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The Five Faces of Oppression- Iris Young
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Talking about oppression in America is a strong and sore topic. People get offended, heated, confused, and, some, (really) just do not care.
But in order to u n d e r s t a n d social injustice in our nation, we need to understand oppression. Systemic oppression; how that involves intersectionality, mass incarceration, poverty, unemployment, discrimination and so on.There is not one solitary oppressor doing the oppressing in our society. It's a conjunction of some well-intended people just living and going about their day-to-day lives. Systemic oppression is "structural--it is not simply just a result of a few people's choices or policies".
The causes of systemic oppression are encoded into our society through unquestioned habits, norms, symbols, and in the assumptions underlying institutional rules and the collective consequences following those rules (and not questioning them).
Young breaks down her remarkable (truly, incredibly important) essay into the "five faces"; I've listed them below.
(Theory by Iris Young. Summary adaption expanded on by myself and Sandra Hinson)
1. Exploitation. Exploitation has to do with the difference between the wealth that workers create through their labor power and the actual wages that workers get paid. Exploitation is built into the market economy; bosses want to increase profits by lowering wages. The wage and wealth gap between the wealthy owners and managers, on the one hand, and the masses of working people, on the other, is an indication of the degree of exploitation that exists in a society.
The central insight expressed in the concept of exploitation is that oppression occurs through a steady process of the transfer of the results of the labor of one social group to benefit another.
2. Marginalization. Marginals are people are people that the system of labor cannot or will not use. This refers to being left out of the labor market. Those who are unable to get and keep steady employment – because of disabilities, education levels, age, historic discrimination, lack of jobs in neighborhoods, the conditions of poverty, etc. – are experiencing marginalization. (Examples: Single mothers, Native Americans--especially those on reservations, mentally or physically disabled, the elderly, and young people--especially black or Latino).
3. Powerlessness. The Marxist idea of class is important because it helps to reveal the structure of exploitation: some people have their power and wealth because they profit from the labor of others. In this particular context, ‘powerlessness’ refers to the way in which workers are divided and segmented into jobs with autonomy and authority and jobs with little or no autonomy and authority. Workers in lower-status jobs experience more powerlessness (both on the job and in the sphere of politics) than workers with professional jobs. At the same time, giving some workers a little bit of autonomy on the job can undermine a sense of solidarity that they might otherwise feel towards all workers.
4. Cultural Imperialism. To experience cultural imperialism means to experience how the dominant meanings of a society render the particular perspective of one's own group invisible while at the same time stereotyping one's group and marking it as the Other. This involves the universalization of a dominant group's experience and culture and its establishment as the norm. The way that one group’s experiences, cultural expressions, and history are defined as superior to all other groups’ experiences and histories is an expample of this. It is not necessary for anyone to say: “my group’s culture is superior;” it simply has to be treated as universal –– representing the best in all of humanity. It is considered ‘normal,’ which means that all others are either ‘strange,’ or ‘invisible’ or both.
5. Violence. Our nation’s history is full of examples where violence has been used to keep a group ‘in its place.’ State-sanctioned violence has been used to enforce racial segregation, to keep workers from organizing and to break up strikes. Everyday violence also reminds social groups of what happens when they resist oppressive conditions: Black youths straying into a white neighborhood, gay men harrassed and beaten outside of bars and clubs, women in the military being harrassed and sometimes raped -- these are examples of the brutality of everyday life for so many of us. And the ways in which violent crimes are dealt with often reflects social and cultural biases; crime is 'contained' within neighborhoods that law enforcement has written off.
The causes of systemic oppression are encoded into our society through unquestioned habits, norms, symbols, and in the assumptions underlying institutional rules and the collective consequences following those rules (and not questioning them).
Young breaks down her remarkable (truly, incredibly important) essay into the "five faces"; I've listed them below.
(Theory by Iris Young. Summary adaption expanded on by myself and Sandra Hinson)
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1. Exploitation. Exploitation has to do with the difference between the wealth that workers create through their labor power and the actual wages that workers get paid. Exploitation is built into the market economy; bosses want to increase profits by lowering wages. The wage and wealth gap between the wealthy owners and managers, on the one hand, and the masses of working people, on the other, is an indication of the degree of exploitation that exists in a society.
The central insight expressed in the concept of exploitation is that oppression occurs through a steady process of the transfer of the results of the labor of one social group to benefit another.
2. Marginalization. Marginals are people are people that the system of labor cannot or will not use. This refers to being left out of the labor market. Those who are unable to get and keep steady employment – because of disabilities, education levels, age, historic discrimination, lack of jobs in neighborhoods, the conditions of poverty, etc. – are experiencing marginalization. (Examples: Single mothers, Native Americans--especially those on reservations, mentally or physically disabled, the elderly, and young people--especially black or Latino).
3. Powerlessness. The Marxist idea of class is important because it helps to reveal the structure of exploitation: some people have their power and wealth because they profit from the labor of others. In this particular context, ‘powerlessness’ refers to the way in which workers are divided and segmented into jobs with autonomy and authority and jobs with little or no autonomy and authority. Workers in lower-status jobs experience more powerlessness (both on the job and in the sphere of politics) than workers with professional jobs. At the same time, giving some workers a little bit of autonomy on the job can undermine a sense of solidarity that they might otherwise feel towards all workers.
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5. Violence. Our nation’s history is full of examples where violence has been used to keep a group ‘in its place.’ State-sanctioned violence has been used to enforce racial segregation, to keep workers from organizing and to break up strikes. Everyday violence also reminds social groups of what happens when they resist oppressive conditions: Black youths straying into a white neighborhood, gay men harrassed and beaten outside of bars and clubs, women in the military being harrassed and sometimes raped -- these are examples of the brutality of everyday life for so many of us. And the ways in which violent crimes are dealt with often reflects social and cultural biases; crime is 'contained' within neighborhoods that law enforcement has written off.
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