[Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #2

[the madison insurgent]

Unlearning Oppression
Teaching others about inequality in order to challenge
it
by James Murrell

“I’m sick and tired of hearing about discrimination
and disadvantages of Blacks, women, gays, or the
poor.” … “I wish those people would stop whining.” …
“I’m not a racist, so don’t blame me.”… “With all the
special treatment these special interest groups are
getting, it is white males who are at a disadvantage.”

Race, gender, class, sexual orientation: inequality
and oppression based on these categories held the
attention of faculty and students attending a
symposium in early November at the UW–Madison. It
focused on teaching about inequality and challenging
the daily words, actions, failures to act, and
silences that continually renew and reinforce
inequality based on group identity. Guest speaker
Allan Johnson, a sociologist at the University of
Hartford, cited the above quotes as often-heard
examples of defensiveness and denial that arise in
European Americans who classify themselves as “white,”
or those who are male, middle-class, or straight, when
teachers and professors attempt to address these
issues in the classroom.
Many people view attempts to discuss these issues as
making excuses for those who have not or cannot prove
their merit in society. Johnson pointed out the
problem with the view that everything in society is a
matter of individuals rather than understanding that
the conditions and structures of society also play a
role. Few do not accept that every person must be held
responsible for his or her actions. Yet, it would also
be difficult to claim that the billions of dollars
spent every year on advertising to influence people’s
choices are spent in vain, and that somehow, one’s
“choices” are only one’s own. The reality of what
political campaign advertising and packaging can
deliver are clearly seen in the results of the recent
election.
Invited speaker Paula Rothenberg, professor of women’s
studies at William Paterson University of New Jersey,
emphasized the power exercised over the use of words
that limits the capacity of the public to even name
and discuss structures of society. She pointed out
that “free enterprise”—the phrase used to describe the
kind of system under which we live—has become almost
synonymous with “freedom” and “democracy” in everyday
speech. Under “free enterprise,” we have corporate
CEOs receiving an average salary and “compensation”
package of $11 million annually, Rothberg reported.
She reported what is by now the well-known statistic
that the top one percent wealthiest people own as much
wealth as the bottom 95 percent in the United States. 
Clearly, the people in the top one percent did not
work so hard or so much that they deserve to possess
as much as 95 percent of the population does. Under
the current social system, a small fraction of the
people comes into possession of the wealth produced by
the work of most of the other people. The recent rash
of corporate finance and accounting scandals and the
bursting of the stock market bubble remind us that
stockholders do what my father always taught me was a
bad thing—they get something for nothing. They receive
money for doing no work. The work is done by the
workers of the companies that trade their stocks on
the market, however inflated their prices may be. In
this system, if you own or control the means by which
the things that all of us need to live—food, clothing,
housing, manufactured goods—you are in a position to
continue to increase your wealth at the expense of
others, because it is the wealth produced by people
who actually labor to make these things that ends up
as dividends, assets, currency stores, etc., that are
traded and accumulated by players in the markets.
Inequality is an intrinsic structural aspect of
society. The more you have, the more readily you can
get even more. The less you have, the less control you
have over your life, because even if you work full
time at minimum wage, you are below the official
poverty line. With inequality a basic part of the
system, it only remains to be determined who will be
at the bottom and who will be at the top. Due to
concrete historical events and circumstances, Blacks,
women, and the working and unemployed classes have
consistently been placed lower in this hierarchy than
their respective counterparts. Through history,
various other ethnic groups have entered and sometimes
escaped an out-group status, though today many Latino
groups and others swell the lower ranks, and native
people (“American Indians”) continue to be the poorest
of the poor.
There is a value to the survival and maintenance of
this oppressive social system to having out-groups
upon which an extra measure of exploitation can be
applied. Since there must be inequality, if much of it
can be “externalized” to out-groups, then there is
more room to placate and pacify in-group members with
a relatively higher level of material rewards. This
can be used to help legitimate the system and to build
the solidarity of the in-group against the external
“Others” whom they are taught to see as less than
worthy, even less than human. The standard of what is
right and good and meritorious becomes what is
“white,” “male,” and “middle-class” for the middle
strata of people (that includes token Blacks, a few
women in management, etc.) who are nonetheless subject
to the same system of exploitation. Out-groups are
portrayed as, or socially engineered to be,
“deficient” and lacking in merit. Using, creating, or
accentuating categories of difference to make them
categories of superior and inferior helps to
rationalize and justify a system based on the
continual creation of inequality inherent to how the
system operates.
Though not treated in as great a depth, the issues of
sexual orientation and various gender constructions
were raised during the symposium, as it was pointed
out that the daily practices of denigration through
“Othering” on that basis is intertwined with—and
inseparable from—those based on sex, race, and class.
Denigra-tion of a group of people based on any
category is a tool of oppression.
Since those in the out-groups always put up some level
of resistance, it becomes imperative for in-group
members to cultivate and participate in mechanisms of
control over the out-groups. The speakers and the
dialog at the recent symposium emphasized the fact
that the attitudes, beliefs, and person-to-person
practices that implement and reinforce the
classifications and their consequences are a matter of
everyday actions and choices. A Black person, for
example, can usually bear witness to the string of
daily indignities and instances of invocation of
“white privilege” consciously or unconsciously wielded
by many European Americans; or a woman can point out
“male privilege.” Yet, it is that daily interpersonal
component of the continual reproduction of unequal
structures that can be a potent site of resistance and
refusal to accommodate the process, and which can be
part of the undoing of oppression. 
Our classrooms are particularly powerful places in
which teaching about and challenging the daily
construction of oppression can take place. Raising the
topic frequently provokes the kind of reactions shown
in the opening quotes, providing opportunities for
working through and transforming the processes that
construct inequality and oppression into those that
promote equality and more egalitarian control over our
lives, our workplaces, and our relationships with each
other. A crucial ingredient to the possibility of
success of social movement through such a pathway is
the realization that undoing the inequality based on
race, class, gender, and other identities need not
only benefit the members of the out-groups. “Whites”
and in-group members ultimately have a stake and an
interest in the society that could be built without
the internecine social warfare and wherein
exploitation itself could be ended, human needs of all
could be better satisfied, and working lives and
social relationships could be more rewarding and
subject to our own decision-making, rather than that
of a powerful few.
There is a plan to follow up the symposium with future
programs for dialog and activity. “Teaching About
Inequality: Challenging Oppression Through
Mindfulness” had several sponsoring academic
departments and organizations and the principal
contact person is Amanda Gengler, at
amgengler at facstaff.wisc.edu. 
The author can be contacted at jmurrell at ssc.wisc.edu.

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