Five Faces Of Oppression Summary

In the reading Five Faces of Oppression, the author talks about the five different faces that oppression takes. The main point of the reading is to understand that oppression might not be what we think it is. Oppression is a prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control. From the reading I would view oppression as someone reducing the potential for another person to be less human or just themselves. This could mean anything from treating them in a dehumanizing way to denying people education, opportunities, or even the ability to speak their native language. The first face of oppression is exploitation. Exploitation is when you use the labor of one social group to benefit another without fairly compensating them. For example people who work in sweat shops are definitely being exploited. They are being paid pennies for their work while the product they produce is sold for more than they would be paid in a year. The amount of work they do for these companies are not being compensated properly while the owners are becoming richer off of them. Exploitation uses our capitalist society to oppress the workers making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The second face of oppression is Marginalization. Marginalization is the act of confining a group of people to the edge of society. Its purpose is to exclude the people
Powerlessness is linked to Marx’s theory of socialism: were some people “have” power while the vast majority “have not”. The powerless are dominated by those in power and because of this they are used to taking orders and rarely have the ability to give them. An example of people who are powerless are those in very low income class that work two or three jobs to survive. These jobs could be the worst jobs ever that treat them horribly but because they must feed their families they stay there and work. They have a mindset that they are powerless to change their situation so they don't try