced. . . what happened in Europe in the 1930s. . . where the guys in the brown shirts start showing up’”(Hazen, 2002a, para. 40). It is difficult for an individual to develop any identity other that the I-identity (Gee, 2002) so strongly promoted by the dominant society. “We are not free to determine ourselves; rather, we are constructed from the bottom up through largely invisible mechanisms of power that at every turn create norms and measure us against those norms” (Guinier & Torres, 2002, p. 138). The interviewees for this paper had different experiences that acted to increase their awareness about the existence of such an institutional identity. Saul was in college during the Vietnam War and mentions this as a turning point in his life,
Well, for me, at my age . . . Vietnam was probably the changing point . . . the fact that the country was so divided on why we were there . . . whether we should have been there . . . what our objectives were . . . and I think it’s turned out in retrospect . . . that a vast majority of the country realizes that we probably made a large mistake by . . . all the actions that we had there . . . and for me, I was a person of . . . draft age and. . . having a father in the military made me feel really torn on . . . what I felt personally and what I felt as duty toward country. . . one, I did not want to go to war. Two, I did not understand that war and why we were there other than we were living in the ‘40s and ‘50s mentality that we were fighting communism but there was no clear-cut reason we were there other than what we were told by the government . . . that we have to do this. . .
Teenagers and young adults experience tremendous pressure to conform to the majority opinions. Here Saul is torn between social/familial acceptance and his own developing beliefs. He felt familial pressure from his father, a military man, to support the government’s actions in Vietnam yet could not seem to rationalize those actions from his own moral foundation.
Even though there is a significant age difference, both interviewees talk about the changes they experienced during their high school years, questioning much of what they saw happening within society. This is considered a normal experience for teenagers yet is often discounted as merely a phase.
Schools do little to encourage exploration of these questions, instead focusing on what Freire (1970) refers to as “banking education”, an anti-dialogical position that deposits information in “student repositories”. This form of education can be found at all levels and students who continue to ask critical questions will often be marginalized by the system, labeled as misfits or troublemakers. Because of the pressures placed on these students, most will conform to the existing system, their resistance starving from lack of supporting dialogue. Guinier and Torres (2002) talk about a similar occurrence with politicians who are elected and attempt to work for social justice but eventually conform to “politics as usual” because of lack of opportunities to discuss the issues that originally motivated them to run for office. Both in the education system and in the political arena, we can see the effects of the banking education mentality, one that works to occupy all available time acquiring dissociated knowledge, leaving no opportunity for development of what Gee (2002) calls a D-identity (or discourse identity) and what Freire (1970) calls praxis. In discussing the dilemma of immigrant children in reconciling their home cultures with U.S. culture, Beverly Tatum (1999) discusses four possible outcomes: assimilation or blending into the dominant culture; withdrawal, placing oneself outside the dominant culture; biculturalism or trying to maintain both home and dominant cultural identities; and marginalization, rejection by both dominant society’s culture and their home culture. Students (and adults) who question the philosophy and practice of the dominant society will face similar outcomes.
Tatum (1999) describes cultural racism as smog; everybody breathes it even though they may not all be aware of it. Guinier and Torres use a similar analogy, “second-hand smoke” (p. 292) that warns us of the hidden danger it carries. In much the same way, we live in a society that has a history of oppression, slavery, decimation of the American Indian, Vietnam, Haiti, Venezuela, Panama to mention a few⎯as a philosophy when dealing with other people here and throughout the world, a philosophy that attempts to dehumanize the oppressed but actually dehumanizes the oppressor (Bell, 1992).
Oppression in many forms continues today but often wears a new face. “So the winds of capitalism blew our vessel right into the cold mists of neoliberalism – with workers’ rights deregulated, Social Security dramatically cut back, unemployment on the rise. . .” (Noll, 2002, para. 6) . We have seen the same events happen in the U.S. that Noll describes happening in 20th century Germany. Stories abound in the news about job layoffs, company mergers, lack of healthcare, and rising unemployment rates. In addition to economic effects, there is a new assault on the right to privacy with the establishment of the Total Information Awareness Office.
Total Information Awareness will use sophisticated computer-modeling programs to search every database they can get their hands on. They’ll scan credit card receipts, bank statements, ATM purchases, Web "cookies," school transcripts, medical files, property deeds, magazine subscriptions, airline manifests, addresses–even veterinary records. (Rall, 2002, para. 4)
The effects of this new form of oppression are yet to be seen but those outside the White middle class arena will most likely be the first affected. Saul is also aware of the recent changes in the economy.
. . . if you’re part of the poor, your day-to-day life is just existence . . . the news just came out that more and more people are going on the public dole for food stamps . . . you hear the news saying that it’s a good thing because it’s pumping money into the economy.
Sandra talked about the increasing control of the government.
. . . it’s almost like the government is a trust. . . it’s almost like a monopoly. . . and it needs to be broken. . . you know. . . and if we can do that, if we can get to the point where we can break it, then. . . yeah, I do think we can change. . .
The above statements illustrate a level of awareness that recognizes a need for political change. As can be seen from this discussion, the corporate elite power structure has constructed a system designed to perpetuate oppression through information suppression and omission. Another example of this perpetuated unawareness can be seen by the comment of an unknown caller to a radio talk show, “I don’t understand all these people who are complaining about Bush’s actions [regarding Iraq]. . . do they want Saddam to fly over and drop a nuclear bomb on us?” (personal communication, November 30, 2002). As can be determined through any reading of mainstream or alternative media, Iraq has been unable to fly any aircraft without being closely monitored by the U.S. much less fly one to the U.S. Saul seems to show some understanding of this media control when comparing newscasts, “. . . there’s a little bit of difference but not a whole lot and if you rely strictly on like the media. . . even the print media, you get the same stuff almost all the time.” Chomsky (1997) refers to the media as manufacturers of consent, that what we see and hear through the mainstream media communicates the constructed messages that the elite power structure wants us to adopt as truth and it is perceived as validated since it appears to come from multiple sources rather than one.
Levels of Awareness of Oppressions
Scheurich and Young (1997) give some insight as to a deeper reason that oppressions often go unrecognized, pointing to epistemological biases. “Epistemologies, along with their related ontologies, arise out [of] the social history of a particular social group. . . [those] currently legitimated in education arise exclusively out of the social history of the dominant White race” (p. 8). Even though these writers are referring primarily to racial issues, it is legitimate to believe that these epistemologies would apply to other oppressions such as gender or sexual orientation. Wallerstein (1979) discusses the idea of a “’world system perspective’” (p. 18) purporting that today’s capitalist world-economy originated in sixteenth century Europe. That would lead us to believe that the ideas of sixteenth century White Europeans form the basis for current epistemologies and therefore influence the dominant White society of the U.S. as well. These epistemological roots are buried deeply within the system of oppression in the U.S. and are difficult to recognize from within an institutional identity. So the question becomes apparent. How does a person move from an understanding of oppressions as acts of one individual toward another who is “imagined” as being inferior when that idea is reinforced by the epistemology of the dominant society? It is like the story about a person from a three dimensional world attempting to describe a basketball to a person living in a two dimensional world who can only conceive of two dimensions and therefore sees the sphere as a circle. Such an understanding requires learning new ways to conceptualize the world. In the same way, a person who is raced White and middle class must learn to see the world of oppressions in a different way. Guinier, and Torres (2002) use the term, “power-with” to describe “. . . the psychological and social power gained through collective resistance and struggle. . .” (p. 141), leading to social justice. This is contrasted with the “power-over” strategy that is used predominantly in the dominant White society, one that leads to control and domination of one group by another. Freire (1970) had already proposed an idea similar to the “power-with” strategy, explaining that when people establish a dialogue (Gee’s discourse) with other oppressed people, each one brings her/his “generative themes”⎯life experiences, to the group and from the continuing cycle of dialogue, they develop praxis (reflection and action upon the world to change it). The corporate elite power structure fears the creation of such spaces and so acts to fill them with entertaining trivia and often fear. Saul recounted sitting in front of the television with a group of younger friends who were watching The Sopranos, an HBO series: “. . . they were totally transfixed on that program. . . totally! They stopped all activity to watch this show, as if it were the God’s truth of what’s going on in this world. . . “. Sandra expressed her concerns in a different way: “. . . you know we’re making decisions left and right with things. . . we don’t even understand the full power of them. . . weapons of mass destructions. . . I mean we’ve just got all of this stuff that’s really frightening”. Both of these accounts reflect the strategy of the corporate elite power structure that seeks to steer people away from opportunities for meaningful discourse.
For an individual who has been given an institutional identity that carries with it power and privilege, there is one major obstacle that must be negotiated: to recognize his/her role in perpetuating the cycle of oppression. Charles Mills (1997) when discussing racism, talks about the social contract, the visible but abstract set of values held by society and promoted by those in power that proclaims that all people are human beings with equal rights. He contrasts it with the invisible underlying racial contract that is the reality of institutional oppression, manifested through racial inequality. White people can unknowingly become signatories to the racial contract when they fail to act to eliminate the effects of racism. Generalizing this concept to all forms of oppression, the individual who has power and privilege must recognize the unknowing signatory status she/he holds as a member of the dominant society to have any hope of a real understanding of the roots of oppression. Helms explains that the time it takes for an individual to develop this recognition directly relates to whether it was learned vicariously or directly (1990).
Helms’ six stages in White racial identity development related to other forms of oppression
In the film, Salt of the Earth (Wilson, 1954), a group of miners strike for working conditions comparable to those given to White miners in other mining communities. As the strike progresses, the women of the community become involved in the process, initially encountering considerable resistance from the men who see them as domestic workers. Gradually, one by one, the men learn to accept the women as human beings rather than subordinates, a controlling image that is still used in the dominant White society today. During the course of the events, Ramon (one of the husbands and a miner) moves from the position of dominant husband who “protects” his family to a person who recognizes his wife as another human being capable of making her own decisions. Janet Helms (1990) has identified stages through which a White person moves from a position of racist to becoming non racist. Helms divides the six stages in White racial identity development into two processes. Stages 1-3 deal with abandoning racism while stages 3-6 focus on defining a positive White identity. It is difficult to examine one form of oppression without considering the other forms as well since they usually intersect in one way or another. For instance, a White person will usually have more power and privilege than a person of color but when race is intersected with gender, things change. A White male will usually have more power and privilege than a White female but the White female will have more power and privilege than a Black male or female. Guinier and Torres (2002) use the term “trump” [verb form] when discussing intersecting oppressions. Being a White middle class male trumps being a poor White male for example. Because the U.S. society is a White upper and middle class, male-dominated one, Helms’ model can be generalized to include other forms of oppression that, like race, exist in contrast to White domination. Note that the change that occurs in the development of a White identity is not an “anti-“ position but rather involves development of a positive view of differences. As Helms explains, the White person no longer defines Whiteness in terms of the perceived inferiority of others based on some difference such as class or race and instead, becomes aware of Whiteness, accepts it as important, and then internalizes a positive view of Whiteness (p. 55).
The first stage in Helms’ process is the contact phase and involves the recognition of differences in people based on a number of factors such as gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, class, or socioeconomic status. At this stage, the White person is the unknowing benefactor of these oppressions. For example, a White male may feel that he is paid a better salary than a White woman who performs the same job not because he is a male but instead merits a higher salary because of better job performance even when national statistics show that inequality in pay between equally qualified men and women occurs nationwide. As mentioned earlier, the amount of time a person spends in this stage is determined to some extent by whether awareness of the oppressive relationship comes vicariously or directly.
The two interviewees show some signs of progression through the contact phase yet still seem disconnected to some extent. Saul is able to see oppression but associates it more with events in other countries rather than in the U.S. He is aware to some extent of the perceptions of others toward those who are different and therefore perceived by those who hold trump cards (race, gender, education level, class, socioeconomic status as examples) as inferior. Referring to American Indians in New Mexico,
. . . if you’re an urban Indian, a lot of people’s impression is that you’re the drunk out on the corner . . . and you see that a lot. . . . if you think about Gallup, NM, you think about all the wine and liquor bottles laying along the side of the street . . . out on the reservation. . .
Sandra acknowledged the existence of racial discrimination and intersectionality of oppressions as well as recognizing to some extent, institutional oppressions.
. . . but I do think there’s a lot of racial discrimination. I think that there is discrimination based on gender. . . and age. . . . a lot of organizations come up with a basic profile of what they want and if you don’t fit in that, you just don’t have a chance, no matter what your qualifications are and it may be a formal. . . uhm. . . system that they’ve got or it could be an informal one.
In order to move to the next stage, disintegration, the White person must recognize the inconsistencies in the negative perception of Whiteness. Helms refers to Dennis’ [1981] five moral dilemmas that must be recognized by the White person. These five moral dilemmas can be used in relationship to any form of oppression and are paraphrased here:
(a) the desire to be religious or moral with the recognition that to be accepted by other Whites, some must be treated immorally based on differences;
(b) the belief in freedom and democracy versus believing in some form of inequality;
(c) desire to show love and compassion versus the desire to keep others in their place using a controlling image;
(d) belief in treating others with dignity and respect versus believing that some who are different are not worthy of dignity or respect;
(e) belief that each person should be treated according to individual merits versus believing that some should be evaluated based on differences without regard to individual merits and talents [p. 78] (1990, p. 58)
As can be seen in the interviewee’s comments above there is some recognition of these dilemmas. Once there is a realization of these inequalities and inconsistencies, the person can move to the next stage, reintegration. Awareness of these inconsistencies leads to acceptance of the power and privileges associated with being White as being earned. Others are seen as not worthy of the same rewards and thus inferior based on their differences i.e. not being White and male or not being middle class White. The White person has accepted the definition of Whiteness and uses it as the “trump card” when dealing with others’ differences. Actions of a person in this stage can range from treating others as inferior to acts of violence, all to protect White power and privilege (p. 60).
The next stage in the process, pseudo-independence, represents the point at which the White person seeks to redefine Whiteness. A key behavior in this stage is the action of the White person seeking to help others change themselves because of perceived “flaws”, their differences. The person in this stage has neither a negative White identity nor a positive one. Helms does not elaborate on how a person moves from the reintegration stage to the pseudo-independent stage but since it does involve a change in perception, it also involves contact with others’ ideas either vicariously through access to alternative information sources or directly through dialogue. Since White people are usually seen as oppressors in the U.S. society, it makes sense that the ones who would be most effective at dialoguing with them would be other White people with similar power and privilege, those who are moving through the same stages or those who have already successfully progressed through the stages of White identity development who are capable of listening and providing positive feedback as they work through the search for a positive White identity. This is especially important since Helms describes these individuals as caught in between, neither accepted by their peers nor by those who are being oppressed and marginalized. Both Saul and Sandra show some signs of having reached this stage. Sandra expresses frustration at feeling powerless to change the injustices she sees.
I feel a sense of powerlessness because I don’t feel there’s anything I can do about it. I can’t think of any situation that’s occurred where I actually had power to change it and make it not like that. . . . and it makes me sad [tears] for the people who are being discriminated against. It makes me embarrassed . . . if I’m part of the dominant group. . . and somebody’s being rejected from it. . . even if I have nothing to do with the scenario, I still feel embarrassed.
Saul is more resigned in his views.
. . . one of my basic tenets though is that human nature hasn’t changed in millennia so that it’s really hard to fight “the” system, and that system’s still in place . . . and so a lot of frustration. . . . probably depression to a degree because if you get to a point where you feel hopeless that you can make a change there’s a loss of happiness and self-fulfillment.
Both interviewees believe that change is made from one-on-one dialogue with others who have similar concerns and understandings and have others with whom they discuss their ideas. In a conversation with doctoral students in the College of Education at the University of New Mexico, author and historian, Howard Zinn stressed the importance of helping students make the connection between past history and current events, stressing that individuals cannot remain neutral in the world (September 18, 2002). Similarly, connecting the series of events, past and present, can identify oppressions that continue to persist today, leading White individuals to see their roles in perpetuating those oppressions. One caution should be noted here. Beverly Tatum, in her book, Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?, emphasizes the importance of opportunities for Black (as well as White) students to have segregated time to discuss racial issues in the company of supportive adults. While it is good to have supporting individuals with whom to discourse about issues of White identity, the focus should remain a Freirian one in which all are participants, each with their own “thematic universes” (1970). He believed in the capacity of individuals to reach praxis through dialogue. This shared dialogue reduces the possibility of unknowingly perpetuating epistemological biases by not viewing supporting individuals as the sole authorities regarding Whiteness (Scheurich & Young, 1997).
Through dialoguing with other Whites who have positive White identities, the White individual will begin to search for a better definition of Whiteness. This marks the entry into the next stage, immersion/emersion, when “. . . the person replaces. . . myths and stereotypes [about others] with accurate information about what it means and has meant to be White in the United States. . . “ (Helms, 1990, p. 62). Those in this stage seek to change the attitudes and behavior of White people, recognizing these attitudes and behaviors as the source of intersecting oppressions. At this stage, the individual understands the meaning and far-reaching effects of institutional oppression. A part of this stage involves reexperiencing emotions previously suppressed or denied [Lipsky, 1978].
“Internalizing, nurturing, and applying the new definition of Whiteness. . . “ (p. 62) describes the final stage of developing a positive [racial] White identity, autonomy, a stage in which there is no compulsion or need on the part of the White person to oppress others who are different. They are no longer seen as a threat to White identity but rather as a way to enrich life through cultural sharing.
This process of White racial identity development could be tied to the “political race” of Guinier and Torres (2002) which begins by seeing and addressing injustices based on race then expanding to recognize and address injustices to other oppressed groups. Political race recognizes the intersectionality of oppressions and seeks to incorporate all groups of oppressed to increase solidarity thus increasing the likelihood for lasting change rather than change for only a small part of those affected (p. 95). Many White people can be included in this group both as exploited by the corporate elites and those Whites with positive White identities who seek solidarity leading to change.
Conclusion
Premises of this paper
There are four basic premises on which this paper is based. The first of these is that the United States is a dominant, White society that is controlled by a relatively small group of corporate elites in collaboration with government officials who have economic gain (that gives access to power) as their main motivation. A means of achieving this power is through a system that on one hand, metes out power and privilege to middle class (usually White) people while exploiting and oppressing “different others” for the purpose of accessing their resources, also using them as human capital but excluding them from any benefits. This oppression must be precluded by a dehumanizing process by which Whiteness (White identity) is defined as being superior to others because of their differences. The second premise for this paper is that most White people are unaware of this institutionally-imposed White identity but still benefit from it at the expense of those who are portrayed as inferior because of their differences. The third premise is that the corporate elite power structure has created an intricate system of “smoke and mirrors” that is used to distract and entertain White persons, blocking them from opportunities to confront this system of oppression and their unknowing complicity thus perpetuating it. The final premise is that it is possible to create change through those middle class persons who act as buffers between the elites and the oppressed, providing them with opportunities to engage in dialogue and discourse both vicariously through alternative sources of information and directly with others who are in the process of change.
What was learned
From the comments of the two interviewees, it is evident that many White people recognize the existence of oppressions but are still disconnected, not seeing how their own positions of power and privilege help to perpetuate the system of oppression. Their comments hinted at how that connection can be made: through the one-on-one interactions, the discourse and dialogue with others who have also begun to see the inconsistencies between what is being portrayed and what is really happening in the relations of the U.S. to other countries and its own people. Whether or not they are able to reach a realization of the institutional nature of oppression will depend upon the extent to which they seek and find those others.
Where to go from here
As a White middle class male, it is logical for me to study other White middle class males to look for patterns of behavior that are characteristic of perceptual change regarding oppression. If such patterns can be identified, they can then be used to facilitate change by providing opportunities for White males to engage in activities that eventually lead to a greater awareness of oppression and hopefully to change. If the system is to change, one element of that change must be the movement of the White middle class toward a positive White identity that is not dependent upon oppression for its definition.
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