Examples Of Oppression In America

One of the most thwarting situations is realizing that your fate has been decided before you get the opportunity to open your mouth. Being an African American teenage girl, there is already the expectancy that you are illiterate, incapable, and shallow. Often times we do not get the opportunity to achieve our own life stories because someone else has already assumed them for us. We are raised to believe that our elders can predict our mistakes because they have already committed them themselves. We spend the majority of our lives attempting to live better lives than those who came before us instead of dominating our own. Some of our deepest inner and outer most struggles uproot from three simple characteristics which we will never be able to control: our ethnicity, our gender, and our maturity.
We are oppressed by means of racism, sexism, and even ageism. Often times, though we do not like to admit, we go out into the world and are immediately limited. We are excluded from certain events because we have developed a stereotype that black people are “ghetto”, ignorant, or loud. Through sexism, women are oppressed by means of labor equality and the gender pay break, in which a man makes more than a woman performing the exact same job. One type of oppression that is rarely identified is that of ageism, in ageism, younger people are not given the same rights or justices as their elders. Although we cannot as easily adjust legal affairs, this is not the type of injustice that the majority of young adults are facing today. Our biggest injustice is not being heard, it is difficult to get people to listen and consider our ideas or to take them seriously just because we lack the time that others feel is the only way to accomplish