Oppression - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... “The Broken Spears” refers to a book with a collection of many accounts of the destruction of Mexico Cortes and the conquerors in their invasion. The author argues that the Spanish were to solely take the blame for the destruction of the Aztec Empire. The author shows how the Spanish took advantage of their superiority over the Aztecs in order to oppress them (Leo?n-Portilla 87). They also took advantage of their cultural difference during the invasion. The book also gives details on how tropical diseases and poor political leadership contributed to the defeat of the Aztec Empire by the Spanish troop. “The house I live in” is a documentary based on the fight against drugs and drug abuse in the United States of America. The documentary was done by Andrew Jarecki in the year 2012. The documentary shows how much the government spends on this yet the results are hardly noticeable. The documentary shows how the police have over the years targeted the poor drug using minorities instead of focusing on the people who avail the drugs (Norrell 111). The documentary also shows the alarming rate in which the number of low income white Americans been jailed for drug related offenses in rising. The documentary suggests that the war against drugs in the USA should be staged across all social and economic classes instead of focusing on a single side. ...
This is evident in the way the Spanish invades the Aztecs thus depriving them of all the resources they have. They manage to do this by taking advantage of their superiority over the Aztecs and the Aztecs’ ignorance. In “the house I live in” the police take advantage of the low class citizens in the war against drugs in the USA. As much as they know that arresting and sentencing the common drug peddlers have little effect on the success in the fight against drugs, they still do it ignoring the drug lords who happen to be of high influence to the society. The government knows well that had there been fair job opportunities for people of all social and economic classes, the drug peddlers and users of the minority communities would not be involved in these activities. However, the government in this case seems to have emphasized on the symptoms of the problem instead of the problem itself. This is a form of oppression mainly encouraged by capitalism in all the aspects of human lives. In both cases someone can agree that there is oppression of one group by another. One of the common characteristics of the people being oppressed is that they have an inferiority complex of some sort to those oppressing them. Given that the oppressors are superior to the people being oppressed, they take advantage of the weakness of their victims. For instance, in the invasion of the Aztecs, the Spanish take advantage of their superiority to invade and exploit the resources formerly belonging Aztec Empire. The police has also taken advantage of the defenselessness of the minority drug dealers and users to arrest them. The police have been able to do very little about the powerful and influential drug lords. This failure is a major hindrance to the success of their mission. This ...Download file to see next pagesRead More